It's been said that the definition of cruising is fixing your boat in exotic locations. Well then I must be a real bonafide cruiser given this v-drive issue. If this saying holds true, which I believe it does, then cruising is also not cut out for people that can't deal with adversity on one hand, while staying calm and enjoying their time in paradise on the other. It would be easy to go into panic mode and let something like a hole the size of a $10 Peso coin in the V-drive transmission ruin an otherwise great time. But after I had the v-drive sitting on our galley counter and formulated my recovery plan, I slipped right into cruiser mode, hanging out at the marina pool, drinking a margarita, and enjoying yet another evening potluck. Sure I had to rehash my tale of "adventure" to all the cruisers at the party no less than 10 times, but the story was told more with humor and comedy than anger and despair. Just like while driving down the freeway, everyone likes to see a wreak, so there was some of that curiosity in hearing the details of my v-drive adventure, but there was also genuine questions of concern and offers of help along with wanting to see how I was dealing with the situation in the event they were one day challenged with some similar task. In the end, a consensus formed that I would turn this adventure into a great series of blog posts and even milking a complete chapter in our cruising DVD series out of the event and come out ahead. That's turning lemons into lemonade, or limes into Margaritas, to bring the saying down to the Mexico level.

It's not just the 30yr old boats that have issues, no friends, the new shinny high priced boats surrounding us in the marina all have their list of broken items in need of repair, so to try and avoid the truths of cruising by buying new won't get you a pass on fixing things in exotic locations! I know some of our broken items sound bad, but really, it's nothing compared to some of the other boats in the fleet! And for some of them it is a much larger issue, because where I simply installed new oil cooler lines, pulled the v-drive, and fixed the other items myself, some people spent much more time and considerable more money just to find someone to look at their broken items and then tell them what needed to be done and make arrangements to pay someone to make the repairs. Folks, if you want to go cruising, you have to start doing things on your boat yourself. Because even if you can afford to hire people to do the work for you, sometimes there is simply no one to hire at any price and if you want something fixed, you will have to do it yourself. Now sure, there will be cruisers around that would like to fatten their cruising kitty by doing the work for you, but then you will make yourself dependant on others and in my opinion miss out on one of the great aspects of what cruising is all about, self sufficiency.

So here's what I've been calling my "adventure plan" to get the v-drive transmission fixed. A few days after Thanksgiving I will put the v-drive in my back-pack and my radar dome under my right arm and board the buss for Tijuana! The 23 hours pleasure trip will only cost $93 dollars and will surely be full of "Adventure"! Once I get to Tijuana, I will walk across the border, rent a car, and drive to the mechanic who has seen photos of the v-drive and placed an order for the rebuild parts. I will also drop my radar dome off for repair and kill two birds with one stone. While back in the US of A, I will bring back some other things from my list including bringing back my repaired Raymarine autopilot control head, my repaired solar charge controller, and whatever other small items I can carry. I would love to add a second SCUBA tank so one of the kids could go diving with me but I'm not sure I could carry everything else and a SCUBA tank, but hmmm...I just may give it a try!

Lori is giving Jason a dockside haircut, and I'm next so that's about it for now from La Paz. I am hoping to make it through the day with no new items to repair and to start fabricating our cockpit sun cover along with some mainsail repair. What, I didn't tell you about our mainsail? Ha ha ha...well, we will save that repair for another day but lets just say, that when you have your sailrite sewing machine out on the deck of your boat stitching up your mainsail, you can officially be called cruising trash, as our friends say!