Back in October when we were getting ready to head back to the boat, Nate got the word that his old job (this time as a civilian) was available. With the cruising kitty running a little low, he put in his application and we assumed that our cruising adventure was soon coming to an end. The plan was to get the boat back in the water and make our way back to San Diego by the New Year. Fortunately for us, Nate was one of the qualified applicants for the job, but his old boss wanted a bigger pool of applicants to choose from. This gave us more time. More time to cruise and enjoy Mexico, and also more time to consider all of our options. Before the job was reposted, we thought of a ton of different ways we could keep cruising. Not forever – we just really wanted to finish off this season.

Our first idea had Nate going to school online. With the G.I.Bill he would get a monthly stipend for taking classes online. The plan was to head down to La Cruz and hunker down for a few months with a good internet connection so Nate could take a few online classes. But by the time we thought of this plan it was too late to start right away, and we would need the money coming in ASAP if we were going to head to La Cruz. Plus, Nate didn’t want to take online classes. He got his first degree online, and it wasn’t fun. He’d rather use the G.I.Bill to do something he’s really interested in and attend classes at a brick and mortar college.

In January, Nate started doing some boat work for our friends David and Kinyon. He was good at it and he enjoyed it, so we thought about sailing down to La Cruz to start a boat work business with our friend Nate. But that required a long term commitment, and we didn’t want to live on a boat in Mexico forever. Our options were limited, and in the middle of January, we still had no idea what we were doing or where we were going, so we just kept hanging out and having fun in La Paz.

It was nice staying in La Paz. We had a great network of cruising friends there and many had kids!

We said goodbye to our friends Megan and Jonah from s/v Orion. We spent a lot of time with these guys in the fall and for holidays, so we were very sad to see them leave.

At the end of January, our plan was to bash back to San Diego. We pulled into a marina for a few days to seal the toe-rail, and Sully and Nate fixed the leaks in Sully’s hatch.