It’s been a hell of a ride. We’re ending this trip and returning to the States to a lifestyle that will be a bit more mobile and a bit less stable than it once was. And that’s okay, it is all by design and things are going according to plan. Our goal is less time in an office and more time in the woods and waters. We are determined to continue to explore the world around us, even if it means that we have fewer pesos in our pockets. And that’s okay, too; if this trip taught us anything, it was how to live simply without sacrificing happiness.

However, we thought that we would be able to find a creative way to store Selkie cheaply, but it turns out that an 8′ x 30′ plot of Mexican desert is comparable to Manhattan high rise prices. If you put a sailboat on it, that is. The economic reality is that it simply doesn’t make sense to store her for 11 months to sail her for one month, which is the likely scenario for our foreseeable future.

We have loved her and she has carried us safely through the rough seas, and we want to see her with sails high as a boat should be, pushing a bow wave and exploring the oceans. The worst damnation for a boat is to dry her out and let her rot on land, and since we don’t know when we’ll be able to return, it could very well harken the death knell. We cannot bear the thought.

So this goodbye is not a eulogy, it’s simply a turning of the page in Selkie’s glorious 50 year run down the coast. Everyone raise a glass tonight to Selkie’s next voyage. May it be downwind all the way.

It’s sad, of course, to say goodbye, but it will also free us to climb the mountains of Baja, and sail in the Carribean and the Pacific Northwest, and travel to South America if we so choose. We have seen the coast of Baja, and we will always return to this special place, but there are other uncharted waters and unclimbed peaks that beckon as well. The next round of the blog looks like it might be written from coastal Alaska, and you know we’ll do everything we can to find ourselves on a sailboat now and again.

Selkie’s now on the market in La Paz, awaiting an interested buyer.

You can find the ad and more detailed information on Craigslist Baja Sur.

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