A Bum Day By Michael

The Schulte family on their PV balcony

A couple years before Windy and I launched our 5-year plan to up-end our lives, I stumbled on a blog by a couple in their late twenties. Pat and Ali were busy sailing around the world on their 36-foot catamaran. There was nothing new to me about young couples out cruising, but blogs were new to me and this one was a good read and updated regularly. http://www.bumfuzzle.com/ turned out to be sustinence for a guy sitting in front of a computer all day with fond memories of a cruising past and distant dreams of a post-retirement cruising future.

Eventually, Pat and Ali made it all of the way around the globe and in the meantime, we accelerated our own cruising plans to include our young kids. The Bums (as Pat and Ali are known) went on to document post cruising, non-sailing adventures on their blog. As the days, months, and years ticked by, I read and read and read, along with them all of the way. The years I enjoyed reading the Bumfuzzle site inspired me to begin this blog.

As I began to regularly document our pre-departure activities here, the Bums started a family, eventually bought another boat, and are now beginning their second adventure afloat. As it happens, we are all in Puerto Vallarta now with kids and boats.

Today we formally met Pat and Ali and their kids, Ouest (18 months) and Lowe (1 month) at the place they are renting in Old Town. Ali didn’t care for the beer we brought, but otherwise we had a good visit and the girls engaged Ouest and delighted in the roof-top pool. It was a nice respite from our boat projects and we look forward to seeing The Bums again soon.

Regarding boat projects:

• I am a hair’s breadth away from completing the install of our wifi antennae.
• I have the installation of the third solar panel all mapped out and needed parts in-hand.
• I found the faulty ground that was preventing the refrigeration from working and the beer is cold.
• I found and fixed the major water leak in the starboard water tank, but have no way of finding and fixing the very, very slow leaks in both tanks.
• I don’t know why the Battery Combiner isn’t isolating when it should and I believe that is why our new starter battery is dead.
• I don’t yet know why the 110 battery charger doesn’t fire up when I plug in shore power.
• Without the starter battery to fire up the engine, I can’t confirm that I fixed the fuel starvation problem likely caused by the two completely clogged filters I removed.
• I installed the CO detector in the girls’ cabin.

--MR

Hollywood is the force that turned Puerto Vallarta from a sleepy little coastal
town into the cruise ship destination it is today. In the early 1960s, Elizabeth
Taylor and Richard Burton came down here to film "Night of the Iguana,"
a movie based on the Tennessee Williams play of the same name. They
had a torrid affiar on set so all of the tabloids descended on the town and
broadcast the romance and beauty of Banderas Bay to the rest of the world.
This bridge is iconic because it is the bridge the two lovers had built to
connect the residences they bought on either side of the street. We
stumbled on it driving home from the Bums' place.