This has been in the works for awhile but never really made it past the draft stage until now. Not really knowing where to begin I’ll try and get you all caught up. I have many more notes on previous travels that will be forthcoming. Just not at this time.
Lets roll back to February, 2020. We had grand plans. Leaving Punta Chivato we continued north to Santa Rosalia then sailed Pellucidar across the Sea of Cortez with our destination of San Carlos. (The weeks following Punta Chivato will be coming a little later but I wanted to get this out.) Pellucidar would hang out in the marina in San Carlos for the months of March and April. We were flying home to great our new grandson, Sullivan Jon. (we did not know it was a grandson at this point) then on April 1st we would embark on a 6 week journey touring New Zealand by motorhome with Linda’s sister and brother in law. This is something we had been planning of the last several years well before we sailed to Mexico and knew of our new grandson. It was going to be a full packed year for sure but we were determined to get it all fit in…….
We would return from New Zealand to Pellucidar and continue sailing in the Sea of Cortez until we put her away for hurricane season end of June in Puerto Penasco. This is a great hurricane hole and is very close to where my Pop lives in Yuma. AZ. We had it all worked out…….. or so we thought.
Lemons – As we prepped the boat for her extended stay in San Carlos the rumors regarding Covid 19 began to circulate. Knowing we would be leaving her for an extended period of time with our trip to New Zealand we took the same precautions as if we were leaving through the hurricane season. The only exception was we left her in the water instead of having her hauled into the yard. Looking back I’m not sure why we did this but it turned out to be a huge blessing!
We had a little meeting with the crew. G2 was concerned about Groot. He realized with us being gone Groot would be lacking in hydration.
We spoke to Maria in the marina office and she graciously agreed to watch over Groot while we were gone.
We flew back to the US and landed in Everett on March 7th. Our good friends Bill and Janet whom you would remember from our PelluciCal Adventure picked us up from the airport. We enjoyed getting caught up over breakfast and they drove us home. Little did we know that would be our last opportunity to dine out for a very long time. I don’t think it was even a week later everything began to shut down. Linda and I quarantined ourselves at the house so we would be available to help out when the new baby arrived.
Lemonade out of lemons – Little Sully was born on March 17th. Only the mother and father were allowed in the delivery room. Later this was tightened up even more to only the mom. Would be tough to reduce it much more than that I imagine! Sully was born strong and healthy and came home the next day. Linda and I were blessed to help out and watch him grow during those first few weeks.
And busy weeks those were! Owen was a good big brother but there is only so much you can do with a new little brother. It seems he is either eating, sleeping or pooping. These activities do nothing to captivate a soon to be 3 year old very long.
Thankfully the weather was begining to turn nice so we had the chance to play in the culdesac many afternoons. Sully would even join in when he could squeaze it into his busy schedule.
As you can imagine our trip to New Zealand was put on hold. The border between Mexico and the US was down so we were not able to get back to the boat. We knew we had prepped her well so were not too concerned. At least not at first…..
So we walked in the park…..
We built a bird house then Owen applied his artistic touch….
We played hide and seek….
We built a boat…..
And Owen got a new workbench – just his size!
And if the days were nice, Sully got to come hang out with us!
Sometimes we would just lay around in the flowers and enjoy the day
Then one special night we lit a fire and had hot chocolate. I think that was a huge hit!
about the time I was running out of ideas for my next project our middle son decided to buy a house and remodel the kitchen. We Drechslers tend to jump in with both feet and Nate is no exception. They got the keys on Wednesday and by Friday evening the kitchen was bare. We found a video on Youtube showing us how to build our own cabinets and away we went! I mean really, how hard can it be? We would soon find out. We were very fortunate as the lock down did not affect us as it did many other families. We saved a ton of money in gas and eating out during those first few months when everything was locked down.
Days turned into weeks and then weeks into months. We kept current on the situation in Mexico through friends that had elected to stay and one young family who looked after Pellucidar for us as she waited for us in San Carlos, Sonora, MX.
Then our youngest son Carl, decided he wanted to jump into the remodeling fray. In all honesty the “building cabinets” idea was originally his but Nathan got the jump on him. I never realized remodeling a kitchen involved moving a sliding glass door, removing two walls, the false celing and moving and / or adding windows. It sounds like I’m whining but honestly it was fun working with the boys on their various projects and the Covid lock down gave me no excuses not to be available. So we built cabinets, moved walls, redid wiring and a multitude of other tasks including a few extra sheets of plywood due to an old guy cutting out pieces before looking at the grain pattern……
We’re not completely done with either remodel but we (they) are making progress. I’m heading to Mexico! Can you blame me?
We had been keeping an eye on the border situation between the US and Mexico. The middle to end of July was looking good for us to get Pellucidar out of the water and secure for the remainder of hurricane season. Stay tuned for our Southern Adventure coming soon to your favorite blog…
SV Pellucidar 