Rhythm is, indeed, everything. I failed music theory back when I was eight or nine and played the violin indifferently. I never could figure out what they were talking about when they talked about 5/6 time (?), or 4/4 time. The house and the car were filled with music, mostly baroque, mixed with the solemn, annoying voices of NPR reporters. I attended the opera. Why couldn't I get it? I sit listening to the soaring arc of George Lewis's clarinet in “Over the Waves” and I think, surely it's the fact that I was mysteriously unprepared to make an intuitive leap. To feel. Or, perhaps, to feel with intellect. Rhythm is a sort of sign or metaphor. If I had to guess I'd say our lives are lived these days at something like a 2/4 beat, overwhelmed sometimes in the faster, higher rhythms of a new place, some gaping—opportunity, that is, some problem waiting to be transformed into the most astounding future we could never have imagined. Isn't that what's waiting?

Recently, Tallulah drank bleach. Jesus! It was diluted so thoroughly it didn't even have a smell. We have no idea how it got onto a measuring cup on the counter. She threw up all over the floor and then said she felt better. I wasn't at all satisfied. But Adam had gone to Fajardo and taken the dinghy; a storm was passing over, interfering with the internet connection; oh yeah, and Adam had the cellphone. We triangulated by shouting into our respective instruments, “Can you hear me?” and bleating the relevant words like morse code. It was kind of like being in a war a hundred years ago. It turned out Adam was calling Lawrence, who lives on a boat nearby, while I was hailing the anchorage on the radio. Then two men in dinghies were heading straight for our boat, medevac style. We all visited the doctor together. He looked down her throat and said she was fine. Then my platoon and I walked over to the health food store for a quick recon of life-giving fluids. When I thanked them, they said, “Happy to help. We don't have much money, but we have lots of time.” A little day-in-the-life for ya.

I recently read a book called Radical Homemakers. It's all about people who, the author says, “did the math.” They did the math and they decided to opt out of the traditional paradigm of working and spending. They turned their family units into “units of production” rather than “units of consumption.” Make, forage, barter, do with less. Drop out. Relearn. Reintegrate, but with a difference. I'm wondering if the commune movement of the late sixties and seventies ran into such trouble because there was no internet. Apparently Adam and I are not alone. Rather than being consumed with anxiety over the crisis of resources, we can look upon it as a reason to live better. What's so great about massive consumption, anyway? Does it make people happy? We've got rhythm. Now, we just have to swing it.

(Thank you, Wendy, for your inspiring gift.)

photo by Tallulah

At SeaWolf and Co. we always work harder to bring you the best possible blog at the lowest possible price—that’s our mission. But who WE are is more than just a leading provider of original content. SeaWolf and Co. is also a group of highly motivated individuals who won’t rest until “mission accomplished.” And while all of our team members are exceptional we’d like to focus this month’s recognition on our globe girding supply chain partners who have been working so hard to restore original images to the site:

Dan: concept development and product procurement
Location: Rotorua, New Zealand
Team Member Quote: ”I already bought it, who should I send it to?!”


Margaret: just-in-time warehousing and transshipment specialist
Location: Gainesville, Georgia
Team Member Quote: “It was returned when I used that address!”


Marv: logistics analyst
Location: Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
Team Member Quote: “She could send it to San Diego!”


Ardy: product oversight/delivery and international customs agent
Location: Worldwide
Team Member Quote: “Sure, I’ll pick it up!”

Sea Wolf in Tenacatita

Thanks to Vicki and John of m/v "Low Maintenance" for this photo.

Water delivery

How it feels to be clean

Our new career

The culture of "Cabo" is a culture of tourism--and more specifically of hustling, scamming, repossessing excess. We became participant observers. Innocently stopping to ask for directions at one of the many "Tourist Information" booths near the marina, we found ourselves persuaded to visit a time share on the beach. The sidewalk promoter, thinking of his commission, cheerfully supplied us with a hotel name--Mar de Cortez--and fake room numbers. But first he needed to know: "Are you legally married?" At this time share, like most of those we encountered, being a heterosexual married couple was a prerequisite for receiving the bounty to follow. In exchange for listening to what turned out to be a three-hour sales pitch, we would receive free breakfast, a discounted parasailing session, and the use of time share pools and hot tubs for the remainder of the day. A large portion of my brain now circling around the fantastical image of a hot shower, I requested that the afternoon include shower access. I didn't get a shower that day. How little we knew of what was possible.

We attended the time share presentation and made serious faces. The software engineer grabbed the calculator and began figuring amortized interest, or something like that. The former psychologist for Intel critiqued the salesman's presentation and offered helpful suggestions. I posed incisive questions about investment value. And what would happen, I asked, if we destroyed all the furniture? Would we really "own" the time share, as the company claimed? My attempt to theorize the limits of time-share ownership was met with undisguised alarm.

At the Villa del Arco we first encountered the startling practice of popping champagne corks in celebration of a sale. The room erupting in applause. The slightly sheepish looks on the faces of the new "owners." The legal minutae to follow--free drinks could hardly be an accident.

One time share led to another. After refusing the closer, who followed the first salesperson to offer still cheaper deals, we were directed to a room where our "prizes" would be distributed. An exuberant Mexican woman, who announced, "I stink!" (after taking care of her new grandchild) directed us to the hotel she worked for. "This breakfast is ok," she said, "but the breakfast at my hotel is really, really good!" We also obtained guarantees of a free snorkeling cruise, a trip to "Lover's Beach" in a glass-bottom boat, and a Mexican blanket.

But these paled in comparison with our next windfall. After listening to the pitch of a salesman whose dream was to spend a night in Dracula's castle and debating with him the existence of ghosts; ducking as one of us almost killed a woman with a golf ball on the indoor virtual driving range; and observing a hot tub that swirled like a toilet, we sat down to negotiate with our prizegiver Zoraida. Her final offer: $450 in gift certificates at her time share/hotel's restaurants and a hot shower (at last!), in addition to the usual breakfast buffet and use of pools and hot tubs. After fending off the assaults of a costume-jeweled closer honed like a knife edge, I watched Michael Jordan play golf and ate Kobe beef for dinner. Time shares were playing havoc with my vegetarian sensibilities.

Then we swore off time shares--until Adam and Scotty, number one with a golf ball, discovered that instead of the meager compensations of gift certificates, one could earn hundreds of actual dollars. We began to penetrate the subculture of time share sales--the freelance persuaders, the complicit managers. (The receptionist at the Mar de Cortez was paid to confirm that people like us were staying there.) Adam brought his negotiating talents to bear on sidewalk hawkers and laughing, in-on-the-joke promoters. Together we were taking advantage of the multimillionaire developers building soon-to-be outdated homogenous behemoths overlooking the sea.

The salespeople were humorless true believers who spoke in dialect, all using the terms "location, location, location" and "no-brainer." I watched a little gold key circle a little gold heart on the ring finger of one saleswoman as she told the story of a man she described as "a parole officer" and "schoolteacher" with his "arms all tattooed" who had come one day to Hacienda Encantada. He listened to the presentation and told his sales rep, "I know I need to buy this--otherwise I'll never be able to take my family on this kind of vacation. But I have no money!" And so the benevolent salesman had worked out a series of "little tiny payments" for the man--doubtless at the 15-19% interest that, we were assured, was the best the developer could do. "You can tell me you don't want this--but don't tell me you're going to think about it," Sherry cautioned us. "Because Disney and Four Seasons and all those companies have done research into this and decided it's a good thing, and there's no way you can do more research than they have." Thus are we intended to accept the conclusions of the very entity that is attempting to make a profit from us. The corporation knows what is best. And one in three visitors to a time share presentation ends up buying.

Our life as grifters/corporate raiders, if I can appropriate those terms, came to an end in Cabo as one salesman accused us, despite what I believed to have been a highly convincing performance of interest, of "just being here for the prizes." Taking advantage of the exploitative, heterosexist corporate tourist development model by eating its food and taking its cash seems feeble and insufficient. But Puerto Vallarta beckons. Perhaps there we will become masked time share guerillas who rise up to staunch the flowing rivers of champagne.

Cruizing Tipz

We've been living aboard long enough now to have gained some insights on how to make this type of life easier, funner, less hasslesome, and generally better in general. And we wanted to share this "wisdom" with any and all who might benefit.

The top picture illustrates the result of a productive evening afloat, a dry-bag for our digital camera. Ingredients: plastic bag, bubble wrap, blue tape, rubber band, and your preferred attitude adjuster!

The second shot is, you guessed it, a fruit and vegetable stabilizer ball. It might look like the innards of your toilet but we've found a higher use for this item. It keeps food fresh up to four days longer or so.

Stay tuned for more tips that you won't find anywhere else!

Headlamp lifestyle