Hashing Out The Plan

All pictures in this post are by Erin Feinblatt www.erinfeinblatt.com

It’s hard to say when exactly the big decisions were made about how we would go about tackling the 900 or so miles from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas.  We both read this book called We Survived Yesterday about four guys who kayaked the distance and felt like we got a good idea of the day to day and the pitfalls.  We would come to shore each night, cook, resupply when needed, and try to row/sail our dory about 25-30 miles a day.  When you google map the Pacific coast of Baja and click the satellite option, you can really get an idea of how isolated some of the stretches are, and if you zoom out you’ll find that the whole thing is roughly the same length as the state of California.  Little fishing villages dot the coast, but for the most part, the main road leaves the coast not far after the border and doesn’t return very often.  There are bigger towns, but they are few and far between. Overall we felt like we had a pretty good idea of how it would pan out, probably not that different from the rafting trip.  We’d just pace out the miles, work really hard on the oars each day, and try to squeeze in some fun while photographing it all.  Easy right?

People have asked us from the beginning why our boat was so small.  When the trip idea started out as a kayak trip there was a reason behind it.  This was never meant to be a sailing voyage, it was set up to be a row trip that had the ability to sail from time to time when there was the wind to do so.  Both Heath and I like the idea of working our way down with our own effort.  Going to bed exhausted, but earning the miles and slowly taking bite size pieces out of the whopping distance. And I’m not going to lie to you, we both were pretty damn into the idea of getting into shape and going cold turkey off of all the bullshit we eat and drink when we’re at home.  I needed to quit soda and he needed to quit candy for a while. Another one of our brilliant fad diets.

(If you really want to dig deep on this trip and the ones before, I did an interview with Monster Children Magazine and you can read it here: www.monsterchildren.com)