Update and the blogs future

Hi everyone! At this point I am over a year behind, having left off just at Bahia Frailes.

So here is a year, in recap.

• Got to La Paz, hung out with friends from Canada and new friends
• Raced Maquinna Point to Mazatlán across the gulf, absolutely kicked their arses
• Continued sailing down the Mexican coast with MQ to Chiapas, 10 miles from the Southern border
• Left the boat there while went back to work for the summer, where I ran my own marine electronics company, was a salmon fishing guide for a season and worked at Trotac the marine store
• Returned to the boat in October, spent weeks getting rid of cockroaches and mould
• Continued south, with the plan to head for Panama.
• Currently in Costa Rica.

So you may have noticed a distinct lack of ‘crossing to French Polynesia’ in this year. After MUCH agonising I decided not to yet, mainly due to spending a lot more than I thought I would (the CAD is terrible right now and everything in Mexico is so much more expensive than it was a few years ago). I am going to get to Panama and decide what to do – either through the canal with MQ or cross the Pacific from Panama. Either way should be a good option. I was also briefly considering going to Patagonia and the Antarctic but that looks really hard so…. probably not. Especially solo.

So, that’s the brief update. Now, onto the blog… Readers may have noticed that updates have been pretty thin on the ground (to say the least) recently and I think it’s time to officially call it. I don’t have the motivation to write really any more, for a few reasons – one is that I get paid to write articles, so that sucks up a lot of my writing mojo, another is that I now keep a personal journal which sucks up the rest. I also don’t really feel I have anything interesting to say either – at this point this is mostly a travel log and there are 1000 different ones out that that are far more interesting. The last point is that I still do post stuff – but it’s all on Instagram now at https://www.instagram.com/sail_dive_fish/

This isn’t for sure the complete end – I may get the urge to return to more long form writing in the future but it will be a lot more one off and not a travel log. I will still leave this site up as I get a lot of people emailing me about a fix or solution they saw on here, but I am going to retire myself from feeling like I need to keep this updated regularly.

It’s been 12(!) years, and I have changed a lot in that time, from someone who had absolutely no idea what they are doing on a boat to someone who sort of has some sort of an idea a lot of the time. I’ve slowly accepted that having a long term partner and family probably isn’t going to happen at this point, and I’ve made peace with that. I’ve had a lot of really good jobs, and each time left them. I need to figure out what my future looks like through my 40s, and unlike my 30s, I don’t think I need this public blog to be part of this.

So thanks so much to everyone who has read this over the years and commented, and those I’ve met in person – without exception you’ve all been lovely.

Thanks for 12 years, see you all at my Instagram (or until I write something new here)

Matt

PS, here are some pictures from Costa Rica