Thursday, March 28

After Three Months in Mexico, the Schultes Head South on Their Grand Banks 42 Bumfuzzle

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After three months in Mexico, Pat Schulte, his wife Ali, daughter Ouest, 9, and son Lowe, 7, are heading south on their 1986 Grand Banks 42 Bumfuzzle, continuing to live the dream, no matter what country they’re in.

They arrived in Isla Mujeres from Key West in January. Pat took the boat over by himself since Ali and the kids were back home in Minnesota visiting family. (That wasn’t exactly the way they planned it, but a weather window opened up, and he took advantage of it.) They enjoyed their time there, touring the Yucatan, celebrating Carnaval (it was pretty tame), and eating a lot of tacos. But it was time to move on.

“Time to roll on out of Mexico,” Schulte wrote on his blog, bumfuzzle.com. “We’d probably cruise Mexico forever if there were new places to visit and explore, but the Caribbean coast really has very few spots for cruisers. We enjoyed Isla Mujeres, but three months was enough for us. We were all anxious to move on.”

When a weather window opened up, they did their laundry in town, the kids rode their bikes in the plaza for the last time, they topped off the fuel tanks, and then cast off their lines. At first they had a 15-knot wind on the beam and Schulte said he had “seriously underestimated the Gulf Stream running between Isla and Cozumel” where the seas were “incredibly lumpy,” but the stabilizers kept the boat “running like a champ.”

He wrote me that after a stop in the Bay Islands of Honduras the plan is to head for the Colombian Islands off Nicaragua and finally down to Bocas del Toro, Panama, for a few months during the hurricane season.

The Schultes are not a family to stay put. They quit their jobs in Chicago in 2003, where he had been a successful commodities trader. Then they sailed around the world on a 34-foot Wildcat, raced their 1965 Porsche across the country, and drove a 1958 VW bus from Alaska to Argentina before returning to sailing with a 43-foot Spindrift. In the summer of 2017, they sold the Spindrift and bought the Grand Banks in Jacksonville, Florida. Since then, Schulte said the Grand Banks, which cruises at 8.5 knots, has been “a pretty great platform for the family.”

Wherever they are, Schulte supports his family with his financial writing and mentoring. A few years ago he set up Wanderer Financial, and he emails a commodities trading newsletter to subscribers every Sunday night. Read more:

http://bumfuzzle.com

 

 

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