Well, as the saying goes, it has “been a minute” since my last post and update, Dec 14th 2025 to be precise, so I’ll try to catch up with some of the key things that have happened since then in the next few posts here.
I’ll start with this post that will provide you with a quick summary of the phenomenal time we had eXploring the Baja peninsula of Mexico from end of December to beginning of March. Sure helped us get 2026 off to a GREAT start.
and yes, I can see those eyes rolling when those who know me hear Wayne saying “a quick summary” BUT in this case it is actually true because my awemazing wife, travel partner and best selling author (pen name Christine Kling) wrote it! Christine regularly writes an article on her Substack called “SailingWriter” and she did her typically awemazing job of summarized our two months in Baja in an article there she titled “Curiouser and Curiouser in Baja” Click on this link to read the whole article and see all her phots. And trust me, you will want to be sure to stay to the end to see the abfab video she took while we were out on the whale watching tour that she had gifted me with for Xmas this year.
While I will plead guilty as charged to being “narratively generous” and Captain of the Good Ship sv LongWinded, when you read Christine’s article you will learn that I am not being my typical grandiloquent self when I tell you that she is an awemazing woman, writer and person and has been from a VERY early age. For example, the last time she was traveling the Baja highway was just after it opened in 1974 when she rode her bicycle from Tijuana to La Paz to at the age of 19. As you’ll read she not only pedaled her way to La Paz, she “… had this crazy idea that you had to do something extraordinary and write about it in order to get published. It was crazy, but it worked and my very first publication was in Bicycling Magazine in July, 1975.”
NOW go ahead and tell me that I’m hyperbolic embellisher!
Hope you enjoy this all too brief detour to well written articles and that you’ll still bravely continue to read mine such as the next update on my latest progress this year converting “Lance” our 2016 Kenworth T270 ex Medium Duty ambulance, into an eXtreme RV. I’m writing that newest update now and should have it published later today. (10 May, 2026)
Thanks so much for joining Christine and me on our adventures and be sure to add any comments and questions you have in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
Zoe & Razz have been enjoying their winter coats during the recent cold spell here. All things relative of course so that has been temperatures down to as low as 2C/36F at night and not getting much above 10C/50F in the daytime. But it is always sunny here so that makes it pretty easy to take and feels much warmer as long as you stay in the sun. However with Christine’s return they are now just back from their day at the Puppy Spa so thought you’d enjoy these before and after pics. As for this week’s update I’m going to bring you up to present time with the latest project I’ve just completed; installing the new Fiama awning! I’ll get back to catching up with all the progress on Lance since we got back from our summer maiden voyage out to the East Coast and back but I thought you’d enjoy seeing the latest project. To be honest I’m doing this in part because it will be a bit shorter update as I’ve been taken down a peg or two with my first experience with Shingles. Ouch! As those of you who have had them will know this is eXtremely painful and not something I’ wish on my worst enemy. However I’m recovering well and not looking quite so much like an escapee from a Leper Colony but fighting this off has definitely zapped my energy a bit for the past two weeks and hence this shorter blog post today. When the weather is nice we like to spend most of our days camping enjoying the sunny outdoors, such as this spot in Dinosaur Provincial Park just east of Calgary in Alberta this past July. But we’re heading for Baja in a few weeks and we do like the hotter weather when some shelter from the sun and at times the rain allows us to stay outside longer. So we’ve been researching what retractable awning would be the Goldilocks, just right, just for us. We wanted an awning that would extend out from the Passenger Side PS as that’s where we tend to set up our table and chairs when camping and one that would be very quick and easy to extend and retract so that we’d use it frequently. After some research we settled on the Italian made Fiama 14’ F45S awning with a “Titanium” colour housing. It took a few weeks to get to us but I was able to get a good price with free shipping from Vanlife Outfitters and I picked it up from a freight terminal in Las Vegas which is less than an hour’s drive from our place here on Road Runner Ranch. The box it shipped in was just a bit over 14’/4.3M long so that roll down rear window in Totu (our 2006 Toyota Tundra) comes in very handy for extending the length of items I pick up without sticking out the rear too much. It was very well packaged for shipping with lots of very tough angled cardboard corners on all sides so it arrived in perfect condition. The awning comes with three of these extruded Aluminium brackets which hook into the extruded Aluminium on the back of the awning body itself so I just needed to come up with a way of securely fastening these brackets to the top PS roof corner on Lance’s Hab. (Habitat/Box)
The awning housing needed to clear the top of the doors on the PS which extend almost all the way to the top of Lance’s Hab so I set out to design some strong brackets that would be eXtremely strong and secure to mount the awning housing at the front, middle and rear. I keep all the cut offs from the XAL or eXtruded Aluminium that I used to build all the cabinet framing inside Lance and just love working with this stuff so I was particularly delighted to find that the T-slot in the 10 Series 1 inch square XAL wedged itself perfectly into the L shaped aluminium gutter rails that runs down the top sides of Lance’s Hab. Sometimes you luck out!
This is the design I came up with. Solid and Simple; four small lengths of XAL with four corner gussets to bolt them all together. You’ll see that I’ve built these such that the top edge of these XAL brackets ends up at the same height as the top of the steel Super Strut rails you saw me affix to Lance’s rooftop for mounting the solar panels. This allowed me to bolt a short length of 2” wide 3/16” AL bar stock to the top of the XAL squares and then bolt through the Super Strut into the captured nuts that slide into these rails. These captured nuts twist lock in place using the blue plastic flanges to hold them right where you want them before tightening the 1/4” through bolt. In the middle bracket you see here as well as the rear one, the flat bar supports fit nicely into the 40mm/1.5” space I left between the bottom of the solar panel frames and the Super Strut. Here is what the finished installation looks like with the Fiama bracket now bolted into the top T-slot of the XAL bracket. This closeup shows how perfectly the bottom T-slot fits into the L shaped AL rain gutter that is part of the top corner extrusions on Lance’s roof. After I had them all dry fitted and checked that the three brackets were where Fiama wants them, I put in a bead of that same 8X Loctite industrial adhesive I used to affix the Super Strut to the roof top so these brackets are definitely on there for good! Being all aluminium construction whole awning only weighs 27Kg/60lbs so it wasn’t too much of a lift for Christine and I on two ladders to lift it up and slide the awning into the brackets. Once the awning is in place the final step is to drill through these holes you see on the bottom lip of the Fiama brackets and bolt the awning securely to the brackets. We like to keep things simple whenever we can so we went with the fully manual style that uses the little crank you see here to roll the awning in and out. If we ever wanted to Fiama makes an electric motor that bolts to the end and let’s you roll the awning in/out with the touch of a switch but we think this simple crank method will suit us best.
To help secure the outer edge of the awning these two extendable legs clip into brackets I mounted on the bottom edge of Lance’s Hab.
I have Lance parked too close to the 40 foot shipping container that is my workshop and on the far left here so I couldn’t get a picture for you of the awning fully extended to the 2.5M/8.2 ft that it goes but I’ll be sure to grab a photo when we hit the road down to Baja in a few weeks. And that’s the wrap for this week and likely this year folks! We leave in Lance next week to drive down to spend Xmas week with our Granddaughters in the LA area and then we’ll hit the road and point ourselves South to spend the first few months of the new year exploring the beautiful Baha peninsula.
My sincere thanks to YOU for taking the time to join us on these adventures and send us your questions and comments. Adds SO much to our experiences to have so many others to share it all with. Hope you too have a fabulous holiday and I’ll be back early in the New Year with more updates on both our travels and the ongoing work to transform our beloved Lance into the XRV of our dreams!
A very quick but important update for those who might not otherwise be aware.
An article entitled “Project Goldilocks” that Christine wrote several months ago has just gone live and been published on the web site of PassageMaker magazine.
As per their byline PassageMaker is “The World’s Cruising authority” so this is a premiere magazine for the community surrounding those out cruising the world, mostly in power boats.
As such, many of you may not subscribe but I am delighted to pass on that the article is now available to the public via the Passagemaker web site which you can access HERE.
Part of the interesting back story for you is that Christine began her professional writing career back when she was in her twenties and wrote an article about her experience of riding her bicycle solo down the entirety of then just completed Baja Highway on the West coast of the Mexican peninsula. This article was published in “Bicycling!” a major bicycling enthusiasts magazine at the time.
Christine has written quite a few magazine articles for a wide range of magazines in the years since and back at the beginning of this year the editors of Passagemaker magazine contacted her asking if she would be willing to write an article about her experiences with Möbius for an upcoming edition of Passagemaker magazine. The magazine publishing business still works quite slowly and the article has only just now appeared online and will be featured in the July/August 2023 print magazine.
For those with sharp eyes who might be confused to see that this article says it was written by “Christine Kling”. No, this is not a typos as this is Christine’s Nom de plume or pen name under which she writes all her best selling mystery novels.
I am SO proud of my awemazing and talented partner and Captain in life for this most recent opportunity to share her writings with the world and hope you will enjoy reading this great summary of the experiences of transforming the dreams of Project Goldilocks into the reality that Möbius now is.
For this week’s Situation Report, we’ll start off outside the door to our Airbnb, as I, Christine, tip-toed out on Monday morning past the Türkitty security system to catch a taxi from the village of Bitez where we were on day 17 of our forced exile from Greece and the EU.
I left behind my family who would be spending their forced internment doing hard labor, as usual.
I was on a mission to free them, no matter the cost.
That cost started out to be rather substantial as the taxi driver asked me in his broken English (better than my Turkish) which ferry I was taking, Castle or Cruiseport. I checked the ticket on my phone and it didn’t say anything about where to catch it. We hadn’t arrived at the castle several weeks ago, so I told him the Cruiseport. Turned out I was wrong, so I had to forego that 18 Euros and buy a new 26 Euro ticket. It wasn’t a good start to the day, and I still hadn’t found any coffee.
The high speed catamaran makes the trip across to the island of Kos in less than an hour, and I made it through immigration with no problem. I still had about 17 days left of 90 allowed in the EU, but I had been in and out many times, and it was clear that the young man who leafed through my passport did not really check all the stamps and do the math to calculate days. He just stamped it, and I was on my way. However, there were two of them working the window, and I had no trouble recognizing the woman sitting next to him. She had been on the job the day we left Greece, and she was a potential problem for us.
You see the day the mermaid waved us off as we left Möbius behind wedged between the tug and the tanker on the island of Kalymnos, Wayne got stopped by that immigration officer as we were exiting EU immigration on Kos. As she had flipped through Wayne’s passport, she came across a stamp from the TRNC, or Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. She refused to stamp his passport as exiting the EU, but rather stamped a white piece of paper and slipped it into his passport.
Way back in 2017, before we had even started building Möbius, we were on our friends’ Lagoon 50 catamaran in Cyprus, and Wayne visited Antalya to talk to builders and to move our vehicle from Rhodes to Antalya. It is not possible to fly from Türkiye directly to Southern Cyprus, so he just flew from Antalya to the north, then walked across the border and took a bus back to Limassol. Later, we learned that though the exact law is in dispute, many Greeks will not let you into their country if you have such a stamp in your passport.
That morning as I had purchased my (second) ferry ticket, I saw a big sign over the window that said, “Persons with a passport stamp from the TRNC will not be allowed to enter Greece when the ferry arrives.”
We had done so well clearing in at Rhodes, and I thought this whole thing was finished. The whole point of our coming to Türkiye was to prove to the Greek immigration authorities on Kos that we had done as they asked and left the country. But Wayne didn’t have the passport stamp to prove it. If we showed them the white piece of paper, the visa issuing authorities would know they had missed seeing that stamp in his passport, and they might never let him back in.
One step at a time. There was no printer in the Airbnb, so as soon as I landed in Kos, I pushed that problem to the back of my mind, got myself a coffee, and then I went in search of a copy shop that could print out the papers that showed that Mr. Gee 2.0 had actually arrived on the island of Kalymnos. The most difficult part of getting around in Greece is that you can’t even read the alphabet, and often the names of the places on Google maps are in the Greek alphabet. But after two or three false leads, I finally found a nice lady who printed out the three pages for 1 Euro. Bargain!
I made it to the police station where the immigration office is located by 10:15, only to be told to come back at 12:30. Okay, breakfast. There was a restaurant right next door.
I couldn’t resist sending a What’sApp message back to the prisoners with this photo and the caption, “Eggs Benny, Baby!” And the cappuccino wasn’t too bad either. (The land visible in the distance in the photo is the Bodrum peninsula in Türkiye)
When I returned to the office, the immigration officials looked over the documents I had brought. I explained that the engine was there at last, and we were simply asking for two weeks to get it installed and then we would leave the EU. They went upstairs to talk to the chief. The nice lady came down after a 30 minute wait and said my husband should come the next day with his passport and she gave me the list of documents needed. She also gave me a paper and told me to take it to the Post Office and pay the 30 Euros for the visa. I took care of all that, even went back to the copy shop and printed out copies of all the papers needed and took her the entire file. She approved it and told me to have him there by 10:00 the next morning.
I had planned to go over to Kalymnos and check on the boat, but I called Wayne and told him the good news first. Then I said, look, if we’re both going to be going to the boat tomorrow, I might as well go back to you tonight. It was difficult to even wrap our heads around the idea that after the weeks of making Plans A, B, C, and D, we were both going home the next day.
So I made my way back to wait for the 5:30 ferry, and took a taxi back to Bitez. We enjoyed a “clean out the fridge” dinner and set our alarms for another early morning.
I didn’t sleep well as Wayne’s passport stamp was not the only fly in the ointment. During our stay in Türkiye, I had done my homework on importing the dogs back into the EU. They have had EU pet passports for several years, and they needed to update their rabies shots and get new titer tests done. We did all that. They would also need to have proof of anti-parasite drugs administered and a health certificate from a vet both no longer than 10 days before entry. We had done all that when we entered Rhodes, and I had considered taking them to the vet while we were sitting around in Bitez, but we weren’t sure of dates or if we would even be allowed in before the end of the year. We discussed it that evening and we decided to just go for it with the old health certificate. If we got to Kos and they wouldn’t let the animals in, I would go back with them and take them to a vet and do what I could to get them legal while Wayne went on to the boat.
The next morning we were off with suitcases, backpacks, dogs in travel bags, and after yet another taxi ride to the ferry dock, we were on our way. I asked Wayne, “How many times is it now that we have said Good-bye to Türkiye? I don’t think I”ll say anything. I don’t want to jinx it.”
The plan was that when we got to the immigration window, if the man was available, Wayne would go first. If the woman became available, I would go. My heart was beating overtime, but we breezed through that and went around the corner to the Customs lady. She motioned for us to put the bags up on the table. Wayne set down the bag with Ruby in it and when the woman started to open it, Ruby let out a loud whine. The woman jumped back. We all laughed and explained that we had two dogs. She peered at the cases and asked if we had their pet passports. I handed them to her. Then she smiled and told us about her dog and asked our dog’s names. We lucked out. She was a dog lover and she waved us through.
Halfway around the marina basin en route to the police station, Wayne parked me and all the luggage at a cafe while he went on alone to immigration. Suffice it to say that our luck held and they somehow didn’t notice that he had no stamp out of the EU. Some four plus hours later after Wayne getting fingerprinted and lots of waiting, Wayne got his visa extension for two weeks. We took another taxi to Mastichari where we could catch the ferry from Kos to Kalymnos.
It was so great seeing that island on the horizon where our home had been docked all alone.
It was dusk by the time we got home to the boat. The dogs were almost as happy as we were. The boat was fine, no dead rodents in the traps we had left (that was another story), no signs that anyone had been aboard other than the local cat population that likes to sleep on the Skybridge, and all was well. We had left the boat unplugged, and we had been able to monitor the batteries and solar situation with the Victron VRM. Without us aboard, there wasn’t too much draw, but we did leave one fridge and one freezer working and all the inverters. The batteries were down a bit, but as you know if you’ve been reading this blog, we were happy that the firefly batteries did as well as they did.
Wayne wasted no time. We arrived Tuesday evening and Wednesday afternoon, this guy came barreling down the quay.
In case you haven’t guessed by now, I am writing this Sunday blog because he has had his hands full the last several days.
But that will be his story to tell. We just wanted to let you all know that we are back aboard Möbius and Mr. Gee 2.0 is getting lots of tender loving care.
Sheesh! Half way through the month of August already!
Time for a brief update on what’s been happening with us and Möbius over the first two weeks of August.
Weather here continues to surprise us with how ideally cool it is. This past week has seen the daily temperatures drop a few more degrees from their previous norms of about 32C / 90F down to about 28C / 82F as I sit typing this at about 3pm on Sunday. Evenings and mornings are even cooler and with the constant Meltemi winds blowing through the boat sleeping is very comfy and mornings are starting to feel downright chilly! Not sure why this area is experiencing such relatively cool summer when the rest of Europe, the UK and many other parts of the world are seeing record high temperatures but we’ll just enjoy and be grateful that we’ve got such ideal conditions.
Here is what else we’ve been up to the past two weeks.
Update from Kalymnos Greece
Christine and I have settled into a nice rhythm here onboard Möbius and in this lovely south end of Kalymnos Island that I showed you around in the last post. If you did not see that post, this map will help orient you as to where the small island of Kalymnos is at (red pin) in the bigger picture of this Eastern end of the Med. This satellite view of the island of Kalymnos (click to enlarge any photo) will help you see how arid and mountainous it is. Möbius is the south harbour at the Red pin. To give you a sense of scale, the coast road allows you to circumnavigate the whole island in just 68 km/42 miles. So not too big which suits us just fine.
Christine Update
Christine continues to be very dedicated to getting her knee back to full working order and goes for a swim each day where the surprisingly brisk ocean water is the perfect medium for her physio exercises. Progress is slower than she’d like but improving. This is but one of may swimming spots she gets to chose from every day. And almost all of them have a beachside taverna so she gets to enjoy a Freddo Cappuccino and water in the shade when she finishes her exercises. Thanks to her E-bike that she got before we left Turkey she is able to get to pretty much any of the swim spots on this end of the island in less than 10 minutes and with no strain on her knee, so all good. The town itself is small but lively with daily arrivals of Turkish Gullets and other sail boats as well as lots of ferries that bring people to and from the surrounding islands or as far away as Athens. Makes for good people watching including this very salty dog of a Captain. As with most small towns though there are some less savory characters like this one who manage to sneak in when no one is watching. In addition to swimming, Christine loves to use her E-bike which she calls her “Freedom machine” to explore further afield and she has been super impressed by how well the “pedal assist” of her trusty E-bike allows her to climb even the steep hills that are the norm everywhere on the island once you leave the waters edge. Her explorations down random little roads and alleys continue to produce finds like this old church. Which can often reveal surprise treasures such as this interior of the building above if you go up the stairs and push the door open. When not out swimming or exploring, Christine is hard at work in her office every day here aboard Möbius as she starts doing the heavy mental lifting of creating a whole new set of characters and timelines for the newest book she is writing. Stay tuned for more on that as it develops.
Wayne’s World
Meanwhile I am kept very busy with the combination of remaining boat jobs on the list and fixing the inevitable gremlins that pop up. Our Kabola diesel boiler suddenly stopped earlier this week after working flawlessly every day for the past year and a half so trying to sort that out. For now I’ve just turned on the 220V element in the Calorifier (hot water tank) for daily dishes and showers.
One of the unfinished boat jobs this week has been finishing building the paravanes so we can test them out when we next head out to sea. As you may recall from previous posts, Paravanes are passive stabilizers which work by “flying” about 6m / 20’ below the water. These help keep the boat level by resisting forces trying to roll the boat from side to side. As the boat rolls, one of the paravanes or “fish” or “birds” as they are sometimes called, resists being pulled upward while the other paravane dives down and sets up for its turn to resist being pulled up as the roll forces go to the other side.
The paravanes themselves, are suspended from Dyneema lines (super strong synthetic rope) that hang off of long booms extending out from each side of the boat at about 45 degrees. Here is a paravane in action from another boat.
If you’d like more details on our Paravane setup check out THIS blog post and THIS one from back in June when I was rigging the booms and starting to build the paravanes.
Before we left Finike in Turkey I had finished shaping and painting the 20mm / 3/4” plywood “wings” for the two paravanes and bolting in the T-bracket where the line goes up to the boom. Now I needed to cut these two aluminium plates to act as vertical fins that will help keep the paravane tracking parallel to the hull. Pretty straightforward to cut with my jig saw and shape with my angle grinder. Now just need to drill holes for the bolts that will attach the vertical fins to the T-bracket and the paravane wings. Like this. The holes along the top of the T-bracket are where the line going up to the boom attaches and provide adjustments for the angle the paravane will slice through the water at different speeds and conditions. Final step was to bolt on these two zinc weights that weigh about 15kg / 33lbs and create the nose of the paravane. This forward weight ensures that the fish will dive down quick and smooth when not being pulled upward. When the boat rolls the other way, the line pulls up which straightens out the fish and immediately start resisting the roll. Rinse and repeat! Here is the finished pair of paravanes all ready for testing, though I will probably put on another coat of epoxy paint for good measure.
Next week I’ll finish the rigging and get the lines attached from the ends of the booms to each paravane.
Not too bad a spot to be in and we are eXtremely grateful for just how fortunate we are to be here.
I’ll be back with more as our time races by here in Kalymnos and hope you enjoy these briefer updates. Let me know by sending your comments and opinions in the “Join the Discussion” box below and I’ll be back with more as soon as I have it. -Wayne
I’ll start with this post that will provide you with a quick summary of the phenomenal time we had eXploring the Baja peninsula of Mexico from end of December to beginning of March. 
and yes, I can see those eyes rolling when those who know me hear Wayne saying “a quick summary” BUT in this case it is actually true because my awemazing wife, travel partner and best selling author (pen name Christine Kling) wrote it! 
We wanted an awning that would extend out from the Passenger Side PS as that’s where we tend to set up our table and chairs when camping and one that would be very quick and easy to extend and retract so that we’d use it frequently. After some research we settled on the Italian made 
It was very well packaged for shipping with lots of very tough angled cardboard corners on all sides so it arrived in perfect condition. 
The awning comes with three of these extruded Aluminium brackets which hook into the extruded Aluminium on the back of the awning body itself so I just needed to come up with a way of securely fastening these brackets to the top PS roof corner on Lance’s Hab. (Habitat/Box)
I keep all the cut offs from the XAL or eXtruded Aluminium that I used to build all the cabinet framing inside Lance and just love working with this stuff so I was particularly delighted to find that the T-slot in the 10 Series 1 inch square XAL wedged itself perfectly into the L shaped aluminium gutter rails that runs down the top sides of Lance’s Hab. Sometimes you luck out!
Here is what the finished installation looks like with the Fiama bracket now bolted into the top T-slot of the XAL bracket. 
Being all aluminium construction whole awning only weighs 27Kg/60lbs so it wasn’t too much of a lift for Christine and I on two ladders to lift it up and slide the awning into the brackets. 
We
![Kalymnos set in larger map_thumb[1]](https://i0.wp.com/mobius.world/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Kalymnos-set-in-larger-map_thumb1.jpg?ssl=1 "Kalymnos set in larger map_thumb[1]")
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