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The Elston family of La Conner is on an adventure of a lifetime, taking a sea voyage from Shelter Bay south along the Pacific Coast. The crew of “Adagio” includes the author of this story, 12-year-old Cindy, who is in the seventh grade, 10-year-old Kevin, a fourth-grader, and their parents Steve and Kathy.

On Aug. 27 my family and I left on our boat to travel down to Mexico and the Sea of Cortez.

Our boat, Adagio, which means slow and steady in Italian, has just traveled over 1,200 nautical miles — equivalent to about 1,380 land miles — in two months.

We just entered southern California and will be in Mexico in about three weeks or so. It has been many days, sometimes overnight, traveling down the Pacific Coast.

Our family has traveled through Washington, Oregon, and we are working on traveling through California.

The Golden Gate Bridge is amazing, and Alcatraz is spooky. Throughout the trip, we have been to aquariums, lighthouses, we’ve played plenty of mini golf, been on a dune buggy tour, and raced go-karts around a track.

We’ve been riding our bikes in most of the port towns, and in our free time on the boat, we play board games, watch movies, swim and jump off the boat, do chores, and do homeschooling, which is nice, because I start school at 8:30 a.m. and get out of school at around noon. Usually, after homeschooling, we go to shore.

The air temperature has been about 70 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit throughout our whole trip, making it feel like a continuous summer. The ocean has been getting warmer and is now close to 70 degrees.

When we are on beaches, we build sand sculptures and do many fun activities, like boogie boarding and skim boarding. Skim boarding is when you throw a light, flat board and run in one-inch deep water to hop on the skim board and zoom across the water.

We have seen lots of different wildlife, like porpoises and dolphins, who are active bow wave riders.

We have also seen whales, sea otters, sunfish, sea lions, seals, sand crab, and Velella, which are creatures with sails on top of them that go by the wind, float in water and can sting. We also see a lot of sea birds like pelicans and seagulls.

There are no more eagles around here, but occasionally you see a hawk or two. There are tons of fishing boats, and we have seen about 15 offshore oil rigs. Near Santa Barbara there was a four- to five-mile long oil slick, just sitting on the surface of the water. There are natural cracks in the sea floor that are leaking about 25 tons of oil per day!

We are planning to spend our winter in the Sea of Cortez, Mexico, after we explore the Channel Islands and San Diego. I love being out here exploring, but I miss my friends.