Journal 11

25 March 2006

We departed from La Paz heading north on the final leg. Our first day we motorsailed in company with Norm a singlehander from Victoria on a Vancouver 27 called Anya. Dolphins accompanied and a lone ray leapt and flopped us out of La Paz. We anchored early that day at a lovely spot called Ensenada de la Partida. We bought a fillet of grouper from a local fisherman and had Norm over for dinner.

26 March

After a calm night we bid Norm adieu as he returned to La Paz to put Anya up on the hard. We left later that morning and actually flew our spinnaker all the way to the next anchorage at Evaristo. The fishing village of Evaristo reminds me of a mini Turtle Bay. The prevailing winds are from the NW which is the way we are headed, but today we had a light following breeze and one of the best sails ever. Another cruiser in the anchorage dropped off a fish he had caught earlier that day. So another feast of fish, this time we put our hand to making fish tacos.
Friends Rich and Annette on Came to Believe (Morgan OI 41) from Seattle met us there and came over for cocktails in the cockpit.
We have been towing the dinghy on this stretch, as all the anchorages require some transportation to land. Each tine we leave we have to hoist the outboard onto a bracket on the stern rail and Maureen and I are quite coordinated in accomplishing this in a minute or so.

27 March

Don the weather guru on the Amigo net (8122 kHz at 0715) says the wind will stay in the south so we move on. It was a rolly uncomfortable place to anchor anyway. We sail off with CTB and end up in the North arm of the bay at Agua Verde. As the name implies the water is an incredible green. All our friends who have sailed here before have said this is a place not to be missed and they were right. We stayed here for 2 days with CTB and took pictures and generally fooled around. The afternoon winds (Cozumel winds) on the first day had us uncomfortably close to another cruiser and after much whining I convinced Dick that we needed to move and in the process we sustained our first boating accident. Dick got his left hand caught in the chain gypsy of the winch. In true cruiser fashion, a number of fellow boaters were over with ice and assistance. Dick’s injury was painful but only bruised and scraped. The ice became particularly handy in the G&T required as an anesthetic.
I realized it was time to really fix the winch and so I invented a chain stripper that really works. Should have done that months ago, of course, but never really had the incentive. Now the windlass really works like it is supposed to.

March 28, 2006

Happy Bday, Florence

29 March

Left the anchorage at about 0900 and headed North. By 1030 the wind was 25 knots from the west and really nasty. At 1130 it was back down to 10 knots from the NW and we motored on to Puerto Escondido, BCS. This strange little hole in the wall is not to be confused with the port of the same name a thousand miles south. There is nothing here, but ‘big’ plans to build a marina and a huge housing tract. By the looks of the infrastructure, this plan has been in place for a lot of years as the curbs and sidewalks are all crumbling but no houses have been built and there is not even a little tienda. The ‘marina ‘ is under construction but there is only a seawall and a few mooring buoys so far. Still it is regarded as the best place to sit out a hurricane on the Baja coast, but that is not on our agenda. We met some cruiser folks at the ‘yacht club’ practicing for a band concert but don’t know how many attendees they will have. The big deal here is going to be Loreto Fest in early May, but we won’t be around for it.
Fidele is here, and they are planning to head out directly for San Carlos.

30 March

Motored on to Ballandra Bay, which is across a 10-mile channel from Loreto. Entered a beautiful quiet bay on Isla Carmen and stayed in perfect calm with CTB and a few other boats. We have now come 140 nm from La Paz and have about 120 to go to San Carlos. We get ready for an overnight passage by rolling up the dinghy on deck and getting all secured below as this is going to be heading straight north on a course of 000 degrees for 24 hours or more.

31 March

We leave early and have an escort of dozens of dolphins, obviously on a mission, no playing in our wake. The wake they leave could easily been that of a small motor boat. We motorsail most of the day with a light NW wind and manage to keep fairly close to our course. By midnight however the wind is up over 20 knots and building.

1 April

This is not fun. At 0600 it is daylight and we are near the city but we cannot find the entrance to the bay. The real charts are very small scale and notoriously inaccurate with respect to GPS positions. And the cruising guides are better but do not seem to match what we see from the water. We are tired and the wind is 25 knots from the north and all we want to do is get the anchor down and sleep. We know where we are but we do not know where the harbor entrance is. Finally we make our way in closer to shore with reference to a distinctive rock pile called Tetas de Cabra (goat teats) which we use to find a very narrow inlet to the Bahia de San Carlos. The marina here is crowded and we are told there is no slip for us and they do not know when or if there will be one. Great. We don't care. We see Frank on Chevalita anchored in the bay and so we join him and about 50 other boats on the hook. We toss out 150 feet of chain in 30 feet of water and hit the bunk at 0930. It is blowing 30 knots with higher gusts. Happy April Fool’s Day.

1400 we wake up and find Chevalita closer to us than when we went unconscious and the wind still blowing. We are dragging and 30 knots or not we have to re-anchor. Maureen is spectacular at driving Blue into the wind and spreading chain in the locker below while I raise the anchor. The new stripper is working flawlessly and makes the job much easier. We reset in a spot a little further out as it has better holding bottom. Just then CTB arrives. They have been out in this ‘interesting’ weather 6 hours longer than we have as we left Ballandra at the same time. Their IQ is changing inversely with time spent in 30 knots+. They anchor nearby and sleep for 16 hours.

2-3 April

Many little challenges as we settle in. The dinghy has a hole, which we fix, and we eventually figure out the wind patterns. It is very calm from sunset to about noon as the easterly land breeze flows against the westerly prevailing winds. It gets pretty hot as we are now in desert country on the ‘mainland’ side of the Sea of Cortez. From noon to 1800 it blows like stink starting at 15 and usually working up to a steady 30 knots and gusts to 40. Then back to nothing at sun down.

We still cannot get into the marina so we arrange to simply have Blue hauled out on Monday evening high tide. We would have very few opportunities to do this as there is only one high tide per day this month and most are at night and lots of them are already booked. So we end up in the work yard at Marina Seca and live in the yard on board as we have power and water and showers at the main building. We have much work to do to get Blue ready for summer storage in the intense heat and dryness over the next 6 months. 45 degrees and 0 relative humidity. This is really a desert. Place to be if somewhat dusty.

April 4 to 18

Happy Bday, Donna

We spend time with other cruisers as we get accustomed to sleeping with no movement and waiting for the bow to turn into the wind. Things are pretty shaky at first as we gradually get our land legs. Our main tasks are to get everything off the decks and washed and put away, and then do some touch ups on the paint. Sounds simple but we have to work hard for over a week to get done. We have taken some side trips into Guaymas which is an interesting town and also to the San Carlos commercial centre. Spending time with Duey and Nan of The Great Escape is beneficial as they have a car and teach us a great deal about the area. We have also met Joy and Buzz who have a condo here and have become good friends and also a great help.

April 8, 2006

Happy Bday, Linda and Diane

The weather is getting really hot so we find that getting up early and having a few hours work done before about 1100 is really efficient. On Wednesday April 12 the town starts to shut down for Semana Santos. We discover that this is a festival that continues to Easter Sunday and consists of thousands of young people in a contest to see how little clothing the girls can wear and how much beer the boys can drink while slowly cruising the 15km stretch from Guaymas to Marina Real. Towards dark they slow down even more and half the vehicles are parked on the roadside covered by their occupants. It seems there are about 6 per car and 8 per pickup and every other sort of vehicle from dune buggy to surf board is represented. The beer vendors at the roadside stands do a brisk trade and there is a uniform of some sort stationed every 50 m or so. The music starts about 2000 and continues to 0500. The next day it all starts over about noon.

April 13, 2006

Happy Bday, Kyle

Here is a bit of trivia: Did you know that Easter Sunday is the first Sunday following the first full moon after the Spring solstice. What a curious mix of pagan and Christian events.

We have now got all our travel arrangements made and it will take us three days and car, bus, plane and ferry to get back. It should be an interesting trip, and it seems strange that this turns out to be a very efficient way to do it, but on to the adventure. We are looking forward to seeing everyone and expect to be back about noon on the 20th, but first we have to move Blue from the work yard to the storage yard and complete the decommissioning. See you all soon.


April 17

The big day has finally arrived and we have gotten Blue moved into the storage yard. She is secured between fou 4” pipes and several jack stands and chains so that even a hurricane couldn’t move her. We have covered with tarps to try to reduce the heat and shut all the through hulls and taped them shut so bugs can’t get in. Several large pails of water are inside to try to keep the humidity up and traps set to catch stray bugs.

By 5:30 we are tired and showered. We are picked up by Buzz and Joy and have a final dinner before catching the bus in Guaymas. The bus is only an hour late and an uneventful 8 hour ride later we are in Tucson.

April 18

Tucson is hot at 7:30 in the morning and we finally get a cab to a hotel where the friendly staff give us breakfast and a room which is lovely. Shower and sleep and by 1 PM we are looking for lunch. We found a bus that goes somewhere and take the number 6 north bound to see where it goes. Tucson is a really large spread out city of about 700,000 with a lot of empty spaces between housing developments. There is some industry here and a lot of movie making activity. We get the Cook’s tour from some of the more interesting and colourful passengers on the bus and end up at a very large mall and hour later. We do a little shopping for some food and drink and take the return trip of an hour to the hotel in the airport area.

April 20

By noon we are on a really inexpensive Air Alaska flight to Seattle. Downtown Seattle is as vibrant as ever and we will return soon for a longer stay. There is a lovely old hotel on 9th street called the Camlin. It has been rebuilt by Worldmark and is now a timeshare.

April 21

The 8 AM sailing of the Victoria Clipper is a sellout and we are glad we booked tickets a couple weeks ago. Crowded or not the cat makes 33 knots on its way across the Strait of Juan de Fuca and we close the circle on our 9 month voyage while still on water. The last 2000 miles were quicker than the first 4000 by a long shot and we are glad to be home. Dick’s brother Gery and wife Barbara picked us up at the ferry terminal and brought us home and helped us start to get set up for life in the fast lane. So far we have internet, cable TV and got the car insured and running. Now that our dinghy is back in the water we can get groceries and maybe a telephone. The cruising life in the Mexican sun seems very far away and we are definitely not done with it.