December 26th (2008) – Paradise Village Marina in Nuevo Vallarta – Jim’s Blog #72

Current Location – Nuevo Vallarta – Lat: 20°41.49’ N / Long: 105°17.59’ W

Here it is the day after Christmas, and we are enjoying the 80° weather outside and the 78° temperature of the water in the pool. We’ve been listening to the news of the snowstorms in Canada and the northern part of the U.S., and feeling a little guilty about our own good fortune. The ABC cable channel being shown here is from Buffalo, New York, and every evening we seem to be watching snowplows clearing the streets and listening to talk of schools being closed. You can bet we’re thankful for the opportunity to avoid the cold weather we see there. At worst we have to pull a light blanket over ourselves in the wee hours of the morning to stay warm – and that’s with all the ports and hatches open.

While Sheilagh was gone, I took the opportunity to start getting in shape before making New Year’s resolutions in that regard. I started walking about 4 miles a day on the beach every other day, and alternating that with longer and longer swims in the lap pool. At the present time I’ve worked up to a mile in the water, which is 64 lengths of the pool and a LOT of time in the swimming lane. My stroke starts out pretty well, but gets very ragged by the end. Then I pull myself out of the pool, stumble over to the lounge chair, and get my strength back with a coke and a Snickers bar – seems like a good training regimen to me!

Sheilagh got back to Puerto Vallarta on Monday evening, after waiting more than an hour for the flight to take off. That was the day it was snowing in both Victoria, British Columbia, and in Seattle – something that occurs only every 20 years or so. Her airplane was waiting in San Francisco for flights to come in from the north to connect to her flight to Mexico. In fact the majority of tourists here seem to be from Canada. While US. Citizens can travel south in the United States to get warmer, Canadians seem to grab flights to Mexico – not only for warmth but also to take advantage of the strength of the Canadian dollar against the Mexican peso.

When Sheilagh got back, the full import of her mother’s death finally hit her, and we’ve been keeping a bit of a low profile during this holiday season. However, we did attend a couple of local functions to try to get into the spirit of the season. We attended a dinner and jazz night at the Vallarta Yacht Club, only to find that the jazz was neither Blues nor Dixieland, but that kind of off-the-cuff-rambling which only true jazz cognoscente can appreciate. It hardly needs to be said that we are not of that class of connoisseur.

We also attended the 60th birthday party of Alan (from “Serendipity”) put on by his wife, Rosie, at the Britannia Pub in La Cruz. Since they are British, they felt the party should take place in a British pub. In this case it was “open mike” night, and the bands were quite a bit better than the jazz band we had heard earlier in the week. Another cruising couple, Bill and Colleen (of the sailing vessel “Captain George Thomas”) gave us a ride over and back in their car; so we didn’t have to negotiate two buses going over and a cab ride back. It was an enjoyable evening, particularly when Alan danced in a pair of Wellington sailing boots and a black top hat, along with Rosie in a gorgeous red dress, with steps out of an Irish jig or a sailor’s hornpipe.

As usual we forgot our camera; so we have no pictures of these events. We are enclosing a picture of our boat with its Shade Tree covers, to show how we are handling the warm weather. You’ll notice we have the dinghy hoisted up on the side of the boat to keep the bottom out of the water when we’re not using it. We left the dinghy in the water for about a week, and it took an hour to scrape the tiny barnacles and green algae off the bottom. In an anchorage we hoist the dinghy up to discourage would-be dinghy/outboard “borrowers.” We’ve had no trouble yet, but it always pays to be careful. To steal our dinghy someone would have to climb up on our boat, cut the halyard, find a key, and then eventually get a cable cutter to separate the outboard engine and gas tank from the dinghy itself. All we have to do is make it a bit more difficult to steal our dinghy than someone else’s dinghy, and so far it’s worked.

Speaking of the dinghy reminds me that we took it up the inlets that thread the area following the path of the jungle cruises that go by us every day loaded with tourists. We were interested in seeing what kind of wildlife exists this close to civilization, and frankly there are warnings everywhere in the estuary to beware of "cocodrillos" (crocodiles), and we thought we might get a look at one. Sheilagh was not so sure she wanted to see one, because she has no confidence in the ability of our hypalon dinghy to withstand the bite of a crocodile, nor of her ability to swim to shore faster than I could to escape. However, all we saw was the iguana pictured above, and we have seen many of those in the past year.

We spent a completely relaxed Christmas Day watching old movies, communicating with our children and grandchildren through Skype on the computer, and eating excellent prime rib with apple pie that Sheilagh made. Today we just saw “West Side Story” and are now in the middle of “The Wolf Man” with Lon Chaney. I’m not sure what any of these have to do with Christmas, but they are a great way to avoid work and lay around writing a blog.

More later . . .

December 19th (2008) – Paradise Village Marina in Nuevo Vallarta – Jim’s Blog #71

Current Location – Nuevo Vallarta – Lat: 20°41.49’ N / Long: 105°17.59’ W

[Be sure to check the newly updated pictures in the December 12th blog]

Today Sheilagh is up in San Jose for a memorial service for her mother, Kitty. All of our children are flying in to pay their respects, and they will get a chance to meet most of Sheilagh’s immediate family. Without realizing it, Kitty has brought the immediate family together this Christmas, allowing cousins to see one another who have not seen each other for years.

I’m staying here to keep an eye on the boat and to avoid the high cost of air travel, particularly when there is no bereavement allowance for sudden travel from the airlines serving Puerto Vallarta. I guess they don’t feel that folks who can vacation in Puerto Vallarta would need the advantage of emergency prices equivalent to those charged for plans made several weeks in advance.

I’ve been keeping busy learning to cook, doing laundry, waxing the boat, and raising the Shade Tree tent-like structure over the boat to keep it cooler inside. Every day I’ve been visiting the lap pool to get in some exercise and to relax with my IPod and a book. So far I’m up to two-thirds of a mile, although the last few laps are looking pretty ragged. Afterwards I read and listen to music for about half an hour before dozing off for an afternoon nap. It’s a tough way to spend time, but I’m dedicating myself to it.

A view up the mast, a closeup showing it was really me at the top, and a view looking down from the top of the mast

I also made it to the top of the mast a couple of times to install a new wind indicator and to refurbish the anemometer. I’m including some pictures looking down to show what it looks like from up there. We used the windless (anchor chain motor) to help lift me up; so we didn’t have to use any muscles to get me up there. We use an REI climbing harness connected to two separate halyards, using one as a backup in case the other fails.

This week I accompanied Alan and Rosie of “Serendipity” to the Britannia Pub in La Cruz to check it out for Alan’s birthday next Tuesday. Alan and Rosie have a Jaguar, which was so much better than a bus to get around, although the large speed bumps here in Mexico make it difficult for the Jag to get over without scraping. There are no “low riders” in Mexico, or they would get nowhere. There was an “open mike” night there and several made-up bands performed for the group. I believe there is an “open mike” night for volunteer musicians nearly every night of the week at one bar or another. There are a large number of cruisers with musical skills and musical instruments, who find places and times to get together, whether on a boat, in a pub, or on the beach.

I also accompanied Ed and Cornelia (of “A Cappella”) and Hank and Betsy (of “Equinox”) to a local symphony and choir presentation in Puerto Vallarta. Most of the musicians and choir members were gringos who spend their winters here, with a smattering of locals. I would think that most of the local musicians are more interested in making money with their music, than to commit the time to a volunteer symphony orchestra that plays music completely foreign to the local genres. To my unprofessional ears the instrumental music sounded very good, and the choir flashed me back to my own choir days.

As a freshman in high school I had the dubious honor (for a guy) of having the highest soprano voice in the boys’ choir, although it certainly was not of a quality that rated any solo performances. I elected to let my voice change, rather than have the surgery to keep it a soprano (as I hear has been done in the Vatican boys’/men’s choir). By the time I was a junior in high school my voice was in a bass register for the high school glee club. In between those two years I tried not to speak too often in order to avoid the embarrassment of having my voice suddenly change octaves without warning.

All of this thought process was prompted by simply watching the local choir perform Christmas songs. It also reminded me that I tried for years to get my daughters to join a choir in high school, since all have very good voices and good ears for the right pitch. However, my urging fell on deaf ears because “the cool kids aren’t in the choir.” Nothing like being told by your daughters that you must not have been cool in high school! And to think of the money we might have made with an all-girl band, except that none of them is too keen on playing musical instruments – the band was not “cool” either.

Last week I responded to a blood drive request for a local blood bank. Apparently there is very little blood on hand because the Mexican community doesn’t need to store it up. If a Mexican needs blood, the call goes out to his/her family and friends and there is suddenly plenty of blood available. In this case I believe the blood bank is trying to emulate the U.S. so as to have blood on hand for those without large families to draw on – like gringos. Most of the evaluation procedures were similar to those in the U.S. except that they required no I.D. from me and never did ask my blood type. The interrogation questions were very few, and the interviewer had to have me read them from the questionnaire, since her English was very poor.

After my blood was drawn, I was given free coupons for a breakfast from a local restaurant, a Bloody Mary from the Vallarta Yacht Club (to be used the following day to deter the intake of alcohol directly after donating), and a T-shirt. All the T-shirts were mediums, which may suit the body sizes of the locals, but didn’t begin to fit most of us overweight gringos. Interestingly enough the Mexican rules for blood donations forbid any alcohol for 48 hours prior and require that we be younger than 65. You can imagine that those two conditions seriously impacted the number of donors – most of whom are either retired or can’t remember what they may have imbibed within the past 48 hours. I learned later that there were perhaps 9 total donors in the three hours that the clinic was open.

Not much more to write for the moment. By next week Sheilagh will have returned and perhaps I can get her to write something for the first time this season. More later . . .

December 12th (2008) – Paradise Village Marina in Nuevo Vallarta – Jim’s Blog #70

Current Location – Nuevo Vallarta – Lat: 20°41.49’ N / Long: 105°17.59’ W

Sad to say, Sheilagh’s mother, Kitty Dwan, died this morning (Friday, December 12th) and Sheilagh has gone up to Sebastopol to be there with her family. Kitty was 96 years old, and she was very upbeat when we had a birthday luncheon with her along with her brother, Kevin, and his wife, Rebecca, in October. Kitty had a very bad stroke on Wednesday, with very little hope of recovery, so Sheilagh hopped a United Airlines flight to San Francisco on Thursday afternoon. Sadly Kitty never regained consciousness, as far as anyone could tell, and died in her sleep on Friday morning, before Sheilagh was able to arrive there. The immediate family will get together this week to remember her.

Meanwhile, I’m staying with the boat in Paradise Village and having to fend for myself as if I were a bachelor. It’s amazing how much stuff Sheilagh does around here, and it’s only been one day since she left. I hope I can last a week without her. I will definitely appreciate her contribution to our pursuit-of-happiness agenda in the future.

A young girl and boy in the roles of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Indian Juan Diego

Yesterday I accompanied our friends, Ed and Cornelia, to a procession of the faithful to the church of Our Lady of Guadalupe to commemorate the December 12th celebration of “"La Reina de México" (the Queen of Mexico). As we got to the church at 9:30 AM we found Mass going on while the streets were full of worshippers stretching some twelve blocks or more. They were waiting for Mass to be finished in order to enter the church to pay their respects. At 10 AM the doors were thrown open and the procession entered the church with worshippers carrying candles and flowers to present to the image of the Virgin. At the altar a couple of priests and other helpers were blessing the people and accepting the flowers and other gifts and placing them around the altars.

Some of the Mariachis in the procession

At the beginning everyone was singing a Mexican hymn as they entered, but soon it was overtaken by a loud song accompanied by a variety of instruments. As the music grew in volume some 200+ Mariachis entered in their charro outfits in ranks by musical instrument being played, starting with small high-pitched guitars, called vihuelas, then Mexican guitars, then guitarróns (small-scaled acoustic bass), followed by violins, and finally trumpets. Since each Mariachi group has its own unique outfit, and since each group was split up by the instrument played, there was no uniformity of look to the players other than a preponderance of black outfits, form-fitting trousers with silver chains down the outer seams, and a lack of the large sombreros they usually wear while performing (because they were entering the church). The mass of players were dotted with several tan and white outfits and colorful scarves everywhere. It turns out the Mariachi form and style of music emerged from the Mexican State of Jalisco, where Puerto Vallarta is located, so this was the real thing.

The Mariachis assembling on the main altar

The Mariachis installed themselves around the main altar and two side altars and continued to play for three or four additional numbers. It was a very moving experience to hear that many musicians – all male, incidentally – bringing their professional expertise to church to acknowledge their religious connection. The music resounded off the high ceiling and naves in the church while people continued to enter with flowers and other gifts in a continuing procession. I counted some 42 people passing one spot in one minute, which meant some 1200 worshippers in half an hour. Soon I heard another band outside, and suddenly the Mariachis started winding out of the church to make room for the next group.

The loud group with all the horns and drums

This group had about six large bass drums along with snare drums and brass. In this case it appeared that loudness was more important to them than the musical nature of the tune. They took up the places vacated by the Mariachis and the procession continued, while it felt as if the roof would come tumbling down with the sound. It seemed the parents with small boys in the procession had dressed them up as Juan Diego, the peasant Indian to whom the Virgin appeared (and who has been sainted by the church), including painted-on mustaches, small serapes, and equally small straw hats. The small girls were dressed up as peasant women generally, with a few girls dressed up to resemble the Virgin Mary. At the side doors to the church were several tableau pictures of Our Lady of Guadalupe where parents could have their children photographed with the Virgin. One of these tableaus had one of those automated horses one finds in front of grocery stores; apparently so male children would be motivated to have their pictures taken.

The start of the multi-hour "Favoritos" procession

The crowd thinned out after about 45 minutes, and we thought the procession was finished. Stepping outside the doors of the church we found additional people lined up to start their procession at 11 AM. We learned that these were the “Favoritos,” those who had been “favored” by Our Lady of Guadalupe in the past year by having their prayers answered. This crowd was more numerous than the first group and kept coming and coming when 11 o’clock rolled around. We found a restaurant along the procession, had lunch, and finally walked to the start of the procession, and people were still progressing toward the church. At the start of the procession were flower vendors and candle merchants who supplied the faithful with the necessary items for the procession. The parents carried flowers and the kids preferred the burning candles. People were still lining up for the one-mile procession to the church as we left at about 2 PM.

One of the Aztec groups in the procession

One interesting phenomenon for me was the presence of three different sets of Aztec dancers, in one case made up of small boys and girls, and in the other two cases made up of small girls and then teenage girls. How the Aztecs figure into the worship of Our Lady of Guadalupe is beyond me. I did a little research and learned that the Aztecs were into human sacrifice in a big way, offering 20,000 men, women, and children annually to their gods. Further research revealed that Guadalupe is in Spain, not Mexico. One source suggests that the name came about because of a mistranslation from Nahuatl (the language spoken by the Virgin to Juan Diego) to Spanish. I quote: “It is believed that Our Lady used the Aztec Nahuatl word of coatlaxopeuh which is pronounced "quatlasupe" and sounds remarkably like the Spanish word Guadalupe. Coa meaning serpent, tla being the noun ending which can be interpreted as "the", while xopeuh means to crush or stamp out. So Our Lady must have called herself the one "who crushes the serpent." The serpent-god was Quetzalcoatl. Apparently the Aztec dancers symbolize the roots of the Mexican people and reference a religion that was demolished by the Virgin and her legions of Spanish missionaries.

I find it interesting that Sheilagh’s mom, Kitty, died on the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Kitty was very religious her whole life, and it seems appropriate to me that she is now associated with Our Lady. If the truth be known, Sheilagh’s first name is Mary, in honor of Christ’s mother, and Sheilagh was born on December the 8th, which is the day that Catholics commemorate Mary’s Immaculate Conception.

My apologies if this blog carries too much of a religious connotation for you. Raised a Catholic myself, and having studied for the Priesthood for six years, I’m impressed with the simple faith of the people I’ve found in Mexico. There’s a trait we could all emulate. More later . . .

December 5th (2008) – Paradise Village Marina in Nuevo Vallarta – Jim’s Blog #69

Current Location – Nuevo Vallarta – Lat: 20°41.49’ N / Long: 105°17.59’ W

After my last blog Sheilagh and I loafed about in La Cruz for the weekend, not even venturing off our boat on Saturday. Actually I did get off the boat and into the water with my fins and snorkel gear to make sure there was no line still caught in our prop from the trip down from San Blas, and to check on the state of barnacle and plant growth on the bottom. There was no line tangled in the prop, and the bottom was amazingly clean for having been in the water for a month since our last cleaning. Maybe it was because the boat been moving pretty actively during this past month.

On Sunday we took a local bus to the neighboring town of Bucerias, the one I had kayaked to on Thursday, and wandered around town for awhile. The street vendors were out in force with things that every tourist should want – sling shots, very tiny bikinis (no, Sheilagh wasn’t interested) and other beach wear, jewelry of all sorts, serapes, blankets, table cloths, sombreros, sunglasses, etc. Since we didn’t need anything, we were a disappointment to the vendors generally. One vendor asked us how many blankets we wanted to buy (not “do you want to buy”), a closing tool I had employed in the past to sell software to large corporations – “How many users shall I sign you up for?” Others used very good English to try to get us involved in a conversation as “friends” before trying the hard sell.

We had lunch at a table overlooking the beach, and managed to catch a bus ride back sitting on the rear axle, since there was no other room in the bus. We had learned long ago to avoid that area of the buses down here because they usually have no suspension, causing the passengers to rise out of their seats at the numerous speed bumps in the road. We levitated several times on the way back, and not in a spiritual manner. We stopped at the local marina and yacht club at La Cruz to find it much improved over its condition last year, with a bar under the thatched-roof second story and a beautiful view of the northeastern part of the bay. We’re sorry to say that the margaritas were small and expensive; so we had just the one drink apiece and retired to the boat for our afternoon naps.

On Monday morning we were due to enter the marina at Paradise Village in Nuevo Vallarta, where we are now. We got some fuel at the La Cruz fuel dock, which turned out to be a lot easier than getting fuel in the main Puerto Vallarta fuel dock, where formerly we had to wait our turn after the fishing boats, pangas, and wave-riders. La Cruz has put two lovely young ladies in charge of the fuel dock with attractive white uniforms – a great marketing ploy. It turns out that there are enough male hangers-on at the fuel dock that the young women don’t have to do much handling of the hoses themselves; so the white uniforms are kept spotless.

We motored over to the eastern side of the bay about five miles away and came through the channel at high tide, keeping just to the right of the dredger that has been operating every time we’ve been here. It was very relaxing to finally tie up to a dock after a week of anchoring out, and being able to sleep on a calm surface. We immediately sprayed off the salty deck with fresh water, and in this case did not reward ourselves with a beer, since we had expended very little effort in tying up.

Here is where I mention that for the price of a couple of nights in the local hotel, we have the run of the place for a month, along with fresh water, electricity, cable TV, showers, and swimming pools. On the first of January we plan to head south to some other ports of call, as we did last year, but for now we are just being tourists, although tourists with some task list items to accomplish before going south.

We have some work to do at the top of our mast to replace a wind indicator that a large bird bent beyond usefulness, and to fix our anemometer. Sheilagh and I have decided that it’s my turn to go up this time; so I’m delaying as long as possible. In fact I got a bad sore throat a couple of days ago and have been medicating with aspirin, rest, and the hot-water-honey-and-alcohol drink that has proven effective in the past.

So far we’ve been to the marine supply store twice, involving bus rides to and from and some walking in between to get to the correct bus station. Here there are some bus stations that only serve longer range buses, and some that serve more local ones. Even if a long-range bus is stopped in front of a “local” bus station for a red light, the drivers will not pick you up. Luckily there is usually someone at the bus stop who will explain which bus we should catch at that particular station.

We heard that we could get a 15% discount at the local marine supply store if we pay in cash (5%) and if we are members of the Vallarta Yacht Club (10%). We satisfied both conditions, but only received a 5% discount. When I approached the owner about this, he admitted he should be giving us a 15% discount, but the inflation of the peso in Mexico has stopped his practice at the present time. At the moment a U.S. dollar is worth 13 pesos, 30% higher than the 10 pesos it used to convert to. It’s hard to argue with a storekeeper who has to buy many of his products from the U.S.

Sheilagh and I have both spent some time lying around the pool, reading more and more books, and appreciating the warmth of the weather here compared to the weather anywhere else. Our ABC station being broadcast here in English in Puerto Vallarta is from Buffalo, New York, for some reason – rather than from California as one would expect. Therefore we get weather reports that sound horrendously cold and nasty. Those reports make us feel even better about being down here in the warmth.

I’ve been lying low and doing as little as possible while trying to beat this sore throat problem. There’s a big party in the Vallarta Yacht Club this evening to celebrate the end of The Banderas Bay Blast (sailing, eating, and drinking to support some charity or other), and I’m too tired to even walk one block to the club. There was a sailing event and party on Wednesday and Thursday, too, at a couple of outlying locations, but neither of us had enough energy to go to those either. We like to think that we’re getting more selective in our entertainment rather than simply lazier as we get older.

Being sick is no one’s idea of a good time, but I remember it being a lot worse when the work-a-day world required that certain tasks be done anyway. Now I can just take the time to be sick and use it as an excuse to put off doing things I wasn’t in the mood to do anyway. I know I’ll be feeling a lot better just about the time that Sheilagh comes down with what I’ve got. Then it will be my turn to take care of her. I hope everyone who reads this is enjoying good health during this pre-holiday season.

Sheilagh will be a year older next Monday, and we’ll have a quiet dinner with friends to celebrate. With Sheilagh’s preference for meat we’re thinking of a Brazilian restaurant to satisfy her cravings. At a place like that she won’t have to eat any vegetables or salad, which she still pushes around her plate without touching much of it as she did in her youth. While I usually take a bite of food from each of the food groups on my plate, insuring that everything gets eaten in a clockwise or counterclockwise fashion (yes, it’s a bit anal retentive I admit), Sheilagh is less logical and always attacks the meat first. After she eats the meat on her plate, she goes for seconds on the meat, before tasting the veggies or whatever else remains from her first plateload. However, if desert is available, there’s nothing that could cause her to finish anything but the meat. I’m not sure how we got our daughters to eat responsibly with Sheilagh as their mother and model.

Nevertheless she turned out well, and our kids and their kids are thriving as can be seen to the left: Daughters from the left are Kimberly, Megan, Stephanie, and Melissa. Granddaughters from left to right are Melissa's children Delaney, Riley, and Paige. The grandson is Evan James, sitting in his mom's lap. More later . . .

November 28th (2008) – La Cruz – Jim’s Blog #68

Current Location – La Cruz de Huanacaxtle – Lat: 20°44.83’ N / Long: 105°22.38’ W

We’ve landed in Banderas Bay, the mouth of which is at least 25 miles across from north to south and the bay extends east about 20 miles from the opening to the eastern shore. At the moment we are in an anchorage in the northeast corner of the bay, as we await our reservation in the Paradise Village Marina starting on December 1st. We plan to reward ourselves with five-star living for a month and then get back into the anchoring business and the use of a dinghy to get around.

We left Mazatlan for San Blas last Saturday, just after I published my last blog. Since we knew it was a 20-hour trip at least, and since we didn’t want to show up in the middle of the night, we left at 2 in the afternoon and headed out for an overnight sail. The channel is being dredged every day from the marina area out to the sea, and the dredging equipment takes up most of the channel. However, they shut down and pull the equipment to the side of the channel from 10-11AM and from 2-3PM to allow boats to enter and leave. The large sight-seeing catamarans leave at 10AM and return at 2PM along with the fishing boats that left before dawn; so we take advantage of those times as well. It’s a good thing they’re dredging because we only showed about 3 feet of water under our keel at one point as we went out with the tide up.

Notice the birds waiting for handouts on a typical shrimp boat.

We had a very enjoyable sail until 11PM, when the wind died, and stayed to seaward of the area where fishing boats were showing lights and fishing all night. This whole coast seems crawling with shrimp boats, nets being pulled along the bottom and periodically raised and dumped on deck. I can’t believe there is much growth on the bottom as often as the nets are pulled across the entire area. It’s a wonder that there is any food left for the shrimp. We saw very little sea life on this stretch, but much of our time was spent at night. We arrived at San Blas (lat: 21°32.47’ N / long: 105°17.61’ W) at 9AM and found that the entrance to the estuary had been filled with sand over the very rainy summer. We called and found that we needed to hug the right side of the channel going in, and managed to avoid running aground (although we showed just 6” of water beneath our hull at one point).

Another couple, Jim and Susan of “Windward Bound” left on the morning we did, and ended up in San Blas about the same time frame. They elected to avoid the shallow estuary and anchor in Matanchén Bay around the corner, which meant that to get into town they had to take a dinghy into the beach and grab a bus or cab to town. We later met in town for a couple of beers at the San Blas Social Club run by a former New York restaurant owner, who claimed he was in the witness protection program and would have to kill us if we learned his real name. Actually he goes back to New York during the hot summers here, apparently to get back in touch with his roots. We later had dinner at MacDonald’s – not the fast food franchise, but an upscale restaurant in town.

The next day we sat around the boat, reading and listening to news and music on our Sirius radio. All of a sudden we heard our names called from outside the boat, and found Les and Diane of “Gemini” in a dinghy at the side of our boat. Since we were the only sailboat in the estuary, we were surprised to see another dinghy. Les and Diane had anchored in Matanchén Bay and brought their dinghy around to the estuary to do some bird watching. We invited them aboard and found them to be a very interesting couple who have been cruising for about 10 years. Les was in the mortgage loan industry, but retired just as the “lying” loans (as he calls them) were coming into play. Those are the loans that are afflicting us now, where loan applications were written with imaginative personal income numbers designed to satisfy the loan criteria. Diane worked in the computer industry attached to geology.

I was told to include more pictures of Sheilagh in order to keep our readers' interest.

We never did get the energy to dinghy into town, nor did we have to because we didn’t need any supplies; so we just stayed on the hook in the estuary and watched the fishing pangas go back and forth from the fishing grounds. Since the tide changes twice a day, we were pirouetted by the current every six hours toward the mouth and then away from the mouth. Sheilagh started and finished a novel that day and keeps reading a lot faster than I do. I prefer to take breaks and work puzzles to “keep the mind sharp” I tell myself. Sheilagh doesn’t do puzzles and seems about as sharp witted, but then she’s two years younger; so she has more active brain cells.

Nevertheless, I still win all the Scrabble matches we have, except one a few months ago when I must have been half asleep. I usually make points when Sheilagh challenges me unsuccessfully on words that are valid in crossword puzzles and in the dictionary, that she has never heard of. I keep suggesting she might want to start doing crosswords to build her vocabulary, but she retaliates that she needs to let me win something or I’ll be difficult to live with. Maybe she’s been throwing these Scrabble games on purpose all this time!

On Tuesday we got up early in order to pull up the anchor and leave on the high tide at 7:30 in the morning. We did just that and managed to avoid any chance of running aground as we exited the estuary. The GPS unit that we use for navigation shows our track wherever we go; so it’s a fairly easy process to follow the incoming track as we go out to make sure we stay clear of shallow water. Once outside the estuary, the sea outside San Blas must be a level 40’ deep for miles, and everywhere there are shrimp boats going back and forth over the bottom. We maneuvered between them and set a course for Punta de Mita, which is the northern tip of Banderas Bay. On the way we played with several dolphins, saw a couple of turtles lazing on the surface, and had a good sail south for several hours.

At one point we noticed some painted coke bottles and white liquid soap bottles strung across our path, indicating a “long line” with several fishing lines extending down along the full length of the buoyed bottles. We aimed between two bottle-buoys, as we have done in the past, knowing that the line sags between them and allows us to cross without tangling our prop. Alas, these fishermen were using polypro lines (like water ski lines) that floated on the surface, which I saw at the last minute. I immediately switched to neutral on the engine, but we still got the line tangled in our prop. Normally I would not want to cut a fisherman’s long line, but if he’s going to float it on the surface, then too bad for him.

We grabbed the boat hook, pulled up the two lines streaming behind us, and cut both of them with our ever-ready fish knife (that we leave in the cockpit for cutting lines in an emergency). It appeared that the line on the prop dropped away, and we continued without problems. I can just imagine the problem we’d have had if we had encountered that line at night. We probably would have had to sit there the rest of the night waiting for daylight in order to go overboard and cut a lot of rope off the propeller, assuming we hadn’t had the propeller or prop shaft damaged in the process. Just another reason to avoid night sails except far off the coast!

Things got a bit tight as we neared the point, because there are three sea mounts that rise up from the bottom to within three feet of the surface. Two of these have been plotted on the charts, but the third has done some damage but can’t be exactly located. The guides say that if we stayed within one mile of the point as we rounded it, we would miss the unknown seamount, since it is 2.25 miles out. Sheilagh got down below on the radar and helped keep us on that one-mile arc, although it is still a heart-in-the-mouth process to think of our boat running onto a seamount and possibly being destroyed in the process. We made it fine, and set our sails for La Cruz, where we anchored that night just at dusk.

The next day we went into Philo’s Restaurant and Bar, the local cruiser hangout, and for the price of a beer were able to get onto the internet. Sheilagh made Skype calls (computer-assisted and cheap) to a couple of our daughters, while I caught up on sailing-related and political websites. We grabbed some lunch at Philo’s and let him know that we would be back on Thanksgiving with a potluck dish to share with the other cruisers for Thanksgiving Day dinner. Philo provides the turkeys and generates a lot of liquor sales as folks arrive up to two hours early for dinner. As each cruiser arrives, he/she is handed a playing card that determines his/her position in the eating line. He has about three decks of cards and hands out 12 aces first, then 12 deuces, and on down to kings. He and his band entertain the guests as each number is called.

A man's work is never done, though we work from sun to sun.

We showed up two hours early and got one ace and one deuce. Philo needed some turkey carvers; so Ed of “A Cappella” and I volunteered for the duty – nothing like being close to the turkey even before the aces are called. We each grabbed an apron and with little more than our fingers, began stripping two turkeys apiece. We shared a cleaver to slice the white meat, and a fork to strip some of the hotter pieces of meat. Naturally we carvers got the sweet breads and a few other tastes of both white and dark meat “to make sure the turkeys were fully cooked.” Since I was still stripping turkeys when the eating lines started, Sheilagh grabbed the ace and got in line first. I finished my job about the time the “fours” were joining the eating line, so I got right in with my deuce.

The salad and vegetable table at the Thanksgiving dinner at Philo's Restaurant

Since every cruiser couple attending had brought a salad, a vegetable, a potato dish, or a dessert, there had to be some 50 dishes and the attached picture doesn't even show the turkey, the potatoes and gravy and some 30 pies and cakes for desert. Since the plates only held so much, it was necessary to pick out what would be the most popular items and grab the first plate-load with those, knowing that other dishes could be tasted on a later trip after the “kings” had been served. Sheilagh brought a key lime pie that went quickly, but there was definitely food left over. We had a good time meeting other cruisers and had dinner with Ed and Cornelia of “A Cappella” with friends of theirs who have a winter vacation home nearby.

I’m afraid we’re too old for the loud music that began punctuating the limited space of the restaurant after dinner; so we didn’t stay long. I was also beginning to hurt from the kayak trip I had taken earlier that morning to the town of Bucerias, several miles away. My idea had been to paddle into the wind for about 40 minutes and then back downwind for an easy 20-minute paddle back. I hadn’t reckoned with a 180° change of wind direction when I got there in 45 minutes. My one-hour paddle turned into an hour-and-a-half paddle with no assistance from the wind. It took three aspirin to tone down the pain enough to let me get some sleep. I’ve got to take it a bit easier as I try to get back into shape.

Today is Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and we are sitting around on the boat and getting tasks done. We give thanks for all of you whom we count as our friends and family. It’s too bad we can’t all be together, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t thinking of you.

More later . . .

November 21st (2008) – Mazatlan – Jim’s Blog #67

Current Location – Mazatlan – Lat: 23°16.29’ N / Long: 106°27.28’ W

We will begin including our latitude and longitude position on each blog in response to one of our readers, Mike Federwisch, who would like to follow our progress on Google Earth. Maybe others of you would be interested as well.

Just another sunset in Mazatlan

Last Saturday we continued our mission to get down to the tip of the Baja Peninsula and jump across the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlan. Doing it in daylight hours was a priority, which put Puerto Balandra as our next stop. We accomplished this easily in about six hours, with a fairly strong wind pushing us the last couple of hours. At Balandra we had to turn into this strong wind to lower our mainsail, and then turn back around to motor into the anchorage. In this case there were several sailboats already anchored, so we had to tip-toe around them to find a spot that wouldn’t be too close to anyone. Naturally the folks on the other boats are keeping a close eye on the process to insure we don’t anchor too close to them, which makes it important to look sharp and stay well clear.

Sheilagh and I donned our walkie-talkie headsets to communicate during the process, and we brought it off very smoothly, as we have dozens of times before. The headsets keep us from having to shout at each other to be heard as Sheilagh runs the windlass that drops the anchor at the bow of the boat, while I steer the boat at the other end. It is not cool to be shouting at one another, even if the reason is just to be heard over the sound of the engine and the windlass. Occasionally we have heard couples who have gone beyond shouting-to-be-heard to shouting-to-show-exasperation with the other – which is a very good reason to use headsets.

Because the weather report that night didn’t sound too good for the next day, we decided it might be a good day to sit tight and wait for better weather. The next morning we received a new weather report that predicted light winds for the next leg of the trip, so we shoved off. The day turned out to have very light winds and we ended up in Puerto Los Muertos, which is the jumping off point for Mazatlan. It’s always a good sign when the actual weather corresponds with the predicted weather. Los Muertos was really crowded, this time with a number of rookies who had come down to Mexico on this year’s Baja Ha Ha, as we had done the year before. They carry pennants announcing themselves as participants, much as freshmen used to wear beanies in college to identify them as rookies. Now that we are the proverbial “sophomores,” we know not to give ourselves away as rookies, although we certainly did last year.

Los Muertos has a good restaurant, known as the Giggling Marlin, but our outboard engine was still on the fritz and we were not eager to row over and back. We settled down to a delicious home-cooked meal of fried chicken with potatoes and country gravy. This woman really knows how to cook. I ate as much as possible because I knew she wouldn’t be cooking the next evening when we would be plowing our way across the Sea of Cortez all night. Sheilagh does not like cooking when the boat is heeled over on its side, even though the stove stays level by swinging with the boat on a pivot. She has some sort of objection to being thrown around the galley. I even agreed to create a harness for her and tie her to a couple of fixed eye-bolts in the galley for just that purpose. Alas, she was not impressed with my idea and suggested I tie myself to the galley with my head over the gas, if I got hungry.

The weather report for Monday predicted a tail wind and fairly low swells all through the Sea of Cortez at our crossing point, so we were off to the races again at about 7:30 in the morning. The first half of the day was very pleasant, but then higher winds and swells kicked in to give us a bit of a herky-jerky ride. We made good time and kept the engine on to make sure we maintained a rate of speed that would get us to Mazatlan by at least 2PM the following day. Both Sheilagh and I got out our IPods and listened to books for several hours as we relaxed in the cockpit or down below in the cabin. I say “relaxed,” but it is difficult to truly relax when the varying winds and waves set up a kind of repeating pattern for awhile and then suddenly throw in a larger wave every now and then. The larger wave causes the boat to twist into the wind and then plunge down the side of the swell, heeling over a bit more than usual. The boat always corrects herself, but in the meantime the changed pattern threatens the braces we have established with our feet and hands, and causes us to grab onto something else to keep from sliding off the seat.

I usually sit on one of the seats we had installed on the back rail, where I can hold onto the radar arch and keep an eye on the wave patterns from fairly high up. That perch also avoids the occasional spray that is cast up into the cockpit by an overly exuberant wave. Sheilagh ensconces herself under the dodger on the lee side of the cockpit (the protected side) and stays well clear of any spray. The real challenge is the occasional trip to the head, where it requires both elbows and knees to help keep one centered on the main appliance.

As night came on we heaved-to for some dinner. That’s a maneuver that pits the jib against the rudder, causing the boat to sit on the swells in a fairly consistent manner as the boat is blown downwind at a very slow pace. Even with the benefit of settling the boat down, Sheilagh’s cooking consisted of warming up some hot dogs, cutting them up into pieces, and throwing them into a can of baked beans. She handed me the cooking pot to eat from and said she wasn’t hungry. I thought it tasted great! That night the moon came up at about 10:30PM, at which time Sheilagh took the watch for about three hours while I got some rest.

I was back on duty from 2AM on, making use of a timer to wake me up every 15 minutes if I happened to doze off – which I did. The theory is that we should be able to see the lights of an approaching boat on the horizon from about 10-12 miles away. If we are doing 5 knots and a tanker is doing 15 knots, then we could close in a half hour or less – thus the use of a 15-minute interval to check for lights bearing down. It’s frustrating to keep getting up every 15 minutes to see if there are any other boats, and finding nothing on the horizon in any direction. A UFO would at least be an interesting change from nothing but night. That got me wondering if a UFO could suck up a complete sailboat with a 58’ mast, or whether they would just transport me from the cockpit, leaving Sheilagh sleeping below. Yeah, those thoughts do occur in the middle-of-the-night watch.

The next morning dawned bright and clear and within a couple of hours the sea state diminished and we turned the engine up higher to make the same speed we had been making with the wind helping us. At one point we were surrounded by dozens of smaller dolphins showing off their jumping skills and playing in our bow wave. One particular dolphin jumped several times and did about 3-4 twists in the air before entering the water again. These were not somersaults, but twists, and we wondered if he might be a refugee from a water park. We both were feeling pretty muggy and dirty; so we both took showers (separately, in case you were wondering) and cleaned up before getting to Mazatlan. The reduced sea state allowed us to do that without being thrown out of the shower in the process.

We got into the fuel dock at about 2PM just as the fishing boats were arriving with their catches for the day. As we waited for our turn for fuel, the first fishing boat, showing one red flag with a sailfish design on it, brought out a 5’ sailfish and hoisted it on a rope gallows to allow the fisherman to have his picture taken with the fish. Counting the cost of the trip down, the stay in the local hotel, the cost of the boat and crew for a day, and the requirement to bring the wife along, each picture was probably worth a couple of thousand dollars. Two more fishing boats unloaded larger sailfish and hoisted them up for the same picture-taking rite as the first one. It was about then that I grabbed the camera, positioned Sheilagh with her back to the fish, and snapped the attached picture. This picture didn’t cost us anything, although we really don’t have any bragging rights.

The fuel dock was having mechanical problems with the pumps; so we pulled away and found our slip in the marina. We had been here before, which means we knew the ropes for checking in and getting on with our preparations for heading further south. We first washed off the dried salt and bird poop on the deck – apparently a couple of birds had perched on the top of the mast during the night and showered the deck underneath with the same material that has produced a number of “White Rock” guideposts in the Sea of Cortez.

In the course of the next couple of days we got the laundry done, got the outboard engine fixed, did a grocery resupply, met several friends for drinks and gab, and did our best to get mail sent down from the states. This year we are buying our prescription medications in three-month increments over the internet and having them shipped to our mail stop, where we had planned to have them forwarded on. We arrived in Mazatlan to find that the mail delivery service won’t send them on without a document from the Mexican government that allows them to be brought in. We hadn’t known anything about this, so we indicated the problem on the cruisers’ net and found that one cruiser had run into the same problem. Doing further research we learned that we needed to take a bus ride to the other side of town, find a hospital there, and get a doctor to sign off on our need to transport our medications from San Diego to Mexico.

We set out on Thursday to get this done, but found that our bus had to detour around a parade that was celebrating the Revolución of 1910. This turned out to be a four-hour parade (from 10AM to 2PM) that delayed us going and coming, but it was a chance to see the cream of Mexico’s youth attired in band costumes, Tae Kwon Do outfits, drill team uniforms, and military camouflage clothing. It also included pauses for full-on demonstrations of putting out fires in the middle of the street by the kids in the civil defense force and a multi-unit gymnastics team made up of young men in training for the Mexican Navy. Although we were somewhat inconvenienced by the celebration, it was another case of treating the experience as an “adventure” rather than an “ordeal.”

What was interesting was trying to find someone in the hospital who knew what we wanted. We had to wait in line for a doctor who seemed to think we wanted him to prescribe the medications we had listed for the form. He couldn’t understand what we needed so he went looking for a translator. Luckily we had a copy of someone else’s document and we were finally able to convey to the translator what we wanted. We were then moved to an administrative office, where a harried secretary typed up the documents we needed in between dozens of phone calls and a number of visitors, including some family members who had arrived to have lunch with her.

When we finally got back that afternoon from a slow bus crawl (air-conditioned, thankfully) through the heart of the area where the parade had finished, we went right to happy hour, where an 80-year-old cruiser gave us a better solution. He told us it was easier to have a family member stuff cotton in the prescription bottles to keep the pills from rattling, and then send them in a priority packet with Federal Express. Apparently that bypasses the usual hassle. In his words, “If you want to survive in Mexico, you need to learn how to bypass the Mexican laws in the same way the Mexicans do.” After 20+ years in Mexico he was convinced that it was impossible to do business in the same way we would do it in the United States. We bought him a beer for his advice.

Today we spent five hours on the boat in front of our laptops as a 14-year-old boy, named Casey, cleaned up our computers, added security features, and eliminated a lot of the problems we had been having. He is the son of a cruising couple and a whiz at computers. We hadn’t planned on this task, but the raves we heard about him from other cruisers resulted in our signing him up for a few hours of consulting work. We thoroughly enjoyed working with him and “donated” toward his college fund (since he is not allowed to make money in Mexico without a license).

Tonight we ended our stay in Mazatlan over dinner with Barry and Pat of “Pacific Voyager” and Chuck and Joan of “Tender Spirit.” Both of those couples will be staying here longer to get some more extensive work done on their boats before proceeding south. Barry and Pat are from Hawaii, and Chuck and Joan are from Alaska, so the conversation was very wide-ranging. Barry had just caught a 7’ sailfish off the back of his sailboat as he was coming across from La Paz (about 10 hours ahead of us), and had already passed around about 90% of it to other cruisers since our iceboxes can only hold so much. It was a very enjoyable way to end our stay. Tomorrow we head south for San Blas; another overnight sail will get us there at about noon we think. More later . . .

November 14th (2008) – Isla San Francisco – Jim’s Blog #66

We left San Carlos last Sunday and took the longer route across the Sea of Cortez and down the Baja Peninsula. We are now a couple of days from jumping back across the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlan. The northern crossing, which we made last Sunday, is about 75 nautical miles across, while the upcoming southern crossing is 190 nautical miles. We have made this southern crossing twice, and it will take about 30+ hours. We’ll start early in the morning on Monday from Bahia de los Muertos and arrive in the afternoon on Tuesday, if the weather permits. This is the season for “northers,” strong winds from the north that blow straight down the center of the Sea of Cortez. What we hope for is a “lighter northerly” that will help propel us across without raising large waves or Sheilagh’s anxiety. So far we have made this crossing twice under heavier winds in both instances.

Last Sunday we had a great sail across the Sea of Cortez with warm southerly winds, although northerly winds had been predicted. We saw flying rays – the ones that look like wet washcloths flipped like Frisbees across the water. We saw no whales, and only a couple of leaping dolphins from a distance. We pulled into a small bay at Punta Chivato that would protect us from the southerly winds we had been experiencing all day and tucked in for the night.

Just as darkness hit, the wind began blowing from the north and the little cove did nothing to protect us from the swells that resulted. It’s not a small thing to raise the anchor, motor around a dangerously rocky point, and resettle into a new cove – all in the dark. So we decided to stay there and endure the rocking and rolling. In order to keep from being thrown back and forth, I slept crossways to the length of the boat in the front berth, letting my head and feet go up and down with no rolling of the body. Sheilagh backed up to one side of the aft quarter-berth and wedged blankets on the exposed side to keep from being rolled out of bed. As it was, neither of us got very good sleep that night and were both in agreement to pull up anchor as soon as light dawned on Monday.

The next day was an easy motor/sail south to the larger protected bay called San Juanico. I caught a nap to make up for some lost sleep from the night before, but Sheilagh tried twice to catch some Z’s with no luck. We passed by the very large Bahía Concepción, where we had celebrated the 4th of July with some 40+ other cruisers on at least 20 cruising sailboats and power boats last summer. San Juanico is known as the location for the “Cruisers’ Shrine,” where cruisers leave something to identify themselves and their boats hanging on a scraggly tree on the north shore of the bay. We avoided stopping in this bay going north last spring because it didn’t protect us from the southerlies blowing at the time. This year we were moving fast and didn’t want to inflate our dinghy or go through the hassle of using the block and tackle to drop the outboard motor onto the dinghy – all just to leave our mark on a straggly tree. We enjoyed a blessedly calm night in flat water and woke up feeling much more rested.

We continued south to the hurricane hole, called Puerto Escondido, on Tuesday, where we caught a mooring for that night and the following night to give us a day of rest on Wednesday. Last spring we had to hike half a mile down a dirt road to a crossroads hotel and small store to get a good meal and some supplies – and then hike back. This time we found a small store in the marina along with a cruiser hangout that included a very nice restaurant. Apparently a young man, called Pedro, had made such a success of a restaurant further north in the town of Loreto that a jealous owner had fired him to save the money she had agreed to pay him for making the restaurant a success. So much for success! Now he is drawing customers from that location to his new spot at Puerto Escondido. The food was very good, but the service was even more so. We plugged into the internet to pick up messages, but had no blog created to take advantage of the opportunity.

We had to row our dinghy into the marina, because the outboard motor refused to work. I developed a blister on my right finger as I pulled the starting cable at least a hundred times to try to get it working. We discovered that the carburetor was spewing gas everywhere but into the cylinder, and we were not prepared to fix it at that time. Luckily Ray from “Emerald Star” gave us a tow back to our boat with his dinghy – luckily because the wind was blowing directly against us to get back to our boat, and I would have had blisters on both rowing hands if I had been forced to row against that 20-knot wind. Sheilagh, of course, pleaded her femininity as a reason for not taking her turn at rowing. When that didn’t fly, she threatened to stop cooking, and I gave in very quickly. The wind blew at 20-knots during the entire time we were in the hurricane hole, but the boat stayed nice and level in the protected water and we got a good rest.

Thursday we set out for the next stop at Puerto Los Gatos on a beautiful day that saw the end of the 20-knot wind that had been blowing for two days. We motored south for a day to get there and pulled into a pretty bay in the afternoon. There we found three other boats, several pangas, and about 30 kayakers with tents strung along the beach. I got energetic and inflated my kayak and took a turn around the bay to get the arm muscles back into shape. In the course of doing that I talked with some of the kayakers and found they were in two separate groups – Mary Aventura and Baja Expeditions. Both groups had very modern-looking two-person kayaks, one set was using pangas for support and the other group, a large motor vessel providing logistics support for the tents and food. Apparently kayaking expeditions are a big tourist-dollar-generator in this area of the Baja Peninsula. Those I talked with were quite envious of the life style Sheilagh and I are living, since they had only a week or two to have an adventure and then return to work.

As we were first anchoring, we were approached by a dilapidated panga driven by a rotund and jolly Mexican, named Manuel. We had heard stories last year of Manuel, the fisherman, who patrolled the Los Gatos area ready to sell fish and lobster to cruisers. We had bypassed this bay last spring, but as he approached we immediately remembered his name and occupation. He had a couple of fish he was selling, but we asked for lobster. He said he could get them, how many did we want, and he quoted us a price – all in Spanish. He asked if we had a beer we could give him, since he had a ways to go to get the lobster and he was thirsty. We gave him the beer and he motored south around the point to get our lobster. We had our doubts that we would ever see him again, but he was back in half an hour or so with three lobsters for the price of two and a second request for a beer.

The next problem was finding a pot big enough to boil three lobsters, each of which was probably below the legal size, but each with fairly long feelers. As we were discussing our options we were approached by the owner of a large fishing boat anchored next to us. He turned out to be an almond farmer from Modesto, who had bought the boat as a tax shelter and was about to head back to San Francisco where he kept his boat. Sheilagh mentioned our quandary as we talked with him and he told us just to chop off the tails, throw the bodies overboard, and barbecue the tails in our outdoor barbecue grill that we keep attached to the rail at the rear of the boat. That’s what we did, and the lobster tails were delicious. I did the dirty deed of cutting off the tails because Sheilagh couldn’t stand to look them in the eyes and do it. I just refused to look them in the eyes!

While we were coming down the coast we got in touch with some friends from the previous year, Dave and Merry of “AirOps” on the ship-to-ship radio. They were heading up the Baja Peninsula as we were heading down, so we made a date and place to meet here in Isla San Francisco. We had favoring winds all day and pulled in next to them at about 3PM. They immediately came over in their dinghy to give us a ride back to their boat, since they were aware of our outboard motor problem. It’s one of the pleasures of the cruising lifestyle to run into friends nearly anywhere we go, especially now that we are in our second year. We had particularly enjoyed Dave and Merry’s company when we were in Zihuatanejo last year, and it took us a couple of hours to catch up with what we had both been doing since then.

Later in the evening we hosted dinner on our boat. We provided the Arachera beef on the grill, while they provided the fresh salad and green beans. Both of us contributed wine, and both couples thoroughly enjoyed catching up on all the other cruisers we happened to know about as we went through both bottles of wine. We finally had to end our get-together so both of us could get some sleep before heading out in the morning. Naturally we cruisers were in bed by 10PM at the latest.

More later . . .

November 7th (2008) – San Carlos, Mexico – Jim’s Blog #65

It’s now a week after my first blog for this season and we’re still in our slip in Marina Real in San Carlos. Why are we still here? Batteries – or rather the lack of good ones that I mentioned in the earlier blog! That led to our renting a car on Tuesday, driving the eight-and-a-half hour trip to Phoenix, staying the night, and then driving the same distance back on Wednesday.

On Thursday morning, while the tide was in, I worried each of the seven 72 lb. batteries from the car > down the ramp > to the pier > to the boat > onto the boat > down the gangway > and into the back berth. I did it at high tide to reduce the angle of the ramp down to the pier. I could use a hand truck from the car to the boat, but after that it was shear lifting, making sure my legs were bent and my back straight.

It was then we found that the new batteries are just slightly larger in length than the ones we had, so our battery footprint plate had to be enlarged. Since we couldn’t find any premade plates for the new batteries, we followed the path of several referrals to find a carpenter who sold us some Starboard strips to make our own footprints. It took me a couple of hours to accomplish that, and then we found out that the difference in terminal types and distances between the terminals ruled out the use of five of our terminal cables. It was good that we still had the rental car that day, or it would have taken us umpteen days by bus to accomplish what we did in a few hours by car.

We managed to find a supplier of cables and helped the supplier put together the cable-end-connectors to the cables we needed. With that fixed we found that the new batteries were lower in height that the older batteries, which prevented our hold-down brackets from actually holding down the batteries. We took care of that problem, turned on the DC panel and everything worked well. It only took us about eight additional hours of work and errands to actually install the new batteries – all due to infinitesimal differences in size. I went into this process just to show how each task on a boat leads to other tasks. Thank goodness we encountered this battery problem in a civilized area that just happens to be the closest port in the region to the U.S.

Now we need to get up to the top of the mast to repair some bird damage and maybe set a sharp spike to keep the birds from wanting to land there. We also need to lubricate our anemometer cups up there and get the wind speed indicator working correctly again. We still need to fill our extra diesel fuel cans, load our water tanks, test our water maker, and wait for good weather. We noticed 25-knot winds yesterday outside the marina which resulted in at least one sailboat limping in to take refuge from the rough conditions. Since a common mariner’s superstition is never to start a voyage on a Friday, we will probably go out tomorrow or Sunday. Although we don’t believe in superstitions generally, we have heard so many stories of bad luck heaped on vessels that dare to depart on Friday that we are reluctant to tempt the storm gods.

We have two options to take when we set out. The first is a three-day sail directly south to Mazatlan, some 425 miles south. With the northern winds we have been having it could be a shorter ride, but probably a lot bumpier. There are only a couple of ports we could pull into on this side of the Sea of Cortez, which would leave us few outs if the weather gets bad. The other option is to cross back to the Baja Peninsula side and make a series of day-sails down the eastern coast of the Baja until we get to the tip, and then jump across to Mazatlan. This latter plan would take 10 days and add 100 miles to the trip. It would offer safer passage if there is any question with regard to the weather; so we are staying tuned to the weather reports.

Our objective is to spend the month of December in the Paradise Village Marina in Puerto Vallarta. We had a very relaxing time there last spring and would like to repeat the experience. We belong to the Vallarta Yacht Club there, and should run into a lot of the friends we made during our cruising last year. At the moment we are holed up in our boat waiting for the weather report at 6PM and having our evening rum and coke. So much for the good life! More later . . .

October 31st – San Carlos, Mexico – Jim’s Blog #64

The adventure continues! We just returned to San Carlos, Mexico to put our boat back together after three months of living a nomadic life in the states. From August through October we camped in some national parks, visited all the relatives in Washington and California (we have no relatives in Oregon), and even sponged off my brother, Ken (and Mavis), in the Seattle area and my sister, Lisa (and Bob), in the Los Angeles area – for at least two weeks in each place. We also stopped in on our daughters, Melissa (with Tim, Delaney, Riley, and Paige) in Newport Beach, and Stephanie (with Hayden and Evan) in San Jose. We were also given the run of our previous neighbors’ house, Sue and Larry, in Sunnyvale for a week as they went on a cruise. Everyone was very gracious in allowing us to experience the benefits of the settled life – certainly a better life than camping in cold weather in a tent.

We took the opportunity on this trip to do a volcano tour of Lassen, Crater Lake, and Mount Rainier during some of the best weather ever in California, Oregon, and Washington. The only real problem was a cold snap at Crater Lake that resulted in frozen water pipes in the campgrounds and two very cold campers in sleeping bags that were rated to 50°F. Since we couldn’t sleep, we got up early, started a big fire to get warm, piled everything back in the car, and left the park a day early. We hustled off to Bend, Oregon where we got a motel room and got warm. After our earlier experience in San Carlos with the intense heat in late July, we thought we could never be cold enough again – so much for thinking.

One of the benefits of camping in national parks is that, at 62, I am allowed into all national parks free of charge for a one-time $10 payment, and the cost to camp there is one-half the going rate. After Labor Day there was no difficulty in finding space in any campsite, even without reservations. So there is a benefit to being retired and not having any family members tied to school or work.

On Monday, October 27th, we set out from San Diego in a Greyhound bus at about 2PM, switched to a Mexican bus line in Tijuana and arrived in Guaymas at 9:30AM the next morning. We had four big bags of clothing and boat equipment, but were fortunate enough to get the green light at customs to avoid a complete inspection. We were feeling good about that, but were later rousted out at 2AM in the morning by another checkpoint, where we had to unload all our bags, drag them into an inspection building, got a red light (along with everyone else), and had an inspector go through two of our bags without comment. We assume they were looking for drugs, arms, or something else we didn’t have.

Our boat was covered in dust, but everything else seemed to be in good shape. We immediately sprayed it off, but had no food and no room in the boat to sleep on it Tuesday night. Our friends Ed and Cornelia of “A Cappella” suggested we stay at a motel in town where they were located, and offered to drive us in their rental car. It was a wonderful feeling to hit the bed and sleep for about 12 hours straight. This was right after we had a great dinner with Ed and Cornelia, Ron and Karen of “Aegean Odyssey,” and Ted and Joan of “Pangaea.” These are all cruisers we met during the past year; so it was like “old home week.”

On Wednesday we replaced all our halyards with new ones that we had purchased in California, and we put up all our sails – a tough job since the sails are so large. We have also had the bottom cleaned, the stainless steel shined up, and are getting the hull waxed tomorrow for the season. We have now set up the bimini to provide some needed shade, reattached the life raft to the top of the deck (as a last resort someday), and reattached the life preservers and man-overboard pole to the aft rail to allow one of us to save the other if someone goes overboard. We also reinstalled the barbecue grill on the aft rail.

After all this we noticed that our batteries were not charging fully; so we investigated. It turns out that these batteries were at the end their lives, and there are no comparable batteries sold in Mexico. We have now located a distributor in Arizona who can sell us the batteries we need. All we have to do is load up our 7 batteries in a rental car (each weighs about 70 lbs. for a total of nearly 500 lbs.), drive up to Arizona, offload the old batteries, load up the new batteries, and make the 300 mile trek back to Mexico. Why take the old batteries to the U.S.? To avoid customs payments for the new batteries!

Even though Mexico can’t supply the batteries we need, they want to charge us 17% for the privilege of bringing them into the country to put on our boat. So we will simply take the batteries to the U.S. “to be repaired” and return with the “repaired” batteries. We have yet to see how the NAFTA agreement has been helpful to those of us trying to operate between the U.S. and Mexico. This whole process will delay our departure about a week – something every cruiser has experienced or will experience. Friends of ours discovered the same problem while anchored in an out-of-the-way cove and had barely enough power to start the engine. In this case they kept the engine going for two days until they reached San Carlos to do what we’re doing.

Our current plans are to cross over to the Baja Peninsula, work our way down the eastern edge to the tip, and then hop back across the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlan. We plan on this because there are no safe anchorages to speak of between San Carlos and Mazatlan; so it would require a two- or three-night trip down. We prefer daily trips or single over-night trips; so it’s worth it to do the over-and-back routine. In addition to the lack of decent protected coves between here and Mazatlan on the mainland coast, other cruisers have reported a prevalence of crime in those locations. Friends of ours lost a dinghy and an outboard motor in one of those anchorages and warned the entire fleet before anyone else got ripped off.

We got plenty of exposure to the presidential election process during our trip to the States, and are happy to have voted by absentee ballot while we were there. Now we are no longer bombarded with television ads and news programs. However, we do have Sirius radio, which keeps us up with what’s going on when we want to know. It appears that most of the news organizations have finally been exposed for their lack of objectivity in reporting on the candidates. Hopefully this will lead to some improvement in the way news is reported in the future.

I’ll be back to you in a few days. This year Sheilagh has promised to contribute to this blog much more than she has in the past. This means you should be getting a different slant on things from her. The primary complaint of readers over the past year has to do with the length of my blogs; so I will be attempting to shorten them significantly. Please note that I have compressed three months into two pages for this kickoff message for the new cruising year. More later . . .

August 4th – San Diego – Jim’s Blog #63

We had just settled into our air-conditioned seats in the bus on our way to Tijuana from Guaymas at the end of my last blog. The total trip would be about 14 hours and just the air-conditioned nature of the trip was a godsend for us. We pulled out books and IPods, had a couple of diet cokes to sip on, and indulged in some snacks as the sun set in the west to our left as we headed north. We found we could lean back in the seats and put our feet up to be completely relaxed and comfortable.

About two hours later Sheilagh began shifting in the seat to find a more comfortable position, and she continued this practice for the next twelve hours. Having traveled by bus for up to 48 hours at a time when I commuted to high school from Walla Walla, Washington to Columbus, Ohio in the fall and back in the spring, I learned that there is no position in a bus seat that can ever bring comfort over a long period of time. The only thing to do is to assume a single position, move one’s feet a few inches occasionally, and make one’s mind fixate on something other than one’s bodily comfort. This did not fall willingly on Sheilagh’s ears. Instead she continued to swivel her hips onto the edge of my seat, then reverse herself in the other direction with her head and shoulders overlapping. Later on in the trip she found another seat that allowed her to drape herself over two seats together. Needless to say she never achieved the comfort she sought.

Every three hours we came to a stop for a 15-minute break, where a few of us got up and walked around. If you’ve never ridden a long-distance bus you wouldn’t know that these stops always coincide with REM sleep, and they are announced by turning on the overhead lights in the bus and waking everyone. The food was the same as that found in train stations, namely pre-wrapped cold turkey and ham sandwiches, and burritos that could be warmed up. This was offered along with all the cold soft drinks one might find anywhere and candy and snack treats. Over time the bus became littered with the packaging of all these items after they were consumed by the riders.

Sometime around midnight we were stopped at a military checkpoint and everyone was herded out of the bus to stand around as our bags were opened and searched. Some military types also searched the seating area in the bus while we were disembarked. It appears nothing was found of any significance and no one was escorted off the bus. We were loaded back up and the trip continued. We found nothing missing from our checked bags when we had a chance to look through them later.

I actually got some good sleep despite the conditions, but Sheilagh developed a bug of some sort during the trip and was miserable. The bus climbed over a very high pass to get to Tijuana from the east in the early morning. The pass seemed higher than the 7,000’ Donner Pass I’m familiar with, and I have never seen so many boulders piled on one another. I was surprised there weren’t more rock falls on the steep faces of the hills. For that matter I couldn’t see how anyone could have built a road over what appeared to be loose boulders everywhere. In the case of Donner Pass in California the road was carved out of granite and there are no apparent rocks hanging over the highway ready to fall. In the case of this pass in Mexico it would appear that any slight earthquake tremor would cover the highway in very large boulders. I kept my eyes on the situation; so I could brace myself and Sheilagh when a boulder rolled down and tipped the bus off the edge of the steep road!

We arrived almost 14 hours to the minute after we left the bus station at Guaymas. That means we were about 45 minutes late at every stop (based on our 45-minute late departure), but that didn’t bother us nor the other passengers who got on and off at various stops along the way. We retrieved our bags and decided that they were too heavy to take on a local bus to the border. We hired a cab which took us to the back of a long line of people entering the U.S. that Saturday. We were immediately met by a couple of entrepreneurs who suggested we take their bus through the checkpoint, so we wouldn’t have to carry our bags in a long line for at least a quarter of a mile. We took them up on it and spent the next 30 minutes or so sitting on a very slowly moving bus that saved us a lot of wear and tear.

Getting through the final checkpoint required that we carry our bags a few paces, and then we spilled out in front of a San Diego McDonald’s, where we had good old American Sausage McMuffins with Eggs. We had planned to load our bags on the trolley and disembark about a block from our condo, but the number and weight of the bags, along with Sheilagh’s not feeling well, caused us to decide in favor of a taxi. This 20-minute cab ride cost about half as much as the total cost of the 14-hour bus trip. Furthermore, adding up all the taxi rides from the marina to the Guaymas bus station and the three cab rides at this end of the trip, we paid $5 less for cabs than we did for the entire bus trip. So we got off with a tab of about $250 plus snacks and drinks to get from Guaymas to our condo in San Diego – cheaper than an airplane ticket for both of us by about half.

We got into our condo where our niece (who is renting it from us) had previously purchased a battery for our car. We quickly installed it, got an oil change and fluids checked at a Jiffy Lube, pumped up the tires, got a car wash, and checked into a local motel at about 4 times the price of the rental we receive on our condo. We crashed for the night and then spent the next two days ordering new halyards for the boat and buying a few other items that we have needed for some time on the boat. We also called Rich and Debbie of ‘Oasis’ who had sailed back to San Diego a few weeks before. They invited us over for pizza on their boat and offered us nearly a ringside seat to a Pat Benatar concert scheduled for the same night beside their marina. We had a great time catching up on their travels and comparing notes.

Today we are setting out to visit relatives up and down the west coast and will discontinue this blog until we start back to the boat in late September, or maybe even late October. We will be doing car camping on the way up the coast, and plan to loop back inland a bit to catch some National Parks going both ways. The climate in California has been wonderful, compared to what we just left in San Carlos, Mexico, and we are very appreciative. Hopefully we will be ready to return to the warmth after spending some cool nights camping in the mountains.

We hope you have enjoyed some of our experiences and musings as we have vacationed for the past nine months in the waters of Mexico. We’ll be back in the fall. More later . . .

August 1st – San Carlos – Jim’s Blog #62

We actually had a lot more nights like the hot and muggy one we had at the end of the last blog. A little breeze would come up at about 5PM and last about an hour or so, which made that time a good one for getting some chores done outside despite the sun shining down on us at that time. In the morning we could work reasonably comfortably from 6AM until the sun began shining down on us at 8AM, but those two hours in the morning and one hour in the evening were not enough time to get everything done. We just got used to being covered in sweat (or “glow” in Sheilagh’s case), and continued working as we looked forward to the shower in the evening. When things got too hot we would wear our bathing suits to the shower, wash off, and walk back to the boat with fresh water versus salty water all over our bodies.

New sailors might ask what needs to be done to put a boat up for a couple of months in potential hurricane conditions. Here is a smattering of the tasks we performed:
1) Changed the oil in the engine, replaced the oil filter and cleaned out the dual fuel filters,
2) Removed the raw water impeller to keep it from developing a weird shape (and discovered that one of the impeller blades had broken off),
3) Added biocide to the fuel tanks and topped them off,
4) Emptied all water tanks, including the hot water tank,
5) Pickled the water maker with a special chemical to preserve it for two months with no activity,
6) Took down all the sails and rolled them up for storage in the cabin – this involved disconnecting the reefing lines and the furling,
7) Cut the fittings off four of our halyards to be used for new halyards, and tied off the old halyards to keep them from flogging the mast in a strong wind,
8) Took down the bimini and the canvas-supported flexible plastic windows around the dodger – effectively eliminating our shade on top of the boat,
9) Cleaned out the head and holding tank and filled with water to keep the smell down,
10) Defrosted and cleaned the freezer and refrigerator, throwing out some food that had gone bad and donating the good stuff to the gals in the front office,
11) Filled up the shower, the sinks, and a bucket with fresh water to allow for some moisture in the cabin during the hot days to come
12) Placed an elastic stretch band (Shockles) tied into each of the dock lines to allow for some boat movement with the dock in the event of high winds and waves.

Generally, sailors pull their boats completely out of the water in hurricane territory and store them on dry land in braces to keep them standing in the strong wind of a hurricane. We saw hundreds of boats put up that way and it is an economical way to do it. One of the problems with this approach is that the boats suffer from being out of the water, causing the hulls and thru-hulls to dry out and crack to some degree. We wanted to avoid the problems with dry storage, and we reasoned that leaving the boat in the water would be appropriate based on the sheltered nature of the marina we were using and the history of hurricanes in this area.

Marina Real is a well protected marina from both the winds and the surge of high waves that can damage most in-the-water boats during a hurricane. We learned that hurricanes had seldom reached as far north in the Sea of Cortez as San Carlos in the past, and the ones that did reach here were winding down in force. We stripped the boat of anything that could blow away in a strong wind, and tied the boat to a good solid dock with strong lines that had some elastic tied in to provide some flexibility. We will be back in October at the end of the hurricane season and will reverse everything we’ve done to prepare to go south for the winter.

We had a marina worker drop by with his son on a particularly hot day offering to wash the boat and shine up all the stainless steel for a very good price. We left the boat in his hands and took the shuttle to the San Carlos Marina to do our laundry. When we returned he and his son had done a great job, and one that saved us at least 4-6 hours of work in the hot sun. I think this shaved a day off of the time needed to perform all the tasks we wanted to accomplish.

Marina Real offers a shuttle to San Carlos three times a day, of which we availed ourselves nearly every day – once to get marine supplies, once to get bus tickets to Tijuana, and once to get the laundry done. This shuttle is handy because the marina provides very few services other than a safe place to tie up, along with electricity and non-potable water. I should mention that the showers are adequate and there is internet availability in the office, which is air-conditioned (but only open from 8AM to 5PM.

To get the bus tickets to Tijuana we had to grab a local bus from San Carlos, after the shuttle, to Guaymas (where the long range bus stations originate), a trip of about 12 miles. Afterwards we visited an auto supply store where we picked up a DC fan for the boat (to replace one that had quit working) and some silvered windshield covers that we later cut up for covers to our hatches and portholes. We also discovered a LEY department/grocery store (similar to a Kmart) where we got some cleaning supplies, and then it was back to the boat.

Finally Friday rolled around, the day of our departure, and we could finally put the sails and dinghy down below where we had been sleeping and cooking. The night before leaving we had a marathon of the last 6 hours of the sixth season of the TV program, “24.” Sadly, we were so tired that we stopped with the last hour to go, planning to watch it on Friday before we left. Yeah, we forgot all about it until we were in the bus later and realized that it would be another two months before we could see the wrap-up of all the plots for the sixth season. Oh well!

The shuttle had broken down; so we took a cab to the San Carlos Marina, where we planned to have lunch and play with our laptops in air-conditioned spaces while waiting for the bus departure at 6PM. We hadn’t realized that the little restaurant we were using closed down at 2PM, which ended our air-conditioned plans. We grabbed a cab to the TAP Bus Station to wait the four hours and found that they were having difficulty with the air conditioning there. As a result, we waited in the shade until nearly 7PM for our bus to finally arrive. We hadn’t expected that the buses would run on time based on our previous 9 months in the country, so the late departure of the 6PM bus was just another part of the experience.

We finally got off at 7PM and were very happy to be sitting in an air-conditioned bus, knowing that we would be in Tijuana early the next morning and in San Diego soon after that. More later . . .