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 . . .