M/V Discovery

Christmas Cheer

2011-12-23T10:13:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas to all and be careful out there.

Christmas in La Paz

2011-12-21T10:35:00.001-08:00

We'll be spending Christmas in La Paz after going to Puerto Escondido for Thanksgiving. We spent 2 weeks in November out in the islands leaving the dock for the first time in nearly six months. It was great to get out and start using the boat as it was meant to be used rather than as a dock queen in the marina. The boat takes on a different personality while out cruising. In the marina it's a comfortable home with all of the luxuries of a waterfront condo. Out cruising it becomes a ship that keeps us safe and secure while cruising. Out on the water we focus on keeping the boat safe, monitoring the weather and planning passages. It's a more interesting life on the water, more stimulating and challenging than living at the dock. We've been living in La Paz since July and we're anxious to get moving again although our current plan is to stay here until May.

Christmas day Linda is going to cook a turkey breast and apple pie (yum!) and Jim and Diane off the trawler Adirondack are going to join us for dinner. We first met Jim and Diane July 2007 at Meyers Chuck north of Ketchikan Alaska nearly 3500 miles from here. It is a small world.

Thanksgiving trip to the islands.

Green Hills of Baja

2011-09-30T10:17:00.001-07:00

We drove south on Highway 1 last week and were surprised how green the country side was. We have driven this road a few times in the last 3 years when going to the airport in Cabo and the area was always brown, like you would expect a desert to be, but a little rain over the summer has made the area bloom with plant life. Viewing Baja from the water it looks barren but if you go inland into the hills after a little rain, it’s rich with plant life. You can hardly see the cactus through all the shrubs and bushes. It is amazing how a desert can be transformed by a little rain.

Hills near San Antonio

Hills near San Bartolo

At the end of the drive we stopped in los Barriles at the Las Palmas resort and had a wonderful lunch, highly recommended.

On the return leg we drove out to Ensenada de los Muertos, Cove of the Dead. We have anchored in this bay many times but had never seen if from land before. Developers have renamed this area los Sueños, Dreams, in order to have a more attractive name for the area. We like the older name better, it has a more adventurous ring to it but we can understand how it may discourage time-share sales.

Mexican Nautical Charts – this is getting fun

2011-09-25T08:22:00.001-07:00

We’ve always been interested in nautical charts and in particular, electronic charts. When we first came to Mexico we had Maptech charts on the PC running Coastal Explorer (CE) and C-Map charts on Furuno. Both are based on surveys done around 1890. That’s right, over a hundred years old. Here’s an example of these charts in CE -

If you click on the image to enlarge it, you can see that our waypoints where we anchored are up on land with this chart and there is a dreadful lack of detail.

Fortunately the Mexican Navy has been doing a new survey since 2005, using borrowed US equipment they say, and have published new vector charts that while not up to the standards of US NOAA charts, are a substantial improvement over the older charts. Here’s the same area using the new vector charts -

At least the land is in the right spot. Now we can add a third type of chart to the collection, charts from Google Earth satellite images. I’ve started playing with a program ChartAid that makes it very easy to capture images from Google Earth and geo-reference them so that chart plotting software like CE knows where to place them. Here’s the same spot with the addition of the photo chart -

These Google Earth photo’s are not perfect, they don’t show depth for example, but outside of the US, Canada, and Europe they might be a great improvement over existing charts. They certainly enhance areas in Mexico. Will we rely exclusively on photo charts? No, but they are another tool, along with existing charts and guide books, that we can use to stay out of trouble.

Living in La Paz

2011-09-05T13:38:00.001-07:00

We’re still on our boat but we’ve settled into Marina de La Paz and plan on staying here for awhile, which means at the present we have no plans to leave. We’re no good at making plans let alone following them so we didn’t sign any long term lease, we just told the owner that we’d like to stay for maybe a year to which he said ‘OK’.

We brought the car down to La Paz after our little trip up to the States in July. We flew up to Boise and then Seattle, saw lots of family, and then drove a u-haul truck packed with all our stuff from storage from Anacortes to Tucson. Now days we have few reasons to call Anacortes “home” other than it’s our legal residence in the States, so we decided to move our stuff to Tucson to be closer to us as we travel around Mexico. Linda’s son lives in Tucson and we go up enjoy his hospitality often so that’s a good place to store our stuff.

After the move to Tucson we drove our ‘93 Jeep Grand Cherokee down Baja to La Paz. We made the trip in 3 days with no problems but there are some spots where the road is narrow, the fall off is steep and the trucks are wide and you just hope everyone moves in the right directions at the right time so that everyone comes out the other side unharmed. It’s fun having a car in La Paz, we’re getting out and seeing areas that we never did before and grocery shopping is so much easier with a car.

When we left Tucson, the Jeep had a slow oil leak from the back of the transmissions and estimates to fix it were around $1200+. When we got to La Paz the leak had gone from slow to a noticeable puddle every night so we found a local ‘shade tree’ mechanic recommended by people in the marina. 3 days latter he had replaced the rear transmission seal, installed new motor mounts, replaced the bearings in the rear differential, and put on new rear brakes. Total cost, with parts - $425. After a month everything is still working and there’s no more puddles of oil so it looks like he did a good job. There was one small issue, he seemed to have loosened a fitting on the Air Conditioner causing the A/C gas to leak out. He denied he did it so we took the car to another ‘shade tree’ shop where they do A/C work and they recharged the system for $35. Kind of a hassle but no big deal.

This is Lupe, the mechanic who did the major work on our car in his shop next to his house.

Where to spend the summer - decisions, decisions...

2011-07-31T09:03:00.000-07:00

During the hurricane summer season in the tropics you need to find a secure place to keep your boat or move the boat outside of the hurricane area. Our first summer in Mexico we went to San Carlos up in the Sea of Cortes and we swore we would never return. It was very hot and humid and the town closes down in the summer because everyone leaves. The only positive thing that can be said about it is it's only 6 hours from Tucson where Linda's son lives. To give you an idea of the heat in San Carlos, we would drive to Tucson in the summer to cool off. Tucson is hot but dry, San Carlos hot and humid.

Last summer we took the boat up to Ensenada just south of the California boarder. It was a 900 NM trip but the marina was clean and cheap and it was only 4 hours to downtown San Diego. It was cold, we had to wear long pants and shoes for the first time since we've been in Mexico. But it was 900 NM up the Baja outside and took us 300 gallons of fuel each way, no trivial expense now days.

So this year we thought we would stay in Mazatlan. We like Mazatlan, the marina is nice and not very expensive and they don't get many hurricanes. The downside is that they're having some drug violence and it's not only hot and humid but they have tropical rain showers and lightening every day and with the rain comes bugs. Lots and lots of bugs, the big flying type of cockroaches. One person described Maz in the summer as a 'swamp land'. Not an appealing image.

That brings us to La Paz. Beautiful city, nice marinas, hot but not too humid but they do get the occasional hurricane and the marinas don't give summer discounts like marinas in other Mexican cities. There are three main marinas in La Paz and the one we prefer is Marina de La Paz, which is also the least expensive of the three. Is it worth it to us to spend the extra $2000 to stay in La Paz vs Mazatlan for the 5 summer months?

Other summer expenses will include a $1350 extra insurance premium for named storm coverage in the hurricane zone, which includes both Maz and La Paz, and electricity which can run a few hundred dollars a month when using the A/C.

After some soul searching we decided to stay in Marina de La Paz. Mazatlan just had too many negatives with the violence and that 'swamp' thing. We spoke with the owners at Marina de La Paz and were reassured about their procedures in case a hurricane came their way so that's where we'll stay. The extra money for the better quality of life seemed like a good deal.

Blogging Again

2011-07-29T13:19:00.000-07:00

We got tired of writing simple travel logs, today we are here, yesterday with did this, blah, blah, blah...so we're going to try something different and write about interesting subjects that we come across while floating around. Most of the time it will be related to boats and cruising, sometimes not. We'll see how it goes.

So this is a recap of what we've been doing on the boat for the last few months -

While in Maz we decided not to travel south on the mainland and rather returned to Baja to meet up with some people we met in Ensenada that have boat like ours. We met them in Agua Verde and then went to Puerto Escondido with them. After 4 days they had some issues with their refrigeration, became disillusioned with Mexico and decided to cut their trip short and return to La Paz and then go north to their home port of Portland, OR. After they left we stayed in Baja and lazily worked our way back to La Paz over the next 4 weeks where we were to meet Linda's brother and wife who were coming down from Minnesota for 10 days.

We stayed in Marina Palmira in La Paz for the first time and played the tour guides for 10 days traveling around La Paz and southern Baja in a rented car. It was good to see Jeff and his wife and we hope they had a good time here.

When they left we had to decide where to spend the summer. We had thought we would return to Mazatlan and had made reservations there but we did have some second thoughts about it. Maz has had some drug related violence recently and during the summer it has rain as well has high heat and humidity turning the place into what one person described as a 'summer swamp land'. Not an appealing image.

more to come...

The good life in Mazatlan.

2011-02-09T07:02:00.000-08:00

The good life continues in Mazatlan. We've added a location map to the top of the blog that will have our current (and past) locations as we travel around. Thanks to Eric & Sherrel at www.sailsarana.com for the code snips.

We use a Dell mini desktop computer for our navigation computer and purchased a mini-keyboard to use with it 3 years ago when we upgraded Discovery's electronics. Well the keyboard has started to cause 'wild mouse' syndrome on the computer where the mouse just mysteriously starts randomly moving and clicking. Not good when you're using the navigation software and the mouse closes the nav software and opens file manager, 5 times over. Smacking the keyboard with your hand seemed to solve the problem for awhile but that didn't seem like a good long term solution so we went looking for a new keyboard. At Office Depot we found what we thought was the perfect keyboard. It's a flexible type that's water proof, not too big, and cheap (around $12 USD). So we bought it. When we got it back on the boat and took a closer look at it we thought we should have taken a closer look at the store before we bought it. It has some strange characters and no Home, End, Page Up or Down, or Delete keys. And other oddities like the keys marked + and - don't really enter those characters but the keys above them do. Other than that it's great and we're going to keep it. Anyhow if we tried to take it back I'm not sure how to explain to the clerk in the store that we didn't notice all the strange and missing keys before we bought it. It works fine for the nav software, although a Home key would be nice to center on the boat on the chart but there's a way of doing that with the mouse which has now stopped it's random movements and clicking. Click on the pic to see a larger image of the keyboard.

We bought fuel in Maz today. We have 4 fuel tanks on Discovery and we only run off of one tank and only put fuel in that tank that has been cleaned (polished) by running through a fuel filter to remove particles and water. When we fuel up we keep the new fuel isolated until it can be polished then it is moved to tanks that may have fuel in them to balance the boat out. That is what is causing the list (listo in Spanish) in the pic below. We bought fuel in the morning and polished the fuel in one tank for 6 hours before it was shifted to a tank on the other side of the boat to level things out.

We discovered a site for those that like reading boat blogs. It's www.trawlerblogs.com. Take a look, it even has our site on it.

Groundhog Day

2011-02-03T14:52:00.001-08:00

Happy Groundhog Day. We hope everyone had a safe and happy celebration and we're sorry we're a couple of days late but Mexico does not honor Groundhog day so we missed it.

We arrived in Mazatlan after a long, 38 hour passage from Topo. Because of the weather we decided to leave Topo in the late afternoon and travel 2 nights and a day arriving in Maz at 7 AM. 38 hours over 2 nights and a day seems so much longer than done over 2 days and a night but sometimes you just have to go when the weather says to go. Right now the weather is saying, very loudly, to stay put. It's blowing 50-60 kts in the northern Sea of Cortez and 20-30 kts in the southern portion with seas over 10'. Here in Maz we're having winds of 25-30 kts and it's cold, overnight temps are in the low 40's with highs in the upper 60's.

Today we had to put on long pants for the first time since we left Ensenada. Everywhere in Mexico has been cold and windy this winter, ok not has much as up north, and we are looking forward to Spring.

Topolobampo

2011-02-02T08:41:00.000-08:00

We visited Topolobampo in late January crossing from the south end of Isla San Jose on Baja, an easy 95 NM passage. Topo is located inside a large bay that is mostly less than 10' deep although there is a dredged channel leading up to the town that is used by large ferries and cargo ships. When we first arrived we anchored just inside the bay behind the barrier island at the way point in Captn Rains' Mexico Boating guide. The next day we traveled up the channel and into the yacht basin and docked at Palmira Marina. We went to Topo and Palmira Marina based on a write up by Pat Rains on her web site and we were looking forward to staying at a new marina facility similar to Palmira's marina in La Paz. What we found was disappointing.

The marina is still under construction although the first stage of docks are done and mostly occupied by sport fishing boats. The marina is continuing to install more pilings and docks. The shore side facilities are still under construction. The restaurant is not open, the parking area is still dirt, there is only one uni-sex shower, and no laundry. There is a small tienda at the marina office selling basic food supplies (bread, soft drinks, candy, etc.) and some boat supplies that cost at least twice what they sell for in the US. The staff does not speak English and they would not answer the VHF radio although they were pleasant in person.

The town of Topo is very impoverished, dirty and lacks basic shops other than one medium sized grocery and a few small tiendas and Modelorama. We did not find a hardware store and only one restaurant which is located at an hotel and opens at 5 PM. All the streets are dirty and lined with trash. We saw a dead rat on the side of the road. The locals are not the friendly and quick to smile people that we are used to meeting in Mexico. They seem to be downtrodden by the poverty. Even the residence of Turtle Bay which is one of most impoverished towns we have visited are more friendly than the people of Topo. We would not recommend this town to other cruisers although the anchorage inside the barrier island is a good place to stop for a nights rest if needed.

Here's an overview of what we found in Topo -

30 & 50 amp power on docks – the 50 amp plug on our dock was broken
Water on dock NOT potable – storage tanks are bad
WiFi only near office, not on docks
No laundry
One unisex shower
No restaurant – might (!) open in a month
Slow expansion of docks – working on some pilings – still 50 slips mostly taken by sport fishers and permanent yachts
No one in the office speaks any English, but Eduardo on the dock speaks a little
They do not answer VHF radio hails
Very small tienda in office
Inexpensive moorage
You must walk across the main road into/out of town to get to town - this road is 100 yards from marina with MANY large trucks and train all day and night
There is a smallish grocery store in town but they only take pesos
One restaurant in town – it was closed the day we walked by
Buoys marked on charts for estuary entrance are WRONG, but there are buoys

Out of La Paz

2011-02-02T08:09:00.000-08:00

We finally broke the grip that La Paz had on us and escaped to the islands. It's easy to settle into life in La Paz, the great restaurants, interesting shops, nice people, and new friends but after a month we were eager to get back on the water.

The search for the ultimate fish taco continues. We found an excellent contender at Lucy's right next to Lopez Marine, highly recommended.

After provisioning (a fancy word for buying everything in the grocery store) we had a good weather window and headed out.

First stop was only 18 miles away, San Gabriel bay on isla Espiritu Santos. This is a large bay opened to weather from the west or south but the forecast was for calm winds so we took a chance and set the anchor and except for an afternoon breeze we were rewarded with a pleasant stay. One surprise was Frigatebirds mating on the south end of the bay on an outcrop of rocks left by a long abandoned pearl farm. The male Frigatebirds has an orange throat patch that becomes bright red when inflated in courtship display. There were hundreds of Frigatebirds with dozens of males displaying their red throat at any one time. We took our dinghy near the birds but not too close as to disturb them. Click on picture below to see detail.

While in La Paz we applied for international health insurance that was recommended by other cruisers. The first hurdle to over come is that we needed to both get physical exams so we called an excellent doctor in La Paz that we had both seen before for minor issues, Dr. Touchman or Dr T as he is know in the cruiser community. We both passed our exams with no problems so we sent them off and waited. After we left La Paz we received via SailMail a form that we needed to sign and return but we didn't have internet connection where we were and we couldn't download the attached form with SailMail so we needed to go back toward La Paz until we were close enough to get a cell signal and connect to the internet. We spent a day cruising south for 2 hours, watching the bars on the cell phone until we could connect to the internet and then downloaded email, printed and signed the form, scanned the signed copy and emailed it back and then found a location to anchor for the night. All in a days work for people cruising on a boat. Cruising has many challenges that city bound people just can't appreciate and we wouldn't change lives with anyone.

Sunsets in La Paz

2010-12-28T08:06:00.000-08:00

Date & Time: 12/28/2010 4:09 PM UTC (Zulu)
Location: 24°09.36'N, 110°19.62'W , La Paz, BC

While the US is suffering from winter storms we're enjoying beautiful sunsets in La Paz. Today was clear and sunny with a high of 80°. We almost feel guilty, almost.

Rounding Lands End

2010-12-21T10:25:00.000-08:00

Date: 12/17/2010
Location: La Paz
Lat/Lon: 24 09 N 110 19 W
Weather: Sunny and Warm

We have arrived in La Paz and it feels like coming home. We've been in La Paz 4 other times in the last 2 years and the city has become very familiar and comfortable. We still think it is the prettiest city on the Mexican Pacific and we just enjoy walking around town.

We had a great passage around Cabo Falso, Land's End, and past Cabo San Lucas. It got a little lumpy off the cape but not too bad, the wind and seas were coming from the West so it was all from behind us and the boat just gently rolls in those conditions with the stabilizers out. We arrived at los Frailes in the early afternoon and had a nice afternoon nap, then dinner and back to bed for the night.

We did have one final adventure on our trip. Los Muertos was our last stop before La Paz and when we anchored it looked like it was going to be a calm and peaceful night. Not so. Just before midnight the winds picked up from the west, not very strong winds, 15 kts or so, but at a different angle from when we and the other boats anchored. Our anchor alarm which measures the distance from a way point we create when we drop our anchor to the current position of the boat, was indicating that our boat was dragging the anchor and although we couldn't see that we were moving the different direction we were pulling was getting us uncomfortably close to a small sailboat that anchored close to us in the afternoon. After getting up at midnight and watching the wind and boat location for half an hour we decided to pull the anchor and move away from the other boats and let out more chain. Once we moved about 1500' from the other boats we let out nearly 200' of chain and got a good set on the anchor. We sat up for another half hour to make sure everything was ok and then went back to bed to try to get some rest. Frank got a couple of hours sleep while Linda laid awake for most of the rest of the night. We're not sure why our 110 lb Bruce anchor dragged, it never has in the past, but maybe it pulled out of the sand bottom when the direction of the wind changed and it never got a good set after that. This is the first time we have pulled and reset the anchor in the middle of the night and were pleased with how well we handled it, no panic or confusion just a well trained crew... well not really.

At the dock in Marina de La Paz we had the marina mechanic come down and look at the leaking raw water pump on the Gen. He doesn't have a new seal for it so it's off we go with pump in hand in hopes of finding a seal in town.

We couldn't find a new seal for the Gen raw water pump in town but the mechanic found
a 'near new' seal in his shop so we are going to have him install that one. It looks in better shape than the one that was in the Gen so we hope to get through the winter with it and get a new one when we return to the states next summer.

We were going to stay in La Paz for 2 weeks but Linda wanted to stay through the first of the year so that took us up to 18 days and the way the marina prices the slip rentals 19 days at the daily rate is the same as paying for one month so we decided to spend a month here. So goes our plans.

Bahia Santa Maria

2010-12-11T14:38:00.000-08:00

Date: 12/11/2010
Location: Bahia Santa Maria
Lat/Lon: 24 46 N 112 14 W
Weather: Winds W 5-10 kts, morning fog, mostly sunny

In Punta Asuncion we discovered a water leak coming somewhere from the Generator. Frank spent a few hours in an embrace with the Gen trying to locate the source of the water only to find that the sea water pump is leaking from the shaft seal. Not something we can fix out here and we don't have a spare pump, should have one of those. The leak is not so bad that it stops us from using the Gen and as long as we're moving the only critical need for the Gen is to make electricity so that we can run the water maker. So we run the Gen for a couple of hours per day to make water (50 gals in 2 hours) and we'll be able to get the pump rebuilt in La Paz.

Continuing south, we finished our second overnight passage this morning starting yesterday at 10 AM in Abreojos (ah-bray-OH-hoz, love those Spanish J's) going 23 hours for 145 NM to Bahia Santa Maria. This is a large, open bay (bahia) that could easily hold 200 boats. Which is a good thing because when we arrived here at 8 AM the fog was so thick that visibility was less than 1/4 mile. Using both radars, the GPS, and electronic charts, not to mention Linda standing on the bow, we found our way into the bay and anchored clear of the 4 other boats already here. The overnight passage was full of stars and easy rolling sea, about as good as it gets for the outside of Baja. The evening started by both of us seeing a 'green flash' at sunset. This occurs just as the sun sets under the horizon and then seems to pop back up colored a bright green and then quickly disappears again. To my knowledge this only happens when the sun sets on the ocean and the air is clear. It's a well know phenomena amongst boaters but this is the first time we have witnessed it.

The weather continues to improve for the next few days so tomorrow we are going to move south 20 NM to the mouth of Bahia Magdalena and then the next day depart early to go around the lands end of Baja California and head north into the Sea of Cortes.

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Turtle Bay

2010-12-06T15:47:00.000-08:00

Date: 12/6/2010
Location: Turtle Bay
Lat/Lon: 27 41 N 114 53 W
Weather: Winds W 5-10 kts, some overcast, mostly sunny

Clear sky's, calm seas and we're back on the water. Life is good. Six months on the dock in Ensenada has made us soft and out of practise on running and living on a boat in motion. It's different staying on a boat in a marina than cruising on a boat, closely watching the weather and charts and planning for your next anchorage. People who travel on their boat develop different skills from those who stay in the marina.

We're in Turtle Bay, officially Bahia San Bartolome, a little short of half way down the Baja peninsula. Turtle Bay gets it's gringo name from the abundance of turtles that were here when the gringos first arrived. There are few if any turtles left. We had 2 nice day passages and one overnighter of 30 hours. The seas could not have been better, at night you could see the stars reflected on the water it was so calm. The only challenge was an area of dense fog that Linda encountered at dawn of our overnighter. We had planned to anchor at Isla San Benitos, a small group of rocky islands west of Cedros Island, but the fog deterred us from entering the rocky anchorage that we had not been in before so we changed course for the east side of Cedros and an anchorage that is open and familiar to us.

The next morning it was a pleasant passage of 7 hours to Turtle Bay where we found 15 other sailboats and one trawler anchored. When we were here last in March 2009 there were only half that many boats. Turtle Bay is a village of maybe 200 people where the main road into town is the only paved road. We took Enrique's water taxi into town and had lunch at the hotel and bought some Coke and chips at one of the many small tiendas (stores), returned to the boat and decided to leave the next morning. Turtle Bay is a safe place to anchor and get some sleep but there's not much to see or do here.

It is getting warmer. We no longer run the furnace at night and you can wear shorts and t-shirts mid-day. Our outdoor thermometer is broken or I would give you the actual temp. We are eager to continue south, which we will do tomorrow.

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What We Did Last Summer

2010-11-28T12:52:00.001-08:00

We've been in Ensenada for nearly 6 months without posting any blog updates so it's time for a quick overview of what we've been up to before we leave and head south.

To start with, it was nice to be in one place for longer than a week. We got our car out of storage in Tucson and started living somewhat like 'regular people'. Going to the grocery store, renting movies, going out to dinner, etc....

We did many trips to San Diego to buy stuff and to just get back to the US. It takes about 3 hours to get to SD going through Tecate, where the boarder wait time is always under 30 min., while going north through TJ can take hours in line. No thanks. We went north via Tecate and south via TJ. Most of our trips were one day, up and back by dinner time. We spent a lot of $ but had fun doing it. If you're in SD and need a clean, inexpensive room for the night look up the Dolphin Inn in Point Loma. Nice place in a great area for $55. Every time we came back south across the boarder we were glad to be back home. Once you've been out of the States for awhile it's strange to return and it seems to be getting stranger all the time.

Boat Projects. 2 new heads (Tecma), new paravane rigging, boom winch cables, SSB radio upgrades (more later), haul out for bottom paint and cosmetic touch ups, having the rugs cleaned, cleaned and reversed the anchor chain, and many more too numerous to mention.

Discovery drawing a crowd during her haul out.

We both got our Mexican Residence Visas known as a FM-3. This is a long term Visa that gives you some additional rights in Mexico, but it's main advantage over the Tourist visa is that you don't have to leave the country every 6 months to renew it. You can hire an agent to do all the paperwork and standing in line for you but we did it ourselves. It's not that difficult and it gave us some first hand knowledge on how the Mexican government works. Linda compiled a list of all the steps, forms, and documents (including the number of copies of each) required to get the visa and passed it on to the local cruiser community. It's not difficult and certainly something that a gringo can do on their own without using an agent.

We traveled a lot around Ensenada and northern Baja. Having a car, we drove all over town. Sometimes looking for some parts for the boat, sometimes just for fun. Linda wanted to check out every large grocery store in town looking for those elusive items you can't normally find in Mexico. We also took day trips to the north, east, and south. It's amazing how much construction is underway on the highways trying to keep things in shape. Northern Baja is very hilly with a cool marine environment so there's a lot of wine and olive groves in the area to visit.

Ensenada is a working class town trying to become a tourist center but still rooted in it's working class base. It's not the prettiest town in Mexico but like all of the places we've been in Mexico the people are very friendly and helpful and we always felt safe wherever we went. Ensenada has all the shopping you could ask for; Costco, Home Depot, Walmart, Starbucks, and all the major Mexican grocery chains so you don't want for anything and there is the best fish taco stand in all of Mexico at the corner of Floresta & Juarez.

We stayed at Cruise Port Marina while in Ensenada. We liked the proximity to down town and it was cheaper than the other marinas. The staff at Cruise Port could not be more helpful. Jonathan and Vanessa will do anything to insure you have a great stay here. The marina is extremely well maintained by a full time crew and we never had problems with the infrastructure here and the bathrooms were always very clean.

The downside of staying in Cruise Port is it is in a very dirty area, the dock water is almost salt water, and there is no WiFi. The cruise ships tie up right next to the marina and run their engines and generators continually covering the boats in the marina with a fine coating of gray dust. The commercial port is also upwind and adds to the dust and dirt cloud. You need to wash your boat weekly or it will start to stain the gel coat. The interior of the boat also gets coated with dust and needs constant cleaning. Which brings us to the dock water. Cruise Port has it's own well and it seems they didn't dig it deep enough to get to a clean water table. The water has a ppm (parts per million of solids) of over 700, anything over 500 ppm is not potable according to the World Health Organization. We tried running the water through multiple filters but could not get the ppm below 600. For drinking water we started running the dock water through our water maker at 200 psi and that produced clear water with a 50 ppm. Washing the boat with dock water is like using sea water. All the stainless fittings start to rust and everything is streaked unless you immediately wipe it down. The boat never seemed very clean after it was washed and within a few days you could start to see the dirt build up from the dust cloud surrounding the marina.

When we first arrived at Cruise Port in June they had a commercial WiFi service that cost $35 a month. The marina then went to a new "free" service that never did work right. The service seemed to only support 2 or 3 connections at a time and even those were painfully slow. Complaints didn't help, it seems the new service was ordered by higher ups and the local management didn't have any control over it. We ended up getting a Telcel Banda Ancha WiFi USB card.

That about covers how we spent our summer. We had a good time in Ensenada but will we come back next summer? No. It's a long distance from the Sea and it's cold up here, even in the summer. By Thanksgiving we were running our diesel furnace every night. This was the first time we ran the furnace while in Mexico. I guess we've grown use to the heat and we're eager to get back south.

Vacancy

2010-06-30T10:01:00.000-07:00

There are 2 major marinas in Ensenada, Cruise Port Marina and Marina Coral. There are a couple of smaller marinas but they are old and only have room for a few dozen boats. We have always stayed in Cruise Port Marina mainly because it was near the downtown area while Coral is outside of town and you need a bus or taxi ride to get to town. Cruise Port is also cheaper, this year a lot cheaper as Cruise Port lowered their rates from last year while Coral had a slight increase. Coral is at a resort and has the amenities of a resort including a swimming pool and onsite restaurants. Both have newer, well kept docks and clean well cared for grounds.

What is surprising is that Cruise Port Marina is only 37% occupied according to the office manager, down a great deal from previous years and Coral's occupancy is also down from last year. It seems that many boaters have taken their boats back to the States or left them in marinas further south in Mexico. Whatever the reason, both major marinas in Ensenada have very low occupancy this season.

This is jellyfish we saw floating around in the marina. It's about 15" across.

Portia RIP

2010-06-27T18:02:00.001-07:00

We lost another member of our family shortly after arriving in Ensenada. Portia died at the age of 16. We will miss her a great deal.

We are now without a cat companion for the first time in 20 years. It is very quiet at night with out the pitter patter of little paws around the boat.

Here is a picture of Portia, on the left, with Clouseau who passed earlier this year.

Baja Bash

2010-06-27T16:53:00.000-07:00

May 30th - June 5th - Los Frailes to Ensenada

All of the weather forecasters said there was at least 4 good weather days coming to the outside of Baja so we left los Frailes at 7 PM on Sunday in order to go around Cabo Falso in the early morning hours when we hoped the seas would be calmer. Well it was a good idea at the time. As we approached the cape at around midnight the seas began to build and the wind started to howl. We had 10-15' seas, the nice steep sided, low interval ones, and winds over 40 kts from mid-night to 6 AM. After rounding the cabo we plotted a course near shore hoping to get a break from the seas but we had to get behind Isla Santa Margarita off the south end of Bahia Magdalena before the seas calmed down. By the time we were off the entrance to Mag Bay, 10 AM June 1st, the wind had died and the seas calmed so we decided to continue and not stop at Mag Bay. The next go or no go point was Punta Abreojos but when we go there at 13:00 on June 2nd the weather was still calm and improving so on we went. And so it went. With the improving weather as we went north it became harder to stop and risk losing the good weather. If there were just 2 of us on board we would have been tired and stopped but with 3 of us we were all getting some rest and felt like continuing.

At 9:00 on June 3rd we were off Turtle Bay and decided to keep going. At 14:00 on June 4th we were off of San Quintin with continuing good weather and we could be in Ensenada in just another 24 hours so on we went.

We arrived in Ensenada on Saturday June 5th at 8 AM. 7 days and 6 nights after leaving Los Frailes. 134 hours
of continuous cruising. Here's the numbers from La Paz -

Engine hours - 153
Fuel Used - 322 gal
GPH - 2.1
NMPG - 2.6
Avg Speed - 5.53 NM per hour
Distance - 846 NM from La Paz, 742 NM from los Frailes without stopping.
No mechanical failures or issues. The boat performed beautifully.

We all felt a great sense of accomplishment and were very tired. We had given ourselves 16 days to get to Ensenada and arrived in 10. As it turned out we could have stopped and rested, the good weather continued for another 5 days but we didn't know that at the time.

Our good mate and friend Nancy started worrying about all the things she needed to do back home and moved her flight up 3 days but we had 4 days in Ensenada to mess around and we found maybe the best fish taco stand in Mexico. Time well spent.

If we do this again we'll give ourselves more time, at least 3 weeks, and stop and rest at least in Mag Bay and Turtle Bay. The outside of Baja is an interesting place and it is too bad that we missed it all this trip.

Los Frailes

2010-06-27T16:51:00.001-07:00

We spent 3 days here waiting for a good weather window and while swimming I ran into a school of what looked like jelly fish (see photo) that gave me a nasty sting on my forehead. It felt like a bee sting but only lasted 90 minutes and then was gone, just like that.

Here's a pic of the little bugger that got me (or at least one of his relatives) -

La Paz

2010-06-27T16:46:00.000-07:00

We arrived in La Paz on May 17th, 6 days before our additional crew member and Linda's friend since grade school, Nancy, was to arrive at the Cabo airport and then it was up the outside of Baja to Ensenada, weather permitting of course. We spent those days provisioning and readying the boat for the 900 NM trip up the coast. It's amazing how dirty a boat can get in 50 days without being washed.

May 27th - Depart La Paz

There was a good weather window starting on Sunday or Monday so we left La Paz on Thursday planning to stop in Los Muertos and then waiting in Los Frailes for 2 nights until the good weather developed on the outside of Baja. We had a beautiful trip to los Muertos and then onto los Frailes on Saturday and spent two nights there and departed late Sunday so that we would be rounding Cabo Falso at 4 AM Monday morning. This sounded like a good plan at the time.

Islands in the Sea

2010-06-27T16:38:00.000-07:00

Ok it's catch up time. It's been a couple of months since our last update and a lot has happened.

After crossing from Mazatlan to Baja on April 1st we spent 50 days in the Sea of Cortes going from one anchorage to another. It was a great time! At first it was a little cool but on May 5th it was as if someone threw a switch and it was summer, the air and water both turned warm and at times hot. We traveled from the SE tip of Baja to Bahia Concepcion, went to Loreto Fest and returned south to La Paz for a total of 50 days at anchor or on a mooring ball. At one point we nearly ran out of food and had to return to Escondido a few days ahead of schedule to go into Loreto and do some major provisioning.

Despite the blustery weather we had a great time in the islands for over 50 days before going to La Paz.

Isla Coronodos
Our favorite location might be Isla Coronodos for it's crystal clear water and sandy beaches. We spent 4 days there and it was just great including a get together with the other boaters in the bay one evening on the beach. When we first arrived at the anchorage we were the only boat there but by night fall there were 13 other boats in the bay, including one nearly an arms length away from us.

Whale Sharks
Here's some pic's of the whale shark we saw in Bahia Concepcion. It's a young, small shark only 15' or so in length, they can grow to over 40'. See Wikipedia - Whale Shark . We also saw one in Bahia Escondido.

Southern Crossing

2010-04-06T09:58:00.000-07:00

After 10 days in Marina Mazatlan we had a good weather window to make the 190 NM crossing to the Baja Peninsula. We departed at 7:30 AM on March 30st. There were 4-6' swells for the first 10 KM but once we got clear of land the seas calmed and we had a beautiful crossing with a full moon. The nicest thing about a calm sea is that you can get some sleep and you do not get as tired when on watch. We arrived well rested in los Muertos at 2 PM on the 31st to find 4' seas coming into the anchorage from the south so we decided to leave los Muertos and head north overnight to Isla San Fransico north of La Paz. With the waves coming from the south into the anchorage at los Muertos we didn't think that we would get much sleep so we might as well keep going with the following seas and hopefully get some sleep along the way.

Our experience with the passage from los Muertos through the Cerralvo Channel is that it's one nasty piece of water. The waves funnel through the north-south channel and then collide with the out coming current and waves from San Lorenzo Channel to make very steep, straight sided waves. So this time we thought we would try something different and go up the east side of Isla Cerralvo and Isla Espiriu Santo to try to avoid the strong currents and resulting waves. Well, it worked on the outside of Isla Cerralvo but as soon as we cleared the north end of the island we got hit by steep 6' waves on our beam coming out of San Lorenzo Channel. There was a strong west wind coming out of La Paz, known as a Corumel, that was creating a mess of the seas and we were stuck in it for the rest of the passage. It was right on the beam and every few minutes an above average size wave would hit us so hard on the beam that it sounded like someone had tossed a bowling ball against the side of the boat. At times we took spray from the port side all the way over the top of the pilothouse. No sleeping that night!

We passed Isla San Francisco at 4:30 AM and could see at least 8 anchor lights in the bay and the waves were entering directly into the anchorage so we continued north first thinking that we would go the 9 KM to Punta Evaristo but then stopped short of there and went into Bahia Amortajada. This is an anchorage off of a lagoon lined with mangroves and there is a large anchorage with protection from the south so we decided to stop here and we dropped the hook and then went directly to sleep. Six hours later, around 1 PM, we were awakened, actually Linda was awakened, I'll sleep through anything, by a voice outside the boat saying "Hola, Hola, Discovery, Discovery." By the time we got up we saw the local park ranger motoring away in his skiff. We're sure he just wanted to check our park permit, which we have, so we weren't too concerned. The wind had started to pick up out of the north and the waves were coming straight into the bay so we pulled the anchor and motored the 6 KM to Isla San Francisco where the bay is protected from northerlies. We spent 3 days in "The Hook" and had a wonderful time but the water was still a little cool for swimming, 72°, so we headed north into the Sea to find warmer waters.

Mazatlan

2010-03-27T08:59:00.001-07:00

We do enjoy Mazatlan. This time we started out by anchoring in the old harbor on the south side of town. There's room for 15-20 boats there and there's easy access to buses from the dinghy dock that only costs 30 p a day. There's also a lot of entertainment with the traffic in and out of the port (cruise ships, ferries, fishing boats and every other kind of boat you can think of). The only downside to the anchorage is that right across the street is the city sewage treatment plant and when the wind is out of the north it does stink! Unfortunately for the 4 days we were there the wind blew out of the north. It stunk so bad that it would wake you up at night. So we moved in Marina Mazatlan into the same slip we had when we were here before.

Our mail that was sent to PV is still MIA but we got lucky and the mail sent to Mazatlan arrived the day after we did. Wow! It didn't contain our boat documentation apparently because the mail packet was sent before the copy of the documentation that we ordered from the Coast Guard arrived in Anacortes. So we had our mail FexEx'd from Anacortes to our daughter in Nampa and she scanned the boat documentation and emailed it to us in Maz. Now we have all of our important mail so no more waiting around for the never arriving mail. We also got the last financial document we needed so we could complete our taxes and file them electronically while we had wifi here in the marina.

As we talk to family back home and hear of their challenges and heartaches in dealing with the economic downturn and other issues of regular life we are very thankful that we can live the life we do. While family members struggle with health, family, and financial issues our biggest daily problems are trying to catch the right bus to get downtown and to pick the right weather window to move on. We are truly lucky to be able to live our care free life in Mexico although we wish there was more we could do to help family back home. And that's not to mention the political sh*t that is going on in the states. What's with all the hate and anger? People should just turn off cable news and talk radio and take a breath, life is too short for all this crap.

Heading North

2010-03-25T08:48:00.000-07:00

After visiting Tenacateta and Barra Navidad, we decided to return north and spend a couple of months in the Sea of Cortes before continuing up to Ensenada for the summer. The Mexican mainland has some beautiful cities but few good anchorages where you can swim and snorkel, so it's north we go.

This time when we arrived in Puerto Vallarta we decided to stay closer to town in the Vallarta Marina. We called beforehand and were assured that they would have room for us and when we arrived at 8 AM we tried to call them on the VHF radio with no luck so we just went in and tied up at the first easy spot we could find and walked up to the office. The office staff are not particularly friendly or helpful but we did get a slip and settled in. There were 2 things we needed to do in PV; 1) get mail from the states and 2) renew our Mexican tourist visas which expired in March.

We immediately sent an email to our mail forwarding outfit in Anacorts to send our accumulated mail to the marina office here. Our past experience is that it takes 10-14 days to receive mail in MX so we were optimistic. Next was a trip to the PV immigrations office to try to get our visas renewed or a new visa issued. No deal! We had to leave the country to get a new visa, no exceptions even though we had renewed our visa in Guaymas last summer with no problem. Our only option was to fly to the states and re-enter the country. Some searching on the internet found that the cheapest way to do this was to take a Mexican airline, Volaris, to Tijuana and walk across the boarder. The airfare was half the cost of flying directly into San Diego or any other city in the states. So that's what we did. We flew to TJ, took a taxi to the boarder, walked across and took the trolley to San Diego and checked into a motel in Chula Vista. We spent a couple of days shopping and walking around and then came back into Mexico, got our new 180 day visas and flew back to PV. Not cheap but necessary.

When we returned we were disappointed that our mail had still not arrived. We had hoped to come back, get our mail and leave but now it looked like we would be stuck here until the mail arrived. After another week of waiting we started making plans to leave and have a very nice lady that we met check for our mail and forward it to wherever we are when it came in. Some people are just nice and it's great when you meet them in a time of need.

PV is a great town for cruisers, and others. It has a terrific bus system, more stores than you could hope for and restaurants on every corner. We had a great time here but after a month it's time to move on.

Clouseau RIP -
Our beloved cat and family member Clouseau passed while in PV from aliments brought on from old age. He was a member of our family for 18 years and will be dearly missed.

Punta Ipala

2010-02-17T14:04:00.001-08:00

This is another small bite where you can get an overnight anchorage in calm weather. The added attraction here are large rocks on the eastern side of the anchorage that are only visible at low tide. We found what we thought was a good spot only to discover at low tide that there was one of these rocks directly behind the boat. We pulled in some chain to move forward a little and kept a close eye on the rock and the tides and left at first light the following morning.

Chamela - Night of living dangerously

2010-02-17T10:04:00.000-08:00

We had heard that Chamela was a beautiful anchorage that was well protected from the ocean swells but what we found was an large bay that was open to the southerly swells. The first day we anchored on the outside of the group of 6 boats and the next day we moved further into the bay when most of the other boats left. We deployed our flopper stoppers, large stainless steel plates that are hinged so they act as barn doors when suspended from the outriggers. They do an excellent job of reducing the roll from the swells, better than the fish that we drag while underway. The weather forecast was spotty, unstable weather was predicted for the area but the reception of the daily net on the SSB radio was very broken up and we had a hard time getting the full forecast. The weather forecasts for the Mexican mainland are poor at best. The forecaster on the SSB net in our experience has a .500 average at best and the other forecaster for the area who uploads his forecasts to the internet was having technical problems and had not been able to upload forecasts for a week.

As evening approached we could see lightning out at sea and as the sun set we had a spectacular light show well offshore and the winds were light so we were not worried. We had 175' of anchor chain out in 30' of water and felt comfortable with our anchorage as we went to bed. Around 11 pm we were awakened suddenly when our anchor alarm sounded, the winds had picked up and the alarm indicated we were pulling hard on the anchor. We immediately got up and found that the lightning was just offshore and the wind and swells had increased greatly. We turned on the radar to monitor our position to shore and the other boats in the anchorage and sat and waited and watched. What we experienced was the scariest night we've had at anchor. The lightning moved right over us, a continuous explosion of light directly over our heads and the winds increased to 50 kts with 6' swells in the anchorage. At one point a nearby sailboat drug it's anchor and moved past the boat next to us as if it were under power. The sailboat managed to stop themselves after letting out 240' of rode. A sail catamaran drug it's anchor and stopped itself just as it entered the surf line near the beach. All this time there was constant lightning all around us and we feared getting struck and losing all of our electronics. We stopped counting how long the thunder arrived after the lightning bolt with one-missisippi, 2-missisippi, and started using one-holy crap, 2-holy crap... We watched the radar closely and we were not dragging our anchor but the boat was pounding into the swells and we were afraid that this would pull the anchor out of it's set so we kept a close watch on the radar and anchor alarm as we sat huddled together in the pilothouse.

After an hour the storm cell started to pass over us and headed inland. The lightning moved on shore and the winds died down but the swells continued. At 3 AM we decided to try to get some sleep only to discover that our forward hatch had leaked and our bed was wet. Linda laid down in the mid-cabin and I laid down on the pilothouse berth to continue our anchor watch. As the winds eased we started to lay abeam of the swells and started to roll excessively from side to side. Neither of us could stay in our bunks with the rolling. Something was wrong with the flopper stoppers and I was afraid that we had lost them in the storm so I worked my way outside to the cockpit and started to pull them in. What had happened was 2 of the 4 lines that the floppers hang by had broken leaving the floppers hanging vertically in the water and useless in stopping our roll. I bought the floppers in and replaced them with our fish which are about half as effective in stopping the roll and but made the boat at least livable inside.

As the sun came up the seas calmed and we were able to get some sleep. The next day on the radio a sailboat 100 yards from us said that he thought he had been struck by lightning but had not suffered any damage and a person on shore reported that a palm tree just back from shore had been struck and caught on fire. We were lucky not to have been hit by lightning and that our anchor held. We have a 110 lb Bruce anchor that has never failed us and love it. If we ever see lightning like that in the future we will move our anchorage to an open area and let out twice the rode as we normally would. In high winds you need lots of space around you and to be clear of other boats. The danger is not only that you will drag your anchor but that the boats upwind from you will drag and end up on top of you or foul your anchor and cause you to drag. You have no control over other boats other than to get well clear of them before the storm arrives.

Watch the video -

La Cruz - Banderas Bay

2010-02-17T07:18:00.000-08:00

This is the cruisers hangout in Banderas Bay, just 15 mile from Puerto Vallarta at the head of the bay. We anchored the first night just outside the marina along with 20 other boats, all but two were sailboats. There was a blow forecasted so the next day we moved into the marina. The town of La Cruz is an old village with some nice restaurants that cater to the gringo boaters. We took the 30 minute bus ride into PV and walked the malecon along with all the other tourists.

Busted!
We rented a car for a day to run to Costco and the grocery store to do some major provisioning and along the way I got stopped for speeding. I was doing 55 kph in a 40 so he had me, no argument. The police had radar set up on the side of the road and as I went by the policeman stepped out and flagged me over to the side of the road. He was very polite, asked for my id and I gave him my WA state drivers license. He told me the rules were that he had to keep my license until I went to the station, paid the fine and returned to him with the receipt. At that point I knew I was in trouble. What if I returned and he was not there? I would never get my license back. I explained to him that it was a rental car that I had to return it the next morning and because it was late in the day I might not be able to get to the station and return before he left. He said that I could pay the fine to him but he did not have receipts. The fine was 870 pesos, about $65 USD, so I gave him the money and he smiled, handed me my license back and reminded me to obey the speed limits. The ticket costs more than the rental car did for the day.

San Blas

2010-02-17T07:13:00.000-08:00

Juanary 14, 2010

San Blas is a small town about 125 miles south of Mazatlan on an estuary with a large bay next to the town. We anchored in the bay and took the bus into the town one day and the next time we were waiting for the bus a person in an older pickup with Washington state plates stopped and offered us a ride, which we accepted. The bay is large, over 3 miles across, and has good anchorage. You can anchor in the estuary in town but there are bugs, no see-ums, and we enjoy anchoring in a large bay.
We went on the 'Jungle Ride' which is a panga ride on an estuary just off the bay that goes through a mangrove swamp with wild jungle creatures such as parrots, iguana, and crocodiles. It's a fun 3 hour ride and worth the money.

Mazatlan Market

2010-01-08T07:36:00.000-08:00

Here's a couple of photos of the Mazatlan Market in the centro district.

This little piggy went to market...

Mazatlan

2010-01-02T08:00:00.000-08:00

We had a near perfect passage from los Frailes on Baja to Mazatlan on the Mexican mainland. The boat ran perfectly, finding it's sweet spot cruising at 1575 rpm and 6.5 knots. The seas were a little rolly on the Baja side but once we were 30 km offshore the swells smoothed out to a gentle roll that slowly calmed down as we approached the mainland. The marina we arrived at is in a new area of Mazatlan that looks to be a slice of San Diego with modern wide streets lined with new shops. Two days after arriving we took the bus, a nice air conditioned bus, downtown to the public market. The city was packed with people as this was 2 days before Christmas and everyone was out shopping and the resorts were full of gringos here for the holidays. The market is a crazy scene and we'll return next week with a camera and post some pictures. Mazatlan is a large city that varies in nature from the fancy resorts on the beaches to working class neighborhoods with a Wal-Mart stuck somewhere in between and we're having fun riding the buses all over and exploring the town.

After having Thanksgiving dinner with over 200 people in La Paz we decided to forego the group holiday dinners in Mazatlan and spend Christmas and New Years with just the 4 of us (don't forget the kitties!). We didn't buy presents for each other but we did get a present for the boat, a waxing. We hired a local worker in the marina to wax the boat for us, the first time we have ever paid someone to wax or clean the boat, preferring normally to do the work ourselves.

We are considering spending the next hurricane season, July 1st to Nov 1st, in Mazatlan. The city has a lot to offer and the marina is very nice and has excellent summer rates. Best of all there is an outstanding coffee shop, Rico's, just a block away. What more in life could you ask for?

Stuck in La Paz ?

2009-12-11T06:57:00.001-08:00

That's like saying 'your stuck in paradise and can't get out'. We love La Paz but our plan was to only stay 2 or 3 weeks and then head across to Mazatlan but the weather gods are having a fit up north and that's throwing some wind down our way so we're 'stuck' here for probably another week. oh well.

We bought some fuel yesterday in the marina. It was delivered on a truck to our slip with the aid of a long hose. You tell them how much you want then pay them up front and they take their truck over to the local Pemex station and fill up a tank on the back of the truck and bring it down the dock. The price is a little lower than the local fuel dock but it was the convenience of having it delivered that we liked.

Our POS VacuFlush toilet in the aft head broke, again. This time it was the shaft that connects to the foot peddle and the flushing valve that makes the toilet actually flush that broke. Sheared shaft means no flushing. No flushing means... well, bad things. It was a miracle that the local marine chandlery, Lopez Marine, had this part in stock and at a reasonable price. The two VacuFlush heads on our boat require constant maintenance because they are extremely complex designs and for a cruising boat you want simplicity so things don't break and when they do you can easily repair them. VacuFlush heads are neither simple nor easy to fix. Last summer we almost replaced them but then decided not to, we may regret not doing so.

We went to the local market, the Bravo Market, to get some fish and pork chops. It's kind of like the Pike Place market in Seattle but smaller and with no health inspectors. It's actually very clean and well run and a great place to get fresh meats and produce.

We uploaded some new pics to our Picasa web album. Look in the 'Sea of Cortes - Fall 09' folder here - http://picasaweb.google.com/n4637fjo

Reading the news from the States make us glad to be here and not there. Between snow storms, escalating wars, watered down health care reform that only benefits the insurance companies (why does the government have unlimited money for wars and bailouts but nothing for health care?), and Tiger (who cares!) Woods, we'll take life in Mexico any day.

3 Weeks in Paradise

2009-11-27T10:15:00.000-08:00

We left Santa Rosalia after 5 days and headed south to Bahia Concepcion (3 different bays within the larger bay), San Juanico, Isla Coronodos, Ballandra Bay, Puerto Escondido, Agua Verde, and points south to La Paz. These are all bays in remote areas except for Puerto Escondido which is a large bay just south of Loreto. At each of the remote bays we swam and walked the beaches, thoroughly enjoying the last of Summer in Baja. In some of these bays the water is so clear you can see the bottom in over 20'. Life is good again and the living is easy.

Here's some photo's from along the way -

Newly hatched baby sea turtle making for the water in Bahia San Juanico -

Bahia Agua Verde (green water) -

Isla Coronodos -

And one more from Agua Verde -

Escape from San Carlos

2009-10-31T11:26:00.000-07:00

We have managed to escape the clutches of San Carlos. At times, we had our doubts if we would ever get out of there. We had planned to leave a couple of weeks ago so we drove our car to Tucson, put it in storage and took the night bus back to Guaymas. Then hurricane Rick started to make threatening moves down south so we waited for it to move inland and dissipate. Then it continued to blow in the sea so we waited some more days and then we finally left on a beautiful afternoon when the engine overheated and we decided to play it safe and return to the marina. Two days of fussing with thermostats and water pumps and we were ready to leave again for a beautiful overnighter to Santa Rosalia only to have the winds pick up when we were 3/4 of the way across, the winds started off Isla Tortuga, building to seas of 4-6 feet and winds over 20 kts. We docked in Marina Singular with 25 kts winds blowing us off the dock but there were plenty of helpful hands on the dock to tie us off and keep us out of harms ways.

We enjoy Santa Rosalia, it's a friendly Mexican town with few tourist and the town is only a block or two from the marina so it's an easy walk to shops and restaurants. There is a Northerly cold front moving through for a few days that is bringing winds and cool weather. What a nice change from the stifling heat of San Carlos. We have turned the air conditioner off and opened the windows for the first time in 4 months. We're going to stay here for a few days to let the front pass and then head south to anchor out and do some swimming and play with our new dive hookah.

Surviving San Carlos

2009-10-11T14:30:00.000-07:00

The summer heat in San Carlos is overwhelming. From sun rise to sun set the heat and humidity prevents any outdoor activity let alone working. We run 2 of our 3 air conditioning units 24 hours a day. They do an excellent job of keep the boat temperature around 80 and just as importantly keeping the humidity down to around 50%. The outside temp and humidity daily is in mid 90's, for both.

The weather is so crippling here that we feel we've lost a summer because we've been holed up inside the boat all the time. When we do try some outside activity we quickly become exhausted from the heat. We will not spend another summer here, next year we're looking at staying in Ensenada.

I managed to contract an E.Coli infection. When Jimena hit a lot of the sewer lines were broken and pump stations lost electricity with the results raw sewage was spread around the ground which then dried and turned to dust. I somehow ingested some of this which gave me the infection. The results are diarrhea and a high fever, the remedy is drink plenty of fluids and take antibiotics. Thankfully I recovered in a few days after I went on the meds.

Marina Real seems to be struggling just to keep the basic services working. They will patch a problem but not spend the time or money to fix the root cause resulting in problems reoccurring over and over. We have not had a reliable source of water on the dock since Jimena. Part of the problem is the rebuilding of the city water supply and part is due to problems in the marina. On our side of the dock we have not had water for more than a few hours at a time. The marina blames it on the city but there is no reason why part of the dock will have water while other parts do not. Our electricity has also been out most of the time. Again the other side of the dock has electricity while ours does not. They've had people working on the electricity but it would work for half a day and then stop and all the workers would be gone for a few days. Out of frustration we finally plugged into an unused plug on the other side of the dock. There are electrical wires routed through the sewer drains because that is the quickest way to patch a problem. This is not a place that you want to spend a long time at. If another storm hits more docks are likely to break apart and sink. And this is not just a 'typical Mexican' marina. Other marinas we've been in in Mexico have all been well maintained.

The heat might be starting to break, the last week was almost comfortable with highs in the 80's and lows in the high 60's overnight! The forecast is for it to turn hot again but we're hoping that the heat will soon cool down.

Surviving Jimena

2009-09-16T14:02:00.000-07:00

We had a little 'tropical storm' come through here named Jimena. It was the remains of the hurricane of the same name and the winds blew over 60 mph for 2 days and it rained over 30" at the same time. The winds did some damage to the area but the rain was devastating. The boats in the marinas, including ours, did not suffer any major damage other than rain intrusion and the subsequent damage to carpets and wood work. There were 12 anchored or moored boats that broke free and ended up on the beach but there was no injuries to people on boats. San Carlos and Guaymas lost electricity for 3 days and water for 6 and there was extensive damage to roads and buildings from the rain. In some places the rain collected in to raging rivers and washed away sections of roads and bridges and washed mud, rocks, and debris into houses.

The Mexican government and agencies deserve praise for their quick and effective response to the storm damage. They were prepared prior to the storm and as soon as it passed there were crews out everywhere starting the clean up and repair. They actually announced there would be 'no Katrina' in Mexico. It's great that the US has become an example of what not to do.

Here's some pic's from around the area.

This is one of the boats that ended up on the beach. If you look to the left above the power post you can see a white object in the water. It's the upside down hull of a sunken boat.

This is the main road into and out of San Carlos. Within a day there was a detour route created.

This is the main road from Marina Real to San Carlos, it was not passable until a day after the storm.

We tied our boat to a chain around the dock pilling because we were not sure the dock would survive. We were lucky, our dock survived but others did not.

The Plan

2009-08-23T09:01:00.000-07:00

There is no sense in having a plan if you're not going to pretend to follow it.

We're anxious to get moving again. Sitting at a dock is not what we want to do but we don't have much choice, we need to stay out of the hurricane zone south of 27° N and with the heat we have chosen to stay at the dock so we can run the A/C. The plan now is to leave San Carlos the first week of October and visit the Bay of LA up north on the west side of the Sea of Cortes, 28°56.840'N 113°33.320'W. We've heard that B of LA is a beautiful area with lots of wildlife, like Whale Sharks, and excellent snorkeling. We're getting an diving Hookah soon and we'll be anxious to try it out. After the B of LA we'll head south and hope to be in Santa Rosalia by November 1st for the El Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, which is the largest holiday in Mexico. Santa Rosalia is a traditional Mexican town so it should be fun to spend the holiday there. Heading South from Santa Rosalia we plan on being in La Paz for Thanksgiving for 2-3 weeks and then head south and east to Mazatlan on the Mexican mainland.

Once we're on the Mexican Riviera we'll wander south stopping in San Blas, Puerto Vallarta, Iplala, Chamela, Careyes, and Mazanillo. We're not sure if we'll go further south to Acapulco, we hear that it's a huge, expensive tourist trap, so we'll just see how it goes. When we turn around and head back north we're thinking of spending next Summer, the hurricane season, in Ensenada. We spent a week in Ensenada on the way south and it's kind of a tourist town but it has a lot of services and it's close to San Diego so we can go get our car and hop over the border to get supplies and parts. After next summer maybe it's off the the South Pacific, we're thinking about it but that's a long way off and we're not to good at making, let alone keeping, long term plans so we'll see how it goes.

Link: Diving Hookah

6 Months in Mexico

2009-08-23T08:55:00.000-07:00

We have now been in Mexico for 6 months. We were reminded of this when our tourist visas expired and we had to go to immigrations to get them renewed. The renewal process is easy and costs just $20 each. We went to immigration office at the airport in Guaymas where there was easy parking and no waiting. The immigration officer did seem a little annoyed that we were interrupting his TV shows but he processed our new visas with no fuss. We have had a wonderful time in Mexico, the people are friendly, there is plenty of stores to get almost everything you need and the weather has been beautiful except for the last 2 months here in San Carlos where it's just down right frickin' hot. The heat index is daily 110°+ with a temp in the high 90° and humidity above 80%. It's just too hot to do anything outside. Hopefully in another month it will start to cool off.

I forgot to mention that neither of us has worn long pants for over 6 months. Short and t-shirts everyday!

Tucson Road Trips

2009-08-07T15:09:00.000-07:00

We've now made 3 road trips to Tucson and back. The car trip takes about 8 to 9 hours northbound depending on the wait at the border and 7 hours south bound. The wait at the border into the States can take 1-2 hours, southbound can be much easier depending if you stop to declare items and how long that process takes. Returning to Mexico the first time we stopped to declare a few items and they just let us go with out paying any duty. The second time we had more items to declare and they quickly processed us, we paid a small duty and in 15 minutes we were off. The last time they made us go through 'Small Imports' and while they were very friendly it took us nearly an hour and cost about $75 to bring in $400 worth of items.

The last time we also had some extra excitement when a car pulled up next to us as we were leaving the last inspection point and told us we had a flat tire. We pulled off the road and some young guys quickly ran over and offered to change the tire for us. They were very friendly and did a quick and good job and we gave them a few pesos for their work. They pointed out a small shop just a few hundred yards down the road where we could get the tire fixed, our spare is one of those mini tires and it was low on air so we slowly made our way down the road to the repair shop. The shop only repaired tires and sold used tires. The man did a good job, 3 days later it is still holding air, and only charge a few pesos.

We will have at least three more trips to Tucson before we leave San Carlos in October. We are planning to buy 2 new heads for the boat, that will take one trip, and a Hookah diving system which will take another trip. Then there will be the last trip to put the car back in storage and take the bus back to San Carlos.

New Look & New Blog

2009-06-30T08:25:00.000-07:00

As you can see, we've changed the look of the blog. The old format looked rather dark for our travels in the tropics so we changed the format and the banner picture.

We also have started a new partner blog, M/V Discovery Tech Notes, that will focus on technical issue and projects on the boat. Look to 'Other Links' on the right to get to the new Blog. This Blog will remain our travel log.

2009-06-28T08:49:00.000-07:00

Date: 6/28/2009

Location: Marina Real - San Carlos Sonora Mexico

Weather: Hot, 90+ ° and 70% humidity

We had all the varnish stripped off the boat this week. It was not a job I wanted to do in this heat. We hired a local worker that had approached us when we first arrived about doing work on the boat. I asked around the other boaters and he seemed to have a good reputation so I asked him to give me a quote on stripping the varnish. He told me a price but then came back after the first day with a higher price and said I must have misunderstood him the first time. I would have fired him on the spot but I had already given him half the price as an advance and didn't want to lose that so I gave in. Lesson learned, always get the price in writing so there can be no misunderstanding.

We're not going to varnish or otherwise finish the teak, just let it go natural and turn a nice gray. We've seen other boats and some Nordhavns with gray teak and think it looks nice and in this heat varnish is too difficult to keep up. The key to good looking teak, decks or cap rails, is to keep it clean by washing it with a gentle soap like Joy using a soft brush and then rinse with salt water.

We got our car from Tucson and had no trouble getting through the Mexican customs at the boarder despite the fact that we had the back of the Jeep stuffed with things. We showed them some receipts and asked how much we needed to pay but they just waved us through. The Sonora area down to Guaymas is a 'no hassle zone' for bringing a car in so we didn't need any import documents to drive down here, if we go further south then we'll need a temporary import permit for the car. We drove up to Hermosillo this week and went to Costco. It looks just like the stores in the states. Hermosillo in just over an hours drive from San Carlos and we wanted to buy some cheese and lunch meat so we bought a small cheap styrofoam chest and a bag of ice to carry the items back. Even with the A/C in the car it was a little too warm and too long of a trip to carry meat that long in the car. Hermosillo is a large town and has a Costco, WalMart, Home Depot, and lots of large Mexican stores so we'll be able to get everything we need, or want.

We're having fun here although it's getting hotter every day. Weather Underground said it was 106° yesterday although we only showed 91° at the boat. The humidity outside is above 70% but with the A/C on the boat we keep the inside temp below 80° and the humidity below 60% so it's comfortable. It's just when you have to go outside and when you first get into the car that's been parked in the sun that's a killer.

We have lots of projects to keep us busy for the summer. We should be going back to Tucson in a week to pick up some more boat stuff, this time new VHF and SSB antennas, so that will be fun.

Mainland Mexico

2009-06-14T09:23:00.000-07:00

Date: 6/14/2009

Location: Marina Real, San Carlos, Sonora

Lat/Lon: 27 56.73 N 111 05.54 W

Weather: Warm and sunny, 85°. Lite afternoon breeze

We're on the mainland of Mexico in Marina Real, 5 miles north of San Carlos in the Sonora region of Mexico. We arrived here 30 days after leaving La Paz, for the second time.

We first left La Paz on April 29th but after a week anchored in some beautiful bays it became apparent that the Generator was not well. The smoking was getting worse, it was running 10 to 15 ° hot, not overheating but not right, and there was not the normal high volume of water gushing out the exhaust. There was something wrong with the water cooling system, perhaps a blocked thru hull or hose. At anchor I had checked the water pump impeller and discovered it only had 3 of it's 5 blades. I was sure that this was the problem and was disappointed after I replaced it to find no difference in how it ran. So it seemed wise to return to La Paz and find the problem before getting further from stores and services. We went back to Marina de la Paz and with the help of Bill on M/V Ocean Quest I finally found some barnacles growing in the sea water intake hose, some 2 feet from the thru hull. Once those were removed the Gen ran great with mucho volume of water coming out the exhaust. While in the engine room I decided to fix a small water leak at a hose fitting on the water maker membrane only to discover that the leak was caused by a cracked end cap on the membrane tube. Fortunately, Bill the 'Water maker guy' had an end cap and I replaced both end caps on the one membrane and bought a spare for 'just in case'. We had the membranes replaced by Village Marine in Seattle 2 years ago and it looked like they over tightened the hose fittings and cracked the nylon caps. The new caps are made from a different material and shouldn't crack. When we took the membranes apart we discovered that our 40" membranes tubes only had 38" membranes in them with a 2" extension fit to take up the missing length. Nice work Village Marine. That's the last time I do biz with them. You can buy the membranes straight from a 3M distributor and save 25%. If and when we need new membranes that's the way we're going.

So once we got ourselves and boat all straighten out, off North we went, again. We tried Los Gatos for a night but with the easterly winds we rocked and rolled all night and slept little. It's a beautiful place but we need our sleep and one of the cats got sea sick while at anchor. Next day it was off to Aqua Verde, green water. When you see a photo of boats in a beautiful bay in Baja anchored in crystal clear, green, emerald water, this is the place it was taken. For some reason when we were there the water was not so emerald in color but it is a beautiful, well protected place. We spent 4 days there playing around in the dink and swimming every afternoon.

The next stop was Honeymoon Bay for one night on Isla Densante before heading into Puerto Escondido. Puerto Escondido has 2 large bays, the outer bay, 'the waiting room', holding 30+ boats on anchor and the inner bay has a 100 mooring buoys and room for another 50+ boats at anchor. There is also a Marina Singlar there with 8-10 slips and a small store and restaurant. You have to pay no matter how you stay, anchor or mooring. We anchored because there were no open buoys large enough for us close to the marina and dinghy dock and there was lots of room to anchor. US$ 15 per day, anchor or mooring. There's nothing much else there but it's only 10 miles from Loretto, a very quaint touristy town. We were told by the Singlar staff that the taxi fare to Loretto was 700 pesos round trip while you could rent a car for 500 pesons a day, US$ 40, so rental car it was. We drove into Loretto and spent an afternoon looking around, shopping, and having lunch. It's a nice town and worth the stop.

From there it was off to another large bay, San Juanico, but again the prevailing winds kept us rolling all night so we moved north just 2 miles to Caleta Ramada which was more protected from the waves. We had the small bay to ourselves and spent 2 days swimming and exploring the beach.

Bahia Concepcion is a large bay inside a peninsula that reaches out into the Sea. It's known as being one of the hottest location in the Sea because the water heats up and it's surrounded by hills. People have warned us about going there and we hoped that we were early enough in the summer to avoid the high heat. There are numerous bays to anchor in and we spent 8 days moving from one location to another. The heat was not too bad and there was always an afternoon wind that helped cool things down. In el Burro cove we met Geary who gives the weather on Sonrista net. Our outboard motor started to act up again, choking and dying whenever we used it and this less than 2 months after a tune up in La Paz. It is truly a POS and with it's streamlined cowling it is very hard to work on. Out of frustration we finally lifted the dink up onto the top deck and I removed and disassembled the carborater, soaking all the parts in carb cleaner. When we put her back in the water, she ran great! Better than after the tune up in LP. I think the problem was some gunk in the fuel line found it's way into the jets and we may just have to do this every few months. I wish we could get a simple 2 stroke, our Yamaha 2 stroke on our Defever was bullet proof, so we're going to start looking around for one. Maintenance on a boat is like 'Whack a Mole'. Get one thing fixed and another pops up.

After a week in Concepcion we moved north to Punta Chivato, a point that sticks out and give fairly good protection. We only spent one night there before continuing on to Santa Rosalia.

Santa Rosalia is an unusual town because the French operated a large copper mine here for the first half of the 1900's and the town has a different look and feel than other typical Mexican towns. The most striking difference is the French liked wood framed buildings rather than adobe so all of the building look like transplants from the Northwest. In fact they use to ship the copper from the mines to the copper smelter in Tacoma, WA and return with ships full of Northwest cedar and fir timber that they used to build the town. The other difference is that few tourists & gringos come here so it doesn't have the tourist shops. The downside is that the grocery stores don't have much selection and the meat departments look rather primitive so staying here any length of time would be difficult. We stayed in the Singlar marina here, weekly rate of 40 pesos per foot, which is a fairly new marina with nice docks and facilities. The bay is protected by a large breakwater that the French built and there is a large panga fleet that are fishing for Humbolt squid this time of year. There is a lingering smell of rotting fish over most of the harbor area, not too bad but it's always there. We spent a week here exploring the town and restaurants.

Now we're in Marina Real just north of San Carlos. This is a well protected marina that's in good shape but there are no shops or services within walking distance. The marina is surrounded by very nice, $1+ million homes and resorts but no stores and only one high end restaurant. You really need a car if you are going to stay here so we are going to catch the bus up to Tucson and bring back our car. With a car you are only a few minutes from San Carlos with stores and restaurants and Guaymas, a town of 200,000, is only 30 minutes away. With a car this will be a great place to spend a few months and wait out the hurricane season. It will get hot here but we have A/C on the boat so we'll be all right.

Pictures

2009-05-07T07:43:00.000-07:00

Here's some pictures from the past week.

Isla San Francisco - 'The Hook' is the name of the bay.

Another 'The Hook'.

King Angelfish at Ensenada Grande in about 3' of water. If you click on the pic to see the larger image you can see 2 Sergeant Major fish behind the Angelfish.

Sea Turtle at Ensenada Grande

Blue Footed Boobies

2009-05-03T20:10:00.000-07:00

Date: 5/3/2009
Location: Ensenada Grande - Isla Partida
Lat/Lon: 24 33.544 N 110 23.911 W
Weather: sunny 90° , water temp 77°

It's a bird and a rather rare one at that. On the south side of the adjacent bay, La Cueva, there is a sandstone wall covered with shelves and pot marked holes that the Boobies use to nest in. This is the only place in the islands where they reside. They look similar in size to a gull but are slimmer and they have blue feet. A person in Marina de La Paz told us about them, thanks Bill. When you approach them, still a 100 yards away, they start to dance lifting one foot them the other back and forth and then spreading their wings in a threatening manner but they are just too cute to fear.

Returning to our anchorage, we saw what looked to be a dead small seal on the beach with 6 vultures around it waiting for it to wash up on the shore. We've never seen a vulture before with it's red nose, interesting but kind of icky.

We went snorkeling again, it's becoming a regular afternoon event. There are so many tropical fish it's like swimming in an aquarium. Schools of hundreds of small fish with colorful Angel fish and yellow and black stripped Sargent Major fish. I saw an eel of some type disappear in the shadows, it looked to be about 3' long. From the dinghy we saw a turtle about 2' across briefly surface for air and we continue to see Mexican Needle fish swimming at the surface that are 4' long and about as big around as your arm. This place is an amazing zoological treasure.

Pictures to follow as soon as we have a broadband connection in a few weeks.

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Isla Espiritu Santo

2009-05-03T20:01:00.000-07:00

Date: 4/30/2009
Location: Isla Espiritu Santo
Lat/Lon: 24 31.680 N 220 22.578 W
Weather: sunny mid-80's, winds mixed 5-15 kts

We left Marina de La Paz today after getting 1056 liters of fuel at 9.10 pesos per liter or about 300 gallons at US$2.20 per gallon. Marina de La Paz is one of the nicest, friendliest, and most enjoyable marinas we have ever been in. If you take your boat to La Paz, this is the best place to go. Costa Baja Marina is the fanciest, a big resort with mega yachts and swimming pools and high moorage rates. Marina Palmara has new ownership that don't seem to care about the customers, they've let go a lot of the staff and increased rates to the point that many yachts are leaving and anchoring out rather than stay in the marina. If you can get into Marina de La Paz, go there.

We motored north 27 NM to the Caleta Partida bay in between the islands of Isla Espiritu Santo (Holy Spirit) and Isla Partida (Parted). The two island are separated by a small bay and a channel that is only 2' deep and 50' wide at low tide. We anchored on the south side of the bay in 20' of water over a sandy bottom. Air temp is in the mid 80's with a water temp of 77°. For the first time in decades, Linda and I went for a swim. Yep, just jumped off the aft of the boat into the water. What a feeling. It was great! A little cool but not bad. A lot of fun! Linda has told people since we started planning this that she wanted to be able to swim in the water that the boat was in and now she can. Up north the water was cold enough, mid 50's, that in 15 minutes you would start to get hypothermia and would likely die within an hour. Here all we got was some sore shoulder muscles from swimming after so many years.

The water here is very clear, you can see the bottom in 15', and the color goes from dark blue to emerald green in the shallows next to shore. There are lots of fish that are new to us; Puffer fish from 4" to 12", small rays 10" across, crabs under 6" with a red pattern on their backs, and a 4' long Mexican Needle fish. This place is so kewl and we are having so much fun it's hard to express. More latter...

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Whale Shark Hunting

2009-04-28T16:53:00.000-07:00

Date: 4/26/2009

Location: La Paz

Weather: Hot, high 80's to low 90's all week

Saturday we went out with a new friend of ours in the marina, Bill Lee on Ocean Quest, to look for Whale Sharks, Rhincodon typus, just outside the bay. Bill has a large fast tender and Linda and I with Bill and his lady friend packed some lunches and headed out the 3-5 miles to look for sharks. Actually the Whale Shark is not a typical shark but is a large, slow moving fish that eats plankton, not people. See this Wikipedia article, Whale Sharks. They are frequently found around La Paz so we went out and watched for any kind of disturbance on the water or birds swarming overhead. After an hour of looking with no luck we went ashore on a sandy beach with sand dunes behind and did some beach combing and had lunch. After lunch we resumed our search but to no avail. The afternoon breeze was starting to kick up bringing with it a chop so we decided to head back before running out of fuel. As luck would have it we ran into a pod of dolphins and had a great time playing with them as we motored along. They would come right next to the dinghy, just our of arms reach, and jump out of the water and run under the boat. The dinghy sits low in the water with four people in it and more than once we took waves over the side soaking all of us. The air temp was around 90° and the water is 75° so it wasn't cold and we all had a great time chasing and running with the dolphins.

We are running to get ready to leave this week for the islands up North. Why is it if you have 4 weeks in a place and enough time to be as lazy as an old dog on a hot day that you end up with dozens of things to do in the last 2 days? Maybe I just figured it out?

We are healthy and there is no swine flu in southern Baja. There's nothing to be worried about here or in the Sea of Cortez where we're going. If you listen to cable news you would think that armageddon is upon us. It will poison your mind if you watch enough of it, just turn it off.

Later...

West Coast Trip Summary

2009-04-24T07:24:00.000-07:00

Date: 4/24/2009

Location: Marina de La Paz

Weather: sunny and warm, mid 90's all week

Distances Summary (in Nautical Miles) -

Port Townsend to Cabo San Lucas - 2,235 NM

Port Townsend to La Paz - 2,398 NM

Port Townsend to San Diego - 1,425 NM

San Diego to La Paz - 972 NM

Number of Passages (Neah Bay to La Paz) - 34

Overnight Passages (Neah Bay to La Paz) - 10

Days Underway (Neah Bay to La Paz) - 44

Average Speed (Neah Bay to La Paz) - 6.16 knots

Fuel Used -

Neah Bay to La Paz - 832 gals

Engine Hours - 380 hours

Gallons per Hour - 2.19

If we were to do this again, and I can't imagine why we would want to, we would make longer passages with fewer stops. Ideally we would go from Neah Bay to Coos Bay and then Coos Bay to Bodega Bay. Both of these passages would be two nights long but if you get good weather they get you into CA quickly. All our overnighters were just one night long and that does not give you enough time to adjust and get some good rest. Passages lasting two nights are good for a 2 person crew or if you have 3 people I would recommend that if you get the weather to do so you go straight through from Neah Bay to Bodega Bay. The less you see of ports and bar crossings in WA and OR the better. Bodega Bay is a great stop, no bar to cross, nice marina, a bit of a walk to a restaurant and store, but if you need fuel it's cheaper here than San Francisco. From there you can slow down and enjoy the CA coast with recommended stops in Half Moon Bay, Monterey, Marina del Rey, and San Diego. We went into Santa Barbara, crowded, narrow slips and fairways and very windy, don't bother, and Channel Island Harbor in Oxnard where there is a strong current running through the transit moorage slips but good shopping 2 blocks away. We did encounter tall, 10' +, breaking waves when we left Channel Island Marina although the weather report said 5-10 kts winds with 3-5' seas. We also stopped in Dana Point which is very nice but expensive. DP is the most exclusive areas we stopped at, lots of upscale restaurants and shops in the marina and up the hill in the shopping area. There is a little restaurant in the DP marina with the best pizza on Earth. No kidding, no exaggeration, it is the best!. DP is nice place but bring your wallet. On the other end, Marina del Rey was $23 dollars a day for moorage (50' boat length) in a beautiful location next to a park and there was plentiful shopping within 4 blocks in regular stores at reasonable prices. MDR has a 'California Pizza' restaurant, not the best pizza on Earth but not bad either.

Note: We've added a lot of photos in our Web Photo Album. The link is on the right side under 'Other Links'.

La Paz - Week 3

2009-04-23T09:08:00.000-07:00

Date: 4/23/2009

Location: La Paz, Marina de La Paz

Weather: sunny and hot, 98° yesterday, breezy at night which cools the place off

We have been busy for the last 3 weeks in La Paz getting the boat ship-shape and exploring around town. We are starting to acclimate to the hot desert climate, at least we're trying. During the hot afternoon we stay inside and slow down and try to be one with the heat, kinda a zen thing. If you fight it it just makes it worse. I like the heat, it's nice not to be cold and wet. Linda is getting there, she try's to enjoy the heat but mother nature sometimes makes that difficult.

The water maker high pressure pump started to show signs of old age so we had it rebuilt by a gringo here who is a water maker expert. Cruising in Baja requires a good working water maker as water is hard to come by so it was important to get it repaired in La Paz when we had the chance. The refrigerator started to run continuously about a month ago and not getting below 40° so we had another gringo take a look at it but it's still not working right. It's either running all the time to get below 40 or if we turn it down so it cycles on and off it's too warm. We're having another person, a local named Hector who has a good reputation, look at it today. Other than that the boat is in good shape.

I went to a doctor a few days ago because I've not been able to completely shake the cold that I had last January. I still have a cough, congestion, and funny feeling ears. The doctor says that I have some liquid in my left lung and an infection in my ears and gave me a list of 4 drugs I needed to take. They don't do prescriptions here, they give you a list, looks like a prescription but it's not, and you take it to the Farmacia and they fill it for you. Anyone can walk into a Farmacia and get any kind of drugs except for narcotics which require a prescription. The doctor's office was as modern and well equipped as any doctor's office I've been to in the States, in fact better than most. The doctor spoke English and was very professional. Charge for the office visit, $37 US. Medical care here in La Paz, and we're told it's the same in all large Mexican cities, is very good and costs a fraction of what it does in the US.

Life here is very relaxed and easy going. The locals are very friendly, if you run into a rude person it's a gringo but that's the rare exception. Goods and services are inexpensive, not all things are cheap but local items normally are, things imported from the States cost 20% to 50% more here. Local produce, breads, etc are very inexpensive and very good. La Paz is large enough that you can find most services from excellent health care to mechanics. We're leaving next week to head north into the Sea. It will be good to get out and start exploring more, the islands north of here are supposed to be magnificent with abundant sea life.

La Paz - Week One

2009-04-07T16:16:00.000-07:00

Date: 4/7/2009

Location: La Paz

One week in paradise and we're still having fun. We've walked around town until our feet ache, we took a taxi to and from a large shopping plaza, we've ordered some lycra diving suits, had the outboard motor fixed, and with the help of a retired navy expat, nearly doubled the output of our water maker. Not bad for one weeks work. Ok, not really work in the traditional sense but we've been busy.

The taxi rides were fun, the second ride was certainly worth the price just for the entertainment value. The ride out was so-so, almost boring. The ride back was fun. Radio blasting Mexican songs with the driver singing along, it was either full speed ahead or full breaks. Fortunately in the city traffic we never got over 30 mph so nothing too scary. At the shopping plaza we bought some shorts, shirts and groceries. The grocery store, called Soriano, is similar to a Fred Meyer or small K-Mart. 1/3 clothes and kitchen hardware and 2/3 groceries. Earlier in the week we walked to a CCC grocery store near the marina. Both stores are equivalent to a well stocked grocery store in the states. Not all the same goods but there is no shortage of items in either store.

We had a local expat do a complete tune up of our outboard motor. There are numerous Americans that live here, most are retired from American jobs but some have lived here most of their lives. They have legitimate Mexican companies and do work on boats. The outboard was fixed by a 20+ year resident of Mexico, 'Sea Otter' Jimmy. 'Sea Otter' is the name of his boat. He came down here over 20 years ago, married a local women, and makes a good living repairing outboard motors and skippering charter boats. We consulted with another expat on our water maker, Bill is retired Navy and worked in the Navy on water makers. He has a shop on his boat that has more water maker parts than most dealers in the states. With a little advise from Bill we were able to improve the output of our water maker by 75%. It's a good thing Bill is here because we've been trying to get some help out of Village Marine in Seattle via email but VM just got bought out by Parker Marine and it seems they are too busy reorganizing to answer their emails.

There is a 46 Nordhavn named Mc Mac from Panama, photo above, anchored off a marina towards the head of the bay from us that has an interesting story. Nobody is on the boat and hasn't been for many years. Seems the boat was impounded by the Mexican Navy 8 years ago for carrying drugs, don't know what happened to the people on board but I assume they're in jail, but the Mexican law does not allow for the government to sell impounded property. So the boat just sits at anchor, uncared for and rotting away. In the last hurricane it broke free of it's mooring and was blown against the breakwater where it was scratched up but being a Nordhavn, it's too tough to sink so easily. So it just sits, a sad sight.

We still have many things to do before we leave in 3 weeks so we'll keep busy. It's been warm and sunny since we got here. Today is in the high 80's with a light breeze. Shorts and t-shirt weather all the time. More later...

Paradise Found

2009-04-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

Date: 3/29/2009

Location: La Paz, Marina de La Paz

Lat/Lon: 24 09.310 N 110 19.586 W

Weather: Sunny and Warm, lite breeze, 82 °

Hi everyone, we're in La Paz! This has been our goal since we left Anacortes last August so we feel that we've reached a major milestone in our adventure and La Paz does not disappoint. As with all our experiences in Mexico, the people are warm and friendly, even the gringo's here are nice, but in addition to the people the town is clean, well kept and modern. The water front has been built with a broad board walk down the beach and there are restaurants and shops everywhere but without feeling too touristy. We are going to be here for a month before heading north into the islands and eventually San Carlos for the summer. It would be great to spend the summer in La Paz but they do get the occasional hurricane here so our insurance requires that we go further north by July 1st.

We are at Marina de La Paz, the heart of the cruiser's world in La Paz. There are dozens of cruising sail boats here and a few power boats, mostly sports fishing boats that are kept here for the winter season. There are also a couple of mega-yachts in this marina and many more in the big resort marinas. This marina is at the edge of down town while the resorts are further out so we are within an easy walk of the shops and restaurants. The weather is warm but not too hot, mid 80's, and I haven't worn long pants or socks since arriving. Shorts, t-shirts, and sandals all day, every day. This is paradise. The cats are loving the sun and we have the doors and windows open all day long with protective screens on so no one goes wandering off, the cats that is. I've also quickly gone native in other ways, I now drink the lighter Mexican beers, Corrona, Texcante, and Pacifico. Up north I only drank darker, amber beers. Down here the heat requires a lighter beer. We also bought a bag of 18 oranges from a street vendor for less than $1.50 and have fresh squeezed juice with breakfast. Life is good.

Bahia Magdelena, aka Mag Bay

2009-03-24T20:14:00.000-07:00

Date: 3/24/2009
Location: Bahia Magdelena, aka Mag Bay
Lat/Lon: 24 38.064 N 112 08.171 W
Weather: windy, mostly sunny, low 70's

We've been hanging out in Mag Bay waiting for a weather front to pass through on Sunday and Monday, which it did. The winds died down Monday evening and we're going to give it another day for the sea to lie down a little more before we head out so it looks like we'll be out of here Wednesday at first light.
We arrived at Mag Bay on 3/19 after a 28 hour, 160 NM cruise. The weather and seas were fair so it was a pleasant trip. Along the way we passed through a group of fisherman in pangas (large rowing boats with outboard motors) and one of them pulled up parallel to our boat about 30' off the beam and yelled 'Sodas, sodas!', gesturing with their arms drinking a can of Coke. I pointed to the aft of the boat and with out changing our speed or heading they pulled in behind us and I tossed them two cans of Coke. They waved and smiled and went back to their fishing. Within 10 minutes another panga pulled up next to us and we repeated the same process.

After arriving in Mag Bay at 9 AM and setting the anchor we went and laid down for a short siesta. A half hour later there was a knock on the side of the boat and someone saying 'buenes dias'. It was the Port Captain. We welcomed him aboard, offered him a cold Coke which he happily accepted, showed him our papers and filled out his simple documents. Now this is a village of maybe 30 people who live in simple shacks next to the shore, yet they have a Port Captain. He was very nice and although he spoke no English and we no Spanish we managed to carry on a simple conversation for 15 minutes. We understood that this is a peaceful village with no crime yet if we went up the bay to San Carlos they had mucho crime and banditos. We'll stay here, thank you.

There have been 2 sail boats here with us and Saturday the three of us hired a panga to take us into San Carlos at the head of the bay to get some groceries. The panga let us off on the beach near the center of town and a friend of the panga driver took us in his Jeep the next 6 blocks to the grocery store. There are some 5000 people in San Carlos and I'm not sure if we were in the center of town or on the edge but the grocery store was not that large. We did find a few things but they didn't have much. There was a lady selling fresh strawberries across the street out of the back of her truck, a newer Chevrolet 4 door, 3 pints for 20 pesos, just over a US dollar. We bought 3 pints. We tried to find an ATM to get some cash but couldn't find one and the driver didn't know of one or didn't want to spend the time to look for one. The streets all looked like sand but most of them were paved roads just covered with sand. It reminded me of a place that just had been blanketed with snow. Even the noise of the cars was muffled by the sand. The area around the town is all sand and dirt so I guess that the winds just keep blowing the sand onto the streets and they don't try to remove it.

We put the dinghy in the water and the motor started right up and ran for about 10 minutes before it stopped, for good. It seems to be a fuel problem so I'm going to take the dink to shore and remove the carburetor there so if I drop anything I can easily retrieve it. The last time I removed the carb in Nanaimo I dropped a part in 50' of water and it took over a month to get a replacement, and that was after we came back to the states! I don't want to take any chance repeating that here.

As we travel south we are also going east. We learned that south of Turtle Bay you move ahead one time zone so we are in the equivalent of the Mountain time but we aren't on day light savings time yet. They do go on DST sometime, we just don't know exactly when.

The photo above is of 'Punta Entrada', Entrance Point, at the entry to Mag Bay taken at 6 AM.

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Turtle Bay ++

2009-03-18T11:33:00.003-07:00

Date: 3/13/2009
Location: Turtle Bay
Lat/Lon: 27 41.210 N 114 53.236 W
Weather: Windy, overcast

Worked on water maker leaks with good success. We did not run the water maker because we are not sure of the quality of the water in the bay and we did not want to clog up the filters unnecessarily. We have enough water to wait to run the water maker until our next trip off shore.

In the afternoon we called the water taxi and went into town. You call the water taxi on the VHF channel 16 and he comes out in a panga, a large row boat with a powerful outboard motor, and takes you to the pier where there are stairs treads leading down to the water with one ladder type step at the bottom. At lower tides the bottom stair tread is 3' above the water level and the bottom step is well above the water. It's navigatable but it takes some courage and just closing your eyes and moving forward.

Once we were off the pier we walked down the beach 50', the only path available, and up onto a small dirt road that leads directly into town. The town has a few blocks of paved road but all the rest is dirt. All of the dirt roads are one lane plus some parking on either side. As one person on another boat put it 'the town is at the end of a 50 mile dirt road that leads to a gravel road'. This place is at the end of the road and the poverty is extreme here. The people are very friendly and helpful and the nicest looking building in town is the church. There are many little grocery stores, more like mini mini-marts with a few can goods, rice, beans, beer, and coke. There are 2 or 3 internet cafés that have multiple computers connected to the internet and you can take your own laptop and connect to their network. We're going back into town tomorrow to buy some beer and a few less important items.

I think I have my laptop problems figured out. The small panel on the top of the keyboard that has the On/Off switch, volume controls, and various lights to indicate if the power is on or hard drive is turning has a plug at one end that plugs into a a receptacle on the main board. The problem is that this plug is not going into the receptacle far enough to make contact so I put a small folded piece of tape under the plug and that seems to help. It still needs a small push from a well placed finger to work every time but at least I know where the problem is and how to fix it.

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Turtle Bay +

2009-03-18T11:33:00.002-07:00

Date: 3/12/2009
Location: Turtle Bay
Lat/Lon: 27 41.210 N 114 53.236 W
Weather: Windy, 30+ kts

I worked on the sump pump for most of the day. You wouldn't think that a simple pump would take so long to fix, especially since we had a backup pump that I put in and it still didn't work and yes, I did check the voltage at the pump, a good 12.6 vdc. The real frustrating thing is that when I brought the pump up to the pilothouse to test it worked just fine but when I took it back to the engine room it didn't work. Very strange voodoo stuff going on. It had to be the wiring so I connected the positive wire to the + post of the engine starter motor, still nothing. I then tried connecting the negative wire to the engine block and it fired right up. There was a bad negative/ground wire for the pump. I've never seen anything like this before. Next thing was to try to figure out how to fix it. I traced the wire as far as I could trough the engine room, nothing suspicious looking there. From the engine room it disappears into a hidden wire run up to the electrical panel in the pilothouse. Checked the panel connections but there was no way to tell which of the dozens of black grounding wires was from the pump. Out of frustration, and the need to get the sump pump working so I could take a shower, I used a wire that I had run from the pilothouse to the engine room but never used. I connected it to the ground strip on the panel and to the pump and it ran great. I still need to sort this out but at least it's working for now.

Now it was shower time with some Ibuprofen, My back was aching from crawling around the engine room on my hands and knees and I didn't want to end up like last October when I could barely move due to back pain. This is not nearly so bad so I stopped for the day before I made it worse.

I forgot to mention that the day after we arrived the Mexican Navy came out to us in their 30' panga with 6 armed shoulders onboard. It was too windy for them to make a safe approach to us so they just came near and asked what our last port of call was and if we were the owners of the boat. At least I think that's what they said, they only spoke Spanish and we don't. We're working on that.

The photo above is the Mexican navy patrol boat.

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Bahia Asuncion

2009-03-18T11:33:00.001-07:00

Date: 3/16/2009
Location:Bahia Asuncion
Lat/Lon: 27 08.214 N 114 17.414 W
Weather: Winds NW 5-10 kts until 3 PM then became NW 25-30+ kts

We left Turtle Bay at 6:30 AM and had a pleasant cruise all day with sea under 3'. As we came around Isla Asuncion the wind picked up to 30+ kts. The bay is not protected from the wind but there is no fetch so the waves were only 2' wind chop. We anchored off of the old pier well off shore in 25' of water so that we would be well clear of the other moored boats and have plenty of room to let out 200' of chain. Facing away from the village at night it was so dark that when I casually threw a rotten banana off of the aft of the boat before we went to bed, it disappeared in the darkness before it hit the water. It's a little spooky being in a small boat in a strange place in such darkness but it can be very beautiful also, if you look up into the skies you can see a thick blanket of stars above you, more than you can imagine.

From the water, the town of Asuncion looks newer and slightly more prosperous than Turtle Bay. Asuncion lacks a pier that the pangas can tie up to so they must launch from the beach. The Mexican Navy did launch a panga and circled around our boat writing down the boat name and home port but they did not try to board or talk with us, just a courteous wave which we returned.

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Bahia Abreojos

2009-03-18T11:33:00.000-07:00

Date: 3/17/2009
Location:Bahia Abreojos
Lat/Lon: 26 43.974 N 113 32.307 W
Weather: Winds NW 5-10 kts until 3 PM then became NW 15-25 kts

The weather Gods are smiling on us, the 50 NM trip from Asuncion to Abreojos had light winds and calm seas. We arrived in Abreojos just as the 3 PM winds were starting so we headed for the 'more protected' anchorage in the East end of town. The West anchorage off of the village is more open to the N winds where the East anchorage has slightly more protection from the winds and W swells. The winds blow every evening on the coast due to the warmer air over the land pulling the cooler ocean air on shore. By 9 PM the land has cooled enough that the winds subside and it's very calm over night.

Abreojos looks to be a nice little village built on a very barren point (punta) of land. Believe it or not tourism is the main industry here due to the whale breeding in the Laguna San Ignacio during winter. The logon is a protected area and only licensed guides from the village can take tourist to view the whales. We are a little late in the season so we only planned on staying here one night.

We plan on going 26 hours to Bahia Magdalena, a large and well protected anchorage 2/3 of the way down Baja. The forecast for the next 3 days is for fair weather do we thought we would make as much distance as possible. There is a small front moving through over the weekend so we'll be in Mag Bay for a few days. Next stop, Cabo San Lucas.

The photo above is of the light house at Abreojos.

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Turtle Bay

2009-03-12T20:33:00.002-07:00

Date: 3/11/2009
Location: Turtle Bay
Lat/Lon: 27 41.210 N 114 53.236 W
Weather: mostly sunny, windy NW 20-25 kt, after sunset 5-10kt

We did a 7 hour run from the anchorage at Isla Cedros to Bahia de Tortugas, Turtle Bay. The bay is well protected from the seas but not from the winds. The winds in the anchorage blows up to 35 kts but there is no fetch so there is just a small ripple on the water and the anchorage is large with lots of room. There are 7 other sail boats anchored near the village but the bay could easily hold 10 times as many boats.

The weather is forecasted to blow for the next 4 days and we have some maintenance projects to complete so we're settling in here for a few days. Yesterday the water maker started leaking for 3 different fittings and couldn't hold the high pressure needed to make water so that's high on the list to fix. The pump in the sump from the head sinks and shower stopped working so the sump in overflowing into the bilge. Add that to the list.

Our main radar, we have 2, started to act up and needs some attention. It has started repainting its screen frequently, sometimes every sweep. It makes it nearly impossible to read. I'm going to check all the connections and hope to find the cause. If I'm not successful I'll send an email to our tech in Anacortes.

We should keep busy for the days that we wait here for better weather.

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Isla Cedros

2009-03-12T20:33:00.001-07:00

Date: 3/9/2009
Location: Isla Cedros
Lat/Lon: 28 14.048 N 115 10.217 W
Weather: Mixed starting fair and building to winds NW 15-25 kt and seas 6-9', Full Moon with broken clouds

We completed an overnighter of 28 hours from Colonet. The plan initially was to go 45 NM to San Quitin but the weather was so nice and the seas so gentle that we decided to take advantage of the good conditions and go overnight to to Isla Cedros, a total of 185 NM. The forecast was for increasing winds overnight with building seas but we hoped that it would not be too bad and we could make some good distance down the coast. The weather was good to us for most of the night but the wind picked up and the seas started to build as we made the 120 NM crossing of Bahia Sebastian Vizcaino. Around 4 AM the seas were 6-9' feet from behind us, we weren't pounding into the seas but the boat was moving a lot as the larger waves moved under us. As we got behind Isla Cedros the seas calmed and we found a so so spot to anchor at the above Lat/Lon. The wind would gust down the hills on the island up to 35 kts pushing us broad side to the low swells so we left the fish in the water to slow the boat motion. The night was rolly but we managed to get some sleep.

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Bahia Colonet

2009-03-12T20:33:00.000-07:00

Date: 3/8/2009
Location: Bahia Colonet
Lat/Lon: 30 57.680 N 116 17.520 W
Weather: 60° high clouds, Winds NW 10-15 kt

Pleasant trip south from Ensenada to Bahia (Bay) Colonet. On some charts Colonet is spelled Colnett. There was low northwesterly swells of mostly 3' with some 5' but it was from behind us so it was an easy ride. Bahia Colonet is formed by a point of land sticking out into the Pacific. There is no real bay here, you just pull in on the south side of the point where you are protected from the NW winds and seas and anchor in 15'-20' of water. The swells do refract around the point and enter the south side so the protect is not complete. Looking south or west you see nothing but the Pacific ocean all the way to the horizon.

As Linda was preparing dinner, I was on the aft deck and heard the unmistakable sound of a whale exhaling but this sound very was close. I looked down the side of the boat and saw a young gray whale rubbing up against the boat. I called to Linda to come out quickly, "there was a whale right next to the boat!". The whale was about 15' long, a new gray is 14' at birth, so it was very young. It lay stationary against the boat with it's nose up against the hull. It would sink under the water 2-3' and surface again, exhaling at the surface. We had to step back to not be sprayed by the plume. After a few minutes it swam around the boat and then off into the bay. It was a very young whale and there was no sign of it's mother so perhaps it mistook our boat for it's mom. Hopefully mom was just off fishing and would return shortly for her baby.

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Last Day in Ensenada

2009-03-07T14:55:00.001-08:00

Date: 3/7/2009

Location: Ensenada

Weather: Sunny 60°, Winds NNW 15-20 in the afternoon

"For whilst money spent can be re-earned, time cannot and as the clock of life is wound but once,I for one,intend to try and make every second a winner and I invite you to come with me and do likewise. " Anonymous

My laptop is starting to show it's age, it's around 5 years old, I think that's about 75 in laptop years. The first thing to go was the little lights that flicker when the hard drive is running, then the on/off switch for the speaker, now it is very difficult to power on. All those items are on the same board that runs across the top of the keyboard. I took the board out and everything looks ok and I tried to clean the connector between the board and main circuit board but when replaced it still didn't respond when the power button was pushed. The computer did light up when I pushed down on the end of the board with the connector and pushed the on/off switch so I think there's a problem with the connector. I used to have some electronics spray cleaner but I can't find it so I'll look for some when in town. For now it looks like turning the power on/off is a two finger job.

We checked out with the Port Captain Friday for our departure on Sunday. In order to do this you need a form stating your next port of call and a receipt from the marina stating you are paid in full. Our marina provided those forms and we took them down to the CIS office first to the Migracion window and then the Port Captainia. We're not leaving until Sunday but the check out form is good 48 hours prior to leaving and the offices are all closed over the weekend. After that we went to a grocery store near the port offices. It's a medium size store, they do have mega stores further from the waterfront, but it was well stocked and very clean. As nice as any state side grocery store. We got some lettuce, grown in California, bananas, and bread.

We had pizza at Alfonso's Pizza restaurant tonight. Excellent Hawaiian pizza, as good as any pizza we have had anywhere. A large pizza, Coke (made with real sugar), 2 beers, plus tip for $16.

We're leaving early tomorrow morning heading south. We will be at anchorages, not marinas, until we get to La Paz in a week or so. The next few stops will be at Bahia Colonet, Bahia de San Quitin, and Punta Baja.

Here's some photos from Ensenada.

Some of many ballons we passed on the water.
CruisePort marina office.

Getting Fuel

2009-03-05T17:44:00.000-08:00

Date: 3/5/2009
Location: Ensenada
Weather: same old, same old. 65°, winds calm in the morning and nights, breezy in the afternoon

We bought diesel today at Marina Coral in Ensenada MX for US$2.08 per gal net. The kicker was that they charged us US$130 as a "docking fee" because we were not guest in the marina. The net cost above includes this fee. Marina Coral has the only fuel dock on the outside coast of Baja. All other fuel sources are from a 55 gal drum.
We didn't know about the "docking fee" until we went to pay, next time we'll ask about all fees and charges before we start pumping although we needed fuel to get to La Paz so we didn't have a lot of options. We might have considered staying at Coral for a night to offset the fee but we were already paid up at CruisePort Marina through Saturday and we're leaving Sunday.

The Marina Coral is 3 miles north of downtown Ensenada and CruisePort is right in the center of town. Both marinas are relatively new and well kept. CruisePort has the advantage of being a short walk to town and is cheaper although at Marina Coral you can use the facilities at the Resort (swimming pool, spa, etc) if that's your thing. There is one other marina here and that's Baja Naval which is an older place right in the center of town that is used by the sport fishing charter boats. Baja Naval also have a boat yard with a good reputation but the marina lacks a little in security and upkeep so we went with CruisePort which is as good as a marina as you would find anywhere in the States.

Yesterday we bought a whole pollo (chicken) from a restaurant downtown that cooks them on a rotisserie over a wood fire. For 100 pesos ($6.66) we got a whole cooked chicken, French fries, and a stack of small tortillas. The chicken was great, a little greasy, but very good. The French fries I thought were good, Linda less so, but odd with the chicken and we really didn't know what to do with the tortillas.

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Customs Inspection

2009-03-03T17:11:00.000-08:00

Date: 3/3/2009
Location: Ensenada
Weather: 64° and overcast

Yesterday we were to have an appointment with the customs agent to inspect our boat at 5 PM but he did not show up and rescheduled for the next morning at 8 AM. This being the next day, he arrived at 10:30 AM. The purpose of the inspection was to verify that the engine serial number that we gave him on the form for the vessel Temporary Import Permit was correct. He arrived and asked to see the id plate on the engine and I led him to the engine room. We have a 'crawl around' engine room and I crawled next to the engine and he said that it was too crowded in there and asked me to read him the serial number. I read him the number, he was satisfied that it matched the number on his form and that was that. He gave us our import permit, instructed us to place the decal in a dock side window, shook hands and left. All in all a quick, friendly, and near meaningless event.

We tried our TV with the rabbit ears when we arrived in Ensenada and were able to get 4-5 channels very well, problem is they're all in Spanish.

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Arrival in Ensenada

2009-03-02T19:43:00.000-08:00

Date: 3/2/2009
Location:Ensenada, B.C. (Baja California)
Lat/Lon: 31 51.317 N 116 37.320 W
Weather: 70° @ noon

Yesterday we had a near perfect cruise from San Diego to Ensenada. Blue skies, 70°, 2' swells, and a light breeze. Doesn't get any better than that. We were up and out of San Diego by 5AM for the 70 NM trip and arrived in Cruise Port Marina at 4 PM. No one was in the marina office on Sunday so we just tied up at a convenient end tie location. The marina is about 1/3 empty so there is no shortage of slips at this time. Word on the dock is that many people have taken their boats back to the states in order to try to sell them. Good luck to them in this market.

Monday morning we were up early to check in at the marina office and then down to the Centro Integrales de Servicios (CIS), the customs, immigrations, and Port Captains office for clearing into Mexico. The marina staff was very helpful in creating our Crew List forms, we had completed one before arriving but it's in Spanish and we mistakenly entered La Paz as our last port rather than as our next port of call, and other documents to get us started. Once we arrived at the CIS office it took about 2 hours to complete the forms and pay the fees. The people are very helpful and speak English so it's overall not a bad experience.

Note: For boaters going to Mexico, get Pat Rains 'Mexico Boating Guide' and follow her instructions on what documents and information you need prior to arriving in Mexico. For example, you do need to know the serial number of your engine(s) to get a Temporary Import Permit for your boat.

In the final step for getting the Temp Import Permit we had to fill out a form stating what basic equipment we had on the boat and then push a button that triggered a red or green light to come on. If by chance the red light comes on you have to have an in-person inspection on your boat, green, you get a pass. Linda pushed the button and, you guessed it, it came up red. We made an appointment for the inspection at 5 PM that day. At 6 PM the inspector had not yet arrived and I went up to the marina office and talked to a clerk that was working late. "Yes" she said, "the customs agent called and said he would not be here today but would come tomorrow morning."

Too be continued...

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San Diego Municipal Docks

2009-02-28T11:35:00.000-08:00

Date: 2/28/2009

Location:San Diego Municipal Dock, Shelter Island

Lat/Lon: 32 42.603 N 117 14.046 W

Weather: 75, winds breezy in the afternoon

We moved 11 km from Chula Vista to the municipal docks at the north end of SD bay. The municipal docks do not take reservations and charge $10.50 per day for the first 5 days and $21 for the next ten days for any size boat. After 10 days you must leave, you can only be at the dock for 10 days out of every 40 days. In this way they eliminate boats living at the docks for months on end. We called before we left to make sure that they had space and the docks were less than half occupied when we arrived. We were a little concerned about getting in because right next door at the Koni Kai resort they are having the Trawler Fest boat show and seminars at the same time and we were afraid that the municipal docks might be full of boats visiting the show.

Friday afternoon we went over to the boat show and walked around the boats. We spoke with the crew from Nordhavn, they had 4 boats on display, and we met Art Defever who was on his own 63' Defever that is for sale.

The boat basin behind Shelter Is is home to 6000 boats, everything from mega yachts to run down sail boats that their owners hope have one more trip to La Paz left in them. It's an amazing place. We walked around the basin and it seems like solid boats as far as you can see.

We were going to leave for Ensenada Saturday, today, but it looks like the wind is going to kick up on Tues-Wed so we'll have to spend most of the week in Ensenada waiting for calm seas so we decided to stay in SD one more day.

The 62 Nordhavn on the right in the photo above is Patty M, formally Rover, that is on the way to Newport Beach from Ensenada. The Captain was kind enough to give use a tour, the boat is fantastic and for sale.

Road Trip- Tucson

2009-02-24T11:19:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we drove our Jeep to Tucson and put it in storage at a place near Linda's son, Jeff. We spent 2 nights at Jeff's house and rented a car to drive back to San Diego. The car, from National, cost $148 including gas for the 7 hour drive. 2 oneway tickets on Southwest would have been $150 for a weekend departure, $98 if we left on Tues, Wed, or Thurs. The car was well worth it to avoid flying. The car we rented was a Nissan Vesa which was one of those cars where if you moved the seat forward enough to reach the steering wheel your legs were too close to the peddles, move the seat back so your legs are comfortable and you can't reach the wheel. Linda and I are 8" different in height and neither of us could find a comfortable position. Other than that it was an ok cheap little car. In San Diego we had to return it to the airport so we got up at 6 AM to get it back in the 24 hour rental period and then ran it down to the airport and then took the bus and then trolley back to the marina.

The trip across highway I-8 from San Diego to Tucson is nice if you like flat desert terrain. The picture above is where the freeway gets right next to the Mexican boarder, that's the boarder fence just across the freeway. Customs and Boarder Patrol had the freeway blocked twice going east and 3 times west bound for vehicle inspections. We got waved through at each stop but it's just the idea that anyone could be stopped and asked to show their papers that doesn't seem right. I guess the idea of 'probable cause' is rather passé.

We're back on the boat for a couple of days getting ready to head into Mexico. Mid week we'll take the boat up to the public dock at the north end of San Diego bay and the weather looks good to head to Ensenada on Saturday or Sunday.

Hi Tech Rabbit Ears

2009-02-18T08:54:00.000-08:00

Not really. We were in Marina Del Rey on election night and we wanted to watch the election returns on TV so we walked over to Radio Shack and bought a cheap set of rabbit ears on the chance that we could get an over the air channel. To our surprise it worked! When we got to San Diego we moved the rabbit ears to the top of the pilothouse and we were able to get the 4 network channels and a couple of local stations all for free. The reception is good, not great, but good enough to watch.

The downside is we can not receive digital TV signals without a conversion box and in San Diego 3 of the network channels have converted to digital on February 17th. We could buy a conversion box for $40 but we're going to be in Mexico in 10 days so we'll just have to get by with NBC and PBS until then.

We're Going

2009-02-15T13:20:00.000-08:00

Date: 2/15/2009

Location: Chula Vista, CA

Lat/Lon: 32°37.406'N 117°06.101'W

Weather: Overcast, 65 °

"I am going because I would have no peace if I stayed" - Donald Crowhurst

It's off to Mexico by the end of February. We've given our notice at the marina, we're finishing our provisioning and this weekend we're taking our car to Tucson to put in storage and it's off we go. We're storing the car in Tucson because 1) Linda's son lives there and 2) this summer when we're in San Carlos in the Sea of Cortez for a few months we can easily get to Tucson and take our car back with us.

We were not sure if we were going further than San Diego but as Crowhurst said, we'd have no peace if we stayed after doing all the preparations for the last 2 years and coming all this way. If we didn't go we would regret it for the rest of our lives. And what's to return to? We can't sell the boat in this market and there are no jobs to be had, so we might as well spend at least a year in Mexico and have some fun.

By the way, Crowhurst did go on the around the world sailing race he was referring to and went insane and committed suicide before he finished, but that's another long story. Read the book - The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst

Being sick for January

2009-02-15T13:17:00.000-08:00

The first night home from Ensenada I was up at 1 AM vomiting. I had a high fever, around 101° for 6 days. After the fever broke I started to get chest and head congestion and a sore throat that kept me in bed for most of the next two weeks. It was 3 weeks before I had enough strength to get up for more than 2 hours at a time and it was 4 weeks before I stopped coughing so much that I started sleeping in the main stateroom with Linda. In the third week Linda did insist that I go to a local clinic where they gave me some anit-biotics and some spray for my throat that contained steroids. Neither med seemed to do much to improve my condition. I haven't been this sick for 20 years but I don't think it was caused by going to Ensenada. Somewhere I caught the flu bug and then a bad cold on top of that. I feel like I missed the entire month and Linda was such a sweetie taking care of me during that time.

Road Trip - Ensenada

2009-02-15T13:15:00.000-08:00

After Christmas we thought we would take the bus down to Ensenada and spend a couple of days. We made hotel reservations on the internet at the San Nicholas hotel that looked good and in the area down by the marinas. We drove to the boarder and parked the car in a lot on the US side, walked across the boarder. Walking south the boarder is open with no check points, the Mexicans don't seem to care who enters their country or what they bring. The bus depot is just 3 blocks from the boarder, right next to the MacDonald's, and the bus to Ensenada runs every half an hour. US$42 for 2 people round trip. The bus is comfortable, clean, and mostly empty. The trip is about 90 minutes and we got off at the first stop in Ensenada which was a mistake, we should have stayed on until the bus depot and been a mile or so closer to our hotel. No harm done though, we got to see more of the town this way. After finding our way to the tourist section we stopped for lunch and to catch our breath and use the restrooms. Lunch was good and we continued our trek to the hotel which we found without much difficulty. The hazard with using the internet is that you may not be getting exactly what you think you're getting. The hotel was older than we thought and it was further from the waterfront and shopping area of town than we could have been if we had chosen a different hotel.

We spent the next two days playing tourist and walking all around the central area of town. On the evening of the third day I started to feel a little off, like I was coming down with a cold, fever and aches and pains, but some aspirin seemed to overcome it and the next day we caught the bus back to Tijuana and returned home to the boat. Crossing the boarder on foot took less than an hour once we figured out how to get from the bus depot to the boarder crossing. There are no signs for directions so we just walked in the general direction and then followed the crowds as we got near. The line was long but moved fast. The line for cars crossing into the US seemed to go for miles and did not seem to be moving, people were standing next to their cars and vendors were walking up and down the lines selling all sorts of goods. Tijuana is not the place to cross into the US in a car.

Road Trip - Boise

2009-02-15T13:13:00.000-08:00

Once we decided to stay in SD for a few months the next step was to get a car so we could get around. When we left Anacortes in the Spring we gave our Jeep to Linda's daughter, Susie, in Boise with the idea that her son, Josh, would use the car when he got a license and could afford insurance. Well that hadn't happened yet and the Jeep was just sitting in Susie's driveway so we asked if could reclaim the Jeep if we came up and got it. On December 12th we flew to Boise just as a major winter storm was crossing the area bringing snow and ice to much of the northern US. The plan was to stay 2 days in Boise, actually Susie lives in Nampa just outside of Boise, and leave before the storm got too bad and take I 84 West to Portland and hop on I-5 south and hopefully avoid most of the storm. Nice plan, too bad it didn't work out that way.

We left Monday morning in light snow but the roads got progressively worse with heavier snow and ice as we went west into the mountains. When we got to Le Grande the roads had snow over ice and we decided to get off the highway at a truck stop along with maybe a hundred semi-trucks. We ate lunch and bought the last pair of chains at the local tire store.

Heading back out on I-84 the road stayed icy and we put the chains on and off 3 times before getting to better conditions near Portland around 6 PM

where we stopped for the day at a Comfort Inn (excellent bed at a reasonable cost!). The next day it was up early and down I-5 in light snow but we made good time most of the day. There was heavier snow in the Sisku's but we made it to Red Bluff in northern California by early evening.

The next day we figured we would have a clear shot down I-5 to San Diego and should be back on the boat that night. After all we were in California and the storm was well behind us up north. The trip started well making good time through Chico, Sacramento, Stockton, and then the farm lands of central California. As we approached the mountains north of LA there were signs to listen to a road advisory on the radio but our radio was not working so we couldn't hear what was coming up. Oregon has a toll free phone number, 511, you can call to get road conditions which we used but CA does not so we blindly continued on. Then the traffic came to a stop, I 5 was closed in Grapevine at the foot of the hills, the CA Highway Patrol had closed the freeway due to heavy snow in the mountains and was turning everyone around in Grapevine. What a mess, traffic was backed up for miles and the CHP had barricaded the freeway and routed everyone onto an off ramp and into Grapevine. There was no sign of the CHP so everyone was on their own to find their way through town and back onto I 5 north. Once through that mess we thought we would take a small highway east and try to connect to highway 58 and get around the east side of the mountains. Once on 84 we started to climb into the hills and it started to snow again and the further we went the heavier it snowed. The area seemed very beautiful but we were focused on the deteriorating road conditions. As we approached the junction of highways 58 & 395 traffic came to a crawl and then a stop. We pulled into a truck stop and learned that both highways were closed ahead and everyone, there must have been a hundred cars and semi-trucks, was just waiting for the roads to open. It was now around 6 PM so we went into the Roadhouse Restaurant, found a booth and ordered some food. We were not alone, the place was full of stranded people including a couple of dozen young people off of a bus who had occupied a banquet room in the back. The restaurant was ok with us staying the night so we switched to a large booth when some people left and settled in for the duration. It's hard to sleep in a booth when all the lights are on and people are talking and coming and going all around you but we tried. At 3 AM trucks and cars started to leave and the word was passed around that highway 395 was opened to Victorville so off we went following the caravan south into the night. It was good going until we got near Victorville and everything came to a halt. What had happened was some trucks had got hopelessly stuck up ahead and it was going to take a tow truck to move them out of the way. After waiting for 3 hours we decided to put on the chains and to turn around and try to make our way back up the line of cars and trucks and try a different route. Once we worked our way back up the line we got onto a side road and made our way into Victorville and stopped at the first hotel we could find, a LaQuinta. They didn't have any clean rooms, it was only 8 AM, but if we wanted to wait they would clean us a room. Highway 15 was closed going East to Las Vegas and West to LA so we waited, grateful to find any available warm room. We showered and then slept most of the day and then went out to get a pizza which we ate in the room before turning in early.

The next day highway 15 was opened so we stopped at Starbucks and headed home. Three hours later we were at the boat, glad to be home and out of the snow.

San Diego & Chula Vista

2009-02-15T13:10:00.000-08:00

After 2 days in Chula Vista we decided to stay there for a couple of months and that we might just end our trip south here. The marina in Chula Vista is in a beautiful park setting with a lovely waterfront and RV park as part of the complex. California does know how to build beautiful marinas and parks and they spare no money in doing so but their marina fees reflect that. The only problem with this marina is that there is no shopping within easy walking distance so if we were going to stay here for any length of time we were going to need a car.

San Diego bay has to be one of the most regulated and controlled boating areas we have been at. Within the bay all anchorages are controlled by the San Diego harbor patrol and you must get a permit to do any anchoring. Much of the bay is developed with high rise resort hotels and marinas and while impressive it's kind of sterile and artificial, somewhat like a shopping mall where everything is designed and well organized. The areas within the bay that are not marinas or tourist attractions are Navy facilities, lots and lots of Navy facilities.

From our location at the south end of the bay you can see the hills of Tijuana Mexico about 5 miles south and because of the nearness of the boarder there are government helicopters in the air around the clock patrolling the boarder and the waters just off of the coast. It's hard to tell from a distance if the helicopters are Coast Guard, Border Patrol, DEA, Navy, or a mix but they are in the air all the time. I know they need to keep a watch for illegals trying to get across the boarder but it's like the 'federales' are constantly watching over you, a little too Orwellian for me.

Dana Point CA

2008-11-08T09:45:00.000-08:00

Date: 11/8/2008
Location: Dana Point CA
Lat/Lon: 33 27.587 W 117 41.925 W
Weather: 75°, winds NW 5-10kts

We're in Dana Point now and it's time to catch up since our last entry.

After Half Moon Bay we went to the following locations -

Monterey - This is a center of tourist activity with large hotels, high end shops, and restaurants of all kinds. We got a slip among the commercial boats but we were close to the center of activity in the town. The downside is that it's a long walk to a full size grocery store, the nearest store is a Trader Joe's which is more of a high end speciality store. We left at 4 AM for the next passage.

San Simeon - We anchored here in mild swells and left the fish in the water to ease the movement of the boat. Not much here and we didn't go ashore arriving late in the day and leaving early the next morning.

Port San Luis - This is a protected bay on the south side of Point San Luis. We called the harbor patrol and got a mooring ball here for the night. Our next passage was around Point Arguello and Point Conception both of which have a reputation of being very nasty so we decided to leave Port San Luis late in the afternoon and round the points at night when we hoped they would be calmer and give us a better passage. The plan worked except when we rounded Point Conception where all of the guide books said the seas would lay down and life would be good. Wrong! When we came around the last point we ran into a strong SE wind, which was not forecasted, and we pounded into 6' steep sided waves for the last 6 hours into Santa Barbara.

Santa Barbara - This marina requires transients to first tie up at at a dock next to the harbor office and register and then they assign you a slip. The wind was blowing 20+ kts when we entered into the marina so docking was fun and then they assigned us a very narrow slip with a port side tie in an area of the marina with a strong current. Our docking was not easy and after our tough 18 hour overnighter this was not fun. This is not one of our favorite marinas and we would not recommend it.

Channel Island Harbor, Oxnard CA - A nice marina that was recommend to us by a fellow Nordhavn owner that we met in Campbell River, BC and has been following our blog. There is a large shopping center near by and we were able to go to a full size grocery store to reprovision. We spent one night here and left the following morning with a good weather forecast. Wrong again! As we entered the channel heading out of the marina we could see the swells breaking over the breakwater but we foolishly proceeded on only to be met by 15' steep swells outside the breakwater. Imagine riding a motorcycle up and over your house, remember I said imagine, then up and over the house next to you and so on down the road. That's what it's like in that size of swell. Once we got into deeper water, over 100', the swells lowered a bit and strung out to a longer period but there was also a 20 kt wind and 4' chop on top of the swells. We should have turned around as soon as we saw the seas breaking over the breakwater and waited for better conditions. But we persevered and continued on.

Marina del Rey - This marina offers the best transient dockage of any marina we have been in. They have a whole section of the marina blocked off for transients that has slips and side tie docks and it's first come, first served so you just come in, find a spot and tie up. No docking at the marina office first and then going to an assigned slip. The shore side around the transient area is a beautiful park with lovely landscaped walking paths through the area. There is also a large shopping center with a huge grocery store less than a mile walk from the docks.

At this point we are tired and need to stop and rest for a few weeks before heading on to Mexico. We have a slip in Dana Point for a month to rest up and take care of some business. I've developed a pain in my left leg due to a bulged disk in my lower back so I'm going to get some physical therapy to try to fix that and we're going to rent a car and go to Costco and WalMart to reprovision. As Linda says "we need to rest up and renew our enthusiasm for this trip".

Half Moon Bay CA

2008-10-22T16:28:00.001-07:00

Date: 10/22/2008
Location: Half Moon Bay
Lat/Lon: 37°30.116'N 122°28.989'W
Weather: Sunny & Warm, 70° @ 7 AM, 85° @ 2 PM

We left Pier 39 in SF Sunday at 9 AM and had a nice cruise down the coast 20 miles to Half Moon Bay. Weather forecast was for winds 15-25 for most of the week so we decided to take a slip in the marina rather than anchor out although there is plenty of good anchorage within the outer breakwater. We also had our mail forwarded to the Harbormaster from Anacortes because we wanted to make sure that we would get our ballots in time to vote. As it turned out the weather the first part of the week was milder than forecasted and we could have easily gone on but once we ordered the mail we were stuck waiting for it to arrive.

Luckily, Half Moon Bay has a beautiful marina with newer docks and a lovely setting. The downside is that the nearest shops are 4 miles in the town, all that's around the marina are restaurants, hotels, and fishing charter businesses. The beach that runs from the north end of the bay, where the marina is located, to the town 5 miles to the south is a beautiful southern California beach and it's a park so you can walk the entire length. We walked a couple of miles before turning back. It's nice to be in a warm area, I actually washed the boat today in shorts, t-shirt, and bare feet. We don't miss the cold and damp of the PNW at all.

The mail arrived today, Wednesday, so we'll be off at first light tomorrow for a 9 hour cruise to Monterey. A front is passing over Friday & Saturday so it looks like we'll be in Monterey for 3 or 4 days waiting for the seas to lay down.

Walkin' on water -

San Francisco

2008-10-20T16:50:00.001-07:00

Date: 10/13/2008
Location: Pier 39 Marina, San Francisco, CA
Lat/Lon: 37°48.514'N 122°24.515'W
Weather: sunny

We came under the Golden Gate today, on our own boat! We had planned to go to Sausalito but the only slip we could find there had 220 VAC and we have 120 VAC on the boat so we came to the Pier 39 East Marina on Fisherman's Terminal in San Francisco. Our slip there had a strong current running through it with ocean surges combined with large tour boat wake so the boat moved around like we were in a storm on the ocean with the lines tugging and moaning as we move back and forth and up and down. All this movement made us feel slightly nauseated whenever we were on the boat. But it could be worse, in the marina right next to us, the Pier 39 West Marina, they have more surge from the swells and have over 300 sea lions on the docks, barking and stinking up the place. No thanks. If you visit SF on your own boat, do not go to the Pier 39 West Marina. The smell alone will drive you out of the place.

Pier 39 looks like it came right out of Disney. Dozens of shops and restaurants, everything from the Hard Rock Cafe to Buba Gump's Shrimp to an NFL Football shop. Crowds of people everyday from opening at 10 AM until the late evening. We heard that Pier 39 attracts the 3rd largest number of tourist of any place in the US (Disney's two places being 1st and 2nd). The original Fisherman's Wharf is down the waterfront a few blocks and still looks authentic.

We played tourist for 6 days here walking the entire Fisherman's Wharf area multiple times, taking a city tour on a double decker bus, going to China Town to look around and had lunch in a good Chinese restaurant (Chinatown Restaurant). SF is a fun place to play tourist but the crowds and noise will sap your energy if you're not use to it plus with our boat rocking and rolling all night long due to the tidal surge and boat wakes, we never did get a good nights sleep while moored there.

On Saturday Linda's brother Kent drove into town from his home in Grass Valley (3 hours one way!) and spent the afternoon visiting. We had lunch at Louis Italian Restaurant on Pier 39 (bad service, bad food, thumbs down) but had a good visit.

Bodega Bay Photos

2008-10-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

Date: 10/12/2008
Location: Bodega Bay
Weather:Sunny 70°, winds 5-10 kts

We went for a long walk to Bodega Head at the end of the bay and looked out over the ocean. We both like Bodega Bay because it's the first place we've been on this journey where it feels warm and the sky and waters are blue. Here's a few pictures from our walk.

Looking north from Bodega Head -

A deer we came upon in the Biological Reserve part of Bodega Bay.

Great Egret. Notice the deep blue color of the water. Water tempature in the bay is 58°F.

White Pelicans -

Bodega Bay CA

2008-10-09T14:31:00.000-07:00

Date: 10/7/2008
Location:Bodega Bay CA
Lat/Lon: 38°19.801'N 123°03.460'W
Weather:windy N 15-20 kts, sunny, 65 F

There was a 1 1/2 day window of good weather before the next front arrived so we left Fort Bragg in the late afternoon on Monday and did another overnighter to Bodega Bay. The NOAA weather forecast again understated the winds and we spent the night surfing in a following sea of 8-12' waves with the wind blowing NNW 25-30 kts. It's not as uncomfortable as pounding into the waves and once you get use to the motion of the waves overtaking and then passing under the boat, it was an ok ride. The swells were coming from our starboard (right) aft quarter so when a swell would overtake us the aft of the boat would rise up and be pushed to the port (left). As the swell passed under the boat the aft lowers and moves down the backside of the wave to the starboard as the bow rises. Our 46 Nordhavn has a very round bottom so her motion is smooth, not snappy like flatter bottom boats. She does move around a lot so in larger seas above 4' you need to get in sync with the motion and always have one hand holding on. After each passage, Linda and I both have sore muscles in our legs and waist from the constant motion and the body's natural instinct to fight against it.

Bodega Bay looks like southern CA, low brown hills, round, bushy trees and blue sky. For the first time it seems that we've finally reached a different area of the coast. The marina is relatively new and it doesn't smell of rotting fish like many of the fishing ports we've been at on the coast. There is a small town on the other side of the bay that we can walk to to get some groceries and do some shopping. Everyone has seen Bodgea Bay, they just may not know it. This is the location where Hitchcock filmed 'The Birds', not in New England.

There is a big front moving down the coast over the next few days with high winds and seas, so it looks like we'll be here at least through the weekend and that's ok with us. With the market falling like a rock, Bodega Bay is a nice place to go broke.

Pleasant overnighter from Eureka to Fort Bragg

2008-10-08T10:21:00.000-07:00

Date: 10/1/2008
Location: Fort Bragg CA, Noyo River Basin
Lat/Lon: 39°25.440'N 123°48.082'W
Weather: High clouds, lite wind

We departed Eureka marina at 11:30 AM after a good (12 hour) night sleep. There was calm winds and sun as we motored out the channel against the flood tide. The bar was calm and we took a heading to go around Cape Mendocino, the most westerly cape on the lower 48 except for Cape Flattery which we rounded on August 31st. The seas built to 3-5' off of the cape but quickly flattened as we rounded the cape and headed south. We had a southerly current so we slowed the engine to 1250 RPM and still maintained over 5 kts. Fort Bragg is 100 south of Eureka, Humboldt Bay, which would take 15.5 hours at our normal cruising speed of 6.5 kts but we again were constrained by the currents in the bar. Humboldt Bay flooded until 1:15 PM and the flood in Fort Bragg started at 7:30 AM the following morning so we had nearly 18 hours to cover the 100 NM for an average speed of 5.5 kts. Added to the equation is that we wanted to get around Cape Mendocino, which has a reputation as being quiet nasty, in the daylight. Our plan was to leave early from Humboldt Bay to make the flood and hurry, if you can call 6.5 kts hurrying, around the Cape and then slow down for the remainder of the trip and arrive at Fort Bragg at day break.

On this trip the weather cooperated and was as forecasted so we had a nice overnight voyage. In the early morning I was getting very sleepy so I laid down at 6 AM for an hour and when Linda woke me she said it was a nice morning but the swells were very large. What we saw when the sun came up was swells up to 15' tall but over 15 seconds in duration so it was very gentle ride as we rode the swells up and down. We called the CG and they reported that the bar and channel had 2-4' swells and there were no restrictions so we proceeded in. The CG also asked for our boat name, description, documentation number, number of people on board, number of life preservers, and our GPS position. We pulled the stabilizer fish out of the water at the outer buoy and proceeded in. The channel is very narrow and turns sharply after you pass under the Highway 1 bridge and other than being temporarily blinded by the rising sun, we had a good trip across the bar and through the narrow channel. Once inside the channel we pulled up the paravane arms and made our way to our slip in the basin. The basin has narrow fairways and the finger piers are no longer than 40' so getting a 48' boat in was a bit of a challenge but there was no wind or current.

There is no wifi in the basin but there is wifi further up the river 1/2 a mile at a small boat basin that has a RV park. We use the SSB radio and SailMail.com to get text email and download weather forecasts. To get to a store we have to walk a mile up a steep hill but there's a nice shopping center and grocery store at the top. There is a winter weather pattern developing with high winds and seas so we might be here for a week or more waiting for good weather. Such is the life of cruisers trying to make their way down the coast. We hope that when we get below San Francisco the weather will improve and become more stable.

The over night trip from Hell.

2008-10-08T10:18:00.000-07:00

The plan was to leave late in the afternoon today and cruise all night arriving in Eureka for the flood tide at 8 AM. The trip is 72 NM which will take 12 to 13 hours and we want to leave CC in daylight so that will make us 2 hours early arriving in Eureka. We'll just 'hang out' off the bar to Humboldt Bay until sun rise at 7 AM and then we'll call the CG and find out the bar conditions and if everything is ok, we proceed in. It's 72 NM from CC to Eureka and flood tides this week are occurring in the morning so we needed to arrive in the morning hence the overnight trip. The weather forecast was for winds SSW 5-10 kts so we were looking forward to an easy trip.

We departed CC at 5 pm in 5 kt winds and had a route laid out that would take us 15 NM offshore so we wouldn't have to worry about crab pots. Once we were offshore we turned south as the sun went down. At 10 PM I went to lie down and Linda was on watch. Around midnight I was awaken by the boat pounding into waves and I came up to the pilothouse to see how Linda was doing. We were off Trinidad Head (41°02.910'N 124°19.800'W) and the wind and seas had started building over the last hour, the wind was now SW 20-25 kts and the seas seemed to be steep and 6-8' in height. We reduced the engine by 100 RPM and that somewhat eased the motion of the boat. I decided to stay up and see how things developed, plus I wouldn't be able to sleep with all this going on. At night it is very difficult to tell what the waves look like, how high and steep they are, but we could see white foam on the wave tops and we were taking spray over the bow.

In the next hour the wind continued to increase and the seas were building and Linda started to feel seasick. Quickly she progressed from feeling a little queasy to violently vomiting in the aft head. She was very sick and spent the rest of the night either kneeling in front of the head or lying in the passage way outside of it. I remained on watch as the seas built and the winds reached 40-45 kts and the sea became very steep and over 12' high. The boat was taking spray over the pilothouse as she pounded into the waves yet the boat was handling it well and although we were uncomfortable, especially Linda, we were in no danger. I continued to reduce the engine speed trying to ease the pounding with little effect. Our main concern was what would we do if we could not get across the bar at the Humboldt River and into Eureka. The next port was Fort Bragg 100 NM further down the coast and we didn't want to continue like this for another 16 hours.

By 6 AM we were off of Humboldt Bay and the seas and winds had come down as we came closer to shore. We're not sure if the high winds we experienced were caused by a passing front that was heighten by Trinidad Head or was just an off shore disturbance and had we been closer to shore we would not have had the high winds. Whatever the cause, as we approached the shore off of Eureka the wind died down to 10kts and the seas to 3-4'. We still had an hour to sunrise and 2 hours to the flood on the bar. We cruised 3 NM past the bar entrance and turned around with the seas coming from behind us and the boat motion calmed way down and Linda started to feel much better. I called the Coast Guard and they reported 2-4' swells in the bar entrance with no restriction. We easily crossed the bar and once in the channel pulled up our paravanes and made our way up to the marina on Woodley Island across from town. Once tied up at the dock and registered we both collapsed in bed for 4 hours, safely secured to a dock. That night we both slept for over 12 hours, recovering from the rough night.

In the morning we both felt refreshed and decided to continue onto Fort Bragg. The marina at Woodley Island in Eureka had little to offer other than a nice restaurant but it was a long distance to any shops in town so we decided to continue while the weather was good.

Crescent City CA

2008-09-26T15:50:00.000-07:00

Date: 9/24/2008
Location: Crescent City CA
Lat/Lon: 41°44.929'N 124° 11.010'W
Weather: fog this morning, sunny afternoon, calm winds

A pleasant cruise down from Brookings to Crescent City, calm winds, near flat seas, and fog. We had no more than 1/2 mile visibility for most of the trip and could not see any of Point St. George just north of Crescent City that has large rocks extending out 6 miles offshore.

We were in Crescent City in November of 2006 for 3 weeks waiting for good weather when we brought the boat north from Dana Point. We had bought the boat in October and had difficulty finding an insurance company to cover us for the trip north. Insurance in southern CA, no problem. Coverage in WA, no problem. Coverage for the trip up the coast in November, no way! We finally found a company through an agent in Seattle that was willing to issue a policy for the trip as long as we hired a delivery captain and one crew member, in addition to myself, to make the trip. They had to pre-approve the resume of the captain and mate and be informed when we were underway and when we were in port. As it turned out it was an uneventful trip expect for waiting in Crescent City for 3 weeks.

The port here is almost all commercial fishing and crabbing boats, but it seems very quiet compared to Ilwaco and Coos Bay commercial fleets. There is some activity on the boats but most are just sitting idle waiting for the crab season to open after Thanksgiving. We seem to be the only pleasure boat here at this time. We're spending our time working on a broken VacuFlush head and walking the mile into the shopping district and getting some groceries. Maybe we'll catch a movie while we're in town.

Our next stop is Eureka on Humboldt Bay. The bar entrance can be treacherous and should only be crossed during flood tides. For the next week flood only occurs in the mornings, so we plan on leaving here Saturday or Sunday in the late afternoon and arrive in Eureka in the early morning on the flood. Another overnighter but we'll arrive in daylight this time. Linda's starting to really like these night runs.

Bandon to Brookings

2008-09-21T09:44:00.001-07:00

Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body : but rather to skid in proclaiming " WOW - WHAT A RIDE!"

Our 'plan' was to go from Bandon to Port Orford, a bay on the coast on the south side of Cape Blanco. There is a small community there but no marina, just an anchorage that is well protected form northerly swells and wind. We left Bandon at noon and after a very comfortable ride we arrived at Port Orford around 5 PM. The problem here was that the swells were coming from from the south west and the anchorage was rolling with 4-5' swells and the bottom was hard with kelp beds so we didn't feel we could get a good anchor set. So what to do now? What was plan B? The next port was Brookings, 46 miles south which would put us in there after midnight. We could follow our new friends on Voyager to San Francisco but I was low on coffee and wouldn't make it for 3 more days. So it looks like Brookings is the best option, I called the Coast Guard at Chetco River in Brookings and they reported that the bar was calm and we'd have no problems getting across. We gave the CG our boat name and told them we would be there between midnight and 1AM. We had called the Port at Brookings earlier in the day and they said they had lots of room on the transit dock and gave us instructions where to tie up. Being the intrepid adventurers that we are, or are becoming, off we headed into the night and a midnight arrival at a new port.

The trip was non-eventual with a beautiful sunset over the ocean and a nearly full moon rising over the land. When we were 6 miles out of Brookings we called the CG and they reported that the bar was still calm and wished us a good passage over the bar. We had expected the CG to offer the come out and guide us in and were a little surprised when they didn't offer but we felt confident that we wouldn't have any problems. We carefully laid a course for the outer channel buoy and went over our plans for when we would pull the paravanes up and what buoys we needed to identify. Our plan was to slow to an idle and pull up the paravanes between the outer buoy "CR" and buoy "2". As we approached the "CR" buoy there was a loud noise as a paravane fish caught a crab pot and pulled the rigging tight. We immediately pulled the throttle back and put the engine into neutral. I went to the aft and could see we had snagged two commercial pots on the port side and the fish was being pulled tight out of the water as we dragged the pots across the bottom. As the boat slowed I pulled in the fish with the electric winch and fortunately was able to easily unhook the pot floats from around the fish with no damage to the fish or rigging. I then pulled the starboard fish out of the water and went up on the top deck and pulled the paravane arms up. Back in the pilothouse, we both took a few minutes to calm down, let our heart rates return to somewhere near normal and regain our focus on the task at hand in getting across the bar and through the channel.

Brookings has range markers, two bright red lights, one low and close to shore at the head of the channel, the other higher and back a 1000' feet. You line up the two lights, one on top of the other and follow that line straight down the channel. That combined with our GPS and chartplotter made it easy to get a fix on the channel and proceed in. The channel is 100' wide with rock jetties on either side. We slowly made our way down the channel and were able to get in without any problem. What you don't realize is how dark it is at night and how little you can see. If it doesn't have a light on it or directly above it, you don't see it, so things tend to appear right next to you out of the dark. It's a little nerve racking to say the least. We would not recommend entering a port that you have not been to before in the dark and will not do it again unless it's absolutely necessary. Once we were safely tied up we sat down with a beer and a glass of wine and were thankful we had such a tuff little ship that could take 10' 'sneaker' waves and snagging crab pots and just shake it off and keep going. We wouldn't trade Discovery for any other boat out there.

Bandon, OR

2008-09-21T09:32:00.000-07:00

Date: 9/18/2008
Location: Bandon OR
Lat/Lon: 43°07.250'N 124°24.693'W
Weather: Sunny, lite winds

Bandon is a beautiful little sea side town with a well kept, quaint 'old town' that has a lot of tourist shops, every 4th storefront seems to be a coffee shop but that's ok. They're all newer buildings with a weathered sea side style. The downside of Bandon for boaters is that the bar is considered the most dangerous on the Oregon coast. We went in there from Coos Bay after a short 4 hour run on a very calm day and had a very nice bar crossing.

The next morning at 8 AM, on the ebb tide, there were waves breaking half way across the bar. We waited until the flood started and the bar looked better with waves breaking only on the end of the jetties. We cautiously proceeded outward, the bar at the end of the jetties had 3-4' gentle swells but in another 100' we were faced with 10-12' 'sneaker' waves that were steep sided and breaking 50' feet on either side of us. I slowed the boat and her bow quickly rose up the face of the wave and down the backside then up and back down on the following wave. Wow! Not a drop of water over the bow just a quick up and down hobby horse motion with the wave tossing the boat like it was a cork.Following this was a period of lower, round swells and then another set of steep sided, sneaker waves. One more set of steep waves and we were out of the worse of it and into deeper water. As the swells move toward shore and the water starts to shallow to under 50' even gentle ocean swells can become tall and steep 'sneaker' waves. We liked Bandon a lot and would highly recommend a visit but by car not by boat.

Once we were out into deeper water, over 100', the swells lowered and we settled into a leisurely cruise. About 30 minutes out we saw, and nearly ran over, a sunfish, Mola mola. This is a large flat fish that floats on the surface of the water, the one we saw was around 3 x 2 ft in size but they get much larger. We saw it's flipper sticking up and then as we passed it we saw the shape, strange fish. We also saw a 6' shark swimming in circles like it was chasing it's tail.

Coos Bay OR

2008-09-21T09:31:00.000-07:00

Date: 9/16/2008
Location:Coos Bay OR
Lat/Lon: 43°20.811'N 124°19.332'W
Weather: foggy night and morning, low clouds in the afternoon

After 13 days in Ilwaco first waiting for mail and then the weather, we left Monday 9/15 and traveled 29 hrs and 186 miles to Coos Bay Oregon. We decided to skip Newport and the other small harbors between the Columbia River and Coos Bay because we wanted to get as far south as we could during this good weather. 'Good weather' being low sea swells and mild winds not necessarily sunny and warm weather. We have come to the conclusion that the WA and OR coasts are to be endured not enjoyed by cruisers. The harbors are scattered and problematic in anything less than ideal seas and there is not much to see or enjoy of the coast from the sea side. In a car it's a different story.

We crossed the Columbia Bar at 9:30 AM just after it turned to flood and it was very mild, 2-4' long period swells with W 5 kt winds. We were told by the fisherman on the dock in Ilwaco that there shouldn't be any crab pots out there this time of year but just in case, we should stay outside the 50 fathom line so we stayed in about 350' of water, 6 to10 NM offshore the entire trip and the only pots we saw were a group of very old ones off of Tilimook. Monday evening the fog came in and visibility was around 1/4 mile the entire night. Thank goodness for a good radar. We had to dodge a fishing boat off of Newport, he was heading inward toward shore and would not answer numerous radio calls so we turned 90 degrees to starboard to avoid a collision. We passed about 1/2 mile from each other and all we could see was the glow from his fishing lights. We passed a few other fishing boats and tugs but nothing exciting. The seas picked up around night fall but calmed down in the evening and by morning it was as calm as our entrance into the Columbia. We called the CG outside of Coos Bay for bar conditions which were 1-3' with no restrictions but we did not get inspected when we got in. Coos Bay is similar to Ilwaco in that it's mostly commercial boats although there are 5 or 6 sailboats here, all heading south except for one heading north. The docks here are filthy, covered with seaweed and gull droppings. Locals come down to the docks to crab and when they pulled their pots they just toss the seaweed onto the dock and leave it there to rot. That combined with the cigarette butts and gull droppings make it a very unappealing place.

We did meet another very nice couple, Chris & Judy on Voyager, a 1990 46 Nordy. They had tried to get fuel around 3 pm and then leave for SF but the fuel dock was closed so they pulled in behind us on the dock. We had some tea with them in afternoon and then a glass of wine and then around 7:30 PM the fuel dock opened and they got some fuel, $3.57/gal, and then came onto Discovery for another glass of wine then went back to their boat at 9:30. They left for SF at 6 AM the following morning and we left around 11 AM for Bandon just 20 miles down the coast.

Ilwaco - A nice visit from family

2008-09-21T09:28:00.000-07:00

My brother and wife, Norm & Pat, came down Friday with their camper and spent two nights at the state park on Cape Disappointment. We spent most of Friday and Saturday with them and I had breakfast with them before they headed home. It was good to see them and spend some time visiting.

The marina at Ilwaco started to look dirty and run down by the time we left. It was good to get out of there and move on.

Ilwaco - The fishing fleet is in port.

2008-09-07T18:06:00.000-07:00

Date: 9/7/2008
Location:Ilwaco
Lat/Lon:
Weather: sunny

The port is filling up with commercial fishing boats that have been forced off of the coast because of high winds and seas. After dark last night a 55' fishing boat squeezed into the slip next to us with less than 12" to spare. He did an excellent job of bringing his boat in with a 15 kt side wind and he never touched us but we did have a few moments of high anxiety. He came over afterwards and apologized for the noise for having to run his generator and pumps all night but he had fish in the hold and had to keep them fresh. We understood, we're in their house here and we can't complain when they do what is necessary to earn a living.

Fun & Games:
Thursday we went to the local museum that focuses on Lewis & Clark items (it's free on Thursday). Thursday evening was an Art Walk through the local art galleries. Ilwaco has a surprising number of galleries and they were all serving complimentary wine. Fun!

Friday had a classic car event in town. They had what they called a 'slow drag' in the evening. It was a little hard to figure out but it was kind of like shuffle board with cars. They start off on a quarter mile track and then had to start gliding at a certain point and the closest to the line at the end won. No braking aloud. It was fun and there were a lot (30 maybe) of neat old cars to look at.

Sunday: We walked out to the Cape Disappointment light house and state park. It was a little too hot and the walk was a little too long and up and down hills but other than some sore muscles and one blister (on my right foot, second little toe in from the outside) we survived. Bring on the Ibuprofen.

The latest weather forecast is for high winds through Tuesday and then maybe a break. We hope to get out later in the week, we'll see what the weather does. If it's too rough for the commercial guys out there it is definitely too rough for us. We're 'weather wimps' and proud of it. On the other hand, Ilwaco is nice but we don't want to spend the winter here.

Ilwaco WA

2008-09-06T10:17:00.000-07:00

Date: 9/6/2008
Location: Ilwaco, WA
Lat/Lon: 46.3030°N 124.0411°W
Weather: Mostly sunny, windy

We made it to Ilwaco, Wa. Our first leg down the coast, 160 NM and 24 hours non-stop. We made this trip with a buddy boat, Jim & Naty on Nirvana, a 49 Defever pilothouse. They live in the Portland area and keep their boat on the river and have made this trip many times before so we followed their lead. I had been on the coast when we brought Discovery north after buying her in Dana Point CA in October 2006 but then we had a captain and another mate on board. Linda stayed at home for that trip. This time it was just the two of us. Being on the ocean is much different than boating on the inside passage where we have most of our experience and being on the ocean at night is very different from what we were use to. The ocean is always moving with swells from 3 to 6 feet in height, on a good day, and 6 to 10 seconds in duration from peak to peak. With the paravane stabilizers in the water the motion is easy and predictable but in order to walk around you always need one hand to hold on, the boat would lean 10° side to side with some 20° swings when a large swell passed under. During the night we each got a little sleep, me more than Linda. We both stayed awake for the sunset and first couple of hours of darkness getting use to being out at night and then I laid down on the pilothouse berth for 2 1/2 hours while Linda stood watch. Linda then went down to the mid cabin berth and managed to sleep almost 3 hours after which I slept for another 3 hours. We arrived at the Columbia River bar at noon, an hour after the start of the flood tide. You always want to cross a river bar on the flood tide so we timed our departure from Neah Bay to arrive at the Columbia bar on the flood tide. Thanks to the timing and fair weather, crossing the bar was a non-event. Jim & Naty then went onto Astoria a few miles down river and we pulled off in Ilwaco. After tying up we realized how tired we were and after registering at the office we both laid down for a nap followed by hot showers, dinner, and early to bed for a good night sleep.

Before leaving Neah Bay we fueled up at the Makah Mini-Mart fuel dock for $3.75 gal, no sales tax thank you, and then pulled into the Makah marina for the night. We now have enough fuel to make it well into Mexico. Being in the marina made it easier to talk with Jim & Naty about the plans for the next days passage to the Columbia River. The downside was that the marina smelled like diesel fuel and dead fish. The anchorage in Neah Bay is good, the marina is old, dirty, and stinks.

In Ilwaco we are in the land of commercial fisherman. There are only a few pleasure boats here and most of them are sport fishing boats. The marina has filled up as more of the commercial boats are forced off of the water due to the high winds on the coast. Most of them hope to get out on Monday. There is a fish processing plant here where the fisherman sell their fish and buy ice and salt. We enjoy being in with the commercial guys, they are generally a friendly and hard working group.

The 7 day forecast has high winds and seas until late on Wednesday and then starts to calm down so we hope to get out of here on Thursday and get down to Newport. We'll see, the weather can and will always change.

We posted some more pic's on our Web Photo Album, link on the right.

You gotta love this -

Getting ready to go

2008-08-27T15:42:00.000-07:00

It looks like we'll have a weather window open up this Monday to get around the corner so we're going to leave Port Angeles tomorrow, Thursday, and go to Neah Bay. We'll get fuel at the Makah Indian fuel dock, recent price of $3.75 gal vs $4.50 in Port Townsend. The reason fuel is so cheap in Neah Bay is that the Makah's don't pay state tax so we'll save nearly $400 getting enough fuel to take us all the way to Mexico and then some.

On Monday, friends of ours that are on their boat Nirvana here in Port Angeles are heading out to go to their home in Portland so we're going to follow them around Cape Flattery Monday and go non-stop to Ilwaco, WA. For those of you following our route on Google Earth that's from waypoint WA175 to WA512 without the stops in between. We're a little nervous about having our first ocean passage being an overnighter but it's easier this way than trying to time the tides for entering and departing La Push and Grays Harbor. We were looking at the tides trying to calculate what times to leave La Push or Grays Harbor on a flood in order to arrive at the next port on a flood and it just doesn't work out so going straight to Ilwaco will eliminate that problem. The weather looks good with sea swells under 5' so we should have a good passage

The Oregon coast has more ports that we can stop at than Washington so it will be an easier and more interesting trip after this first leg.

Waiting in Port Angeles

2008-08-25T09:37:00.000-07:00

Date: 8/25/2008
Location: Port Angeles
Lat/Lon: 48°07.498'N 123°27.068'W
Weather: Cool 58 F

We arrived here two days ago and will stay until Tuesday morning when we leave for Neah Bay. The weather in the Straits of Juan de Fuca are moderate but on the coast it's still blowing with 8-10' swells. Before we head around the corner we would like the swells to be lower than 5'. The 7 day forecast has the seas laying down next Sunday the 31st so we're going to wait in Neah Bay for a few days but be ready in case the seas improve before Sunday. If you look at a chart of the winds vs. the sea heights they do not move in sync, the winds can decrease without a corresponding decrease in the sea heights which can be affected by storms far out in the Pacific. It's the 'butterfly in China flaps it's wings and causes a hurricane in Florida' concept. Look at http://www.buoyweather.com and go to the Buoyweather Regions>United States>Washington and click on a red buoy dot off the Washington coast. That's what we're watching trying to determine when it's the right time to head out. We're getting anxious to get out on the ocean and start down the coast but we don't want to do anything foolish, we're going to be patient and wait for good weather. Too many people get into trouble or have an unnecessarily rough trip because they got tired of waiting and headed out before they should have. On the other hand, you don't want to be too cautious and miss a good weather window. So here we sit, hoping we're doing the right thing.

Port Angeles marina is a rather small but clean and well kept boat haven that, despite it's size, has quite a few mega yachts stopping over here. The reason some stop here is that Westport Yachts, a major yacht builder, is located here and Westport yachts will stop here for warranty work and repairs. As you can see from the photo, there are two large yachts moored just in front of us, the boat directly in front of us is 130' Westport, Miss Sydney. We feel like a pygmy in the land of giants.

Port Townsend

2008-08-21T17:49:00.000-07:00

Date: 8/21/2008
Location: Port Townsend
Weather: Periods of rain and wind and sunny and calm. A little bit of everything.

We've spent 5 nights in Port Townsend working out some problems with the water maker, getting supplies and spare parts, and spending a nice evening with Linda's cousin Jill who was nice enough to take us out to dinner and show us her new house in Port Ludlow. The weather out on the coast is predicted to blow a little the first part of next week so we're in no hurry to get out to Neah Bay and sit for 4 or 5 days waiting for the seas to calm down. Better to sit here and Port Angeles before heading out to the coast. We plan on leaving Friday for Port Angeles and spend a couple of days there before heading to Neah Bay.

The photo is of us, on the left, in our slip with a very nicely converted fishing boat next to us. This is the 'commercial' section of the marina although there were just as many pleasure boats, mostly sail boats, as there were commercial fishing boats.

Coastal Itinerary & Routes

2008-08-14T16:51:00.000-07:00

Date: 8/13/2008
Location: Friday Harbor
Lat/Lon: 48°32.480'N 123°00.780'W
Weather:Sunny and warm

We've added a new link with our planned coastal itinerary and a download of our routes in Google Earth format. In Google Earth, if you don't have it you can get it at http://earth.google.com/, you can see our navigation route with waypoints down the coast. A waypoint is a location you aim for in your route, each one labeled with a unique name. In our future logs we will refer to specific waypoints so you know exactly where we are. Right now the route only extends through Oregon, we will post the complete route when we're finished entering it in the computer. In case your wondering, we didn't just make up these routes and waypoints, they're from the book Exploring the Pacific Coast by Don Douglass & Reanne Hemmingway-Douglass, the bible for making this trip.
The planned route is a list of towns we plan to visit with the distance between them. The 'hours' is approximately how long it will take us to travel between them at 6.5 kts per hour, about 8 MPH. There are obliviously more places along the coast but these are the best places to stop if you're not planning any overnight passages.

Moment of doubt

2008-08-06T15:54:00.000-07:00

As we headed south with the market falling like a stone and fuel prices rising without end we began to think that perhaps it would be prudent to delay our trip to Mexico for a year and hope for better financial times to come. In fact that is what we decided to do. We announced our change of plans to our family and friends and made plans to winter over in Friday Harbor. We would need to buy a car and we'd want some sort of TV to while away the long, cold, windy winter nights but it was not difficult to stay and dream of leaving next year. While making these plans we discovered a kind of glum had come over us, it was like we were giving up on our dream. We told ourselves it was only a delay of one year but what would happen if next year the market was still down and fuel prices high? Would we wait another year, and another until the dream had passed and we started talking about moving ashore?

No! Now is the time! The boat is ready and we're ready, the market will rise or fall wherever we are so we might as well be in Mexico spending our last dime on tequila in a bar on the beach than sitting in the rain and cold of the PNW waiting for just that right moment to leave. So we're heading south, now is the time. If the finances don't work out than so be it, but we have a felling they will. Better to live the dream than regret you didn't try. We had our moment of doubt but found the strength, or foolishness, to take the riskier course. We'll see how it ends.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain

Back in the San Juan Islands

2008-08-04T08:17:00.000-07:00

We're back in the San Juan Islands in the Pacific Northwest. I haven't kept up on posting our progress so I'll try to list some of our favorite places along the way.

Note: We added a link, to the right, for our 'Alaska 2008 Trip Summary'. This is a day by day listing of each place we visited during our 103 day trip to Alaska.

See our Web Photo Album under 'British Columbia Southbound' for more pictures of these locations.

Tuesday June 24, 2008
Location: Nettle Basin, Lowe Inlet off of Grenville Channel
This is a beautiful bay with a large stream entering in the back. Contrary to the guide books, we had a difficult time getting the anchor to set in the south side of the bay but we were able to get a hold in the north east corner. The bottom seemed to be hard rock with a thin mud covering. It was a calm night and we had a lot of room around us so we didn't have any problems.

Saturday June 28, 2008
Location: Boat Inlet off of Reid Passage, BC
Lat/Lon: 52.3085°N 128.3726°W

This is a small lagoon that you enter through a narrow passage that you have to transit on the upper half of the tide. We went through with 8 feet under our keel at the lowest point. Once inside you are rewarded by an unspoiled bay not a quarter of a mile across surrounded by old growth forest. We were the only boat there and when I got up at 2 AM to check the anchor it was so dark that I could not see the shore, I had to turn on the spot light to locate the tree line. The sky was full of stars unlike any night sky you can see in the city. In the afternoon we went for a short walk on the rocky beach and then returned to our dink to continue exploring the bay. 10 minutes later when we looked back at the beach that we were just on there was a black bear not 100 feet from where we had been. He was the largest black bear we have ever seen and no matter how close we came he would not look up or run off. He spent 30 minutes eating the long fresh grass on the shore before he turned into the trees. Linda may never walk on a shore in a wilderness area again.

Wednesday July 2, 2008
Location: Rounding Cape Caution and Blunden Bay

There is an old saying, 'fog is your friend' because it normally brings calm seas. Well, we had a lot of friends coming around Cape Caution and the following day crossing from Blunden Bay to Port McNeill. We have 2 very good radars and AIS (Automatic Identification System) so we can see other vessels, the problem is other boats, especially small go fast fishing boats, running into us. On two occasions we had to stop the boat because we saw small boats approaching us quickly that would have run into us if we hadn't changed course. These little boats don't have radar and didn't see us until they were less than 100 feet away when they would turn sharply to avoid us.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday July 3,4,5, 2008
Location: Port McNeill

We really like Port McNeill, a small town on the North East coast of Vancouver Island. It's well kept marina is right next to the shopping area with a good grocery store, coffee shops, and restaurants.

Monday July 7, 2008
Location: Beaver Inlet off of Loughborugh Inlet

With the Spring currents in Johnstone Strait opposing us we decided to go into the back channels and discovered a great anchorage in Beaver Inlet. This is a well protected, long bay that has good holding. There is a cabin and dock at the head of the bay with a float home on the other side but once you are in the back half of the bay there is no evidence of other people. We shared the bay with one other boat that was courteous enough to anchor well away from us.

Wednesday July 9, 2008
Location: Von Donop Bay, Cortes Island

With a blow coming, we decided duck into this well protected bay for a couple of days. As with all of Desolation Sound at this time of year the bay was crowded with summer cruisers but there was adequate space and we spent two nights swinging in the wind. The outboard motor on our dinghy was starting to run rough and fuel would leak out of the carburetor after a few minutes of use.

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday July 13, 14, 15 2008
Location: Newcastle Island, Nanimo, BC

We anchored on the edge of this busy anchorage and rocked and rolled as many boats sped by us as if we weren't even there. I worked on the outboard motor but only succeeded in dropping a critical part into 20 feet of water. Not a good day. We called around and ordered the dropped part from a dealer in Bellingham WA. We did have a nice meal at the Dinghy Dock restaurant.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday July 17, 18, 19 2008
Location: Squalicum Harbor, Bellingham WA

Windy city, every day the wind would start out at 5-8 kts and build to 15-20 kts by late afternoon. We walked the 4 blocks to the outboard motor dealer to pick up our dropped part only to find that it didn't arrive because it was not in the Seattle warehouse and has to come out of Wisconsin which would take another week. We needed to get some groceries but there are no stores within walking distance of the marina but the marina has a shuttle bus and will take you anywhere you want in the local area. They took us to an excellent Heagen grocery store and we were stunned by the size and selection in the store. We were use to the medium to small stores located in the small towns up the coast so this was a shock. We also connected with some old friends, Peter and Carolyn, that we had not seen for over 2 years. They were staying in their RV just north of town and we spent most of two days with them. That was a nice treat. We didn't look forward to returning to Bellingham to pick up the part in a week, although the marina is cheap, so Peter and Carolyn offered to get the part and bring it to us in Anacortes. Nice people.
We go up at 5:30 AM on Sunday to try to get off the dock before the wind kicked up. The wind was blowing from our beam and pinning us against the dock. By 6:00 the wind was up to 5-7 kts but we were able to get clear of the dock. When we got out of the marina the wind increased and by the time we were into Bellingham Bay it was blowing over 40kts. The waves had built to 4-6 feet, this was some of the nastiest conditions we had seen all summer. The weather forecast had been for winds 10-15kts. As we got further away from Bellingham and into the San Juan Islands the wind decreased and it turned into a nice day. The marina in Bellingham is a great place but the wind really sucks, perhaps it you were a sailboater...

Back in Canada

2008-06-27T16:09:00.000-07:00

Saturday June 21, 2008
Location: Pillsbury Bay, Prince Rupert, British Columbia
Lat/Lon: 54°19.233'N, 130°19.190'W
Weather: Hi 58°, Overcast and rain

Prince Rupert is the Canadian Customs port of entry for all boats entering Canada from Alaska and they have the most screwed up entry system of any city I've been in. To start with there is no public dock for customs, you must tie up at the Prince Rupert Rowing & Yacht Club marina, the public docks, which are full of local commercial boats, or, as we were told by a Canadian customs agent, in person, in May, you can dock at the Atlin Terminal dock. Once you're docked you must find a public telephone and call the customs office. Your cell phone will not work in PR because they have a private phone company and it does not accept calls from any other carrier. The PRR&YC is a private marina and is always full during the summer and nearly impossible to get into so we decided to take an open spot at the Atlin Terminal. After docking I walked up the dock only to find the gate locked with no way of getting to the phone both 20 feet outside the gate. There was no official looking person around so I turned to go back to the boat. Above my head was a sign that said 'Restricted Area, Authorized persons only!', 'Area under video surveillance.' Great, not only can I not get to the phone to clear customs but I'm an unauthorized person in a restricted area. So I walked back to the boat expecting a guard to appear at any moment when a lady leaned out of the boat docked in front of us and offered me the use of her security gate key to get the past the gate and call customs. For this persons protection I will not reveal her name or the name of the boat she was on but she has my eternal gratitude for her act of kindness.

Once you get Canadian Customs on the phone they are very professional and the process is simple and straight forward. When we received our clearance number we were off to Pillsbury Cove across the bay from town for a quiet night at anchor.
The next morning we we're off early for what we thought would be a long day. In the channel heading south out of PR the Canadian ferry 'Northern Adventurer' passed us nearly at full speed in the narrow part of the channel that is not ¼ mile wide. The wake from the ferry is 8 to 10 feet steep and a hazard to any boat in the area let alone to boats caught close by in the channel. The Canadian ferries are notorious for waking pleasure boats and I'm sure the crew got a big laugh seeing us tossed around by their wake. I just wish they would give the crew some lessons in common courtesy and seamanship.

Before we got to Grenville Channel the tide had turned against us so we decide to change our plans and head to a beautiful cove we had visited last year, Captain Cove (53.8097°N 130.1977°W) off the head of Petrel Channel. We stayed 2 nights here sitting in the rain and low clouds resting and waiting for better weather which never came.

Tuesday, June 24th, we continued south in Grenville Channel to Nettle Basin (53.5622°N 129.5726°W) in the back of Lowe Inlet. Nettle Basin is ½ NM round and 70-120 feet deep. We tried anchoring where the guide books recommend but the anchor felt like it was dragging across a hard, flat, rock bottom. After two attempts to set the anchor in the southern sided of the bay we tried a small bight on the northern side and the anchor seemed to catch. The forecast was for calm winds so we set the anchor alarm and settled in for the night. The weather was lite rain and low clouds with temps in the mid 50's. We are so looking forward to Mexico.

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Ketchikan AK

2008-06-19T18:36:00.000-07:00

We've been in Ketchikan for the the last 3 days and hope to leave tomorrow, June 20th, to continue south. The weather here has been great, sunny and 60's, it looks like summer has finally arrived in SE just as we are leaving. We like Ketchikan and have done a lot of chores and errands while we've been here including a trip to WalMart and Safeway, and of course Starbucks.

I added a new album to our Web Photo Album, link in the left column, where I posted all of my pictures of commercial working boats from SE Alaska. I enjoy walking the docks looking at all of the fishing boats, old and new, rundown and freshly painted, and thought I would add an album dedicated to just working boats. I'll add more albums for each location we pass through.

Petersburg, AK

2008-06-13T10:38:00.001-07:00

Location: Petersburg, AK
Lat/Lon: 56.8096°N 132.9672°W
Weather: Low 41°, Hi 50° F, Steady constant rain, Winds 5-10 kts

Hooray! We have wifi in Petersburg so I uploaded some new photos to the Web Album.

We left Goose Bay early Wednesday morning and cruised 10 ½ hours for 70 NM all the way to Petersburg arriving around 5:30 PM. After a rather dicey docking, not my best effort, we went to a Mexican restaurant/bar and Linda had a burrito and I had a enchilada. It's an odd little place, the restaurant and bar are two different companies but share the same building and space, they're only separated by the fact that the bar floor is one step higher than the restaurant. The food is served on paper plates with plastic forks and knives and if you want a beer you have to get up and walk into the bar and get it yourself. They still smoke in the bars up here. Alaska is big on individual rights and part of that is they don't prevent people from smoking in bars, and most people seem to smoke up here. There are limits though, there is a sign on the bar door that says -

No Dogs Allowed in the Bar. No exceptions!

Petersburg is a small town in a remote area of SE Alaska but it's fishing industry has the largest fishing catch, by dollar value, of any port in the US including the lower 48 states. That's a lot of fish. Things are busy around the port this week, the Dungeness crab season opens Sunday at 12:00 and the boats are busy loading pots and filling up on ice. Most of the people working on the boats are young men although some of the boats are family businesses with up to 3 generations working on them including the women. The young people that work the fishing boats live a very different life than young people down south.

Seems summer might be over. There was a lot of sun in May and now we're in a rainy windy pattern that is driving us south. We're tired of being cold and wet so were heading south two weeks earlier than planned. We still plan on spending two weeks around Anacortes and then heading down the coast the first of August rather than mid August.

We plan to leave here on Saturday and be in Ketchikan Wednesday and spend 3 days there before crossing into Canada.

Are we lazy cruisers?

2008-06-10T21:22:00.000-07:00

We have been traveling with other boaters that seem to do a lot more than we do as we cruise around and it's started to make me wonder if we're not just lazy boaters. One couple we've been cruising with, Art & Diane, often come into an anchorage in the early afternoon, set their anchor, immediately lower the dingy from the top deck of the boat, take their dog, Lewis, to the shore to do his thing, rush out and sets crab or shrimp pots, go fishing for a few hours and then pull the pots and clean the catch and make a delicious meal.. While all this is going on we're taking naps, lazily working on some small boat projects, taking some photos and if it's not raining, we'll lower our dink and take a short trip around the anchorage. We love the traveling, the adventure of turning into a new bay, looking for the perfect anchorage and settling in once the anchor is down but we're not that crazy about eating crab or shrimp and fishing is fun but killing and cleaning the fish is not something I really like doing. Linda finds it strenuous enough deciding whether to defrost chicken or pork for dinner and finishing this blog entry is reason enough for me to take a nap.
Part of the reason I'm hibernating in the boat so much of the time is that it's just plain cold outside. Many days the temperature ranges from 42° to 48° F, the clouds are low and there's consistent lite rain or drizzle. I have little energy to go out in the cold and rain and do anything. Yesterday was 54° and that seemed exceptionally warm and nice. We talked to another boater a few days ago that said they went out to an island off of Sitka to do some fishing and no one was catching any halibut and "it just felt like winter" so they're heading south out of SE Alaska.
I guess we'll just have to go at our own pace and hope to get more active when the weather warms up.

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How can the weather forecast be so wrong?

2008-06-09T20:45:00.000-07:00

Monday, June 8, 2008
Location: Goose Bay, Port Camden, Kuiu Island
Lat/Lon: 56.7436°N 133.8691°W
Weather: Low 41°, Hi 54° F, Mostly Sunny, Winds 5-10 kts

After Deep Bay we went to Appleton Cove where Art & Diane showed up later in the afternoon. When had said our good byes in Sitka, they were waiting for a spare part and then heading to Juneau and we were heading south to Mexico. As it turned out they got their part the morning after we left and decided to get underway and made it to Appleton in one day when it took us two. Saturday morning we said goodbye to A&D again and headed out into Peril Strait to go down Chatham Strait a short distance to Cosmos Cove for the night. The forecast was for 15 kt winds from the SE, no problem, a little chop but basically a nice day. Boy the weather forecasters were way wrong. As soon as we came out of Appleton we ran into 4-6 ft waves and 30kt winds. When we turned into Chatham Strait the winds were sustained 25-30 kt, gusts to 45 kt and waves of 6-8 ft. Not nice at all. As we pounded into the seas the cats got sick and frightened, which is a terrible thing to happen to the poor kitties. You try to calm them but they don't understand the boat movement and the noise from the waves and wind and they get really scared. After 4 hours of the pounding we turned into Cosmos Cove (57.2433°N 134.8717°W) which offers little protection from the wind but is protected from the waves and provides a good anchorage. So there we sat for the night, wind howling thru the bay at 30+ kts, with us waiting for the 15 kt wind forecast to arrive which it finally did around midnight.

The next day was beautiful, lite winds and blue skies (the forecast for today was for 15 kt winds same as yesterday, that's 2 for 2 they missed by a mile) and off we headed across Chatham Strait for Halleck Harbor (56.9128°N 134.2228°W) on Kuiu Island. This is a nice bay protected from all winds except from West to Northwest. We were here last summer and it's a nice stop over for a night. We got a good hold on the bottom and the winds were calm overnight so we all slept well.

Monday we left at mid morning for a small unnamed bay Linda found in the guide book near Rocky Pass in Port Camden. The guide book calls it 'Goose Bay' because of the family of Geese living in the bay when they were there. On the chart it looks small and the entrance is twisted and shallow but it is a gem once you get inside. It's about ¼ by ½ mile in size and half of the bay is 35' deep. The other half of the bay is less than 10' deep so you need to watch the chart. It's nearly land locked so it's well protected from any weather and the guide book says there are lots of black bear in the area so we're on bear watch constantly scanning the grassy shore hoping to add to our collection of bear photos. We plan on staying here for a couple of nights before heading further into Rocky Pass. We'll let you know when we leave.

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Leaving for Mexico

2008-06-06T20:44:00.000-07:00

Thursday, June 5, 2008
Location: Deep Bay
Lat/Lon: 57.4464°N 135.6337°W
Weather: Hi 48° F, Partly Sunny, Winds 5-10 kts

Well not really, but we had a pizza party on our boat the last night we were in Sitka with our friends Art & Diane off of Kirkwall, Rick & Barb from Galatea, and later in the evening Eric & Sherry from Dolphin and we were asked "when are you leaving for Mexico" and I think it was Barb that said "tomorrow!". There is some truth to that, we're about at the northern apex of our Alaskan trip and we're starting to our trip south that will take us to Mexico and beyond. I'm starting to get excited about the trip down the coast and into Mexico and I'm spending more time reading the cruising guides of Mexico and planning the trip down the coast but it's a little early to get focused on Mexico and forget where we're at right now.
We had a late night, at least for us, and decided to make a short day of it today and stopped at Deep Bay after we went through Sergius Narrows in Peril Strait at slack tide at 1:00 PM Deep Bay is not a spectacular location but it is nice bay, good holding, and we saw 2 bears, maybe the same bear twice, before we turned in early. We need to slow down somewhat or we'll be back in Anacortes before the end of June so we'll start doing shorter days and spending more than one day at nice anchorages.

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Sitka

2008-06-02T16:33:00.001-07:00

Location: Sitka

Lat/Lon: 57.0622°N 135.3656°W
Weather: Hi 58° F, Partly Sunny, Winds 5-10 kts

I had planned to upload a slew of new pictures while in Sitka using our WiFi provider from down South, Broadband Express, aka BBX. We have had BBX for 3 years, paying an annual fee for unlimited service in most marinas south of Campbell River and including Sitka. Well, it's not working in Sitka, some sort of hardware problem that they don't seem too interested in fixing. BBX service has been deteriorating for the last year, over last winter in the Skyline marina in Anacortes it was hit and miss and they even stopped answering their support phone messages and emails. So I'm using my SailMail account and the SSB to send and receive emails. The connection is weak in the marina with all the other high poles and antennas and the electrical interference but I can get connected in the evening most times. SailMail is a great system but it works best when you are out on anchor and your antenna has a clear shot at the sky with little other electrical interference.

I've posted the last 3 entries from a hotspot in the local library in Sitka. I'll try to get some more posted, and maybe another batch of pic's to the web photo album, before we leave. The weather turned blowy so it looks like we'll be here until the end of the week which is okay because we like Sitka and there is lots to do here.

Appleton Cove

2008-06-02T16:27:00.000-07:00

Tueday May 27, 2008

Location: Appleton Cove
Lat/Lon: 57.4689°N 135.2926°W
Weather: Hi 60° F, Sunny, 20 kts winds in Chatham Strait, 5-10 kts in Cove

We were in Appleton Cove twice last year and again this year and it is not very interesting, pleasant but not noteworthy except this time we had entertainment. As we entered the cove we noticed two bears across the grassy flats at the back of the bay and after we anchored the two bears started running across the flats, one bear seemingly chasing the other. After that one of the bears just hung around for the rest of the day, rolling in the grass and strolling from one end of the bay to the other. We have never seen a grizzly bear stay in one area for any length of time, let alone all day. It was great entertainment.

The photo is from Takaz Bay, not Appleton. We didn't get a good pic of the bear or the cove so I'm using this pic from Takatz.

Takatz Bay

2008-06-02T16:21:00.000-07:00

Sunday May 25, 2008

Location: Takatz Bay, Baranof Island
Lat/Lon: 57.1350°N 134.8582°W

When something breaks or stops working and you find the part or the thing that caused the item to stop and you replace it and it starts working again than that's good. It breaks, you find the problem and fix it. What is not so good is when something breaks and you can't find the problem but the thing starts working again, all on it's own. It's good that it's working again but you just know that it's going to stop again and chances are that at some point it's not going to come back to life on it's own. This happened to us twice on Sunday. First the washer/dryer stopped working. Linda had just finished doing a load for Diane, that's another story all together, and put our own towels in to wash and after filling with water the thing just starts clicking, no action, just clicking. We checked the belt, it's ok, moved the dial all over the place, no good, nothing. So we let it sit for 5 hours while we cruise to Takatz Bay. After we get in and settled we fire up the GenSet and Linda turns the washer on and amazingly it starts working. Maybe it was just tired, overheated, something and now it worked. The second occurrence was just after we went to bed, we turn on a piece of electronics at the head of the bed that monitors the depth, wind, and location of the boat. Well it started beeping, the GPS part had failed and it was sounding an alarm. The item is an amazing piece of micro electronics. It has a GPS, compass, wind speed and direction detector, temperature and humidity and it's all in a container about the size of a Coke can. So we turned it off and went to sleep. The next morning it worked. No idea what went wrong or how it was made right.

Pybus Bay

2008-06-02T16:16:00.001-07:00

Saturday May 24, 2008

Location: Cannery Cove, Pybus Bay, Admiralty Island
Lat/Lon: 57.3052°N 134.1553°W
Weather: Hi 60° F, Sunny, lite winds

Wednesday, 5/21, we left Petersburg and went a short (20 NM) hop to Thomas Bay and anchored in the lower part at the south end of Ruth Island ( 56.9805°N 132.8168°W). Thomas is a large bay some 6 miles deep East to West and 8 miles North South. Ruth Island is located within the bay and is nearly 3 miles long. At the northern end of Thomas Bay is Baird Glacier which has receded ¼ miles back from the waters edge and therefore doesn't calf ice burgs into the bay. Thomas Bay is very beautiful with steep sided cliffs and mountains rising all around. Unfortunately the day we were there was low clouds and rain and it was difficult to see much above the lower hills.

Thursday we went over to Portage Bay (57.0014°N 133.3209°W) at the northern end of Kupreanof Island. Portage Bay lacks the high mountains and because of that is not a spectacular anchorage but it is a wide open bay with good holding which we needed for the winds that were forecasted to last through the night.

Friday we left early to go to what turned out to be one of the most spectacular anchorages we have been in in SE Alaska, Cannery Cove on Admiralty Island. This is a round shaped bay surrounded by a bowl of mountains that go straight up from the waters edge. Shortly after we arrived we heard a low roll of thunder coming from the mountains and looked up to see an avalanche of snow cascading over a rock faced cliff about half way up the mountain side. Truly a special location. We'll post pictures the next time we have wifi.

The weather is predicted to be unusually sunny and warm for the next few days and we plan on staying here for at least two nights and then continue on our way towards Sitka.