Rounding Lands End

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.