Summer Days

 

The days pass slowly, repeating the same routine day after day. The heat and humidity make it impossible to work outside except for brief periods in the morning and sitting inside all day has sapped the energy out of us. We vow we will not spend another summer like this again. Next summer will be different, we just don't know how.

Despite our gloom, we've had some major projects done on the boat by the local workers who seem able to work in the heat. They recaulked the upper deck, steps to upper deck ,and forward hatch, two additional solar panels have been installed and the hull has been polished making it look like new (see previous post).

And we count the days until we can get out of here ( target departure date is November 1st).

Mid August to mid September seems to be the rainy season here as storms form inland and work their way out to sea and the occasional tropical storm passes north a couple hundred miles to the west. Last weekend we got 6" of rain in a 36 hour period and it rains overnight most days.

Our current plan is to head south to Banderas Bay and then further south to Tenacatita and Barra de Navidad. We hope to find a quiet bay with warm water and stay for weeks on end only coming back to port to reprovision. This will recharge our spirits and perhaps provide us with some clarity on what to do next. We feel like the victims of too many options; sell the boat/stay on the boat, stay in Mexico/go to Panama, find another summer activity/who knows what. Poor us, we know, stop your whining and just enjoy life.

It's a Gift

It’s getting hot! The heat and humidity are going up in Mazatlan and it’s only June. Days are now in the low 90's while the humidity is in the 70's, sometimes into the low 80’s. We keep at least one a/c on 24 hours a day and sometimes 2 in the afternoon. We have three ac units on the boat but we try not to cool the areas where we are not. The heat and humidity really effect you outside so we have slowed down on our outside projects and curtailed our trips around town.

We made a run up to Tucson already to get some project supplies and see some friends. It's about an 18 hour trip and we make one overnight stop along the way. Highway 15 is fairly nice and there are plenty of places to stop for food and gas and lots of good motels. The roads in the northern half in Sonora are the worst but the highway in Sinaloa are very good. The car stopped running while in Tucson, just refused to start one morning, and we took it to a shop recommended by some friends. It turned out the 'computer' that controls all the electronics had died and because the car is 20 years old they had to get a replacement out of Pennsylvania that took 3 days, so we sat in the motel watching TV waiting for the car. We've had the car since new, 20 years now, and it has 220K miles on her. As the mechanic said "After all this time and miles it has paid for its self and she owes us nothing. Every time she starts it's a gift". It was 108⁰ (but dry) in the afternoon, so without a car we couldn't walk around too much except in the evening. We'll be making another run up north in late July for more parts and do a little house sitting for our friends Jennifer and Dean.

We're trying to keep busy inside the boat without going too mad but we're already looking forward to leaving in November.

It's going to be a long summer.

The picture is of the beach off of Paseo (avenue) Clausen with the Mazatlan skyline behind. There are statues all along the city beaches throughout Mexico.

Tucson & Plans

Life has thrown us another small curve. Two months ago we were planning to leave for Panama, then our departure from Ensenada got delayed by a couple of weeks and then the weather turned to crap and we had to wait another 3 weeks to get some half way decent weather. The trip to Panama started to look like a rush so we decided to spend another season in MX and summer over in La Paz. Not a bad plan, go down to Mazatlan and then Puerto Vallarta for a couple of months and then return to the Sea in the Spring and be in La Paz by July. Then Linda's son and wife who live in Tucson decided to move to Indianapolis (Indianapolis???) where her family are. Great, but we stored our Jeep with them in Tucson and they kind of act as our home base up north. So we need to do something with the car and it would be nice to see them one more time before they leave so lets go to Tucson now, say our goodbyes, get the car, drive it to La Paz and store it there until we get back in June. Oh wait, did I mention that we decided to stay in Mazatlan for the summer, not la Paz., so we'll drive to Maz and store the car in the Marina until summer. The boat is in Maz and we can leave it there while we hop back to the States. Change of plans happen and we're getting pretty good at this last minute stuff. Ok, lets buy some tickets, tell people when we'll arrive and hope things don't change again in the next 2 weeks. Oh boy.

So we flew from Mazatlan to Phoenix, rented a car to drive to Tucson where we got our Jeep. We spent 2 days at Linda's sons house where we tried not to get in their way while they packed for their move to Indianapolis and drove to Phoenix to see some old friends. The next day we headed south, stopped at Tucson to see how the move was going and then continued to Nogales and Mexico.

Some thoughts and observations along the way.

Flying sucks. Drive whenever possible. The two hour flight from Maz to Phoenix is expensive, $360 each, and the hassle of airports and TSA should be avoided whenever possible.

Heading south it took us awhile to get to the border and then some more time to get our visas and import permit for the car so we didn't make it very far the first day. We stopped in Santa Ana at the Elba hotel which is very nice but noisy being right on the highway, with our room overlooking the road, and with a late arriving and early departing family on either side of our room. Oh, the bed was as so hard we might as well have slept on the floor.

The plan for the second night was to stop in Navojoa south of Obregon but there was a national basketball championship going on and there were no vacancies in any of the nice hotels along the highway. That was too bad because it looked like a very nice town with plenty of hotels and restaurants. So on we went to Los Mochis arriving at 5 PM and immediately got totally lost in the city trying to find a Best Western that was advertised on the highway. We eventually stopped at a City Express hotel that was a very clean 7 story building with plain but functional roomswith very hard beds.

Los Mochis is an attractive city of 250,000 people with at least 2 WalMarts. We know because we drove past both of them while looking for a hotel.

Sinaloa is known to some as the headquarters for the 'Sinaloa Cartel', one of the largest drug cartels in Mexico. What we didn't know until we drove through it is that it has a large agricultural industry that looks very prosperous. Linda said it reminded her of driving through Iowa, mile after mile of corn fields.

The road trip down highway 15 was very pleasant. There are plenty of services along the way and the roads are ok, not great, with some construction along the way but nothing that slows you down too much. Highway 15 is a toll road all the way, it costs us $65 USD in tolls to get from the border to Mazatlan.

Now that we're back in Maz we are getting ready to head south to PV and try to find some warmer weather. We plan to return to Maz in June for the summer. We are leaving the car in the marina parking lot and we still need to decide what to do with the car next season when we head to Panama. That's a long time from now so we'll see what happens then. No use making plans now.

Six Years On the Boat and Still Afloat

The last six years on the boat have been great for us. In 2006 we sold our house and sold, gave away and then stored what remained of our stuff and moved onto our boat which at the time was a 44 Defever. In the Fall of that year we fell in love with and purchased a 46 Nordhavn then moved aboard and put the Defever up for sale. Six years later we're still living on our Nordhavn, Discovery, and have cruised twice to Alaska and down the coast to Mexico where we've been for 4 years. Life has been good to us for a lot of reason.

• In Mexico everyday has a touch of adventure to it. Just going to the grocery store can be an adventure.

• Life can be so unexpected. When we started this we had no idea we would end up here in six years and we have no idea where we will be 2, 4, or 6 years from now.

• We survived the worst economy and market crash since the great depression and we still have enough money to keep going. Not sure exactly how we did that but we're glad we did.

• We enjoy the warm weather of Mexico and there is nothing more fun than jumping off the back of the boat into warm water and swimming around a quiet anchorage. We have lived most of the last 4 years in t-shirt, shorts, and sandals.
• Riding a bus around a Mexican city is the best entertainment available.

• Our boat has become a very comfortable home. We have not wanted for bigger or newer. It fits us perfectly.
• After spending 6 years together in a small boat in calm and rough seas we're still talking to each other and still very much in love.

Technorati Tags: Mexico,Nordhavn,Alaska

Ensenada Summer

 

Now that summer is over and we're near the end of our stay in Ensenada it's a good time to look back at what we've been up to.

The trip up the outside in June was not fun. It was rough at times and Linda suffered from sea sickness. When we arrived in Ensenada Linda was ready to call it quits for this boating thing and we were talking about taking the boat north and doing the inside passage or maybe even selling her. We then took a 3 week road trip to Tucson and up to Boise and when we returned we felt refreshed and started to take a new look at things. I was not excited about going north. Returning to the States was not exciting for me. What would we do? Get an apartment and go to the mall and Starbucks everyday? Being on the water, in the boat, just the two of us, that's exciting and what I really wanted to do. Linda, with some distance from the rough trip up here, admitted she really wanted to continue boating and go on to Panama. She knew her limits, she would have times of discomfort and she would get sea sick again but she still wanted to keep going. So over a coffee and chai tea at Starbucks we decided to keep boating and prepare to head south to Panama and maybe even Ecuador. We started to make plans to prepare the boat and continue the dream. Lists were made, projects discussed and prioritized, and money spent. Lots of money!

We don't know what we're going to do once we get to Panama, we just know we're going to have some fun and see some monkeys!

The good life in Mazatlan.

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.

What We Did Last Summer

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.

Baja Bash

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

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

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

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

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

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.

3 Weeks in Paradise

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 -

6 Months in Mexico

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

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.

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

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.

Bahia Abreojos

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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Bahia Colonet

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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