It's Hot!!

Quick update.
It is really really hot. If there is no breeze it is too hot to do much of anything. We just sit under a fan and try to keep cool.
Cindy wanted me to point out that at night the temperature only drops to the mid 80's, if we are lucky.

Getting warmer, much warmer...

Summer is really getting started in the Sea of Cortez. The days are up in the mid to high 90's, and drops to the 80's at night. We are starting to get used to it. It does not seem to bad as long as there is some breeze (or fans) and you are out of direct sunlight. We are trying to keep cool with shades, fans and swimming. We still need to complete our sunshades for the boat, every boat has covers built to provide shade during the day. We are using some temporary measures till we get that sewing task
completed. We want something big enough to cover the boat, but small enough to store easily. Strong enough to handle the afternoon winds, but simple enough to take down quickly when storm winds come up suddenly.

We are now anchored in Agua Verde, a nice protected anchorage that is quite popular so there are about a dozen boats here. We have been working our way north with stops at Evaristo, and Nopolo. Nopolo was interesting as it was just a collection of a few houses for fisherman along a few beaches at the base of an arroyo. Another stop off the beaten track, and the people we talked to seemed nice. We had some good sailing in strong southerlies for a few days. However our last day was a long trip as we
got some confused seas with 6ft wind waves and variable wind, it made for an uncomfortable motion. Some of the roughest seas since Alaska/Canada! We bypassed El Gato because the conditions would have made it a poor anchorage. We will spend a few days here in Agua Verde enjoying the bay and doing some jobs. Our intentions are to get to Conception Bay for the 4th of July. There is supposed to be a large get together of cruisers and other ex-pats, so we need to get another 120 miles further north.

We no longer have plans. We only have intentions. We intend to travel somewhere, or intend to be at a specific place at a specific time. We never seem to be where we thought we would. This is part of what we enjoy about cruising, we can be flexible enough to stay longer somewhere, or to skip a place all together.

Bee atttack!

We are back at "The Hook", an anchorage at Isla San Francisco. We were here a few weeks ago before we headed south to La Paz. We left La Paz so that Cindy could do here net from a more conducive location. We headed out to Balandra Cove for a few nights, then back to La Paz to wrap up our taxes. While there I checked our fuel tank and found some black crud in them. I was not convinced I was able to get it all out so we decided to get the fuel polished (cleaned by chemicals and repeated filtering).
To do this we had to go to a marina, we did not want to pay for moorage, but lots of fresh water and electricity sounded good. We did get the fuel polished, though it did not seem that it pulled out too much crud. I hope that means that I wsa able to get most of it myself. Since the alternative is that we wasted our time and money. Unfortunately while we were at the dock the water was off for repairs, they kept saying it would be on soon! Finally a few hours before we were leaving they agreed to
turn the water on for one hour! We hurriedly filled the tanks and rinsed off the boat. We were mostly done before the water was turned back off.
We left La Paz and headed back to Balandra Cove, but a night of 45 knot winds convinced us to move to a new anchorage. We moved up to Caleta Partida, a large cove between Isla Espiritu Santos and Isla Partida. We spent a few days here exploring in the dinghy and visiting our friends Greg and Nancy on "Festima Lente". We tried to go to a cove on the north end of the island called El Embudo. This turned out to be a small cove with just room for one boat, a sandy beach and clear water. Looked like a
great place to have all to ourselves. However we were not alone, as we started to anchor we were swarmed by a group of bees! We managed to get the hook down while swatting bees left and right. After taking out a few dozen there were less but still enough to be annoying. We have been told they are often after fresh water, and if they find some and tell the rest of the nest, they all come out to visit. We realized this was not going to be a tranquil stay and decided to head further north, back to Isla
San Francisco. Disappointing to leave such a pretty spot, but better to leave while we were ahead.

The La Paz waltz

We are in the anchorage in La Paz now. There is a strong current in here and often strong winds as well. The two work off of each other and so the anchored boats move around a lot in a strange motion known as the "La Paz Waltz". We will be here for a few days for provisioning but need to be out of here by Tuesday. Cindy has volunteered to be a Net Controller for the Southbound net. This is a radio net on the SSB (Single Side Band) radio. There are a few nets, the two biggest being the Amigo in the morning and the Southbound in the evening. These are a way for the boats in Mexico and central america to communicate, this is a known time and frequency to meet. The net controller keeps everything organized as boats check in and give their boat name, crew names, and position, facilitate messages between boats, and listen for weather information (Don Anderson on Summer Passage in Oxnard, does great weather). Cindy is now the controller on Tuesday evening, She has done this twice and is doing great! Unfortunately La Paz in not a good place for HAM radio reception, so we need to be elsewhere by tuesday evening.

 

We finally caught up to Yohelah, the boat we went with to Canada and Alaska. The boat is here in La Paz, Rob is still here getting the boat ready for summer storage, but Teresa is already back in Seattle looking for work. We miss Teresa, but did get to do dinner with Rob. The will be back in the Fall for more Mexico adventures.

Old posts from old blog

Back To The Baja  05/17/2007

 

Masquerade is now anchored at Isla San Francisco, a small island about 45 miles north of La Paz.

We enjoyed our visit in Altata and met some nice people there. We met a family that owns one of the beach restaurants. Only the daughter, a young woman named Wendy spoke English, and my Spanish is really bad. She said that she would like to see the boat, and we told her we would happy to show it to her. The next afternoon I was swimming of the boat, cleaning some growth of the bottom, when Cindy told me we had company. I climbed back aboard to find 3 pretty young ladies in the cockpit. Wendy came out with two friends (Diana and Dulce), ferried out in a cousin's panga. We had a nice visit, with Wendy acting as interpreter. She invited us to join her and her family for dinner that evening. We accepted and met them that evening at the restaurant. They insisted that we pull the dinghy across the road and into the open-air restaurant (it has wheels) so that it would be safe. We then walked over to a brother's house where they had a BBQ going to make Carne Asada. We had dinner with around 17 extended family and friends. Wendy again had to act as interpreter as only one other person spoke a little English. We had a pleasant evening and the Spanish/English dictionary got a lot of use. We hope to get back this way soon.

 

We had a long passage across the Sea of Cortez. We wanted to sail and not motor so the crossing took at least an extra 24 hours. We had light winds and winds from the wrong direction most of the time. We went from drifting with the spinnaker in 4kn of wind to reefed sails and 25kn in about 2 hours. We did end up motoring some as it was taking a long time. From here we will probably visit La Paz then head to the northern part of the Gulf of California.

 

Off the Beaten Path 05/04/2007

 

We finally left Mazatlan! After leaving the marina we spent 2 weeks in the Old Harbor. The anchorage there is close to the historical district of Mazatlan, and is walking distance to the plazas and Mercado. We met up with some friends the Northwest (V'Ger) that we had not seen in 2 years, and another boat we met in Ensenada (Momo).  We hiked up the lighthouse, which is the highest lighthouse in the americas. Great view of the harbor and Mazatlan. We had a brief stop at Venados (Deer) Island, then headed north to Altata. Altata is a small town about 120 miles from Mazatlan. The town was first visited by cruisers in 2001, and is not listed in most cruising guides. Information has started to be passed around so now perhaps a dozen boats a year come in, compared to hundreds that go through Mazatlan. There are no good charts to the bay and it is very shallow with an entrance that can be scary, so having information from previous boats was very helpful. We were welcomed in by a pod of dolphins. We are the only cruising boat here and probably the only gringos as well. Everyone seems friendly, and I think we are a bit if a novelty. The Port Captain spoke english and was very friendly, he told me that Altata was a busy commercial port back in the 1800's but a hurricane hit in 1911 and altered the harbor, closing the old entrance and creating a new one 10 miles south of town. The new shallower entrance caused the commercial traffic to stop. We are anxious to get out and do a little exploring, also the water here in the estuary is around 76 degrees so we can do some swimming without being too cold.

 

 

One Year Cruising! 04/15/2007

 

April 1^st was the one year anniversary of the day that we cut our dock lines, left Seattle, and started cruising.

It is amazing to us that a year has passed so quickly, but it also seems like a lifetime ago that we were doing the work/commute routine.

 

So looking back at some figures

Miles: 4900 (nautical miles)

Border crossings: 5 (Canada, USA-Alaska, Canada, USA-Oregon, Mexico)

Boat searches by Customs officials: 1

Furthest North: 59.0N degrees, Glacier Bay Alaska (The Arctic circle is 66.33N)

Furthest South: 22.5 N, Cabo San Lucas, Mexico (just into the Tropic of Cancer)

Furthest East: 106.27W Mazatlan, Mexico (about even with Albuquerque NM)

Furthest West: 137.0W Glacier bay Alaska

Highest winds: 45kn (Alaska)

 

We miss our friends that we left behind, and family that we have not seen enough of. On the other hand we have made lots of new friends and become part of a community of cruisers here in Mexico.  We are looking forward to

 

 

 

A New Blog!
I was getting many complaints about not loading and had little time to figure it out with the limited access to the internet I have here in Mexico living on the boat. So I decided to switch to Blogger. Hope this works out well.