10/15/2010 Underway to San Juanico

All is well, we're almost sailing :-) At least the sails provide good shade and a little help with propulsion. We left Santa Rosalia a few days ago and have had a pleasant and calm trip south. Another two weeks and we'll be in La Paz where we'll stay through Thanksgiving.
Cheers,
Carolynn & Tom

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10-10-2010 Santa Rosalia

We got back to Santa Rosalia about a week ago, ah, that first “real” shower felt so good! The general consensus from the weather gurus is that the sea water has cooled enough that any more hurricanes this far north are unlikely :-) This has been one of the mildest hurricane seasons in the eastern pacific in history (we’re very happy with that). We have a slip reserved in La Paz for November 1st so after a few days of clean-up and a few projects, we’ll proceed south down the Sea.

Here are a few of the things that occupied us for the last month up in Bahia de los Angeles (BLA):
We went on a big hike at the popular anchorage of La Gringa. This is also a popular RV and camping beach in the winter. This time of the year there were only a few hardy campers.

We went to a party and pot luck at the home/trailer of a cruiser couple that have settled in BLA. There were tons of great food and a very competitive game of darts. I tried my hand but went out the first round, Tom just sat and watched. A great time was had by all.

Another day, a Cruiser Living on Dirt (CLOD) brought his pick-up truck and trailer and gave all of us a ride around town to fetch diesel, water, provisions, whatever we needed. We called it the “cruiser hayride” and it was great fun. There were probably 25 cruisers and over 50 jugs for diesel and water all crammed into the bed of the truck and trailer (no seatbelt laws in Mexico). As we drove down the road, the locals would stop and stare in amazement at all of the gringos crammed into the trailer, we were laughing so hard trying to imagine what they were thinking. Here is the stop to fill the diesel jugs:

There is an excellent small museum in town that we spent over an hour in, It has many displays and artifacts from the early Indians, the days that BLA was a large mining area, as well as many displays of local and marine animals including a gigantic whale skeleton.


Here we are sailing our dingy around the anchorage. I think this is the most sailing we’ve done in months :-)

I was chased by a seal for a while but he lost interest when I didn’t give him a fish.

One last full moon party, floating into, then out of the La Mona estuary:

Some of the “floties” were pretty fancy:

Tom’s was simple:
Buster the dog was in the middle of the excitement:
One of the boats brought a very old, expired life raft that the kids deployed on the beach then had a ball playing in it:


A few days after the last party we decided to bid adieu to BLA. It was a nice area with many cozy little anchorages but we’ll be glad to get south where the land isn’t so harsh and rocky.
On the way south there were many pods of leaping dolphins:

The nights are getting cooler and it’s good to be moving south again.
Cheers,
Carolynn & Tom