8/28/2010: Bahia de los Angeles

8/28/2010: Bahia de los Angeles

Note: I am initially updating this blog entry via the radio so I can't put the pictures in I want. There is an internet cafe in town but the connection is very slow and the building is very hot inside, I'll put the pictures in later (I have marked their location with parenthesis).

Update: Pictures added

We've been up in Bahia de los Angeles (BLA) for the last few weeks, and will probably be here for awhile. BLA is a large bay with many scattered islands and anchorages and is a popular area in the winter for camping. There is only one smallish village though and few provisions. From what we have been told it's pretty busy in the late fall to spring, but only the crazy yachtistas are here in the summer. It's very hot and muggy, I can't wait 'till fall when it starts to cool down and it's safe to go south.

The trip up from Santa Rosalia was pretty uneventful, though when we first left we couldn't get the boat speed up to normal; Tom was worried that we were losing our transmission! We debated going back but Santa Rosalia doesn't really have any repair facilities. It was a long overnight passage to San Fransisquito! It was good to see the sun come up, even though it would bring the heat with it. Sunsets and sunrises seem more spectacular out in the water:

Once we got safely anchored and had a good rest in San Fransisquito, we dove over the side. The problem with our speed was obvious, the bottom of the boat looked like a big shag carpet from the 70's and the prop was just a fuzzy round ball. It's a wonder that we could move through the water at all. A few hours of scrapping made our bottom look more like a boat's than a psychedelic flashback :-) We had just had our bottom cleaned three weeks ago in Santa Rosalia so in this warm water, the growth is incredible (like weeds growing in a spring garden). San Fransisquito was a nice anchorage but typical Baja dry:

We moved on to Las Animas bay, where unfortunately we got inundated with bees! There were dozens buzzing around the boat trying to get in. I was very glad I had sewn bug screens for the hatches and dodger so that kept most bees outside but we couldn't go out without feeling like we were under assault, we didn't stay too long in Las Animas.

On the way there we came across a huge pod of dolphins feeding, there were hundreds! They weren't interested in playing though so we sadly said good bye:

Our next stop was Ensenada el Quemado (burned bay). This was a very nice, secure and shallow bay, no bees and we ended up spending a week there just hanging out, continuing cleaning the bottom and exploring the bay. We had a few days of clouds which wasn't good for the solar power generation, but kept the temperature a little lower.

The clouds made for beautiful sunsets:


We started to run a little low on a few provisions so we motored around the corner to the village at Bahia de los Angeles. The few small stores are well stocked with staples, but nothing fancy. The exciting thing about the village anchorage was that there were whale sharks feeding in it! At one point I counted five in the anchorage and occasionally they would swim right by the boat: This one was only about 14 feet long :-)


It was then time for the full moon party! 27 boats descended on a small lagoon called La Gringa, in the north part of BLA where everyone floats into the lagoon on the rising tide then floats out when the tide reverses, do we know how to party or what?! While it sounds corny, it was a lot of fun and some of the floats were pretty impressive:

That's about it for now, just hanging out in BLA, listening to the weather and hoping no hurricane makes it up here.
Cheers,
Carolynn & Tom

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Santa Rosalia - Blog update via SSB

This entry is a test to see if I have figured out how to update my blog using our ham radio. Up to now I have only been able to post a new entry when we have internet but I think I have figured out a way to post while we are out of internet access. I can only post short messages and no pictures but it's better than nothing. We're still in Santa Rosalia and plan to be here at least another week.

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7/19/2010 La Paz to Santa Rosalia

We’re in the little town of Santa Rosalia, about ½ of the way up the Sea of Cortez on the Baja side. This is the first marina and the first wifi signal we’ve had since we left La Paz about a month ago. Here’s what we have been doing since then:

After leaving La Paz we island hopped up the same path we had taken last December, though before it was cold and rainy but now it’s hot and muggy! We didn’t spend too much time in any one place since we had heard that there was a big 4th of July party up in Conception bay. There are lots of small fish camps in most of the anchorages, though for the most part we stayed on the boat.

Tom is working on learning how to fish and coming up the coast we caught something:

We finally got it on board (not easy to do since our deck is about 5’ off the water). We had no idea what it was but it looks good:


Following directions in a book, we filleted it and had fish for dinner, but it wasn’t very good and we thought that we had not bled/filleted it correctly :-( Later though we described the fish to another cruiser who told us we had caught a “Skip Jack”, he confirmed that they’re not very good for eating and the only thing he uses them for if he catches them is bait or for his dogs. If we catch another Skip Jack we’ll let it go.

We saw lots of marine life; huge pods of dolphins and many jumping rays. One afternoon in Isla Coronado the jumping rays were so thick that it looked like the ray olympics! There would be the 500 meter dash with 20-30 rays jumping and racing ½ way around the anchorage. Then a few minutes later there would be an aerial display with rays leaping and flipping only a few boat lengths away from us. I saw numerous 360’s and a few double flips. When a ray jumps and flops back into the water it sounds a little like popcorn popping. At times in the anchorage it sounded like a whole bag of popcorn being popped. They’re not easy to capture on film though, they’ll be popping up all over the place but as soon as I get the camera focused, none would jump until I set the camera down then they would start popping out again. I got mainly splashes and a few blurry pics but couldn’t quite capture how many there were or how much they would jump and flip:

We spent a few days at Isla Coronado, snorkeling and dingying around. This is a dramatic and forbidding volcanic island, though the anchorage is well protected.

Also at Isla Coronado we took a hike up the hill. Initially the trail was pretty level and led through the sandy brush. Eventually though the trail led up the side of the hill and consisted of medium volcanic rocks perfect for tripping over or turning an ankle.

The only way to know you were on the trail were periodic “cairns” of 3-4 rocks piled on top of each other.

It was a hard hike but the views from ½ way up the hill were good (I didn’t make it all the way up):

On our way into Conception we saw a whale shark! It was early in the morning so it was hard to get a decent picture since the sun was reflecting off the water. He was about 12 feet long (a little one) and we didn’t want to bother him too much. The whale shark is the largest fish and can grow up to 46 feet long. The name “shark” is a bit of a misnomer as they eat only plankton.

We showed up in Bahia El Burro a week early for the party so got our choice of spots. When we got in there were only 5 other boats in the anchorage but at the height of the party there were 35!

One morning we decided to hike to the top of the hill overlooking the anchorage. From our boat the trail looked obvious and while steep and rugged, not too bad:


Once on the hill though the trail wasn’t so obvious and much of it was a scramble up rocks more suited to goats! The cruisers guide calls this hike “strenuous”, they weren’t joking. There was little shade on the trail for rests but we made do with any little bush we could find:

We finally made it to the top of the hill (felt more like a mountain) and the views were spectacular!

The day before the party a group of us went on a desert tour with Salvador, a wonderful local guide. We would periodically stop and Salvador would talk about the local history and medicinal uses for the desert plants.

We also visited a river bed where there were lots of petroglyphs (symbols and animals carved into rocks). Archeologists estimate these were done around 1100 B.C.

Coyote:

Rays:

We also visited some cave paintings (Pictographs). Our guide claimed that the oldest paintings have been carbon dated to 14,000 B.C., but I’m not sure I really believe they’re that old. The hike was nice though especially since we had to swim through a cool refreshing pool to get to the cave :-)

The party on the 4th was great; it’s interesting to meet many of the cruisers we had been talking to over the radio for the last few months. Sorry but no pictures, I was having too much fun to bother with the camera.

After the party we slowly made our way north to Santa Rosalia. Santa Rosalia is a played out Copper mining town established by the French in the 1860’s. Most of the town is built of wood instead of stucco and has a much different “feel” to it. It is well laid out with sidewalks and street signs and many corners even have painted handicap ramps (very rare for Baja). On at least one of the ramps though they didn’t quite get the concept of a wheel chair ramp :-)

There are many reminders of the town’s mining past:

Santa Rosalia is also known for the Iglesia Santa Barbara church, designed by the architect Gustave Eiffel, creator of the Paris Eiffel Tower. Eiffel originally constructed this church in France in 1887; it was intended as a prototype for missionary churches built to withstand the climate in France’s equatorial colonies. Two years later it was exhibited in Paris, together with the Eiffel Tower, at the 1889 Paris World Exposition. Eiffel took first prize for the church’s modular, tropics-proof design.

When a French official later heard the church had been warehoused in Brussels, he purchased it and had it shipped in sections to Santa Rosalia, where it was reassembled in 1897.

Opposite the church is a “world famous” hot dog stand; Chuyitas, featuring bacon wrapped hot dogs on a soft bun with the works. Almost all the cruisers show up there every few nights for their dog fix
It’s been hot and muggy so we try to spend the hottest part of the day lounging in the pool and meeting new folks.

We’re not sure how long we’ll be here, we have three months of hurricane season to kill up here and we like the town so we’re not in a big hurry to leave, though we wouldn’t want to ride out a hurricane on these docks.

When we do leave though we’ll probably be out of internet access for quite a while.
Cheers,

Carolynn & Tom

6-14-2010: La Paz

We had some wonderful days of motor sailing from La Cruz to La Paz. There were a few times we could have turned off the engine and sailed but each time it would have slowed us down enough that we probably would have had to come into the next anchorage in the dark so we motored along. The first few days the wind was mostly on our beam, but then it slowly clocked around until it was almost behind us. Other than the risk of an accidental jibe (the wind getting on the wrong side of the main sail and having the boom come flying across the deck), running with the wind is a very comfortable way to sail. I was even able to sleep well underway when I was off shift, rare for me. For a while we were sailing “wing and wing” with the wind directly behind us and the jib of the other side from the main, very sweet:

The weather here is wonderful, warm in the middle of the day (mid 90's) but the humidity is low so it doesn't feel too hot and it gets almost cold overnight (mid 50's but with a 20 mph southerly breeze, perfect sleeping weather).

There is a (quasi) joke in the sailing world that boat stands for “Break Out Another Thousand”. We’ve decided in our case it is “Break Out Another Tool”. When we left La Cruz we discovered our autopilot wasn’t working. It took us a while to decide it had a problem since all of the lights lit up and under sail the boat is well balanced and she stays pointed in the direction we set her up. Intermittently the autopilot would work then suddenly we couldn’t make any course corrections so eventually we went to hand steering, though the conditions were so nice it only took an occasional correction (but you don’t dare leave the helm), this made for long nights though. When we got to Mazatlan, Tom found not one but two problems; a cracked relay switch and one of the solder joints on the circuit board was cracked. He was able to fix both, we’ll keep our fingers crossed that this solves it. Then the afternoon before we left Mazatlan, Tom got a funny feeling and decided to run the engine a while at anchor. After just a few minutes we heard a sparking sound, opened the engine door and saw sparks coming out of our alternator. Lucky we had a spare alternator but it took more than an hour of swearing and bloody knuckles to replace it. We were in a calm anchorage; if it had happened underway it would have been 100 times worse.

On the passage from Mazatlan to la Paz, both the autopilot and the alternator worked great!

We'll leave La Paz Wednesday morning and will probably be out of internet access for at least a week or two (or longer if we find a wonderful anchorage :-). We’ve heard rumors about whale sharks spotted further up the Sea, that would be so cool to spot one of those gentle giants.

Carolynn (& Tom)

5/31/10 Escape from La Cruz.

We’ve dug the tunnel, paid off the guards and we’re making our escape out of La Cruz de Huanacaxtle :-)
We have a new main sail, a new track system so the sail goes up and down easier, re-did our reefing system so one of us can put in or take out a reef by ourselves in the cockpit (reefing is the processes of making the sail smaller by gathering material around the bottom), and a “taco shell” to hold the sail in when it’s down, rather than having it flop all over the deck. It took a lot longer than we anticipated, but this will be much safer for us to sail with so we’re happy.
Here’s the new main in its final fitting and our test sail, isn’t she pretty?:

We also got our wheel custom covered with leather, much nicer on the hands than the bare metal. Here’s Westin the leather guy just finishing up:

The only one of who’s not ready to leave is our cat; Ginger. She likes life at the dock where the boat doesn’t move much and the humans don’t turn on that scary engine.
What are you looking at?

Our plans are to retrace our path back to the Sea of Cortez and spend the summer in the mid to northern Sea. We’ve heard that it will get pretty hot but should have less humidity than down here (being broiled versus poached). Keep your fingers crossed for us that the hurricanes stay away.
Carolynn & Tom

4/25/2010
Well; we’re still in La Cruz, same spot we’ve been in for the last 2 ½ months! As I mentioned in the last blog, we’ve ordered a new main sail and a fancy track system for raising, lowering, and stowing the sail. We knew it was going to take a while to get here and be installed, but it’s been longer than we had imagined, thus is life in mañana land. We are making progress though, Mike the sail maker took our mast away, thus guaranteeing that we couldn’t leave even if we wanted to :-)

It’s going to be an awesome system though once it’s done, and should allow one of us to raise, lower, and reef the main from inside the cockpit, a much safer system than what we currently have.
I’m not quite sure what we’ve been doing these last months, though it seems like the time has flown by. We did take a one week trip back to California in a whirlwind visit with family. I wished we could have taken longer but we had left our cat, Ginger back on the boat. We had a couple of friends looking after her but we still didn’t feel we could be gone for too long.
It hasn’t all been lounging at the beach drinking beer (though there has been a bit of that). We’ve several times taken the bus up to Sayulita, a popular surf beach. Tom bought a bogie board so we either bring that, or he rents a long board and hones his surfing skills.

Here’s Tom riding a wave (it was bigger when he started)

Sunday’s are pool day at Los Arroyos Verdes, a beautiful 20 acre resort up in the Bucerias foothills. Lupe, the owner/designer is a fellow sailor and sends a van down to the marina to pick up anyone interested. We can explore the grounds, swim in the pool, or eat at the wonderful restaurant/bar. Other than the food and drink, everything is free. The landscaping is gorgeous and there are eclectic touches everywhere. Los Arroyos Verdes is completely organic, fully runs off solar power and was made from natural building materials (stone, brick, etc). It’s a very beautiful and tranquil place.

Well, that’s about it for now. When and if we get our main sail finished, we’ve decided to sail back up to the Sea of Cortez for the summer. We’ll have to keep a close watch on the weather for possible hurricanes, so keep your fingers crossed for us :-)