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| Interabang in the Bahia de los Angeles End of Summer Regatta (photo courtesy of Karmaseas) |
When we arrived in Mexico Sea of Cortez
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| One of our favorite summertime anchorages: La Mona in BLA |
As many of you noticed, we did
a poor job of keeping up with the blog during the summer months. For this, there are several good excuses: the
weather was too rough, it was too hot, and hunting and gathering food took too
much time. While all of these are true, it
would be more accurate to confess that we spent too much time hanging out with
friends, playing Baja Rummy, exploring beaches, and generally enjoying ourselves. We understand that reading about parties,
card games, and beaches can get really boring, so we will focus on the first
set of excuses.
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| A bonfire on a white sand beach with our friends Conor and Lanea of Moondance - Priceless! |
When it comes to rough weather,
we were most concerned about chubascos (large storm cells that randomly strike)
and hurricanes. During a happy hour
gathering in Loreto, Laura from Just a
Minute stressed to us that it was not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’ we will
see fifty knots of wind at anchor. This
freaked us out a little and kept us on our toes. During chubasco season, basically the month
of August, every night we raised the dinghy, folded and stowed the shades, and put
away all the toys in preparation for fifty knots of wind. Now that we have been through two chubascos,
one with gusts over sixty knots, we have become religious about hunkering down
nightly. We are very grateful to have
missed out on seeing a hurricane. Hurricanes
Miriam and Paul had us rushing to the shelter of Puerto Don Juan, the nearest
hurricane hole. Thankfully, both of
these storms weakened and arrived as remnants.
Thanks to our chubasco experience, riding these out was no big deal.
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| When the wind blows - no problema - just use rocks and shells to keep the cards from blowing away |
The heat was a much bigger deal. Each morning we covered the boat with white
tarps to shade the deck and cabin from the blazing sun. This helped, but the temperature inside the
boat regularly climbed above 90 degrees.
Fortunately, Hotel California
had some fans they wanted to sell. We
never would have survived the summer without the four additional fans we
installed in the main cabin and galley. With
the heat also came electrical challenges.
In addition to fans running constantly, the refrigeration ran around the
clock struggling to keep the box cold. With
all of this extra demand for electricity, the big surprise came when we learned
that solar panel output declines as temperature increases. Talk about adding insult to injury. We had to run the generator twice a day to
keep the batteries charged. Just one
final note about a summer in the desert, heat rash. Enough said.
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| Times like this you forget the heat |
Even when it’s hot and
miserable, the crew still needs to eat. We
keep the boat well stocked with rice, pasta, dry beans, and canned goods (beer
falls into this category). There is no
freezer on board, so when it comes to protein we have to go out and get it. Our trusty spear gun has paid for itself over
and over again in this department. Every
two or three days, I would go out spear fishing and return with two or three
fish. Trisha frequently made requests
for certain species: “I want a grouper and a trigger fish.” It is not unusual for us to eat fish twice a
day. Favorite dishes include fish tacos,
breaded fish, fish fried rice and our most favorite dish, fish bowl. Fish bowl consists of fried fish over steamed
rice with soy and Sriracha sauces and is a great dish for breakfast, lunch or dinner. When available, we gather clams and Trisha makes
a fantastic linguini with steamed clams.
Late in the season, Trisha discovered an awesome stuffed clam recipe for
the larger chocolate clams (named for their brown color). I now spend hours scouring sandy bottoms for
chocolates. A real treat is scallops
when we can find them. These were the
most plentiful in the very remote Puerto Refugio. Unfortunately, our total scallop haul for the
season provided only six dinners.
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| Chocolate clams we gathered about to become... |
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| Dinner! |
Overall, spending the summer
in the Sea of Cortez is a truly wonderful adventure, but not for the faint of
heart. One must be prepared for chubascos,
heat, bug bites, rashes, and a limited menu (unless they have a freezer
onboard). With this gauntlet of misery
mastered, a cruiser is free to enjoy the countless anchorages, beautiful
scenery, abundant wildlife, and camaraderie of fellow cruisers. At the end of summer party on Sept 30th
in Puerto Don Juan, it was apparent that this handful of sailors shared a special
bond: we had survived the summer in the Sea together.
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| BLA End of Summer Regatta Banquet (Gypsy, Karmaseas, Moondance, Interabang, V'ger, TanTori, Ula Lena, Harmony, Golden Eagle) |
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| Nancy on Eyoni, Pam and Rick on Hotel California and us at the End of Summer Party at Don Juan |
