In the Marina

We finally escaped the grip of Marina de La Paz.  Nothing against the marina, it’s our favorite.  The facilities and the staff are great.  The problem is that marinas are like heroine, once you get hooked its hard to quit.

After months of dealing with the struggle of life at anchor we pull into the marina.  It’s a cozy, safe feeling.  We are giddy with excitement as we plug into shore power.  Soon we are washing salt off the decks and rigging with a seemingly endless supply of fresh water.  No more garbage stored in the anchor locker, the dumpster is just a few steps away.  Our faithful dinghy serves not as our lifeline to the outside world, but as a shade for the forward hatch.  As the days pass, we loose track of the weather, the tides, and the phase of the moon.  The assimilation into marina life is complete.  We saunter down the dock on our way to a grocery store, a restaurant, or a happy hour.  The slip fees add up quickly, but life is good and everyone around us is paying the big bucks.  It feels so right, it can’t be wrong.  After a few weeks, we have made a trip home to see family and friends and significant progress on the boat projects list.  One day, the harbor master knocks on our boat and wants to know when we are leaving.  You mean we have to leave?!  We commit to a departure date and the countdown is on.  The stragglers on our list of marina chores get completed.  We announce to friends that we are leaving the marina to go anchor out in the bay.  The response from one of our marina mates: “You mean you’re giving up your slip?!”  Yes, cold turkey.

So we are back on the hook.  We found a nice little spot in front of the malecon (the La Paz strip) near the municipal pier.  There is no one anchored to the north of us, so when the forecasted north winds blow later in the week we don’t have to worry about another boat dragging down on us.  We are quite happy to have extracted our selves from the marina, and I provide Trisha with a daily tally of how much money we have saved.

Summer in the Sea

Interabang in the Bahia de los Angeles End of Summer Regatta
(photo courtesy of Karmaseas)

When we arrived in Mexico nearly one year ago, Trisha began telling fellow cruisers about our plans to spend the summer in the northern Sea of Cortez.  The typical marina cruiser responded with warnings of unbearable heat and widespread misery while sheepishly confessing that they, themselves, had never actually spent a summer in the Sea.  Fortunately for us, we met actual veterans from past summers in the Sea who were infinitely more knowledgeable and helpful.  These folks became good friends and mentors.  As we reflect upon the adventures and struggles of the last three months, we raise our glass to those who coached us to success: Scott and Monica on Scott Free, Patrick and Laura and son Jack on Just a Minute, Chuck on Jacaranda, Rick and Pam on Hotel California, Rich on Third Day, Ethan and Nancy on Eyoni, Alan and Barbara formerly on Native Son, and Kevan on Alex II.  Thank you all for your patience and eagerness to help.  We endeavor to pay it forward with the same wonderful spirit.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Chocolate clams we gathered about to become...

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 30^th 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.

BLA End of Summer Regatta Banquet
(Gypsy, Karmaseas, Moondance, Interabang, V'ger, TanTori, Ula Lena, Harmony, Golden Eagle)

Nancy on Eyoni, Pam and Rick on Hotel California and us at the
End of Summer Party at Don Juan

Hurricane Paul

It was late September when Hurricane Miriam turned out to be a false alarm. Many relieved sailboats had gathered in the vicinity of Puerto Don Juan's hurricane protection. With the storm breaking up and a crowd already gathered, an impromptu meeting of the party committee determined that the time was right for a full moon celebration. Trisha was adamant that the announcement of the party should, in no way, suggest the end of hurricane season. Hurricane season goes on through October and it makes no sense to tempt the fates. On September 30, a group of nearly thirty cruisers got together for a potluck on the sandy spit in Puerto Don Juan. It was the best party of the summer.

Early the next morning, two of the boats weighed anchor and began their hurried trip south. Trisha and I were in no hurry, planning to take our time cruising around Animas Bay and burning up more of the hurricane season clock before leaving the safety of the northern Sea. Nearly two weeks had gone by when we found ourselves anchored with five other boats in Bahia San Francisquito. The next leg for all of us was an eighty mile, overnight passage to Santa Rosalia. Rumor had spread through the anchorage that the marinas in Santa Rosalia were full with boats waiting to get in. With a tropical storm brewing in the south and a Norther forecasted to be blowing through in a day or two, we thought it best to stay put rather than travel eighty miles only to find no room at the inn. The other five boats headed to Santa Rosalia.

The boat rolled wildly the day of the Norther driving us to the brink of insanity. After a long day the local weather finally settled down, but we kept a close eye on that tropical storm. The storm became better organized and was given the name Paul. Three times a day we downloaded and analyzed the forecasts from the National Hurricane Center. We strategized about what we will do if it comes our way. At four in the morning on Tuesday, October 16, the latest forecast indicated that our worst case scenario was becoming reality. An hour later the anchor was up and we were on our way back to the shelter of the nearest hurricane hole, Puerto Don Juan. During the nine hour trip we enjoyed flat water, light wind, a nice push from the current and several pods of dolphins swimming nearby. It was like the calm before the storm.

We arrived in Don Juan to find very calm conditions and four other sailboats at anchor, including our friends on Moondance and Grace. The good news was that the latest forecast showed Paul weakening. As darkness fell, I began to think that we burned all that diesel fuel for nothing. Any regret quickly faded the next morning when the wind came up and it started raining. Our morning has been quite rainy and windy with sustained winds in the twenties and several gusts to thirty knots. Don Juan is protected by hills on all sides, so when it's windy in here it's quite awful outside, especially in places like Bahia San Francisquito.

Admittedly, our hurricane avoidance practices are quite conservative but we are happy with the results.

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Summer in the Sea (Picture Time)

We finally have a somewhat decent internet connection so we will be posting pictures from our summer in the northern Sea of Cortez.  

Interabang underway
 (photo courtesy of Eagle)

Baja Rummy game on Interabang
Kyra and Rick from Nyon, Jeanne from Eagle and
John from Timepiece

Trisha and Kyra kayaking in La Mona in Bahia de los Angeles

One of the many storms we experienced this summer

Boats at anchor in La Mona

Beer break during a beach bocce ball game

Clams from Puerto Don Juan

Trisha with Zeda from Eyoni in Don Juan.
Sailboat Eyoni on the left careened for propeller work

Isla Alcatraz in the background

Puerto Refugio on Isla Angel de la Guardia

Aptly named Fang Rock in Puerto Refugio

Derrick goes to extremes to find treasures for Trisha

Big lizard in Refugio

Gulf grouper upper left, spear gun lower right

Lighthouse near BLA village

Typical spear fishing catch

Arriving in Bahia de los Angeles (BLA) and our first BIG chubasco

(Trisha's blog)
On August 13th we arrived in BLA which will be our "home base" for the next few months while we wait out hurricane season and explore the northern Sea of Cortez. We had planned to visit many anchorages along the way between Bahia San Francisquito and BLA but plans change. We had a part that needed to be welded in order to run our generator. We contacted a few cruising friends to see if there was a welder in BLA and Patrick on Just a Minute saved the day. Patrick hooked us up with a couple who live in BLA that offered to help us out. We anchored in front of their house on La Mona and dingied in. We were driven in their 4-wheeler into BLA village five miles across some very rustic roads. I was struck by the beauty of the surrounding area both by land and sea; it reminds me so much of Death Valley (one of my favorite places). We accomplished our mission by finding a welder who not only fixed our problem but strengthened the weld. We have found the Mexicans to be hugely resourceful, being able to make do with available materials and able to repair most anything. In addition to the repair, we also got a grand tour of the village and stopped at each tienda and picked up a few provisions.

Feeling good about the accomplishments of the day, we retired to the boat for a relaxing evening. About 10pm, the winds began increasing very rapidly and within 10 minutes there were 30-35 knots. We were about to experience our first big chubasco. A chubasco is a summertime convection storm that can be accompanied by high winds, thunder, lightning and rain. In a short time the winds were increasing to 40 and 50 knots and the lightning was all around us. The best was yet to come; we saw several gusts of 60-62 knots before things were to begin calming down. (Note: To put things in perspective, a hurricane category 1 has winds of 64-82 knots) In all, the high winds lasted about 1 ½ hours and the rain was not even enough to fully clean the boat. Whew! It's good to have our first chubasco in the rear view mirror. We came through it okay, no damage and we took note of a few things we might do differently if and when the next one hits.

We plan on spending a few more days here in BLA before heading to some of the anchorages we passed on our way here. Also to hook up with our friends Pam and Rick on Hotel California who have returned from the states and are heading this way. Our Baja Rummy skills have improved greatly since we saw them last!

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Bahia San Francisquito

Interabang was ready to make the eighty mile passage from Santa Rosalia to Bahia San Francisquito on Friday, July 27. The plan was to leave late at night expecting to arrive at our destination in the middle of the afternoon the following day. We shared our plans with Tom and Jeanne on Eagle and they wanted to buddy boat with us with one stipulation. In order to avoid the bad luck associated with leaving port on a Friday, we would postpone our departure to just past midnight, thereby technically leaving on Saturday morning. Bill and Lisa on Beyond Reason just happened to be leaving at the same time so we had three buddy boats. The passage was uneventful until the last four or five miles. The guidebook warned of strong currents possible in the channel outside of San Francisquito and we found this to be an understatement. As we neared the channel we noticed big waves with whitecaps ahead. Upon entering the rough water we found confused seas with large waves, some as high as eight feet, coming at us from multiple directions. Navigating the channel was slow going with the boat bucking and rolling wildly for about thirty minutes. Once through the slop, it was a short two miles to the anchorage where we joined three other boats. Our friends Kyra and Rick on Nyon and John on Time Piece arrived a couple of days later.

Unfortunately, we arrived at San Francisquito with a water maker problem. The feed pump had burned up during the trip and we would soon be out of fresh water. I studied each of the spare and installed pumps on the boat trying to find one that would meet the specifications but had no luck. Remembering that Tom on Eagle was a water maker service guy, I gave him a call on the radio. Lucky for us Tom had a spare pump that would get us by. Awesome! We fired off and email to Rick and Pam on Hotel California. They were visiting family back home in California. They saved the day again by agreeing to pick up a replacement pump and bring it back to Mexico for us.

San Francisquito presented us with the first opportunity to use the spear gun. On my first time out, I came home with three opal eye. The friendly fish are available in large numbers and are an easy mark. Comparing notes with other cruisers, we learned that the opal eye was essentially a 'B List' fish. "Good for tacos" someone said. Trisha encouraged me to target more tasty species and leave the opal eyes. With coaching from Rick on Nyon and Tom on Eagle, I was soon able to identify and hunt the fish on the 'A List.' I bagged twenty fish during our stay including chubs, grunts, porgy, and three of the highly prized and delicious leopard groupers.

San Francisquito also provided us with our first chubasco experience. A chubasco is a big thunderstorm with scary high winds that come at night. As we have learned, the flashing lightning generated by the chubascos can be seen coming from far away warning of their arrival. We had a rather light chubasco with winds peeking in the mid-thirty knot range. The winds were a little scary and the continuous lightning was amazing. We saw any form of lightning you can imagine from large bolts shooting straight to the ground, to long streaks across the sky, to wide fans of little bolts that filled the sky like fireworks. It was a scary night with an amazing show.

After a little over two weeks in San Francisquito our stay abruptly came to an end when we had a part fail on our generator.

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Preparations

Santa Rosalia is our last provisioning stop for the remainder of hurricane season.  The months of August, September and October will be spent in the remote northern Sea of Cortez.  We will be able to buy provisions in the village at Bahia Los Angeles, but this place is so far off the beaten path that everything is very expensive. Veteran cruisers have stressed to us time and again that we need to stock up in Santa Rosalia.   
Some scenes around town:

Each day we walk into town with a shopping list and return with bags of food.  Interabang does not have a freezer, so perishables like meats and produce will only be available to us for a couple of weeks from the dock.  We stock up on staples and load every available space to capacity.  Fishing and clamming will soon become our main source of protein.

Beer is another challenge.  How much beer will be needed for three very hot months?  How are we going to get the beer from the store to the boat?  These are challenging questions.  When Eagle and Time Piece arrived at the marina they were also looking to stock up on beer.  The three boats got together and determined that we each wanted five cases.  Fortunately for us, my friend Carlos at the Deposito (beer store) resolved our delivery problem.  I have done a fair amount of business with Carlos and developed a good relationship with him.  He speaks absolutely no English so negotiating the deal took time and strained my limited Spanish and Carlos’ patience.  After a couple of trips back and forth between the marina and the Deposito, Carlos and I worked through the details and shook hands.  He would borrow his friend’s car and deliver fifteen cases of beer to the marina at ten o’clock the following morning.  The next morning at a quarter of ten, I was in the cockpit putting on my shoes when a smiling Carlos came walking down the dock.

Derrick on the dock with the beer delivery 

One of the greatest things about cruising is the way cruisers help one another.  Our outboard motor was overheating and Rick from Hotel California diagnosed the problem as a bad impeller.  Bob on Nirvana, the boat next to us in the marina, was going home to Sacramento for a couple of weeks and offered to bring the part back for us.  The part was shipped to Bob’s house.  Bob’s plans changed and he got delayed, but he remembered that Bill from Beyond Reason (another boat in the marina) was also visiting the Sacramento area.  Trisha found Bill’s email on the Beyond Reason blog site and emailed it to Bob.  Bob contacted Bill, arranged a rendezvous, and handed off the part.  Bill showed up at the marina with the part a day earlier than originally planned.  The outboard is now back on track.

Finally, Trisha and I want to give a big thank you to Ed and Connie on Sirena.  They were kind enough to loan us their air conditioner after they left for California.  Santa Rosalia is quite a hot and humid place.  Thanks to Ed and Connie, we spent most of our days here in luxurious comfort.  We’re going to miss that air conditioner when we’re gone.

Final installation of the air conditioner