HIPNAUTICAL RECORDS

Well we motored over to the anchorage at La Gringa, must be a lot of gringos there :-)  We found a quite deserted cove with only one small light a beach hut at night with no signs of life & no other boats.  But the short trip over was plagued by that nerve wracking rattling sound coming from near the transmission; we start making plans to go to Guaymas for major transmission over haul$$ :-O
   After a day or so our kid boat friends on 4 Pack have made HF radio contact & they’ll be here the next day.  Tropical storm Lowell is also making it’s way up our way so we make plans to meet 4 Pack in ‘Chicken cove’, Puerto Don Juan, the best hurricane hole in the Sea.  They arrive & Lowell fizzles out, which is why we’ve come to area in the first place; the storms seem to loose their punch by the time they get this far north.  The mystery transmission sound is in full nerve wracking unglory for the trip over.  
    With Carl’s help we do some extensive trouble shooting on the transmission but we find no signs of serious trouble.  We disconnect the prop shaft from the transmission & run the motor, we don’t hear ‘the sound’ at all.  The transmission when rotated by hand is velvety smooth (hence the name of the Borg Warner transmission is called ‘Velvet drive’ :-)  The motor’s alignment to the shaft is spot on but still the sound is present when we motor over to the village the next day:-O 
 9-14-09 
   We motor from the village to La Gringa a day before the big cruiser’s full moon beach party.  Our dear friends from Sunbow (my dream cat:-) has given us a forty foot length of high grade synthetic Amsteel single brade line that I will use to replace the broken stainless steel cable that corroded & broke two weeks ago; a job I had been planning to do for years but could find an easy way to remove the old ss cable without much $$ work.  The old pin assemble would have had to been bashed, drilled & hammered out, a new pin assemble would have had to been custom made all while paying extraordinarily high boat yard fees to the amount of over $3300.  We the broken cable was a blessing in disguise as it solved the problem of how to remove it :-)   I used my hooka diving snorkel system & replaced the old ss cable with the new line.  This 1/4” line has a holding strength of over 14000lbs!  It worked great! 
   9-15-09 
   We had about 17 boats I believe there for the cruiser’s full moon beach party, with the highlight even of floating out of the flooded lagoon just after high tide on our floaty toys.  It was great to meet the faces of the folks we hear on the HF radio check ins & swop info & boat stories. 
  
9-16-08 
  We invite anyone who would like to raft their dingies to our boat for a cockpit concert.  Now we’ve had a couple or two come over for previous cockpit concerts but this one was one for the books.  It seemed like all the boat’s in the cove was rafted up & we enjoyed playing our music.  I need to hook up a small PA system for the big crowds one of these days :-) 
 9-17-08
  We invite 4 Packs mechanical wiz guy Dan to ride along with us as we motor over to the village so we can get an expert opinion on our very troubling transmission sound.  We have all ready made arrangements for a haul out repairs in Guaymas but we just want a second opinion.   The wind is great for sailing which always made the sound very apparent while sailing over 3 knots.   We got to be sailing around 7 knots with no sound.  We motored at full throttle with no sound. The whole trip over & no sound….Dan must have fixed it by a laying of hands mystical mechanical magic:-)  
    Later in the town internet place I receive an email from our dear friend Keith.  Back in our home port of Ventura he was know as the ‘Mayor of D dock’; we were told soon after moving our boat there that if we had any boat questions that we should ‘talk to the Mayor’.   After 4 years & 1000’s of questions we set sail on our cruise but when ever we have any boat issues we still ‘talk to the Mayor’ :-)   His email had a few questions for us to help him pinpoint our mystery transmission sound.  Picking up that we had an issue with our keel’s lifting cable he asks if the cable could be loose.  Well wouldn’t ya know it, I had just replaced the ss cable with the new synthetic line & we couldn’t get the sound to re-appear :-)  Although at that time we had only one short passage but it would have surly made that nerve wracking sound.   We’ve since made a handful of short passages with absolutely no mystery sounds heard :-) 
 A few days later we sail over to La Mona anchorage in the south end of Bahia de Los Angeles.  The following morning Bobbie Jo & I set out to take a ‘short hike’ up the rocky hills above the anchorage.  It certainly didn’t look half as tough as the big volcano hike we did last month so off we went in the full blazing sun of late morning :-O  The hike starts off going nearly straight up the huge rocky bluff & then just higher & higher :-O  There is absolutely no shade trees here in the Baja, there is no way to escape the sun but at each vista we come to, although we are on the verge of over heating we are encouraged to make the next vista.  Nearly to the top Bobbie reaches for a big stepping rock, tests it first for stability then climbs forth only for it to tumble down sending Bobbie tumbling toward a very step drop off towards certain major pain if not worse; luckily she finds her balance before reaching the point of no return.   Not until we’ve made the top do we realize that we are nearly spent do to the heat & we are now only half way thru :-O 
 9-24-08
    We had a great sail over to Gecko beach to attend a part for the HF radio net controller of which Bobbie Jo is an enthusiastic member of the club.   The great sailing conditions got better & better until the wind is gusting way over 25 knots by the time we set the hook.  All the boats anchored there are doing a major rocking horse motion.  Some boats abandon the party & flee for calmer anchorages, some can’t even put their dinghy’s together & can’t make the party but for those of us that braved the wet dingy ride to the party at Duffy’s tavern, a cruiser’s party hut on the beach.  We enjoyed ‘Duffy Dogs’ which put to shame the Santa Rosilia bacon wrapped dogs although their freshly baked buns made for fierce dog wars :-)  There was a dart board competition in which I place 2cd over all, not bad since it’s been decades since I’ve tossed the pointy things.  
   Tomorrow we will head into the village to do some internet biz & re-supply the beer stash before heading back out the nearby islands.  Tonight’s HF radio weather report brings news that there is something brewing the tropical kitchen way down south of Acapulco where it’s been raining 22 out of the last 24 days.  Cyclonic winds have been blowing there for days but too close to land to develop into anything of our concern way up here but it may move off shore tonight & by tomorrow morning it could be blowing 50 to 60 knots; 64 knots is hurricane strength.   Once that happens it could then come up our way.  This time of the hurricane season the chances of the big one developing are decreasing but at the same time the jet stream moves into a position that once develops, encourages them to travel up the Sea of Cortez :-O  In that case it would be time to batten down the beer mugs :-O 
 
We then sailed out to Isla La Ventana just behind our kid boat friends on 4 Pack.  We spent nearly a week there over a month ago; it seems like a year ago as time goes by quickly.  We all took a nice short hike up to a massive cross on a mountain peek with a great view.  We did some kayaking & spear fishing; I caught two nice trigger fish for a scrumptious fish taco meal that day.   
    After a few days we sailed over to La Gringa again, a short trip across the channel so we could get better radio reception & transmission for our radio nets.  Carl stepped up to the mike to take on a radio net host.  We did our own private version of the cruiser full moon party; our version was a new moon party in which we enjoyed a large tidal flow out of the lagoon on the beach.  
    We then puttered over between Isla Mitlan & Isla Coronados for another few days of snorkeling, fishing & we all attempted hiking the big volcano.  Robin faked a hurt leg (he wacked it that morning so it seemed plausible) but just used that as a ploy to get off the mountain & play Nerf toys with his friend Patrick who also didn’t seem to be up for the brutal climb.  His brother Casey scampered up the hill in no time flat, we would of done the whole climb in a faster pace if he didn’t have to wait up for us old folks.   After the hike we walked over to a huge whale carcass which was rotting on the beach.  Massive spine bones littered the area, along with the huge skeletal remains but the extremely over powering smell made it a short inspection.  
    After a few days there we sailed back to the village for some supplies & internet connection.  Then we went over to La Mona on Saturday 10-4-08 for the Buccaneer’s Cruiser party which is a satellite of the original party held on this same day up on Catalina Island back in our home waters of Southern California.   We all dressed up like pirates, spoke in pirate-ineez’ & consumed much grog in the form of Buffalo milk; a drink from the utters of Catalina’s buffalo herds, a tough job that must have been :-O  After a few of those drinks we hardly noticed the 20+ winds & huge seas bouncing our boats about :-)  After getting smashed on buffalo milk we made for the beach & had a scrumptious pot luck.  Someone had gotten the news that this is Bobbie’s birthday, a cake was made & a cleaver pirate birthday card was secretly signed by all…what a huge surprise :-)
       The next morning we were all moving a bit slow as we lazed about the boat trying to get some sort of motivation when Bobbie spotted a whale shark near our boat.  I grabbed my fins, mask & snorkel & we hopped in the dingy; his may be my last chance to swim with the big whale sharks.   I slid into the water just in front of the on coming whale shark & swam along side of it as it came by.  It’s huge!  This one was a few feet longer than our 10.5 foot dingy.  As it swims along, its huge  2.5 foot wide mouth is constantly opening up & gulping in plankton rich seawater; the sound track of ‘Jaws’ playing through my head as I swam along.  This one, like most have the smaller Remora fish attached to various parts of the whale shark.  They use their sucker mouth to hold on & they eat the dead skin & other parasites while the whale shark doesn’t even seem to notice.  I gently touched its wing fin, careful not to invoke a tail trashing; its large tail fin could deliver a mighty wack if it felt the need for speed.   The whale shark can reach a length of over 20’ but it’s no threat to humans & even though it’s mouth is huge it only eats plankton & other small critters that are floating in the water. 
 Today 10-6-08  We’ve motored back to the village, I’ve got a bunch of correspondence with boat systems suppliers.  Seems we’ll need to get a generator to help supply more power; we are just barely keeping up with our basic needs & there is never any power left for fun stuff like movies, music & Robin’s Playstation.   I’m doing research into whether to get a cheap portable gas unit that would be tied to the deck outside or an expensive diesel unit that can be permanently installed in the motor room & can be tapped into our huge diesel supply.  Our water consumption requires us to make more water than we thought which takes even more power.  The hot salty water has caused the quality of our water to be a lot less than the manufacturer says is within its normal range, so I’ve done some tests & will soon learn how to deal with that issue. 
    This mornings HF radio weather report has brought into light some very hazardous cyclonic storm developments.   The storm down around the Mexico & Guatemala boarder was very uniquely amplified by wind phenomenon called the Tehuantepecer, a wind that originates from the artic, blows along the Rocky mountains & funnels thru a mountain range in the narrow area between the Gulf of Mexico & the Pacific between Mexico & Guatemala; this winds routinely gets in excess of 70 knots, hurricane force but not a hurricane.  This wind joined with a tropical storm, the makings of a ‘Perfect storm’, this storm did indeed develop into hurricane Maria but as I write this it is safely heading west out to sea & out towards Hawaii.  The other tropical disturbance which has been reported for the last two weeks by our HF radio weather guru Don Anderson, while no one else would mention it, is now a named storm called Norbert & is forecast to become a full on hurricane as I write this.  This hurricane is forecast to make landfall upon the lower 1/3 of the Baja by this Thursday or Friday.  This will put a delay in our plans to head south tomorrow, we wanted to sail south to Santa Rosilia in the morning but now it looks like we’ll have to stay near the hurricane hole up here at Puerto Don Juan.  If that doesn’t make us nervous enough there is another cyclonic storm just brewing way down south near Guatemala & El Salvador which looks promising to become a hurricane & make it’s way our way in two weeks.  All hurricanes that form at this time of the year are very inclined to curve up to the north east, following the jet stream & the Coriolis effects. 
       10-08-08   We motored out of the village in less than 10 knots of wind towards the southern end of Isla La Ventana.   Soon the winds were on the nose from the north at 20 to 25 knots but we kept the motor going since it was only about 6 miles away with lots of small isles & reefs on ether side.  The swells were making the seas quite washing machine like but in the Lee of Isla La Ventana it went flat calm.  We set the hook near the tip just about 40 yards from the screaming winds & raging seas.  Below there were many large rocks that the anchor scrapped along before finally finding it’s hold.  Our friends 4-Pack came along soon after & noticed that there was really only room for one boat & the other nearby beach looking places were too deep close to shore to safely spend any time in so they sailed on to Puerto Don Juan.  I couldn’t resist the great snorkeling opportunities in this hazardous place, so Bobbie & I hopped in for a look see.  It was the clearest waters we’ve seen in a long time.  There were a large number of coral fans waving along the bottom.  We saw some living coral of several different types & sponge like corals, red sponge bowls; all quite fascinating.  Bobbie swam over to what looked like a very large needle fish, except this one was actually the tail of a giant stingray, it shook itself off the bottom & fluttered away along with a few of it’s friends :-O  Forget about ‘Jaws’, we fear the stingrays down here & they are very plentiful.  Not only do you have to watch were you step but they also have a tendency to flutter to the surface without warning whipping their extremely hazardous tail barb as they flutter by :-O  The famous crocodile wrestler from Australia met his quick end from the end of one of those stingray barbs & that thought has always got me on the edge.  Here in the Sea of Cortez the once numerous sharks have just about been hunted out of exisitance, can’t say I’m too upset about that although as mentioned in Biogeography papers, another species will likely take up it’s niche & in the Sea of Cortez the ‘Red Demon’ giant squid has bellied up to that sand bar…I guess it has a belly, it does have three hearts & can change colors like a UFO…or so say the ufologists:-)   Now I thought that those cute little guys had little rubber like soft suckers but no, first they are not little, some get to over 7 feet long & those suckers…they are really like vicious piranha teeth!   Then there’s it’s mouth, hard as a rock & the size of a very large parrot, capable of severing the head off of a 10” thick fellow squid in just seconds.  In Santa Rosalia where these ‘Red Demons’ are caught each night by the brave pangeros fishermen, there are reports that during the squid feeding frenzy that sometimes the fisherman accidentally fall into the giant squid feeding frenzy & are quickly mobbed & dragged to the depths in seconds :-O  So we’ve got a few things to worry about in these waters.  So perhaps it’s no wonder I can’t get Robin to go with all that often.
    After our little snorkel we haul anchor & follow our fellow kid boat in Puerto Pollo, where the chickens come to hide at Puerto Don Juan.  Hurrican Norbert is blowing over 120 knots today, the next day he’s going on about 140 knots; that’s the lower reaches of a ‘devastating class 5’ hurricane :-O  To give a ‘Perfect Storm’ kind of boost to Norbert, a very large north pacific high pressure gale is blowing northwest down the coast all the way to the tip of the Baja at 25 to 60 knots (more off shore & less along the beaches).  This is the classic ‘Perfect storm’ conditions that will really make a mess of the seas where they collide as there are currently 20+’ ocean swells freight training down the coast of Baja from the northern gales & there are 20+’ ocean swells traveling up from the south hurricane Norbert & where they collide would make for a very harsh washing machine ride in ANY boat of ANY size.  There is a health & welfare report out for the boat ZA ZA, reported to have departed Cabo San Lucas a few days ago heading north.  With Norbert expected to make landfall around Magdalena Bay they should hope to be north of there, the only relatively safe place to anchor would be Turtle Bay, otherwise the wise thing to do would be to stay way off shore & ride it out :-O
    On 10-09-08 the other tropical disturbance has become hurricane Odele blowing around about 80 knots down there in the tropical kitchen & likely to come our way as well.  
   Today, Saturday 10-11-08 after a few days of very calm (before the storm) clear weather the effects of the northern gale is blowing through our anchorage at 20 to 30 knots just after I get back from a successful spear gun run; I’ve bagged a couple of very choice fishies for lunch.  Robin would have loved the fish tacos but I’m sure he’s diggin’ his time with his friends on 4 Pack.  With the high winds we agree not to dingy back to get Robin, besides they have made plans for a sleep over with an unexpected ‘awake over’ all day…we own ‘em one :-)   Now that Norbert has bashed into the Baja just below Mag Bay at over 85 knots the counter clockwise winds are in a position to let the northern gale blow on through the northern Sea of Cortez area where we are.  As I type this Norbert is halfway across the Sea of Cortez making it’s way toward San Carlos, the place we had considered hauling our boat out into the mud boat yard held up on tiny metal sticks for transmission work… glad that didn’t need to happen :-) 
    We will want to be heading south as soon as Norbert, Odele & the strong northern gales calmed down a bit :-O

Ship’s Log after Bahia de Los Angeles

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Looking back from 12-04-08: 

  Boy the time & seasons are passing by fast.  I really enjoyed our time in Santa Rosalia.  The first two weeks I really hit the boat projects hard & then finally got my bike out of the forepeak after about 6 months of non use.  All the bikes needed some TLC & oil :-O  After patching a few inner tubes & oiling up all the sea corrosion I started to explore the area.  The first few days I was on a quest to find a dirt road to the top of the city above their impressive grave yard up on the hill looking over the sea.  It took a few days of exploring all of the city’s dirt roads until I found the one that took me to the top & beyond after meeting up with every dog in town.  Some were curious, some were typical lazy Baja dogs but some were extremely vicious attack dogs that put my tempo into high gear :-O  Turns out yelling ‘Bad Dog’ at them with enough intensity over comes the language barrier :-)  The road to the top was paved for the most part with hand laid cobble stones, starting near the top after a fairly steep dirt road.  The terrain was an impossibly rough boulder & rock strewn area, the massive effort to put in such a road must have been hellacious for the workers, the summer’s heat must have also been a killer.  After a mile or so of real steep cobble stone, the road continued as a dirt road, they would pile the boulders & rocks to the side.  These roads went on for miles & would expand after they had hauled out all of the copper ore they could ‘easily’ get to.  The mining operation started with less than 30,000 acres but expanded to over a million acres by the end of their hay day.  I would ride for about 3 hours each day covering lots of ground.  I came across many abandon mining artifacts such as the massive cable car gondola bases set up at the tops of vast ravines.  The roads seemed to on forever, more than I could cover a few hours; being curious to where some of these roads went I rediscovered ‘Google Earth’ & zoomed into the area & got a god’s eye view of where these roads went.  I was able to determine that some went way down steep slopes I had no intention of dealing with so I took the rest.  Still these roads covered miles of ‘nowhere’, leading to some forgotten ranch only accessible by donkey or mountain bike. 

   Bobbie & Robin had a great trip up to the states & made it back with no trouble at all bringing back the new generator & a million boats things; these I got busy installing on the boat right away.  We enjoyed the hamburgers from the guy with the small TV on top of his car a few times before we sailed out on Nov. 17^th.  We sailed down to Punta chavato for a night, then down to San Juanico for two nights, we caught a hefty tuna which made excellent fish tacos for two meals for the three of us; we also caught a pair of Serria  fish along the way.  We left our contribution to the cruiser’s shrine & did a major bottom clean with the hooka before heading south again, this time we were bound for Honeymoon cover near Puerto Escondido.  There were a few boats there so we just anchored in 80 feet of water :-O  The next morning I figured that if we have to motor as much as we’ve done so far we’ll need to get more fuel.  We hadn’t topped off since July, not bad for so many miles & months; we were hoping to make it to La Paz where it’s cheaper & avoide the 12% extra they charge in Santa Rosalia but instead pulled into Puerto Escondido where they charge an extra 20% :-O 

We didn’t get out of there until 11am & mostly motored all the way down to La Paz, arriving just as the sun was coming up; we set the hook in town & eight minuets later Bobbie Jo was running the Sonrisa Early Bird HF radio net.   

  Sailing back into La Paz was like sailing back home, it had become like home after spending 4 months there last spring.  I got a lot of boat projects done & a lot of running around town for stuff.  We attended a very delicious Thanksgiving day pot luck with over 250 cruisers :-)  The next night Bobbie & I performed at a beach bash party.  We discovered a crack in Bobbie’s harp, we felt lucky the whole harp didn’t implode that night.  After the beach concert she loosened the strings, the next two days we added a special epoxy to the horizontal crack & when that dried we added some to the ‘upside down’ crack’.  The next day we laid in four strips of fiber glass over the crack area, after that dried we sanded it smooth & applied an epoxy filler so we can sand the whole repair to a smooth patch.  Bobbie will paint a decretive pattern over the patch to make it look like perhaps we did it on purpose :-O   

   We hussled & bustled all through our whirl wind La Paz blitz.  Robin had lots of fun with his bud from the last time we were here, Sam from Sunbreak.  Our departure date became ‘monyana’… a few times until we left the same time Sunbreak’s crew sailed out on their new huge schooner ‘Vltava’.  We are currently anchored together at Isla Partida Calita Partida with the kid’s over here running the new generator to power the Playstation video game :-O  There is flat calm predicted until Saturday so we’ll just hang out here for 3 days. 

On Friday morning Vltava sailed out for San Everisto & we motored over to the next cove north on Isla Partida, Ensenada Granada.  Robin watched the penguin surf movie ‘Surf’s Up’ & got inspired to do some dingy surfing; I tow him behind the dingy while he rips along.  I then went on a nice kayak tour, and then cleaned the prop & metal parts for our big 234 mile passage to Mazatlan.  Stuff grows fast, it had been only two weeks since I cleaned it all up in San Juanico but the tough critters where back in farce :-O

   On Saturday morning we hauled the anchor & set the main & mizzen sails while still in the protected cove.  The wind outside was already blowing about 15 knots on the nose as we motor sailed around the tip of Isla Partida.  After about an hour we turned the corner around the island & headed down wind towards Mazatlan.  We sailed fast & furiously, some times making 10.5 knots.  Our estimate of averaging 5 knots would have got us there in around 2.5 days; right in the middle of the day Monday.  We made such good time that we set the anchor at 11pm.  We always plan on entering a new place during daylight, but the charts showed that the anchorage here is quite straight forward & we made here in the dark with no problemOs  :-)  We anchored just below the worlds 2cd largest light house, the scene was very cool but in the morning the smell of the nearby sewage treatment plant was quite overwhelming. Our first foray into Mazatlan’s old town was a bit of a culture shock.  We boarded a pulmonia, a sort of golf cart like mini taxi made from an old VW bug with a fiberglass chassis which whisked us away to the central old town.  The extreme hustle & bustle of the place was quite over whelming as we have not experienced such a magnitude of people & shops so far in Mexico.  We had a very sub standard meal there at a Chinese restaurant; we found 4 or 5 Chinese restaurants & no Mexican restaurants in the hours we spent getting some email done in that part of town :-O

   That first morning we had a major crisis with a very critical system, Robin’s Play$tation 3 stopped working just 5 minutes into a morning session.  Now the adventure of getting it back on line has begun.   Further research reveals that returning the unit for repair & actually getting the unit back thru the Mexican mail service & importation issues would not likely be fruitful…so Robin & I trekked thru the grand city to hunte down a new unit $$ :-O  On our city adventure the bus that was supposed to go to Sam’s Club went way out to the outskirts of town & dropped us off.  The bus driver in broken English & us in very broken Spanish managed to understand that the bus to Sam’s club would come along soon…& the sun was setting :-O  Our hunt was successful & we made it back to the boat in the dark & played the game :-)

     The town was exhausting, to get internet it took an hour, a journey from the boat by our dingy & a lengthy trek into town; two hours of travel total.  To get the laundry done it was the same journey :-O  We took an hour long bus to the marina district to meet another kid boat Whisper at the Singlar marina, the kids had a great time at the pool.  A Couple of days later Robin got to go back to the marina to attend a birthday party for one of the kids from ‘Catch 22’.  Things are looking good for kid boat contact :-) 

  On 12-16-08 we motored out of Mazatlan & soon was sailing along in fresh air!  We sailed until 10:30 pm then turned on the motor in the dying wind.  We arrived on Isla Isabella at sunrise the next morning.  This was the most pristine island & anchorage we have been to in the entire first year of cruising.   We spent a year in Baja Mexico with it’s harsh dry hot climate, void of plant life that wasn’t cactus or scrub bushes lying dormant in a state of near death waiting for the chance of summers rain; the scenes, though breathtaking were or basically rock & sand.  Although I enjoyed the undersea world of the Sea of Cortez, other cruisers that had cruised here 10 to 20 years ago spoke of how much more sea life there was in fish, shell fish & the living coral species.  

    Isla Isabella is only about a mile around, a volcanic rock poking out offshore between Mazatlan & San Blas; it is home to about 5 million birds that make this their unique nesting grounds in which bird watchers the world over come to study their habits.  We anchored behind the rock spires of Los Monas, they are shaped like a woman’s figure ‘mannequin’.   We found no sand, it was all lava rock, our anchor happened to catch a rock crevice that held us when backing down to test the hold, when I dove down to check the anchor it was just loosely hanging on but we found it quite tricky to haul anchor two days later.  We met up with our new kid boat friends on Whisper & took a very cool hike through the island.  We landed our dinghies in front of a line of seasonal fishing huts & followed a path that led to a volcanic creator lake.   Along the way we came eye to eye with nesting frigate birds sitting on their nest’s on top of their eggs or sometimes with a fluffy chick; it was quite the experience.   After walking around the creator we climbed up & over to the Los Monas edge of the island where we saw nesting booby birds with their fuzzy chicks & a great view of our anchored boat. 

   After returning to our dinghies we donned our snorkeling gear & explored the very clear waters which were very abundant in colorful fish of varieties that we have never seen before.  There were tantalizing species of the very tasty trigger fish, tuna’s the size of large chickens (of the sea :-)  & even a large eel.  That night we had the Whisper crew over for some sundowners & the tiny 16’ catamaran ‘Miss Cindy’ sailed into our anchorage.  Miss Cindy is a home built beauty that looks like a small UFO, it has twin parallel masts.  I saw her first when she started her cruise in Santa Rosalia, we saw her in again sailing out of La Paz, we heard she was in the marina in Mazatlan & we passed her the night before just after sunset.  They are sailing all the way down to Central America where she’ll be trucked over to a large lake, from there she’ll sail to the Atlantic ocean & on to Cuba… 

   The next morning I took Bobbie Jo to shore, she hiked to northern tip & had great views of the various nesting birds.  Robin & I went spare fishing on the south side where we had seen the abundant fishes the day before.  Robin quickly nailed a tasty dark blue fish & came away with a large parrot like fish & a tune like fish; I’m still new at fishy names :-)

    That night we had a very rolly night at anchorage behind the Los Monas rock islets, so in the morning after I kayaked around the tiny 1 miles across island, we re-anchored in the south cove which the cruising guide calls an ‘anchor eater’ place.  We ended up having some trouble getting our anchor un hooked from the rocks at Los Monas & again when we left the south cove the following day.  

    Our water maker has been making progressively worse water since we began to head up into the Sea of Cortez.  We thought it was the heat of water & the high salt content but it has gotten to a point just below the standard of potable water or roughly 3 times worse than it should be.  I performed a number of recommended tests & cleaning procedures which unfortunately did not improve the water quality.  We now have to figure out how the water maker company will get us the repair parts before we spend the next year making our way half way around the world to a place where we will stay at long enough to have the parts shipped to us :-O   

    We departed Isla Isabela at 6:40am & motored the whole way to San Blas on a windless morning.  We say a number huge whales lifting their tail fins & diving deep for their food.  We arrived at about 1pm & anchored up the estuary/ river, our first time to maneuver & anchor up a river :-O  It was so clam in the anchorage & the people we met so friendly that we decided not to rush thru the place.  We had planned on a quick visit here in San Blas & make our way to La Cruz near Puerto Vallarta to meet up with our other kid boat friends but we got pulled into the relaxing vortex of San Blas.   The local icon Cap’n Norm Goldie & his wife Jan invited us along with 20 other cruisers to a Christmas eve dinner at his friend’s restaurant.  Bobbie & I played a few tunes with my guitar & her flute; her harp is still under construction repair.  Norm & his wife Jan has lived in San Blas now for over 43 years.  They do a lot of charity work for the poorest of the locals.   We’ve been enjoying the town, so far San Blas has been our favorite town & the nearby Isla Isabela has been our favorite anchorage.   We have finally reached the tropics!  There are palm trees of many types, banana trees, the waters edges are filled with many other types of greenery.  We took a jungle adventure cruise on a panga that has so far been the high light of our cruising adventures so far.  We spent over 4 hours traveling way up the river to view the many varieties of fantastic bird life, crocodiles, iguanas, deer & a whole lot of other very cool wild life animals.  We got to swim in crocodile infested water in very pure clean water; the crocks were for the most part blocked out of the swimming hole with a chain link fence, however they have lost a few slower kids over the years.  

12-26-08   We motored to Chacala from San Blas on a windless sea.  Chacala was a cute little Mexican resort town where Mexicans come from hundreds of miles to vacation here.  Good prices on drinks & food made for fine relaxing time there.  We anchored a short swim from a nice sandy beach where we swam to a few times.  Robin & I used our boogy boards in the surf & Robin did a bit of sand skim boarding.  

12-28-08  We motored & sailed from Chacala to La Cruz near Puerto Vallarta in the world famous Banderas bay.   We pull right up next to our dear kid boat friends on 4 Pack whom we had spent the last summer.   Soon other kid boats arrived & we started hearing more on the radio.

12-31-08 On New Years Eve a catamaran kid boat with 3 girls aboard hosted a kid swim party.  They inflated a huge floating island & long water slide.  We counted about 15 kids ranging from infant to young teens.  

1-1-09  The parents had a great time yakin’ & toasting in the new year -  Feliz Anos Nuevos!