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. 17th. 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!
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