07:00 Up with the anchor and off to Loreto. We printed out copies of the log and a few letters while we ran across the channel. It was another bright, sunny, windless morning and Loreto, with it's green palm trees and background of 5000 foot maountains, sparkled in the distance.
08:00 We anchored, put down the Metz, and ran to the beach. Since it was high tide we didn't even have to get our feet wet, just stepped out and pulled the boat a few feet up on the sand.
Had we wanted it, there was a taxi waiting for us but we decided to walk and see if we could find our friend Gustavas. We walked up to where I thought his house ought to be, but I had forgotten the turn because we were soon on the mission walkway. No matter, we were hungry anyway and decided to go to the Cafe Ole for breakfast. The main taxi stand is just across the street from the Cafe Ole and guess who was the first car on line. Yep, Gustavos Number 29! He recognized us immediately, asked about Bryan, and offered to take us anywhere, so we had him take us around the block and back to the Cafe for breakfast where we had a nice chat.
With Gustavo's help we got tortillas, booze, groceries, and beer. He took us to his house to make phone calls to Dad & Mom and Nan, and where Lois exchanged Jessica's address with his sixteen year old daughter, Irlanda, hoping to promote a "pen pal" relationship. On the way back to the beach he ran us by the La Pinta hotel where we found a nice couple just checking out who would take mail north for us. We tried to talk Gustavo into coming out to see the boat, but he declined again, saying, "Next trip."
12:30 Hauled anchor out of what was now eight feet of water (We were in twelve when we came in.) and had no sooner headed out than we got a call from the Fram. They had hooked a Dorado on the way down from San Juanico this morning and wanted us to come for dinner. We agreed on an anchorage on Danzante island, just across from Puerto Escondido, and ran down there, studying our Morse code tapes on the way. We've decided we might as well learn code and get our Ham licences; it might save us a few bucks in phone bills and be fun as well.
14:30 Anchored on Danzante. Hadn't got the hook down when I got a call from Terry on "Exotica", a guy who I've been hearing wants to buy our boat. He is pretty excited about it, saying that he fell in love with it when he saw it in Santa Rosalia. He was disappointed that we weren't coming into Escondido and, after we got anchored, I spent a half hour on the radio giving him all the data on our little ship. Not long after I went through the same thing with the skipper of the "Peu Peu", a thirty foot sailboat from Valdez, Alaska, which is anchored near us. Wherever we go our boat stands out.
The water here is crystal clear and eighty-plus degrees. I swam, checked our prop zinc, and brushed a little grass off the bottom. Fram got here about five, dropped her hook next to us, and we had a really nice dinner of Dorado washed down with good white wine to finish off a perfect day.
I did have a bit of a mess today. When we were in Loreto I picked up some nice, one liter, plastic cups which I thought I'd use in painting the deck. Well, I should have known better; I know that polyester eats foam cups and it did a nice job on these. I'd mixed up a batch and had it about half on the deck when the remaineder started oozing its way out of the bottom of the cup. It was a busy few minutes while we tried to get it spread as far as possible over the deck. There'll be some thick spots in the gel, but with sanding and another coat it won't look bad.
Fram left the cove about noon for Escondido, they are heading for Seattle next week, and were replace by a Moorings boat with a three generation family aboard. Later in the evening we went around and visted with them and a couple of girl kayakers who are camping on the beach. Nice quiet day in a nice quiet anchorage. The noisiest things around are the pelicans, who are almost continually diving for fish all around our boat. They make a big splash when they hit the water but usually come up with something to eat.
I'd just finished and was relaxing with a drink when in pulls a very businesslike looking little trawler -- it was Terry Kennedy in the "Erotica". He called and came over for a look at the boat after dinner. Nice, blond, macho kid of maybe 35 who loves to dive and has sort of a bootleg charter operation here. Does lots of diving at 200 feet down. He just got a video camera with an under water housing and is having lots of fun taking pictures in the depths. He gave us half a bucket of Chocolate Clams.
10:20 Weighed anchor and headed out of our neat little cove. About the time we first got full RPM on we noticed a clicking sound coming from somewhere near the stern. I stopped. It stopped. I went to reverse; nothing. Started again and at about 1000 RPM it started again. By this time we'd pretty well eliminated everything inside the boat, so I stopped, got out the boarding ladder and my mask and fins, and went over the side. Nothing there either! Prop was clean, no sign of line on the shaft or anything that might make a noise. Everything was tight.
Back on board, we started again and the clicking was gone. Mystery!
11:40 Anchored in one of our favorite spots, the little cove just south of Punta Candelaros, the one Bob and Kristy liked so much. It's open to the north but today was perfect. After a swim and lunch, I spent the afternoon working on the deck while Lois cussed at her sewing machine as she worked on a new cover for the sailing dinghe. The old cover, which she made while we were in Friday Harbor, has rotted in the baja sun. The deck is looking pretty good; I've got the whole forward section done and the temperature protection on the white is already becoming apparent.
About five o'clock the Exotica arrived, along with a sailboat called "The Trip" which is obviously another dive vessel. They anchored near the edge of the cove, well out of our way. We had Terry's clams for dinner. Um, good!
.PA
07:00 Anchor up and we're on our way. The Trip has already moved out and Exotica is right behind us. I thought about turning the point and running downwind to Aqua Verde, but the foam blowing off the tops convinced me that we were probably better off on close-by Danzante. Waves coming over the deck, we ran back past the Candelaros, three big rocks in the channel between the point and Isla Danzante, and to the west side of Danzante where there was protection from the northeast wind and wave.
08:30 Anchored on a nice little bight on the south end of Danzante. There was still lots of wind, gusts as high as forty knots, but it was coming over and around the mountain so the seas were only rippled. We settled back; I wrote the first draft of our Christmas letter and Lois read a novel.
Along about 11:00 o'clock Exotica and The Trip moved to the north anchorage from where they had parked south of us but we didn't get much in the way of waves until after noon. When they got to about three feet we decided to go too.
13:30 Up anchor again and off to the north anchorage. Now the whole channel is white as the wind blows the tops off the short, choppy waves. Gusts to 35 knots are common as we run up to Honeymoon Bay.
14:15 Parked again, this time in the east cove beside Honeymoon along with Exotica and, of all people, Claus on the "Neeltje", our apple pie baker from the storm in Turtle Bay last winter. We're anchored deep this time, in about ten fathoms with 250 feet of chain out, but we have a good hook and feel secure even though the wind is still howling. By evening the wind subsided but kept blowing in gusts to twenty all night. The weather map shows a high 400 miles directly west of us moving east at twenty knots. If, and it's a big if, it keeps moving over us the winds should calm down tomorrow.
That job took a couple of hours this morning. The rest of the day we spent mostly just fooling around; the wind was blowing too hard to work outside. I called Downwind Marine on the single sideband this morning and ordered a new flow sensor plus some rust remover which they will send to Marina de La Paz. They hadn't seen mail for us yet but Nan probably didn't send it out until late Monday. Lois cleaned out all the galley cupboards and we spent a couple of hours working on our Morse code. Seems like it ought to be easy to memorize forty-four sounds and associate them with letters, numbers, and punctuation marks but it sure isn't, at least for we old dogs.
The guys on The Trip came over for a visit and to look at our weather data. They flew a Bonanza down from San Francisco and will be heading back tomorrow. Said it took them 6 1/2 hours to come down non-stop, a lot better than trying to fly commercial. From what we hear on the radio they still have no reliable air service into Loreto. Resort Air has a very iffy schedule which gives the Moorings Charter people fits. We watched a movie in the evening, North by Northwest with Cary Grant. The wind is down so we ought to be able to run down to Aqua Verde in the morning.
09:00 Got a call from Erotica. We'd asked Terry, who is a Ham, to try to get a message from Jeff Glaves on whether he was planning to meet us in La Paz. Sure enough, the call went through to Kris and we heard the answer come back on the Chubasco Net, "Will call Jeff and let you know tomorrow." The Hams, for all their screwy rules, do have a valuable communication system.
10:30 Anchored in the south cove at Agua Verde. There's a bit of a swell running here but the north anchorage looked so full we thought we try here first. We got down the Metz and ran over to the other side where there were six boats anchored. It turned out that there is really lots of room and it is considerably better protected from the north wind and swell, should it come in the middle of the night. We chatted for a few minutes with the people on the "Moon Dancer". They are also planning to go across to the mainland soon.
Back at the boat, I took my little scraper and went swimming. I went all around the waterline and bottom knocking off the few barnicles which have accumulated in the last couple of weeks. The puffer fish hovered just under me, sucking up some of the stuff I scraped from the bottom. The water is so clear that I can see the entire length of the boat.
About noon we moved over to the other side and spent the afternoon just laying around and listening to our code tapes. I managed to kick a bulkhead with my bare foot this morning and have a really sore little toe, so I wasn't feeling up to going ashore. We're really getting the manana fever. It's hard to get any ambition at all.
07:00 Off and running on a calm morning. We ran out of Aqua Verde, around the reef, before heading south toward Puerto Gatos. It's a short run, only 20 miles including the turn around the reef. The sea had only a gentle swell left from days before.
09:30 Anchored in Puerto Gatos. I misjudged in trying to tuck into the best spot behind the reef, got a little too close and, after we got the Metz down and went out on a sounding expedition, we hauled anchor and moved a little further out. No matter, we can use the exercise.
That task accomplished, we filled the cooler with beer and tortillas and headed for the beach. Gatos acually has three beaches, all with fine white sand, separated from each other by cliffs of wind shaped red sandstone. There was a little breeze from the southwest so we went to the middle beach where a high cliff overhangs and protects the shore. There Lois lay in the sun while I took the mask, fins, and speargun and went hunting off the rocks. I didn't bring back anything but had a fine time sightseeing. The water is still pretty warm and I saw many varieties of fish that I'd not seen before. There were a number of long, skinny needlefish, some I recognized as pompano, a huge school of two to three inch long fish with a turquoise stripe down their sides which parted and closed behind me as I swam in not more than four feet of water, and at one time a school of yellowfin tuna came by on a fast pass. The little fish would come right up to me but the bigger guys just sort of drifted away as I got near enough to point the gun at them. I guess that's how they got to be big guys. I did quite a bit of shooting, even knocked some scales off one eating size fish, but never did any real damage.
After that we just lay on the beach in the sun. Lois even surprized me by taking all her clothes off and sunbathing in the nude. We have the whole place to ourselves and the nearest passing boats were a couple of miles away. I'd almost gotten her convinced that she should come out and look at the fish, even had her up to her knees in water, when our friend Manuel came roaring up in his panga. Lois of course was fully dressed before he got within a mile. He welcomed us with big smiles and handshakes and remembered very well our visits from last spring. He had his son with him, a skinny kid of about 14, also named Manuel.
After greetings, he asked if we wanted some lobster and scallops and we of course said, "Yes!", so off they went around the point with young Manuel driving while Manuel Sr. donned his diving gear. I was kicking myself later for not going with them, because in about two hours they were back with six lobster, a dozen of the big rock scallops, and two conches. He sure knows where to go and how to get the groceries; it would have been an educational trip. We may stick around tomorrow and I'll get him to take me. I gave Manuel 40,000 pesos for the seafood, probably much too much, but he's such a neat guy and he will never name a price, knowing that the yachties will usually err in his favor. After a beer for him and a pop for his son he left and we stuffed ourselves with lobster for dinner.
As we went to bed there was a gentle breeze out of the north but the anchorage was quiet. Along about 11:00 I woke and noticed puffy white clouds floating by in the moonlight, something we don't often see down here. We decided it might be a good idea to put up the Metz, just in case things got a little more exciting, so Lois and I, she with nothing but a shirt and me with nothing at all, got out on the deck in the moonlight and stowed the Metz. Too bad we couldn't have had a video of that!
08:50 I hauled the anchor while Lois maneuvered the boat into the wind. As soon as we had cleared the reef I dropped the parafoils in the water and put our flopper-stoppers to work for the first time this fall. And work they did, we had some pretty rough seas out there - six to eight feet and, as usual, very short and steep with pretty white crests. They were coming off our port quarter and attempting mightily to roll us over but with the F/S's down and George (our autopilot) at the helm we had a very comfortable ride. We were sure glad we were running downwind!
12:45 Anchored in our favorite spot in San Evaristo. Three other boats here waiting out the wind: the "Libre", a fifty-odd foot Grand Banks, the "Ospray" and the "Sloop de Jour", both sailboats.
We spent the afternoon listening to the wind blow - took long naps, worked a while on our code, and listened to the radio. I managed to ruin our two conches by cooking them in the shell, a procedure which I found makes them impossible to remove; the meat is quite tough and is wrapped tightly inside the spiral. I realize now that Manuel meant to put them in water just hot enough to make them come out of their shell, not to cook them. One of the other boaters said we could put them, shell and all, in the pressure cooker and tenderize the meat enough to get them out, but I decided to just chalk that one up to experience and dumped them overboard. We'll find others in the future.
We had several boatloads of visitors today, all groups of young men dressed up in their Sunday best and looking for a handout of cigarettes or whiskey. We've never had so many. I'm more inclined to give them something when they come in ones or twos rather than in threes and sixes. It's surprizing how clean and well dressed these young bucks are, in slacks, good looking shirts, and jackets or windbreakers. The standard of living may not be high in these small villages, but we sure don't see what could be called poverty. The few places where we have seen it it seems to be associated with a particular type of Indian. From what we've heard true poverty is much more prevalent on the mainland.
It was a lot cooler today, in the low seventies. The cold front which is generating all the wind is making itself felt even down here. As I look at the weather chart, however, I don't feel too bad; there's a monster storm in the Gulf of Alaska about to hit the northwest. The wind is down tonight, so we'll head on down toward La Paz in the morning.
Other than for the fact that I had to steer on the way over it was a nice trip. We still had quite a swell out of the northeast (it probably was six to eight feet during the last hour), but the wind was light and coming from our quarter so Lois' newly washed windows even stayed clean. As we approached Isla Partida we were treated to the sight of a Manta Ray leaping out of the water and performing acrobatics very close to the boat. It would come out of the water maybe ten feet and do a triple flip before falling back. It did this six or eight times within a hundred feet of the boat, closer than we've ever seen one before. It wasn't a big one, only three to four feet across, but shaped as they are, a big black rectangle, he was quite a sight to see.
11:30 Anchored in Partida after the second try to get a hook set - had to haul in 200 feet of chain the first time when the anchor kept just bouncing along the bottom. Oh well, we need the exercise! We decided to come in here because we found that the Aurora and Willow are both here, planning to stay through Thanksgiving. Al and Don had been out diving with some minor success, so they gathered up Barb and Brenda and came over to our boat for a glass of wine and a chat. All four are from the Northwest and have cruised Southeast Alaska so we have much in common to talk about.
Later in the afternoon I went to work on George. He's a Benmar "Course Setter 21", a very common, inexpensive but reliable unit. I was hoping that the problem was a corroded connection somewhere which was keeping the steering signal from getting from the Pilot House Control to the Power Unit back in the lazarett. No luck, I found that the plus and minus 4.5 volt signal is being generated correctly at the PHC and that signal has to be getting to the Power Unit because the motor drives nicely in one direction, so it appears that one of two "Schmitt Trigger Circuits" in the Power Unit has quit. I pulled the Power Unit circuit board and found that it is a complicated one for which I have neither the knowledge or equipment to fix, so I guess we're without help at the helm for the time being.
Scallops again for dinner tonight and, while all the folks were here this afternoon, a panga came by with some nice big Chocolate clams for which we traded a quart of outboard oil, so we're pretty well fixed for seafood. We do need to get busy in the fishing department though, we're out!
Spent a lazy day in Partida: serviced the HRO, found some water in the bilge due to a leaky sea cock and fixed that, then spent several hours reading a biography of Winston Churchill while Lois and the other ladies went to the beach in search of pearl oysters. The wind was down a bit but, was still too strong for working on the deck. Several boats came into, and left, the anchorage during the day including one Seattle boat, the "Michaelanne", bringing an eighteen pound turkey from La Paz to share with Willow and Aurora.
After dinner we had nine people aboard our boat to watch the video of building the Voyager, the Burt Rutan airplane which flew around the world; Al & Barb from Aurora; Don, Brenda, Steve (9), and Denny (11) from Willow; and Mike, Anne, and Bryan (15) from Micheal Anne. We drank beer (The boys had pop) and passed around popcorn and lobster while all eleven of us crowded into one side of the salon to watch the movie. A fun crowd.
The parrot fish are interesting animals. There are several varieties here and all are very colorful. Most have large, bright blue, irridescent scales on the tail which shade to green and yellow toward the head. Their teeth are fused into a parrot-like beak, hence the name, and some have a large humped forehead making them look like a caricature of a heavy thinker. The book says they grow to eighty pounds and are very good eating. We'll get a report from Don.
After a dinner of clam chowder, we went over to the Aurora for a game of Trivial Pursuit. We played men vs the ladies and the men, of course, won. A newly arrived couple were there, Norm and Pamala from the "Timshell", so there were ten of us in Aurora's Salon. Makes for a chummy party. We are invited for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow where there will be either thirteen or fifteen. No matter, we'll move over closer and spread out on two or three boats.
The day was perfect. The north wind went completely away at last, and with it the swell on the east side. about 11:00 o'clock Don, Al, and I got on our wet suits, hopped in the Metz, and went through the little channel to the east side. About a half mile south we found a sheer cliff with lots of huge rocks at it's base that they thought looked like good lobster hunting grounds. It was spectacular! There were lots of cracks and passages between big bolders and swarming in all of them were millions of fish, parrot fish, angel fish, damsels, hawk fish, chub, and hundreds of other varieties. Many I'd never seen before and some, like a black and yellow angel with long flowing, trailing fins, which I recognized as having seen in aquariums. Al pointed out an odd looking fish called a Crown Hawkfish which lays quietly in cracks or crevises on the bottom and is therefore easy to shoot. It has a pattern on its back like a rattlesnake and he says it is very good eating. I took a shot at one which Don found for me and, of course, missed.
After that I decided that I had better get some target practice if I was ever going to have a chance to get something for dinner, so I started shooting at some of the smaller fish. That worked out pretty well; I got one nice meaty little critter with yellow stripes down his silver sides which Denny calls a chub, and a couple of damsels. All together they'll make a nice meal for us. And, I also got my first lobster! That was quite a battle! I was hunting for another crown hawkfish, poking around between the rocks, when I spotted this guy in a crack between two rocks. He didn't move as I poked my gun in the crack and pulled the trigger, and he still didn't move as I tried to retrieve my spear. I jerked on the teather, dove again and pulled on the spear and still couldn't get it to come free, and still the lobster didn't move. He was in about eight feet of water and it took about five dives before I finally got him and the spear out of the crack by reaching in and almost pulling his tail off. The spear had gone squarely through his shell, just ahead of the tail, and he was wedged in between the rocks so well that he just wouldn't budge. He was a big guy with antennae almost two feet long, and will make a nice meal.
The Michaelanne, Timshell, Aurora, and Willow rafted together to form the Thanksgiving dinner platform. After preliminaries of goodies and a punch called "Purple Jesus" made with 96% pure grain alcohol on the Michaelanne, most of the dinner was served on the Timshell which has a huge cockpit. We had turkey, the eighteen pounder, two kinds of dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, a green bean casserole, corn pudding (which Lois made), and all kinds of pickles, olives, etc. There were also five pies but, just about the time we were ready to cut into them, the good old Sea of Cortez pulled the rug out from under us. The flat calm of the day was broken by the start of what is called the Corumel, a southwest wind which starts in the evening and sometimes blows all night into the anchorages of Partida and Espritu Santo. Rafted boats are bad news in wind and sea so there was a scramble to clear the decks and get the boats separated. We headed home to the Sea Raven sans pie, poor us!
And, the wind did blow most of the night, never hard, just a steady 20 knots, but that's plenty to kick up the waves . I thought about getting up and putting out a stern anchor but didn't have the energy, what with all the diving, several glasses of Purple Jesus, and a big dinner, so we rocked and rolled all night.
12:15 Metz up, boat shipshape, we're off for La Paz. We'd put out the poles just in case but, as we rounded the point, it was appearant that they wouldn't be needed - the whole of Bahia La Paz was flat as a mill pond.
16:00 Anchored off the pier at La Paz. We got down the Metz and I ran over to the Marina where I found the stuff I'd ordered from downwind but no mail. Tried to call Nan to find out where it might be but the phone at the marina is out of order so couldn't get through. I'll have to try again tomorrow.
Back at the boat, the wind had strengthened and was opposing an outgoing tide so the La Paz waltz was in full swing. I got nervous when we swung within a few feet of an old steel-hulled schooner so, up with the hook and off to a different place. We found one right in front of the marina which gives us comfortable swinging room, a much better place all round.
Several of our Santa Rosalia friends are here; Marjorie Grace, Nua Nua, Amobel, Ventura, Tanake. Marjorie Grace is at the dock where I talked to Bill and Debbie. I also saw Jack and Donna from the Ventura who left this evening for the States and then New Zealand where they've been invited to cruise with friends.
On the way back we went by an electronics store we'd been told about and picked up a couple of 100 ohm resistors. I figured I might as well try replacing the bad one as a first step in getting our autopilot fixed. Unfortunately, it didn't work; I got it installed, then crawled down in the lazerett, plugged the unit in, and had Lois turn on the power. Smoke, from the new resistor! So, the next steps are to order a new board from Downwind, and to try to locate an electronics repair man here who can fix the old one for use as a spare.
I did finally manage to get through to Nan, on the Single Sideband radio, channel 2214, even though they wouldn't honor our Calling Card number either. We even had a pretty good connection. She said she sent out our mail to Downwind on Monday, the 14th as we'd requested. It should have been there long ago! She'll call them right away and get a tracer on it and I'll also check on the radio on Monday. (See what I mean about not being a very productive day!)
In the evening we were invited to dinner on the "Pas Time" with some of our Turtle Bay friends, Bob & Joan Pas, who are moored here at the Marina de La Paz. Bob broiled some good American style steaks from the Ce Ce Ce, the La Paz supermarket equivalent to Safeway. Lois made a cheesecake for desert - we do eat pretty well!
Started the day out by doing the check-in tour on my bike while Lois went off to Margarita at the La Perla department store to have her hair cut. Haircuts are very expensive here; she paid $4.79 including a 25% tip. It was a beautiful morning, as usual, and I had a nice ride the mile out to the Port Captain's office, back to Migracion and the Hacienda to pay the port tax, then back again to the Port Captain for final stamping of our papers. That job done, I went hunting for some money and found that getting cash on the Visa card here is easy, but costs a fee of seven percent. I may have outsmarted myself when I decided against carrying travelers checks in favor of Visa. We'll give it a try on the mainland, but may want to make different arrangements in the future.
I then went up to the little electronics store where the friendly manager confirmed that my two power transitors were shorted. He then searched his replacement transitor books and came up with equivalents. Back at the boat, I soldered them in place, reassembled and installed the board, and had Lois turn on the power. Wallo, no smoke! And George now turns the rudder in both directions! I'm pretty proud of myself. It's the first time I've been successful in repairing any of our on-board electronics. Fortunately, we haven't had much trouble with them.
Had a nice visit with Bob and Verna Roe on the "Sailorr" who are compiling a list of boats heading south. They've also set up a Single Sideband radio schedule: Monday & Thursday at 15:30 UTC on channel 6 Charley. They were on the mainland last year and recommend that mail to Puerto Vallarta be sent to the Marina in Nuevo Vallarta rather than to the Port Captain. The address she gave us is:
Yate "Sea Raven"
c/o Victor Paniagua
Nuevo Vallarta Marina
Zaragaza 180 Desp. 206
Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico
We'll probably take that suggestion.
Finished off the day by watching the Seahawks whip the Raiders on TV. Yes, they have Monday night football on public TV even here. It gets a little confusing now and then because they superimpose commentary in Spanish on top of the English speaking announcers, but the action is there.
Our mail which Nan sent and which was postmarked in Seattle on the 16th finally arrived. I suspect that it has been at Downwind for quite a while - they do handle a lot of mail. She had promised to call them Saturday and it arrived this morning. I also talked on the radio to Chris at Downwind and told him to send us a spare circuit board for the auto pilot. It may not get here before we leave for Mazatlan but it will catch up somewhere.
After several trys, I managed to get through to the High Seas telephone business office where the lady I talked to assured me that they would honor our billing number in the future; so, hopefully, we won't have to call collect. The phone on the dock still isn't working so communication remains a problem.
The wind died down a little in the evening so, after a super dinner of Dorado which Bob Paz gave us, we went over to the Aurora and ate popcorn while we looked at some of the video pictures Norm and I took in Partida on Thanksgiving.
We got over one hurdle today at Migracion. Our tourist cards (Visas) both run out soon after the first of the year. I didn't want to go to the mainland, where we are told the bureaucracy is worse than here, without having them extended. Lois brought down some blank forms, so I filled two of them out and took them in to Migracion where the officials, without an awful lot of fuss, made them out for 180 days and put the official stamps all over our copies. I let them think we came in by car; we'll see what they say when we go to check out on our boat.
We had dinner at El Taste, a nice restaurant overlooking the La Paz waterfront. We were almost the only customers in the place. Tomorrow is inauguration day for the new Mexican president so there are no liquor sales from 12:00 today until midnight tomorrow. I guess most folks are staying home.
Al and Barb (Aurora) came over for a spagetti dinner and a movie to finish off a very quiet day.
At the DMV it was an hour before anyone even recognized our existance, and then only after we were joined by one boater who spoke Spanish. The Mexican clerk is a master at avoiding eye contact, even more so than waiters in some U.S. restaurants. Every desk in an office is piled high with papers, most of which consist of packets of multiple pages, stapled or clipped together. While you stand at the counter a clerk will stack and restack those papers, get up and walk immediately in front of you, pick up another stack of papers and sit down again, never meeting your eyes or recognizing that you are there. After you have concluded that this clerk must not be authorized to serve at the counter and have waited a long enough time, he or she will come to you, again never making eye contact, and ask what you want. Whatever it is always seems to be a big problema.
The concept of first come, first serve, also seems to not apply to us who are deficient in the language; a Spanish speaking person is very often served immediately, no matter how long you may have been waiting. In this case we were saved by Rocky, a forceful, Spanish speaking lady who could demand their attention, and did. She at least got things going. We each were given a form to fill out which took about ten minutes, 201,000 pesos were collected as the inspection fee for the five boats (67,000 for the first and 33,500 for the other four), then we waited again, this time for the inspector who would assure that the boat we claimed was indeed in the harbor. After about an hour a very nice guy in blue coveralls, who had been running around stamping numbers on automobile engine blocks, came up to us and said he was ready to go. Learning that we were walking, he got what was obviously his personal VW van, loaded us all in, and headed for the marina. There, I loaded him and three others in the Metz and we set off through what by now was a quite choppy, sloppy, anchorage. He had a neat way of recording the hull number on the boats. Ours is molded into the fiberglass on the stern. As we came up to the boat he whipped out a piece of carbon paper, rubbed it over the numbers, then put a piece of transparent tape over them. When he pulled it off there was our number on the tape. The tape is now on our permit as physical proof of our identity.
We slopped our way around to each of the other four boats then he took us back to the DMV where we waited another forty-five minutes for them to finish typing, signing, and stamping our permits. It was about 1:30 before we were done. From there we piled in a cab and went to Migracion where things went relatively well. In fact four of us were finished and, with the last guy about to have his papers stamped, we went back down the stairs to the taxi. We waited, and he didn't come. After about ten minutes when one of us was about to go investigate, he came bounding down the stairs. He said that, just as the Migracion Officer was about to sign his papers, a Spanish speaking man came up and interrupted. After serving him, the officer left the room and didn't come back, leaving our friend standing there wondering what happened. Minutes later he returned and, seeming surprized to see our friend still there, he apologized and signed and stamped his clearance papers.
The story was repeated at the Port Captain's office, although there there was no waiting for the clerk who served us immediately. The only wait there involved the filing of an accident report by our friend Rocky on a run-in they'd had with a sport fishing boat at Cabo San Lucas -- she had neglected to tell the rest of us that she had that little extra duty to perform. It went well though, and we were only about an hour at the port captain's office.
By the time I got back to the boat I was ready for a siesta. We went to dinner with Bob and Joan who then took us out to the big CCC in their van for our final grocery shopping and beer run. They are sure a nice couple - hope we run into them again.
While filling our water tank Beth Warawa appeared full of greetings and apologizing for not having brought us the hypalon we requested. Al couldn't find the white in San Diego. He was already deep in the bilge of the Spring Moon changing out a bad oil cooler. While Lois copied notes on the mainland ports from Beth's "Charley's Charts" I walked over and had a chat with Al. He said they had a very nice tour from Tucson to Puerto Vallarta in their motor home. As soon as he gets his engine going again and checked out they'll be heading back with the boat. If things go per schedule, we'll see them in Puerto Vallarta at Christmas.
13:10 Fueled, watered, garbage and oil dumped, mail dropped, and an impeller from Downwind picked up, we are off the dock. It's a beautiful afternoon as we run up the channel.
14:30 Anchored at Pichilingue. Lois hasn't been feeling tops - she has a nasty head cold - so we decided to make it a short day. Pichilingue is a nice change from the anchorage at La Paz. It's quiet, without the noise of the city, and much better protected so we don't have the constant movement of the boat that we've had at La Paz. We spent a quiet afternoon reading.
As we got out of the protected harbor of Pichilingue there was quite a little swell running - maybe three to four feet. It was pretty apparent that we were going to need our stablizers so before we made the turn into San Lorenzo channel we slowed down, dropped the poles, and put the parafoils on the water. By this time we had passed the sailboats Shabumi and Moon Dancer and, looking back as they made the turn, I was glad we had our flopper stoppers. There was almost no wind and the other boats were wallowing badly while we cruised along, seldom rolling more than ten degrees.
We were about two thirds of the way through the channel when the event of the day occurred. I'd hung out our fishing lines which we've been dragging everywhere with little success and, glancing back, I saw that one of them was throwing a roostertail. Slowing almost to an idle, Lois took the wheel while I went back to investigate. On the end of the line was something that looked like we might have picked up a piece of brightly colored plastic. It flashed bright yellow and green in the sun as I pulled in the line hand over hand. I had it half way to the boat before I was sure that it was a fish, a Dorado! We've heard a lot about the beauty of these animals (Dad told us that it was the prettiest fish he'd ever seen) but had never seen one ourselves. After getting it up on the deck I took some pictures of it with the video camera which I'm sure will be disappointing. There is nothing which could record the splendid irridescent green, yellow, and blue colors of this strangely shaped fish. This one was small weighing only about ten pounds, fifty is not unusual, but he had a lot of meat (Mahi Mahi). We stuffed ourselves for dinner and will have at least two more meals from him.
13:10 Anchored in Bahia de los Muertos (Bay of the dead). The wind has really picked up now, about 35 knots in the anchorage, but Muertos is well protected from the north and we're comfortable with a good solid hook in the hard sand bottom. There are lots of boats here: Half Moon, Moon Dancer, the power boat, Compromise, and two or three others were here when we arrived, then five boats traveling behind us came in for the night. Marjorie Grace and Peregrina decided against heading directly for Isla Isabella, 250 miles away, and came to join us. By dark the wind was down. Maybe we can move on in the morning. Click here for MORE.