Monday, January 29, 13 – underway south - Mazatlan to San Blas

We had a wonderful northern holiday.  It was beautiful and snowy and Christmasy and perfect   We saw all the family and had Christmas afternoon and dinner with our three Alaskan sons and families.  Steve’s kids were not there and we missed them but we were eleven for dinner, if the one in the high chair merits a full number!

We had less than a week in La Conner, but it was enough to fill our bags with stuff that we had to take to Mexico.  As usual the list was something that we could have used for the game “ I packed my grandmother’s trunk”:  The major items were food, dvds, a large number of (probably expensive) stainless  steel fittings for a project of Earl’s and a 30 inch LED light to mount ooutside for running at night.  Earl said my bag was too heavy, so at the last minute I moved some things to his bag, which was a good move. Our three bags were all between 46 and 50 pounds. 

Earl spends a lot of time doing internet research and inevitably finds things that we need for the boat.  The new LED light is an example.  It uses only 9 amps and puts out something like 10 millions candle light equivalents.  Obviously we needed it.  He had made preliminary arrangements with a man who does stainless work for a bracket for said light before we left La Paz in December and the work and installation were completed within days of arriving in La Paz on the 14^th.    So far, although we made a night crossing to Mazatlan and to San Blas, I cannot report on its usefulness.  It is dazzling!  In fact it was so bright that when we turned it on, the reflection off the railing around our bow was blinding. We partially wrapped the railing with black and tried it again last night, but with the full moon and a lot of moisture in the air it seemed underwhelming.  No matter, with the moon we had plenty of light, but it will be interesting to try it again when it is really dark outside.

The rest of Earl’s week was consumed by his ‘project’.  He had installed a bimini before we left Washington in 2009.  It had been wonderful and heavily used, but Earl had spent much time thinking of alternatives.  Minor alteration made to the design a couple of years ago had worked, but the canvas needed replacing and the stainless bows kept coming apart.  We now have what we are calling “The Pavilion”. This is a square piece of canvas, held up by 4 magnificent stainless posts and an impressive amount of hardware.  It needs a little tweaking, but it does provide a much better view and more coverage than the old bimini. 

The Scarboro’s arrived on Friday, just 4 days after us, and work was still underway, so we could not leave immediately.  Joan arrived with a nasty cough which has taken more than a week and some drugs to get rid off.  Earl and Clark both had a touch as well, but I think we are finally on the road to recovery.

We could not have left right away anyway, because the weather had been violent.  The first day we were in La Pas, it blew 35 in the boat basin and outside there were twelve foot sees.  The port was closed most of the week.  Finally on Sunday we had everything finished and reasonable weather and we took off for Mazatlan on the western mainland of Mexico. 

We got about 3 miles before the electrical system stopped working.  We obviously were not going anywhere that way. Earl swung the boat around to head back into the marina, just in time for a Mexican navy dingy to stop and board us to check our papers, then back into the marina we limped.  Earl and Clark spent the day looking for solutions, and Earl called his favorite electrician, Jim Rovang, in Washington.  We went to bed, hoping things would look better the next morning.  And they did!  Laying in bed, Earl came up with the possible problem – and he was right.  In putting in the wiring for the new light, he had knocked a connection loose.  When he called Jim to tell him, we found out there was a technical name for this –owner sabotage. 

So Monday morning we started off again and had a reasonable run down to Los Muertos.  It was lumpy and neither Joan nor I felt well, but Earl and Clark were in their element.  It is some 190 miles to Mazatlan from Muertos, a little more than 30 hours for us.  That means a 5 am departure will get us in by early afternoon.  For once, we did not leave earlier than advertised.  The further we got from shore, the nicer the seas, and we had a pleasant ride.  As an added bonus, there was an almost full moon.  There is something quite lovely about running at night when the seas are good.  A special quiet time!  Well, almost quiet.  Our auto pilot which is working well on the auto function (taking us on the course we set) is not working on the ‘nav’ function which corrects the course for drift.  As a result, every minute, an alarm starts ringing.  A push on the button to reset the pilot turns off the alarm until it comes on again.  Thus, there was no chance of anyone sleeping on watch.

To add to the excitement, at around 11 Earl noticed the electrical system acting up. The alternator was not doing what it should.  He turned on the generator and it kept all the systems running, but things were clearly not as they should be.  Early Wednesday afternoon we pulled into a slip at the Mazatlan marina and started looking for a repairman.

Thursday afternoon, Rick who lives on a sail boat in the marina came, puzzled over the autopilot, examined the alternator and announced it dead as a door nail, drank two beers and said his alternator man would be by at 8 am to get the alternator.  This being Mexico there is an alternator man who showed up at 11.  He did a great job of repairing it for a modest price, but it was not ready till Monday, so we spent longer in Mazatlan than we intended.  The diodes were burned out and there was a problem with the stator.  Apparently the type of alternator that we have is not very expensive, so I think we will be adding one to our spare parts.  

The Marina Mazatlan where we stayed is a 20 minute bus ride from El Centro.  The old city is quite charming.  It has a spectacular old Mercado, although the meat section can put one off beef.  The fruits and vegetable are gorgeous.  Each vendor seems to have a more beautiful display than his neighbor.  Joan, Clark and I toured the town on Saturday and had a lovely lunch on a little square called Plazuela Machado at the Beach Burger.  The food was yummy!  We spent a few hours wandering around and checking out the little archeological museum and a couple of shops selling the work of local artisans.  Lovely for us, but sadly for the town, the streets were almost deserted.  We took an open air taxi back.  Delightful – but best remember to hold on to one’s hat!

 

The area around the Marina is not very appealing. It is a development that ran out of capital and buyers before it was finished and it looks rather sad.  The Marina itself is very nice, although the water is not potable and the pump out facilities consist of a couple of men with a very large plastic tank on a wheeled cart who don’t work on weekends.  By the time we left on Monday, our holding tank was full and –due to a leaking hose outlet- our fresh water tank was virtually empty.  Definitely time to head off.

We are having a pleasant run to San Blas.  The weather report was iffy for Monday afternoon, but we found it fine.  We are back in the land of whales!  We have seen a number of them, several repeatedly slapping their tails.  One put on quite a show, repeatedly slapping its tail twenty or so times before stopping to breathe. The porpoises came for Daisy, and they too put on a show.  Two of them jumped as high as our rail right in front of our bow.  The night was peaceful.  We were going through a large number of shrimp boats but we never really got close to them.

 

We will be in San Blas sometime this morning and are all looking forward to a repeat visit in this little town that we have loved in the past  

December 17, 2012. Anchorage, Alaska

December 17, 2012 – Anchorage, Alaska

It is now three days before the start of winter, although one would not know that by looking outside our kitchen window, where the snow is piled high on the back deck and over the Christmas lights strung around it.  The sky is a beautiful clear blue, and the temperature has warmed to minus 6 degrees.  With a warm cup of tea, Christmas music in the background and a fire going, it seems far away from our fall cruising in the Sea of Cortez this year, where the temperature was usually at least 90 degrees warmer than this. 

I think that the fall is perhaps the very best time to cruise the Sea.  This year was a little different because there has been a good deal of rain, at least by Baja standards.  As a result, the hills were quite green, instead of brown, and the air was somewhat humid.  The real downside was that we found ourselves pestered by flies and some mosquitos that had not been an issue in La Paz the prior winters.  The locals were happy to have the moisture so there must be more pluses than minuses. 

As we had discovered last year, there are flocks of little yellow butterflies that are found even way off shore.  I don’t know where they are the rest of the year, but it made us feel like old timers to see them again and be able to say – oh yes, as usual in the fall. 

The air temperature in the early fall is higher than I like, especially during the day.  At the beginning of October it is frequently in the high 90’s.  By the time we left in the first week of December, it had dropped into the 80’s during the days and the 60’s at night, making for great sleeping.  The wonderful thing, however, is the water.  Starting above 85 in October, it was still just below 80 when we left and extraordinarily clear.  I think we could always see the anchor.  Swimming was something that we did multiply times a day, and, if we were alone, we did not bother with suits.  It was heaven.  We are currently planning on bringing the boat back north this summer, and I am having a hard time adjusting to losing this aspect of Mexico.

This year we did not have any specific plans to go anywhere.  It was incredibly relaxed, even by our standards.  We spent time generally near La Paz and explored some of the smaller coves that we had passed over in prior years, but somehow did it with no sense of urgency.  It was wonderful.  There was lots of time for reading, knitting, other handwork, kayaking, and just enjoying each other and any guests who dropped by for a drink or to visit. 

As usual, we met wonderful people.  One young couple from Canada was planning to go off to the Pacific.  They were darling and I was slightly envious that we were not in their shoes.  Another cruising couple gifted us with 16,000+ eBooks.  I have finally figured out how to get them on my kindle and Earl’s iPad, so we may never need to buy another book from kindle.  The week before we left, we met up with Nina, our Norwegian friend off the 27-foot sailboat Bika.  They have spent 7 years on a sailboat with ‘limited amenities”.  As Nina said, just having no through hulls limits things a lot.  They have really mastered a simple way of life.  They too are planning to head across the Pacific where they plan to sell Bika and buy a larger sailboat in which they will live when they return to Norway.

The week before we left, we finally got to see the whale sharks that are frequently found out in front of La Paz.  These are strange creatures.  They are filter feeders and very large.  They grow up to between 40 and 60 feet.  Their mouths are huge.  For all their size, they are very docile and many people swim in the water with them.   We admired them from the deck. 

For now we will bundle up and enjoy the North Country, our family and the holiday season.  How lucky we are!  We return to Mexico around January 15^th and, in contrast to the fall, have a busy schedule planned.  We will cross over to the Mainland in January with the help of our friends, Joan and Clark Scarboro.  Then come mid February we will be back on the Baja to pickup our son Stuart and his wife in Loreto and cruise down to La Paz.  We will reverse the trip and return to Loreto with friends from La Conner, and hopefully have a visit from old friends, Jim and Jane from New York before another visit from our son Brian and his family.  Then, it will be time to figure out when to go north back to the Puget Sound area.  (Or not, if we change our minds).

November 5, 2012 - Costa Baja Marina

October 29, 2012 – Underway East of Isla San Francisco

Earl just caught a large sailfish, 7 feet or so – that’s what happens after you say the magic mantra “There are no GD fish in this GD ocean” and go to make yourself a sandwich.  Daisy, of course, heard the first click and provided encouragement during the whole process.  I was mostly driving the boat trying to help Earl keep some of the line on the reel.  He was his usual self – calm not.  This boat does not turn on a dime, especially at low speed. His real frustration is that he cannot both drive the boat and reel in the fish at the same time.  I should record the dialogue!  That said, it is a tribute to the 43 and to my fisherman husband that we are actually able to catch such a fish on a 7 knot boat.

We have been here about 2 and half weeks and there has been a fish drought.  We finally caught a little skipjack this morning and now the big excitement of a sailfish.  The billfish are so beautiful when we first hook them.  Silver and blue.  They fight so hard that they exhaust themselves and by the time we get a fish close enough to the boat to release it, the colors have changed to brown and orange.  I hope this one survived.

We left Serenity in April and headed north to Anchorage to meet our new grandson, Reese.  He is charming with the added bonus of dimples.  His big sister Amelia is very good and protective – Daisy could do without him since he gets all the attention. 

The summer started and ended with weddings of grand children.  Last year, Jon’s son Justin married lovely Courtney.  This year in June, Julie Ann’s son Erik married his Julie Ann in Las Vegas where they live.  We now have two Julie Ann Andersons in the family.  It makes for confusion on facebook.  

The wedding was beautiful and we had a marvelous time seeing lots of our family.  It is a small world – we discovered that the bride’s grandmother grew up in Anchorage not far from where we live.  Earl did lots of dancing with his great granddaughter Lily and his granddaughter Meaghan.

 

The second wedding, in October, was Jon’s daughter Beth. She and Ryan were married in Dufur, Oregon at a lovely small old country hotel.  We were surrounded by golden wheat fields with Mount Hood dazzling in the distance.  Although the complete opposite of the first wedding in setting and style, It was again wonderful.  Beth had 5 flower girls, aged 2 to 6, who were good enough to eat.  The youngest spent the ceremony alternating between dumping out her pail of rose petals and then picking them up again. Beth’s daughter Lily, aged 9, was honorary maid of honor, and Jon’s wife Becky looked so young and lovely that she could have been the bride herself.

In between the weddings, in mid July, the Kari boys went fishing.  Earl and all five of our sons were together on Serenity for a week of Mexican fishing.  It was a very special trip.  With 18 years difference in age between the oldest and the youngest, this was the fist time since 1978 that all five boys were under the same roof for more than a day.  They really had time to be a family.  The water was in the high 80’s and the temperature probably in the 100s.  There was lots of swimming and water play, and many, many margharitas.  And of course, there was fishing!  Although no one caught any billfish, the dorados were slaughtered!  Earl thinks they must have caught about 40 of them as they cruised from La Paz to Loreto and back.  The largest ones ran about 50 pounds.  A stop at Los Gatos and a visit with Manual produced 45 lobsters, so they had a feast of those as well as fish. 

 

While Earl and the boys were fishing, I took daughter in law Isha, her eight year old daughter Bella, granddaughter Beth and her daughter Lily back to Stockbridge Massachusetts to visit our family home there and see some East Coast relatives.  It was also a wonderful time.  Beth and Isha are even closer in age than their daughters and have many similar tastes.  We all enjoyed seeing the sights in New England, so different than the Northwest, and many hours were spent in the swimming pool.  

In between our trips, we had wonderful at home times with our children and grandchildren and many of our friends in Anchorage and then La Conner Washington.  October 10^th, loaded with luggage, we headed for Mexico.  As usual, we had tons of stuff to bring, the largest being a new barbeque since the old one had died when Earl was here with the boys.  Also as usual, having Daisy slowed the process.  As required, she had had her physical within the prior week, including expensive blood tests, and, being wise to the process, we even had duplicates of the forms with us.  That was not enough.  They now give the dog a full exam at the airport.  Given that there is no control on dogs brought in by car, this is overkill. 

Our wonderful friends John and Maria Luisa met us at the airport and we stopped at a grocery store on the way to the marina.  After 6 months, it was wonderful being in the produce section of a Mexican grocery store.  I have missed the marvelous selection of peppers and fruit.  Then we hauled and hauled stuff down to the boat. 

One advantage of keeping the boat here in Marina Costa Baja is that she is beautifully maintained by Fito and others at very reasonable cost.   She is washed every ten days and her bottom is cleaned every three weeks.  In addition, Fito polishes the outside and pretty much polishes the inside too.  Thus, the biggest job on our return is unpacking and stowing.  We don’t have much if any cleaning to do. 

A couple of days after we arrived, our first guests of the season, Roland and Nancy Miller, arrived to spend a week with us.  They had been down in the spring of the second year and we had gone north to Loreto.  This time, we went south to Muertos (aka Bahia de los Suenos).  We hoped to catch fish but that not happen.  However we had a lovely visit there.  First lunch at the beautiful resort Gran Sueno

and then dinner at the little restaurant at the other end of the beach.  Then north again to Espiritu Sancto where Nancy was able to get in some post dinner skinny dipping.  Too quickly, we had to return to La Paz and send them north.

 

Continuation – November 4 at Costa Baja Marina

The day after we caught the sailfish, October 30, we left Ensenada Grande after a peaceful night.  The seas were flat and the sky blue and we were headed towards an anchorage at Bahia San Gabriel where we get internet.  Earl had the fishing poles out and all was calm until he hooked a nice dorado.  As usual there were the constant and conflicting instructions to the first mate:  take it out of gear, put it in gear, go left, no go right, no go right ahead, put it out of gear etc.  Eventually the fish was close to the boat and it was time for photos.  As instructed, I left it in gear, put the auto pilot on, and went to the back the with camera.  I could not get the camera to work, so Earl gave me the fishing pole and then discovered that the camera did not work for him either – dead battery.  I suggested that he try his iphone.  He did and got some photos.  Then he gave me the iphone and landed the fish.  We were in the process of taking photos of him with the fish –(more instructions about getting my back to the sun) – when there was a terrible noise and we were almost knocked off our feet.  I rushed to the pilot house followed by Earl and to see a cliff rising in front of the boat with our anchor grinding into it.  We had run into Isla Balena (Whale Island).  It was an unreal moment.  I looked to the left and could see rocks that appeared to between two or three feet below the surface.  (It is hard to tell the depth with the water so clear.) I put it in reverse and we slowly backed away as we kept an eye on the bilge pump.

Miraculously, the only damage we could see was the anchor roller was bent.  Embarrassed, shaken, but counting our blessings, we headed back for the marina.  Lesson number one:  don’t ever take things for granted.   Lesson number two: if you are going to run into Whale Island, do it in a Nordhavn.

Today is our 40^th wedding anniversary.  We celebrated with mimosas and pancakes for breakfast, followed by domestic tasks in the marina. Daisy has had a haircut, I have done several loads of laundry, Earl has fixed some fishing lures in preparation for more fishing and now at last I am catching up on the blog.  Our 4^th season in La Paz has official started.