Feliz Ano Nuevo!!

The crew of Masquerade all want to wish all our friends and family a very Happy New Year!!!

The salvage of Melody

The morning of the day before Thanksgiving we received a call on the VHF from one of the other boats on the dock saying that a fellow boater needed help. We learned that Melody had run aground the previous evening in the high winds.  After a night of strong winds and waves the hull had been holed. David the owner/captain was OK, but needed help to salvage his personal belongings and items of worth from the wreck.  The sailboat melody was on a point a few miles south of Santa Rosalia, near a small estuary.

The crews of Topaz, Sea Change, Little Fawn, Episode II, Tequila Mockingbird, Pear D, Amaranth, and Masquerade gathered at the marina and we drove down in a couple of trucks to the bluff overlooking the boat. We had two choices to recover the items; either a long walk down the cobble beach and then up a steep hill, or ferry across the estuary to a location the trucks could get to. Unfortunately the strong Norther was still blowing and the estuary had breaking waves across it. We decided that the long walk was the only viable option. The Mexican navy was very helpful and had sent out a few soldiers to guard the boat since early that morning to insure that the wreck was not looted. They stayed on site and even helped move some of the items from the boat onto the beach.  We all quickly got to work, some packing up and removing items from the boat, a few people carrying the items down the beach, and a few of us carting the stuff up the hill to the trucks. We spent the next 4-5 hours collecting and moving any items that could be salvaged. Once we were done we told the navy thank you and that they no longer needed to guard the boat. We brought David and all his gear back to Marina Santa Rosalia, and moved the gear into the palapa/office. Dodie offered David her boat Topaz as a place to stay while he was in Santa Rosalia, getting himself organized and going through the salvaged gear.  Everyone helped David set up an impromptu yard sale to sell the gear that he no longer needed and to help recover at least a bit from the financial loss.

When all of us were together the next day for a Thanksgiving dinner, David told us that he was touched by all the help he received. While it was very sad to see David lose his boat, it was heartening to see the boating community come together to help someone in need. 

Happy Thanksgiving!!

We wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving, we hope that all are well and spending the holiday with family and friends.  We wish that we could be with our families and you are all in our thoughts.

We have much to be thankful for, good health, good friends, and loving family.  We have been invited to join a Thanksgiving dinner here in Santa Rosalia. It will be at the house of British ex-pat who lives here, and has a boat. There are several other cruisers and ex-pat that will be attending. There should be between 14-18 people. Should be a great feast. Two of the couples we spent Thanksgiving with 2 years ago.

All for now, we need to row ashore with our contributions of salad and beer bread.

Still waiting for Jimena

We are now in the inner harbor of Puerto Escondido, tied up to a mooring. The sails have been taken down and the deck stripped of dodger, kayaks etc. The boat is ready for the storm. Fortunately the latest forecasts show that the hurricane is weakening some and should stay to the west of us and not hit the Baja till further north. This is good news.

 

Right now we are getting unsettled weather, calms for a while than downpours and gusty winds. More updates later.

Jimena watch

We are in Puerto Escondido, the area’s best hurricane hole, watching the weather.

The National Hurricane Center is forecasting this to be a very strong hurricane for the north pacific. Currently it is at Cat. 4 and may reach Cat 5, but should be weakened by the time it gets as far north as we are.

 

The current forecasts show that it should go on the west side of the Baja while we are on the east side. We are hoping that the storm heads further west away from us and not east towards us.

 

We will be spending the next couple of days getting the boat stripped down and prepared for the potential high winds. The bay will protect us from storm surge, but we will still most likely get heavy wind and rain. We are in a good location and should be fine, we have plenty of time to prepare ourselves and the boat.

 

We will send more updates later.

Cutting the dock lines, and the first storm of the season.

We had a tropical depression form last week, and although it did not develop into a storm or hurricane it caused a bit of excitement here. Friday around noon it started to rain. Not one of our old Pacific Northwest drizzles but a tropical downpour. I went out for a moment to cover up a few things and was instantly drenched. A bit later strong winds started up and so we headed back out again. The boat was not quite prepared due to the brightwork/varnish we are doing. We needed to secure items stored on the dock, re-tie the dock lines, and take down our canvas shade covers. While we are doing this we can here loud crashing noises of awnings falling over, banners shredding and canvas flogging in the wind. The rain continuing to pour down the whole time. One of our jerry jugs and one of our large storage tubs that we used in the truck blew into the water and drifted across the bay. After an hour or so we had a few minutes of calm then the wind started again from the opposite direction. Another hour of strong winds and then it was all over. Afterwards people compared there wind speed readings so the winds were most likely in the 45-55k range. We had wind waves in the small harbor so those speeds seem pretty accurate. We were told that it was the highest winds in at least fifteen years. We were lucky and were able to recover most of what had blown away.

 

We were able to finally get away from the dock.  We got the boat cleaned up and stowed away enough to head out. Of course we only went on a short trip to Isla Venados, an island right off the beach of Mazatlan.  We thought that a short trip and a night on the hook would be a good way for everyone to get their sea legs. This could be important for the cats especially since blue has never been underway. If we can avoid sick crew and potential messes, it is worth waiting another day before heading out. Although so far it seems to be an exercise in futility as far as Blue is concerned.

 

Tomorrow we should be underway to cross the Sea of Cortez. We should end up somewhere between Isla San Francisco and Aqua Verde, all depends on the wind.

 

Boat commisioning

We are still in Mazatlan and have been joined by our granddaughter Mysti. She will be spending a month or two with us on the boat.

We are finishing up getting the boat ready to go. We had to put everything back together that we took down last year and do some cleaning. We also needed to make room for our new crew. We are getting some brightwork done by Rueben and that should be finished soon. Since we are off schedule we are getting the boat out of storage mode while most boats are getting ready to be stored for the summer. The good news of it is that we are getting lots of gifts of food that they need to get off the boat before they leave!

 

We drove down so we have a truck here now. Driving in Mexico and especially in the old part of town is a challenge. First off the speed is all in kilometers so that takes getting used to. In addition gringos are the only ones held to keeping the speed limit; last year many cruisers got tickets even though traveling at the speed of other traffic. Speed limits and stop signs are treated as suggestions not rules for the most part. Street signs are few and far between as are painted lanes. There is one main street that varies in width from about 2 lanes to 4 wide, however there are no painted lanes and traffic just kind of goes wherever. I usually try and follow behind someone and hope they are in a lane. There are many busses and they are the top of the food chain. They make sudden stops (in traffic) sudden lane changes (to get around other stopped busses), and often speed as well. You need to keep an eye on them and stay out of there way! Our truck is big (a dually) so the narrow streets of downtown are frightening. We barely squeezed through a few spots with inches to spare. The narrow streets don’t slow down the buses and trucks though. I try and stick to wider streets. I am glad I got a little driving experience in last year, using a smaller truck. That was a cruiser vehicle that once belonged to Nakia who sold it to Hooligan, who now sold it to V’ger. The car keeps getting passed around to new cruisers as the previous owner leaves Mexico for other countries.

 

We hope to leave the marina this weekend, weather permitting.