Some family time in mexico

Long since due for an update!

After San Francisquito and the strong winds, we had light weather heading further south to Santa Rosalia. We spent a few days cleaning up the boat, including a trip up to the top of the mast with a water hose! The boat looked like we had taken it off-roading. The water running down the boat was the color of chocolate milk. We prepared the boat for a visit from my parents ( Jim and Sally), and found an RV park for their Scamp trailer. My parents were coming down for about a week to visit, they were also bringing us a bunch of goodies from the states (hard to find food items and boat parts).

We unloaded some of the goodies and did some sightseeing in town, then headed off to Isla San Marcos for a few days. We had a nice spinnaker run and even got Sally to steer the boat for a while. Jim reeled in a nice Mexican Bonito on the way, which made an excellent BBQ for the night’s dinner. We found a nice spot to drop the hook at Sweetpea cove. We had wonderful weather, with warm days and cool nights, plus we had an amazing dolphin show for two days. Hundreds of dolphins were swimming up and down the coast of the island, coming very close to the boat and often leaping completely clear of the water. We put on the snorkel gear one day and tried to swim with the dolphins. The dolphins would have none of this, and refused to come anywhere near us! Funny how they won’t come nearer than 20-30ft from an anchored boat, but will swim inches off the bow when underway. We did a day trip down to the village on San Marcos, this is a town for the gypsum mine on the island. The town was interesting and very neat and clean, the local church was built from blocks of gypsum so was quite unique. After a few days we headed back to Santa Rosalia. Since we had a vehicle we wanted to drive down to Mulege, a town that does not have a good anchorage so we did not stop there in the boat. It one of the oldest settlements in the Baja as it has the only fresh water river. The town was nice with some older building still existing, but the river west of town was spectacular. The river meandered up the valley and the valley floor was completely covered in palm trees. The most greenery than we have seen in Mexico so far. There was an old Mission (first in California), and the old prison (inmates were let lose to work during the day, but they had to come back in the evening to get locked up overnight), unfortunately both were closed so we could not go inside. After a bit more provisioning with the car for items like fuel and propane (which is located 5 miles from town!), we had to say goodbye. We had run out of time and my parents needed a few days travel time to get back to the states. We had a very nice visit and everyone enjoyed the time spent together.

We left Santa Rosalia a few days later and are now down at Punta Chivato. This is a point with a nice beach and has a beautiful resort that we cannot afford to visit. There are several other cruising boats here so we have done a bit of visiting around the anchorage.

Migrating south again...

We left Puerto Refugio a few days ago and sailed south, back to Bahia de Los Angeles. The weather has been changing, getting cooler and the prevailing southerly winds of summer have been replaced by the winter northerlies. This weather pattern makes it easy to sail up into the Sea of Cortez for the summer and then back down toward Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta in the winter. Quite convenient if you are patient and not in a hurry.

Puerto Refugio was nice though we ended up re-anchoring several times. The west bay was protected from the north and east, and the east bay is protected from the south and west. The wind would change every few days bring wind waves along, this would make the anchorage uncomfortable so we would up anchor and move to the other side. Normally this is no big deal, but one day it turned at four in the morning and we had to wait till dawn to safely move the boat.

I did some trolling in the dinghy after Michael from Cambria caught some Yellowtail. I tried the next day but had no luck till Michael showed me his spot. Then I caught a large Yellowtail (24”) and 2 more small ones as well. The large one made a nice dinner for both us and the crew of Momo. We had not had this type of fish before but it is now one of our favorites.

We have been playing with the underwater camera (Canon S60 with underwater housing). Getting pictures of non-moving creatures is fairly easy, moving (and shy) fish are tough. It is difficult to hold the camera still and you cannot use the view finder. We can also make short movies, which we have found takes practice. The first few tries made the “Blair Witch project” look like it was made with a steady-cam. Camera movement was way too quick and jerky, watching could induce motion sickness. We are getting better and may get a few movies posted soon.

We are back at the village of Bahia de Los Angeles, getting some provisions and placing some online orders on the internet. My parents are going to come and visit us at the end of the month so they get to courier down some supplies for us. So we get both a visit and goodies! The only downside is that we now have a schedule. However it should be no problem getting to Santa Rosalia in 2 weeks time.

More from Santa Rosalia...

We have been at the marina for almost a month now, and are ready to head out. We had not planned to stay this long but plans change. We now have a new set of batteries (Thanks to V’Ger) and are ready for the summer. We have finished quite a few jobs, more sewing and other installs (shower connection in the cockpit and more fans).

Santa Rosalia was built as a company town for a mining operation run by the French. The building materials for the town were all shipped in, so many of the buildings are wood rather than concrete like the rest of the Baja. The town definitely has a different feel than other places. The town is proud of the past and there is a museum and there are trains and other mining equipment around town as displays. The church in town has an interesting history. It was designed by Gustav Eiffel for a worlds fair in Belgium, the building is a pre-fab design made from metal. It was bought by the mining company dismantled, shipped to Mexico (on a sailing ship), and reassembled. There are photos around town of the harbor filled with schooners and square riggers. These brought coal from England and returned to Europe with copper. The old smelter is in ruins but still stands neat the harbor. There has been an effort to fix up the area, but as seems typical with Mexico, it is only half done. There is a nice malecon area, with a tiled walk way and lights, but the old buildings are run down and falling to ruin (some would be quite nice if restored). Near the smelter they installed tile walks, lights, landscaping, but the smelter buildings are full of trash and broken windows.

In my last update I mentioned the Palapa of Knowledge, and as appropriate I gained some knowledge there. The original palapa was removed when they built the nice malecon. The current palapa is not actually a palapa at all, it is one of the old wood buildings that is in a state of disrepair. One end of the building is usable and serves as the marina office/hangout.

From here we will make a short trip out to Isla San Marcos, there are supposed to be some interesting caves to explore by dinghy and by snorkel. Should be fun. It will also be nice to get out where there should be a nice breeze. The last few days the humidity has been up over 75% so we have been hot and sticky.

The Palapa of Knowledge

We are in Santa Rosalia at the Marina for a while. We are having some issues with the batteries and are getting replacements from the states. We are enjoying the town and the company of the other cruisers. The marina is very informal and is pretty much run by the cruisers, the beer, ice, laundry etc.. is all done on the honor system. Each boat has a sheet on which to mark down the services you use, and then you settle up before you leave. The building tends to be the afternoon hangout, where everyone sits around and drinks a beer. The opinions and advice apparently prompted someone to christen it “The Palapa of Knowledge”.

I will add more details about Santa Rosalia later. As it is a interesting town.

The La Paz waltz

We are in the anchorage in La Paz now. There is a strong current in here and often strong winds as well. The two work off of each other and so the anchored boats move around a lot in a strange motion known as the "La Paz Waltz". We will be here for a few days for provisioning but need to be out of here by Tuesday. Cindy has volunteered to be a Net Controller for the Southbound net. This is a radio net on the SSB (Single Side Band) radio. There are a few nets, the two biggest being the Amigo in the morning and the Southbound in the evening. These are a way for the boats in Mexico and central america to communicate, this is a known time and frequency to meet. The net controller keeps everything organized as boats check in and give their boat name, crew names, and position, facilitate messages between boats, and listen for weather information (Don Anderson on Summer Passage in Oxnard, does great weather). Cindy is now the controller on Tuesday evening, She has done this twice and is doing great! Unfortunately La Paz in not a good place for HAM radio reception, so we need to be elsewhere by tuesday evening.

We finally caught up to Yohelah, the boat we went with to Canada and Alaska. The boat is here in La Paz, Rob is still here getting the boat ready for summer storage, but Teresa is already back in Seattle looking for work. We miss Teresa, but did get to do dinner with Rob. The will be back in the Fall for more Mexico adventures.

Back To The Baja

Masquerade is now anchored at Isla San Francisco, a small island about 45 miles north of La Paz.

We enjoyed our visit in Altata and met some nice people there. We met a family that owns one of the beach restaurants. Only the daughter, a young woman named Wendy spoke English, and my Spanish is really bad. She said that she would like to see the boat, and we told her we would happy to show it to her. The next afternoon I was swimming of the boat, cleaning some growth of the bottom, when Cindy told me we had company. I climbed back aboard to find 3 pretty young ladies in the cockpit. Wendy came out with two friends (Diana and Dulce), ferried out in a cousin's panga. We had a nice visit, with Wendy acting as interpreter. She invited us to join her and her family for dinner that evening. We accepted and met them that evening at the restaurant. They insisted that we pull the dinghy across the road and into the open-air restaurant (it has wheels) so that it would be safe. We then walked over to a brother's house where they had a BBQ going to make Carne Asada. We had dinner with around 17 extended family and friends. Wendy again had to act as interpreter as only one other person spoke a little English. We had a pleasant evening and the Spanish/English dictionary got a lot of use. We hope to get back this way soon.

We had a long passage across the Sea of Cortez. We wanted to sail and not motor so the crossing took at least an extra 24 hours. We had light winds and winds from the wrong direction most of the time. We went from drifting with the spinnaker in 4kn of wind to reefed sails and 25kn in about 2 hours. We did end up motoring some as it was taking a long time. From here we will probably visit La Paz then head to the northern part of the Gulf of California.

Off the Beaten Path

We finally left Mazatlan! After leaving the marina we spent 2 weeks in the Old Harbor. The anchorage there is close to the historical district of Mazatlan, and is walking distance to the plazas and Mercado. We met up with some friends the Northwest (V'Ger) that we had not seen in 2 years, and another boat we met in Ensenada (Momo). We hiked up the lighthouse, which is the highest lighthouse in the americas. Great view of the harbor and Mazatlan. We had a brief stop at Venados (Deer) Island, then headed north to Altata. Altata is a small town about 120 miles from Mazatlan. The town was first visited by cruisers in 2001, and is not listed in most cruising guides. Information has started to be passed around so now perhaps a dozen boats a year come in, compared to hundreds that go through Mazatlan. There are no good charts to the bay and it is very shallow with an entrance that can be scary, so having information from previous boats was very helpful. We were welcomed in by a pod of dolphins. We are the only cruising boat here and probably the only gringos as well. Everyone seems friendly, and I think we are a bit if a novelty. The Port Captain spoke english and was very friendly, he told me that Altata was a busy commercial port back in the 1800's but a hurricane hit in 1911 and altered the harbor, closing the old entrance and creating a new one 10 miles south of town. The new shallower entrance caused the commercial traffic to stop. We are anxious to get out and do a little exploring, also the water here in the estuary is around 76 degrees so we can do some swimming without being too cold.