Stepping off the plane into 98 degrees of heat and high humidity in mid-September was a pleasant shock to the body after spending two months in temperate Oregon and California visiting family and friends. Yes, it's good to be back home in Mexico. After a pleasant ride with the cabby, getting the latest on Hurricane Greg, the Mexican presidential campaigns, and the new changes to the landscape, I arrived home, on Kestrel. When I opened the boat, it was 104 degrees in the cabin - HOT, HOT, HOT. Kestrel was fine and thankfully there were no surprises; no full bilges, no exploded cans of food, no cucaracha (cockroach) infestation -- she was floating contentedly and tugging lightly at the docklines in the afternoon breeze.
I believe we left off the last newsletter in April with the repairs to Suzie, our errant engine, getting the dose of whiskey after a successful major repair. Once Suzie was running, we headed North, initially with trepidation of the engine failing, for our 2+ month adventure into the Sea of Cortez. We departed May 1st. We ventured about 260 miles North to Santa Rosalia and back (the engine ran perfect the whole trip -- thank you Suzie) -- sailing about 50% of the time going Northbound and 75% of the time heading Southbound. This trip was a boon for us as far as fine-tuning our light-air sailing skills as well as sailing off and on to anchor. The winds in the Sea in the late Spring and early Summer are predominantly light and variable. The slower pace left much time for reflection and admiration of nature.
Wildlife was abundant with squadrons of brown pelicans, which always keep you entertained, soaring frigate birds, and animated booby birds, as well as many pods of dolphins, leaping and flipping rays, turtles, a few (thankfully) sharks, and a pod of pilot whales which we sailed amidst. Shelling was also great with a mob of the rare paper nautilus' found near San Evaristo. Every shellers dream can be found (dare I let the word out?) at Punta Chivato with a wide variety of whole, colorful shells.
Early in the trip we were anchored in the beautiful bay of San Evaristo. Late one evening we had a wind shift with strong offshore winds coming down the Sierra de las Gigantas. Jay decided to go on deck to make sure we reset our anchor along with the 12 or so other boats in this little bay. Good thing he did. I was below and heard chimes -- Oh, isn't that nice, someone's got chimes on their boat! Then I heard Jay with a real urgency in his voice bellow, "Oh, *@#$&, Leslie we got a problem!" I popped up just in time to see a boat dragging down on us. The other boat dragged into our bow and got their rudder caught up in our anchor snubber. Luckily Jay was up on our bow to fend the other boat off. And double the luck that our anchor held both boats. We were able to get the situation under control -- getting both engines going, getting the other fellow's anchor up without fouling ours, and dropping our snubber to free him. Needless to say, we didn't sleep sound the rest of the night. We were pleased to find no damage to either boat the next day and Jay successfully retrieved our snubber from the sea floor.
Later in the trip we pulled into Agua Verde to anchor and just as we were about to let go the anchor, we looked to port and saw none other than the same boat which dragged into us at San Evaristo. Quick. Do we just motor on, or do we save face and follow through with dropping our anchor here? We decide to go ahead and drop it, as even if a wind shift came, it was unlikely they would end up upwind of us. Later, the couple rowed over and posed a multiple choice question: "One, you're insane; Two, you don't remember us; or Three, you know we bought a new anchor." We all had a laugh. Yachties are truly a laid-back kind of people who can chuckle at their mistakes. The couple informed us their old anchor they were using was a CQR knock-off and they had had problems with it not holding since they bought it. They had since bought a genuine Bruce anchor and have had no dragging problems since.
Our favorite little town we visited was Santa Rosalia. This working town was founded and built by a French copper mining company and has a nice little working harbor. Many of the locals here are fair-skinned and often times we were unable to tell if they were Norte Americanos or not, so it was "Buenos Dias" or "Buenos Tardes" to all. This little town is not quaint like Loreto or Mulege, but there is a warmth and pride about the people which we haven't encountered in any of the other towns. It's not highly touristed, which may attribute to the great friendliness of the locals. The lack of tourism is most likely due to the disrepair of the old mining facilities, which many tourists may see as an eyesore. But for those who are more interested in meeting the locals and seeing a true Mexican town living its life day-to-day, then Santa Rosalia is the place. The town has a wonderful little museum and the architecture throughout the town is vastly different than the rest of Baja. Wooden houses with verandahs and even a church built by Gustav Eiffel make it feel like you're stepping back in time 50 to 75 years.
But the best part of all was the hot dog stand in front of the Eiffel church. Now I'm not one who usually gets too excited about hot dogs, but when they are wrapped in bacon and then deep fat fried before serving, they taste heavenly. However, if we made a regular diet of them, I'm sure we'd be knocking on heaven's door a little sooner than desired!
Speaking of heaven, we found the most fantastic snorkeling spot in Baja, thanks to our friends on Onrust, Sandy and Melissa. Now this is one of those things you just hate sharing because you don't want to spoil a good thing, so we'll give the name of the anchorage, but not the location. With some research, you may be able to find this spot, which is called Puerto Lancha. The snorkeling was exceptional with fishes galore, but also the flora of the sea was captivating and colorful. We saw not only unusual and different fishes, but also a moray eel, an electric ray, an octopus, as well as a multitude of different urchins, conches and other shellfish. We spent hours each day in the water exploring nature's wonders. What made this spot so special was the lack of boats, which fish the reefs clean and that's why we're hesitant to give out too much information on its location.
We met up with two different SIYC boats during our stint in the Sea, Le Zarder and Sea Tern. In fact, all three of us were at Ensenada Blanca near Puerto Escondido together. It was fun meeting Sea Tern for the first time and it was a mind-warp seeing Earl and Francie of Le Zarder, as it was just like being back home in Oregon, except we were in the warm, blue waters of the Sea of Cortez. We had a lot of catching up to do and spent over a week buddy boating with Le Zarder and another boat of dear friends, Askari with Dick and Nancy aboard.
There are many, many stories to tell, but we're afraid of putting you to sleep with our long narratives, so we'll bring this newsletter to a close. We will haul Kestrel out for bottom paint in early October and then wait for the hurricanes to die out before heading across the Sea to Mazatlan. We plan to visit Copper Canyon this Fall and then begin our 2000 mile journey to Costa Rica, expecting to arrive by June 2000.
As Jay likes to say in regards to grasping the time and distance of what we are doing: Think of a boat going 6 mph and think of a car going 60 mph (10x the boat speed per hour). We went 3000 miles last year, that would be 30000 miles in a car in the same amount of travel time -- or in other words, the equivalent of driving across the United States five+ times in a year.
Please keep in touch and if you know people who would like to receive these newsletters, but are having a hard time subscribing, tell them to contact us directly, and we can add them to the distribution list.
Cheers,
Leslie & Jay
PS: It was great seeing all our families and friends during our 2 month visit to Oregon and California. A belated thank you to all of those people who graciously opened their boats and homes to us and welcomed us. We counted something near 20 different beds we stayed in during our two month visit! It was a whirlwind! We're glad we were able to visit so many people and we're sorry if we missed some of you along the way!