Real Mexico

Isla Cedros

As a big system was brewing throughout the north pacific, we decided to travel to Bahia Tortuga (Turtle Bay) at a faster pace than initially planned.  We did the trip as a "passage", with a brief stop on Isla San Martin and a short overnight stop (<12 hours) on Isla Cedros. We've included some pictures of the enormous elephant seal on the beach at Isla Cedros - as you can see, we got a bit close. Unfortunately Charlotte's barking (when she finally discovered he was there) caused this guy to boogy back into the water and settle a little further down the beach. Oops.

Surprise Over

For some reason this passage was harder than some of the others we did further north up the coast. Maybe it is just that we are out of practice as we've been enjoying the shorting hops that we did down the California coast. For whatever reason, this one was difficult. It didn't help that I felt pretty seasick for the first 24 hours. I switched up my seasick meds on this trip though (can't think of why now), so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. I'll be going back to the old standard (scopolamine patch and stugeron) for the next passage!

Our New Dinghy Wheels in Operation

We were pretty happy to arrive in Bahia Tortuga on Wednesday afternoon. We immediately put the dingy in the water and went to shore, keen on using our new dingy wheels on the nice sandy beach by the wharf... Or at least what looked to be a nice sandy beach... It was sand alright, above the waterline - unfortunately there was a whole line of large rocks just below the tide line, that were impossible to see in the murky water close to shore. Needless to say, our first beach landing with the dingy wheels was a disaster! The wheels got stuck on the rocks and we couldn't pull the dingy up at all. Did I mention there is just enough surf to be difficult? Through shear force of will, we somehow got the damn thing up the beach. How we didn't break the wheels off, I'll never know. From speaking to some of the other Cruisers in the bay, we realized we weren't the only ones who'd discovered that "dingy wheels down" while going into the beach at low tide wasn't going to work on this beach!

We were smarter the next day. We rowed into the beach through the mild surf with the dingy wheels up, then pulled the dingy up the beach as far as we could. Gary then lifted the back end of the dingy (thankfully we have a very small, light dingy so this is possible) while I put the wheels down. Then we rolled it up the beach. It worked like a charm and we even looked like we knew what we were doing. At least we learn from experience...

Jerry Cannin It in the Streets of Mexico

Our first land chore was to fill our jerry cans with diesel. We loaded our jerry's onto our cart and set off through the dirt streets of town. While no where close to level, the roads were manageable with the cart. We met about a billion scruffy looking dogs along the way, but happily none seemed agressive towards us or Charlotte. We reached the Pemex gas station and filled up without incident (we even did the whole transaction in Spanish - thank god for our 'Spanish for Cruisers' book!).

Daily work to keep the main street level

Town itself is pretty typical rural Mexico (from our limited experience, anyway). Dirt streets, mostly concrete block houses, few plants (this is desert, afterall), faded names on stores, garbage, street dogs, loud speakers screaming from the top of cars etc. In other words, fantastic. This is the 'real Mexico' we came to see, not the santitized Malecon of Mazatlan or Puerto Vallarta, where gargage cans are a-plenty and everything looks clean and orderly (although that is OK too). Cruise ships certainly don't stop here. We've heard this town described by other cruisers as 'Coyote Ugly' or as 'rough',but I think it has a charm of its own. The people are friendly and they don't hassel you like they do in the touristy parts of Mexico. They say buenos dias, then go about their business. Like other parts of Mexico, they have a wonderful sense of community, as we can hear something going on in town every evening (tonight it's an 81st birthday celebration). It is primarily a fishing village, so there are a ton of pangas booting around the bay, plus a few bigger US charter boats. How the town sustains itself, I'm not sure. But, it is here, and it is welcoming.

Churches always get the best real estate

Wall art at its best

The Best bar in Town

We show up and it rains!

Bahia Tortuga Marina

We've had a pretty relaxing stay so far. We've attended a potluck, hosted a games night and had a dinner party. We've done some reading in the cockpit, and enjoyed the national geographic scene around us. Today we had pelicans dive bombing the boat, dolphins and sea lions circling us and loons serenading us. Not a bad life.

We are also taking this opportunity to teach Charlotte to be a better boat dog. We have only been taking her to shore once a day (around noon) and we've been encouraging her to pee on board in the evening. So far so good - she has peed on her pee mat for the last 2 nights. We haven't had as much luck in the morning, but we're getting there. We'll get her to pee while we are underway yet!

Just Another Day at the Office

Offshore Update: Arrived in Bahia Tortuga

After a 4 am departure and a pleasant day's sail we've anchored just off the pier at Bahia Tortuga. We managed to land the dinghy only getting a little wet although use of the new wheels we have for Pearl is going to take some practice. Charlotte seemed to have got the message after last night and went at the first opportunity.
We'll be staying here for at least 3 or 4 days perhaps more so there will be time for a proper post with some pictures later this week.

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Offshore Update: Resting at Cedros Island

After making a quick stop at Isla San Martin to give Charlotte a break from the boat we packed the boat up again and left yesterday afternoon for another offshore passage. All night we had great winds from behind but a large swell from the west tested our metal. Checking in with 6 other boats throughout the passage showed that we weren't the only ones having challenges with the seas. Stories of bumps and bruises were at least offset with equally good stories of great speeds down wind.
I hand steered for a couple of hours for fun at around 3 am getting the boat surfing to 9 knots until Karina informed me that we were going too fast and asked if we should reef. Later she suggested that when she "asked" if we should reef, that was code for "we must" reef. After more than 20 years I am still learning how to communicate with her. At least the good winds allowed us to reach Cedros island before dark.
Arriving here at Cedros Island we quickly took Charlotte to shore expecting her to get down to business immediately after her feet hit the ground. She had other ideas and instead decided to challenge all the rocks to battle. Turns out the "rocks" were elephant seals, sea lions, seals and otters. We almost gave up trying to get her to pee before she finally remembered why she was there and realized we were serious when we said she was going back on the boat now!
Over the past 24 hours we have seen too many dolphins playing in the waves to count. Turtles, weird birds galore and every species of "fur weiner" known to man. We must be in National Geographic land!
Aside from our sacrificial UV strip on our Gib disintegrating, a leak in our watermaker somewhere and Karina battling sea sickness all is well (really!). Our friends from Kialoa gave us a whack of tuna steaks yesterday which we are currently cooking up. We could have also had lobster from the local fisherman for beer and cookies but Karina was too sick to consider eating them so we passed on that. Winds just hit 25 knots here... Guess I should go check the anchor. We look forward to a long rest tomorrow in the protected anchorage of Bahia Tortuga.

Offshore Update: At Isla San Martin

Hi everyone
We had a bit of a rolly night but managed to have just enough wind to sail. While a bit frustrating at times as we wished it would just blow 2 more knots, we are proud to have persevered and sailed most of the night. We are currently traveling in a bit of a convoy with a number of boats headed south spread out over about 30 NM. As we stuck through the tough winds we seemed to have missed a pocket of better winds that a few boats in the lead managed to catch. We have stopped at Isla San Martin for a brief attempt to "Pee" Charlotte. I expect we will continue at least to Isla Cedros in a few hours.
All for now
Gary

Mexico At Last!!

Saying goodbye to Pete and Karene in San Diego

We left San Diego at 3 pm on December 4th, in the company of 4 other boats - s/v Kialoa (Tanya, Scott and Josh from Saltspring Island), s/v Namaste (John, Cindy and Journey from Seattle), s/v The Red Thread (Neil and Jessie from Seattle), and s/v Astraea (Nate, Natalie and Sullie from San Diego). Our friends Dean and Lynn from s/v Solastra (who are waiting for parts and hope to leave next week), as well as our San Diego-based friends Pete and Karene came to see us off the dock.  It was a great send off.  We sailed out of San Diego at a whopping 3 knots in 10 knots of breeze - perfect.  We officially sailed into Mexican waters at 7 pm.  

Crews of s/v Namaste, Solastra, Kialoa and Sea Rover II

After a beautiful night sail with an almost full moon, we arrived in Ensenada harbour.  We docked at the marina at 8am, got cleaned up, then headed over to the immigration/customs building to complete our visas and to obtain our temporary import visa for the boat (good for 10 years).  It was a surprisingly pleasant experience as all the different departments you have to visit are in the same building, so you just have to go from one window to the next. The marina gave us a step-by-step sheet explaining what we had to do, so it all went smoothly - and only took 2 hours!  Surprisingly they didn't want to see any documentation for Charlotte, even though I had the very official looking vet health certificate from the US. I guess I shouldn't complain, as we were worried she would cause us problems.

Raising the flag

We wandered around Ensenada in the afternoon.  It is an interesting place.  A cruise ship was in town so the vendors were out in full force trying to convince you to buy their crap.  We got very good at saying "no, gracias" as we walked the street.  We definitely don't need another T-shirt or shell that says 'Ensenada' on it!  I'm sure we were a disappointment to the vendors.  We lasted an hour before our senses had reached their saturation point (Mexico is loud) and we retreated to the solitude of the boat.  We have to venture back into town today to pick up a few groceries and to buy diesel.  This is our last provisioning stop until Cabo or La Paz, which could be as much as a month away.

We are extremely happy to be in Mexico.  We are still 900 nm from our ultimate destination, La Paz, but we are slowly getting there - one nautical mile at a time!  

Weird Sightings in America

Self explanatory

You don't see this everyday!

You could lock your bike to this...

... or this.

Hard to describe this - a woven 'rug' in the shape of a fish - from a fish boat.

Good incentive

Only in America

Grisly Halloween

Slightly scary... this was in the middle of no where.

Makes sense.

A novel way to beg for money.

They do love Thanksgiving here...

Not sure what to say about this one..

Last Few Days in America! Last Few Boat Projects Complete!

Tightening pipe fittings

Attaching hoses

We stayed in San Diego a week longer than originally planned with the hope that we'd complete a few projects that have been on our "to do" list for a long, long time.  The big project was finishing the watermaker.  To avoid distractions, we moved to an anchorage in beautiful Glorietta Bay (which turned out to be a distraction in and of itself!).  We spent 3 days connecting hoses, disconnecting hoses, wrapping plumbing parts with plumbers tape (again), connecting hoses, tightening bolts, running more hoses - well, you get the picture.  And then it was done.  We started up the engine (our watermaker pump is engine driven), and lo-and-behold, we made water!  It truly is magic.  All told, our "easy to install" watermaker took us probably 100 hours to install and was anything but easy, but it is done.  And did I mention, it makes water??!!

On top of the engine compartment, installing the panel

Charlotte 'helping' with the install

Hotel del Coronado

In between connecting hoses and tightening bolts, we explored Glorietta Bay and Coronado Island. The highlight was admiring the beautiful Hotel del Coronado, which was built in the 1880s and is a truly stunning building.  Apparently this was the location for the movie 'Some Like it Hot' with Marilyn Monroe.  They turned on the holiday lights on the hotel for the first time while we were anchored in the bay and we had a perfect view of it from our boat.  Truly magical.  We also enjoyed several lovely walks by the beach, as well as a celebration dinner of fried food (it was only supposed to be drinks and appis, but the US portions are so big!).  As we haven't eaten fried food in many months, it was a bit of a shock to the system.  I'm pretty sure we consumed an entire years fat allocation in one sitting.  But it was good...

Hotel del Coronado by night

Beach outside the hotel

The 128 foot 'America'

After 3 days 'working' in Glorietta Bay, we moved back to the La Playa Anchorage we'd stayed at before.  This is the "weekend anchorage" in San Diego and is situated between 8 yacht clubs.  Needless to say, it is usually a gong show, and this weekend was no exception.  Not only were there about 30 boats in the bay (did I mention the anchorage is very small??), one of them was the 128 foot schooner "America", which is a replica of the boat that won the first America's cup back in 1865.  It was beautiful, but took up a fair amount of space.  Watching them anchor was an experience.  The boat doesn't have an anchor fitted on the front (I guess that would spoil the 'old' look) so they had to throw one over the side - without damaging the boat.  The anchor they used was tiny - our anchor (which is albeit, oversized for our boat) was bigger!  Two guys payed out the chain (with their bare hands) while the boat was driven backwards, and you could just see the burns they were getting. Not the best show of seamanship we've seen...

The weekend at La Playa was good.  The weather was hot and sunny, and so we actually enjoyed some down time.  I sat in the hammock a couple of days, and Gary stayed still for a few hours too.  Hopefully we'll get to do more of that when we get to Mexico!

We have spent the last few days back at the Southwestern Yacht club.  We finished up our last few boat projects (installing our dingy wheels, oil change, rig check etc) and have completed all the paperwork necessary to clear out of the USA.  We have 2 days to be out of US waters and hope to leave for Ensenada on Thursday, once the storm that is raging outside (yes, it is actually RAINING right now!!) has passed.

Our access to the internet will be non-existent for the next month until we get to La Paz.  We may try to do a few posts using our HF radio, but the posts will be short and without the usual pictures.  Bare with us.  

We are both excited and nervous about the next stage of our voyage.  We are looking forward to the scenery and wildlife, but are naturally apprehensive about the language barrier we'll be facing.  Neither Gary nor I are 'naturals' when it comes to languages and so I expect we'll spend a great deal of time doing hand signals and feeling generally perplexed when spoken to.  But, that is part of the adventure too.  Hopefully we've retained a bit of Spanish from our year of lessons before the trip... time will tell. 

Stay tuned for our next adventures (and misadventures)...