5-16-19
After spending a week in Santa Rosalia we are headed north to
the next well sheltered anchorage about 75 miles away. Winds have varied for 16 knots to 0 knots and
are now back to about 10 knots. Seas have ranged from calm to confused little
waves of a foot or two to short period swell now of about 4 feet (which is kind
of a bummer when it comes off of the bow as the short waves set the boat to
“hobby horsing” from bow to stern but this is VERY common in the Sea of
Cortez). Clarice is sitting in the captain’s chair with her bare feet up on the
counter reading a guidebook and checking out the window and checking the
instruments every few minutes. I’m sitting on the pilot house bench with Jarvis
lying snuggled up next to me in his usual “underway position”. I’m also keeping an eye on the radar screen
with shows nothing for 6 miles around us except for the shore about 5 miles to
our port side and we are watching a video feed from the stern to see if a fish
happens to grab one of the lines we are trailing. The outside temperature is already in the
80’s (Fahrenheit) at 9 AM with just thin clouds here and there that we expect
to dissipate before long. We are listening to the Chubasco radio net on a ham
frequency to check if there are any weather surprises that we didn’t pick up
off the GRIB file download this morning (hmmm – the first tropical low of the
season with has a very low chance of becoming a tropical storm/hurricane has
formed down by the equator – need to watch that) and listen for any messages
from our ham friends. Heading towards us
we see a pod of at least 100 dolphins so we will quickly pull in our fishing
lines to avoid accidentally hooking one as they pass. In other words it’s a normal
travel day on the Sea of Cortez waters.
Just to follow up on the previous paragraph it is now 12:30
and we are in calming seas after the water got rough enough that we ended up
putting the paravanes in the water to smooth some of the fore-aft motion and I
pulled out the Gin-Gins (ginger candy that helps with early motion
sickness). Clarice had noted some
horizontal clouds over the peninsula mountains this morning and remembered one
of the guide books saying that in this area there are some low areas in the
mountains and there is a cloud pattern that indicated strong westerlies coming
from the Pacific Ocean. I think she got
it right as the seas were ugly for about 1 ½ hours and then the winds and
waters settled down although we could still see the waves behind us on the
radar. So we are in calmer waters and
now have very very large whales (species yet undetermined) on all sides of us.
We managed to get just enough internet in one of our prior
anchorages to learn that we were at risk of losing our insurance on June 1st. We knew that our coverage year with Lloyds of
London would end mid-July and so we had been communicating with our insurance
agent in Maine about our plans for the next year. Our agent caught that we planned to be in the
Sea of Cortez in June and July and pointed out that our policy stated we needed
to be OUT of Mexico from June 1 – November 1st (we had blanked out
on that detail as we believed we hadn’t planned to have an extended stay in
Mexico until we got here and changed plans).
We had enough time to get back to San Diego if we did a 24/7 run but
this was the opposite of what we wanted to do.
Long story short is that we have resolved the insurance issue and will
now have a new underwriter who is much more familiar with Mexico waters. The new policy will cost about $5000 USD/year
and require that we get the boat surveyed (add about $1000 USD so someone can
say the obvious (that the boat is in good sea shape)). The policy is OK that we stay is Mexico as
long as we stay from about La Paz north with fits in well with our plans.
Getting this whole mess straightened out was a major reason for putting into
Santa Rosalia where we had good internet and cell service for a week.
We had our first pleasant surprise when we walked up to the office
at Marina Fonatur and were told by a very helpful young woman that our base fee
would only be about $2000 Pesos (about $100 USD if we stayed for a week) plus
fees for metered power and water. Not
only were the fees much less than we have grown accustomed to but the docks
themselves were in excellent condition.
Fonatur is a government agency that has built a number of tourist
facilities (including marinas) to try to attract outside money into the
country. Some of the facilities have
been privatized after they became known for poor maintenance, some continue
with reputations of poor maintenance and then some are like the Santa Rosalia
marina where the staff clearly takes pride in the upkeep of the facility. It wasn’t one of the fanciest places we have
stayed but Clarice enjoyed the pool (as did Phoebe an 8 year old visiting her
grandparents’ boat berthed next to ours).
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| Santa Rosalia Marina Fonatur |
I find mines and minerals to be fascinating and Santa Rosalia
is through and through a mining town.
Back in the 1800’s the Boleo Mining Company was incorporated in France
and then came to Mexico to harvest the rich deposits of copper in the hills
around Santa Rosalia. The “easy”
pickings were cleaned out in the 1980’s and the mine was closed until 2005 ish
when a Canadian/South Korean company invested billions of dollars into new
smelting processes, a new shipping wharf, and reopening the mines and they are
now again shipping copper, zinc, and manganese. Also on an island just off Santa Rosalia and
just south of town are gypsum deposits that are quarried out and shipped out as
another mineral bonanza. The original
smelter is rusting along the waterfront (part of it has been restored enough as
the beginning of a museum to go along with the main mining museum in the
original Boleo Company headquarters), the breakwater around the marina is made
of slag from the old smelter and huge piles of glass sand are on the hills also
left over from the smelting process. The
beach in town is called Playa Negro for the black glass sand that was originally
deposited into the bay and now has washed ashore. Throughout town are holes in the hills next
to the roads that must have been old shafts of some kind but are now blocked
off. The little town has quite a few old
steam locomotives on display that were the work horses above ground for moving
the mine products around (displays shows mules or donkeys doing the work
underground). Most of all the town has a
“company town” feel about it will many old clapboard buildings and red tin
roofs.
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| Old mining machinery on display |
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| One of several steam engines left from the mining days |
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| The original smelter ruins |
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| More of the smelter ruins |
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| Note how the toxic smoke was run up a hill to dilute it over a larger area |
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| A true ADA playground!! |
One of the fascinating finds in town was a steel church
imported by one of the mine owners. It
is believed that the church was designed by Mr. Eiffel himself and was
displayed at the Paris Exposition next to the Eiffel Tower before being
disassembled and moved to Mexico. The
building is an acoustical disaster but the historical significance made up for
the priest and musicians having to use a sound system. We did attend one service in the church and
it was clearly a very active place with a number of services each week and
excellent guitar and vocal music. I
mentioned to the priest (poqueno ingles to go with my poqueno espaniol) that I
had never been in a Catholic Church before with an empty cross to which he
pointed to the Christ statue “walking” next to it. Having grown up with protestant traditions
this makes much more sense to me as Christianity is based on the belief in a
risen Christ.
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| Steel Church designed by Gustave Eiffel |
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| Inside of Steel Church |
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| "Naked cross" and walking Christ |
This was another place where I was really glad to have my
electric assist bicycle so I could explore the town which is all uphill from
the marina. Again I found myself
checking out the cemeteries on the hills overlooking the waterfront. It gave me pause to notice how many of the
recent graves showed dates of birth after my own suggesting that life
expectancy in the town is still not long.
Apparently this was like many smelter towns (including where I grew up
in Tacoma, Washington) where the smelters belched many toxic wastes into the
air for years. In Tacoma ASARCO’s answer
to complaints was to raise the level of the top of the smokestack and spread
the wastes further, in Santa Rosalia they moved the stack to the top of a hill
with the same outcome. I cannot say for sure if that is the basis of the short
life expectancy but it would be something to consider in a study. Another part of the cemetery that gave me
chills was a section (later I noticed several other sections like it) where
there were small piles of rocks over unmarked graves most likely of very small
children. Without any dates or other
information I can’t tell for sure what happened but this would be a common sign
of an epidemic passing through. I
wondered if people who don’t believe in vaccinating their children would
understand the potential cost of their choices if they stood in the midst of
those piles and listened for the cries of the dying children.
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| Hilltop cemetery |
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| Looking out toward the sea from the cemetery |
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| Unmarked children's graves |
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| More unmarked children's graves |
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| The crosses on the hill |
We learned that there is no car rental agency in Santa
Rosalia and as it hasn’t really established itself as a tourist town even
though Mexico highway 1 passes through it so there wasn’t any tour services
either. In order to get out of town and
see the scenery we decided to hire a taxi for a day. The driver didn’t speak English but he was a
very good man recommended by the marina manager and we worked all day on
practicing language. Our goal was the
town of San Ignacio just over the divide in the middle of the Baja Peninsula. We paid him about $100 for 6 hours of playing
tour guide to the two of us and Jarvis (whom he had agreed the evening before
would be OK in his cab after some local ladies pointed out that Jarvis was very
well trained).
On the way to San Ignacio we passed a number of very old
volcanos but on further examination we realized that some of the lava flows
didn’t look that old in geologic time (we now believe they are from the
1700’s). The overall scenery driving up
the road to the town was lovely desert and mountains. The town itself is GREEN!!! (OK we are from
Washington, The Evergreen State and miss GREEN) as it is built in an area of
springs and even has a couple of shallow lakes.
Entering town you drive through hundreds of closely spaced palm trees
and then the town square is shaded by trees a couple of hundred feet tall. This
is another town with a very old mission church (and once again I took the
opportunity to sing in it so I could listen to the walls singing with me). Our driver introduced us to an American woman
who owns one of the original large haciendas in town. She maintains the home almost like a museum
and was eager to show us around and to answer many of our questions about the
town. We ate lunch and then started back
down to the Sea about noon and felt like it had been a very good day and that
our taxi fare was well spent.
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| Volcanoes along the route up the mountains |
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| A fairly "recent" lava flow |
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| Mission in San Ignacio |
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| Inside the Mission in San Ignacio |
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| Mission in San Ignacio |
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| Town square in San Ignacio (first tall shade trees we have seen in Baja) |
June 21, 2019
After Santa Rosalia we had hoped to enjoy some of the
outstanding clear water diving we had heard about. We have so far been pretty disappointed as
the plankton blooms are pretty thick everywhere we stop. We have passed through a number of areas of
red algae (AKA “red tide”) so thick it made the water color range from brown to
blood red. The only tradeoff is the evening and night phosphorescent shows are
spectacular. We moved up the north end
of the Sea of Cortez at a fairly fast clip as the anchorages and marinas are
getting fewer and farther between. We
did stop at a group of islands known as “Refugio” we could see why this little
archipelago is the destination of a lot of campers and boaters as the scenery
is spectacular and we are likely to go back that way on our trip south in
August. The other disappointment
(besides the clouded water) was the amount of camping garbage on the
beaches. (We later heard from our
friends on Saare Lil that they had met several “kid boats” in Refugio and that
some of their fondest memories of the Sea of Cortez were formed while they were
there.)
We rather suddenly found the water under our keel rapidly
shallowing as we entered the realm of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado (or at
least the sand washed south for zillions of years from its formation). The Colorado river no longer reaches its
natural terminus in the Sea of Cortez as every drop of water is pulled off to
feed agriculture, provide drinking water and fill swimming pools as it heads
south. On the other hand the delta that
remains is a clear testament to its history of power and Earth shaping through
the ages.
Recognizing that we had sailed into an area of shifting sands
we watched our charts and depth sounder readings very carefully. When we enter the breakwater of San Felipe it
looked like we wouldn’t have any problems but when we looked off our stern the
next morning at low tide we realized that at least 50% of the area within the
breakwater area is silted to the point of being dry land at the lowest
tide. Thankfully other mariners had
added notes via a crowd sourcing program to our electronic charts which gave us
a heads-up on how to approach the Marina Fonatur dock.
After our last stop in Santa Rosalita we weren’t surprised at
the low cost of staying at a Fonatur Marina but we were not happy with the
condition of the docks. In fact after a
very long day at sea I recall feeling pretty let down when I realized we would
be moored at a dock that was long past its’ prime in an industrial area a few
miles from the main part of town. What
we eventually found was that Fonatur had repaired the upland parts of the
marina and was actively working to rehabilitate the docks (they put several
rebuilt sections back in the water before we left). Security was very good with up to 3 Coast
Guard boats at the dock (with at least one of them crewed at all times) and a
full time security guard. Town was a fair bicycle ride away with the biggest
challenge being that thorns hidden in the sand along the road kept puncturing
our tires.
On the way to San Felipe we had
ordered a new sewing machine for the boat.
It is simple (kinda old fashioned) but built specifically for sail and
canvas work. The machine was to be sent
to our friend’s business in San Diego for pick-up. We also wanted to get some new watermaker
membranes and convert our system to be able to use less expensive generic
sizes. A company in San Diego had the
parts in stock and would not charge shipping if we picked them up at their
assembly shop. Finally we had a long
list of marine parts we wanted to pick up and NOT have to try to get them into
luggage from Seattle. With all of this
in mind we found a rental car (in excellent condition) and drove on very good
roads to San Diego while Jarvis stayed at a doggy spa. While we were in San Diego we visited with
our friends the Grays and with boating friends as well. We made excellent use of our time and picked
up everything without problem except for the sewing machine which had been
loaded onto the wrong delivery truck by FedEx.
The good news was that we knew it was in the San Diego area if we could
track it down and eventually while we waited at the warehouse FedEx found the
box and handed it over to us the same evening it was supposed to have been
delivered.
Once back on the boat we were able
to upgrade the watermaker and are very pleased that it is making about 40 -45
gallons per hour rather than the 25 gallons per hour we could get from our old
membranes (we were especially pleased as we had been told to expect only about
30 gallons per hour until we had a chance to upgrade our high pressure pump). The sewing machine challenged Clarice a bit
as she got used to its idiosyncrasies but her first project with it was
produced with about one tenth of the frustration that she had with her
dressmaking machine and the stitches look much much better.
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| New membranes (blue on right) installed under bed |
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| Clarice studies her new sewing machine |
While eating dinner we met an expat
couple who own a home in San Felipe.
They gave us a ride back to the boat and then visited and asked a lot of
questions about our craft and living on it. During our stay in San Felipe they
introduced us to dune buggy riding on the beach and in the arroyos and took us
to see some of the sights in the area.
Joe used to sail on the Nimitz which for some time shaded our passage as
we left our home port in Everett where it was docked. As such he was very familiar
with boating systems and jumped at the offer to join us as we sailed across the
Sea of Cortez to Puerto Peñasco (even choosing to sleep in the pilot house
berth as it reminded him of his bunk on the aircraft carrier).
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| Baja Buggies |
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| Buggie ride on the beach |
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| New friends take us to a giant saguaro reserve |
Speaking of the Colorado River
Delta, like the Columbia River Delta back home it has created miles of sandy
beaches. Just outside of the breakwater
was a beach that ran for miles and was very very wide at low tide (the tides at
this end of the Sea of Cortez run up to 14 feet). Jarvis was in little dog heaven for every
morning and evening run on the beach.
There were many opportunities to increase his calcium intake sneaking
fish bones off the beach when he thought we weren’t looking. There were pelicans and other birds to chase
and most of all there was lots and lots of room to run as fast as his little
legs could go.
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| Jarvis was in doggy heaven on the sand beach in San Felipe |
We are currently in Puerto Peñasco waiting for our planned haul-out next week.
Again we find ourselves at a Marina Fonatur and in a commercial harbor
with many huge shrimp boats tied up together and a number of tourist boats
ranging from “booze cruise” boats to “pirate ships” all of which seem to find
it necessary to have VERY loud sound systems which start blasting music and
other noise at about 6 pm while they load for the evening sunset cruises. Other than that we have found its not too far
of a walk or bike ride to the larger stores and to the sand beach that attracts
hundreds of folks from Phoenix and Tucson.
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| Sandy Beach Puerto Penasco |
We have run into a number of boats
getting hauled in the same yard as us and in many cases they are part of the
community in motion that is the reality of long distance cruisers. We had friends who needed a ride to Phoenix
where they could rent a car one-way to California and other friends who needed
a ride to the airport in Phoenix to catch a flight back on their way to home in
northern Alberta. We found that we could
rent a mini-bus for about $US 200 that would carry all 12 of us and had a roof
rack for the baggage. We drove the van
north and enjoyed the scenery and picked up some new bicycle tires and puncture
resistant tubes then spent the night in a nice motel before driving back the
next day with a stop in Oregon Pipe Cactus National Monument. (Sadly after feeling very good about Jarvis staying in the kennel in San Felipe, I wasn't pleased with him being left in a cage in Peñasco - Clarice has been trying to convince me that Kennels are a good option at times but I will have to use a lot more care in choosing them before I will be willing to leave Jarvis with strangers again.)
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| Mini bus trip to Phoenix |
DANGEROUS IN MEXICO???
About once every week or so we hear
how dangerous it is in Mexico. Just today I had a person write a response to my
TripAdvisor information about driving to Phoenix and back asking, “How safe is
the travel from Phoenix to Puerto Peñasco currently…. Any issues to be aware
of?”. This was after a friend of Clarice’s
had reported that her brother in Phoenix wouldn’t take her on a side trip to
Rocky Point (the Gringo name for Puerto Peñasco ) because it was too
dangerous. Here is the response I wrote
to the latest question, “We did not experience anything that concerned us
driving between Puerto Peñasco and Phoenix and back. We have been advised by
more than one expat living in Mexico to avoid driving at night. The only reason
given was a concern for blowing sand on the coast road from Puerto Peñasco to
Mexicali. We have heard more than one claim of "its dangerous there"
from Phoenix residents - we don't know the source of the concern. We have been
moored on our boat in the seedier part of town (its the only place to moor a
boat) for a couple of weeks with walking and bicycles being our primary means
of getting around and using common sense have been no more concerned than
walking in the seedier parts of any USA city”.
On Facebook it is consistent that
those of us who are here will write that using the same level of vigilance in
the places we have visited that we do in USA cities has kept us safe so
far. We were most concerned about pilferage
from our boat and dinghy in San Diego so we always locked the dinghy and bikes
carefully. On the other hand I have not
seen my cell phone for several days and am convinced it was palmed while we
were at a restaurant here in Puerto Peñasco .
Going back into the USA we were
stopped twice at border patrol check points away from the border. We were only asked if we had “appropriate ID”
and sent on our way without actually showing any ID (the agent was caught a bit
off guard when he asked if everyone was a US citizen and I replied no that we
had Canadians in the vehicle). This
continues to feel “not right” to me after having lived near the border with
Canada where such check points are rare to non-existent. Perhaps it goes back to my youth and childhood
when I heard over and over about the evil East Block countries that required
citizens to carry identification papers at all times and that it was a sign
that America was a great country because we had the freedom to travel without
being stopped. Here in Mexico we often
are stopped at military check points and the officers all carry automatic
weapons but this is not MY country and I don’t expect to have the same freedoms
here as in the USA.
Speaking of which a common question
that comes up on the cruisers’ forums is about carrying firearms on boats. The common answer is it is a pretty stupid
thing to do unless you like visiting foreign jails or having your boat
confiscated (answer to the next question: we carry bear spray in case of a low
level piracy attack – for a high level attack they can have the boat and we
will go overboard in the life-raft). Clarice ran into that worst case “ugly
American” response on one forum when someone wrote in, “but it’s my
constitutional right to have my guns”.
All we can say is that if you don’t understand that the US constitution
only applies in the USA then please go back and take 6th grade
civics and for the sake of the rest of humanity get rid of your guns as you are
too stupid to own them responsibly!
So to end this section of random
thoughts, I have to ask what makes us feel safe or not safe. Someone wrote that the Mexican police
presence with them all carrying automatic weapons made them not feel safe. Curiously I think that many of the police on
the corners in Cabo are there for show so that the tourists worried about drug
cartels will feel protected. On the flip side I have long had a bad taste in my
mouth from visiting Phoenix in the 1970’s when I was a high school student with
pretty long hair. I was riding my bike
down the highway and was randomly pulled over by a police officer in a car (not
a motorcycle) who got out of the car with a riot helmet on. I remember being struck by the barrier the
officer had created between me and him just because he felt a need to look “tough”. Every since that incident I have been a big
fan of “officer friendly” type programs and have gone out of my way to say hi
to cops on the beat (especially those on foot or bicycle) in appreciation of
how little it takes to make a wall between us. In another instance I recall a
student MD visiting our clinic in Belize complaining that there wasn’t a phone
in the dorm and what would they do if there was an emergency. What she hadn’t taken the time to consider
was the reality that the police might ask for her to drive and pick them up as
they often ran out of fuel part way through the month, and had they responded
they might have not been impressed at her complaint about a robber who happened
to be the cop’s brother-in-law. What
does this all come down to? In the end “being
safe” is a very culturally based concept and varies greatly from place to place
and person to person. If you are going
to travel then you are going to have to get used to being responsible for your
own safety and recognizing that every choice you make from what you wear to how
your body language expresses confidence, to where you choose to travel and at
what times defines how safe you are likely to be.
So is it safe in Mexico? Yes and
no. Is it safe in Seattle? Yes and no.
Parting thoughts and photos before I publish this post:
- In the May post I wrote about trying to keep my nursing brain
functioning. The current plan is that in
September and October Clarice will stay in a marina in Mexico where we have a
number of friends and work on boat projects (and hopefully have a long-time
friend of hers visit) while I head off to Hillside Clinic in Punta Gorda Belize
for a month. This is the clinic where
Clarice and I spent the year of 2004 in the very southern tip of Belize Central
America. A funny aside is that one of my
motivations for choosing the clinic was that my Belizian nursing license
specifically says, “without limit of time” so I assumed it was still valid and
I wouldn’t have to go through the hassle of getting license reciprocity in
another state or country. The clinic
director had never seen such a thing as the Belizian licenses now are time
limited but on checking with the national board it was confirmed that my
license is still active. (I have always joked that I go through a sex change
when I enter Belize as well as the licenses of the era only had female pronouns
even though I know of at least one other male who was a nurse in Belize at the
time.) Hillside Clinic Belize
- Boat Projects: Clarice is focused on getting the boat clean and ready for our haul out. I completed another room of my floor sanding project.
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| Sanding the floor |
Floor after varnish (it was the sun bleached color of the vertical wood)
- We have received word that the school we have been supporting is Esperanza near La Paz is near ready for students.
