After our very enjoyable trip across Canada and then back
across the USA we flew back to Phoenix and then the shuttle Clarice had
scheduled took us and a whole lot of baggage back to Puerto Penasco. We had carried 1 bag (+ 1 dog counts as a
carry-on) + 2 backpacks on the plane, we had 1 free bag each (=2) + we paid for
1 extra bag (which weighed in at 47 lbs) (total luggage via the plane 6 items +
Jarvis). We had pre-shipped 1 – 72 lb
box via UPS and ordered 3 gallons of diesel treatment delivered to the hotel.
The fun part was that we knew that we would be required to vacate the shuttle
at the border and carry everything into Mexican territory so we spent the
evening at the hotel reshuffling everything into 2 wheeled carry-on sized bags
(the heavy stuff), 4 duffels, 2 grocery bags, and one box (and of course Jarvis
on his leash). After checking 2 of the
duffels (and apparently deciding we wear a lot of cloths) and Jarvis’
international health certificate (value of the piece of paper alone $99 USD
(total vet bill including blood tests, heart-worm prevention meds, and 3 year
rabies booster (the 3 year shot is not offered in Mexico) $500 USD)), and
having Clarice run across the street to pay our 6 month’s visitor’s visa fees
we were allowed to move into Mexico proper and reload into the shuttle. From
there it was a non-eventful ride back to the boat.
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| Jarvis waiting for the veterinarian to return |
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| Waiting for our shuttle to Mexico |
Knowing that it would be very hot on our return and
recognizing that we can’t use the boat’s air conditioning units when it is out
of the water (they transfer the heat to seawater) we had planned to use one day
to get Salish Aire ready to “splash” and launch the following day. It soon became clear that this schedule was
pushing the limits a bit as the boat was covered with dirt, we needed to get
the refrigerator and freezer cooled down and filled with groceries and we had
some final work to do on the bottom AND we found a through-hull valve that
wasn’t seated well. (For non-boaters a
“through-hull” is anything that requires a hole in the boat typically below the
waterline so they are always of concern if they aren’t clearly seated well.) In
this case it was a valve that had previously been used by the toilet system but
wasn’t any longer so I decided to re-purpose it for the shower drain. While in
the States I had picked up a final bronze plumbing fitting and figured it would
take about 15 minutes to install (Clarice joked that 15 minutes in “normal
time” equals several hours in “boat time” – she was right.) As I tightened the
new part it seemed like the valve moved so I had Clarice watch from outside of
the boat and she reported it was gapping from the hull a tiny bit. In order to reseat the valve we had to remove
it completely and clean all of the old sealant.
Apparently when it was originally installed it was about 1/16 in from
tight but the sealant didn’t allow for any leaks. The creatures of the sea did clog up the threads
that should have been used and required that we install it twice (once to
discover it wouldn’t tighten correctly and the second time after we had cleaned
the hardened sea gunk from the threads). It was also interesting to find that after 20
some years the paint on the inside of the hull under the sealant had never
cured. In any case after lots of 3M 5200
sealant “jumping” onto my clothes, and lots of “gnashing of teeth” (but no
“tearing of garments”) we got it in place and once in the water it didn’t leak.
Back to the problem of the very hot boat out of the
water. After one night of not being able
to sleep and recognizing that we would need a couple more nights I talked to
the yard owner about renting a window A/C unit.
He normally had some but they were all in use instead he offered to take
me to the store to buy a small unit and buy it back from me at a discount if
that is what we wanted to do (instead another boater outbid him and ended up
with the unit.) We managed to jury-rig
it so it blew cool air in through the hatch over our bed and provided a place
to retreat to during the day and allowed us to get some sound sleep. With some good rest we were able to get our
projects done and be ready to launch on high tide Monday August 5th at 5 PM. We moved across the harbor and after checking
the weather forecast we prepared for a 3 AM departure on our way to Puerto
Refugio 100 miles south.
Based on the weather forecast we expected some wind from the
south with a maximum of 15 – 20 knots.
We started out in 13 knots which surprised me a bit as it is usually
calm in the early hours. From the 13
knots the wind continued to increase until we were bashing into 25 – 30 knot
winds and waves up to about 10 ft for
the next 16 hours. The best description
I can give is imagine being in a significant earthquake for 16 hours. We broke dishes (that flew out of locked
cabinets), Jarvis ducked just in time to miss getting hit by a 60 pound life raft
jumping off its shelf, we had salt crystals ½ way up our engine stack above our
heads. I needed to use meclizine to
stave off sea-sickness but, despite it label stating it is “non-drowsy”, I felt
drowsy all day (thank goodness Clarice seems to be “immune” to the effects of
motion sickness). We tried to keep
doors open and finally resorted to operating the generator so we could cool the
pilot house with air-conditioning (unlike the Pacific Northwest where winds are
cold, the air temperature was still in the 90s). We did talk with other boaters on the
Chubasco Ham Radio Net at 7:30 AM and were told that the National Weather
Service totally missed the winds we were facing and for that matter they were
very localized exactly where we were! In
summary; it was a miserable day, we dropped anchor after dark (luckily we had
been in the anchorage before so an exact route to follow was saved on our
electronic charts – we don’t normally enter Mexican anchorages at night as the
charts can be up to 1/8th mile off), picked up the worst of the
glass, I had a tortilla with peanut butter, Jarvis ate and drank a bit, and we
headed for bed with a nice breeze blowing through our bedroom hatch.
 |
The same storm that had shaken us up had broken a chain plate
holding a side stay for the mast on this north bound boat. Then when he went to start his engine
he discovered the fuel dock had filled his tank with gasoline rather than
diesel. We were able to help out by selling him 20 gallons of diesel
from our tanks (its nice having a 1000 gallon capacity). |
So after a good night’s sleep we awoke this morning to a
really lovely anchorage area with no other boats about. The breezes that do come from the south are
blocked by Guardian Angel Island from creating any real waves and help cool us
off some. The water is clear and warm
enough that even I (and seemingly Jarvis when we put him in) enjoy it. Clarice and I worked through the day on boat
projects and about the time we had ridiculous amounts of sweat streaming off us
we would jump in next to the boat or go snorkeling. Our expectation is that we
will stay here and explore for a few days before moving on. More to follow I’m sure.
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| Our entry for the 2020 Nordhavn calendar from Puerto Refugio |
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| Puerto Refugio |
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| Jarvis was excited to find a big field to run in on our early morning run before it was too hot. |
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| Jarvis was excited to find a big field to run in on our early morning run before it was too hot. |
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| Puerto Refugio |
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| Puerto Refugio |
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| Puerto Refugio |
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| Puerto Refugio |
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| Puerto Refugio |
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| Vela (Sail) rock is easily mistaken for a boat under sail from a distance thanks to "paint" from the birds |
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These silly birds like to circle the boat (driving Jarvis nuts) and
then they land in the rigging and argue over who gets the best spot.
The other day two of them were trying like crazy to catch my fishing lure
zipping along at 7 knots. |
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| Another amazing sunrise |
The dog and the radio:
We have been trying to figure out what it is with Jarvis and
the High Frequency (HF) SSB/Ham
radio. When we first started using it he
never seemed to take notice then he got to where he was pretty upset by
it. He shakes and climbs in my lap and
just acts completely out of sorts. We
asked if anyone else had a dog with the same issues and no one did but the best
suggestion seemed to be that he is responding to the modem making noise at very
high frequencies of hearing. With that
in mind we try to connect when we are using the modem and then turn off the sound
but he still is out-of-sorts. Someone
suggested it was a conditioned response so with a month away from the boat it
would seem that he might have forgotten to worry. Initially that seemed to be the case but
today he came back from a beach outing with Clarice and I had the modem /radio
combination going but the sound off and he quickly got back to his scared
behavior. I’m really coming to believe
that he is sensitive to the Radio Frequency (RF) in which case a Faraday cage
might be the answer (our engine room with its stainless fire screen should work
but Jarvis really doesn’t like being in there).
Maybe a bit of metal around his dog house, aluminum foil hat, who knows??? So far locking him in the
bedroom seems to help some (it is the furthest point from the transmitting
antenna). In any case RF is a real issue with boat HF radios that make LED
light twinkle, pumps come on spontaneously, and other weird stuff – maybe
including freaking out my poor little dog who will never be able to understand.
UPDATE: While we were
up north we took delivery of a top quality coax cable to replace the last
vestige of the original HF radio that came with the boat. The original cable was very heavy duty but
when it was removed we could see outward signs of insulation cracking and heat
damage from being in the false stack.
WOW – what a difference after a bit of a false start (the factory
connector had an intermittent failure but we had also ordered extra connectors
and a crimp tool for them)! We used to
have a record of a send rate on the modem we use for Sailmail email service of
about 250 bytes/min whereas today (with poor ionosphere conditions) we hit 850
bytes/min and our receive record went from about 3500 bytes / min to 13000
bytes/min (which reminds me of our excitement the first time our new 5600 baud
dial-up modem brought us data after using the 1200 baud system). There are also signs that we have less RF
leakage into the cabin including Jarvis is less bothered. He has also learned to head to the V-berth
when the radio comes on or we are trying to see if covering him with a metallic
shield helps (it seems to).
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| Trying a makeshift Faraday cage |
Heat, Hot, Really Hot!:
Clarice and I grew up in the Pacific Northwest where it gets
into the 90’s Fahrenheit for a few days of the year and all of the locals think
the world is coming to an end and high humidity simply doesn’t happen when
there are high temperatures (now you know why we put up with gray skies for
weeks on end in the winter). So here we
are in Mexico where it has seldom been below 90 since we arrived and the
humidity running 40 – 50 % (which doesn’t seem like much when comparted to the
rain forest environment we lived in in 2004 and I’ll return to next month (poor
judgement???)) but it is enough to make it so sweating (or panting in Jarvis’
case) are ineffective ways to cool off.
The sweat doesn’t seem to evaporate but rather just pools around where
we are standing or soaks another set of clothes so they look like we wore them
in a shower. So how are we coping –
overall not well the truth be known. At
this moment we are anchored in a lovely cove surrounded by interesting hills
and lots of little rock islands. We
should be spending our days in the kayaks or hiking and exploring. We do swim, frequently, but it’s more to cool
off than anything else. We’ve even taken
to putting Jarvis in the water in his life vest – he seems to enjoy being
cooled off and scoots around amazingly fast with his four little paws doing the
dog paddle but he continues to not be a fan of the water.
So what do we do….. We drink LOTS and LOTS of fluids. A
quick aside: before we left for the States we were drinking lots of fluids and
my weight dropped 10# and my blood pressure was dropping and I thought it was
all great. Until I nearly passed out with the blood pressure appropriate for a
16 year old female. So on Norm and Tom
Tech Talk (as our frequent radio conversations about all things medical and all
things mechanical have come to be known by our fellow boaters) I brought this
issue up with my friend Tom the Physicians’ Assistant who pondered it a bit
then asked if I was on a low sodium diet.
Since Clarice has a family history of hypertension she has never added
salt to her cooking or at the table so by default I am on a low salt diet. Tom’s advice was to eat salt so Clarice and I
chugged down a pint of electrolyte solution bottled by and sold next to the
Coca Cola and drunk frequently by the locals.
Now we know why as we both quickly regained a lot of energy and felt
better overall. So back to the lots and
lots of fluids we drink now: Every evening I fill our many Soda Stream liter
sized bottles with water and a pinch of salt and put them in the refrigerator
for the next day. During the day we
drink them straight or with flavoring with or without CO2 injected by the Soda
Stream thingy. We keep fans blowing on
us continually, we wear as little clothing as we can and not stick to the
furniture, we stay in the shade of the boat, we jump into the water and hang
around the shady side of the boat, and if all else fails we start the generator
and run the air conditioners. For sleep
we open the hatches over our bed and hope for a breeze while running a fan
aimed at us all night long.
The Soda Stream deserves an honorable mention. Like most boaters we abhor waste in general
and so to avoid carrying cans of soda pop many of us have Soda Stream devices
on board to carbonate water we are already carrying and then we add powdered
flavoring. The problem is that Soda Stream uses proprietary CO2 cartridges and
refills are not available in Baja. To
address this problem we bought a fill device off Amazon and a 5# CO2 bottle
(which we carried in our luggage with the valve removed and a sign on the
outside of the luggage to ease any concerned TSA agent looking at it on x-ray
(they still opened the luggage just to be sure)). The next problem was filling the bottle with
CO2 locally. In the USA there are a
number of places that will do this ranging from welding gas suppliers to soda
pop distributers but none of those places that I checked in La Paz filled their
own bottles (they sent them away to Tijuana).
Finally a very kind man made a couple of phone calls for me when I
explained I was running all over town on my bicycle. He provided me with the name of a company and
we confirmed that it showed up on Google maps.
I had no idea what the company did and when Google maps led me down a
dusty back alley I wondered what was going on until I saw a fire extinguisher
company. They took one look at the
bottle and indicated it would be ready after lunch (they even provided a label
for the bottle so now it says it is a fire extinguisher). Word has quickly spread through the cruiser
community that we can fill Soda Stream cylinders and we have discovered we have
a highly desirable trade item (our other trade item is fresh water which
usually can be traded for fresh fish at outlying fish camps).
August 19, 2019
Hurricane country:
Our insurance (like most other policies for this part of the
world) has a lot to say about hurricanes.
In fact the reason we are staying north of 23 degrees N latitude until
November 1st at the earliest is that our insurance company requires
that we stay out of the worst of the hurricane zone if we want to be
covered.
So what do we know about eastern Pacific hurricanes: They are spawned as tropical lows about 10
degrees north (the equator is considered to be out of the hurricane zone) and
tend to move west and northwest as a rule.
Once they get west and north a bit the Coriolis Effect kicks in and they
may start to rotate (there is no Coriolis Effect at the equator and thus no
rotating storms - yes this was news to
me but there are some interesting YouTube videos explaining it). All is well as long as the trade winds keep
them on their “normal” track which is aimed right at Hawaii (although the
cooler water usually tames them before they get there). BUT especially later in the season they do
“funny things” and sometimes head straight up the Sea of Cortez or make a “J”
back towards the Pacific shore of South Mexico or the Baja Peninsula. If they head toward Baja everyone hopes the
mountains along the spine of the peninsula will take some of the energy out of
the storms but looking at some of the damage we have seen they can, and do, wreak
havoc periodically along the Sea of Cortez shore of Baja. Since we are in
hurricane season at the present time we try to keep an eye on anything
suspicious so we can make preparations if we need to which brings us to last
evening.
We get our weather reports several ways when we are away
from a good internet source. We have an InReach satellite messenger which helps
a bit but doesn’t provide marine specific reports for this area. At least once
a day we download forecast files from our Sailmail account via the HF
radio. These reports are automated and
come in both narrative and graphic (GRIB) formats. Finally we regularly participate in the 07:30
AM Chubasco ham radio net which always includes weather information. Last evening I pulled the graphic GRIB files
for a larger area than usual and noticed a tight spinning mass of ugly air
south of Baja. When I paged forward the
ugly mass moved up the outside of Baja with its high winds and rain and then
crossed a low spot in the peninsula eventually landing directly overhead. I asked about this on the Chubasco net this
morning and apparently they weren’t looking forward to the weekend and the
storm is only showing up in some models at this time. If it comes it sounds like Saturday and
Sunday could be VERY wet and VERY windy.
As we expect to be in Santa Rosalia with our own internet access this
evening we will be able to access the NOAA National Hurricane Center web page
and will see what develops. In the
meantime we are making plans of where to hunker down (after discussing options
on the Chubasco net we believe the south end of(Bahia Concepcion ) Coyote Bay
offers us the best protection without crossing to the mainland side of the Sea)
and how to best protect the boat and ourselves.
More to follow………
Back to the heat:
We had a heart to heart talk the other day and I (not so
much Clarice) am coming to believe that heading south to Panama may not
happen. If we head that way then we are
“stuck” in the tropics for a number of months more and I’m not sure I’m up to
it. We have always said that some of the
world’s premier cruising grounds are in the Salish Sea and on north to Alaska
so we are likely to head back north. Our
current conundrum is that we are required to stay north of Cabo up until our
insurance window opens on November 1st and unless the weather from
mid-California north decides to vary considerably from its historical past we
may not be able to find a window of opportunity for safe travel until spring.
August 28, 2019
Since the last note we spent a week on the dock in Santa
Rosalia where they had 50 Amp electric power available which meant (Oh GLORIOUS
Day!) that we could run all 3 air conditioners continuously! Which was a good thing as the temperature hit
108 F at one point! There was also a
small but appreciated roof top pool where we could hang out and just soak in
the “cool” water while Jarvis enjoyed the shade cover and the breeze off the
water. We did have one nighttime rain,
wind and lightning storm that woke up the several boats on the dock waiting out
tropical storm Ivo which was travelling up the other side of the peninsula. The squall lasted about 2 hours and then
nothing so we decided it was more likely a “Chubasco” event rather than being
related to Ivo. A Chubasco wind is where rising warm air over the Gulf pulls
cooler Pacific air over low spots in the mountains and creates some memorable
but short lived squallS. We boats waited
and talked with each other and we watched the townsfolk fill their cars with
gas and appreciated the offer of an upstairs room in the marina to take refuge
in if needed and then pretty much nothing but some light rain happened. (No complaints from us!)
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Santa Rosalia Road Runner |
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| Old mine shafts are a common sight in Santa Rosalia |
We continue to make our way back towards La Paz with the
plan of arriving there within the next few days. On one hand the water is very clear and we
had the best dive since arriving in Mexico yesterday and on the other hand
getting back on a dock where we can plug the air conditioner in sounds
great. We were anchored in front of a
huge new resort the last two nights and joined another couple out of Washington
for dinner ashore where we had some of the best meals we’ve had in Mexico. Last evening we went to bed under a cloudless
sky on a mirror smooth bay and poo-pooed the forecast of possible thunder
storms. Perhaps we should have figured
something was up when Jarvis met us as we returned from the restaurant with a
wail of despair which was really unusual behavior for him – he is always eager
to greet us but doesn’t sound upset that he was alone on the boat. When we don’t have air conditioning we tend to
sleep with our heads at the foot of the bed so that our upper bodies are
directly under the main overhead hatch for the wonderful moments when wind
funnels down and it also puts us closer to the 12 V fan that we run all night
long. About 1 AM I was dreaming about
getting splashed with water when I realized that I really was getting dripped
on from rain coming through the open hatch.
I woke Clarice up and the two of us ran around and closed up the boat
except for the salon door and windows which are under cover just as the
humidity was climbing to the level “miserable beyond miserable”. All around us there was lightning but it must
have been pretty distant as we didn’t
hear much thunder. We did have light
rain later in the morning and the swell created by the storm rocked the boat as
we hadn’t put our Flopper Stopper out [Def: A Flopper Stopper is a metal device
about 4 ft X 2 ft with a hinge in the middle that is hung into the water in our
case from our paravane poles. The goal
is to keep the boat at anchor from reaching its natural rocking frequency (as
happened last night). It does this by
closing like a clam as that side of the boat dips and then snapping open and
“lifting” a very heavy load of water when that side rises. The device is very helpful but they are
seldom seen in the PNW where anchorages tend to be very protected.] Needless to say neither we nor the other boat
anchored near us slept well last night so today we did a short 3 hour run to
the anchorage off Agua Verde Village.
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| Flopper Stopper under water |
Swimming, snorkeling, and diving:
While I was visiting the manager’s office in Puerto Penasco
I noticed an updated version of the paddlewheel
speedometer / thermometer that came with our boat sitting on a
shelf. I was able to purchase it for a
fair price and have since installed it.
Our older paddlewheel worked and reliably told us our speed through the
water (to compare with our speed over ground from the GPS so we can judge
currents) but the thermometer never worked.
We now can read the sea temperature and it has been running from 84 – 90
degrees F . In any case jumping in the
water is the fastest way we have found to cool off and frequently in the
afternoon we can be found bobbing next to the boat sometimes with Jarvis
joining us. The good news is that after
having the water be filled with plankton on our trip north it is now very clear
and snorkeling and diving are becoming fun again. Yesterday when we dove we both wore our
thinnest wet suits even though we likely would have been warm enough without
them but it seemed a good thing in retrospect as we both felt something sting
the bare skin around our lips as we surfaced (we didn’t see any jellyfish or
other known troublesome creatures but the other boaters in the anchorage
reported that there is a near invisible creature with a long tentacle that will
sting). We recovered quickly but were
glad that we didn’t have more skin exposed.
In any case the dive far surpassed any previous dives with hundreds of
fish, 3 eels, corals, and a hundred feet of visibility. Snorkeling today we circled a rock and were reminded that we are in a fish
sanctuary as the fish are much larger as a group and lots of them. Near the end of our swim I spotted a large
turtle about 2 feet under me completely focused on eating something under a
rock. Clarice and I watched him for a
long time and then he suddenly paid attention to us and actually had an “Oh my
gosh!” expression as he swam off faster than I’ve ever seen a turtle swim
before.
We managed to rendezvous with friends headed north in the LA Bay area for several days. A highlight was when a whale shark about 30 ft long decided to visit the anchorage. Pretty much everyone got into the water with him which didn't seem to stress him in the least. At one point he swam so close to me that I couldn't get him into a single frame of the camera and then he whacked me with his massive tail as he left. Other events we enjoyed were a potluck on the boat with A/C (ours), working to get Jarvis more accustomed to the water (often its the only way we can help him cool off) and floating in a local tidal stream from an estuary.
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| Adults got the main floor for the potluck |
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| Kids got the pilot house for the potluck |
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| Jarvis isn't excited about being in the water but he swims well and it really helps cool him off |
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The Hegewald girls were visiting our boat when the whale shark came into
the anchorage. We went in his general direction in the dinghy when he decided to
swim within a foot of our bow. |
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| Whale shark next to the dinghy |
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| Oh gee! Its swimming straight towards me! |
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| And past me about 2 ft away! |
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| And its really BIG! |
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| Is there an end to it? |
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| That tail is really big and hard when it whacks you! |
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| Starfish near the shore |
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| A turtle nest protected from birds and other predators in Candalaria Bay |
September 1, 2019 Back in La Paz
We arrived back in La Paz last night and quickly plugged in
the boat and turned on the air conditioning.
The evening temperature was pleasant as there had been some rain (with
lightning) that had cooled the air off a bit so Jarvis and I took a walk down
the Malecon (seawall). We had a pleasant
surprise in that several projects had been completed since we left including a
new park centered around the local artists sales store. The park includes a spray park and a skate
park. When we were here before we could
see that they were trying to save some palm trees that had been planted before
the ground was lowered for the park by putting raised planters around
them. We can now see that the raised
planters are very much part of the skate park design. A bit further on our walk we noticed that the
children’s play area now includes an ADA section with wheelchair accessible
swings and merry-go-round. Finally there
were lots and lots of people enjoying the relatively cool evening (it was only
90 F ) although we have noticed that there are very few gringos in town for the
summer.
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| A new water park and skateboard park have appeared in La Paz since we were last here |
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| This is the second accessible children's play area we have seen - it is new since we left town in April |
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| A new water park and skateboard park have appeared in La Paz since we were last here |
We look forward to being connected with the world (we’ve
already had long phone conversations with friends and family we have missed)
and being able to pick up parts and supplies from the relatively well stocked
stores in this the capital city of Baja Sur.
A final note – as the folks up north are watching hurricane
Dorian approaches the SE USA coast we are also keeping an eye on tropical storm
Juliette that is about 400 miles SW of us and expected to reach hurricane
strength tomorrow. So far we don’t
expect to feel anything from it but it is thunderstorm time of year in this
part of Mexico so that will be a new experience as well.
