Settling in

We have been on Wiz for about a week now.  It's been busy getting ready to live full time on her.  Most of the systems are working.  One big job we are doing is an engine service.  It's been burning some oil and blowing some smoke for the last few seasons.  The suspected problem is valve stem seals which we ordered in January when we were here last along with injector nozzles, gasket set, thermostat, and a few other parts.  We hired a local mechanic Omar to help us out.  He came by with a helper and tore the engine down in no time.  The list of things to fix grew some.  The turbocharger blades were blocked by rust in the housing.  It was also had quite a bit of carbon buildup.  We are expecting Omar to return with the rebuilt parts and some replacement hoses for re-assembly tomorrow.

Through inattention, we allowed our ham radio licences to expire, so I studied for the Technician test for a couple of days and passed it easily.  So I took the General at the same session without studying, and, well, did not pass.  There was another testing session in 2 days so a quick study and I then passed, so now I can talk nets that I was not licenced for previously.

We brought a van load of stuff down.  All the things from clearing out the house for sale.  We have been winnowing that down further for the last week and now have everything organized and stowed.

At this point the list of projects is pretty small and we will start to watch weather as soon as the diesel is put back together.  Then we will head across to the Baja and start working our way south.

We still don't have a clear plan, But I'd say we might be leaning towards heading across the pacific this season on Wiz.

Today was the first day that was not packed with boat projects.  Last night we even went to the movies and saw "Doctor Strange" in English with Spanish subtitles.  Three tickets for the current equivalent of  $6 USD!  The extremely strong dollar makes anything not imported from the US a good deal.  I still have not figured out why Gas and Diesel are more expensive here.  It was a little over $60 to fill the minivan.

We are feeling settled in, and Wiz is more ship-shape than torn-up.  We have already met a few kids boats we would like to catch up with and a couple of other cruisers that know or remember cruising with my parents.  We are starting to get integrated back in the cruising community, and are looking forward to being part of it full time now.

Modere su Velocidad

While driving from Phoenix to San Carlos and Wiz, I saw this message many times.  "Modere su velocidad"   So that is what I'm intending to do.  Reduce my speed, enjoy the journey and not focus so much on reaching the destination.

We left Phoenix at 5am and breezed through the drive to San Carlos arriving about 1:30pm.  We stopped by Wiz in the dry storage yard first.  She is not in the work area as we intend to go directly from storage to launch on Friday morning's high tide.  Wiz looked good.  Really dirty and a little more dust than usual below, but otherwise not bad on initial inspection.  One bummer noted is that the LCD on the SSB radio looks like it got cooked in the heat.  Hooked up the battery charger and solar panels.  We then unloaded a large part of our stuff.  At this point all that we own pretty much fits in one jam packed mini van.

After visiting the marina office we checked into a hotel, showered, and went to JJ's, our favorite restaurant.   Carne asada tacos!!

We walked around Marina San Carlos.  We ran into a couple on a boat from Seattle which knew my parents, unckes and many people we know.  As we were talking we met Heather from Carumba and asked if she knew of any boats with kids.  Score! kids on her boat and another.  "Would you like to come meet them?"  A couple of hours later, after talking with the crews of Caramba and Shawnigann we headed back to the room feeling right back at home and fortunate to find other kid boats on the first day of our new adventure.

Darrell - San Carlos 11/9/16

Beginning the next "phase"

Three months ago we decided to move up our plans to cruise full time.  For several years we a rough plan to do this when Cooper, who is no now 11, was a couple of years older.  But we couldn't wait!

We have been cruising Wiz for anywhere between 2 and 5 months a year for the last 10 years.  This year in January, we had Wiz all re-commissioned, provisioned and ready to go in San Carlos, Mx.  While waiting on weather to cross to Santa Rosalia we got an email from Susan's work that prompted us to put Wiz back on the hard and return to Montana and both our jobs.  We really missed our annual cruising fix and I think that is what ultimately tipped the scales.  We both felt that if we didn't do it now that it might not happen.

The last three months have been hectic and a bit stressful. Getting the house ready to sell/rent.  Winding up jobs, disposing of cars, boats, motorcycles and 95% of our "stuff".  This was definitely made easier by adopting an "everything must go" approach.

We are here in Arizona visiting my parents and doing the final things on the "wind up our shore based life" list.  We'll be driving to Wiz in San Carlos next week sometime.  From there the "plan" gets less defined.  After a few months in Mexico we will decide on two courses.  Either sailing Wiz across the Pacific, or sailing her to San Diego and buying a new boat in Europe.  Neither are bad options.  We have been looking at boats but have not found the "one".

Wiz is a great boat.  She is all dialed in.  Extended cruising would require only a short list.  New genoa, batteries, and a cockpit shade solution.  The new boats we have looked at are really nicely designed and functional for living aboard. Yacht design has come a long way.  But, the build quality is unfortunately far, far, below what we have become accustomed to in our '73 Swan.  By comparison, the new production boats look like Ikea showrooms below.  And I fear they would age about as well.

That's the quick catch up to our plans and status. We'll blog our progress on this adventure.

Cooper will be blogging at http://WheresCoop.com

More to come as we get plugged back into cruising mode.

Darrell

Gray Whales

3/25/15

Just the snout alongside (calf)

Close enough to touch (calf)

We rented a car to drive to San Ingnacio and then out to Bahia San Ignacio to watch the whales.  I was shocked when the rental car was delivered on time and it was a new (2000 miles) Nissan.  Air conditioning and all for 900 pesos for the day ($60).  On the drive Cooper says "hey dad, there's a winch handle in the door and when you turn it the window goes up and down"  Crazy, the kid has never seen a manual window...  The drive was interesting as the interior up in the mountains was really green and pretty.  Typical of Mx driving the road was really pretty good but allowed for ZERO margin of error.  Just wide enough for two vehicles and NO shoulder.  Where the shoulder would be in the US were drops that varied from 2-500 feet with no guardrail.  The last 12km out to the camp was primitive and with so much washboard that we were able to only go about 10mph.  It was all worth it though.  After loading in the panga and going 15 minutes out to the bay it only took about 20 minutes until a mother and calf came right alongside the boat.  Close enough to touch!.  Splashing seems to attract them and the guide says they like to be scratched and they also will scrape along the boat.  It was spectacular when the calf came up to the boat and rolled onto it's side and opened its mouth a bit.  We could see the baleen and the eye.  They feel kind of odd, I expected them to be fairly firm but they are really kind of jiggly like jello under the smooth skin.  Researching them yield some crazy things like the calves drink 50 gallons of their mother's milk a day and it's close to the consistency of butter?  There were quite a few of the whales around and about the boat and we spent two and a half hours amongst them.  

Santa Rosalia

3/22/15 

We motor-sailed 30kn from Punta Chivato to Santa Rosalia.  We have never been here before and it looks like there is a lot to explore.  We walked through town and tried a couple of taco stands for lunch.  Found good shrimp and carne asada tacos.  We are pretty thin on provisions so we picked some items up at a larger tienda.  The marina has power, water, internet and showers so we are feeling pretty civilized after being away from these conveniences for over a month.  We will probably spend a few days here before looking for a weather window for crossing the sea back to San Carlos to begin putting Wiz away for the season and returning home.  Don’t want to think about that too much just yet but it’s getting closer. 

Punta Chivato

3/21/15 

Wiz at anchor at sunset

Punta Chivato is kind of interesting.  There is a well-groomed dirt runway just off the beach, a long string of fairly nice to super-nice houses along the shore.  There is also a golf course.  The golf course has zero grass. The greens are simply well groomed hard-packed sand.  The fairways rocky dirt, and the rough is just like the fairways except for scrub brushes and cacti. There was a fair amount of terain sculpting to make it interesting.  

Abandoned Pilots lounge complete with dungeons

We found a “restaurant” which was the only thing going on.  It was really like an attachment to a house.  We had some coronas and cokes. there was a young guy hitting golf balls from the tops of little piles of dirt he would build and tee up on.  I swear his technique was just like Happy Gilmore.  He insisted I take a swing, which I did and have no idea where I pulled the picture perfect shot from, certainly a total fluke.  We talked for a while using what he referred to jokingly as my “spinglish” turns out he is a “contractor” which means that he does whatever jobs are needed by the owners of the beachfront houses.  He was explaining that the owners have much money and most fly in on their King-Airs and stay for about a week a year. 

Shell Beach

 Later we took the dingy to the shell beach, literally miles of beach with a solid layer of shells covering it.  We explored a giant half-built and abandoned house.  It was pretty weird, looked like it had dungeons and strange rooms that we could not figure out a use for.  Speculation ran from water storage to contraband hiding.    

Caleta San Juanico

3/20/15 

We sailed up to San Juanico.  We had fairly rare East-Southeast winds so it was a nice sail but in the afternoon as we entered the bay there was a fair swell coming into the primary anchorage.  We tried to tuck in and put the anchor down in 17 feet but it was still pretty bouncy.  Just before dark, when the wind had not abated yet we picked up anchor and moved across the bay for more swell protection.  There was a large motor yacht there and the captain swung by in his tender to ask if we needed anything and also mentioned that our friends from Coaster were going to visit tomorrow.  Turns out he is friends with Daryl from Coaster’s dad.

Lots of fish at San Juanico

Cooper and Darrell on the beach

The next morning the crew from Coaster showed up in their parent’s Grady White fishing boat.  We had a great afternoon on the beach and then snorkeling with them.  Kent, the captain and owner of the yacht Xanadu called on the radio looking for a fuse.  I had one and Daryl repaired the circuit on their tender.  We got a tour of Xanadu, very, very cool.  Turns out they are from Montana also! 

Ballandra

3/18/15 

Back to Ballandra for a couple of days of snorkeling, kayaking, and beachcombing. Susan went snorkeling at the northern point and collected a bunch of scallops for dinner, tasty! I did a boat project and took the damaged teak in the companionway down to bare wood and built back with 6 coats of varnish, messy. 

Wiz underway - pretty typical conditions

Susan and Cooper playing with a balloon fish

Better snorkeling than we are used to

Cooper in his wetsuit ready to go.

Puerto Escondido

3/13/15 

Cooper on the radio telling a joke on the morning net.

Cooper finally found a couple of friends to play with.  There were two boys that hung out in the marina where their mother ran a jewelry shop.  There was no common language but there were bikes and legos and lots of sticks to play guns with.  We also met the crew from the sailboat “Coaster”.  My “other brother” Daryl, his wife Janet and their 10yr old son Julian. We made a provisioning trip to Loretto with the crew from “Misty Haven”. 

Loretto Square - lots of easels set up for kindergartner art.

Loretto is probably one of my favorite towns on the Baja.  Shame it’s so difficult to get to as there is no protected anchorage nearby.  We had a great time exploring for the morning.  We did our other boat chores and laundry which we needed badly.  We got antsy for beach time and snorkeling after a couple of days and started to plan a trip north with stops on the way to Santa Rosalia.

Escondido

3/11/15

After School, we decided to sail to Escondido, largely driven by a desire to do some laundry.  It had been blowing to 20 the day before and looked like 15 or so.  It’s a 15 mile trip and we decided to sail even though it was dead downwind and 5-6 foot seas. It was a little rolly but hand steering not too bad.  At the end of the trip the wind died a little to the point that the rolling got bad enough that Susan started to feel poorly.  Pulled around the point and She started feeling better immediately in the flat water.  We’ll probably be in Escondido for a couple of days.  We don’t really like it here but it’s the only place between La Paz and Santa Rosalia to get laundry, provisions, and fuel.  We’re right at the mid-point of our trip so it’s a good time to re-provision. 

Ballandra

3/10/15

After a morning snorkel at Pulpito we had a good sail south to Ballandra.  Ballandra is a nice anchorage on Isla Carmen just 10 miles or so due East offshore of Loretto.  One thing that is interesting at Ballandra is that we can get marginal internet using our cellular booster and Banda Ancha dongle.  Just enough to catch up on email. We had one of the best snorkel trips yet.  We saw a moray eel and crown of thorns starfish.  Also quite a few different fish including a large pipe fish.  

Sea-Life

3/9/15 

A Dolphin showing off just 50 feet from our dingy!

We took the dingy and snorkeling gear around the point.  We could hear sea lions all the way from the next point 2 miles north.  When we got closer to the sea lion rookery there were a lot of sea lions on the rocks.  We were excited to see if we could swim with them but they got fairly agitated when we got close.  There were some very large bulls that were barking at us and got in and swam towards us.  We decided that these guys were not nearly as used to humans as the ones closer to La Paz which we had swam with several times.  It just looked a little sketchy so we just observed from the dingy for a while.  On the way back we got close to a couple of pods of dolphins.  They seem to ignore you totally right to a certain distance and then they just disappear.  One pod did get close and were jumping about 30 yards away.  Susan got lucky and snapped a great picture of one mid-jump.  Back at the point we had a good snorkel and saw a lot of fish.  Cooper lasts about 15 minutes before he’s so cold he has to get out.  We decided to stay and do one more snorkel tomorrow before heading to Bahia Ballandra.

Punta Pulpito

3/8/15 

We had a nice trip 45 miles south from Bahia Conception to Punta Pulpito yesterday.  We set the anchor down in the early afternoon under the point and Cooper was dying to go to shore and explore the exposed vein of obsidian on the side of the hill. We med-moored the dingy as there was no beach just large boulders and irregular shoreline.  Cooper had a blast collecting pieces of obsidian.  We had to cull his finds way back as he had about 15 pounds of stone he wanted to take back. There was a lot of varied geology to look at all in one location.  Interesting to see so much evidence of volcanic and sedimentary formations in one location.  We also explored some sea-caves out around the point.  The snorkeling looked promising but the light was going so we decided to wait till the next day.  

The Other "Black Mountain"

A large piece of Obsidian

Trek to Internet

3/6/15 

The North winds are predicted to die down tonight and we are planning to head south. We walked up to the highway and hitched a ride to Mulege.  We are sitting in the courtyard of a restaurant.  We are all catching up on email, blogs, finances and work.  Coop is updating his blog.  We plan to spend the next week or so getting down to the Loretto-Escondido area.

Fun on the beach

3/5/15

Today was Susan’s birthday.  Coop was having a bit of difficulty with school and I lost my patience and had him jump of the bow and swim around the boat.  The water is a little chilly and this worked as an attitude adjuster.  Susan instructed Cooper through the process of cooking breakfast and a birthday cake.  Later in the afternoon I saw some kids on the beach.  I ran Cooper in and we met a family from Montreal that were collecting clams in the shallows.  I went back to the boat and left coop playing with their two boys.  A bit later I went back to the beach and there were about 20 cool cars lined up on the beach.  At first I thought it was a car show, there was a cool little canary yellow Porsche 356 SC and a real racing Mini-Cooper.  It was a rally from Ensenada to Cabo.  Real driver-cars, catered lunch etc.  As I was talking to sever of the drivers (all from Mexico) someone launched a DJI quadcopter.  I saw it fly out downwind over the bahia towards a hillside. Then it zipped up over the hill and I thought “that’s gone”.  It was blowing 20 with gusts through the hills.  I couldn’t see the pilot, but about 10 minutes later a delegation came and asked if I would run the pilot out to look for the drone in the dingy.  We went out and looked, but could not find it.  I’m pretty sure they sink and completely sure that if you land one under power in salt water every bit of electronics is done anyways. We had a bonfire and roasted marshmallows on the beach with a group of people travelling in RV’s.

Horsing Around

3/2/15  

We went on a horseback ride today.  The guide’s wife picked us up at the beach just before lunch. We drove through Mulege and then out a valley about 15 miles into ranch country.  The roads were primitive.  The guide met us and his son took us on a two and a half hour ride through the arroyos rigth at the base of some mountains.  It was incredibly pretty.  I think we lucked out as a couple of weeks ago there was a lot of rain and the vegetation was quite green. There were huge piles of driftwood and uprooted plants piled against the upstream side of small trees and cacti.  Evidence of a LOT of water recently in the dry riverbed.  A bunch of strangle Spanish later, we learned that the water was running 5 meters deep down the arroyo.  Obviously not the place to be when the rains were heavy.  In Mulege, near the mouth of the river it was running 9 meters above normal, nearly wiping out the bridge. It was a really neat trip and worth the significant saddle pain.  My horse’s MO was to drop back and then trot to close the gap.