Bonanza Beach, Boat Cushions, Blood, and Bird Shit

We are back in La Paz again after a rolly few days anchored off Bonanza Beach. We chose to spend our last few Sea of Cortez "island days" in Bonanza because our good friends on S/V Serendipity were resting there after a 3 day crossing from Puerto Vallarta.

This anchorage on the east side of Espiritu Santo island is, as we soon learned, open to refracting northerly swells. We anchored in close to the beach well inside a reef that guards the north east entrance. At all but high tide, the reef knocked down the worst of the swells, but a 15 knot northerly wind made our stay a bit rolly. Visually, this is a lovely anchorage, with two miles of sand and dunes framed by volcanic hills of red and black rock and a granite headland immediately to the north. We spent 3 days here walking on the beach and sharing pot luck dinners with Frank and Cheryl. We also made the first two boat cushion slip covers and with a few tweaks and some Velcro tabbed straps to hold things together they look quite decent. Pictures to follow.

Yesterday I had my second Mexican dental experience. Much better than the one last spring where a Guaymas dentist drilled out two old fillings, breaking a molar and putting in fillings that lasted less than two weeks. The broken molar that I had repaired in Canada had become infected below the gum line and could not be saved, so the very competent English speaking dentista (female dentist) extracted it. Unfortunately their compressor was not working well, so the drill that she used to cut the molar before removing it kept slowing and stopping and the whole debacle took more than two hours with much blood loss. We went out to see the carnaval parade after this but my heart was not in it and Rani kindly took me home early.

I woke up at three in the morning with the blood still trickling into my mouth to the telltale splat of bird shit arriving on our cabin roof and the enhanced bass thump of Mexican dance music from the malecon. From recent experience I know how hard bird poop is to remove if left for a few hours, so I went on deck and scared away the little night heron that was perched on our windex at the top of the mast. A few minutes later, Rani came on deck in a very bad mood - much like a small sleepy bear awakened during hibernation - as I scrubbed the poop off the dodger, sail cover, cabin hood, solar panels, and side decks. My explanation that I could not sleep anyway due to the bleeding and the booming carnaval music did not fly and she informed me that normal people do not stomp around at night cleaning bird shit by flashlight.

Today was better and I managed some porridge for breakfast. We worked on the boat cushion covers and prepared for our guests, Kurt and Nancy, who arrive tomorrow. We will put Ladybug in a marina for a week to entertain our guests and to do the final projects and provisioning before we leave for Polynesia.