Cruise of the Ladybug

Boat Projects

2012-02-26T22:34:00.001-08:00

A few pictures from the last two days of intensive boat project work.

Rani provides scale for our storm jib, which flies only as high as the first spreaders.

The dinghy was quite badly damaged around the bow where the tow line pulled through the plastic, putting a big hole in the bow where the eye was, another in the front of the gunwale, and a tear in the port gunwale aft of the bow.

Using a small soldering iron to fuse the broken bow eye plastic piece back in place.

Starting by melting a groove around the broken piece, which has been pushed into place.

Melting a polypropylene rod into the groove. The iron is a bit too small for the job and it was slow work.

The repaired bow. Note the eye has been moved up a few inches because the repaired section is too weak to hold it. The gunwale damage is too large to repair by welding as the plastic was lost during the accident. The tube through which the painter was led is visible and has been repaired and reinforced with plastic welding rod.

The gunwale aft of the bow had a tear, which has been repaired with welding rod.

The bow eye is now backed by some aluminum scrap we bought at a window manufacturer.

Filing the plate we will use to reinforce the bow.

Marking the plate for rivet holes.

Plate riveted in place. We will cover this with something soft to protect Ladybug from bashes.

Autopilot cantilever bracket made from PVC pipe and lined with a wood plug to back up the socket. The white and silver plate in the background will hold this pipe and was fitted to hold the autopilot at the right height and distance from the tiller. The duct tape is just in place until the glue dries.

A few pictures from Bonanza Beach

2012-02-25T07:37:00.001-08:00

Here are a few pictures from our recent visit to Bonanza beach. The lovely moth landed on the lines that hold our solar panels. The lines are only about 1/8 of an inch in diameter.

Moth on the rigging

Rani has decided she needs some upper body toning and has decided to work the windlass to bring up the anchor more often.

Rani bringing up the anchor.

We were delighted to hear our friends Frank and Cheryl from Serendipity hail us on the VHF and we joined them at anchor off Bonanza beach.

Enjoying some wine on the beach with Frank and Cheryl of S/V Serendipity

Kurt and Nancy arrived a few days ago, after we checked into Marina Palmira, bringing with them some Polynesian cruising guides that Rani had ordered as well as additional spices and some presents of dried fruit and books. Kurt also gave us a lesson on celestial navigation including how to calibrate and use our plastic sextant. He also wrote up a guide for us on how to take Meridian sites. We plan to follow his advice and take noon sites each day on passage, so we are prepared in case we lose our GPS and electronics in a lightning strike. It will also be fun to do things in the traditional way.

Day sailing with Nancy and Kurt

Kurt is clearly happy to be back on the water.

Rani's new lycra anti-jellyfish suit, sewn by Katty in La Paz.

Unfortunately, we had a small incident involving the propeller and our dinghy tow line. The engine and prop are fine but the force tore off the front of our little plastic dinghy. I will try to plastic weld things back together and back this up with aluminum sheet. We will replace the tow line with a floating one.

Dinghy towing eye from our Walker Bay.

We have revised our estimated departure date from La Paz, to the end of the first week in March. This will give us time to finish most of our projects including installing the autopilot, fixing the dinghy, repairing the jib, and painting the chain.

Bonanza Beach, Boat Cushions, Blood, and Bird Shit

2012-02-21T18:20:00.001-08:00

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.

Trekking with Chris

2012-02-15T17:06:00.000-08:00

As most of my friends will acknowledge, I am a pretty good hiker. Trekking with Chris, however, has put a whole new meaning to exploratory hikes and sometimes leave me wishing for the well trodden trails of the northwest forests where I used to roam with the Cowichan Outdoor Group.

In the Baja heat we venture into the desert, scramble up scree encrusted hills, hop rock to rock and dodge the prickly bushes and cacti in the steep arroyos where rain water once tumbled down the mountains. The anticipated three hours become six and we return with wearied limbs covered in spidery trails of dried blood. Chris rarely complains despite suffering more than his share of this abuse ( he rarely pays attention to that old addage “look before you leap” ).

Dos Amigos on San Gabriel beach

Off on an adventure!

Making new friends on Bonanza Beach

Puffers can be cool too!

John with staff

Multitude of life under rocks

John lifted some rocks at the pools on the southern end of Bonanza Beach and we were amazed at the number of sea stars, cucumbers and shells hiding in the cool shade and shallow water.

Sea star hiding under the rocks

Shells living in the rock pools of Bonanza Beach

I should have warned our friend John of sv Time Piece before we invited him on a cross-island hike on Isla Espiritu Santo.The first leg of the trek from San Gabriel Bay to Bonanza Beach was an easy hike through a well traveled arroyo but the return leg was a detour directed by Chris.

Along the way, Chris invited John to follow him in his Thelma and Louise leap off a large dune. Unfortunately, I did not catch the action on my camera, so Chris repeated this twice for my benefit and had a prickly landing on the third. John used his safety training skills to extract the cactus spines from his foot.

Let's follow the coyote trail

But, let's go up this dune and jump off the top!

Woweeeeee!

Oweeeeeee!!!!

Chris ran into this beastie at his third run down the dune :(

“ We can climb over that gray looking ridge and come down into an adjacent arroyo which should bring us back behind the bird colony”. It sounded easy enough but what we did not foresee was that there was another ridge beyond the first and traversing those hills would be hard work in the afternoon heat. In this instance we decided that following Chris was not the best idea, so John and I decided to mutiny and scramble down instead of following him up the second ridge.

We think he ran up to beat us to the dinghies as he managed to disappear rather quickly from view. While hopping along the rock slides and crawling down crumbling sandstone scree, we amused ourselves by inventing stories of encounters with wild cats and near death escapes that we would later recount to our very own Captain Bligh.

"We just have to go over one more ridge , honest!"

Cordon Cactus in arroyo

Rani's cave

Boats beyond the frigate colony

Finally our arroyo opened into the salty flats behind the mangrove sanctuary of the nesting frigate colony.

Dinghy transfer

To his credit, Chris rowed out to Ladybug to fetch us all a can of cold beer when we emerged onto the beach, battered and bruised. And he towed John's dinghy from the beach into deeper water, probably to ease his conscience.

Pictures from the Islands Near La Paz

2012-02-10T09:57:00.000-08:00

Rani has promised to post an entry in the next few days. Until then, here are a few pics from recent trips to the islands north of La Paz.

Sally Lightfoot crab at Bonanza Beach.

View south along Bonanza Beach.

Goats rub their horns on certain trees.

Free Spirit anchored off the mangrove lined lagoon at San Gabriel anchorage.

Ladybug arrives in Lobos anchorage.

Furling the jib slows things down and makes it easier to maneuver under sail in an anchorage.

Ladybug inspects the toys in the 'garage' of a mega-yacht.

Chris and John climbing near the Raza anchorage.

John Spicher and Chris resting after the climb. Rooster and Hen islands in the distance.

To balance the dinghy we now sit back to back on the main thwart.

Navy vessel approaches after dropping off an officer on Time Piece. We have been inspected twice in the last few weeks.

Masked men and guns - The fellow who is waving took down our vessel particulars and one of the masked men came on board with him. He was very interested in our boat and Rani invited him below - machine gun and all.

Chris inspects a large shell midden.

This cave was occupied many years ago and has its own shell midden.

Beautiful patterns of peeling bark.

Rain!

2012-02-08T08:11:00.000-08:00

The day we arrived in Mexico in mid November it rained in the night. Since then, we have not seen a drop until today, although we passed near a shower that produced a rain-arch on one passage. It comes as something of a shock when you wake up here to overcast skies and doubly so when these are accompanied by drumming rain and rumbling thunder.

We have rigged a tarp to collect rain water in anticipation of doing this often in the tropics. The results so far are not spectacular - we have collected enough water to brush our teeth, but the water is rich with fragments of blue tarp. I think we will either need to make a custom tarp to collect rain or try to use the boats scuppers to collect run-off. (The deck has high bulwarks, which will trap the run-off from the cabin and sails if we block the scuppers that drain over the side).

Rani tells me she loves the sound of rain - it takes her back to being a little girl in India. She would run outside, dancing and twirling, the drops landing heavily on her head. Sometimes the rain would come so quickly and heavily that the parched earth could not accept it immediately and everything would flood. And then the worms would come out and make it hard to get back to her house as she had to walk on tip-toes to avoid squishing them. My early memories of thunderstorms take me to my parent's bedroom where I must have ended up hiding under the covers and counting the seconds between light and crash.

Being in a sailboat in a thunderstorm with that big metal pole poking up toward the clouds is not an entirely relaxing experience. I take heart that there are 6 other boats in the anchorage some with quite a lot taller masts...

Baja Sailing

2012-02-07T09:27:00.000-08:00

One of the things you sometimes hear during coffee hour at the cruiser's club ('club cruceros') in La Paz is that there is never a decent wind for sailing among the islands in the Sea of Cortez. Like the Gulf and San Juan islands in the Pacific North West, the winds here in the winter seem to be either light and variable or strong from the north. The joke about Gulf Island Sailing where every boat you see has their mainsail up and their motor running holds quite well for this area, too.

However, we have an advantage that few of the Gulf Island sailors have and that is that we rarely have a deadline. Nor are the tides here a huge issue until you enter the estuary channel leading up to la Paz, where currents regularly flow at a couple of knots. So with much patience, it is actually possible to sail almost anywhere here. Going south is perhaps the simplest, since with a 20 knot 'Norther' behind you, you can easily do 50 miles in daylight, if you don't mind rolling around in the short sharp seas that build up during these winds.

Around the islands north of La Paz, the winds can be challenging. The Lorenzo Channel that separates La Paz from the islands has its own wind. A vortex can form in the pocket west of this channel where the winds die out and a big choppy swell from two or more directions makes it virtually impossible to sail. With northerly winds it is sometimes possible to sail far to the west to avoid this pocket of trouble, but this adds four or more miles to the passage between the islands and La Paz.

Our trip yesterday was not entirely typical, since we were able to sail through the pocket of calms off the Lorenzo channel. We left Raza anchorage with a light Northwest wind blowing and ran south with the wind behind our starboard quarter, ghosting through the calms in the lee of Rooster and Hen islands. Two boats were under sail about a mile offshore, one hoisting its spinnaker as we sailed out of the bay. About an hour out, the wind died out and then shifted into the southwest. Several sailboats motored past in both directions and the two boats that had been sailing took down their sails and ran south to La Paz under motor. The southwest wind held for a couple of miles, but as we approached the Lorenzo channel and cleared the south end of Espiritu Santo Island, we could see a train of white caps marching down the channel from the opposite direction. I hurried to the mast and put a reef in the main. We then slatted around in the hiatus between the wind systems for half an hour.

When we finally reached the channel wind, it was on our port beam and Ladybug hiked up her skirts, leaned her shoulder into the sea, and took off like a young colt. A large 1970's IOR race boat that had motored past us earlier rolled out her jib (Rani says we shamed them into sailing) and we sailed in company across the channel, leaving them as we turned into the Lobos anchorage. Lobo means 'wolf' or 'sea lion' and it is a common name for rocks and points in the Sea of Cortez. There is a small rock of this name off the anchorage that welcomed us with a musical accompaniment of bellows and grunts.

Lobos anchorage was filled by a multi-million dollar mega-yacht, behind which two masts could just be seen. We beat into the anchorage, sailing under the stern of the big yacht, where the 'garage' was open, displaying a raft of kayaks, jet skis, and other aquatic toys. The transom of the yacht opened out into a ramp, up which the toys could be hauled and loaded before getting under way. Our friends George on 'Susie' and Charlie and Sharon on 'Castaway' were the two sailboats in the anchorage and we sailed upwind of Castaway, jibed, and ran down under main alone, so we could best determine where to anchor. The big yacht occupied so much of the anchorage that we ended up beating back up to a point inside of it, just off a sand shelf and about 300 feet north of Castaway. We dropped the anchor in 14 feet of beautiful emerald water and a few hours later, a full moon rose over the anchorage as the sun dropped behind the hills across La Paz Bay.

Sea Socks and Sail Covers

2012-02-06T07:44:00.000-08:00

Just before leaving Nova Scotia to move to BC, I paddled for a week down the coast in a river kayak. This was a wonderful trip, but some of the open water crossings were rough and because the boat has no bulkheads and I cannot 'eskimo roll', I realized that had I capsized, my chances of survival were low. To improve the odds on such trips, I decided to make a sea sock. This is simply a large sock-shaped bag that you sit inside while paddling. It fits around the cockpit combing and prevents water from entering the rest of the boat if you capsize. I bought the materials for this - coated Cordura - over the Web and have been carrying it around ever since - first across Canada to Victoria, and then onto Ladybug and down the coast to Mexico. I never made that sea sock, but yesterday, we finally used the material.

Friends who have spent much time in the tropics have warned us that the intense sun can do a number on your sails even if you keep them covered. Most of our canvas is more than 10 years old and thinner and less opaque than it was when new, so we decided to line our main sail cover with the burgundy sea sock material. We cut the material into 3 pieces and sewed these on the inside of the sail cover using the special sunbrella-specific UV resistant thread that Rani brought down from Vancouver. This thread is thicker and waxier than anything I have used before and did an excellent job without the issue of twisting and jamming that has plagued previous canvas projects. Our little Singer Featherweight handled the job without an issue, despite having to punch through 5 to 6 layers of material in places - testimony to the fact that good thread and a sharp needle are as or more important than your sewing machine's power.

The northerly winds have died down today after 2 or 3 days of rough weather outside our snug harbour. We are running low on water, butter, eggs, and fresh vegetables, so will sail south toward La Paz today.

Tuning the Rig

2012-02-05T09:19:00.000-08:00

Our friend, John Spicher on Time Piece commented on our rig being a bit loose - in particular our aft lower shrouds (the wires that run from the first spreaders down and back) were so loose that the mast might be in danger of pumping (oscillating), which could cause a dismasting or failure in the long run. John brought over a tension gauge and measured the tension in all of the wires but the forestay, which is covered up by the roller furling foil. The tension ranged from 13% of breaking strain on the back stay (and by extension, the un-measured forestay) to as little as less than 4% (off the scale of the gauge) on one aft lower shroud.

To tension the shrouds, you twist a threaded turn-buckle a couple of turns at a time, alternating on each side and sighting up the mast each time to make sure things are straight and true. Befre we started, we went around the inside of the boat, tightening the bolts on the chainplates, which transfer the loads from the mast shrouds to the hull, via various bulkheads.

It took about two hours to undo all the wires that prevent the turn-buckles from losing their adjustment, tension all 10 wires, and re-affix the locking wires. Thanks to John we now have a nice evenly tensioned rig with between 11% and 13% of breaking strain on each wire - more tension being on the back and fore stay as well as the primary shrouds (the ones that go all the way to the top of the mast). Hopefully this will get us across the Pacific and back.

Post from our radio

2012-02-02T06:57:00.001-08:00

One of the options that Blogger offers is the ability to post an entry via email. We will use this while en route to the Marquesas to provide passage updates including our position. The posts will be brief and text only because we will be sending them via a HAM radio link, which provides speeds similar to late 1980s dial-up modems.

There are dozens of HAM radio operators around the world who provide the gateway from radio sets to the Internet that makes this possible. To connect, we find a HAM station that is fairly near us (we are currently using stations in California and Texas, for example). Each station can respond on a number of frequencies and the one we choose is dependent on how well radio waves propagate at the time of day that you are communicating as well as the distance to the station from your boat. Sometimes it is just not possible to connect at all. We have had luck with daytime transmissions and usually try to connect early in the morning and just before sunset. We also use this service to send and receive short text emails to a special radio email address and to download weather forecasts and raw weather data (GRIB files that show wind speeds and surface pressures).

Ladybug is currently anchored in San Gabriel bay on Espiritu Santo island north of La Paz. We went on a lovely long hike yesterday to Bonanza beach and back via the valley behind a lagoon. Saw one goat and many frigate birds who nest in the lagoon. The baby frigate birds are now mostly adolescent and harder to tell from their parents. We had to move the boat away from the nesting site later that night because the birds decided our boat needed re-painting. The new fridge is working well and drawing only about 12 amp hours per 24 hours in the cool Baja winter airs, so we had cold beers on our return the the hike - woo hoo! (After 3 years cruising here with no fridge this is a real treat.)

Postcard from the frozen north

2012-01-16T00:07:00.000-08:00

While Captain Chris has been hiking in the sun, swimming with baby sealions, capsizing little Annie and snorkeling in balmy waters, I have been working in the small northern B.C. community of Hazelton. Here, the air is crisp, the ground is covered in snow and the days are short. The only time I see any daylight is during the walk to work in the morning, at lunch break and on weekends! However, the views of the snow-capped mountains and frosted trees are stunning, especially when the sun shines ( at least one day this week!).

Bulkley River

Visiting friends' log home after snowshoe trek

I brought along my snowshoes and was pleased to finally get some much needed exercise this weekend. A local friend drove us to the Kispiox Valley where we jumped a barbed wire fence and trekked to the Kispiox River, returning via a farmer's field and a fir tree grove. It was snowing all the while but visibility was pretty good and the temperature hovered around -5 degrees Celsius. It was cold enough to freeze my hands each time I removed my gloves to take a photo! We saw lots of moose tracks in the snow but no moose. During the winter they feed on the willow branches along the river's edge.

Brigitta enjoying the winter fun

Old Fishing Cabin on the Kispiox River

Walking along the shore of the Kispiox

Horse home

Ancient truck

Single-handed Cruising

2012-01-12T06:11:00.000-08:00

Moonrise over San Jose Island

Cruising as a single-hander is quite different from cruising as a couple. Obviously, you are on your own when it comes to sail handling, navigating, and anchoring. For the first few days, I found myself forgetting to do the things that Rani usually does when getting underway - such as turning on the depth sounder & GPS. I was forced to slow down and really think through any tricky manoeuvres (such as anchoring or departing anchor under sail) because I could not rely on that second person to leap to my rescue when things went wrong. Despite this and probably because I had practised doing most things on my own, I have enjoyed the challenge of single-handing in the islands just north of La Paz and have tried to sail between most destinations, putting only about 4 hours on the motor since leaving the marina 2 weeks ago.

Boat carrier off La Paz

Another difference between single-handing and cruising as a couple is how other cruisers view you. There are quite a few long term, usually male, single-handers in the Sea of Cortez. In some instances they cruise in tandem with each other and I think the reason for this is that most cruising boats with 2 or more people on board view single-handers as loners and outsiders and avoid socializing with them. There is a basis for this attitude in that some of the guys you see out cruising alone look a trifle rough around the edges and live on small, somewhat run-down older boats. Another reason that cruising couples probably avoid single-handers is that those who spend too much time on their own can become starved for company and conversation. This combined with the eccentricities that also develop when you have no one to keep you in check can make connecting with a single-hander a disturbing experience. I base these comments both on my own experience (on both sides of the equation) and recently observing how one group of sailors reacted to the single-handers in an anchorage we were sharing.

Ketch sailing off La Paz

Anyway - enough of that. I have been keeping busy exploring the islands just north of La Paz, including some new hikes, sailing the little dinghy, and snorkeling. I have also varnished the cap rails and begun to install the auto-pilot.

Custom sandals

The new hikes include a cross island trek from Ensenda de la Raza, a hike from a shell midden to an isolated peak above the Raza anchorage, and a ridge walk from Ensenada el Gallo. The first hike skirts a large mangrove swamp, crosses a sandy plane, and then follows a meandering seasonal river course (arroyo) across Isla Espiritu Santo. This is a long hike and took an entire afternoon (about 5 hours). It also required a row into a head wind of about 1 km and when I arrived for the first time, I discovered that I had left my hiking shoes on Ladybug. I had just read a book about earlier adventurers in this area who had made their own footwear from a crocodile they had shot, so I thought I would try something similar. Not having a gun or suitable target handy, I beach-combed until I found some nice padded pieces or rubber and a thick piece of line that yielded suitable ties to make myself a pair of sandals. The improvised footwear lasted for about 500 meters and I was forced to return to the boat for something more practical.

Ex goat

View from Gallo hike

Delicate flowers flourish briefly in harsh conditions

View from Gallo hike toward La Paz

Lagoon at end of Raza hike

The Raza hike ended at a high shelf where I could look down onto a lovely lagoon on the east side of the island. I was too tired at this point to continue (plus I would have been returning in the dark). On this shelf were the remains of a native camp as well as fencing from what was probably a goat pen. There were also 4 or 5 columns of what looked like old concrete, but was probably just aggregate rock that had eroded more slowly that the surrounding rock.

Lovely vines in the arroyo at Raza

Old cardone stands on the extensive midden at Raza

Mysterious 'ruins' at Raza

The hike to the peak above Raza involved some excellent climbing rock where a waterfall must plummet in the rainy season. The water here and the huge shallow bay full of shell fish would explain why there is a massive midden in this bay. The midden extends further than any I have seen in the southern Baja and there are signs of a more recent camp here with terraced stones that may have formed the foundation for a palapa as well as some copper sheet and a steel pa handle.

The Gallo hike climbed quickly to a ridge and then followed the ridge out and down toward the west providing splendid views both north and south across a plane planted with cacti and dotted with small flowers.

Another Gallo view

I took our little Walker Bay dinghy out for a sail in rough weather and managed to capsize off a point when one of the lines holding the sail to the boom parted suddenly. I quickly discovered that our dinghy floats, but only just, when full of water, so was forced to swim for shore pulling the mainly submerged boat and dragging the mast and sail behind me in the water. After about 25 minutes of struggling another cruiser buzzed over in a motorized inflatable and towed me in to shore where I was able to up-end the dinghy and drain out the water. A good lesson to learn here rather than off an atoll in the south pacific and I will be much more hesitant to use the dinghy under sail in heavier winds. I will also put a knot in the out-haul and downhaul as the line that popped, came free from a jam cleat.

S/V Sojourn at the Isoltes

I had the best snorkeling experience of my life at the Islotes - two huge chunks of rock that lie just north of Isla Partida. There are buoys anchored in the deep waters off these rocks to which pangas tie when they take tourists out to dive or snorkel with the sea lions that colonize this area. I went early in the day to stay out of the way of the tourist trade and tied to one of the moorings, diving to inspect it. There was a block of concrete - maybe 300 or 400 lbs - a length of nylon, a submerged float and then another length of chain - certainly not enough to hold Ladybug in anything but calm weather. Fortunately there was very little wind and I swam over toward the colony of sea lions that covered almost every rock near the water. The baby sea lions are curious and one immediately came over to Ladybug and rubbed its nose against the hull. Later when I tried to leave, this sea lion came back to the boat and wedged itself between the propeller and the hull making me very nervous about hurting it when I departed (it moved away when I started the engine, however).

As I swam, the babies twisted and dived and jumped clear of the water around me. Having swum once before with young sea lions, I knew they wanted to play, so I dived with them and tried some admittedly pathetic aquatic acrobatics. The sea lions came so close they brushed their flippers against me and one tentatively nibbled my outstretched hand. You do have to be a bit careful as they have strong and sharp teeth; a friend had her thigh bitten while swimming with them later that day. The underwater scenery here is an incredible backdrop for playing with the sea lions. Colorful corals, an arch through the smaller Islote with rock walls lined with flowering anemones, and dozens of varieties of fish. I am not sure how so many obviously tasty fish co-exist with the sea lions, but there were schools of dozens of surgeon fish as well as huge parrot fish (the largest I have seen), trigger fish, Cortez angle fish, etc. The fish also seemed habituated to people, either because they were used to things shaped sort of like sea lions or because they were used to divers. I will bring Rani here when she returns from Canada and would recommend this experience to anyone sailing in the area. Try to come around 9:30 am on a calm day (you can motor from Enenda Grande in about 45 minutes).

Sojourn captain and crew on Isla San Francisco

Sojourn crew on Isla San Francisco ridge walk

Having said that most cruising boats avoid single-handers, the captain and crew of SV Sojourn welcomed me on board and we shared a number of meals on both vessels. Captain Scott sailed in the Baja Ha Ha this year and he and his crew mostly hail from San Francisco, with one lady coming from the UK. They were enjoying a week in the Sea of Cortez and after taking care of the usual boat projects, Scott plans to head south towards Panama. I had the pleasure of showing them the lovely ridge loop hike on Isla San Francisco (see pictures).

The final pictures are from the Armotajada lagoon at Isla San Jose as well as one of a rainbow over some nearby off-lying rocks. The lagoon was full of Ibis and egrets as well as blue and other herons. A very beautiful spot where I was all alone for 2 days in a strong northerly wind.

Ruins of a stone and brick house. San Jose had a large salt collection operation
until recently and there were many more residents here until the 1980s

Channel in the Amortajada lagoon at high tide

Roosting pelican

White Ibis

Corvadae sails past Isla San Jose in a rare rain shower

I will be in La Paz for a few days and then back to the islands until Rani returns from Canada where she is working for a few weeks as a relief pharmacist in northern BC.

A night sail on the way south to La Paz

2011-12-25T07:32:00.000-08:00

This post is for Jamie Orr, who likes to occasionally see something about sailing on a sailing blog...

The wind was light in the anchorage at Agua Verde for much of the day. It was not until about 3 pm that a steady wind began to ruffle the water. We were expecting strong northerlies the next day and decided that rather than do all our sailing in rough downwind conditions, we would leave with a lighter south westerly breeze and sail through the evening. There was a near full moon rising around 8:30 pm that should give us some help in navigating the San Jose channel and finding a suitable anchorage. We were also familiar with the anchorages en route and with our newly functioning radar and some saved GPS waypoints, should be able to find our way in without too much difficulty.

Approximate route

We sailed out the anchor and laid a course for the north west edge of Marcial reef, about 3 miles off shore. We set up our Monitor wind vane to steer us on a broad reach as gusts of westerly wind from the cliffs at Marcial point blew us out of the bay. Dark comes quickly and decisively in mid December and we were soon navigating by way points because a heavy cloud cover and no moon made it impossible to see even the nearby mountains of the Sierra Giganta. Rounding the reef, we turned onto a beam reach and with the vane steering and a reef in the main to cope with gusts out of the mountain valleys, we headed for the entrance to San Jose channel.

Rani navigated on this passage, as she usually does, and used the radar and GPS to keep us on a rhumbline aimed at the middle of the channel. The moon rose behind a cloud-torn sky revealing the faint outlines of islands to seaward, and soon the flashing light on little San Diego island provided comforting confirmation of our electronic bearings. We passed the anchorage at Los Gatos where we could see the anchor light of a sailboat, possibly that of our friends on Southern Cross who had left Agua Verde earlier in the day.

The wind began to increase and we had 2 reefs in the main before we reached the north end of the channel. It was lovely steady sailing with the wind blowing off the land and only a small underlying swell to roll us around. The vane was able to cope with conditions such as these, so long as we made sure to reduce sail and keep the helm balanced during the gusts.

The San Jose channel is usually windier than the surrounding waters due to funneling of the northerly winds prevalent in the winter. However, with the wind in the south west coming over the steep mountains that line the Baja side of the channel, the wind actually became lighter and somewhat fluky in the channel. We decided to favour the outside of the channel and ran over to Isla San Jose to try to find a clear wind. Rani was nervous about getting too close to the sandy spits that project into the channel from the island, but we soon picked up the lighthouse on the more northerly projection and stayed about a quarter to a half mile off shore.

We debated tucking in behind the sand spit, but decided that it would offer no shelter from the westerly swell and instead aimed for San Evaristo on the mainland a few miles further south. The wind died down off Evaristo and we downed sails and motored into the anchorage around 1:30 in the morning. There were 4 boats in the north lobe and 2 in the main anchorage, where we dropped the hook off the beach and after ensuring we were well set collapsed in the V-berth after a lovely 45 mile sail.

San Evaristo anchorage - the next morning - our friends on Corvadae sail out for Isla San Fransisco

Time Piece - A Custom Coast 34

2011-12-25T07:08:00.001-08:00

Time Piece - at anchor in the 'Hook' at Isla San Fransisco

We were anchored off the pristine crescent of sand known amongst cruisers as 'the hook' at isla San Fransisco in the Sea of Cortez when we saw a sail boat approaching. There was something familiar about her, and as she drew nearer, her owner hailed us, asking if we were a Coast 34. It turned out that his boat, Time Piece, was also a Coast, although different enough to my eye that I could not immediately identify her.

Owner - John Spicher inn the galley - note the angled center-line sink and lovely solid
teak woodwork. The oblong portlights (windows) are also different from production Coasts.

Owned by John Spicher, Time Piece was recently arrived in Mexico from Anacortes, Washington. John has lived on board her for a decade in Shilshole, Washington. Time Piece came down in this year's Baja Ha Ha cruising rally, taking first place honours in her division because she sailed the entire course (only 7 boats out of 162 entries did so this year).

Time Piece at the start of the Baja Ha Ha

The bulwarks are much higher on Time Piece than Ladybug - a full 8 inches,
giving the deck a safe, enclosed feeling. The deck is lower than on production boats.

We went on board Time Piece the next morning and over coffee, chatted with John about his boat and experiences. He revealed that the boat was not one of the production Coast 34s that were built in the Vancouver, Canada area since the early 1980's. Instead she is a custom hull, built to Graham Shannon's design by a Port Alberni shipwright. John had a binder that the builder, Jack Klock, had put together to document the blood, sweat, and tears that went into the boat. Jack put in 12,500 hours of labour over a period of 7 years, launching her in 1990. She was built with a full keel (an option specified by the designer) and has raised cabin sides, a lower deck, wider beam (12 feet!), and much higher bulwarks than the production Coast 34s. She also weighs in at a beefy 26,000 lbs, nearly 10,000 lbs heavier than the specified weight. This is a result of her massive construction, with substantial fibreglass layup over a full airex foam core.

Male mold for Time Piece - made of wood strips over wood framing.

Builder inside raw hull after mold has been removed - a daunting task ahead.

The finish work inside is on a par with the best Taiwanese boats, with solid Burmese teak, milled by the builder, employed throughout. Her layout is similar to the production Coast 34, except for the engine placement being slightly further aft and the galley, which retains the angled sink of the original plans. Some bulkheads have also been moved a few inches and extra collision bulkheads installed.

Nice teak woodwork - lots of curves in this boat.

One of the nicest things about building your own boat is that you can do things in a way that is more labour intensive, but results in a better solution than a production boatyard can afford. Time Piece has a number of novel features including water tanks that are built directly into the keel area (getting the weight down low where it acts as ballast) and a unique plumbing system that runs all grey and black water to aft tanks behind the engine. This eliminates all discharge through-hulls below the waterline. She has only 3 below waterline fittings - one raw water intake shared by the engine, water maker, and saltwater pumps, the propellor shaft, and the depth sounder transducer. Even the head is flushed from re-used sink water.

One of the many nice touches - a stainless steel spring that hold open the chart drawer.

John is obviously satisfied with his boat. She meets his criteria for a blue water passage maker that can be handled by one and has proved to be a practical live-aboard.

John looks over the original blueprints for his boat - a nice thing to have on board.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T06:04:00.000-08:00

After working on the boat projects for several weeks in Guaymas, Sonora, we set off sailing on a lovely beam reach across the Sea of Cortez to the Baja east coast. The last few miles were the best as some dolphins joined us in the morning light. They swam in front and around Ladybug, twisting their bodies as they whizzed by to make eye contact with me as I leaned over the bow pulpit.

We arrived at one of our favourite anchorages, San Juanico, and were soon swapping stories with friends from the past on s/v Hotspur. That night we were invited for mouth watering pizza and our first margaritas on S/V Just a Minute.

Algodon flower -"windmill" stage!

That was an auspicious start to three weeks of near perfect sailing down the coast towards La Paz, anchoring at some familiar anchorages on the coast and the islands nearby. On Isla Carmen we sat out a northerly blow for 5 days in Puerto Ballandra and made new friends with other stormbound sailors.Since it was still possible to row ashore, we set out on exploratory hikes across the island to find bighorn sheep and new vistas from the scrubby hilltops. We did catch a brief glimpse of a sheep disappearing over a rock face thanks to the eagle-eyed Steve of s/v Corvidae.I ran down the steep gravelly switch back to try and get a photo for the blog but the creature just vanished. Maybe we had a collective hallucination!You can, however, see us in a photo taken from the top of that ridge as we featured it on our Christmas card.The view below of Salinas Bay with it's white crescent beach and giant rectangular salt pans framed by reddish brown volcanic cones was stunning.

Salinas Bay salt pan from the ridge

Chris's shelter on Isla San Francisco

Exploring new anchorages is always a challenge as the seasonal northerly wind dictates our course for the night. However, we were fortunate to experience a few moderately calm days and sailed Ladybug into new bays. Hiking into new territory was a novel experience and we found many treasures; flowers, shells and beached skeletons, including a mummified wild cat.

wild cat, maybe a lynx, found mummified on shingle beach.

This wild cat, maybe a lynx, was probably shot ( see bullet hole above left eye) and ran off the cliff onto a shingle beach.

Looking south towards Isla Cerralvo

Sailing into the sunset

Coyote melon vine

Thanks to the recent rain, the flowers were spectacular in the arroyos. Vines of bright yellow morning glories and pretty pink San Miguels clambered over rocks and shrubs and purple nightshade flowers stretched out like bats' wings. The plateaus above were decked out for Christmas with the luscious red berries of the boxwoods competing in the colour contest with the scarlet chilli-like flowers of the coral plant.

Boxwood shrub on Isla San Francisco

Nightshade family

Rama parda ( Acanthus family)

Cruising Again

2011-12-09T08:17:00.000-08:00

Apologies for the silence.

We are in Puerto Escondido on the Baja Peninsula en route to La Paz where we will spend Christmas. It took two weeks to get Ladybug ready for the water because of additional projects that needed completion before we leave for the Marquesas.

New solar panel & slick black bottom paint

The radar scanner we bought on eBay works! This makes entering harbours at night much easier.

Adding insulation to the fridge.

Newly insulated icebox - still need to epoxy and paint the inside.

New hatch cover

The winds have been strong and from the north about half the time, so we have spent quite a lot of time hiding out in secure anchorages along the way, including 4 days in Puerto Balandra, where we had some excellent hiking with some new cruising friends who were also storm-bound. On one hike we crossed the island to a lookout over Salinas Bay and Steve pointed out a bighorn sheep as it disappeared down the mountain. We saw what looked like a hunting blind made of black plastic and tarp on a steep slope with a great view over the valley. Whether it was used by hunters or naturalists, one can only guess.

Chris with Steve, Nona, Bo and Libby setting off to Bahia Salinas from Puerto Balandra

Salinas Bay panorama from ridge above

View of Salinas Salt Pans, Isla Carmen

Scrambling up for a view of sand dunes and whitecaps on a blustery day on Isla Carmen

Libby, Rani and Bo feeling the wind in their hair

Nearly home - Chris, Hugh, Nona and Bo

WHAT? I found a small BIGHORN

More fall foliage

2011-10-24T15:17:00.000-07:00

A few pictures from my last Nova Scotia hike with John Maly at Crowbar Lake on the Eastern Shore. As usual, click to enlarge.

Lakefront colours - The trail we hiked ran around two lakes and several streams.

Low lying trees across the lake. The trail later ran through this grove.

Reflections in a small pond near the trail head.

Silver birch and maples - iconic Nova Scotia trees.

Nova Scotia Colours and Grapes

2011-10-06T07:34:00.000-07:00

Another non-cruising post, but I could not resist posting a few pictures from Nova Scotia. The following were taken during a short hike to a waterfall near New Germany in Nova Scotia.

North River stillwater

North River rapids

Apron Falls

Dad navigating

Christmas trees and fall foliage

I am currently staying at my parent's place in Barss Corner. It is nearing grape harvest time and today we even had a little sleety snow to let us know winter is near!

Measuring sugar level in the grapes

Measuring the Brix (sugar level) using a refractometer

And a gratuitous but cute picture of my brother and niece with her first undies :)

Coast 34 Owners web site created

2011-10-05T06:55:00.000-07:00

Together with Doug Swanson of Ka'sala, we have started a new site dedicated to the Coast 34 sailboat (of which Ladybug II is an example). The site, which can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/coast34owners/ contains a list of Coast 34 owners and information about the boat. We may add a forum to allow discussion, but for now, owners and others are welcome to comment on the site or provide us with feedback via email.

Coast 34 Cutter

Installing a new tub

2011-09-21T14:19:00.000-07:00

OK OK - not exactly a post related to cruising, but I thought it might be helpful to someone to share some of our experiences putting in two new bathtubs in my friend Ian's house. I am staying with Ian after having rented our house in Duncan on my way out to Nova Scotia.

Old tub - does not look too bad in picture but is quite worn and has been recoated once already...

One thing that many articles and videos on Youtube neglect to cover in any detail is how to get out the old tub and how to put the new one in. Here are a few pointers I have picked up during the 3 tub installs I have done in the last year.

New tub - Ian with my niece's bear who assisted with the installs.

The order of destruction/construction is roughly:

Rip off tiles or old surround. Tile removal is therapeutic according to Ian...

Removing old tiles

Correct technique for removing tiles.

Cut away any wet drywall (we found that water had made its way behind the tiles (perhaps through unsealed grout). Scrape off old adhesive to make wall reasonably level.

Wall scraped to make even for installing the surround - note dry wall removed well above plumbing
to allow us to remove and install the tubs by swinging them up and into this space.

Cut away a piece of drywall at the tap end of the tub to a height of about 36 to 40 inches above the tub lip. Remove any insulation and vapour barrier and save to re-install later. This provides access to the plumbing and allows room for you to swing the new tub into place, allowing the skirt to clear the wall. You need room between the two end wall equal to the length of the diagonal of the new tub and this provides enough length, at least for a 20 inch high tub...

Measuring diagonal to see how much space we need to swing the tub through.

Cut away the drywall along the back length and foot of the tub up at least a couple of inches higher than the taller of the new/old tubs. Again - This allows you to tilt the tub away from the wall to help as you swing the old tub out and the new tub.

Old plumbing - Note drywall, insulation, and vapour barrier have been removed.
We will remove the valve assemblies to allow the tub to swing past.

Disconnect the drain by unscrewing the flange inside the tub. One way to do this is to insert a wrench or adjustable slip jaw pliers and use another pair of pliers or wrench at right angles as a handle. Unscrew the overflow plate. Turn off the water and unscrew the taps and faucet. You will need to remove the handles first...

You should now be able to lift the end of the tub beside the plumbing, tilting it slightly out from the back wall and wiggling it free of the drywall. You may have to work a bit to make it clear the old plumbing. If it will not clear this, you may need to cut the old plumbing taps out.

You will need to measure and put together a drain/overflow assembly for the new tub based on the dimensions and location of the drain overflow cutouts in the tub and the position of the drain pipe in the floor. The latter was a problem for us and required cutting old drain pipe (1.5" ABS plastic) and moving the drain location to line up with the tub overflow pipe. We assembled the plumbing at the tub and welded this with ABS cement and then attached the this to the newly positioned floor drain in the bathroom.

Now is also a good time to redo the faucet and taps, perhaps moving to a single tap installation. This required us to do a lot of copper cutting, joining, and soldering. We used an old baking sheet to protect the wood from being scorched and cut the old copper with a hacksaw. A pipe cutter would have been nice.

New faucet installed - lots of copper joints but quite easy to do it yourself with an appropriate torch.

The new tub may be quite a bit deeper than the old. This can make it tricky to install, but if you have cut away the drywall on the plumbing wall to a good height, you should be able to install the tub by swing it down from an on-end position with the high end swinging down into the cavity you have made in the plumbing wall. Again a slight twisting out from the wall may be needed until the tub is almost down flat.

Hook up the drain plumbing being careful to compress the gaskets evenly to get a good seal.

Finally, you will want to shim the tub's supports (for us this involved feet in one tub and rails in another. Because of the skirt, it is very hard to reach the feet to shim, so we cut an access in the drywall along the back of the tub to let us reach in and place a shim. You may be able to avoid this by initially cutting away at least 2 inches of drywall all around the top of the tub so that you can temporarily lift the tub to slide in the thin wood shims.

Checking for leaks

Fill the tub with water and check for leaks (a long arm helps as you have to reach behind the tub for this. Fill up so the overflow overflows, too...

While the tub is full, secure the lip via drywall screws either through the lip or immediately above it, depending on the type of tub.

When replacing the drywall, use a product designed specifically for this purpose - not regular drywall. We found some very nice fibreglass faced panels that are 5 feet by 32" - 2 of these did the 2 bathrooms and are easier to fit in a car than the 4 X 8 sheets. We cut them using a knife and straight edge.

We put in a polystyrene tub surround, too. Use a cardboard template to position cutouts for tap, faucet and shower and don't forget to cut out holes for the cover plate screws to go through.

PL 700 adhesive applied to back of new surround panel

New surround in place.

Preparations for the upcoming season

2011-08-03T21:20:00.000-07:00

For the last few months we have been working part time and getting the house ready to rent out because we are planning a longer trip on Ladybug II. We hope to make the Pacific crossing in the spring of 2012 to New Zealand via French Polynesia and assorted South Pacific islands. There - I've written it, so now we have to do it! Well - anything can happen between now and the spring, but we are planning as if we will be away for two years or more...

Perhaps the biggest project we hope to complete before the spring is to improve the charging capabilities so that we can run a refrigerator. Rani sees this as a necessity to keep veggies for more than a few days in the tropics.

Even a well insulated small 12 volt fridge will draw 20-30 amp-hours per day. And to take this little power, we will need to add insulation and gaskets to make our ice box much more efficient at retaining the cold. The number of bits and pieces this project will require is amazing, because we have to make the power initially, store it during periods when we are not using the motor or the sun does not cooperate, and then draw as little as possible. Parts include:

additional closed cell insulation sheets (5" total wall thickness)
FRP board to re-line the icebox
2 gaskets for the lid
new counter material for when we tear apart the galley
fiberglass and epoxy to hold it all together
3 to 5 new batteries (our batteries are nearly 9 years old)
a smart regulator for a high output Balmar alternator (which the previous owners generously left as a spare)
2 extra solar panels and wiring + brackets + through deck glands
... and the list goes on.

We already have an Adler Barbour compressor and plate that appear to work, but just can't keep things cold with less than 2 inches of insulation and an unsealed lid.

Carrying enough spare parts for the engine and other systems is also a concern, so in addition to the usual disposable items we are going to lay in a spare raw water pump, starter motor, shifting cable, and possibly a spare injector. We have a spare fuel lift pump and a good set of gaskets and miscellaneous bits from the previous owners.

Radar internals

We recently bid on and won the (hopefully) working guts of a Raytheon radar on eBay to replace the defunct one that did not work when we purchased the boat. Our EPIRB battery is out of service, so we need to replace the battery. The water maker has started leaking and the little parts to fix this are hundreds of dollars, so we will attempt a Mexican fix and failing this will retire it and rig up a system to collect rain water.

On a fun note - I just bought a little Singer portable sewing machine (1953 Featherweight 221) that should be very useful on the boat. We need to make new covers for hatches and repair the mainsail cover, among other stitching chores. The 'new' machines sews beautifully and is simple and well made (see picture). It has a zigzag attachment, so I may even see how it does with reinforcing our UV patch on the jib!

Singer 221 and attachments - the bed folds up and the whole things weighs < 20 lbs (11 lbs for the machine)

Much of this stuff, we have already purchased, and will have to lug to Phoenix, via the UK and Nova Scotia (visiting our parents). We will buy the rest in Phoenix and area or have it shipped to our Phoenix hotel. Then with a rental car stuffed to capacity we will drive the 7 or 8 hours south to Guaymas, returning the car a day or 2 later and busing back down.

Back at home, we need to move our stuff (again!) into storage, sell the car, arrange for someone to be a contact for our tenants, and work out the various flights and visits on our way back down to the boat. Phew - it makes me exhausted just thinking about this!

Harry Pidgeon and "Around the World Single-Handed"

2011-07-14T10:46:00.000-07:00

Harry Pidgeon was the second person to sail alone around the world. He did this between 1921 and 1925 on a 34 foot engineless sailboat that he built entirely with his own hands. In 1932, he set off again on the same boat (the Islander), completing his second solo trip around the world in 1937.

What strikes one is how much he enjoyed his experiences - both the adventure of ocean crossings and the people he met in the many lands he visited. I recently read a book by Louis Bernacot, the 2nd person to sail around alone by the three capes, as opposed to using the Panama canal (1936-1938). Bernacot's account is one of almost grim determination. He does not linger in many places, seeming focused on the goal more than the experience. His socializing seems limited to other ex-pats and colonial officials. In contrast, as the photos in Around the World Single-Handed show, Harry Pidgeon immersed himself in the cultures he visited, spending a great deal of time exploring ashore.

Another facet of this book that makes it stand out are the excellent photographs. Harry was a self-taught professional photographer and his pictures have both ethnographic and artistic worth. Harry Pidgeon's voyage was the first solo circumnavigation via the Panama Canal (which had not been finished when Joshua Slocum - the first solo circumnavigator - sailed around South America via the Straits of Magellan).

Here is a link to a brief biography of Harry Pidgeon.

I obtained a first edition of this book and scanned it with the intention of producing my first e-book. It took me about 6 elapsed months (maybe 100 hours total) to do this work, which involved converting the images to text using an optical character recognition program, editing the text for both conversion mistakes and formatting errors, editing and reformatting the images from high resolution scans, and assembling into various e-book formats. The work is in the public domain to the best of my knowledge (Dover did a reprint of the original in 1989), so please feel free to download a copy for reading on your ebook reader or computer (see the side bar to the right of this blog). I have tested the e-Pub format on a Kobo touch and all formats on the Calibre e-Book reader Windows application.

If you enjoy this e-book and are feeling generous, I have placed a PayPal donate button below the download links. Your donation will help support our vagrant cruising life :)

Back to Guaymas

2011-05-13T15:39:00.000-07:00

Bahia Santa Teresa from the mouth of a cliff cave

From Santa Rosalia, we had intended to explore some of the more northern reaches of the Sea of Cortez that we have not yet visited. We sailed north towards Bahia San Francisquito in very light winds, making only 20-30 miles per day and stopping in somewhat exposed anchorages each night. There is a different feel to the big bays north of Santa Rosalia. The water looked greener than that further south and it teemed with tiny fish and hundreds of noisy, chattering royal terns and Heermans gulls.

Walking in the desert near our anchorage at Santa Teresa

On day 3, a forecasted northerly gale blew up before we had reached the protection of Bahia Santa Theresa. We had been motoring in a calm from around 8 am, but should have left earlier because we were caught about 10 miles south of shelter by sudden strong winds. The main was down and it would have been difficult to raise it and put in three reefs. Under engine, alone, we were unable to make more than 1 knot, so we rolled out a little bit of the jib and beat into this with the motor assisting. It was tense sailing with large choppy seas created in part by a strong current running against the wind. The gusts were so strong that, even with only 20% of our jib out, we were heeling 20-30 degrees. It was also tricky to tack because without the main up, it was difficult to bring the boat through the wind. On one tack I got the jib sheet double wrapped on the winch and the flapping of the jib tore several feet of stitching holding on the UV protection canvas before I could free up the sheet.

Playing primitive bacci ball with a golf ball we found

We anchored in the lee of Punta Santa Teresa off a mile long white sand beach and here we remained for 4 days as the gale blew. Outside the point, white 'buffaloes' galloped across the wild landscape. We managed to row our dinghy ashore and found a small community of Gringos and Mexicanos living at the far end of the beach and a mile or so north on Bahia San Francisquito. An airstrip and 75 mile dirt road provides access and on our first day there we saw a small private jet take off into the gale.

Visiting with Howard

On our first walk the next day, we met Howard who rents an off the grid palapa on the beach from a Mexican owner. He invited us over for a coffee and told us a little about the area. The airstrip and buildings here were originally part of a Club Med development (his Palapa was one of these buildings) but this was long closed. We saw some small airplanes that morning and there are a few simple buildings in which pilots and their passengers can stay. Howard also told us that this area is popular with sports fishermen, although the gale must have kept them away because we saw no other boats during our stay. Howard is a collector and his palapa deck was covered in locally gathered fossils, whale bones, and copper nuggets.

Fossilized snails on Howard's porch

Big horn sheep skull with added snail 'eyes'.

The next day we walked into the desert and hills nearby where we found a cave that was probably used for shelter by the indigenous people. It looked like the archeologists had been here by the sizable mound excavated from the cave. Howard had found artifacts including several arrow heads nearby, which he had given to visiting archeologists for display in a museum in Mexico city.

Sleeping palapas for airport visitors

When the wind finally abated we had nothing but calms for two days during which we crossed the Sea of Cortez once again (our 12th crossing). The calm waters made for excellent nature watching and we enjoyed our first sightings of sperm whales. We saw pods of up to 12 whales - cows and their calves swimming slowly or lying on the surface. One whale came right up to Ladybug as we lay becalmed, rubbing itself along our side and clicking rapidly and noisily.

Here is a video of the sperm whales including 'logging' where they float like logs, a single whale moving past us, possibly feeding, and a whale that comes alongside:

At Isla San Esteban we anchored off a sea lion rookery and went for a snorkel in the chilly waters. The sea lions were very curious, perhaps because there were so many young ones, and they swam over to see what strange creatures had invaded their domain. Whenever I dived to the bottom, they would follow me and swim quite close, spiraling and turning somersaults underwater. I felt very clumsy and slow compared to these graceful creatures. I also saw my first shark on this swim - small (< 3 feet) and blue gray, sitting on the bottom in maybe 6 feet of water. Later we saw a 4 foot hammerhead as we sailed toward Guaymas.

Sea horse found at Bahia Santa Teresa

The winds remained light and we had to use the motor a lot in order to reach San Carlos. It was so calm that night that we took down our sails and put on the anchor light while still 10 miles off shore. In San Carlos, we re-connected with Frank and Cheryl on Serendipity, whom we had last seen here more than two years ago. It was great to spend a few hours together and catch up on all that has happened in their lives.

View from the deck in Marina Seca Guaymas

Rani gathering perishable food to give away. Note folded mainsail and jib.

We had a splendid sail down to Guaymas where after two days in the Singlar marina, we hauled out Ladybug at Marina Seca Guaymas. Everything went smoothly this year despite strong winds and shallow water off the marina ways (we saw 1/2 a foot below the keel on the depth sounder at one point). Tomorrow we take the bus to Phoenix (8-10 hour ride) and fly home to BC.

La Paz to Santa Rosalia

2011-04-27T07:04:00.000-07:00

It has taken about 2 weeks to sail the 220 miles between La Paz and Santa Rosalia. We visited some old familiar anchorages and a few new places, which we will share briefly through some pictures.

In Caleta Partida, the anchorage between Espiritu Santo and Partida islands, we rigged the hammock given to us by Peggy and Brian Storey back in October when we were married. It fits nicely when strung between the shrouds and the roller furler and is very comfy. Thanks Peggy and Brian!

Rani tests our new hammock

At Isla San Francisco I took our dinghy, Annie, out for a sail while we waited out some strong northerly winds. Although the picture looks like it is calm, I came close to capsizing that day with winds gusting past 20 knots in the anchorage.

Sailing 'Annie' at the hook in Isla San Francisco

North of Isla San Francisco, we sailed close to Isla Coyote where a few familes live year round, fishing in the local waters. The island is a tiny rock packed with their dwellings. It is protected by reefs and lies a few miles from the mainland. The same families have lived here for generations, the children going to school by panga on the mainland.

The village at Coyote island

We anchored next at the north end of Monserrate Island after an exciting spinnaker run from Isla San Jose, where we maintained 7+ knots for a couple of hours. Here we went for a hike with Michelle and Mark off Cheers. They have recently left their positions as captain and naturalist with the National Geographic cruise ships that sail in this area as well as up to Alaska and in the Med. They are now off for a year or two to explore the world on their own vessel. We found fossils in this arroyo and the cardon cacti were in flower.

Ran with, Michelle, and Mark off sailing vessel 'Cheers'

Fossils in the boulder seen in the picture above.

Cardon cactus flowers

We then sailed to Isla Carmen, stopping at Pericho, Cobre (Copper) cove, and Painted Cliffs anchorages. The picture below shows Rani looking down on Ladybug anchored in Cobre, where we spent a morning hiking up a dry river bed (arroyo) and across a tableland. The agave flowers were an unusual sight for us, perhaps because these plants usually bloom May-July when we are back up north. The nopal cacti were also in bloom in the arroyo below.

Overlooking Cobre anchorage - note the green (oxidized copper) colour of the rock at the far side of the bay.

Agave flowers near Cobre anchorage

Close up of agave flowers

Nopal cactus flower

Buds on nopal cactus

We stopped next at San Juanico, anchoring around sunset off the rocks that protect the south end of this anchorage. The winds were very light on this passage and were to remain so until we reached Santa Rosalia, with the exception of one passage off Isla San Marcos where we had to beat into a 15 knot headwind for an hour or two.

Sunlit rocks at the south anchorage in San Juanico

The next passage saw us finally getting north of San Juanico for the first time in two years. We had a very interesting ramble through an old mine site just south of Point Concepcion. We found the foundations and walls of several buildings including what we believe to be the manager's house, worker's buildings with adobe walls, and facilities for extracting and processing manganese ore from the surrounding rock. This site has been abandoned since world war II, when it was a source of chemical grade ore.

Examining the ruins of what may have been the mine manager's house.

Offloading facilities?

Adobe walls - possibly from living quarters for workers.

Overlooking the main mine site.

Beautiful stone work in the walls of a large building.

The platform in the foreground contains a fine dried slurry.

A piece of unprocessed rock.

The beach where we landed had an elaborate panguero (fishermen) settlement with a nicely thatched shelter and a view from the hillside over the anchorage (note the deck chair).

A panguero camp at |Los Pilares

Just south east of Santa Rosalia is Isla San Marcos where there is a large gypsum mine, in operation since 1925. Some of the gypsum is shipped from here to California, where it is used in the building industry (e.g., for wall board). We arrived the day after easter Sunday and after the Semana Santa celebrations were finished. There was a small shrine outside the village and a chapel overlooking the mine pits as well as a church made of gypsum blocks in the village itself. It was a holiday, so we avoided choking on the gypsum dust, which usually drifts over the village when the mine is in operation.

On the beach at the south end of Isla San Marcos

Shrine

Small chapel overlooking the quarries

Rani poses beside balloons left over from the previous night's dance.

Gypsum church - built of large blocks of soft white rock.

Near the loading facilities where gypsum is loaded onto ships via conveyor belts.

We saw a lot of sea life on our trip north, including humpback, pilot, and fin whales. We had two close encounters with the big fin whales who seem to rest on the surface more than other whales. On one of these occasions, the whale surfaced just in front of our boat and dived immediately under us, turning on its white belly as it went. The second meeting happened a week later near Concepcion Bay when a huge fin whale surfaced just off our starboard beam and again dived immediately. It was so close that we would have collided, had it not dived.I think all three of us were equally surprised! Last night at San Marcos Island we watched a humpack mother and calf swimming together in the soft light of the setting sun. On the previous day, while sailing little Annie into the beach, a pod of dolphins came over and swam with us for a few minutes. We have some video footage and will try to post this when we have figured out how best to process it.

We will reprovision here in Santa Rosalia and then explore the northern sea for a week or 2 before we haul out in Guaymas. We are excited about seeing a new area of the Sea of Cortez and enjoying some isolated anchorages.

Mint chutney surprise

2011-04-12T10:54:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning and went into the galley to make us some coffee only to get a surprise when I opened the saucepan I normally make coffee in!

Tamarind pods soaking overnight - their resemblance to something else was a shock first thing in the morning!

The tamarind is added to mint, onion, chillis, and spices to make a delicious mint chutney.

Mint chutney - goes well with stuffed rotis (parathas).

Pictures from Ian and Mint

2011-04-12T10:08:00.000-07:00

With their permission, I am posting a few of the excellent pics that our guests took during their visit with us on Ladybug.

Putting away the main sail. Jib is poled out for a downwind run.

Jumping rays

Another jumping ray

And another...

And a ray jumping duet

Dolphins swimming near Ladybug's bow

Pelican fly-by

Ladybug at anchor in San Gabriel, rowing ashore in Annie

Rani sailing Annie

Beating back to La Paz on our last day out. Rachel is enjoying the wild ride.

Mint and Ian on the uphill side of the boat - last day out.

Cruising with guests

2011-04-09T14:43:00.000-07:00

We and our guests, Ian, Mint, and Mint's 13 year old daughter Rachel survived a week together on Ladybug.

Mint and Ian climb the trail at Isla San Francisco

The good - lots of wildlife sightings including schools of jumping rays, porpoises, and colourful reef fish. We had a good if somewhat challenging hike on Isla San Francisco as well as an expedition to see the 100 year old pearl farm on Isla Espiritu Santo (Click here for more info on this farm). We also had some excellent sails, having little occasion to run the motor.

Rachel and Rani on Isla San Francisco. The Sierra Giganta mountains on the Baja are in the background.

Rachel looks happy with her own creation for lunch.

The not so good - Captain Curmudgeon's water rationing was not easy for Mint and Rachel who both have long hair. My offer to cut their hair with the number 4 attachment on my trimmer was not well received... We did our dishes in salt water and everyone was so careful with the water (being frightened by Captain Curmudgeon) that we came back with our tanks still partly filled. Fortunately we brought along plenty of tequila and juices to supplement our supply of drinking liquid.

Rani at the pearl farm on Espiritu Santo island.

Chris holds an oyster shell. In the background are piles of shells and the pearl culture raceways built out of un-mortared stone.

We had some rough nights at anchor with the local Corumel winds making most of the anchorages noisy and a little bouncy. These winds are a fact of life in the islands north of La Paz, but they seemed particularly strong this time out. Mint and Ian were sleeping in the V berth near the anchor and were subjected to a bouncier and noisier ride than Rani and I who had the smaller quarter berth further aft. Rachel had the berth over one of the water tanks, which would slosh around when things got rough, so she lost some sleep too and had to move onto the settee across from this berth one night.

Annie under sail with Chris at the helm.

Ian sailing Annie in Caleta Partida

Ian enjoyed the sailing and we had some decent sailing breezes on 5 out of the 7 days. Ian has sailed with me before and both he and Mint have taken sailing courses, so they know enough to be helpful crew. Ian also enjoyed sailing little Annie in the Caleta Partida anchorage. Mint and Rachel were good sports, and despite feeling a bit queasy at times during the first few days they did not complain.

Adolescent frigate birds in the mangroves near the pearl farm.

More immature frigates.

Privacy can be a bit of a challenge on our smallish boat, especially when the head has a curtain for a door, so it was no surprise that bodily functions that do not usually get discussed were a topic of conversation most days, especially with a 13 year old on board.

Ian enjoys a nice 10 knot breeze on our last day out.

Hopefully it was a positive experience for all and we have learned a few things for the next time we host friends on board.

La Cruz to La Paz

2011-04-01T11:23:00.000-07:00

A few notes on our recent crossing to La Paz...

We celebrated Chris's birthday a few days early with Jo and Rob in La Cruz.

The birthday 'boy'

We arrived safe but tired after an 8 day crossing ( 4 days straight at the end) from La Cruz to La Paz, beating into light winds. I wish I had taken a photo of the chart plot of Ladybug's wanderings over those days. She seemed to be heading anywhere but La Paz, tacking east and west. On our last day we ran the motor as the wind died almost completely and we were running out of time. Usually we wait for the wind to come up but this time we were expecting company on March 31st in La Paz.

En route, we anchored in the San Blas estuary to visit our friends Rich, Lori, Amy and Jay on their new 36 foot sailboat Third Day. Lori and Amy were busy painting mermaids and fish on the bottom.

Bottom Painting Third Day

We took time out to hike to the old fort which was built in 1770 to defend the town's extensive sea trade with the Philippines. Behind the fort are the ruins of the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary built in 1769. The church once contained the bronze bells that are said to have inspired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "The Bells of San Blas". For someone who never actually visited San Blas he recalled the town's bustling past quite vividly.

Church of Our Lady of the Rosary

Inside of the church - beautiful stonework

It was fun sailing up the estuary in our little dinghy before celebrating Chris's birthday on the actual day with the Boren family on sv Third Day.

Local paddling in a pirgue type boat

Back to the trip up to La Paz:

Passing through the San Lorenzo Channel north of La Paz in the moonless night was not as bad as I had anticipated since we did not have to dodge any tankers or ferries. Chris, to give him his sailors' due, did put up the sails for a quarter of an hour but the light head wind was no match for the strong current against us and he had to call it quits to save the sails from wear and tear.

And, now, we are off to the islands - Islas Partida, Espiritu Santo and San Francisco. A couple of friends and their 13 year old daughter arrived from Victoria last night. They will be our first guests to live and cruise on Ladybug II for one week, if they do not mutiny first! Chris and I went to pick up the groceries yesterday after Chris planned the week's menu - all vegetarian except for the odd tuna/squid sandwich to prevent withdrawal. We hope that the pristine beaches, turquoise waters, dolphins and whales will more than make up for cramped quarters, lack of privacy, a vegetarian diet and Captain Curmudgeon!

We shall report back when we return as to how we all fared and maybe even bribe our guests to send their feedback.

Longfellow's poem, The Bells of San Blas:

They are a voice of the Past,
Of an age that is fading fast,
Of a power austere and grand;
When the flag of Spain unfurled
Its folds o'er this western world,
And the Priest was lord of the land.

The chapel that once looked down
On the little seaport town
Has crumbled into the dust;
And on oaken beams below
The bells swing to and fro,
And are green with mould and rust.

Then from our tower again
We will send over land and main
Our voices of command,
Like exiled kings who return
To their thrones, and the people learn
That the Priest is lord of the land!

O Bells of San Blas, in vain
Ye call back the Past again!
The Past is deaf to your prayer;
Out of the shadows of night
The world rolls into light;
It is daybreak everywhere.

Desert Plants of Baja California

2011-03-20T17:18:00.000-07:00

While sailing down the east coast of Baja California, we were constantly surprised by the density and diversity of plants in what appeared to be essentially a desert. Up close and personal, there were times we regretted wearing shorts as almost all the trees, shrubs, and ground cover appeared armed with barbs, thorns or burrs. Chris seemed to be most Cacto-phyllic as he invariably stepped on or into these iconic symbols of the desert. While we recognized some of the more common plants, we really did not have a great reference book until this year. Our friend Randall of S/V Murre gave us the most valuable “ A Field Guide To The Common And Interesting Plants Of Baja California ” by Jeannet Coyle and Norman C. Roberts. So, now our hikes have become more interesting and occasionally we dare to taste some of the edible fruits and plants enjoyed by the indigenous people of the region many centuries ago.

Phytogeographic Regions of Baja

As you can see on the map copied from the field guide, there are eight phytogeographic regions in Baja and we have only accessed one of them during Ladybug's travels this year – the Central Gulf Coast Desert. This region extends from the Bahia de los Angeles to the Cape and includes most of the Gulf Islands. As you have probably seen in many photos from our blog, the land here consists mainly of volcanic and granitic rock. The rainfall is irregular and sparse, resulting in sporadic flowering and growth of vegetation. Arriving last year in October, we saw a much greener desert after the summer rains.

Mallow Family

The characteristics of the desert are low humidity, high air temperature, with great daily fluctuations, high surface and soil temperatures, low organic and high mineral content of the soil, erosion by strong winds and water, and poor drainage. Since water is essential to any life, desert plants have become highly adapted to preserving water. Examples are: a sprawling root system (creosote ), miniscule leaf size (ocotillio and cirio), thorns and spines instead of leaves (cacti) , resin and wax coatings for water-proofing (creosote ), leaf production limited to when water is available ( elephant tree ), bitter juices to avoid being eaten ( creosote, lomboy), tough seed coats and water storage tissue ( cactus, Agave ).

Hedgehog Cactus in flower

Tough, woody seed pod

Most desert plants are low in stature and are widely spaced, mingling with dissimilar plants – a lesson in harmony. Due to the limited nutrients and water, desert perennials grow very very slowly. The cardon is estimated to grow about one inch per year, so you can see why we worshipped the “old growth” sentinels which we encountered along the way.

This old grandfather must be over 300 years old!

Torote Blanco - Elephant Tree

The aromatic scent of the torote trees remind me of hikes in the pine and cedar forests of the northwest. The bark is used for tanning and dyeing.

Wild Lilac – leaves and flowers can be boiled into a tea. Fresh flowers make a lather when crushed and rubbed in water. Cattle, sheep and deer like it. Bees visit the flowers for nectar.

Garambullo ( Old Man Cactus) - the tips of the stems are covered in coarse, gray hair-like spines.

Cholla – Green, fleshy fruit was bitter to us but is popular with cows. We spent many hours trying to pick out the fine spines from our lips and hands after this taste test!

Devil's Claw – The woody seed pod has prong-like claws which attach to fur, clothing and skin for a highly effective dispersal method. The two claws often clamp into cattle nostrils or hikers' boots!

Juanita – Blooms continuously with pink flowers forming garlands over cacti and shrubs in arroyos and hills.

Desert Mistletoe

Desert Mistletoe ( Toji ) is a woody parasite that we see latched onto many trees. Its berries are eaten by birds or dried and eaten by Indians. Leaves and berries are also cooked with rice and the mixture used as a poultice to draw out pus from boils.

Pitaya Dulce

Missionary records state that the Indians spent the Pitaya Dulce fruit season in a state of euphoria. It was a dangerous period for young girls gathering fruit as the braves would try to catch them. The feasting lasted several months and allowed the tribes to travel and socialize together. If the fruit was not eaten fresh, it could be dried for future use. Interestingly, when the fruit was gone, the indians would gather their dried feces to collect the black seeds, then grind these into a meal – the “second pitahaya harvest”.

Blooming Barrel Cactus

Bursage ( Burro weed )?

Nopal - Prickly Pear Cactus

Nopales are generally sold fresh in Mexico, the spines removed and diced. Used to prepare nopalitos, they have a light, slightly tart flavor, like green beans, and a sticky texture.

Yummy!

Torote Colorado - birds love this fruit

These berries looked enticing but we knew better!

Beautiful patterns on Barrel Cactus

Flowers of the Desert Agave

Cardon Cactus in bloom

Red chilli-shaped flowers of Palo Adan - a very common shrub in the Baja

Possibly Heronbill but I am not at all sure - comments?

Brittlebush - Sunflower family

Bird's nest with built-in spiny defense courtesy of Chain-Link Cholla

Mangrove tree at Caleta Los Lobos

Nightshade

Acanthus family

The underwater plants off the desert coast can be just as colourful! This photo was taken by Randall (sv Murre) while snorkeling at El Gato

La Cruz and Sayulita

2011-03-20T09:36:00.000-07:00

The main purpose of our trip to La Cruz was to see off our friends Jo and Rob on Blue Moon. They are off to the Marquesas and will spend the summer in the south Pacific before returning to their home in New Zealand. After spending a couple of days here in La Cruz with them, we decided to take a trip together to the nearby surfing resort of Sayulita. The bus ride from Bucerias to Sayulita was impressively quick, the driver at times behaving more like he was at the wheel of a Maserati. I was standing at the back of the bus and had no illusions about where I would end up if we had to stop suddenly at these speeds. Still it was only $1 for a 25 km bus ride and we all arrived unscathed.

In Sayulita, the road bridge was washed out in a flood and as you can see from the picture below, so were other facilities. Jo from Blue Moon is to the right, Rani in the middle, and first time cruiser, Cathy on the left. On the plus side there was no one there to collect the normal 5 peso (40 cent) fee...

Line up for the washroom

We all went swimming and body surfing. In the picture below, Rob is coming out for a break while Cathy's husband Lindsey and I get ready to catch a wave. You can see how successful we were in the following picture.

Ready to catch the wave

The wave caught us instead

There is an iguana sanctuary in Sayulita and we were able to get up close and personal with the big fellow shown in the picture below. This iguana was at least 5 feet long including a three foot tail.

We ate our mid-afternoon comida at a little sidewalk restaurant, enjoying huevos rancheros and tasty vegetarian sandwiches with fruit juice for a very reasonable 50 pesos each ($4). After comida we went back to the beach for more swimming and surfing before catching the bus home. It was nice for a change to get away to an area where there were not so many sailors!

When we arrived back at the marina, we just had time for beer and a snack before watching a performance of folk dancing. The performers were young girls mostly between 12 and 16. They performed a wide range of dances, many of them involving tapping intricate rhythms with their shoes. Some of the dances were performed in costumes as old men with white bearded masks and canes. The young girls did a remarkable impersonation of wobbly legged bent backed old creatures and I could not help but think they might regard the majority of us cruisers as such!

We will be here in La Cruz or a few more days before re-crossing to La Paz.

A New Tender

2011-03-20T09:25:00.000-07:00

All last cruising season and the first 2 months of this one, we have been using our inflatable Helios Inova double kayak. This is a suprisingly seaworthy little boat with a capacity of about 400 pounds and we have carried a full load of groceries, 4 gallons of water, and the two of us without a problem, even in the rough chop of La Paz's anchorage. We sold our powered inflatable Apex RIB dinghy to cruising friends last season, primarily because I wanted to replace this with a hard dinghy we could row, similar to the small plywood one we had carried on Ladybug I. Because friends are visiting in a couple of weeks, we need some way to transport more than two people at a time to and from Ladybug, so our need has become pressing.

It has proven to be really difficult to buy a hard dinghy in Mexico. Most cruisers have inflatables down here and those who have rowing dinghies don't seem interested in selling them. However, we put the word out in La Paz that we were looking for an 8 foot hard dinghy and eventually found 3 possibilities. Two were Walker Bay plastic dinghies that are probably the most common hard dinghies now seen down here, being readily available from West Marine and quite inexpensive. The third was a hand built plywood and fibreglass boat. Kurt off Raven helped me evaluate the plywood boat and although it was well built, we agreed that it would be too heavy and awkward to bring aboard on Ladybug's foredeck. We don't like towing a dinghy as a rule, so wanted something that could be lifted on board without damaging our backs or Ladybug's deck.

A sistership to our boat

We ended up buying an elderly Walker Bay with a sailing rig from Annie, who puts on yoga classes at Marina de La Paz. The dinghy needs a few repairs but should serve the purpose. The sailing rig (mast, boom, sail, rudder/tiller, and centreboard) has allowed us to sail the considerable distance to and from the marina dinghy dock here in La Cruz and have fun at the same time. We even took her out for a pleasure sail this morning and Rani said she enjoyed the feeling of skooting along effortlessly close to the water. We have named her 'Annie' in honorur of her previous owner.

Crossing to the Mainland

2011-03-20T09:23:00.000-07:00

It is hard to believe, but this is our tenth crossing of the Sea of Cortez in two years. Every crossing has been quite different both from where we have departed from and sailed to and because of the time of year and weather conditions. This crossing was mainly in light airs and took a total of 8 days from La Paz to La Cruz.

We departed La Paz on March 8 but only made it as far as the Caleta Los Lobos anchorage, less than 10 miles from La Paz . We sailed down most of the channel, putting on the motor to avoid beating through the very narrow stretch between Marina Palmira and the entrance. We had tried to tack through this bit twice already this year and find that with our big jib and the inner stay of the cutter rig that such short tacking is unelievably strenuous. Unless the wind is strong, someone has to go forward to help the jib around the inner stay and then run back to the cockpit to grind in the genoa. By the time this is done it is time to tack again! I am tempted to remove the inner stay and tie it off to the mast but it is nice to have it in reserve in case we have a very strong blow. This stay is where we can set a small staysail or storm jib.

Baking banana bread underway

Before we turned on the motor, Kurt came barreling out of Marina Palmira in his inflatable, pulled up behind us and handed up a nice cold Negro Modelo cerveza – one of the best send offs we have had yet from any port! Kurt and Nancy on Raven were also kind enough to maintain radio contact and relay messages to Rani's relatives in England, so we could clarify a health issue with Rani's mother.

The sail to Lobos was a beat to windward and we soon had 2 reefs in the main and were doing a nice steady 6 knots. We were outpointing and outsailing a couple of other boats and feeling very smug until the wind dropped and we were left flopping around in an infuriating steep 3 foot chop. We have often seen strange wind patterns in the area of La Paz Bay near the entrance to the Cerralvo Channel and also north of the channel near Espiritu Santo Island. We wallowed around for a while and eventually lost patience and put on the motor to steady things a bit while we searched for some wind. It looked like we would have a very rough time in the channel, so we called it a day and bore off for Lobos in the mid afternoon. Sometimes it just makes sense to call it quits...

Booby riding a turtle

The next leg of our passage was a long day's sail from Lobos, through the busy Lorenzo Channel and down the Ceralvo Channel to Los Muertos. We sailed out the anchor and were able to make the passage entirely under sail. The commercial port of Pichilingue lies just south of where we departed and in addition to tankers and small container ships, the big Baja Ferries run from here across to Mazatlan. We had to alter course to avoid shipping a couple of times in the Lorenzo Channel. The wind was light in the morning and as we rounded the corner to run down the Cerlavo channel it came behind us and its apparent speed dropped to almost nothing. A big swell made it difficult to keep the sails filled, but we poled out the jib to reduce the slatting and about half way down the 20 mile long channel the wind began to build until it reached 20+ knots. By 3:30 pm, even with a reefed main and partial jib, we were seeing boat speeds as high as 9.9 knots down the face of the waves. Each time we have sailed this channel, we have experienced similar conditions, with light winds at the north end and more than enough wind as the afternoon arrives and we reach the mid-point of the channel. This was exciting sailing and our Monitor wind vane steering was barely able to control things on this almost dead downwind course. As dusk approached we made the decision to pull into Los Muertos rather than face a rough night at sea for the first night of our crossing.

The actual open water crossing began at Muertos and ended about 80 hours later at Isla Isabela. On day 1 we began our sail with a good breeze and swell left over from the previous day. We had a pleasant downwind run that day with Ladybug galloping along despite being thrown from side to side by 6 foot quartering swells. That night, as forecast, the wind died down and we were forced to gradually turn off our course and point up into it to keep the boat somehat steady in the big rolly seas.

Bringing down the cruising spinnaker

On Rani's watch at around 3 am, half a dozenn dolphins came to play around Ladybug, weaving glowing tunnels of phosphorescence as they passed across our bow. I was woken to the strains of classical music as Rani attempted to communicate with her new friends. On my morning watch I had to alter course radically when a humpack whale sounded immediately in front of the boat and maybe 30 feet away. The whale seemed as surprised to see us as we were to see it and immediately dived. In La Cruz we learned of another boat and whale that had not been so lucky. The sail boat struck the whale three times, the final strike leaving the whale pinned across the boat. The boat began to take on water and they transmitted a mayday, but were able to stop the flow of water (the propeller shaft had become dislodged) and made it to La Cruz, where they are currently hauled out.

The wind died entirely around dawn and we motored slowly for a couple of hours to reduce the maddening rolling. After checking in to the radio net and listening to the weather we put up our sails to catch 1-2 knots of wind and were able to sail for the remainder of this day and through the second night until about 8:30 the next morning. We then took down all sails to wait for some breeze, the swell having gone down enough to make this tolerable.

Anchorage at the Monas (Manequins) Isla Isabela. Sea Hobo is pictured here and we later met single hander, Andy at La Cruz. He is a boat builder from Vancouver Island.

The third day was a light air day, too, with some slow downwind sailing and a couple of hours of motoring when the wind disappeared entirely. We began to see thousands of jellyfish and other assorted gelatinous blobs – some with bright blue glowing spots. I guess we were in a current that must run up and down the coast. We began to see two to three foot turtles drifting in the same current as well as sea lions basking on the surface with their flippers cocked up in the air. Rani counted over two dozen turtles go by that day close to our boat, some with birds riding on their shells (see picture). The calm seas also allowed us to hear and see humpback whales and we had several decent sightings of these huge creatures. Shortly after I fell asleep after my morning watch, I was woken up by Rani's excited shout of “Killers, Killers!” and I ran to the cockpit in time to see a pod of killer whales or, more correctly, orcas off our port beam.

Panga fishermen at Isla Isabela

The fourth day was even quieter than the previous and we decided to fly our Spinnaker to make better progress, hoping to reach Isla Isabela by nightfall. 7 hours running with the big red and white sail up, 4 hours under white sails, and nearly 6 hours under motor, saw us arrive at Isabela at dusk, anchoring off the Monas to the east of the island. Due to time constraints we did not go ashore and left early the next day, enjoying a splendid Spinnaker run until mid-afternoon, when the wind swung ahead of us into the south and we switched back to our regular sails. The wind vanished altogether by suppertime and we elected to motor in to Punta Mita at the entrance to Banderas Bay. Navigating this stretch of coast in the dark is a bit nerve-wracking because the charts are so inaccurate and there are rocks and unlit buoys at the entrance to the bay. However, we had waypoints and a GPS accurate mini-chart in our guidebooks and also some recollections of last year's night time entry. We anchored succefully at Punta de Mita, moving the next day into the more protected anchorage at La Cruz, where we will visit with our friends on Blue Moon.

Ladybug sails south from Puerto Escondido (Video)

2011-03-07T00:45:00.000-08:00

Here is a short 2 minute video shot on Ladybug II as we sailed south from Puerto Escondido in a nice breeze.

Geology of Baja California

2011-03-06T16:23:00.003-08:00

Note - I will be adding some pics and maps to this post eventually, so please check back soon.

View from the volcanic cone (828ft) on Isla Coronados

Photo courtesy of Kurt on SV Raven

For those interested in some geological background, I found the following information in " A Field Guide To The Common and Interesting Plants of Baja California " by Jeanette Coyle and Norman C. Roberts. In attempting to condense three pages down to three paragraphs, I may have omitted significant facts, so don't sue me!

The jagged finger of the Baja California peninsula is relatively young in the history of the earth. About 150 million years ago, a chain of volcanic islands existed between the modern day Sierra Nevada of California, USA, to almost as far south as Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. To the west of the island chain was the deep trench of the Pacific Ocean and to the east, a shallow sea. Over millions of years, sediments eroded into the west trench and the volcanic rocks built up in the island arc. Limestone and shale to the east of the volcanic rock accumulated in the shallow sea. Heat and pressure has resulted in the complexity of these "metamorphic" rocks. Rocks that were formed in the deep sea are exposed in the mountain ranges of the west coast of Baja California. The shallow sea sediments are found all along the coast of the Sea of Cortez.

Volcanic activity stopped around the age of the dinosaurs and tropical rains eroded the mountains to expose granitic cores created earlier. Some of these mountains eroded completely and a plain extended hundreds of miles eastward. Rivers flowed down the current peninsula carrying away gravel and sand to the Pacific. About 25 million years ago the San Andreas Fault split California and northwestern Mexico apart and everything west of the fault began moving northward. Movement is still occurring at a rate of about one inch a year and has displaced Baja California by 450 miles since inception.

The movement was not uniform and stretching of the peninsula was accompanied by more volcanic activity. The Sierra de la Giganta is formed from the accumulation of the volcanic rock. Lava flows and ash layers has created the colourful black and pink layered landscape of these areas. The rivers that flowed from north Mexico were stopped by the separation of Baja California and the plain lifted up and tilted in the east. This surface can be seen today, rising from sea level of the Pacific to almost a mile high in the Sierra Juarez and Sierra San Pedro Martir. Scattered on the surface are river gravels, some gold bearing, evidence of old river systems.

The east side of this highland area is the " Gulf Escarpment", east of which is the San Felipe Desert, with some isolated mountain ranges. Between the desert ranges are valleys filled with sediment.

Baja California is still geologically active.

Hiking in Baja California Sur

2011-03-06T09:36:00.000-08:00

This blog entry is dedicated to my fellow hikers and great friends in the Cowichan Outoor Group, Vancouver Island.

View over Balandra Cove, north of La Paz

Chris above The Hook, Isla San Francisco

I am still a hiker first and foremost, using Ladybug II for access to some of the most unspoilt and sometimes challenging terrain in Baja California Sur. The rugged range of the Sierra de la Giganta provides a stunning backdrop to the pristine beaches and arroyos of the little bays where Ladybug rests while cruising down the east coast of the Baja. We have not yet managed to hike into the sierra but are content to scramble up the canyons and bluffs or wander down arroyos created by the summer rains.

Exploring a large arroyo on Isla San Jose

Panorama of paradise

As soon as we drop anchor, we usually rush to cover the sails, turn off the instruments, tidy up the deck, splash our inflatable kayak into the water and paddle to shore. If we arrive late in the day, we hike for an hour or more, often watching the sunset from the beach or bluff. Usually we linger at most places and explore for 3 to 4 hours at least each day.

Sometimes "we" read the tides wrong before we go ashore

Setting off from the beach, we follow arroyos (dry river beds), canyons or simply scramble up the cliffs to plateaus or peaks. There are no marked trails, except one on Isla Coronados, since it is a popular day trip from Loreto. Our cruising guides for this area have some suggestions, especially if other adventurous sailors have been out and about in the past. However, in most anchorages we create our own trail, taking care not to disturb the flora, especially if the flora has barbs! Scrambling up slippery scree at steep angles is not my cup of tea as I feel safer on solid rock, even if the jagged edges are lethal to my boots.

Dennis and Chris scrambling and sliding on Isla San Francisco

The Serengeti of El Gato - hiking with Randall (S/V Murre)

Along the way, we stop often, photographing the plants, admiring their tenacity to survive in the dessert conditions. Sometimes we find fossils, embedded in rocks from the river beds of past millenia. We stop to think about the people who lived in these lands. How did they live in such a harsh environment? The sea was plentiful in its bounty and even the dessert has edible plants. We found shell middens along the shore at several islands but also mounds on higher ground, evidence of land rising up from the ocean. Along the top of Isla San Francisco we found rocks that were shaped for grinding the cacti seeds or fruits.

Fossil found in river bed on Isla San Jose

Our pace is different from the usual club hikes as we have the time to wander at leisure. The climate has been perfect for trekking and the sun has shone every day since we arrived in Mexico. Chris has only gotten sunburned a few times and my tan is getting darker! The temperature varies from 15 to 25 degrees Celsius during the day now but was a little cooler when we first arrived. It is normally breezy on shore but can get quite hot during the hike as we venture inland. As all good hikers, we carry plenty of water and some food. I have to confess that we have been forgetting our first aid kit ( Sorry, Del and Dave ). Thankfully we have not encountered any rattlesnakes, scorpions or poisonous plants so far! Both Chris and I have had the occasional encounter with spiny cacti but other than a bout of swearing there is not much one can do in that situation.

Coyote foot prints on beach at El Gato

Vulture skull

Pantomime time at high noon

Desert valley and mountains near La Paz

Never get too close to wildlife!

Sailing on and off the anchor

2011-03-03T06:17:00.000-08:00

Steve of S/V Mystic asked for a description of what we do when sailing on and off the anchor...

In three years of cruising down here, we have only had our engine fail to start once (due to low batteries) but you never know when the beastie will let you down, so Rani and I do a lot of practicing just using our sails. Sailing into or out of a crowded or narrow anchorage requires several skills that you do not learn well if you always down sails before coming in or fire up the engine when you depart.

When we arrive in an anchorage under sail, we usually roll in the jib at the mouth of the bay and proceed under main. The exception to this is if we have to beat up to the spot we have selected to drop the hook in. In this case we roll up most of the jib, leaving out just enough to help us tack. We may sail gently through the anchored boats (if any) to verify depths and find the best spot to drop. The trick is to arrive at the right spot after bringing the boat up into the wind and letting fly the main. I must admit that I do not always get this right and may find that once we have dropped down after letting out chain that we are too close to another boat. At this point we either sail out the anchor and try again, or more likely fire up the engine and after dropping the main re-anchor under power. If we are successful in getting into the right spot, we sometimes back the main in order to set the anchor. This involves pointing the boat into the wind (Rani does this) while I push the boom up to windward, filling the mainsail so that Ladybug drifts backwards. If the wind is blowing strongly, I may not do this and rely on the wind on the hull and spars to set the anchor.

When leaving under sail there are two main choices. If there are boats or danger such as rocks or a beach to windward, then we want to leave with the sails loose and drift backwards once we have raised the anchor. This assumes there are few boats aft of us. If the dangers are downwind then we make sure the mainsail is in tight and we beat upwind to the anchor and try to get away on the best tack so that we will clear any boats or dangers. We start by hoisting the main, but only after we have removed the anchor bridle and pulled in about half the chain. This reduces the time we have when we are sailing around with our anchor still in the sand! We often roll out a little jib after the anchor is off the bottom especially when beating to windward. Without this, we have had trouble getting Ladybug to go about, especially if the anchor is still in the water (hanging off the bow as a drag). Of course we try to get the anchor on board as quickly as possible to avoid steering problems.

Rani does the steering during this and I work the windlass on the foredeck to raise or lower the hook. So far we have only had to fire up the engine on one or two occasions when we got caught in stays and were in danger of running into another boat. Speaking of other boats - some people admire what we are doing and applaud a successful exit or entry - others are very uncomfortable when you arrive or depart under sail, perhaps because they would not be comfortable trying the same manoeuver. We do not usually do this in very crowded anchorages for this reason :)

Cruising from Puerto Escondido to La Paz

2011-02-27T09:58:00.000-08:00

Rani is working on blogs about our recent hiking adventures as well as some information on the local flora, so I will fill in a few details on where we have been since Puerto Escondido. For those of you who are sailors, I will try to include some details on the passages (day sails) we have made between Escondido and La Paz, where we are now at anchor.

Agua Verde - the palapa is now home base for bow hunters after big horn sheep. The custom caravan belongs to a couple from Alaska.

Our first passage south was from Puerto Escondido to Aqua Verde, a pleasant 10 mile run. We had light airs for much of the passage although we had a promising start with moderate following winds from the northwest. These were strongest in the area of Danzante island, probably due to funneling between the tall peaks of this island and the Giganta range on the Baja 'mainland'. Later the wind petered out to a few knots and we used our whisker pole to hold out the jib, running with our main out on the opposite side. We spotted what we believed to be Gray whales swimming and resting on the surface. The quiet seas made it easy to see the whales from miles away and we would often hear their breath as they breached before we spotted a jet of spume.

Barrel cacti

Snug anchorage under the bluffs

We stayed two days in Agua Verde, due to light winds, buying a few supplies at a new tienda that has opened since the last time we had visited. The goats are not producing much milk at this time of year and we were not able to buy any of the delicious queso fresco that we had enjoyed in previous years. The highlight of my visit here was a tour of the Vancouver island sailing vessel, Aleydabeth. Lyle and Lark showed us around this lovely 35 footer, which they had built from a bare hull. In the heads was a magnificent English toilet, called a Baby Blake, which they had bought second hand. Unlike your typical plastic boat toilets of the $150-300 variety, this beauty was over $5000 new, made of porcelain, bronze, and leather. I was privileged to take the Baby Blake for a test drive and will try to install one in Ladybug if we ever run across a used one in good shape.

Anteater or elephant?

We sailed from Agua Verde out to one of the offshore islands, with winds gusting to 25 knots. It was a great ride with the beam wind pushing use along at a solid 7 knots for much of the way – a 'soldier's breeze'. This sail reminded me a lot of our trip out to Santa Cruz island in California in our first Ladybug. The spray was flying, but the greater freeboard and length of the newer boat kept the cockpit much drier (in Ladybug I, we took frequent spray over the dodger). We dropped the hook off a rock formation that our friend, Rob, from New Zealand on Blue Moon nicknamed the anteater (Rani thought it looked more like an elephant). Despite the strong winds we risked a kayak landing and hiked up an extensive arroyo filled with cacti and flowering desert plants. The trail led up and out of the arroyo onto a plateau that looked out East toward the mainland of Mexico. The sea far below was dotted with white caps and we were glad to be in a relatively snug anchorage.

Ladybug ghosting under the cruising spinnaker.

Two days later, we had a somewhat disappointing sail into El Gato, under whose familiar red cliffs we had anchored on several earlier occasions. After a nice downwind sail of about 8 miles, the wind went elsewhere and we resorted to motoring, taking the opportunity to make water. However, a light breeze filled in after an hour and we had a pleasant drift into El Gato, where a swell bending round the point gave us a rolly few nights at anchor. In El Gato we met Randall on Mure, a graceful 31 foot Mariner ketch. Randall was taking a year off to sail Mexico and planned to return to San Francisco via Hawaii in the summer. We invited him to join us on a lengthy hike and he made a great companion, pointing out and naming birds and plants that we had seen before, but had not identified. He later gave us a book on the plants of the Baja that has added a lot to our enjoyment while hiking.

Mure at sunrise in El Gato

Our next passage saw us using the motor more than we had in total in the previous two weeks. The wind gradually died as we headed south and despite and abortive attempt to fly our cruising chute, we ended up running the iron genny for more than three hours. We made so much water that the tanks overflowed and we had to pump out our bilge and dry out the eggs and cheese we had stored there. We anchored in a new-to-us anchorage near the north end of Isla San Jose. Two other boats were already at anchor when we dropped the hook off a stunning sand spit. We kayaked ashore and walked along the beach as the sun set behind the mountains across the channel – a magical place.

Strange little silverfish like bugs scoot all over the rocks near El Gato. Rani does not like these little beasts one bit!

To make up for all this motoring, we did not use the engine at all on the next four passages, sailing out the anchor and anchoring under sail in each new cove. I justified these maneuvers to Rani as good practice for when our engine would not start. It certainly builds skill to do this and I think Rani may even be starting to enjoy the extra challenge and the occasional round of applause we get when we do an elegant entry or exit under sail into or out of a crowded anchorage. On one passage, another double ender, a graceful Pacific Seacraft Mariah 31, anchored under sail beside us. We exchanged compliments when we sailed out our anchor a half our later, passing close under their stern as we left Isla San Francisco.

Starfish in a tide pool near El Gato

The most challenging maneuvers were when in a tight anchorage on a lee shore as happens quite often in the two big islands close to La Paz. On Isla Partida, we had to beat our way out of a narrow cliff lined bight, tacking every half minute or so into a west wind. Almost all the anchorages face west and we had a similar experience in the wider anchorage of San Gabriel where we missed stays twice due to having up too little sail and nearly ran into the cliffs on the north side of the anchorage. It is a trick to stay calm when you are drifting sideways towards the surf, but this is what you must do if you are to roll out more furled jib and convince the boat to come about on the other tack. We kept the key in the ignition just in case, but I refused to turn on the engine as this would reduce the realism of the whole exercise. Rani is still talking to me, so she is either turning into a real sailor or maybe just becoming resigned to her fate.

Ladybug anchored off Isla San Jose. Nopolo is in the background.

Because there was a National Geographic mini cruise ship anchored in the hook at Isla San Francisco and two other large power yachts besides, we gave this favorite anchorage a wide berth. Instead, we tried out another new-to-us anchorage off the Baja peninsula just south of and opposite Isla San Francisco. We anchored in shallow water in an open roadstead off a fishing camp. Ironically, we had one of the most peaceful nights here in all the places we stayed north of La Paz, for over the next few nights we suffered through Corumel winds blowing directly into the bays on the west side of the islands. We laid out a stern anchor to keep Ladybug facing into the gentle swell and slept like babies.

Balloon fish.

In Cardoncito on Partida island we re-connected with our friends Dennis and Lisette on Windward, spending a few days in their company, hiking, and sharing delicious potluck meals. As is often the case, Windward was heading in the opposite direction and we made tentative plans to see them later in the spring when we should cross paths on our return 'migration' to the storage yard.

Our final port outside of La Paz was the Lobos anchorage about 8-10 miles from La Paz. The anchorage was fairly crowded when we arrived but we tucked ourselves in under sail beside an elegant 40 something foot Swan sailboat. When we came back from a hike, we found 11 boats at anchor, of which 4 were from our home port of Victoria.

Ladybug sails along the Baja.

The sail into La Paz was a dead beat to windward into a short chop. We made it into the channel in two long tacks, but gave up beating up the narrow channel due to traffic in both directions. We anchored off Marina de La Paz near a shallow sand bar that separates the main channel from the Mogote. We plan to be here for about a week.

Heading South

2011-02-09T07:12:00.000-08:00

From San Juanico, we sailed to the Coronados Islands, stopping for one night and hiking to the peak with Kurt off Raven. Once the wind filled in the sail was a delight, reminding me of why we started cruising in the first place. I was struck with how much more connected I feel here to the richness of our natural world than when I am living a 9-5 existence at home. We have traded the abstract complexity of our workaday lives back home for this more immediate and deeper experience. Anyway - enough philosophising...

Hammerhead shark head

Rani and Nancy (off Raven)

Kurt off Raven

On our hike up to the peak, Kurt talked of his sailing trip from Hawaii to San Fransisco, during which he and his girlfriend ended up in the Pacific Gyre (an area of calm water at the center of the Pacific high). Here they found all sorts of debris, although not the acres of plastic that now exist there. In addition to Japanese glass floats, they found the floating corpse of a giant red-coloured squid, longer than their 26 foot sailboat. Kurt told me that he later talked to an expert on these squids who told him that he had heard of only a few sightings in all the years he had been studying them.

Sun star

Anchorage on Isla Carmen

From Coronados, we parted ways with Raven and sailed for Isla Carmen where we anchored in a sheltered bay. Eager to stretch our legs, we found a lovely hike to a grassy plateau below which was the site of an abandoned village. The shell middens in this area were a couple of feet thick and extensive.

Grassy plateau on Isla Carmen

View towards Loreto from Isla Carmen

Trigger fish head

Cactus worship

Village shell midden

Sea arch on Isla Carmen

We are now in Puerto Escondido anchored off the Singlar marina. Ladybug has full water tanks and washed down decks, the laundry is done, and this blog updated, so its time to head south again towards La Paz.

Riding out a gale

2011-02-09T06:37:00.000-08:00

Sailors may seem overly preoccupied with weather from a landsman's perspective. Each day we wake up comparatively early to listen to one or more weather forecasts on our long range shortwave radio. When we meet another sailor, weather and sea conditions are almost always part of the conversation. The reason for this is that where we travel, our comfort and safety at sea, and even where we choose to anchor each night are determined to a large extent by the wind's direction and speed.

This time of year in the Sea of Cortez, it is common to have strong northerly winds reaching gale force and often lasting for several days. That means that it is very difficult to travel north and even traveling south can be dangerous or at least uncomfortable during these periods. These winds are caused by areas of very high pressure air north of us in the southern US and much lower pressure air south of us near the equator. The air flows south channeling through the Sea of Cortez until the pressure levels off to the north.

Rani relaxing in the balmy tropical breeze

During the northers, cruisers find an anchorage with some protection from the big swells and waves that build up after a day or so as well as some shelter from the wind. However it is hard to avoid the wind, which will somehow manage to bend its way around even the biggest mountain in its way. We anchored as close to the shore as we dared in a sandy cove with hills to the north. You want good 'holding' so that your anchor will dig in well and sand works well for this.

Before the gale we prepared the boat by removing extraneous items from the deck, tying off any lines that could flap around and keep us awake at night, and tying an extra line around the sail cover. We let out extra anchor chain and put on lengths of fire hose around our bridle (the line that ties the boat to the anchor chain) to reduce the chance of this chafing. We also turned on our mapping GPS, setting an anchor drag alarm. The GPS will detect when you have moved further than X feet (say 120) and will sound a beep to alert you. During the gale, we would get up about once every hour to check for chafing and ensure that the anchor bridle was properly positioned in the chocks. By zooming in on the GPS map, we could see our track as we swung back and forth on the anchor. Finally, we set a small sail called a riding sail from the stern of the boat. This supposedly helps reduce the amount of swinging you do around the anchor, but Ladybug has a very high bow and she still sails around her anchor vigorously.

The first day was exciting and we lost plenty of sleep in the night. The second day we got a bit stir crazy and desparately wanted to get off the boat. We chatted with Kurt and Nancy on the sailing boat Raven, anchored a few hundred feet downwind of us and they were feeling the same - you could here the frustration in their voices. By the third day we had settled into a routine, reading, baking fudge and bread, lazing in the cockpit (dressed in our winter clothes due to the icy winds), and watching movies on our netbook.

We also managed to get our water maker working, which was having problems due to small leaks on the system. The beast runs at 800 psi in order to extract fresh water from sea water through a membrane, so even a tiny leak will cause the whole thing to fail. Fortunately, we were able to tighten a few connections and make 6 gallons of pure drinking water.

First day ashore - We made this rock ladybug to place in the 'cruiser's shrine' - a tree on the beach where boaters have left memorabilia of their visits.

We were very glad when the winds died down enough on the third day for a quick paddle to shore. The following day we were able to go ashore together and think about heading south to our next anchorage.

Back on the water

2011-02-08T15:44:00.000-08:00

Rani was not feeling at all well. Neither of us had been on the water since last April and the seas were coming in nasty short 5 foot lumps, pushed by more than 20 knots of breeze from the north west. Ladybug broad reached across the Sea of Cortez, the windvane steering capably now that we had turned her bow well south of our original course for Santa Rosalia. It's funny how quickly our plans change when confronted by an uncooperative wind. We had both been so looking forward to visiting the nursing gray whales in San Ignacio, intending to leave Ladybug in a marina in Santa Rosalia. Now however, we were bound for a snug anchorage at Bahia San Basilio, much further south. Here, we hoped to wait out the much heavier winds forecast for two days later.

Ladybug in the slings ready to lift. Francisco is the yard manager (standing by Chris)

Ladybug ready to launch

Slings stuck in the mud under the keel - it took an hour to free her up.

A day earlier we had sailed out of Guaymas after a difficult launch. The launching channel at the marina seca in Guaymas is shallow and, unless the tide is high, when boats are lowered from the travel lift, the launching slings can become trapped under a boat's keel. It took more than an hour and much prodding with poles and hanging over the lifelines to free up the big canvas slings without damaging our new bottom paint job. Ladybug's keel settled into the viscous black mud and we tied her off around supper time to wait for an early morning tide.

Fishermen at sunset off Miramar, San Carlos area.

Before the sun rose the next day, we motored down the channel in the pink haze of pre-dawn. We had light winds most of that day but I was happy to be back on the water and we meandered the dozen or so miles to the Miramar anchorage near San Carlos. We were awakened the next morning by a heavy swell rolling into this anchorage, which made it impossible to sleep. By 11 am, the brisk north west wind that was now driving us toward the Baja had come up without any warning, and we quickly hoisted sail and got underway. The heavy wind caught us by surprise and Ladybug healed over so violently that our newly acquired handheld VHF flew across the cabin, it's volume knob breaking off in the process. We hurriedly put two reefs in the mainsail and later dropped the main altogether proceeding under reefed jib alone.

Patron saint of fishermen?

Rani's malaise was short lived as the Gravol took effect, and after a brief snooze, she was able to take her turn on watch. We sailed on through a moonless night toward a previously logged GPS waypoint that would hopefully keep us clear of the intervening dangers. Before we had GPS, I would not have attempted a night crossing like this with a predicted dawn arrival. Instead, steering only a compass course and estimating our progress via dead reckoning, I would most likely have slowed the boat down or steered further offshore to ensure we avoided the off-lying islands. As it was, even with GPS, our charts for this area were so inaccurate that it was prudent to ensure that we were at least two or three miles from the charted position of the off-lying islands.

San Juanico

Rancho Santa Ana welcome sign made of shells embedded in sandstone

We made landfall around dawn at San Basilio and anchored in the San Juanico anchorage after sailing about 100 miles in less than 20 hours. Despite getting little sleep on the crossing, we knew we had to make the most of our first day here because gales were forecast for the following three days that would probably keep us pinned down on board Ladybug. We inflated our double kayak and paddled over to a nearby beach from which we hiked all afternoon along the shore and over several bluffs to a rancho that lies in a valley a few kilometers away. We returned via a true high clearance road (Rani all but disappeared in the ruts!) and spent the evening preparing Ladybug for the predicted high winds. A 39 foot Westsail had anchored nearby while we were off hiking and shortly after we returned to Ladybug, Kurt and Nancy motored over to say hi. We discussed our preparations for the blow and agreed to monitor 18 on the VHF in case either boat needed help.

Return to Guyamas, Sonora, Mexico

2011-01-28T11:31:00.001-08:00

We finally left a cold and rainy Vancouver on January 16th for the warmth of Sonora, Mexico.

Weathered figure head found in Guaymas boatyard.

Our Sunday morning Delta flight to Phoenix had been cancelled but they re-booked us on a direct flight with US Airways. We arrived earlier than expected and the extra time allowed us to pick up our pre-ordered Raytheon depth sounder/knot meter and bottom paint from West Marine.

At the hotel desk, our Alpenglow replacement bulbs were waiting for us, thanks to Debi. We are truly thankful of the great service we received from this company. We had ordered the wrong sized bulbs while in Duncan. When we emailed the company, they offered to express ship the new bulbs to Phoenix, since we were about to leave the island.

Our sojourn in Phoenix was not all fun. Ironically, Chris came down with a nasty stomach bug on our first day there ( we never seem to have this problem in Mexico! ). Whether it was the under-cooked over-easy egg he ate at a local fast food place or contact with a contagious niece a few days earlier, we shall never know, but he was indisposed for the next couple of days. I drove around to buy a few provisions (mainly almonds, ziploc bags, toiletries) and Imodium for Chris!

On Tuesday, he was feeling well enough for a 2 hour drive to Sedona, an artsy little town known for it's healing hot spots near various vortices. We went there to hike in the Coconino National Forest, although Chris could have used some healing!Our first hike was a 4.5 mile loop starting at Cibola Pass via Jordan's Trail, Soldiers Pass and up to Brins Mesa, a perfect 3 hour trek with stunning views. The first portion was an easy walk through a cool forest of junipers and pine with some snow patches in shadowed areas. We passed a large sink hole, The Devil's Kitchen. As we climbed up, the views opened to vistas of the valley and the town of Sedona. On each side of the trail were manzanita bushes, yuccas and prickly pear cacti. We had a picnic lunch at the top of the grassy mesa, looking down into Mormon Canyon and towards our car parked at Thompson Creek.

Can you see the face in the rock?

View at our lunch spot

Since there were still a few hours of daylight left, we drove to a second trail at Doe Mountain. Along the narrow trail winding up the mountain we met a French couple who were also keen sailors and travelers, so we had a good chat before continuing to the plateau at the summit. The sunset views from the plateau were amazing, the red rocks ablaze all around the valley.

Looking east from the top of Doe Mountain near sunset.

On Wednesday, we took the light rail to Tempe, the Arizona Sate University town and walked along the restaurant lined streets, on the campus and beside a man-made lake for a pleasant afternoon.

Our TBC bus departed at 10pm, so we spent a few hours just catching up on emails at the hotel. We had an assortment of 7 bags, including an astonishingly heavy tote bag crammed with stuff that is hard to find in Mexico as well as two cans of copper bottom paint concealed in grocery bags. Unfortunately, we had to change buses at Nogales, the Mexican border town, hoofing our mountain of luggage through customs and onto the second bus. Customs was easy – we traipsed past the traffic light with our luggage and got the green light. I actually had to insist on stopping at immigration to get a 6 month visa while all the Mexicans waited patiently in the bus. The proceeding eight hour ride was a bit bumpy as the second bus was not exactly new, but we managed to sleep some hours.

Ladybug's dust coated deck.

When we treached Guaymas, it was exciting to finally board Ladybug. The thick layer of red dust on her decks was no surprise. Chris wasted no time in hosing her off while I inspected the interior. We had left all the bedding, settees and cushions covered in sheets but there was very little dust and grit. No cucarachas anywhere! All our provisions seemed to have survived the summer, other than the soya, left in a not very airtight jar ( crawling with teeny little insectos !). Our constantly running computer fan and good ventilation had been very effective.

Boatyard waterfront.

Fishing boat awaiting repair. There is a large commercial boatyard next door to our little cruiser's yard.

The boatyard was as busy as ever, ranging from the long-term guys re-building old wooden boats they probably wished they had never bought in the first place, sailors using their boats as condos in a warm place and people like us wanting to leave in a few weeks. We met Francisco and Juan, the friendly Mexican workers who had helped us with our hauling out last year. I also bumped into Barry, off S/V Nutshell, and he offered me a ride to pick up some groceries at Soriana in Guaymas. That meant we could eat something other than sandwiches and restaurant fare.

Chris removes the leaking stainless steel water tank.

Chris watches while Henrick welds a patch on the tank.

We had to adjust to climbing up and down a 12 foot ladder to enter or exit our home. The washroom/shower building is next to our boat, and the state of the facilities would never meet the standards back home. It's BYOTP&S ( bring your own toilet paper and soap )!

Life up a ladder.

Lady's washroom and public library.

Since our arrival, we have been busy making repairs to make the boat ready for our departure this weekend. Chris has installed the new depth sounder and zincs, rigged the sails, re-stuffed the stuffing box, checked the transmission oil and painted the bottom. We also took out our stainless steel water tank, which was leaking from one of the welds and, with the help of a Swedish sailor named Henrick, had it rewelded, patched and re-installed.

What have I done? Not a heck of a lot as most of the work involves special skills or muscle, sadly lacking. I have made several excursions with Kathy and Hal of S/V Airborne into town to shop for provisions and cooked a few curry dinners, including butter chicken which lasted 3 days! The temperature in the cabin usually starts off around 59F in the morning and goes up to around 70F in the afternoon. It is a lot warmer in the sun outside, of course.

Eric and a local crane operator pulling out a mast for repainting and re-rigging.

Internet reception is good on our boat and I actually attended a webinar on Schizophrenia and Psychoses organised by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain while sitting on our boat deck yesterday!

We love our evening strolls along a road that goes past the marina seca towards the naval base as there are lovely sea views towards Guaymas and the other side of the harbour is a wall of craggy mountains.

It's good to be back!

Back to Mexico

2011-01-12T18:22:00.000-08:00

Well it has been a long time since we updated this blog and my apologies for this. Rani had some issues with tendonitis that has prevented her from using the computer much and I have just been busy doing non-sailing related things.

Recorder concert at local school

This fall, I played recorder in a local quartet, worked at the university in Victoria as a research assistant, and taught a 3rd year computer science course. I had been warned by several friends that the teaching would be time consuming and boy were they right! When you teach a class for the first time you need to budget for at least 15-20 hours per week to prepare lectures and mark assignments. Some weeks it took closer to 30 hours! We also finished most of the inside renovations on our house and even managed to get married. A 'brief' selection of pictures from before, during, and after the wedding can be found here.

We also did quite a bit of hiking with the Cowichan Outdoors Group and this trip to Mexico will be in stark contrast to our recent recreation.

We fly out of Vancouver for Phoenix in a few days and will then take the bus down to Guaymas where Ladybug awaits us. The plans are modest this season and we will sail south through the islands in the Sea of Cortez to La Paz, across to Puerto Vallarta, possibly stopping at ports north of there en route, then return to Guaymas via La Paz and the islands in May. We are both really looking forward to some sunny warm weather - today we had a foot of snow and the power was out for 7 hours+!

Hardwood flooring and back to the job world

2010-08-08T09:12:00.000-07:00

My idyllic life as a house husband came to an end this week. For the past 2 months I have been renovating our house, painting and installing flooring, cleaning, and making lunches and suppers for Rani. The projects are not done, but it's time to earn, what cruisers Lin and Larry Pardey call 'Freedom Chips'. I am back at the CHISEL research lab at the University of Victoria working for the professor who supervised my Masters thesis a few years ago. I will also be teaching a third year computer science at the university on systems analysis, starting in September. Meanwhile, the renovations continue...

After the vinyl flooring was finished, we moved on to the living room and hallway, removing the old paneling in the living room (2 layers of it on one wall!).

Living room exposed drywall. The back of the paneling is quite a nice mahogany like ply.

The walls under the paneling were dry-walled, thankfully, so all I had to do was fill in some unfinished areas and all the nail holes from the paneling. Note the delightful russet coloured carpet and the back of the old fridge.

We painted the living room ceiling (it was stained brown from cigarette smoke etc), the walls (a llight grey green) and the hallway (a lighter shade of the kitchen yellow).

Hallway with new paint and old carpet.

We also painted the living room floors after soaking various spots along the walls with vinegar and hydrogen peroxide to remove cat odours.

Painted subfloor - paint was recycled from an enviro-depot. Walls are painted a light grey green.

I could not find a second hand manual hardwood nailer locally at a decent price and renting an air powered nailer would cost $80 per day, but I managed to find one through craigslist in Winnipeg and the owner posted it to us for a total cost of $70, including a couple of boxes of nails.

The nailer is made in Quebec and is designed for the DIY crowd

because you can strike it multiple times to set each nail.

The nailer did not come with a mallet, so I taped discs of vinyl flooring to my 2.5 lb pocket sledge hammer and another disc on the nailer face to cushion the blow. It takes me 3 or 4 blows to set a nail and I have managed to jam the thing twice so far, requiring a disassemble to free it up. However it works very well, driving heavy 2 inch nails into the tongue of each board at 45 degrees. The alternative, and what you do when you near a wall is to pre-drill for 2" finishing nails and nail each one by hand, setting the nail in with first the side of a nail set and then its point.

Chris using the nailer.

Some of the hardest bits are around doorways and entrances. There are 9 of these in the hallway and living room! 3 Closets, 3 bedrooms, a bathroom, and the kitchen and dining room entrances. Each requires undercutting trim so that the flooring will slide under it as well as cutting complex threshold pieces. I picked up a nice old Rockwell table saw to do these longer beveled cuts.

Beveled piece bridging kitchen to hallway. The nails holes will be filled with

putty and the raw wood varnished to match.

The flooring job should be finished by the time Rani flies to th UK to visit he parents and relatives in a couple of weeks.

Installing vinyl roll flooring in a moderately complex room

2010-07-20T23:01:00.000-07:00

The new vinyl flooring (slate tile look) is finally complete. It took about a week longer than I had originally thought it would (almost like a software development project!)

For those of you who might be thinking of replacing your flooring in the kitchen or perhaps a laundry area, here is what we went through to DIY this:

We started by removing the old carpet, which was well glued down. Ironically, our carpet installer remembered installing this carpet in the kitchen a few years back. He did a very thorough job of it, using plenty of glue.

This is the old flooring - carpet with 1960's era tiles.

Next we peeled off the tiles. Opinions vary on this and it appears that most professionals will opt to level the existing tiles in place if they are pretty solid. This is partly a cost thing and partly because the old tiles and adhesive may contain asbestos, which requires special removal gear and permits. I am pretty sure our tiles do contain asbestos, so I was careful not to break them where possible. Here is a website that will help you identify if your tiles contain asbestos (isn't the Internet great!: http://www.inspectapedia.com/sickhouse/asbestoslookB.htm)

I used Rani's iron to get each tile nice and warm to melt the adhesive enough to lift. It takes about 2 minutes per 1 ft square tile - 16 seconds at 6 different iron positions. The iron is at a cotton setting and I put a piece of newspaper between it and the tile to avoid marring the base of the iron or melting the tile. Fumes weren't an issue unless I got bored and let the iron sit for too long in one spot.

Iron set on Cotton. Note scraper used to get things started. The grey area has already been leveled (I did the tile lifting in stages and leveling the sticky black areas allowed me to move around the kitchen without getting stuck in the tarpit.

Half way through the tile removal and leveling process.

The 'cutback adhesive' is a black gooey tar compound, which may also have asbestos fibers in it. The reason I did not worry too much about this is that these fibers are pretty well trapped and unlikely to get airborne. This adhesive must be either removed (tricky and potentially messy) or covered completely to prevent any bleed-through into the vinyl flooring that will sit on top. To do this and to level the floor I used Planipatch with Planipatch Plus additive. The latter is used in place of water and apparently makes the whole thing more flexible and also a better sealer. It is certainly an expensive gallon of liquid - about $30 and appears to be a dilute white glue. I used close to a gallon and about 10 lbs of the patching compound to level the floor. It is applied thin in a slurry - much thinner than plaster and then spread with a trowel. Then you sand it (not too bad as it does not kick up a lot of dust) and then fill in the bits you missed to make the floor level. I did this a few times in selected areas where the plywood sheets did not quite meet evenly or there were defects in the wood.

When the floor is level and all baseboards and appliances removed, it is time to measure the room. Pros no doubt do this on the fly and dispense with a template, but I chose to make a giant paper template out of butcher paper taped together because the room is quite complex with two closets, a few doorways, and a jutting counter. The triangles in the picture are where the template is stuck down to the floor to prevent shifting.

Templating the first half of the room.

The room is just over 12 feet across and about 21 feet long, so to make things simpler, I decided to lay two pieces about 11 feet by 12.5 feet each and join them down the middle with a seam. This is tricky stuff to get just right, so I was quite good at procrastinating over the 2 or 3 days before I cut into the vinyl!

Vinyl roll laid out to template and mark on our living room carpet.

For marking and cutting, you need to lay out the vinyl on a large flat surface. Some people use their driveways but ours is quite wonky, so I used the living room floor. Ideally we would have taken up the carpet and done this on the plywood, but I was not ready to do this yet, so I very carefully traced the template outline on the vinyl leaving lots of allowance for trimming later. It turned out that I should have trusted the template because in almost all cases I ended up trimming back to the template lines and this trimming added hours to the job.

Here us the first half dry fitted. There is a closet around the right corner and one on the near right.

Try to do this with a real slate or ceramic tile!

The second piece was rough cut based on tape measurements and then laid over the first piece to cut the seam along a shared 'grout' line. The finished seam is shown below.

Seam is along the horizontal line nearest the top of the picture.

I then templated the second half by lining up the butcher paper with the first half and covering the rest of the room. I also allowed some tolerance here and did much trimming back to make the vinyl fit around counters and corners.

Ready to glue - the seam runs right down the middle of the room, so I was very careful when I cut and aligned it!

The next step was to apply the adhesive. This is done in two goes for each half, rolling back the bit to be glued and then rolling it out over the glue using a rolling pin and hands to work out bubbles and spread the glue.

Installing adhesive. This tub cost about $40 or $50 dollars - yikes! The tile to the left is the 2nd piece that has been dry fitted.

And voila - here is the finished result:

Rani enjoying our 'new' kitchen.

View into the dining area. The air conditioner still has to go - a project for next month.

10 things to know before sailing to Mexico from Canada and/or the Pacific Northwest

2010-07-06T10:20:00.000-07:00

We just visited a couple who are leaving from Comox on a Coast 34 to sail to Mexico. Before the visit, I tried to think of a short list of things I wished we had known before we sailed. Here it is, admittedly incomplete and uneven in importance :)

1. Checking in to the US. The coast is divided into different jurisdictional areas. If from Canada, you must check in to US customs and immigration (obviously), but you also need to phone in to each new area as you proceed down the coast. You can get a list of phone numbers and names for each area to call when you first check in. Carrying a cell phone is useful because otherwise you have to land and find a land line to call from.

2. Liability insurance is required in Mexico by marinas and storage yards. It is quite inexpensive and we have been told you only need the minimum (costs about $200) because the Mexican legal system is not supportive of huge law suits. You can buy liability insurance beforehand via phone or online. http://www.bajabound.com/boat/faq.php

3. When you sign in to Mexico and get a temporary import permit (TIP) you will need your engine serial numbers. You can also buy a TIP online, we have heard.

4. Almost all the paper and electronic charts are very inaccurate in Mexico - especially in the Sea of Cortez and south. They are off by miles and not consistent in their inaccuracy. Some newer GPSs allow you to correct for this and there are some electronic charts that have been corrected, but do not rely on your GPS position corresponding with the chart without verifying this. The detailed chart for Ensenada in the chart book we used was off by 2 miles!

5. You will need to clean your hull much more often in the warm, rich waters, particularly near river mouths. You can hire local divers who use compressors at marinas for about 1 US dollar per foot of boat length (or water line length in some cases). If you do it yourself, plan on becoming very good at holding your breath or use compressed air.

6. In some places small jelly fish are an issue while snorkeling. Wearing leggings and long sleeve shirts helps or you can use a full wet suit or lycra jelly fish suit.

7. Dental work and medical work is cheap and of decent quality. We had our teeth cleaned for $35 by a dentist who did a thorough job. We talked to cruisers who had mole removal and other minor operations for far less than they would cost up north. Quality of care varies so ask local cruisers for advice.

8. A reliable autopilot with back up or in addition to a wind vane make the long downwind sail less stressful. We were always worried that our little wheel pilot would fail.

9. There is an excellent newer guide to cruising the Sea of Cortez available from a lovely cruising couple who publish it themselves in Washington state: See http://www.exploringcortez.com/ It is hard to buy in Canada, but can be picked up along the way (Downwind Marine in San Diego has them) or you can order it online. It is far superior to the other guides we bought that are more general (Raines, Charlies Charts).

10. There are a few food/drink things that are hard to get or very expensive in Mexico: Nuts, good chocolate (Trader Joes is a good place to stock up in California), good inexpensive wines (buy in California), black tea (the Mexicans seem to mainly drink herbal teas and coffee), sharp cheeses (most Mexican cheeses are softer and have a milder flavour).