Heading South

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

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

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

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

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

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

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://inspectapedia.com/hazmat/Asbestos_Floor_Tile_ID.php)

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

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).