We’re back in La Paz, the city where we bought Rumiko. It's been good visiting with old friends and making some new ones here at the Don Juan marina. In particular we've enjoyed our time with Bill from Rocky and Brew and Michael and Liz (and their friends) from Saoirse.
As soon as we arrived in La Paz Dan went to Santa Rosalia to fetch our truck. He brought back the truck and a 23-year-old hitchhiker, Cam, who had made his way to Santa Rosalia from Vancouver. Dan enjoyed Cam's company on the drive and found Cam to be a very thoughtful young man, so when he heard that Cam was planning on catching a ferry from La Paz to the mainland Dan convinced him to try to find a ride across on a sailboat instead. After several days of announcing his desire for a ride over the VHF "Cruisers' Net," Cam managed to find a ride with none-other-than our pals, the good-hearted folks from Isis. Burke, Kacey and Quinn departed for Puerto Vallarta a few days ago with Cam (who has never sailed before) as crew. Here's hoping they had a fantastic voyage. We look forward to hearing about it when we meet up with Isis in a few weeks, and look forward to seeing Cam the next time we're in Ontario visiting Lisa's folks (Cam's permanent home is in Aurora, Ontario, less than half an hour from where Lisa's parents live).
We had a great couple of weeks sailing from Guaymas down to La Paz. We especially enjoyed the snorkeling at San Juanico and South Isla Monserrate. In both cases, the clarity of the water allowed us to see the incredible diversity of fish and other aquatic organisms (e.g., moray eels, urchins, starfish) that inhabit those waters. We also did a great hike on Monserrate where we saw several hundreds of large spiders -that is not an exaggeration- on our 7-hour hike. It would appear that the spiders on that island have very few, if any, predators. Monserrate is an extremely fascinating island - one that we will undoubtedly spend more time exploring when we get back to the Sea of Cortez.
We spent a number of glorious nights out on the sea, making our way to the next anchorage. We've really grown to love night sailing, and have seen some wonderful sunsets, moonrises and sunrises.
We also experienced two nights of extremely challenging sailing conditions. On one occasion we had strong winds with big waves hitting our broadsides - from within the boat it sounded like something really hard, such as a piece of wood, was crashing into us. Yes, it was a bit unnerving. Neither one of us slept much that night. On a different night sail we both had a bad stomach bug. Fortunately, Dan had just gotten our Monitor wind vane (an apparatus that enables the boat to hold a steady course) working, so the wind vane was able to steer the boat while the two of us were, ahem, otherwise occupied.
We've been in La Paz for the past week doing some boat maintenance and repairs to prepare the boat for our biggest crossing to date. We had a mainsail batten pocket re-sewn by Snug Harbor Sails, and we removed all of the windows (a.k.a. port lights) and recaulked them and a few other holes to try and reduce the small leaks that occur when we take on big waves.
We'll be out of touch for a few weeks, but we will do a blog posting from Zihuat about our big crossing and mainland adventures. Lisa has never been to mainland Mexico or a tropical environment, so she's especially excited about this leg of the journey.
As soon as we arrived in La Paz Dan went to Santa Rosalia to fetch our truck. He brought back the truck and a 23-year-old hitchhiker, Cam, who had made his way to Santa Rosalia from Vancouver. Dan enjoyed Cam's company on the drive and found Cam to be a very thoughtful young man, so when he heard that Cam was planning on catching a ferry from La Paz to the mainland Dan convinced him to try to find a ride across on a sailboat instead. After several days of announcing his desire for a ride over the VHF "Cruisers' Net," Cam managed to find a ride with none-other-than our pals, the good-hearted folks from Isis. Burke, Kacey and Quinn departed for Puerto Vallarta a few days ago with Cam (who has never sailed before) as crew. Here's hoping they had a fantastic voyage. We look forward to hearing about it when we meet up with Isis in a few weeks, and look forward to seeing Cam the next time we're in Ontario visiting Lisa's folks (Cam's permanent home is in Aurora, Ontario, less than half an hour from where Lisa's parents live).
We had a great couple of weeks sailing from Guaymas down to La Paz. We especially enjoyed the snorkeling at San Juanico and South Isla Monserrate. In both cases, the clarity of the water allowed us to see the incredible diversity of fish and other aquatic organisms (e.g., moray eels, urchins, starfish) that inhabit those waters. We also did a great hike on Monserrate where we saw several hundreds of large spiders -that is not an exaggeration- on our 7-hour hike. It would appear that the spiders on that island have very few, if any, predators. Monserrate is an extremely fascinating island - one that we will undoubtedly spend more time exploring when we get back to the Sea of Cortez.
We spent a number of glorious nights out on the sea, making our way to the next anchorage. We've really grown to love night sailing, and have seen some wonderful sunsets, moonrises and sunrises.
We also experienced two nights of extremely challenging sailing conditions. On one occasion we had strong winds with big waves hitting our broadsides - from within the boat it sounded like something really hard, such as a piece of wood, was crashing into us. Yes, it was a bit unnerving. Neither one of us slept much that night. On a different night sail we both had a bad stomach bug. Fortunately, Dan had just gotten our Monitor wind vane (an apparatus that enables the boat to hold a steady course) working, so the wind vane was able to steer the boat while the two of us were, ahem, otherwise occupied.We've been in La Paz for the past week doing some boat maintenance and repairs to prepare the boat for our biggest crossing to date. We had a mainsail batten pocket re-sewn by Snug Harbor Sails, and we removed all of the windows (a.k.a. port lights) and recaulked them and a few other holes to try and reduce the small leaks that occur when we take on big waves.
Today we provisioned and cleaned the boat, and tomorrow, weather permitting, we will start sailing from La Paz to the mainland. Depending on the winds, we’ll be out of sight of land for anywhere from four days to more than a week. We’re hoping to make landfall south of Cabo Corrientes, a notoriously challenging point of land south of Puerto Vallarta where the winds and currents can do funky things. We’d like to miss that area.
We'll be out of touch for a few weeks, but we will do a blog posting from Zihuat about our big crossing and mainland adventures. Lisa has never been to mainland Mexico or a tropical environment, so she's especially excited about this leg of the journey.
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