Log of s/v Del Viento

Wild, Crazy Yeast By Michael

2012-02-27T22:48:00.000-07:00

This is Eleanor emerging from the best and
busiest ice cream place in La Paz, Neveria
Fuente. Surprising to me and the folks who
work there, she likes the flavor Tequila
Almond. I guess the apple doesn't fall
so far from the tree.

It was three weeks ago that I wrote about our bread starter gift from La Loupiote and our wonderings about whether it would result in sourdough bread. (You’ll recall that La Loupiote sailed away, leaving our question unanswered.) Well, we got an email from Deb.

We first met Deb online when she won the book giveaway during our Great Pre-Departure Stuff Purge. We caught up with Deb months later as we passed through her hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. I knew Deb was a former sailing instructor, but I now know she is also a former chef who has been, “probing the depths of sourdough for the past year or so.”

Deb wrote: “What you have is sourdough starter. Sourdough does not necessarily mean dough that tastes sour, although I sure like it when it does. It just means using wild yeast instead of commercial. The sour flavor can come from a variety of things--type of flour, type of water--but mostly comes from a long proofing time.”

We baked our first batch shortly after it rose. We gathered around two hot loaves, a knife, and a crock of butter and devoured them both in one sitting, like hungry savages. It was fantastic.Yet neither loaf tasted sour, but like really good French bread.

Moonrise at anchor off La Paz.

For the second batch, Windy allowed the dough to rise, then to sit overnight in the fridge, and then to rise again in the oven before finally baking it. What popped out of our Force 10 that morning was among the best sourdough bread I have ever enjoyed in my life. It was perfectly tangy. It was soft but with a bit of a chew. The crust crackled and crunched and was a bit tough. The entire boat smelled divine. (Of course, what makes this all the more enjoyable is the climate. We’ve been rolling out of bed when it is still 55 degrees down below--in Mexico that is technically freezing, by the way--so warm bread out of the oven appeals in a way it would not have back in Puerto Vallarta during the summer.)

In the same email, Deb wrote: “There are so many names for sourdough starter--chef, biga, poolish, mother--depending on the percentages and your background--but any starter that's 20 years old is nothing but wild, crazy yeast…I'm sure it's been colonized by foreign-language-speaking yeasties from all over the world.”

I’m sure it has been too. Just today, I heard again from the French crew of La Loupiote. They are back online after running into our friends Kyra and Rick aboard the Canadian-flagged Nyon a few hundred miles south, anchored off Mexico’s Isla Isabel. The Nyon crew told La Loupiote about our sourdough dilemma and that we needed help.

So where next? We’re spreading the love. We’ve already decided to send some of this 20-year-old bread starter across the Pacific (once again, I’m sure) with our friends aboard Wondertime—because you can’t keep a good bread down—err, you can keep it down—pardon that pun.

--MR

Behold!

Our friend Nancy (a Magotian--that is she lives on the La Paz Magote)
took the four of us south on a full-day road trip in her Honda CRV. It
was a nice respite from the intense month of boat work that has
nearly consumed February (more in a later post).

Fat Tuesday By Michael

2012-02-22T20:45:00.000-07:00

The iconic carnaval mask.

The city of La Paz, Mexico exploded these past several days with a barrage of color and cacophony of sound. Carnaval was here.

While there are larger carnaval celebrations in Mexico (Mazatlan is probably the biggest), the celebration we enjoyed in La Paz retains a home town feel where folks watching the parade call out to friends on the floats.

Festivities began in the afternoon, when the air filled with the smells of deep-fried churros, steamed corn, and bacon-wrapped hot dogs. About 5:00 p.m., the parade began its slow craw down the seaside drag, closed to traffic until the morning. The beach and anchorage abutting this route provided a respite from the hustle, bustle, light, and color.

The post-parade crowd grew eash night. By the time the headliner took the main stage late Tuesday, the crush of people was difficult to sqeeze through. Yet children still darted underfoot, undeterred in their bid to reach the cotton candy vendors. An invisible hand would seem to part the crowd for strollers.

On the carnaval perimeters, thousands of lights fixed to amusement park rides flashed and careened. Many of the rides were tame enough to delight little ones and others were raucous and perilous enough to entice the teens. Booths of games of skill and chance were everywhere, sucking up pesos at a furious pace.

Following is a video of Eleanor enjoying one of the not-so-tame carnaval activities. The background audio is a pretty mild representation of the boisterous soundtrack of carnaval:

--MR

There was a heavy nautical theme; not sure whether this is this year's theme
or the same every year.

The floats were heavy on paper mache and kids in costume.

The girls and I taking it in.

If these capes wind up in
the tires...

Lots of recycled materials
used on the floats too. Here
note the LPs, CDs, and bottoms
of green plastic bottles--among
other things.

I thought, "Pretty girl in an outrageous costume,"
but then he climbed back on the transvestite float.
There were several environmental-, human rights-,
and sexual freedom-themed floats.

Another reminder that the Baja peninnsula is culturally more similar to
California than to mainland Mexico. Even the language is different.
When your car breaks in Baja, you go to the autopartes store. When
it breaks in mainland Mexico, you go to a refaccionaria.

This was the main stage featuring the big acts. There were at least three
additional stages, all competing to see which could be loudest.

Windy, the girls, and our friends Tim and Nancy waiting out a 15-minute
lull in the parade, ostensibly due to a vehicle breakdown.

Starting The Staff Of Life By Michael

2012-02-07T10:09:00.000-07:00

Our new mystery starter.

Something cool happened to us the other night. Our friends aboard La Loupiote gave us a special parting gift: a bread starter that’s been around the world. It is nasty looking thing, just as a good bread starter should be. We haven’t used it yet, and there is a burning question about whether it is a sourdough starter.

Now, this is not a trifle concern. We have not eaten any sourdough bread since leaving the U.S.—six-and-a-half months ago. This despite visiting a few bakeries run by expats here in Mexico and buying their tasty looking, overpriced loaves stuck with little hand-printed, chichi sourdough labels. Lesson: A sourdough label does not a sourdough bread make. And shame on us, because:

“I don’t smell any sourdough, do you?”

“Nope.”

And we buy it anyway, every time, hoping against hope that maybe the tangy, distinctive, glorious, characteristic scent promised by the label, is simply trapped beneath that beautiful, crackled crust.

Like the crew of Del Viento,
the crew of La Loupiote is a
family of four with two girls.
Unlike us, the La Loupiote
parents are in excellent shape,
experts in circus technique,
and have astounded audiences
on their way around the world,
performing more than 400 shows
to date. This is them, twisted up
in silk drapes and high up in their
rigging, performing their Cirque
du Soleil-like show at sunset.
It was beautiful and amazing.

“Nope, I don’t taste any sourdough.”

“Me neither.”

Hanging off La Loupiote’s transom in our dinghy, we listened to Franck and Delphine tell us the story of this starter, of how a young European bread maker spotted the boat Bread, of how she patiently tutored the German owner in the fine art of bread making after learning Bread was a misnomer, that the German couldn’t bake a loaf to save his life. About how the German sailor nurtured and propagated the starter she left him, about how he then shared that starter with others on his trip around the world, 20 years ago. About how those sailors followed suit. About how the La Loupiote crew tried recently to share this same starter with a fellow Frenchman in Alaska, only to learn he already used the same starter in his galley. About how this sourdough starter…

That’s where Windy and I can’t reconcile: she never heard the word sourdough, I did. You see, it was dark. We were in our dinghy filled with groceries. We were hanging off the transom of La Loupiote, clutching our gift, listening to the story. The girls were boisterous (yeah, that’s the word), it was hard to hear. And Franck and Delphine are French…their English is very good, but not perfect, and their accents strong.

We don’t know whether our well-travelled starter will yield sourdough bread or just really good French bread. La Loupiote sailed away early the next morning, up into the sea, out of VHF range and temporarily without access to email. But we will know soon and learning the answer promises to taste very good indeed.

--MR

We enjoy the Ballandra anchorage, especially when we have it all to ourselves.

Forget Mitt & Barack By Michael

2012-02-06T12:02:00.000-07:00

I'm halfway through this book.
The author was Mexico's foreign
minister in the Fox administration
and is a visiting professor at Princeton.
The book sheds light on many of
the seeming paradoxes of Mexican
culture and examines where this
country may be headed in the next
50 years. So far, it is fascinating.

Mexican presidential politics are getting exciting. As of yesterday, all three major parties have selected their candidate. One way or another, the outcome of the July presidential election will be extraordinary.

A WOMAN AT THE HELM: Josefina Vazquez Mota could be the first female leader of Mexico. While female leadership is relatively common throughout Latin America (Evita! is only one example), Mexico is a glaring exception. What are her odds? Vazquez Mota is a member of the PAN party. This is the party of the current administration (President Calderon) and the party of his predecessor, President Fox. Fox is credited with returning Mexico to democracy 12 years ago when his election ended the rule of the PRI party, which had been in power for 71 years and was widely acknowledged as corrupt, nearly a dictatorship. Fox was a pro-business candidate who instituted free market reforms and is credited with eliminating much corruption. But...while the Mexican economy has been awesome over the past decade, the populace is fatigued by the war on drugs that has hurt tourism, reduced foreign investment, and resulted in so much violence.

A RETURN TO DARKNESS?: As I wrote above, the PRI party has been out of power for 12 years, but otherwise ruled the country since 1929. That tenure was a period defined by corruption, no doubt about it. The PRI candidate for this election is Enrique Pena Nieto. He is handsome, charismatic governor of the state of Mexico and married to an ultra-popular, glamorous Mexican soap opera star. Will his election undo many of the reforms and much of the clean-up that's happened over the past 12 years? Or does Pena Nieto represent a new PRI platform?

A NEW SOCIALISM: The PRD party advances a platform way to the left of what we are used to in the U.S. Their candidate for this election is Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, one of the most recognizable politicians in Mexico and the same guy they ran during the last election. He came in second last time and refused to accept the results, attempting to rally a populist revolution in the streets to have them overturned. While his actions were largely criticized for their destabilizing effect, he is credited with improving the Federal District of Mexico during his tenure as mayor of Mexico City.

I see the PRI and PRD parties as polar opposites, at the political extremes, with the PAN party platform somewhere in the middle. But regardless of who wins, I think moderation will prevail. For the first time in history, no one party has a stranglehold on the country. All three parties are strongly represented in local and state politics and in the national congress. Like in the U.S., Mexico's executive branch may set the tone, but doesn't rule absolutely.

So where do things stand? The PRI candidate, Enrique Pena Nieto, is leading in the polls by a huge margin, PAN's Josefina Vazquez Mota is second, and the PRD's Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is a distant third.

July will be here soon and I'm excited to see what happens.

--MR

Josefina Vazquez Mota celebrating her victory yesterday.

Sea of Cortez beaches are almost all very shallow, which means that
the girls can wade out for hundreds of yards sometimes, and the
water is delightfully clear. None of this is bound to change,
regardless of the election outcome.

What Does It Cost To Go Cruising? By Michael

2012-02-02T10:07:00.000-07:00

Windy at the helm steering us downwind
down the channel into La Paz. On this point
of sail, we would benefit from an extra
panel in our genoa.

We’re still working on our own answer to that question. I finished assembling the data and just updated The Cost page at the top of this blog, through December. Our monthly expenses still far exceed what is sustainable, yet they are in line with our expectations of now. Looking forward, I think 2012 will be less expensive than 2011, but costlier than normal for a couple reasons. First, we plan to spend a chunk of 2012 in the U.S. and Canada, and the higher cost of living (compared to Mexico) will affect us. Second, we anticipate two big expenses during the year.

The first big expense has to do with sails. Our 33-year-old mainsail is stretched and worn, with a belly like Santa Claus. And no matter how I trim this sail, I can’t seem to flatten the thing. I cinch down the outhaul, I make sure she’s sheeted tightly, I bear down on the halyard winch until the luff is stretched to the breaking point, and I still have a Santa sail.

Now, I’m not a very good sailor, but I’m blaming our tired mainsail for our inability to point. Returning from the islands last week, we played around on a close reach for several hours, tacking back and forth upwind into a stiff breeze. What I learned is that, try as I might, we have a no-go zone that spans 135 degrees. This is going to kill us trying to bash north against the prevailing winds late spring (headed up to British Columbia, not via Hawaii). So, sail work is in order, and it may not be cheap. I’m going to talk to the loft here in La Paz and see what they can do. And that is not the end of our sail problems: when the sun is on the other side of our genoa, I see thousands of points of light through the seams. Furthermore, our genoa is cut about 36 inches too short. Standing on deck, I can hardly reach the foot (the furling drum is already at stanchion level). The previous owner reported having it cut because of some deterioration, so if we learn the sail is worth saving, I may have a panel added. More money…

Tie up two big tugs next to
each other and this is
bound to happen.

Second, the dinghy situation is going to change, somehow. I wrote here about whether we should go with a life raft or a life boat. Today we have a soft-bottom dinghy and a Plastimo Offshore life raft with an inspection that expired 3 years ago. We are considering replacing both in San Diego with a Portland Pudgy. The idea is that the Pudgy would serve as both a dinghy and a life raft. We’ll see. Otherwise, if we stay with the dinghy + life raft model we have now, we will probably have our life raft inspected and may replace our dinghy with a ridged-bottom inflatable. More money regardless…and on my wish list is a Torqeedo electric outboard that uses no gasoline…

Today, the cost basis of our boat (the purchase price plus the money we spent on it) is just about $90K. We will likely spend about $10K more on the refit.

--MR

Just a week ago, I was in contact with the Portland Pudgy folks in Maine,
trying to locate an owner in San Diego whom we could contact and
arrange a sea trial. Then yesterday, here in La Paz, we ran into a couple
cruising on a 72-foot powerboat who let us try out theirs. We found
it felt much bigger than we anticipated. This may indeed be our future,
but still lots to consider, including cost.

Island Time By Michael

2012-01-29T09:22:00.000-07:00

Gliding towards Del Viento at anchor. We bought this
kayak used from Maluhia in Puerto Vallarta. Our time
out at the islands confirmed that it was a good purchase;
we're looking now for a second one.

Windy's mom flew down to La Paz and spent a couple weeks with us. We spent most of her visit 20 miles away from La Paz, at the uninhabited playground that is Isla Espiritu Santo. We didn't even scratch the surface in terms of all there is to explore.

The girls especially enjoyed their time with Grandma. In fact, I think her visit will be more memorable for them than all of the natural beauty we were immersed in.

The weather was perfect the first few days, but then turned windy. Fortunately, we were in a protected anchorage until the last night, where Grandma Julie took her turn at anchor watch, bracing herself against the howling, chilly winds while we pitched like mad into breaking swells. It was a sleepless night, but afterward we returned to La Paz and finished up her visit in slip 207 at Marina Palmira, where we all slept soundly.

--MR

Grandma Julie and the girls eating breakfast in the cockpit at anchor
in La Paz. Specifically, they're eating toasted bagels and fresh
pineapple. We splurged and bought a toaster in La Paz. When I
say splurge, I'm not talking about the cost of the toaster, I'm
talking about the number of amps is sucks from the batteries
when we use it--that is hard to swallow, but toast is nice.

I took about 100 examples of this picture. I naively
figured I could sell it to a sailing magazine
as their cover shot. I had pretty much
already spent the large check I was
sure to receive, when I reviewed the
guidelines on the Cruising World website,
"Avoid shadows, large, dark areas "

Eleanor with about the 239,412th hermit crab she's found since we arrived in Mexico.

Grandma Julie's visit was like Christmas all over again. She brought gifts from
herself, other relatives, and some D.C. friends. She also brought our mail,
some Trader Joe's goodies, and stuff we needed from West Marine.

Grandma Julie and Frances headed to shore.

Having lived aboard in her 20s, Grandma Julie felt comfortable on Del Viento
and understands our lifestyle.

Windy, Frances, Eleanor, and Grandma Julie watch another amazing sunset.

The Land Before Time By Michael

2012-01-27T11:14:00.000-07:00

Eleanor with her lizard friend. This little guy approached
the girls when we landed and he looked a little peaked.
Eleanor fed him water, dried cranberries, and banana
and he perked up and got greener. We had to shoo
him away when it was time to leave.

At the start of the year, we sailed to this place teeming with birds, mostly blue-footed boobies and frigates. This place is a rugged, nearly deserted island about 25 miles off the Pacific coast of mainland Mexico. This place is a protected national park where Mexican biologists and their grad students camp for months at a time to study the birds. This place is host to migrant Mexican fishing families who arrive by panga to live part-time in the beach-front encampment owned by their co-op. This place is known by cruisers to have a poor, rock-strewn anchorage with little protection from wind in any direction, and where boats are wrecked, but a place that must be visited regardless. This place is Isla Isabel.

Our friends aboard Wondertime used the apt description of Isla Isabel as “the Mexican Galapagos.” Iguanas approached us out of seeming curiosity. Booby couples whistled and honked at us from their nests at our feet, warning us not to step too close to their eggs on the ground. Frigate birds peered down at us from branches a couple feet above our heads, males inflating their brilliant red throat sacks in their bids to court females, undeterred by our wandering and starring.

Isla Isabel is what remains of a volcano. The island’s geography seems young, her features sharp and prehistoric, not smoothed out and tamed by the dulling forces of wind and sea. Rugged, magnificent spires mark the primary anchorage off the eastern shore and underwater pinnacles make the southern anchorage unsafe for more than one vessel at a time.

This guy was all alone, probably because his
feet weren't blue enough. Note the tag on his
leg. This was put there by the biologists who
camp on the island and study the birds.

As the biologists on the island maintain bird blinds on the eastern shore, dinghy landings are encouraged only on the southern beach where the fishing encampment is located. And from this beach are two trailheads, each promising a unique view of this natural wonderland. From behind the encampment, we hiked upward to the low rim of the volcano before descending into a caldera densely covered in low-canopied trees. Here the Magnificent Frigatebird (Fregata magnificens) nests on top of the low canopy, just 8-10 feet off the ground, and generally in clusters of nests that crowd the small trees (the colony here is the largest in Mexico, 35,000 to 53,000 birds). During our visit, fluffy, white-feathered chicks poked over the edge of their nests, watching us pass, in stark contrast to their coal-colored parents.

Anytime we were out from under the dense canopy, we watched a sky filled with soaring frigates. It is a sight to see, hundreds of birds moving through the air in different directions, hardly a bird flapping its wings, all riding invisible currents on their majestic, 7-foot wingspans.

Up over the other rim and across a field of tall grasses is the shore and thousands of blue-footed boobies, the frigate’s inelegant, pudgy polar opposite. Curiously, these birds nest on land--and not under the protection of some scrub brush or on the side of a rocky cliff, just on land. Ironically, they don't move especially well over land, just standing or walk in an ungainly fashion, sort of resembling a diver walking with fins on. But they are swift, strong fliers and good fishermen. The boobies pair up monogamously, male and female, to build, maintain, and defend their nests.

Three of the yong scientists we met who were
a few weeks into a three month stay, studying
the booby population.

The boobies' eyes are non-blinking and expressionless, their feet range from a brilliant pastel blue to a pale green. In the case of the male, their feet color changes with their diet, over short periods of time. The females observe this and pick their mates accordingly. Additionally, mothers check out the foot color of their chicks to determine to which she administers food.

A steeper hike from the beach leads through an area where hundreds of iguanas, in all sizes, wander under foot. From there it is up the rugged slope of the southern rock bluff where a stunning view of the bay and much of the island awaits.

Here is the view from that part of the island, filmed by the crew of Wondertime:

--MR

We happened upon this Magnificent Frigatebird in a dire state. He had dropped
down beneath the dense canopy. With his seven foot wingspan, it was impossible
for him to get back up, though the dense foliage. We watched him struggle for a
bit before Windy and Eleanor tag teamed to shoo him through a
gap in the canopy. They were successful, but he seemed pretty tired
or wounded from his ordeal and we left him wondering if he would make it.
I later read that falling beneath the canopy was a death sentence for these
guys and one of the leading causes of mortality.

This is a couple making their nest on the ground.

Eleanor on the craggy coast of Isla Isabel.

The Chacala Secret... By Michael

2012-01-20T09:34:00.000-07:00

The beach was packed to the gills with Mexicans on holiday. The same beach will likely be
much less crowded when you arrive. This picture was taken during the Christmas break.
We hear that the only time of year Chacala is more crowded is during Easter/Santa Semana.

Chacala is a gem, a tiny, picturesque cove on the west coast of mainland Mexico, between Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta. This anchorage is described in every guidebook I’ve seen for this coast, yet none mention its best feature: the hike to the rim of the extinct volcano.

Chacala changed since I was last here in 1997. Where there was once only a spattering of modest homes and tiny businesses, and just a few palapa restaurants on the beach, now there is more of everything and several spectacular hillside mansions. But Chacala on steroids retains its natural beauty. And even though the volcano trail we hiked back then is long gone, erased by the changes, no worries, we found a way. To any cruisers planning to make landfall in Chacala, following is what we did:

Once you’ve landed ashore and checked in with the port captain, walk down the beach in a southerly direction until the palapa restaurants end. Now get on the inland side of the chain link fence and continue in the direction you were going, but on the dirt frontage road. Soon you will come to a sign and a gate marking the entrance to the Mar de Jade Holistic Living Center (where wealthy people come to do yoga and starve themselves). Continue in, you have our permission.

Now eyes left. See the grassy parking lot where each space is defined by a palm tree? Good, walk left into this lot and continue on to the end. There you will see the start of a trail. Take it. If within 50 feet or so you cross a brook on a concrete bridge, you are in the right place. Keep going.

Just as you start to really enjoy this delightful jungle trail, say after an 1/8^th of a mile or so, it will end where bulldozers created the road leading to those spectacular hillside mansions. If you can somehow pick up the trail on the other side of the road, more power to you, we could not. Instead, we followed the road up (to the right, or towards the beach). After about a half-mile or so, you’ll see the first gated entrance to a hillside home; keep going up.

Finally, the road will dead end at what must be the mother of all spectacular hillside mansions, judging by the entrance (I would be happy to retire in the gatehouse). The place is called Orofino, the gatehouse is up the drive. Walk up the drive, you have our permission.

Now, on your left, about 30 feet before the gatehouse, there is a depression in the low wall bordering the drive. Beyond that depression, there appears to be a trail going up the hillside, or at least a break in the foliage where construction debris is scattered. On our way up, we hopped this 12-inch wall and scrambled up the hill. We saw a lean-to and more construction materials off to the left. After about 150 feet, we came across another, very narrow fire road. (Now, it turns out--as we learned on our way down--that this narrow road actually intersects the Orofino driveway beyond the gatehouse. A much more civilized approach to the volcano would be to pass the gatehouse and turn left at the first intersection, about 100 feet beyond.)

This is a road that runs along the rim of the volcano. If you go left, you will ascend to the highest part of the rim. At that point, orchards of some kind of tree (I imagined them to be olive trees, but they’re not) will surround you. Off to your right, you will see grasslands down below, in the perfectly round crater, about a 1/4-mile in circumference.

All of the way up (and down), you will catch stunning views of the bay and of your boat at anchor. Once beyond the lush jungle, to where the orchards are, the neat rows of those olive-looking trees juxtaposed against the deep blue water and mountains beyond, will make you think you’ve landed in the Med (not that I’ve ever been there).

Of course, we left the camera aboard for this hike. Doh!

--MR

In Banderas Bay, we enjoyed swimming in the water. Now in the
Sea of Cortez, cooler waters may preclude pictures like this until spring.

La Cruz Retrospective By Michael

2012-01-18T10:11:00.000-07:00

This is the main artery of La Cruz,
calle Langosta. Note the wood
cross in the center of the roundabout.
This cross is made of huanacaxtle,
a type of hardwood. In the
distance, you can see some masts
against the blue water of the bay;
this is the marina.

We left La Cruz de Huanacaxtle on December 27, nearly four months after we moved aboard there, not an insignificant period of time. It is the kind of time that allowed us to become quasi members of the community, recognized and greeted by the people who live there. We bought sundries, we had our laundry done, we sought medical care—all the domestic stuff not associated with tourism or transience.

La Cruz is small, walkable. This accessibility is enhanced by the Mexican culture (and climate) whereby much of life is lived outside, literally on the streets. In the afternoon and evening, doors to homes are wide open and occupants sit outside, in chairs shooting the breeze, watching the world go by. And we become part of that world that goes by, on our way to the market, the bus stop, the paleteria, the lavanderia, or a taco stand (set up in the street). Over a short period of time, greetings became more familiar and we came to learn that the lady who made our tacos is married to the diver we saw on our docks every day preparing to clean boat bottoms. We came to know the names of the dogs we passed. We enjoyed long conversations about Mexican politics and local development with Claudia, owner of a local eatery. We long ago stopped telling the women at the lavanderia our boat name. La Cruz was our first home as a live aboard cruising family and it is well suited to that role.

The modern marina on the banks of La Cruz was both a stark contrast to the town, and a tightly integrated member of the community. And the marina is filled with pleasant, helpful employees and cruisers who arrived long before us and who helped us to transition. The crews of Ballona, Cactus Tree, Happy Nest, Katrina Liani, Kenta Anae, Maluhia, Sababa, Sourdough, and Ulalena were our first neighbors in this new life, and became our first friends. And finally, there was Tami on Andiamo III. She was the resident den mother who somehow found the time and energy in the summer heat to organize a La Cruz Kid’s Club event every other weekday. Her sense of humor and enthusiasm was welcome and always appreciated. She and her family are headed to El Salvador for a season and eventually to the East Coast; we wish them fair winds.

--MR

This is the billboard outside the marina advertising its snazzy rooftop restaurant. The
Spanish is nice, it roughly translates to, "Where the seasoning enhances the view!" How
could so much money be spent on a sign without employing a better translator? You see
this all over Mexico, and it makes no sense, given all the English speakers.

While in La Cruz, I had the opportunity to play a minor role helping the crew
of ~~Nylon~~ Nyon re-step their mast after they lost the top five feet during a sail
in the bay and their subsequent repair. Nyon was one of the many boats that
arrived very late in our stay and added to our La Cruz experience.

In our final weeks in La Cruz, the number of cruising kids grew and grew. This is a gaggle
of giggling girls on the foredeck of Convivia. Frances is among them, in the turquoise shirt.

Whale Follow-up By Michael

2012-01-13T15:42:00.000-07:00

Mexico is just different. Every supermarket I've been to
sells this stuff: Jarabe de Maiz pasteurado para Bebe.
This translates to: pasteurized corn syrup for babies.
On the back are instructions for adding it to the
bottle, adding it to porridge, using it to make fruit
appetizing, or dabbing it on the pacifier.

In my first post about the whale incident, I wrote:

[immediately following our failed attempt to free the whale] We made a call to the fleet. One of the three boats in the anchorage answered, as well as a vessel in distant San Blas who heard our call and who had recently helped cut the net away from a mother whale and its calf. Wendaway didn’t have any additional advice, but did strongly advise against going in the water next time. It sounded like their whale was tangled such that the lines could all be cut from the dinghy, and they had two adults in the dinghy, a real advantage. I felt better about the difficult decision we made.

Turns out that Mark aboard Wendaway was underway with two crew when they spotted a mother and calf, tangled together, the day before we spotted our tangled whale. Mark was apprehensive about putting his boat and crew at risk to try and save the whales, but his crew, Frank and Mary, were determined to try and do something. They came up with a plan and some rules of engagement and went forward. There are three interesting posts about this encounter on Wendaway’s blog:

· A detailed account of the rescue, written by Frank, who cut the whales free from a dinghy over a two-hour period.

· A clear account of the incident from Mark’s perspective (owner and captain of Wendaway).

· A postscript by Mark that includes information about his own subsequent investigation into drift netting, Mexican law, and crew safety.

And below is a fascinating video that Wendaway put together about their encounter. After seeing how matter-of-factly the fishermen behave in this video, my conclusion is that these entanglements are not uncommon.

On the back of a whale: a rescue from Mark Schneider on Vimeo.

And finally, the following video by experts who discuss whale rescue responses. In short, Del Viento and The Rose broke all the rules in our save, but all’s well that ends well.

--MR

Frances watches her big sister sew, in the cockpit, at sunrise--the last sunrise of our
three-day passage across the Sea, from Isla Isabel to Ensenada de los Muertos.

A Whale Saved, Part II By Michael

2012-01-11T08:43:00.000-07:00

In this picture of a whale swimming around us, you can see the flaps
open at the top of the body, aft of the head. These are the nostrils for the blow
hole, as this guy had just blown. They closed immediately after I snapped
this picture and the orifice nearly disappears.

The night of our failed whale rescue, the crew aboard The Rose felt anxious about the whale out there drifting through the night, entangled. They were distressed when they heard us tell our story from that day, and they weren’t willing to give up hope, even after their failed search at dusk. Before retiring for the night, John and Pat and their two friends decided they would raise anchor on their Peterson 46 and head out for another search in the morning.

That night aboard Del Viento, Windy and I were also consumed with the unsettled events of the day. Lying in our berth that night, Windy studied the iPad and our track on the Navionics app, wishing there could have been a better outcome. Then she sat up with a realization, “That whale isn’t drifting south with the wind and swells, he’s drifting north, against them.” Indeed, the squiggly yellow line on the screen showed us approaching the whale from the south, moving all about it and around it in circles, and then leaving the whale from a point north. Without any sense of the currents, this was exactly the opposite of what we all assumed, earlier in the evening studying the iPad track aboard The Rose. It was counterintuitive because it seemed that anything without a motor would have been pushed south. It makes sense that she saw what we all didn’t see, given her 10-year stint making maps for National Geographic. Unfortunately, our dusk search had been in the wrong area.

Eating breakfast aboard Del Viento the next morning, we heard The Rose hauling their anchor. We went up on deck. Across the water they told us they were headed back out to search for the whale. We shouted to them that they should search in a northerly direction from the coordinates we gave them the day before. “The whale isn’t drifting south!”

“Really?!” It didn’t make sense to them either, but Windy told them about our new perspective based on the iPad track. Full of new hope, we told them we were right behind them and began raising our anchor to join in the search.

This pod of whales swam around us for twenty minutes off Isla Isabel while
we stood off a half mile from the whale in distress, having finally freed our anchor.

But our anchor was fouled. We spent 30 minutes pulling at it with the boat from four different directions, no luck. We were stuck. On the radio, we heard the excited call from The Rose, “We found the whale and it’s still alive! John’s going in the water and we could use assistance.” At this time, Mark from Three Hour Tour came by in his kayak to ask if he could help us in any way to retrieve our anchor. Three Hour Tour arrived in the anchorage after all of the drama from the day before and wasn’t monitoring our working channel; he had no idea about the situation nor our anxiety to get out there and help The Rose. We filled him in quickly and Windy urged, “Please don’t help us, help them!”

A ray up close. Yesterday we
saw rays doing acrobatics
for the first time, full loops.

Within minutes, Mark and his wife and their two college-age children stopped their day, raised their anchor, and were headed out to sea. Close behind him was the other boat in our anchorage, Boomer.

Aboard Del Viento, I pulled off my shirt and put on a mask to solve our own problem. Twenty-five feet down, I found our chain wrapped around a short rock pinnacle and beyond that our 66-pound Bruce anchor tucked neatly under a rock shelf. I unwound the chain and then stood on the bottom and dragged the Bruce out onto a clear sandy patch. I shot to the surface and asked Windy to raise it quickly, before it fouled again. She was distracted by all of the traffic on the radio.

Pat aboard The Rose was worried about John. He is roughly ten years my senior and had been in the water with the whale for a while. He was tired and cold. She was requesting that other boats contact the Mexican navy for assistance, or whether other cruisers were in the area and were willing to dive into the water with the whale.

Windy looked at me, “I totally understand if you don’t want to, but do you want to?” I felt trapped between really wanting to and really feeling it wasn’t a good idea. I thought hard and even reasoned that with more boats and support (John’s friend was near him in their dinghy, with mask and fins on, ready to jump in if he needed help), things wouldn’t seem as dangerous as they did to me the day before. John was in the water without a life vest too, which made the task much more doable. I went back and forth in my mind, “Let’s motor out there.”

As we started out, radio traffic from The Rose urged the two boats out there then to stand off and asked that other boats avoid the area to avoid spooking the whale. Then we heard that Mark’s 20-something son from Three Hour Tour was going into the water to assist. We hung back about a half-mile away, eager for information as the story unfolded and ready to assist.

Underwater with the whale, John heard the same squeaking I heard and felt the same fear that I felt. But after a while, and after getting spooked a few times by erratic movements by the whale, John finally got angry. He said he felt like one of those doctors on TV who begin screaming at their ER patients, “You will not die on me man, not on my watch!” Something clicked and he became resigned to whatever might happen, pushed his trepidation aside, and went for it. John began swimming deep, underneath the belly of the whale, at least 15 feet below the surface. He could then see there was no heavy weight holding the fluke down as I reported. He saw that the whale was hogtied, lead-weighted polypropylene and monofilament stretched tight between its tail and snout, ensnarling one pectoral fin. This made it difficult for the whale to breath, having to raise its head against the restraining netting to catch a breath.

John cut from the snout, dove and cut line repeatedly from the belly and under the pectoral fin until…the whale literally sprung out of its restraints and the remaining netting and lines fell away.

And then we heard the call over the radio, “He’s free! They did it! The whale is swimming away, free from the netting!” Jubilation from the four boats boomed over channel 77. Windy said she felt a tremendous emotional load lifted.

It occured to me later that all 15 crew aboard Boomer, Del Viento, The Rose, and Three Hour Tour can rest easy knowing that, for the rest of our lives, no matter where we are, we never have to spend a dime on one of those whale watching tour boat trips.

* * * * * * * * *

Later that day we all heard another call over channel 16: another tangled whale was spotted and a cruising boat was standing by, but looking for assistance. I jumped aboard The Rose with my mask and fins and we headed out for the two-hour trip to that location. But en route we learned that the whale was dead—and had been as the cruiser that spotted the whale reported that they never saw it blow. From the smell they described, we reasoned that it was the same dead whale spotted a day earlier on the same drift path. We turned back.

So, over a three day period, four whales were found by cruisers trapped in nets. Three were saved and one was not. How many were not found? How many are never found? Looking across the huge expanse of ocean, that we nearly ran down the whale we came across, is incredibly unlikely. Even if we’d seen him blow from a distance while under sail, we would not have gone to investigate, it would have been just another whale sighting and we would have continued on, unawares.

There is no way to feed seven billion people by rod and reel, but nets are indiscriminate and this situation wasn’t right. Can nets be monitored? Can they be designed to prevent these kinds of unintended consequences? Should there be a moratorium on nets deployed during the time of year whales transit an area?

--MR

The second day of the whale save was a coordinated effort. Boomer (on the left) and
Three Hour Tour both shared in the triumph. Inexplicably, I don't have any pics
of The Rose, a Peterson 46, nor her crew. In this picture, everyone is returning
from the whale rescue but stopped short to observe a pod of four whales cavorting
around us. The whales did barrel rolls and seemed to slide over the tops of one
another in play. There was a calf too. Notice everyone standing on their decks
to observe, though the whales didn't come out in this shot.

A Heartbreaking Decision, Part I By Michael

2012-01-07T14:48:00.001-07:00

Here I am trying to calm myself down, to breath slowly.
The whale could present only a small portion of its body
above water because of the netting. Seeing the entire
whale underwater was overwhelming and made me
feel tiny and vulnerable.

Three-and-a-half hours into the new year, Windy woke up, started the engine, raised the anchor, and drove us out of the anchorage off Chacala while we all slept. By late afternoon, Del Viento was about 50 miles north, under sail, just abeam Isla Isabela. We tacked and headed for the anchorage, about four miles distant. The autopilot was on and we were all up near the bow. I saw it first.

“Wow! Whale! Strait ahead! Wait, we’re gonna hit it!”

The dark body of a whale was about 25 yards in front of us. I sprinted back to the cockpit to disengage the autopilot and steer us around it. It looked like the top of a submerged Boeing fuselage. Windy came back to say it might be dead. Then it blew. Then she saw it was trapped in a net.

We doused the sails, started the motor, and turned around to assess. We were looking at the top of a humpback whale. Only a relatively small part of the whale was above the surface, a portion from aft of the head to just before the hump. The whale raised the top of its head to blow and then submerged it again, otherwise it didn’t move. A string of net buoys trailed about 40 feet behind.

I lowered the dinghy into the water, Windy handed me a knife, and off I went to see what I could do to help this animal. As I neared, the whale seemed to get bigger and Del Viento seemed to shrink and get further away. I shut off the dinghy motor as I approached the net buoys behind the whale. The only sound was of seas breaking over the whale’s back.

I began pulling net aboard the dinghy, filling it with leaded polypropylene line, buoys, monofilament, and dead fish. But pulling the net also pulled me closer to the whale and its massive fluke that I could nearly make out, deep below the surface. When a portion of the net became too heavy to pull up, I plunged my arm down and cut the ½-inch polypropylene. I did this until all of this net visible from the surface was piled high in the dinghy. The whale didn’t move, but continued blowing. I was having a hard time keeping from getting tangled in the netting I was now sitting on.

I drove away from the whale and summoned Windy on Del Viento. We agreed I should try to do more from the water. She handed me my fins and a mask, I side-tied the dinghy to Del Viento, and she motored upwind of the whale. About 25 yards away, I rolled off the dinghy and began swimming towards the whale.

This was a new experience. In the water with the whale, I felt small and vulnerable. The smooth top of its body was now above my head. Treading water about ten feet away from a wounded wild animal, I felt scared and stupid. I inched closer.

Here I am sitting on the net I hauled and filled our 11-foot dinghy with, telling
Windy that I can't get any more and need to go in the water. What is cool about
this picture is that you can see the whale's brilliant white pectoral fin about 6
feet underwater.

Curiously, when the whale blew, it sounded like the threatening noise of a big cat. Not the roar of a lion, but the noise Hollywood dubs in when a tiger is cornered. It wasn’t a reassuring noise and startled me every time. When my head was underwater, I heard a cacophony of high-pitched squeaks.

Putting my mask in the water was surreal, seeing all that was down there, the size of a city bus, next to me. I let the swells move me closer until I bumped up against it, just abeam its hump. They body felt firm and the skin slippery. I quickly began stroking it like Windy advised me, hoping that would help the whale to distinguish friend from foe. Then I grabbed a polypropylene line about 18 inches down and cut it. My pulse raced and I felt jittery from adrenaline.

I pushed myself away and could see many more lines, lower and towards the fluke. The fluke itself was maybe ten feet underwater and covered with barnacles along the leading edge. It looked massive, and I was concerned about being near it, but it never moved the entire time I was with the whale; I reasoned it was weighed down by netting, catch in the net, weighted line designed to submerge the net, or all three.

With my life vest on, I couldn’t dive far below the surface. Even with fins on, I struggled to control myself in the surge of the two- to three-foot swells. At once, my fin snagged in the monofilament and pulled at my leg with the surge. I thrust my leg away in a panic. I put the knife back in my pocket and removed my vest, looping it through just one arm and letting it drag behind me. I could now get a bit deeper, but not down to the fluke, about 12 feet below the surface. I swam this way to the front of the whale. Line and netting were wrapped around its snout and on the pectoral fin on this side. This fin was white and about the size of a surfboard, an old longboard, and also covered in barnacles. I recalled the power exerted by the whales we saw a few days prior, slapping these giant fins repeatedly against the water. I opened my knife, dove underwater, and reached for some netting at the tip of the fin and started cutting quickly.

I cut a piece of the polypropylene and some monofilament when the whale abruptly moved the fin out of my reach. This startled me. I backed away and swam towards the head for the first time. Before I realized it, I was staring at a blue-gray, human-like eye the size of an orange. This was unsettling and I looked away and continued forward.

At this point, I've taken my life vest off and hooked it loosely around one arm.

I knew going in that this was a baleen whale, meaning no teeth, but a large filter apparatus for trapping plankton. So I knew I wasn’t going to get chomped up here where the mouth was, but thoughts of getting sucked against the baleen ran through my head, along with a bunch of other irrational fear-inducing thoughts, like that whatever distress signals this guy was sending are probably drawing sharks for miles, due to arrive any minute. Or, that maybe another whale would come to assist, see me as the threat, and ram me or Del Viento.

And then the rational fears occurred to me, compounding my anxiety. What if I am underwater (or above), he moves, I get tangled in this mess all around, and drown? What if I dive down and successfully cut something heavy and get tangled and pulled down with it? Meanwhile, seas were making the operation difficult despite the risks. I made a few more successful attempts to cut away parts of the net from the badly tangled whale, and then swam away and waved Windy over.

Over the water I told her about my safety concerns. I told her I was going to give it one more good try to cut the netting around the snout, and that she should stay close. I swam back to the whale.

Up near the head, this time on the leeward side, I again met the animals gaze about a foot underwater. I could see that this pectoral fin was not as tangled, but did have a single polypropylene line passing underneath it, pulling taught from the snout. It was about four feet underwater. I dove down to cut it, but the line was pressed against the body and the fin moved and spooked me. I was at an odd angle in the water, struggling with the life vest wrapped around my good arm. I would have been more effective with it off completely, but I didn’t think that was the right thing to do. I swam forward. I again dived to cut a single line that I thought might make a difference, if I could reach it. But then this massive head bowed down even lower and underneath me. I was over the top of it and could feel my body pushed around by the current created by the whale’s movement.

I’d had enough. I wasn’t physically spent, and I even figured I could keep my fear in check long enough to make some real improvement to the situation, but I felt it wasn’t wise. I wanted to help this suffering mammal, with eyes, but I couldn’t accept the risks I perceived.

I motioned Windy closer and swam back and boarded Del Viento. It was difficult to motor away, but we felt there was nothing more we could do. We could see it continue to blow as we got further away. We both were uneasy and troubled.

As I pulled on the net early on, I was pulling myself closer to the fluke, submerged
deep below. In this picture, I am probably 15 feet from the exposed back, pulling, cutting,
and keeping an eye on my position. The seas seemed much steeper and rougher than they
appear here. I was really rocking and rolling and getting tossed about.

After setting the hook off Isla Isabela, we brainstormed ideas. Windy proposed we motor out again, find the whale, and spend the night shadowing it. If it wasn’t dead by morning, maybe it would be tired enough to no longer pose a threat. I countered that the threat of being perceived as a threat by the whale was only part of the danger, and how could we assess whether it was more docile? We decided that with a smallish anchor and line, we could motor up to the whale’s tail, toss the anchor beyond it, and perhaps snag the bulk of the net that must be holding the fluke down, haul that up with the windlass, and cut when we could no longer pull it closer. We both liked the idea, but don’t have an anchor aboard less than 40 pounds.

We made a call to the fleet. One of the three boats in the anchorage answered, as well as a vessel in distant San Blas who heard our call and who had recently helped cut the net away from a mother whale and its calf. Wendaway didn’t have any additional advice, but did strongly advise against going in the water next time. It sounded like their whale was tangled such that the lines could all be cut from the dinghy, and they had two adults in the dinghy, a real advantage. I felt better about the difficult decision we made.

But the other boat that answered was in the anchorage with us and had been with Wendaway and was eager to assist. Before we knew it, The Rose took our coordinates and pulled anchor to go see if they could find the whale and assist. Windy motored me over to them, I jumped aboard their Peterson 46 and went along. It was about 20 minutes to sunset. Fortunately, I had the iPad with us and it showed our GPS track with the whale encounter. The wind and swells were moving south and we traced a line through the circles Del Viento’s path made while I was in the water. We estimated the approximate drift of the whale during the 90 minutes that had passed since our encounter and made our search along a southerly trajectory—to no avail. We had a lot of false alarms, spotting other, non-tangled whales and dolphins, but decided that our tangled whale was either too hard to find, or sunk.

In retrospect, Windy and I should have stayed with the whale when we could think of nothing else to do, radioing for assistance from where we were. We also should have spent more time brainstorming before leaving this whale. We felt sick about the whole thing and now so did the crew of The Rose.

But tomorrow would be a new day…stay tuned for an uplifting Part Two...

--MR

Frances suited up in her bid to be a whale rescuer too.

Not Bad For A Thursday By Michael

2011-12-30T13:34:00.001-07:00

0700

The alarm sounded about this time. We haven’t woken to an alarm since leaving D.C.; I hope this doesn’t happen again soon. But we were anchored out off Punta de Mita and the family aboard Convivia invited us over for coffee, early. Early is what they do.

0800

Tucker and Victoria on Convivia are a couple with strong streaks of technical geek, inventor, and go-getter running through them. And they love coffee. Before leaving San Francisco (and with plenty on their plate having decided to go cruising and with two small children in tow), they decided it would be a good idea to find a way to roast coffee beans aboard. So they bought an extra large barbeque, had some slots cut in the lid, and incorporated a hamster cage-like rotisserie contraption with a handle for turning. They packed their vessel full of green gourmet coffee beans and they roast regularly. Grinding happens below with an elegant, manual, shiny brass device.

We made a thermos of Mexican hot cocoa, cut up some fresh pineapple, and launched the dinghy to visit with our friends for an hour or so over what Windy said was pretty damn good coffee. Then we wished them all fair winds and dinghied back to Del Viento, not sure when we will see this cruising family again. They are headed for the South Pacific this spring, and we are headed to the Pacific Northwest this summer. We could both cruise the oceans of the world for the next 10 years and never again cross wakes. But we made a connection and that is the way cruising is.

0900

Windy hard at work halfway up the mast.

Now on our minds was the earlier (prudent) departure of another cruising family, also anchored off Punta de Mita and bound as we were for the port of Chacala, about 35 nautical miles up the coast (nautical miles are a bit longer than the statute miles you drive in your car, 1.152 times longer).

But alas, as we approached our girl, we could see that her spreaders were drooping, a defeated pose for any rig. Sagging spreaders are not something that can be observed from deck, it takes an away-from-the-boat perspective to see this. And what is important is that sagging spreaders are dangerous. Spreaders should be proud, pointed slightly upward, bisecting the wire stay. Ours were like small broken wings, unable to play their critical role in maintaining the integrity of the mast.

Instead of hauling the anchor, I hauled Windy up the mast to adjust the spreaders while I loosened and retightened each side. They were not like this when we left La Cruz. But en route I adjusted the spreaders on both sides, when they were flagging in the leeward position, probably mistakenly tightening them down after they’d fallen.

1100

Motoring around the northern point of Bahia de Banderas (and finally out into the open ocean), we saw our first Humpback whale breach. It pushed the first 30-feet-or-so of its massive body near vertical out of the water before stalling—hanging for a split second—and falling sideways with a massive splash. We were all gaping mouths, smiles, and shouts. We saw at least 20 more whales throughout the day. We saw a number of spectacular breaches, many tail-up soundings, about 40 blows, and a couple whales that repeatedly slapped the water with massive pectoral fins. We didn't take a single picture.

1230

It was about this time that we saw our first rays of the day, while under sail. They were the brown rays, about a foot in diameter, in schools of dozens, jumping out of the water over and over, creating what looked like a giant fish boil.

1300

I went down below to make a batch of killer guacamole with our remaining cilantro.

1400

We then saw larger rays, jumping/flying out of the water, flashing sparkling white undersides as they flapped their wings in what looked like a bid to fly.

1445

Up at the bow with Windy, Frances and Eleanor made eye contact with another ray as he jumped out of the water and up to deck level, just a few feet away. Eleanor said “He had a small mouth and he was cute!”

1515

While under sail, I took some extra turns of the furling line off the drum, whipped the end, and reinstalled.

1600

One of the larger sea turtles I’ve seen appeared up ahead while Windy was driving. She steered to within a few feet of him and he didn’t dive as they often do. He continued his rest period at the surface and simply kept an eye on us as we glided by.

1615

Windy and the girls spied a pod of dolphins ahead, circling an area of water in what appeared to be an urgent, coordinated hunt for some fish we couldn’t see.

1730

After motor sailing sixty percent of the day, we made it into Chacala hours after Wondertime, but still before dark. On our way in, they called on the radio and invited us over for dinner (we gladly accepted). Like Convivia, Wondertime is planning to cross to the South Pacific this spring. Our paths will soon also diverge, but we learned that they plan to depart from La Paz and to first see some of the Sea, so we look forward to seeing more of them during the coming months.

1830

It seemed later than this to us because our travels brought us into mountain time today, so we gained an hour. But dog tired after our day (but not so sleepy after all the chocolate the crew of Wondertime fed us), we retired.

-- MR

Eleanor, Frances, and Leah (from Wondertime) ham it up for a picture in
front of the gingerbread house they constructed and decorated while
anchored out off La Cruz.

Happy Hookers By Michael

2011-12-23T09:30:00.000-07:00

This time of year, open markets in all the neighborhoods
and towns feature everything Christmas, from toys to
decorations. Baby Jesus figurines are everywhere, in
sizes to fit any budget. This one is about 12-inches
long and features a repaired broken leg. None
depict the holy child without mascara.

We made it. Sunday, with little fanfare, we pulled the dock lines aboard and motored out of the marina to stake our claim in the La Cruz anchorage. We set the hook in 23 feet of water just in time to enjoy a sunset from the cockpit, cold beers in hand. It was the kind of sunset that gives the sky dimension and depth that extends overhead and behind you, ribbons of high-altitude clouds saturated orange at one horizon and tinged pink at the other.

The girls laid low, unused to the motion of the ocean—though we were all rocked to sleep and slept soundly our first night, absent the creaking of dock lines we’d grown used to.

Three things remained to do before our first sail. First, when I went to install the Tank Tender sending units into the taped-up holes atop the new water tanks, I found that the threads were not correct. Until they could be corrected, temporarily sealing these holes to prevent water from leaking out when heeled, is difficult. Second, I needed to pull Windy up the mast to adjust our spreaders, to bang on the undersides until they bisect the wire to form equal inside angle, above and below. Third, she needed to install the new spreader boots on the same trip up the mast.

After several trips to the machine shop in Puerto Vallarta to resolve the tank thread issue—I think I wrapped that up. After hauling Windy up the mast yesterday morning, using her 20-year-old climbing harness and our main halyard, she was able to fix the spreader alignment, but not able to install the only boots I could find for sale in Puerto Vallarta, too small. So, she carefully felt the spreader tips with her hands and deemed them smooth enough not to chafe the sail in the short term, and we called that project complete. Then yesterday, we hauled the anchor and went sailing for a few hours. It was awesome...no, it was amazing. The winds were light, but our fully-loaded sloop with a very high-cut genoa glided around the bay like she was on rails. Surprising to both of us was how steady she was. Either of us could leave the helm long enough to use the head, and the boat would track straight. On the first Del Viento, you could hardly take your hand off the helm long enough to stick it in a bag of chips before she rounded up--no matter how she was trimmed. We were all smiles, all four of us.

Eleanor grabbing some alone time in the
lazarette

The past couple of weeks have been a blur—the big push. We accomplished a ton of work in that time. Added to the amount of work we’ve completed since arriving in Mexico, it is a formidable list (see below).

Our plans for the near future include wrapping up small jobs aboard (like rewiring the nav lights) and allowing the girls to spend time with their friends aboard Wondertime and Convivia. It’s interesting that we visited both of these boats on our way down in the car last summer, in their respective home ports. I wrote about our Wondertime visit here. The post I wrote about our meeting with Convivia was lost, but they wrote here about our visit aboard their beautiful Cal 43 in San Francisco Bay, the day after the Independence Day fireworks.

Last night Eleanor went carolling with the kids aboard Popoki and Andiamo III. She and Frances plan to do the same again this evening. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and we plan to sail north the day after Christmas, bound for La Paz and our landlubbing friends Tim and Nancy. Wondertime will likely join us for a bit of the way, maybe stopping with us at Chacala and Isla Isabella. Mid-January, Windy’s mom arrives in La Paz for a two-week stay aboard. We plan to take her out to the nearby islands (no, not to drop her off).
--MR

Windy and the girls aboard the newly-anchored, newly-named Del Viento.

Windy and I aligning the hailing port on the transom before application. This is
about the last thing we did before leaving the slip.

The 2011 refit of Del Viento includes, in no particular order:

Removed the old boat name, applied the new name
Removed the exhaust elbow, had it repaired, reinstalled
Installed the CO detector
Installed 2 smoke detectors
Replaced all the standing rigging
Replaced 6 chainplates
Removed, marked, reinstalled the headsail
Replaced the main halyard
Replaced the headsail sheets
Replaced the water tanks
Cleaned and painted nearly the entire bilge

Replaced 2 windlass solenoids

Replaced the windlass base

Had the davits re-welded

Had jack line eyes welded to the companionway stanchions

Had 6 supports welded to 6 aft stanchions

Had struts welded to the bow pulpit

Had a new anchor roller fabricated

Had hand-holds fabricated for the dodger frame

Relocated old anchor roller as secondary and install new primary

Had the teak toe rails and trim stripped to bare wood

Applied 7 coats of varnish to the teak toe rails and trim

Replaced the gaskets on both main hatches

Stripped and painted new nonskid decks

Cleaned and painted all interior lockers and cubbies

Had all the furniture cushions reupholstered

Rebuilt the anchor locker floor

Installed a new bilge pump switch and wiring

Installed new bilge pumps

Repaired the manual bilge pump

Relocated thru-hull for the primary bilge pump

Cleaned the salt water strainers

Replaced the house and starting batteries

Rebuilt the floor that supports the house batteries

Replaced a lead of 2/0 wire for the windlass

Had the hull and topsides buffed

Rebuilt the toilet

Redesigned and replaced the head plumbing

Removed, cleaned, repaired, and reinstalled the holding tank

Built a new solar panel arch

Installed an additional solar panel

Replaced the Racor water separator filters

Replaced the fuel return line

Installed the wifi booster antennae

Installed a new stereo system and speakers

Installed 6 fans

Installed a 4-inch solar fan in the head cabin top

Installed a new propane solenoid and hose

Replaced the overhead light fixture in the head

Replaced all the interior bulbs with LEDs

Removed all the bonding wires/foil

Added blocking to the floor of the lazarette

Replaced all the fresh water plumbing

Reconfigured the selector switch for the galley fresh/salt pump water

Regreased the Maxprop

Prepped and painted the bottom with new antifouling

Had a gel coat crack in the bow repaired

Replaced refrigeration wiring connections

Of course, this list omits the hours and hours and hours spent exploring, playing, blogging, cleaning, learning, organizing, socializing, and shopping. I’m not including all of the time spent on the two dinghy motors. In that context, it is amazing to me what we accomplished these past five months. And a few projects remain:

Re-bed the opening port lights in the girls’ cabin

Install the 7 port lights we brought down with us

Install the LED mast head tri-color and anchor light

Unhitched By Michael

2011-12-15T21:30:00.000-07:00

(Vanity Fair)

Christopher Hitchens died tonight. Much of the reporting I've read is filled with canned references to his "battle" and "fight" with esophageal cancer. It ain't right. I recall clearly listening to an interview he gave Anderson Cooper two months after his diagnosis last year, during his tour for his bestselling memoir, Hitch-22. In that interview he said, "Having to sit through chemo therapy is an almost zen experience in boredom, you can't do much except read, you don't feel great, and you're watching poison go into your arm. People say you should be struggling, battling cancer. You aren't battling cancer, you couldn't be living a more passive moment than that. It feels as if you are drowning in powerlessness."

Hitchens was brilliant. But what resonated with me more than the power of his intellect, was his eloquence. He expressed himself just as clearly in extemporaneous thought as he did in his writing. Peers have said that he wrote nearly as quickly as he spoke.

Though nobody doubts his intellect, to many his thoughts, when contrarian, were strident--and I don't think that is without intent. In our often over-simplified world, where labels are used to immediately peg people, to simplify what should be complex for the need of an audience to quickly digest information and reinforce prejudice, Hitchens was a contrarian. Dare to label, or otherwise characterize him simply, and you will soon be wrong. He was an athiest who believed that life begins at conception. He was a one-time socialist who supported George W. Bush.

Coincidently, last week I watched a 100-minute formal debate between Hitchens and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. (I was just talking to some other cruisers about it at our full-moon bonfire.) The two debated the motion: Is religion is a force for good in the world? This was one of the Munk Debates filmed in Toronto November 2010, in association with the BBC and Intelligence Squared. Hitchens is funny, serious, and thought provoking. He is well into his treatment and left hairless by chemo. If you want to celebrate Hitchens or learn more about him, I encourage you to take time from your day to watch.

If you've read this far: I can report that while blog posts have been scarce lately, progress in our quest to get out of the slip has not waned. We plan to leave as soon as Saturday...and go sailing. More later.

--MR

9/11 was a turning point in Hitchen's personal and professional lives. His post-attack
position that the U.S. should unseat Saddam Hussein was controversial and
alienated some of his closest friends, notably Gore Vidal. This is a picture of
Hitchens in Iraq in 1975, a time when he likely developed an understanding an
affinity for the Kurds. (Washington Post)

15 Years Ago Today By Michael

2011-12-07T21:00:00.000-07:00

On December 7, 1996, after a couple letters, a couple phone calls, and a single visit, Windy and I set off on our first voyage relative strangers. We liked it, and that's why we're doing it again.

Windy and I left our Ventura, California slip on a cold, clear morning.
Pictured on the left is our friend Tim Fitzmorris who later flew down
to crew on our Panama Canal transit. On the right is my dad (l) and our
friend Bill Cornick (r).

The Ventura skyline behind me. This is my excited face, really.

New Year's Eve in a cruiser's bar in Cabo San Lucas with our friends Lyn and
Connie Breedlove (l) and Dar Rice and Michael Dion (r),
of Principia and Mimosa, respectively.

Windy swimming with a friend at Los Islotes, an islet at the northern end of Isla
Espiritu Santo, in Mexico's Sea of Cortez near La Paz.

Windy intrepidly gliding past bigger friends in the flat calm, 100 miles offshore
enroute to Mazatlan, Mexico. These were members of a larger pod of sperm whales.

We didn't start the trip as a couple, but by the time this picture was taken, we were.

A motorcycle we rented in Guatemala.

A vista in the Guatemalan highlands.

About to be boarded by the U.S. Coast Guard from a U.S. Navy launch
from the guided missle destroyer in the distance. We were in the Bay
of Panama and they were looking for drugs.

Windy and our friend Tim on the foredeck during our canal transit.

Windy and my mom thought the Panama Canal transit was hilarious.

Spotting howler monkies from the fresh water of Lake Gatun, Panama.

Having fun on Columbia's Isla Providencia.

Prepared to abandon ship and waiting, so tired I could hardly keep
my eyes open, trapped anchored 100 yards off Maria la Gorda, Cuba--
a lee shore with 50-knot winds blowing from 1997's tropical storm
Andres. The anchor line chaffed through shortly after this was taken
and we were able to motor sail off, barely.

A pretty dawn in June, a few hours from a Key West landfall and the end of our trip--
at least for 15 years.

--MR

Tank Progress By Michael

2011-12-05T21:35:00.001-07:00

Eleanor and the 3-year-old tanks at the machine shop.

Presumably because they were leaking, the previous owners of our boat replaced both the original, 30-year-old stainless steel water tanks in 2008, in Guaymas/San Carlos and used the services of reputable welders. When we bought the boat in June 2010, one of the tanks was leaking slowly and on both tanks, epoxy was smeared along the inside seams. So the tanks we just tore out of the boat enjoyed a lifespan in the 12- to 18-month range. That’s shocking. And while I’m still not sure why they were so short lived, I now know where they failed.

· All of the interior baffle welds were rusting and weeping on the outside of the tank.

· The welded seams were corroded and leaking in places.

· Pin-holes were near the welded seams and appeared sporadically at other places.

My theory is that the tanks failed due to a combination of electrolysis and poor welding.

Electrolysis: All of the tanks and thru-hulls and mast step and even a chain plate, were bonded with a combination of heavy-gauge wire and copper strapping. Experts still argue amongst themselves over whether or not bonding is a good practice, or a bad one. In my reading, I learned that even proponents of bonding concede that there is a lot of room for error in terms of conduit size and adequate attachments, and that error can serve to magnify and even create problems. Whereas by not bonding metal components in a boat, you lose the theoretical advantages of bonding, but avoid the pitfalls. I don’t think bonding is necessary and I removed all of the bonding aboard Del Viento. Hopefully isolating the new tanks will contribute to their longevity. As an aside, when I was in the water cleaning the hull and zincs the other day, I happened to reach up and noted current in the port-side cockpit drain thru-hull. It is above the waterline and obviously attached to something inside that is producing the current. I have to tear Eleanor’s bed apart to determine the cause, so I haven’t done this yet.

A pin hole is clearly visible here, just adjacent to the crimp weld. There are
many others along this seam, a half-a-dozen or so visible in this picture.

Poor welding: There is no reason the interior spot welds on the baffle tabs should be apparent on the outside of the tank as they are. But every one of these welds is corroded on the outside of the tank and leaking. My understanding is that it takes an experienced welder to not “overdue” things. I think these welds were overdone. The tank seams were crimped and then welded. I think this was not the best approach, resulting in crevices where crevice and pitting corrosion can occur—and it looks like it might have.

This is how all of the interior baffle welds look on the outside of both tanks.

I’ve got the new tanks in the boat and installed. Tomorrow I am going to fill them with water to ensure there is no settling or position changes that will happen when they weigh 450 pounds each. Then I will continue working to get the floor joists in their exact positions before I glass them to the hull. From there, attaching the flooring and replacing all of the furniture will be time-intensive, but straightforward.

--MR

Here is how things looked just before I dropped the
new tanks in: all freshly painted with BilgeKote.

A Fine Day By Michael

2011-12-02T19:43:00.001-07:00

Frances rode her bike into the marina the other
day. I recovered it for her. A little WD-40 and
she is good to go.

Yesterday, nobody worked on the boat. Instead, we crewed on a friend's boat, Wondertime, for the first leg of the Banderas Bay Blast, a 3-day sailing race event sponsored by Latitude 38 and to benefit local children.

It was very, very nice.

We left the dock midday and crossed the starting line outside the La Cruz marina about 1:45. For the next few hours, we charged ahead, tacking north towards our destination: the anchorage off Punta Mita.

When we crossed the finish line at dusk, the committee boat sounded a blast and announced our finish over the VHF. We dropped the hook, whipped up some fresh guacamole, and opened some cold beers. The sunset was unreal: a huge, fusia ball on the horizon. But to our dismay, the finale was precisely obsured by an anchored power boat several hundred yards off the port side.

Today Windy and the girls bussed over to Paradise Village Marina to watch Wondertime arrive from their downwind, second leg of the race. The kids are all eager to play in the pool. Tomorrow they'll return to Paradise where Eleanor and Frances will participate in the chili cook-off as members of the La Cruz Kids Club.

Here are the Wondertime and Del Viento girls during the race. I guess this was our
foredeck crew, here managing the twin head sails.

I'm remaining here in the La Cruz to work on the boat. Our tanks arrived today, our anchor roller modifications were completed yesterday, and the four new chainplates for the lower stays will be here by Wednesday. Everything has come together and suddenly the ball is in my court; our escape from the marina hinges on my efforts. Racing on Wondertime yesterday was a good catalyst for the push to our own finish line.

--MR

Note: we first met Michael and Sara and their girls Leah (5) and Holly (3) in Olympia, Washington on our car trip from D.C. to Mexico. They arrived here in La Cruz about a week ago and Frances could not be happier to have a playmate her own age in Leah. The two get along like peanut butter and jelly.

Here is our foredeck crew post-race with a pirate. This pirate is Richard Spindler, publisher
of the sailing magazine Latitude 38. I met Windy 15 years ago through an ad she posted in
Latitude 38.

This picture I took from the Latitude 38 blog, 'Lectronic Latitude. Wondertime is a
Benford 38, a ketch with both a headsail and a staysail. The pinkish blob on deck
in this low-res pic is the girls and Windy sitting atop the cabin on the windward
side. In fact, today 'Lectronic Latitude posted this picture and a few more
featuring Eleanor and Frances and other cruising kids.

Prevaricator, Me By Michael

2011-11-28T19:10:00.000-07:00

I'm not working only on the boat, I'm also working
on my appearance--going for the Dan Haggerty meets
Merlin Olsen look. The necklace was my birthday
gift from Frances. It has since fallen apart and
she has no interest in reconstructing it. (This is
okay by me as I don't think Dan Haggerty
wore a necklace.)

I jumped up when he passed, “Senor!”

The slight, dark-skinned old man pulled over and stopped his cargo trike. I walked over and asked what flavors of ice cream he had. I ordered chocolate, one scoop. He held up a small plastic cup and said something. I nodded to indicate, “Yep, that’ll be fine.” He pushed it toward me more insistently and I realized he had asked me to hold the cup; he had only one arm and needed it free to scoop the homemade ice cream from his crude cooler.

His parting words to me were in English—clear, slow and deliberate: “Where—are—you—from?”

“Los Estados Unidos,” I said. He nodded seriously. I said goodbye and walked back to sit on the curb in front of the machine shop (the one building my new stainless steel water tanks), in an off-the-beaten-track part of Puerto Vallarta. My ice cream was already gone when he rode up to me.

“I—want—to—ask—you—a—question—please.”

He got off his bike and sat next to me, urgently thumbing through an English grammar book, written in Spanish. I welcomed the distraction as I was killing time. It took him quite a while, about two minutes, before he found the page he was looking for. I was eager to be the hero; he couldn’t possibly know that on this day, on this dusty little Mexican street, he’d sold ice cream to an English major who relishes talk of language and grammar.

I studied the page he had open, trying to anticipate his question. It looked like verb tense instruction.

“What—does—this—mean?” He pressed his thumb hard onto the page, underscoring a line of words in bold face, the same word in several tenses: nonplus, nonplused, nonplusses, nonplussing.

I felt a flush of panic. I smiled and nodded reassuringly, in spite of myself. I knew his question had nothing to do with grammar, but I started to answer a grammar question, hopefully. “Esta palabra aqui esta en muchas formas, para indica el tiempo, como futuro, presente, pasado, …”

“Si, si, claro…but—what—does—this—word—mean—nonplus?”

I’d been racking my brain for the past 30 seconds trying to answer the same question. I’ve read the word hundreds of times, probably understanding the context, but never the exact meaning. What a good word this was, nonplus, and I’d never made it my own. And I fancy myself a writer?

I don’t really know why what happened next, happened. But I began to define this word to the ice cream salesman in a desperate hope that in doing so, the meaning would somehow make itself known to me.

“Um, ok. Es como sorpresa, pero mal. Es como el siento de la persona cuando hay una sorpresa mal, pero la persona no esta enojado.”

The ice cream salesman asked for an example. I spoke and pantomimed one in Spanish, a lame example to match my completely incorrect definition, and he carefully repeated his understanding in English.

“I—ride—my—bicycle—on—the—street—and—lady—jump—in—front—of—me—and—a—big—surprise—and—I—turn—quick—and—I—not—happy—but—I—not—mad. I—nonplused?”

“Exactamente!”

Did I just say that?

While I really think I believed I could somehow divine a definition for that word as I spoke, it is pretty shameful that I didn’t retract at some point.

“Thank—you—I—hope—to—see—you—again—on—this—street.”

“Adios!”

And that is it, that is the way it went down. Utterly nonplused, I lied to an elderly, disabled street vendor, probably a poet in his spare time, working hard to translate his work into English. Pretty shameful because he couldn’t possibly know that on this day, on this dusty little Mexican street, he’d sold ice cream to an English major who relishes talk of language and grammar and who doesn't really know the meaning of a common English word.

--MR

After touring Bumfuzzle a couple weeks back, we played
in one of the pools in Paradise. The girls enjoyed them-
selves like nobody's business. This is Frances zipping
down a slide, for the 25th time.

After teaching myself to whip a line, I quickly did a half-dozen more.
Then I passed on my new-found knowledge to Windy. Next we need
to learn to splice.

In Deep By Michael

2011-11-22T21:39:00.000-07:00

The wide angle lens is very distorting. The shallow-looking cavity
where the floor is removed held two wedge-shaped water tanks
that are 50 gallons each. It took two days to get to this point.
Note the furniture suspended next to the mast. There is a solid
metal rod that runs parallel to the mast that passes through
the nice trim on this piece. It was easier to slide it up on the
rod than to remove either the trim or the rod. I have no
idea what this rod is for.

A close friend emailed the other day to say she was enjoying recent posts about boat work, but would really like to hear more about the girls and what they are up to. So anyway, I got the water tanks out, both sitting on the dock tonight. I didn't get them out in time to take them to the machine shop today, but that is the first thing on my agenda tomorrow morning.

I'm borrowing a car from Tim aboard Sababa. He has an old Hyundai he brought down from Arizona a couple of weeks ago. I figure I'll stick one tank at a time in the back and bungy the trunk lid down.

I'll know more tomorrow, but assuming the turnaround time on the tanks is one week, and assuming it takes me three days to reinstall them: I could complete this project by the first weekend in December. And if I can wrap up the chain plate and anchor roller projects in the interim, we could be out sailing that weekend!

Oh, Windy and the girls are probably going to head into Puerto Vallarta tomorrow to check out the new Happy Feet movie, a nice respite that will keep them off the boat while I paint the bilge with some special-purpose, toxic polyurethane paint.

--MR

This is how things looked at the end of day one. Note the shiny, still-unremoved,
stainless steel water tanks beneath the floor joists. Oh, and there is Frances
in her skivvies, trying to squeeze past the stack of tool boxes on the way
out of the head. Of course, since the holding tank had to come out to access
the water tanks, nobody is using the head today...nor tomorrow, nor the following day.

Polytheylene Water Tanks? By Michael

2011-11-18T13:17:00.001-07:00

The chain plate for the port aft lower stay. Again,
evidence of water penetrating the sealant at the
deck and running down behind the chain plate to
corrode the bolts and back face. I won't know
whether we'll have to replace this until I remove
it and polish it, looking for cracks and
extreme pitting.

Today the bedding compound around the chain plates for the upper stays is set. This means I can reattach these stays and detach the lower stays so I can remove and inspect those chain plates. I began removing wood trim to access the four chain plates for the lower stays. There is evidence of water leaking down these, just as there was on the chain plates for the upper stays. Accordingly, I removed additional trim to see if I could find additional leaks.

Yesterday, I began the water tank replacement project. I cleared out the storage spaces under the settees (both reorganizing a lot of stuff that needed to be reorganized, and finding a lot of things we will go ahead and try to sell at the marine swap meet tomorrow). I also removed all of the bungs in the floor that have to come out to remove the water tanks and I figured out how to disassemble the dinette. I am working at a pace to remove the tanks late Monday so that I can get them to the shop Tuesday morning (Monday is a big Mexican holiday, Dia de la Revolucion, commemorating the start of the Mexican revolution in 1910).

A couple folks commented and others emailed about our likely choice of stainless steel for replacing our problematic stainless steel water tanks. I failed to mention we did consider polyethylene tanks and we haven’t ruled them out. In fact, polyethylene was my first choice and before we realized the leaking was getting progressively worse, I figured we would live with the leaks until we got to San Diego, find a place that made custom polyethylene tanks, and replace our two tanks with these (I don’t think we can have these fabricated in Mexico and I don’t want to wait for large, custom tanks to be shipped to us here).

Bolts securing a deck fitting are shown here,
just forward of the chain plate pictured above.
The mold in this picture and the one above,
is likely caused by water slowly leaking
around these bolts and along the intersection
between the hull sides and deck underside.
More rebedding is in order.

But about the time I realized we have to remedy this problem before we leave the dock, I learned more about polyethylene tanks. They can’t be built with traditional baffles. My understanding is that they are roto-molded and any baffles have to be part of the shape, which creates a lot of negative space that decreases holding capacity. The approach then is to use multiple small tanks, which is a poor compromise for a few reasons, including cost, potential leaks from additional fittings in difficult-to-access places, and additional mounting considerations (for example, whereby a single large tank may span two supports, multiple tanks may require additional supports). Another drawback is that polyethylene tanks cannot be glassed in, they must be secured using straps.

Our metal tanks are wedged shaped to take advantage of the interior hull space. One is starboard and one is port, mounted symmetrically. It is difficult to see how well they use the space (there is bilge area beneath them) until I remove them. It may be that we can use the existing space in a different and effective way with multiple, rectangular-shaped polyethylene tanks, but I doubt it.

Don’t get me wrong, were I building a boat from scratch, I would configure it to use off-the-shelf polyethylene tanks. They are non-toxic and will last forever. But given where we are and the configuration we are working with, I suspect we’ll see that is straightforward to repair our existing tanks (maybe cutting off and replacing the bottom, for example) and that they make good use of the available space. I think we will then reach a conclusion about the reason these failed and move forward with stainless steel. After all, the previous tanks were stainless and were not replaced until 30 years passed (and our neighbor in the marina, Cactus Tree, is a Mariner 31 with 40-year-old stainless steel water tanks). I’m convinced it is all about installing them properly, ensuring the exterior stays dry, and preventing anything caustic (including chorine) from corroding the tank. I hope I’m right.

--MR

Eleanor proudly displaying the doll she made for me for my
43rd birthday. She enjoys sewing and proudly keeps
her own sewing kit in a tupperware container.

Perspective By Michael

2011-11-15T22:50:00.001-07:00

2007 picture showing the marina
construction nearly complete

On one of the last days of October, Windy and I sat in our beach chairs at dusk on the small beach adjacent to the marina. It is a picturesque spot, maybe a five-minute walk from our boat. The surf is usually very small here, in the lee of Punta de Mita. The girls like that the water is shallow for hundreds of feet. The view of nearly the entire Banderas Bay is magnificent.

Our little strip of beach is only three-years-old, created during construction of Marina Riviera Nayarit. This development forever changed the character and geography of La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, a fishing-based pueblo founded in the 1930s. I was here in 1997, anchored out in our last boat. Today the town is busier and seems more prosperous. But gone forever is the little crescent-shaped beach littered with fishermen’s pangas, cruisers’ dinghies, and plastic tables and chairs of waterside bars and eateries. In fact, the sense of a distinct bay is gone with the marina breakwater redefining the coastline.

An older gringo walked in from the surf. He had a large, vertical scar in the middle of his chest, like my grandfather had. He chatted with a Mexican family before he walked by us and stopped to introduce himself. We gave him our abbreviated story and he gave us his.

Older Gringo is a local, an ex-pat who has lived in La Cruz for a long time. We went back and forth with names of people we know who live nearby, both of us trying to reach a common understanding of where in town his house is located.

Profligate pulled in a couple of days ago. This
63-foot cat is a working boat owned by the
publisher of Latitude 38. You can read their
recent take on La Cruz here.

“Ah, and so you were one of the homeowners up in arms over the building of the marina, because it changed your beach front property into one that fronts the parking lot behind the fish market?”

“Yes and no,” he replied. He said that his house was thusly affected, and that his neighbors each ponied up hundreds of dollars every month to pay the lawyers who fought the proposed development tooth-and-nail. He said they were all ex-pats like him. He said most have moved on. He said his view is very different, that he didn’t join the fight against the development.

I think I raised my eyebrows at this point, both surprised and perplexed.

“Even though I own property here, and even though I am here for a very long time, I am a guest in this country.” He added that just as he has no right to vote in a Mexican election, he has no right trying to alter the course of development in this community. “I am a guest,” he repeated.*

I thought of the old Hotel Punta Chivato (now called the Hotel Posada de las Flores). In the 1980s, an Oregon couple took their turn in the storied ownership history of the famous spot on Mexico’s Baja peninsula, near Mulege. They put everything they had into the place. As their restoration was nearly complete, the Mexico ejido system forced them to surrender the property when it was deemed communal land. (This system was subsequently eliminated in the early 1990s when NAFTA passed, in a Mexican bid to quell anxious foreign investors.) Surely that couple understood the risks of their foreign investment, or should have. I wondered if Old Gringo had been in their shoes, would he have fought the confiscation of his property?

Probably not. I reasoned that the scar on Old Gringo’s chest is a manifestation of a previous, stress-filled life. I imagined that his seeming Zen-like passivity and perspective is deliberate, a healthy, post-surgery change in attitude.

I thought about myself and whether I’d made any similar changes since we left D.C. I don’t think I am a stressed out individual (not in that life nor in this life), but Windy reminds me regularly that I don’t slow down, that I always have to be working on something. It is sometimes maddening to me that she is not stressed about all of the things on the perpetual To-Do list that lives in my head. I’m almost always anxious about getting things done according to the timelines we impose.

Old Gringo would probably remind me that we started cruising June 3, more than five months ago, and that the time for timelines is passed, and that this is our new life, that I need to slow down and enjoy it, not focusing on what it will be, but enjoying what is--just as I imagined I would all of those years I sat in a cubicle dreaming of just this. I think he would be exactly right on that point.

--MR

* I am cognizant that I am a guest in Mexico. Even when I’m frustrated by inefficiencies characteristic of the Mexican way of doing some things, I try and mimic the attitudes of the Mexicans around me, no matter how absurd it seems. For example, I recently made a trip to Home Depot with a two-foot piece of dirty, torn hose in-hand, hoping to find a replacement. I knew I could not walk through that front door with my hose before a security guard at the entrance put a small sticker on it that he initialed, indicating the hose is not store merchandise. Absurd as that would seem in the U.S., here it is reality, in several stores. So with a bunch of people clustered around the guard at the entrance on this day, I waited my turn to have a small, initialed sticker put on a piece of hose that looked like trash. Of course, the flip side is that some things are extremely efficient, such as getting a part welded or just about any other transaction with a tradesperson.

This is Dona Mari, a fixture here at the marina. She spends her days recovering
aluminum cans from the marina recycling bins and then pulling them into town
in her cart. Here she is sitting doing needlepoint. This is the first time I've seen
her resting, at the marina or in town. She seemed pleased to have her picture
taken, but I could not get her to smile to save my life. The reason may not be
that she is hiding poor dental work, as there are other possible reasons.

Happenings By Michael

2011-11-13T21:48:00.001-07:00

Our brand new RuleMate 2000 GPH bilge pump is wet and
corroded inside. Check out that circuit board! It was defective
in that the wire grommet wasn't properly seated. West Marine
says I can return it for store credit when we're in the States
next summer. Ironically, if the pump hadn't been submerged
in the water from our leaking tanks, we may not have
discovered this problem until we really needed the pump.

A lot has been happening around here lately and yet we are still in the same place and our prospects for getting out of here by the end of November are tentative. There are three things holding us back: chain plates, port lights, and water tanks.

The Chain Plates

I installed and bedded (sealed) the two new chain plates for the upper stays. The bedding compound I used is a popular 3M product called 5200, a polyurethane sealant with astounding adhesive properties. In fact, it adheres so well that ten years from now—when I go to remove and inspect these plates—I will likely curse myself for using this stuff. But no water must get into the joint, not a drop. Stainless steel, generally immune to the rusting and corrosion that plagues other iron-containing alloys, is subject to crevice corrosion and pitting corrosion. Both of these types of corrosion are apparent on the chain plates we removed.

Of course, corrosion weakens the metal. As I explained in recent posts (here and here), this could be really bad.

So pretty, I hate to re-install the teak
trim that hides it.

In our case, water found its way through the existing bedding compound, through gaps probably only a few micrometers wide. Some of that water remained in the crevice where the chain plate passes through the deck, and some found its way further down, behind the chain plate. In both cases, this water sat stagnant and over a long period of time broke down the oxide film that stainless steel needs to remain corrosion free.

I am going to wait five more days for the 5200 to set before I attach the new upper stays. At this point, I will remove all four of the chain plates for the lower stays. (I can’t remove the lowers sooner because they are holding up the mast while the uppers are not attached.) If the lowers are okay, I will reinstall them. If they are corroded too, we will wait for new ones to be fabricated.

The Port Lights

We can sail away without installing the port lights. But I don’t want to. The existing port lights don’t open and you can’t see through them as they are opaque. The new port lights are beautiful stainless works of art that provide additional visibility and ventilation. Installing them at the dock will be easier than doing so at anchor and the sooner we get them installed, the sooner we clear these boxes out of the cabin. Windy isn’t as adamant about doing this before we leave, so we’ll see.

In this picture, you can see the pitting corrosion on the back of the old chain plate and in the
background, the rust staining on the fiberglass against which the plate was held for 33 years.

Water Tanks

They leak, both of them, a lot. We have decided to replace them here in Banderas Bay. This will be a big and disruptive project. These leaking stainless steel tanks are actually replacements of the originals. These were made in San Carlos, Mexico in 2008 using a thicker wall to prevent just the problem we are having now. Apparently, either the metal used was flawed or an inferior grade or the tanks were installed in such a way that crevice corrosion, pitting corrosion, or some form of electrolysis attacked them. Interestingly, I don't see any evidence of rust staining in the bilge where the water runs out from under these tanks.

Once they are out, we will have a better idea of what is causing the leaking. To get them out, I’ll remove the dinette, the flooring in the main part of the cabin, the holding tank, the floor joists, and finally the tanks. The floor joists are attached to the hull beneath the settees with fiberglass tabbing. The tanks are glassed to structural members down low. I will cut all of this away and then learn all about glass and epoxy when I put them back in.

We strongly considered two other options for storing potable water aboard: building integrated fiberglass/epoxy tanks and using flexible water tanks. Though each promises a less disruptive solution to our problem, neither matches the permanent (in theory), non-toxic solution of new stainless steel tanks.

I don’t have an estimate from him yet, but I was very impressed last week when I visited the machine shop of Hilario Gonzalez in Puerto Vallarta. Several people have recommended several machine shops around the Bay, but Gonzalez’s name came from a few independent sources I trust. He will likely make our new tanks.

I will write more about this project as it progresses. I start tomorrow.

--MR

There is no promise I could not have exacted from Eleanor and Frances in exchange
for letting them have one of these pups. Unfortunately, the answer was no.

10 Things That Surprised Me About Mexico By Michael

2011-11-09T21:30:00.000-07:00

This was the price of avocados at a local market
after prices started to come down. Note
the recent decrease here from 65 to 64 pesos
(about $5.50 USD at the then exchange rate)
per kilo. They were at 79 pesos when we
arrived and today they sell for 16!

Vegetarian-friendly taco stands
At one time or another, every Mexico cruiser’s blog waxes poetic about the ubiquitous Mexican taco stand. They write about the best tasting fish tacos, ever. They rate their favorite carne asada taco stands. They talk about chicken street tacos so good, they return over and over again even after suffering bouts of stomach and intestinal distress that can be absolutely traced back to said stand. With only these references, a vegetarian is likely to conclude that taco stands offer nothing for them but an empty tortilla. Nobody talks about the glorious bean or cheese tacos that can often be had at the same stands. Glorious tacos they are, stuffed to the gills with fresh cilantro, salsa Mexicana, finely shredded cabbage, pink pickled onions, and a slab of queso blanco—for about 8 pesos (65 cents).

Few cruising catamarans
Been to the big boat shows on the east or west coast of the U.S. lately? Read any of the mainstream sailing magazines over the past few years? Maybe you are under the impression, like me, that the cruising monohull is nearly dead, displaced (pardon the pun) by seas and ports brimming with non-heeling, big-windowed catamarans. This ain’t the case in Banderas Bay. I have seen only a handful of multihulls since we arrived, and none occupied. Anecdotally, among the cruising families whose blogs are linked on this site, the mono-to-multi ratio is 11-7.

Few boat parts available
I knew coming that boat parts are expensive in Mexico, but I wasn’t prepared for how scarce they are. Those white rail clamps used to mount solar panels and such? I can’t find them anywhere. Non-silicone-based caulks are in short supply and very difficult to find. There are stores that sell Ancor wire, but common sizes are out-of-stock and replenishment can take weeks. Need 12-2 cable in the next couple of weeks? Make due with 14-2 or 10-2. Same story with 1/2-inch reinforced hose. It may be that inventories are kept low during the off-season.

Oxxo is everywhere
When a Starbucks opens its doors across the block from another Starbucks, people mock the coffee empire. These same folks have not seen an Oxxo convenience store in Mexico. In fact, nobody has ever seen a single Oxxo store in Mexico because if you are standing in sight of one, you can’t help but see another, or several others. These stores resemble U.S. 7-11 stores and are owned by the richest man on earth, Carlos Slim.

Here an Oxxo, there an Oxxo, everywhere an Oxxo.

Guns are everywhere
I’ve travelled Mexico since the 1980s and am used to seeing young Mexican men in military uniforms carrying M-16s. But this is usually at airports and other points of entry. Walking the streets of a Mexican town, these sightings were rare. This time, about a dozen years since my last visit, big automatic guns are everywhere. They’re carried by the Federales as well as local police and private security. Here at the marina, my girls regularly walk by men carrying Uzis. I think the change is related to the internal war on narcotics-related violence. Television commercials and billboards selling the effectiveness of the government’s efforts to keep the people safe, are prevalent.

No lime juice
Limes are cheap and plentiful. Every small store sells 14 types of manual juicers. But it will take a day of shopping and some luck to come across a bottle of plain lime juice. Of course, this anomaly is actually a lesson: if I’m so desperate for a margarita, I need to let go of my expedience-trumps-all U.S. mentality and squeeze some limes—it’ll make a better margarita anyway.

Avocados can be expensive
This one was a shock. When we arrived, avocados could not be had anyplace for less than about 79 pesos per kilo. At the then exchange rate, this was more expensive than the avocados we could buy at Trader Joes in D.C….and those were imported from Mexico. They’ve steadily decreased in price since we arrived and everyone says it is a normal seasonal price fluctuation, go figure. (Note: just bought some yesterday for 16 pesos per kilo, prices have dropped dramatically.) Also, the BBC has another take.

Left turns on the roadway
In the U.S., we are trained to watch for oncoming traffic as we make left turns across their path. In Mexico, the stakes are doubled because left turns are made from a far right lane, so you’re crossing traffic moving in the same direction as well as oncoming traffic. Accordingly, left turns are made only at intersections and only with a green arrow. In addition to this being disconcerting, it also means doing a lot of backtracking. To visit a store on the opposite side of the highway, you have to know where it is in advance so that you can get in a far right lane (separated by a median from the center lanes) and at the first intersection past the store, make a u-turn and head back the other direction.

Pico de gallo ain't pico de gallo
What we are all trained to refer to in the U.S. as pico de gallo (the fresh mix of chopped tomato, onion, cilantro, and chile) is here called salsa Mexicana. Here, pico de gallo is a mix of fruits, including mango, with chile powder on them. Once this was explained to me, I understood why in every supermarket, I was always directed to a collection of plastic containers on ice, all filled only with chopped fruit. Though I've heard this may be a regional thing, that maybe outside the states of Jalisco and Nayarit, pico de gallo really means pico de gallo.

A strong Mexican middle class
This fact really challenges perceptions and images of Mexico many of us are exposed to in the U.S. Having watched Mexican films and knowing Mexicans, I was consciously aware there is a Mexican middle class, but most of my time in-country prior to this was spent in the smaller towns of Baja, another world altogether. So I don't think my subconscious had reconciled what I knew with what I'd mostly seen. As a result, I was surprised by it when we arrived. I wrote all about it in this post.

--MR

It is difficult to see, but there are two thru hull valves in this picture and 28 below-
the-waterline hose clamps. The large thru hull valve (white handle) controls the head discharge
(2 hose clamps). The smaller thru hull valve (sliver of yellow handle visible in center of the
picture) was used for head sink dischage, head intake, and head sump pump discharge
(26 hose clamps). I re-plumbed all of this. By re-routing the sump discharge to an above-
the-waterline thru hull and attaching a bronze T fitting directly to the valve,
I reduced to four the number of hose clamps on hoses coming from the smaller valve .

La Ofrenda And Halloween By Michael

2011-11-08T00:23:00.000-07:00

A big part of the Mexican celebration for Dia de los Muertos
is the ofrenda. This offering to a deceased person
(usually a family member) is usually in the form of an altar.
This year at the marina lounge, the cruisers in residence
made an altar that honored many dearly departed.

It is hard to believe the holiday is come and gone. When we arrived September 1, it seemed totally within reason that we too would be here and gone by this time.

Not even close.

Frances honored her late Grandpa Bill. The can
of beer is for him. Unfortunately, I would bet our
boat he never drank a can of Pacifico in his life,
but it is the thought that counts.

I am knee deep in getting the outboards running, the dinghy patched, a couple additional coats of varnish applied (so that we don't lose the work we did), and readying ourselves for the biggest project of them all: removing the water tanks and then replacing them (more about this in a separate post). I am waiting for our new chain plates and anchor roller to be fabricated (so I can then remove the other chain plates). Our new port lights still sit in their boxes.

Strike knee deep, we are neck deep. But we paid for our slip only through the end of November; hopefully we will be ready to sail away at that time (and at the new winter slip rates, we had better be ready to depart).

Things are starting to buzz here at the marina and in La Cruz. Hatches shut tight on boats dormant since we arrived, are now open New faces keep popping up on the docks and at the yacht club. Store fronts in town that looked as though they were shuttered for years, are now bright, cheery, and alive. More people are milling about. The first boat flying a 2011 Ha-Ha burgee sailed in yesterday. The farmers' markets are back up and running. The first cruisers' swap meet is on the calendar (November 19).

The change reminds me of D.C. after a winter of windows shut tight and faces of the few pedestrians wrapped in scarves. Suddenly one weekend it seems everyone is outside bustling, the sound of lawnmowers vibrates the air, and the smell of fresh cut grass amplifies the notion that things have awakened.

The trick-or-treaters of Marina Riviera Nayarit 2011: (left to right) Christian of Andiamo III as a
zombie, Abby of Andiamo III as the summer fairy, Shandro of Kenta Anae as King Peter, Frances of
Del Viento as a ghost, Matero of Kenta Anae as Little Red Riding Hood, and Eleanor of
Del Viento as the evil queen of the dead.

For treats, all of the kids walked the docks and visted boats with either an anchor light or spreader lights on, identifying them as per official Halloween nautical custom.

--MR

Cruisers again hosted the orphans from nearby Bucerias for a holiday party.
Here Eleanor and Frances are engaged in a game of Pato, Pato, Ganso (or
duck, duck, goose). Musical chairs is another favorite of this crowd.

Eleanor instructing a couple of the boys on the fine points of making masks.

Tami of Andiamo III (standing) and Terry of Ulalena (sitting) working with the cruiser
kids to make this Rice Crispy, marshmallow, food coloring, gummi worm thing they
called sushi...yuck...but all the kids at the party loved it.