October 1998

Tuesday September 29     In marina Santa Rosalia.

We took an interesting trip yesterday into the hills near the town of Mulege, up a riverbed to some caves with great Indian paintings. They were very old but the colors are still bright because they are not exposed to the bright sunlight. The hike itself was wonderful as the canyon was beautiful. Very green plant life against water-cut red stone. Part of the trip we actually had to swim through some deep holes in the river; places where the river was constricted by rocks had filled wall to wall with water. It was a warm day so it was very pleasant to be wet. We had parked at an outlying ranch and when we returned to the ranch, our guide fixed us lunch using the kitchen at the ranch. The kitchen was in an outside patio-type area so we could watch the cooking in progress. The ranch raises goats and cows to make cheese and it was fresh and delicious!! It is required to have a guide to visit the paintings because the Mexican government is trying to preserve the paintings. We had a wonderful and informative guide, Salvador Castro. He has been guiding into this area for years and knew lots of facts about the plants and animals as well as the paintings and he spoke great English. We were accompanied by our friends Manuela from "Paradise" and Dar from "Mimosa". Tomorrow we are off to San Diego (by car) to pick up mail, needed boat parts and say our hello’s to Bill’s mother and brother.

Friday 2 October

With us on our trip to San Diego is Dick from "Irie", leaving Karen and their doggies to guard the boats. He too has lots of shopping and paperwork to do in the US. We drove to Ensenada on Wednesday making stops in San Ignacio and El Rosario on the way. The Mission in San Ignacio still has ham-radio antennas on one of its side buildings and I wondered if the same priest is still in the area that we tried to track down 30 years ago when we drove down the peninsula before the road was paved. At that time, my father had talked to the priest on his radio and we tried unsuccessfully to track him down as he traveled between the churches of his parish.

We stopped for food and fuel in El Rosario and should have stopped for the night in San Quintin as the sun set soon after we passed that town (we thought Ensenada was closer than it is). Driving in Baja after dark is not smart as cows tend to hide in the low spots in the road where they can not be seen until too late. The section of road between San Quintin and Ensenada is mostly populated but the road was under repair in long stretches making the driving difficult. We had no problems, but it was dumb anyway. Yesterday we finished the journey to San Diego and spent the rest of the day in a marathon shopping spree, picking up all the essential goodies on our list, except items from the marine stores.

Wednesday 7 October

We are still in San Diego waiting for the outboard motor parts to arrive. Since we have finished all the "need to do" items on the list, we got to play today. Jimmy Buffett is here in Chula Vista for a concert tonight and the Galley at the Marina had a pre-concert concert with their normal Sunday band, Koko Loco. We had enjoyed listening to Koko Loco most Sunday evenings the year we spent in Chula Vista Marina and it was good to see the band again. We enjoyed the music at the restaurant this afternoon along with beer and lunch of "Cheeseburgers in Paradise". The Buffett concert tickets sold out very soon after going on sale so we could not attend it.

Dick signed up to take the entry level ham-radio test on next Saturday morning so he spent the day studying. Tomorrow Bill and I will make one last use of our annual Disneyland passes and visit the park while Dick remains in the hotel room studying. The ham license has proven to be real valuable while cruising both to keep track of other cruisers and to pass messages to family and friends in the states.

Saturday 10 October

Bill and I had a great time at Disneyland on Thursday, the crowds were small and composed mostly of young families with grandma. The lines were short and no one seemed to be rushing around. It was one of our more relaxing trips to the Magic Kingdom.

Our outboard parts were finally in at Downwind Marine on Friday and we picked them up, then drove to a Motel 6 in Carlsbad so we would be near to where Dick would be taking the ham test this morning.

Monday 12 October

Back in Santa Rosalia, we arrived late in the afternoon yesterday after a long days drive from San Quintin. Dick passed his tests for the no-code tech ham radio license Saturday morning and we immediately started south in heavy south bound traffic. We spent some time at the offices on the Mexican side of the boarder while Bill picked up car import papers for mainland Mexico, Dick got his and Karen’s visas stamped for another 6 months and we declared our more expensive purchases to customs. We had a great customs inspector that got us through with "no problema" but then we almost got hung up with the uniformed guard at the exit. We had made the mistake of telling the uniformed officer that we lived on boats in Santa Rosalia and he was not going to let us through without additional papers declaring that we had paid duty on boat items. Our understanding customs official came over and cleared things up so we were off.

Tomorrow evening we head across to the mainland with the car on the ferry. It leaves late in the evening and arrives in Guymas early Wednesday morning.

Thursday 15 October

We spent last night in a little town south of Los Moches. We crossed to the mainland on the ferry Tuesday as planned. It was an all night crossing in very calm seas. The seas must not always be such, because when Bill went down to drive the car off the ferry, after we docked, the vehicles had all been well tied down and they had to wait for the crew to untie them. We arrived soon after sunrise, and after some wandering around (we didn’t have a street map of Guymas), we found the main road south. The road is a toll road and in very good shape, similar to the interstate system in the US. Being able to drive at freeway speeds, we arrived at the hotel in the early afternoon and decided to stay. In order to find food and motels, we had to leave the toll road and travel the old, free road which actually passes through the little towns. The old road is also a good road but is only two lanes wide. The roads here in the state of Sinaloa have nice wide shoulders, that were nonexistent in Baja and further north on the mainland. From the motel, Mazatlan is only about 5 hours away so we plan to continued on the older road to the outskirts of the city today.

The landscape here has changed from the dry desert at Guymas (similar to that in Baja) to green farmland as we drove south. There are rivers here that originate in the mountains to the east that provide water for irrigation.

Wednesday 21 October

Another week is almost past. We arrived in Mazatlan Thursday evening arriving via the "back door" as we had been driving on the old Hwy 15. We cut over to the ocean on the road to the Mazatlan beaches. This road led to the beach area north of town and following the beach road south we soon ran into Marina Mazatlan. We met John and Fran from "Barnacle" just returning from the Immigration, where they had started the renewal process for their FM3 visas. Armed with the information that John and Fran had gathered we all drove over to Immigration Friday morning, and got our papers in order. Of course we were missing a few papers, so Bill and I returned again Monday to complete the paperwork. We are to pick up are visas in one week, and be all set for another year here in Mexico.

While in Mazatlan we stayed at a cheap older hotel right next to the great hamburger place of Thorny’s Surf Burgers. It was a good location but had no air conditioning and a rather lumpy bed. In another week or so the lack of air conditioning should not be a problem, but this week, three late season hurricanes decided to raise their ugly heads and with it the humidity soared. It even, for a time, looked like one of the storms would hit Mazatlan; so we made daily runs to the marina to check the storm plots posted there by the harbor master. We spent quite a bit of time exploring Mazatlan’s tourist areas. One day we spent walking around the old town and the mercado there; another day we walked along the Malicon checking out the beaches and the waves at Olas Altas; and another time we drove out to the base of the lighthouse along the windy steep road that continued from the Malicon over to the harbor area.

While in Mazatlan we were also inundated with requests to attend time-share marketing presentations. We were constantly stopped on the street with promises of free tickets for tourist activities, if only we would attend a free breakfast and listen to the marketing spiel. We did attend one and received tickets to the Mexican Fiesta dinner at Playa Mazatlan resort. We attended the fiesta dinner last night and it was very good. The food was a varied representation of Mexican dishes and the entertainment was enjoyable.

Next week Doreen's father is to be in Guadalajara visiting an old friend so we are heading off in that direction while we wait for the visa renewal.

Thursday, 22 October

We are currently in Tepic (aboutr half way between Mazatlan and Guadalajara) having spent much of yesterday driving from Mazatlan. The road between Mazatlan and here is pretty poor and carries lots of traffic until the new divided toll road is met. The toll road is completed the rest of the way to Guadalajara so the next stretch should be much easier. Tepic is the capital of the state of Nayarit, but they do not get much American tourist traffic here; our Spanish is being well exercised!  We enjoyed the local anthropological museum which had much better explanations of Aztec and pre-Aztec eras than we had encountered before.

Friday 23 October

We made it to Guadalajara and have even found a motel with safe parking for the car. We arrived in town about noon and headed into the center of town looking for Hotel Frances, a old hotel in the center of the historic district. We found the hotel but there was no place for the car so we continued on. This is where we made a mistake, as we took a main road north and then found the "around the city" road and headed east instead of west. We ended up out of town in the country before we stopped at a gas station to find a phone. Bill called my dad’s friend, Don Goodwine, to find out which part of town that he lived in. It was back near our inbound track. After another hour and another trip through the town center we found a Burger King and another phone nearer to Don’s residence. This time the directions got us to Don’s front door with only a few wrong turns. My dad was there to greet us at the door. Bill then took advantage of a web connection and answered the many computer questions of dad and his friend. We found a motel nearby, a quaint place but with a good bed and a very nice shower with hot water and only $12 per night.

Thursday October 29

We are back in Mazatlan after spending 5 days in Guadalajara where Bill had spent much time on the web gathering information. Having left Guadalajara early Wednesday morning, we were back in Mazatlan by 3PM local time. The road between Guadalajara and Tepic is a great fast toll road and we were to Tepic by 9 in the morning. The good road ends just north of Tepic and because of all the trucks on the road, the going was slow until we reached the lowlands. It was still a two lane road but there were enough straight sections that passing the slow vehicles was doable. We made good time until we reached the military checkpoint just south of Ciudad Union where the trucks seemed to back up for miles and we all had to creep along.

We went to immigration this morning and our paperwork will not be completed for another ten days. Andrea and Judy from The Dalles are currently vacationing in Mazatlan so we tracked them down and spent an enjoyable evening catching up on the current activities in our hometown.

Tuesday November 3

We finally have our renewed FM3 and are legal in Mexico for another year. We returned to immigration on Friday to ask about getting temporary paperwork so that we can get a "despacho" to move Lanikai from Santa Rosalia to Mazatlan. The officer there said that we needed the FM3 and then disappeared for awhile. When she returned she had our paperwork and told us that it would be ready on Monday. Well Monday was a holiday and the office was closed but this morning all was ready. All in all, the renewal took just under 2 weeks, which is what we originally figured it would take.

Saturday we took what is called the "country tour" with Andrea and Judy. It was a wonderful all-day trip in a van with 7 tourists and a guide. We traveled east of Mazatlan into the countryside and stopped in four little towns. In one we visited a bakery with a brick oven, and a place where floor tiles were being made. Another place that we visited was a furniture factory where they did decorative hand carvings on the furniture pieces that they made. It was a small multi-family affair and there were other similar shops scattered in this town. The next town had a wonderful old church and plaza. We arrived just as a local couple were celebrating their 25^th wedding anniversary in the church. The last stop was in Copala where we enjoyed a delicious lunch with the famous banana coconut cream pie for desert. This town is "up in the hills" and has many picturesque houses with old red tile roofs. The central plaza and church also provided photo opportunities.

Sunday we spent the afternoon with Fran and John at the beach. We drove to the beach area north of the marina and enjoyed the music, watching the superb dancing of an older couple that were also enjoying themselves, drank some beer and went for a lovely swim in the sea. After all our activities, John barbecued hamburger back on "Barnacle" for us.

Friday, November 6

Back on Santa Rosalia after a long event filled trip yesterday, we spent today getting "Lanikai" ready to head out again.

Wednesday afternoon we caught the ferry in Mazatlan and arrived in La Paz Thursday morning. We then rode a bus that transported us to the bus station down town where we got on the 11:30 bus to Santa Rosalia. Not more than an hour into our trip the bus developed mechanical problems (we were watching the movie Volcano, and as Los Angeles was being covered in lava, we started smelling smoke in the bus!) and after an hour or so of trying to fix it himself, the bus driver flagged down another bus that was going our way. We all crowded on to that bus and rode the next three hours to Ciudad Constitution with many standing in the isle. In Constitution enough riders left the bus so that there were seats for all. We continued on north and arrived in Santa Rosalia at 9PM.

Today we hosed the many weeks of dust off "Lanikai", got laundry done, bought new fishing licenses for the year, purchased some groceries and hired a diver to scrape off barnacles from the hull and prop.

Monday November 9

Lanikai is ready to head out to new places. We plan to get our "despacho" paperwork for travel this morning, make a last e-mail contact and gather up some bread and avocados and hope to be leaving the dock by noon. We are both ready to be swinging from the anchor again. Yesterday projects were finished before noon, giving us all afternoon for reading. Both of us have been reading lots of books; most marinas have a book exchange where we can trade the used ones for new tales and we have taken great advantage of this.

Later: We threw off the dock lines shortly after noon and headed out of the harbor with a light north wind. We were soon sailing and had a nice 3 hour run to the south end of Isla San Marcos under small jib and main making about 3 knots. When we turned to get into the anchorage it became a beat into strong winds and we were glad for the small sails. We anchored in the lee of the island, took a quick swim, the water was only 72F, then enjoyed the sunset as we ate dinner in the cockpit.

Thursday 12 November

Tuesday we enjoyed another downwind sail and arrived at "Marina Bradbury" in beautiful Conception Bay just before sunset. There were two other boats anchored there and Cliff on "Inclination" invited us over for coffee as soon as the hook was down. We enjoyed a relaxing few hours visiting with Cliff, drinking the coffee and then went home with a sierra that he had caught, for our dinner.

Wednesday we just spent relaxing. The NW wind did not blow again today and it was quiet and peaceful in the anchorage. Late in the afternoon we did go ashore to meet Jerry and his wife, Nola, a very nice couple that are very helpful to us crazy cruisers and who seem to even enjoy having us around. They call their small section of beach "Marina Bradbury" even though there are no marina facilities there. We really enjoyed our visit with them and left with a great sand dollar that was beautifully decorated by Nola with many small shells.

We were up early and had the hook up before 7am this morning. Lanikai motored in light northerly wind out of Bahia Conception and around Punta Conception. By 10:30 there was enough wind to raise the jib and shut down the engine. We had a great sail for five hours before we had to restart the engine to make the anchorage before dark. We entered Bahia San Juanico just as the sun was setting and had the hook down well before dark. The NW wind seemed to pick up more as we were closing in on the bay and continued to blow strongly into the night.

Saturday 14 November

The wind continued to blow Thursday night until early Friday morning and then quit for a few hours, picking up again by 10:30 in the morning and then blowing all day. The day was mostly cloudy with some sun breaks until late in the afternoon when the sky clear up completely. The wind finally died in the evening last night.

The wind came up again this morning, but not as strong as yesterday and by evening it was quite calm in the bay. This morning we went over to visit Greg and Debbie on "Tiama"; with our spare bilge pump in hand, as they had developed a water influx problem with their built in pump. Their boat is lower in the water than it was before cruising loads were added, and this put the outlet for the bilge pump below the water surface. With the anti-siphon loop no longer functioning properly, the outlet valve had to be turned off leaving them without a working bilge pump. Our spare manual pump will solve the problem for them until they can get to Mazatlan for repairs. More reading and a dingy trip into shore to visit the cruiser’s shrine-tree filled out another day.

Sunday 15 November

A morning motor sail in very light winds but with left over rolly seas brought us to Isla Carmen and a nice peaceful bay (Puerto Ballandra) where we anchored for the night. The water is cool but swim-able so we both jumped in for a dip and nice afternoon wash up in the sea. Tomorrow we will continue south to Agua Verde and wait for good weather to make the 2-3 day crossing down to Mazatlan.

Tuesday 17 November

Motoring south in calm weather and glassy seas yesterday, we arrived in Agua Verde late in the afternoon. We trailed a fish line the entire way but it yielded not a nibble, so we had to make do with rice and carne asada for dinner.

Today was another light wind kind of day. We spent part of the morning getting a few things ready on the boat for the crossing to Mazatlan, but spent most of the day reading and enjoying the sunshine. The northerly winds are expected to return on Thursday so our plan is to head out on Thursday morning about 3am so that we can at least sail part of the way across. We were up at three this morning for about 15 minutes to catch the spectacular meteor shower that was occurring.

Saturday November 21

We are tied up in Mazatlan Marina after a wonderful 2 ½ day sail from Agua Verde. We left Agua Verde at 3 AM Thursday morning with Larry and Phyllis of "Tiare" right behind us. After motoring in the light morning breezes, the main finally was full by noon so we pulled up a jib and a mizzen, shut down the engine and had a wonderfully perfect sail the rest of the afternoon. The wind died around sunset and we dropped the mizzen and motored, but by 9PM we were again under sail with the engine off. The wind continued most of the rest of the trip although there were some periods where the waves rolled the boat enough to dump the wind from the jib too obnoxiously, so we eventually dropped it and motored at low rpm with the flattened main doing most of the work. The wind was never over 20 mph and mostly around 15 for the entire trip. By Friday afternoon we realized that we had to slow down to avoid arriving before daylight, so we dropped all sails, except for the reefed main, and continued on. By evening, with a dying wind but still lumpy seas, we started the engine again as we needed the extra propwash over the rudder to help out the autopilot. We motor sailed the rest of the way in, clearing the breakwater at about 7:45 AM and were all snuggled to the dock by 8:30.  We have a slip with electricity and water, paid for until mid-April.  We have a number of boat projects to work on and plan on various inland travel trips as well.