Misc Stuff from around La Paz and Costa Baja Marina

First I want to say I am sorry that the following blog is not full of my latest adventures or photos of me catching a 450 pound Marlin on a 20 pound test line. That last statement on test line will be understood my long time fishermen or should I say fisherpersons.

I have been stripping varnish and sanding the teak on the outside of the boat. This is something I should have done while in the cool temps of the Bay area,,,,, but no!; I wait until I am in Mexico where and when the temperatures are 115 degrees. I drink about 5 gallons of water a day but I haven't pissed in two weeks. Instead I walk around looking like a man that has just stepped out of the swimming pool

I have taken some photos to share with you from around La Paz and the Marina were I and my boat stay. Mexico celebrated their Independence Day on September 16th having the usual speeches and parades. I also thought I would take some photos of one of the two cemeteries in town given that another celebration is approaching on November 2nd. That day all Mexicans celebrate the Day of the Dead.

Let me begin by letting you see what I see everyday around the marina where I now live.







The marina is surrounded on three sides my restaurant, shops, condo's and a small hotel. The boat shown is Dolce Vita. She is at rest for a couple of months waiting for the hurricane season to end. The landscape is a photo showing that Baja is mostly desert. This is on the remaining side of the marina. It does now look somewhat green because of recent rains.

Mexico's Indepenance Day, September 16th.

I was disappointed in the parade having expected more costumes and colors. There were no bands, although all of the schools had students in the parade and of course let us not forget the military. Those of us that grew up in the Midwest would also be disappointed in that there were no tractors in the parade and they didn't throw candy towards the small children.

The next photos are taken at one of the two cemeteries in town. We all recognize how many of the cemeteries are laid out within the U.S. , and it does not at all resemble what these photo's show. Many, but not all of the grave sites are made up of what could only be described as a very small and colorful homes. I think it is beautiful and many of the sites are kept up very well with fresh paint and flowers. During the Day of the Dead, family members come down to the grave sites bringing items that the dead enjoyed as they sit around the eating food and playing games as they celebrate the life of the one they now visit.

In a couple of weeks, the weather will begin to cool and normal life here will return. I will be going north in a couple of weeks spending 10 days with friends on their boat as we sail south from Santa Rosalita to La Paz. In early November another friend is coming down and sailing with me across the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlan on the mainland of Mexico.

That is all until next time when I chronicle my sail south with my friends Bill and Jean.

Until then, be safe out there.

Tropical Storm Overhead and THEN>>>>

It was early Thursday evening. Tropical storm Lowell is off the west coast of Baja and headed our way to La Paz. The center of the storm was expected to hit us around midnight. Floods and winds were predicted. The winds were only going to reach 40 mph. Hopefully nothing more that a Minnesota thunderstorm.

I had cleared the decks of the boat to prevent anything from blowing away or breaking, closed all of the hatches, ate a sandwich for dinner and settled down to read a book about a ship wreck in the early 1800's off the coast of Africa. The title is "Skeletons of the Sahara". The book is an enjoyable read and I was getting into it when it happen...............

Smash!!!! Bang!!!! Knock Knock!!!! Crash. What the hell had just happened I thought? The sound was coming from the cockpit at the back of the boat. Again, Smash, bang, crash. I opened the hatch a small crack to see if I could see what this monster was. I couldn't see anything in the dark. All I could sense was the smell of death. What could it be?

I wasn't about to walk out there to get a closer look fearing it was waiting for me so it could strike. I locked the cockpit back up a used my light to see if anything appeared in the dark. Rain was coming down hard now and the winds were picking up. Again and again, the boat shook and rocked as the noise continued. Not as often as before but as load. I thought I heard, from the corner of the cockpit, a sound only a wild animal could make as it stocked its' kill.

All that I could hope for was that this unknown creature would soon die. The cockpit was filled with blood making it look like a fresh murder seen. I went back to my book and gave it another 30 minutes to see if the noise stopped. It did. I then sat up from my couch, laid the book down and started for the hatch to unlock it.

I stepped outside and carefully and slowly moved towards the corner where the sound had come from. There it was in a pool of blood, dead. It was clear that it had been chased my something further up the food chain from itself and seeing my boat jumped in to take refuge. The name of the boat is Dolce Vita. Sweet Life in english. Not a very fitting ending for the creature that you can now view below.

La Paz and Todos Santos

It is another great morning in La Paz so I thought I would put together another blog so you can see some of the views I have here each day.

It gets warm here, or should I say HOT. However, the winds cool everything down to the high 60's in the late afternoon through the evening so sleeping is great. I wish I could say this will continue but the locals say next month it will remain hot all day and evening. That is why I am coming back to San Francisco so I can complain about the cold fog.

Those of you that I get to visit when I return will have to tell me if I have lost wieght. I think I have. I walk around town every day in the hot sun which can be as much as a mile or two and that will take the pounds off of anyone.

The boat is finally clean top to bottom. I oiled all of the wood down below given the extreme temperatures it will be going through while down here in Mexico. I am having someone check my cooling system tomorrow to hopefully give it a good bill of health. I also changed the oil the other day while it was cool, so the boat is ready to sail off again as soon as I return from California.
The beach front along the center of town has some wonderful sculptures which I have taken photos of to just prove to everyone that I am cultured after all. Even if I hang out in dive bars. To show everyone that I have not lost my sense of reality I thought I would share the first one that I could really get my arms around.

Some of you will notice that many of my photos do not have images of people in them. One of my friends got very mad at me once when I took her photo while at her cabin in the mountains, telling me I should ask first before taking photo and that it was very rude not to. So I have become very sensitive to this every since and I take care not to take photos of strangers that I can not first ask. Who said I can not become politically correct?

Here are some of the other sculptures along the water front.

The harbor I am in is towards the left side in the back of the photo that shows a woman holding a sea shell.

As a change in pace and scenery, I took a bus ride yesterday to a town across from here on the Pacific side of Baja. Todos Santos is a small town where an artist colony is growing. Many artists from outside Mexico are moving there and opening shops. One day it may be compared to Santa Fe, New Mexico. I think the most interesting was the bus ride and the country side that I viewed traveling down the road. All desert, skinny cows and small shacks where people lived and survive some how.

Here are some photos that I took to share with you all.

Hot Pepers!!!

Well that is all for now. This is getting too much like work and the reports that Randy asked me to do while at CSAA.

I will see you all when I get back to California.

Denny

We Made It---La Paz

The killer fish I caught

Made foe speed. I was going a a speed of 8MPH when I caught him. Tasted GREAT

Look at the blue waters.


Like many of the small villages we anchored near

Like many of the cafes we eat at.

Casing off of small shrimp on shore

We made a new friend

Cabo San Lucas at the Marina. Several places to spend your money

Another small village

A beach anchorage

Does anyone recognize this?

Very small cafe.

WOW! Has it been one month since I posted the last Blog? I guess so. There has been a lot of water that has passed under Dolce Vita since then and a continuation of the adventure. If you have watched our progress on the Locator web site that I gave you, I am not going to bore you about each location other than to add some photos that may highlight some of the spots.

We had only two problems after leaving San Diego and we solved both of them as we have become pros at fixing stuff without the advantage of going to a hardware store or calling a mechanic.

We continued to enjoy the many people we met and the food we ate along the way. I can't say what my favorite spot was because each one was so different.

We had to do more than expected number of 24 hour sails but other than finding ourselves tired after those legs, they were uneventful while in Mexican waters.

My sailing partner, Bob, went back to California yesterday after spending a day and a half in La Paz. He is retired and has been for some time, but he had to get back to his part time job before he got fired. Not the kind of retirement I want to spend.

Bob and I were together in a very small spot for 2 months and through that time and all that happened, we got along just fine. Each of us were a little cranky in the mornings, especially Bob when I said we were pulling anchor at 6 in the morning :). I found out during this trip that he enjoys sleeping until 10:00 am every morning. Since I enjoy rising at 6:00 am, I was not his best friend in the mornings.

Bob joined me in Monterey as a good sailor and left the boat in La Paz as a great sailor. I will always be very grateful to him for joining me on this trip and making it possible.

I am now sitting in the Marina de La Paz with a number of other cruisers and enjoying the town, the food and again the people. My Spanish is also improving at a fast pace.

I am going to stay here until July 1st when I fly back to Minnesota for Mom's memorial and then onto California to visit my family and friends our there. I am not sure how I am going to survive the cooler weather back home but I don’t think I will be sitting in the back yard in my shorts without a shirt. I will be in California for 2 months and I promise I will make an effort to see everyone.

We are in Mexico

The adventure continues uninterrupted .

We left San Diego on Sunday morning at 0 dark thirty and crossed into Mexico around 8 in the morning. Our plan was to sail onto Ensenada but around eight hours into the day I decided to slip into Puerto Salina. Someone that we had been talking to in San Diego had recommended it. It is a new marina and is still in the process of being built up. None of the charts show the marina's location but there was some information in one of my cruising guides that was helpful in finding it.

The people there were very friendly and helpful. A small boat came out to greet us and escort us into the marina and slip that they had assigned us. They then drove us a short distance to the office where we signed in. The next day, without charge, they drove us 20 miles into Ensenada and helped us through the process of going through immigration and customs. It took us 2 hours to complete the process and had we done it ourselves it would have taken 6-8 hours. We took Jose out to a nice place for lunch and of course gave him a tip for all of his help. We were very grateful.

Of course the first thing we had to eat was fish taco's and also a visit to the Cantina. There was a sign hanging from the rafter that I thought i would share. Some of you might find in comforting.

We had planned to leave that on Tuesday morning for Ensenada but it was raining so we stayed until the next morning and pulled anchor around 8 in the morning after signing our departure papers. We arrived in Ensenada around 2:00 in the afternoon. Checked in with the marina (Cruiseport Village Marine) and then walked around town looking for Cuban cigars and a restraunt. We found both and both were great.

Today I walked to a coffee shop for coffee and attempted to read the best I could, a local Mexican paper. Tomorrow morning we are leaving for the next anchorage which is just that. No marina and no facilities. So we will be going dark for a few days until we find civilization again.

Here are some photos that I took since the last Blog posting. There is one photo that may be hard to make out but it is a large pod of dolphins. There must have been 30 or more that swam by us.

Well that is all for now. Until next time, Be safe out there.

I will be posting our position each evening and sending a short email from my sailmail email account. Again, please DO NOT reply to those messages. Some of you chose to ignore that request last time. If to many of you replay it will prevent me from sending anything out since the system is VERY slow speed. Send me emails to my Google account and i will get them when I find the next marina.

Thanks

Denny and Bob