Lazy Days Underway

Vessel Name: Lazy Days
Vessel Make/Model: 49 DeFever
Hailing Port: Long Beach Ca
Crew: Ron & Cheryl (and Jasmine)
About:
We live-a-board our 49' CMY DeFever Trawler. We live in Long Beach Ca but make a 7 month trip to Mexico every other season. When we first retired in 2003, we spent the next 3 years traveling through Mexico, Central America, Panama and through the Panama Canal to the Caribbean. [...]
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01 June 2014 | Long Beach CA
02 May 2014 | Long Beach, CA
30 April 2014 | San Diego
16 April 2014
11 April 2014 | Cabo Rivera Marina
03 April 2014
26 March 2014 | Playa Bonanza, Espiritu Santo
19 March 2014 | Punta de Mita, Banderas Bay
08 March 2014 | Punta de Mita, Banderas Bay
04 March 2014 | Barra de Navidad
09 February 2014
07 February 2014
27 January 2014
21 January 2014 | Marina Ixtapa
18 January 2014 | Ixtapa
09 January 2014
06 January 2014
Recent Blog Posts
01 June 2014 | Long Beach CA

Trip Re-Cap

02 May 2014 | Long Beach, CA

Home in Long Beach

Home safe and sound.... feels good to be back in Long Beach. Our arrival was met with a little assist into the slip by Long Beach Lifeguards Shoreline...thank you! We've traveled approx. 4,000 miles in the last 6 months. 45 miles out of Long Beach (mid way SD to LB) we lost the dampener on the transmission [...]

30 April 2014 | San Diego

Back in the US of A

For those of you who have been following our blog (thanks Ken), I just want to let you know that we're Back in the US of A! It always feels good to get back to the US. Appreciate traveling, but no place like home!

16 April 2014

Underway outside Baja

Just passing Todo Santos,, 11 miles off shore and we have internet! Amazing....but not as amazing as the sea condition. We had some white caps and about 14kt of wind rounding the point at Cabo, but as soon as we got on the outside of the Baja, it went flat! Passed Cabo Falso in 7kt of wind, with a long [...]

16 April 2014

Starting the treck North!

We've had a very pleasant stay in the marina at Puerto Los Cabos. Did some re-provisioning, and a quick stroll around town. SJdC is a very quiet, nice older Mexican town - nothing like Cabo San Lucas.

16 April 2014

Fishing from Los Muertos to Los Frailes

We spent the morning trolling our way from Los Muertos to Los Frailes. We were looking for something to eat, but unfortunately all we caught was 3 marlin! We had to sacrifice 2 cedar plugs...couldn't get the darn things to throw the hook- no bueno. Ron had to cut the line at the leader when we got them up to the boat. Exciting... ,Oh well, tomorrow is another day!

Trip Re-Cap

01 June 2014 | Long Beach CA

We’ve been home just over four weeks. My goal was to finish this Travel Blog two weeks ago…oh well… it’s tough once you’re home and back in the swing of things. OK, to be honest it was tough keeping up with the blog while we were traveling and had all the time in the world! I find FB a much better venue to “talk” with friends and family. FB is way easier to relay what’s going on real time. When updating the blog, I felt I needed to write, re-write and critique once again, before posting. Also, the format for posting pictures is much easier on FB. The one benefit of the blog is the capability to post via the ham radio when we don’t have internet access. Well, just traveling in Mexico that isn’t much of an issue these days. Oh well, next trip I’ll just make sure everyone who wants to follow along has access to my page on FB.

This was our 6th trip to Mexico for 6-7 months, not including the 3 years we were cruising when we first retired (12 years ago!) We experienced some pretty big, ugly seas the last two legs of this trip, but still, weather-wise this has to be the best trip we’ve ever made. We had 25 hours of pure crap weather out of over 500 hours running time. Not bad….not bad at all. And when the weather wasn’t bad, it was very good – ha.

Lazy Days performed above and beyond the call of duty through 516 hours of travel on this trip. Well, except for the last 5 hours, 40 miles south of Long Beach. We were traveling along, happy to be almost home, when we heard a horrendous noise from the port engine. Ron put the engines in neutral and went to the engine room to see what the heck he could find. He tried a couple of different things, also dove in the water to make sure the running gear was ok, but we still had the noise when he put the engine in gear. At this point, his guess was that we had lost the dampener on the transmission on the port engine. (As it turned, it wasn’t the dampener, but the planetary gear, which destroyed another gear. Ron thinks this was caused by the line (600 to 800’ of 1 ¼” line) that he ran into on the last trip up Baja, two years ago. At that time the line was wrapped around the entire boat -- props, shafts, rudders, stabilizers, etc. and shut down both engines. Also, the mechanic said that reverse on the starboard engine was close to going out – guess this is what happens when you have over 55,000 nm on the engines )

Oh well, we continued on home on one engine, which wasn’t too much of an inconvenience since it was a nice calm day. The stabilizers run off the port engine, so we were without them for the remainder of the trip. This could have been a major problem if we’d lost the transmission on either of 2 prior days of travel, when it was so rough. The big guy upstairs was definitely looking out for us, and we do appreciate His help. (note – both transmissions have been rebuilt and should be back in and running next week )

One of the questions people often ask us is, “What do you do all day?” I thought I’d take a minute and describe what makes up a day in our life while cruising. Even though we have plenty of free time to do everything we want to do, the cruising life is not without its share of chores and challenges.

Take grocery shopping /provisioning for instance. You know how frustrating it is when you go to a different grocery store and have to figure out where everything is? Well, try going to a different store every time you shop, AND you have to translate everything on the shelves from Spanish to English to figure out what you want. Also, remember, in order to get to the store, you had to take the skiff to shore, either walk to the store or find a taxi. Then once you’ve finished shopping, you have to find another taxi, haul everything over a sandy beach back to where you left the skiff, and then once you’re back to the boat everything has to go into the cockpit from a moving boat and skiff! (I know, poor me.) Anyway, shopping can be an all-day affair! (We have quite a bit of storage room, so we try to take on enough supplies to stay well stocked. Also, some items aren’t available everyplace, so you have to plan ahead.)

Daily house cleaning takes up a good amount of my free time. I still have the same cleaning schedule that I would have at home in the slip, which is sometimes complicated by the constant movement of the boat. While I don’t get sea-sick (thank goodness), I do get tired of the movement at times. At that point, we usually change anchorages and find a calmer environment (go ahead and call me a princess, I’m OK with it).

Ron has the responsibility of making sure everything is ship shape and sea worthy at all times in the engine room an on deck machinery (cruising and at the slip). We’re fortunate that Ron is pretty handy with the tools and can usually fix just about any problem we encounter. Also, after years of cruising we carry enough spare parts to start our own marine store! Ron’s really big into Preventative Maintenance, so he usually spends at least 1 to 2 hours in the engine room just tweaking things, routine maintenance, water maker requires extra maintenance (makes fresh water from salt water). He knows this helps him catch things BEFORE they break. Almost every cruise through the engine room is guaranteed to find something that needs to be tweaked – loose hose clamps, small leaks, etc.!

We both do quite a bit of reading, me more than Ron. Ron spends a lot of his free time running around in the skiff, checking out the anchorage, surfing etc. An hour in the morning is usually taken up listening to the ham radio, checking weather information, etc. We try to go to shore most days, just to walk around for a bit. A lot of our free time is spent socializing with other cruisers. If we’re in port we tend to eat out quite frequently. We get together with friends 3 to 4 times a week – either on someone’s boat or in town. In a resort town, such as Barra Navidad, a lot of my time is spent at the swimming pool! All in all, the days just fly by….it seems we’ve just finished coffee in the morning when it’s time for cocktails in the afternoon!

I promised a list of the places we visited in the Sea of Cortez. We traveled as far north as Puerto Escondido, stopping at anchorages every day, then on our return we stopped at different anchorages. The anchorages available in the Sea are all short distances apart, which makes it nice. Also, if you don’t like the wind/anchor conditions in one place, just travel a short distance and you’ll find a completely different set of conditions!

When we crossed the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California) we left from Mazatlan harbor and went directly to Ensenada de los Muertos. On our way to Isla Espiritu Santos we stopped at Isla Cerralvo for a couple of hours of shell collecting (not as good as in the past). Our first stop on Isla Espiritu Santos was Playa La Bonanza, followed the next day by a day in Caleta Partida. We spent a couple of great days hiking on Isla San Francisco, and then headed to Puerto Los Gatos for the evening (and some good shell collecting. The red rock bluffs which surround the anchorage at PLG are amazing. The next day we headed to Bahia San Marta, which was a new stop for us. We stayed a couple of days and did some major beach exploring for several miles by skiff! Lovely… Next stop was Bahia Candeleros – another new anchorage. BC was a cool anchorage – weather conditions were perfect. We spent the afternoon running around in the skiff to the islands – Danzante, etc close by – lots of beautiful beaches! There is a new resort hotel in one corner of the anchorage, but we didn’t get to shore. The water was too shallow to take the skiff close enough to anchor it in order to go ashore “dressed”. Next on our itinerary we spent a couple of days on a mooring in Puerto Escondido. I think I covered PE in one of my previous logs.

When we left Escondido, we headed to Isla Carmen. Since we have been to the anchorages on the Baja side of Carmen, we went directly to the back side of the island. The wind was blowing a bit, so we went to Punta Perico, instead of our intended anchorage of Bahia Salinas. The next day we had better conditions so moved the 2 miles to Bahia Salinas, where we spent hours hiking the old salt ponds! There is a cool new hunting/fishing resort at BS – they bring hunters out in pangas from Loretto, and they stay on the island for a few days of hunting big horn sheep (http://www.docstoc.com/docs/154743295/Hunt-Desert-Bighorn-Sheep-on-El-Carmen-Island_-Baja_-Mexico)! Not sure what the costs are for lodging, etc, but if you get lucky and get a ram, it costs $58,000-$74,000 depending on the size (points) of the ram. Definitely a high end hunting trip!

From Isla Carmen we made our way south to Isla San Jose, where we spent nights in Bahia Amortajada and Puerto Salinas. This “Puerto” Salinas is also an old salt flat mining area. It’s interesting to see the old, abandoned mining equipment that was used years ago. Our next stops were back at Espiritu Santos, Caleta Partida, and Bahia San Gabriel. While in Caleta Ron changed oil in the mains, and changed all fuel filters getting ready for the Baja Bash north. Heading down the Baja, our next stops were Muertos, Cabo Riviera Marina, Los Frailes, and San Jose del Cabo. We spent 3 days in San Jose del Cabo, then got lucky with a good weather window in order to make the trip around Cabo San Lucas and on up the outside of Baja…heading home.

The trip north on the outside of Baja was amazing. Weather conditions were perfect (except for 2 legs of 60 miles each from Colonett to San Diego). The trip from San Jose del Cabo to Bahia Santa Maria is a 24 hours run, due to the lack of anchorages in between. From SM north we stopped every night. We spent an extra day in Turtle Bay, just to get off the boat and walk for a while. Looking back, if we’d continued on, we would have arrived in Ensenada before we hit the bad weather (ah, hindsight). The day runs coming up Baja are usually between 8 and 15 hour days.

Ron and I would like to thank everyone for following along on our adventure. It’s always exciting sharing the places we visit, and the amazing sea life we have the opportunity to experience. As Ron always says, we’re truly blessed… See you next trip!

Below are some statistics for the trip that you might find interesting.

Overall Statistics:

*We left Long Beach November 18, 2013; Returned to Long Beach, May 1, 2014
*Days spent cruising – 164

*Time spent in Marinas: 59 days
*Days at anchor: 105 days

*Marinas:
Marina Coral - Ensenada – 3 days
San Jose Del Cabo – 5 days
La Cruz, Puerto Vallarta - 10 days
Marina Ixtapa (zihuatanejo) – 3 days
Barra de la Navidad – 3 weeks
Marina Vallarta, Puerto Vallarta – 10 days
San Jose del Cabo – 3 days
Marina Coral, Ensenada – 2 days
South Western YC, San Diego – 2 days

*We traveled 516 hours @8 knots (dropped to 6-7kts a couple of times during the bad weather, to make the ride easier)
*Miles traveled – 4,128 nautical miles (A statute mile is 5,280 feet in length. A nautical mile is 6,076.11549 feet in length)
*We used 2,580 gallons of diesel fuel @ an average cost of $4.22 per gallon.
*Total number of generator hours – 282 hours
*Gallons of water made aboard with Village water maker – approx. 5,200 gal (We hold 400 gallons of water, and when we’re in a marina we fill our tanks from the dock water, using a water purifier/blue light system)

Highlights:
*Sea Life – birds, sea turtles, whales, dolphins
*Shell collecting
*Surfing (for Ron).
* Stand up paddle boarding and surfing with SUPB.
*Fishing – we caught Dorado, yellow tail, yellow fin tune, and sea bass.
*Finding new anchorages.
*Running into cruising friends from prior years and meeting new friends.

Be sure to check out the picture directory for new posts!

Home in Long Beach

02 May 2014 | Long Beach, CA
Home safe and sound.... feels good to be back in Long Beach. Our arrival was met with a little assist into the slip by Long Beach Lifeguards Shoreline...thank you! We've traveled approx. 4,000 miles in the last 6 months. 45 miles out of Long Beach (mid way SD to LB) we lost the dampener on the transmission on the port engine (at least that's what Ron thinks it is). Horrible noise!! I've laughed about the "weather Gods", but the Real guy was definitely looking out for us. Today's weather was totally benign ... if this had happened on one of the last 2 legs (crap seas) it would have been a real challenge. (OK Mike, Trinity, here ya go).... our stabilizers run off our port engine, so therefore, no stabilizers... our trek into Long Beach was gorgeous.... the last 10 miles the wind kicked up, and we didn't feel comfortable putting the boat in the slip with one engine, hence the call to LB Lifeguards. (30 minutes later it was flat calm...and wouldn't have been a problem). Anyway, all is well ... and it feels really good to be home! See everyone soon.... hugs

Back in the US of A

30 April 2014 | San Diego
For those of you who have been following our blog (thanks Ken), I just want to let you know that we're Back in the US of A! It always feels good to get back to the US. Appreciate traveling, but no place like home!

Sorry I haven't kept my posts more up to date, but when we're traveling the computer has to come onto the bridge in order to get internet connection (if it's available), and the bridge is not really set up for typing. Plus, while I don't get seasick, the normal motion makes it difficult to type!

I will catch you up with the places we're been the last month, as soon as we're back in the slip and I have a free moment! (If you're on FB, you can friend me, as I do update notes there more frequently. Way easier to jot a quick note :-)

Anyway, we had an awesome trip up from San Jose del Cabo - great traveling weather, until the last 2 legs of the trip (both 60 miles to weather) Below is my post on FB from Yesterday's trip from Ensenada to San Diego. The "last Saturday" I refer to was the weekend of the Newport to Ensenada Race. They had quite a wild ride down the coast, and we had an equally wild ride up the coast. Constant winds 28-33, with highs of 37kt....seas were confused with a 10-12' swell running. As I said a wild ride for everyone! The committee boat sitting outside Marina Coral at the finish line actually tore off his bow rail!

FB post 4/29/15: Picture is of today's conditions
I think I must have angered the weather Gods by talking about all our great weather. After last Saturday's major hiccup, we were watching the weather closely for our trip to San Diego. NOAA weather predicted 10-15, gusts to 20 from Mateo Point to the Mexican Border. OK, we're 60 miles below that, but should be good that much father south....Right? The first 6 hours of the trip, we had constant winds in the 26 to 33kt range, and recorded a high of 41kt.. (Hello NOAA?) Wind was from the east, so directly on our beam (thank you stabilizers)....seas weren't nearly as big as last Saturday, but enough chop for the wind to blow salt all over the boat...again. Oh well...but the funny part is TWO MILES BELOW the Mexican border, the wind died completely - down to 10kts, and NO white caps. Oh well, guess NOAA was right! We're settled in at South Western YC for a couple of nights, and we'll try to get to LB on Thursday without all the Drama! Looking forward to seeing everyone. (last pic is salt on the rails!)

I'll get back with you soon!

Underway outside Baja

16 April 2014
Just passing Todo Santos,, 11 miles off shore and we have internet! Amazing....but not as amazing as the sea condition. We had some white caps and about 14kt of wind rounding the point at Cabo, but as soon as we got on the outside of the Baja, it went flat! Passed Cabo Falso in 7kt of wind, with a long lazy swell, no white caps. Keeping fingers crossed this will be the routine for the next 900 (+/-) miles to Long Beach.

Starting the treck North!

16 April 2014
We've had a very pleasant stay in the marina at Puerto Los Cabos. Did some re-provisioning, and a quick stroll around town. SJdC is a very quiet, nice older Mexican town - nothing like Cabo San Lucas.

The restaurant on site is called the Container - that's because it is an old storage container, which has been turned into a kitchen and bar. Seating for meals is outside - lovely setting right at the marina.

We took Ron's fresh yellow fin tuna and a lobster from our freezer up to the chef at the restaurant and had him prepare it - lovely. Can't imagine the chef can turn out such amazing plates from such a small area!

Looks like we have a decent weather window (time will tell), so we're heading out tomorrow to begin the up hill slough back to Long Beach. Our first stop will be Bahia Santa Maria, 24 hours later. Nice to have the full moon while under way at night!

Catch you later - time for bed!

Fishing from Los Muertos to Los Frailes

16 April 2014
We spent the morning trolling our way from Los Muertos to Los Frailes. We were looking for something to eat, but unfortunately all we caught was 3 marlin! We had to sacrifice 2 cedar plugs...couldn't get the darn things to throw the hook- no bueno. Ron had to cut the line at the leader when we got them up to the boat. Exciting... ,Oh well, tomorrow is another day!

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