November 12, 2008 - Wednesday
We had a lazy day for the most part. Due to the rolling sleeping conditions last night, we put out the Rocker Stoppers first thing this morning. A Flopper Stopper is, in essence, two pieces of sheet metal sheet that form "wings" that flop open; these wings are attached to each other on a hinge. You attach the entire assembly to a line and drop one over each side of the boat into about 8-10' of water. When the boat rocks to that side, the wings fold up and the whole device sinks further into the water, however, when the boat goes to rock the other way, the wings open up, creating drag and, in theory, slowing the rocking action of the boat in that direction. With one deployed on each side, the rocking is supposed to slow in both directions. I'm not entirely sure that I buy into the whole concept.

Other than that, we all sort of did our own thing today. I started a new book today, The Bourne Betrayal, so I have been pretty consumed by that; those of you who know me know how obsessed I am with reading once I start a new book.

I went swimming several times and enjoyed the buoyancy of the warm and very salty water. Due to the wind, it was a little chilly when you first get out, but otherwise a joy. It is nice boat swimming because you don't have the sand to deal with. I hooked up the Sun Water Bag again today to rinse off after all the salt water swimming.

So check this out: remember I talked about the "net", the morning broadcast during the Ha Ha? Well, nets exist all over the world and there is one in the Sea of Cortez that broadcasts each morning called the AMIGO NET (Don Anderson on channel 8122 on the single side band radio). Anyway, during his broadcast this morning, he informed us that a high has formed over, of all places, Nevada, that is causing us this grief down here. In the Sea of Cortez, the wind generally blows out of the NNE to the NNW, but under certain conditions it REALLY blows out of the north and is referred to as, amongst other things, a Northerner. It is sort of like the Santa Anna winds in Southern California. If you are sailing north in the Sea of Cortez, you DO NOT want a Northerner blowing, and that is exactly what we have due to the high pressure region forming (formed) over Nevada. Here I am, a thousand miles away, and I'm still getting hit by Nevada weather!

We had pork chops on the grill and a potato, onions, and garlic dish that we cooked in an aluminum pouch on the grill as well.

We plan is to make it to Bahia De Los Muertos on the 13th and should be well on our way by the time you all get this. This is the place that has the little, but modern, restaurant (The Giggling Marlin) and we will likely dinghy to shore for dinner tomorrow.

By the way, I have not had a chance to play with that website at all, but I saw a note - while I was making entries in it before we left Cabo San Lucas - that GoogleEarth was enabled. So....if you click on the map of the earth on the right side, you might also have an option of clicking a button (or some other option???) that will change it from a map to a satellite photo. That might be interesting to try as you can see the actual places I am at, and not just maps. Maybe someone can try it and respond to let me know so that I can share with the others.

We had a beautiful full moon rise just before dark which was still pretty low on the horizon as we had our pre-dinner drinks. The others all had blended margaritas, but I had a cold beer and a little shot of that good Tequila JJ and Steph were kind enough to donate - don't worry, we are only using the good stuff for sipping, not mixing.

I hope you all are well. Take care.

Paul.