As most of you know I'm a twice a year church goer, usually those times are Christmas Eve and Easter. I use to also go with my Mom on Mother's day but now that she has moved on up to heaven I only go twice a year. Yesterday Shaybo and I went to the local Catholic Cathedral (the oldest cathedral in La Paz) for Easter mass. Shaybo is Catholic and also only goes to mass twice a year. I was raised Episcopalian and if the service had been in english it would have been almost the same as the Episcopal service my Mom dragged me to every week as a kid. We found out later in the day that the Mexican's don't really make much out of Easter Sunday. They have a two week celebration of Easter and yesterday was pretty much just another Sunday to them. Never the less it always makes me feel good to attend church and I usually find myself wondering why I don't go more often.
Yesterday my 6 month old, bullet proof, never has problems MacBook Pro died. It suddenly just froze up and quit working. After using Shaybo's computer to do a little research we found out that this is a very common problem with the MacBook Pro. It seems that it was designed with a faulty hard drive, and since there are no Apple service centers in this part of Mexico I'm pretty much screwed. The moral of the story is before you spend three times the cost of a PC on something that never breaks....get all the facts.
Phew!!....one more thing.
We have had some MAJOR changes in the crew of Si Bon. Catherine, Peter and Rich are now all gone. Bob is taking a little boat break at a local hotel before he and I leave on Saturday for a month long cruise up the Sea of Cortez to Santa Rosalia. So right now it's just Shaybo and myself and we're off to Balandra for a three day trip....just the two of us. Shaybo will be returning to the States on Friday after being here for a month. She has slid into the cruising lifestyle with amazing ease. Shaybo will be moving back to her hometown in Vermont and I'm hoping to visit her there this summer.
We'll be back to La Paz on Wednesday and as usual I'm sure we'll have a story or two to tell.
God Bless.

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When most people in the states think of spring break they think of college aged kids drinking themselves into a stupor and being as far away from their parents as possible. Here in Mexico spring break is a time to be with your families, they go to the beach together, they go out to dinner together and they attend church activities together. Don't get me wrong, they still do their fair share of partying...it's just that they do it with their families.
We decided to stay anchored at Balandra this week during our mini cruise, Balandra offers more protection from the pesky Coromuel winds and with road access there were plenty of locals to intermingle with. On Tuesday we decided to take the dinghy in to the beach and walk about 1.5 miles to another beach called Playa Tecolote. Tecolote has waverunner rentals, lots of locals enjoying spring break and of course several palapa bars. Shaybo and I decided to rent a waverunner for 40 minutes and we buzzed up and down the shore and then took it around the point to Balandra and buzzed Bob who had remained on Si Bon to relax (sorry Bob).
Before leaving for Tecolote we had a little bit of a concern about leaving the dink unattended for so long on the beach, especially with all the crowds there for spring break. On our prior trip to Balandra we had met and become friends with the local kayak rental dude, who goes by a different name every time we see him. We decided it would be best to try and find him on the crowed beach and at least talk to him before leaving to walk over to Tecolote showing the other people on the beach that we knew the head local of Balandra and thus dispelling any ideas of screwing with the gringos rubber boat. When Benjamin or David or whatever his name is finally saw us he ran up to Shaybo giving her a big hug and kiss on the cheek, then to me giving me a hug and laughing about not getting a kiss from me. We talked and laughed with Benjamin in full site of the entire beach for about 5-10 minutes and without actually having to ask him to watch our dink, we headed to Tecolote knowing damn well that no one would be messing with the dink while we were gone, proving once again that it's not what you know but who you know.

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Yesterday we had another easy going day in paradise. People often wonder what the hell we do all day...and to tell the truth, we often wonder the same thing. The days seem to fly by, first of all we never seem to get going until late morning. Once we do get going there are always lots of jobs to do around the boat. There's cleaning, varnishing, routine maintenance items and of course those pesky boat repairs. Before we know it it's 1700 and time to go to happy hour.
Yesterday Shaybo and I decided to take Si Bon out and empty her nearly full holding tank, we could have just gone to the marina pump out, but we both wanted Shaybo to get a little practice maneuvering the boat and this gave her a good chance to practice. Shaybo took over the helm right out of the marina and skillfully maneuvered Si Bon through the tricky La Paz channel and out to sea. We made up imaginary docks and she practiced tuning into the boat and bring her to a stop. We fiddle farted around for an hour or so then headed back, Shaybo wouldn't let go of the helm, she brought the boat back through the narrow, dog legged harbor entrance like a seasoned pro.
We're getting ready to leave later today for a 3-4 day mini cruise, probably won't be able to update the blog for a couple of days but I'm sure I'll have a story or two when we get back.
God bless.

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Yesterday Sharon and I decided we would take a road trip to a town on the Pacific coast called Todos Santos, so we jumped on a bus and off we went. Todos Santos is a pretty cool mexican town that is a popular day trip for people staying in Cabo San Lucas. Upon arriving in Todos Santos we immediately noticed the difference between the real Mexican town of La Paz and the tourist Mexican town of Todos Santos. First of all there were gringos (Americans) everywhere, then we became aware of the fact that nearly all of the Mexicans spoke English. Next we found ourselves constantly trying to dodge high pressure vendors, all of whom had the best priced and the highest quality junk in town. We checked into the Hotel California and were told that it was the "real" Hotel California from the Eagles song. It is a really cool artsy hotel that in itself is a MAJOR tourist attraction. However, we later googled the song and found that the "real" hotel California is in Hollywood, still it was a really nice place to stay.
At dinner last night we reflected on the day and we both agreed that although we were enjoying our stay in Todos Santos we preferred the non-tourist atmosphere over the tourist atmosphere. We enjoy conversing with the locals using our handy dandy Spanish/English Dictionary and we don't like pesky high pressure vendors chasing us around, and all of our fellow gringos seem to change the whole Mexico experience somehow.
On another note, I did line up a little job while we were in Todos Santos with a local construction crew who needed an extra hand (pic).

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As we have traveled deeper into Mexico and away from the tourist towns we are finding that less and less people speak english. Having Peter onboard has been a huge help as he speaks pretty decent spanish. Me on the other hand, can speak very little spanish and I tend to mispronounce the few words that I do know. Once again the mexican people have been a huge help due to their patience and easy going attitude. I am usually able to communicate with them by using hand signs and my handy dandy Spanish/English dictionary. Yesterday Shaybo and I spent most of the afternoon trying to find a new propane hose to replace one that we had found a small leak in. To some people it would have been aggravating walking all over La Paz as we went from a marine store, to a hardware store, to a Weber barbecue store, to another marine store and on and on. Shaybo and I made it a fun day as we became absorbed in the challenge of finding the hose....which we eventually did. All the way tossing out holas, buenas tardes and hasta luegos. As I have become forced into speaking spanish I am now starting to add slowly but surely more and more words to my spanish vocabulary.
This pic was taken several nights ago as I ordered dinner. It was not a posed pic. I would also say the young waiter was VERY pleased that I was making an effort to speak his language.

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Part of the plan for the month of April (subject to change, of course) is to use the Marina Palmira as our base of operations and to do small mini cruises out to the off laying Islands of Isla Espiritu Santos and Isla Partida and some of the other anchorages in the area. On Wednesday Peter, Sharon, myself and our newest crew member Bob headed out of the marina for the first mini cruise since being here. We were able to put up the sails right out of the harbor and sailed to a beautiful cove on the mainland called Balandra, you may remember that we had stopped overnight in Balandra on our way into La Paz. Balandra is home to the "world famous Mushroom Rock" (pic). Mushroom rock was created by thousands of years of erosion undercutting the rock. Due to further erosion, hurricanes and locals climbing on it, the rock gave way, since it is "world famous" the city of La Paz went out and propped the rock back up with rebar and cement. More erosion, hurricanes and climbing caused further failures. Finally the city of La Paz, unable to prop it back up, had a fiberglass replica made and that is what you see in the pic, BTW it is rumored that La Paz has a storage room full of fake Mushroom rocks so when there are future failures they can run right out and replace the fake with another fake.
We didn't really have a plan when we left La Paz and due to wanting to check out Balandra better, we decided to hang around the next day and night. Balandra is a beautiful cove which has shallow shoals extending out for several hundred yards, meaning that you can walk out from shore for what seems like forever and still be in knee high water. We hiked, we laid on the beach under a palapa and we mixed it up with the locals. The weather during the day was perfect, but at night a local wind called a Corumuel can come up ranging from a comfortable breeze to a full blown nightmare. The first night we experienced our first Corumuel and it blew pretty good all night and into the morning before dying out mid morning. The second night the Corumuel came up again but not as strong. On Friday we decided to head out to the islands, and due to the Corumuels I picked a large bay between the two island of which the cruise books all said provided the best protection. The bay was beautiful when we arrived in mid afternoon, I set the hook (anchor) and laid out plenty of anchor chain to better hold us should a Corumuel come up. God decided to test my anchoring skills as the Corumuel did indeed come up and with a fury. The wind was howling though Si Bon's rigging, the boat was being violently thrown about and the crew was all awake holding on for dear life. Mini waves were breaking off of our port quarter and I had to put on my life vest and clip into a jackline (safety line) just to crawl out to the bow to check the anchor in the middle of the night.
Morning came and while it was still blowing it had calmed down enough to weigh (pull up) the anchor and head back to the marina. The good news is we were able to sail almost the whole trip, which is very unusual in the Sea of Cortez.

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