03/15/2012, Cabo - not Hawaii

We hardly had any wind as we departed from La Paz so each day we stopped our 'motoring' to see if the next day would bring more wind. Even here in rocky/rolly Cabo roadstead, there isn't much wind but we WILL leave tomorrow. We have fresh gribs and the weather is still favorable so here we go. Now you can plan 14 days from 3/15 instead of 3/11!

The picture is of the Navy who stormed by us many times in La Paz but we didn't get stopped leaving - which was good.

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A good day to set sail
03/10/2012, La Paz to Oahu

Today is the day! La Paz has a huge current running through the channel, which is now ebbing. We picked up our laundry, made one more food and water run and are ready to depart. FYI-laundry at the La Paz Marina is just over $4.00 - 50 pesos to have the laundry lady wash, dry and fold a load of clothes. We plan to move to Los Lobos, a quiet nearby bay with NO current so we can finish cleaning the bottom, use my kayak one more time then set sail for Hawaii tomorrow morning. Celestial can easily make 200 miles a day so we're planning right around 14 days at sea. Now to remember to stow all the items that will fly once we begin to heel.

For a picture, I chose to 'show off' our huge pile of scallops and prawns and local olives. Scott bought the seafood from a vendor who walks through the marina maybe once a week. Can you tell I was excited to finally have seafood? In the background is handiwork we bought when we were up in Aqua Verde.

Aloha!

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Back to the windy city!
02/25/2012, La Paz

We were determined to NOT be here for a week of music every night until 4-5am! But we did come back for the last night of Carnival (2/21) and we're glad we did. Cruiser friends Nancy, Ethan and Zada let us tag along with them since they 'knew the score'. They bought eggs with confetti in them but you could NOT toss them at the lovely ladies and handsome men - only at the trucks or the little boys who were trying to catch them or smash them on your neighbor! I'm still picking up confetti that came back to 'Celestial'. I did get a feathered Carnival party mask to remember the event with. More pictures are on facebook.

We're into our last few weeks in Mexico. We need to seriously think about what we need to do before we head out again. Nathan, our son flies in on the 3rd and we'll start watching for a weather window to sail to HAWAII! Nathan was super excited to do the two week sail, not that excited to play tourist in Hawaii but his girlfriend will come over for her birthday so I expect his enthusiasm to change then!

We're changing zincs, working on the auto pilot so it'll hang in there until Hawaii when we'll replace it, replacing our protective edge to the rolled up jib that stands in the sun day after day. There's hardly any material left from when we had it done in 2009.

After all our calm days up north, we're back in the windy city where we've drug our anchor twice already! The tide streams in and out of the bay twice a day pulling you this way then that way. Luckily our anchor alarm is loud enough to wake us up at 3am!! We were onshore back in December when it happened the first time. We were enjoying a festival and we hear on a loud speaker, "It appears the boat 'Celestial' has gone on a walkabout!! Luckily we just rubbed against a sand bar and didn't hit anyone. This time again, it was low drama to get on deck and re-anchor the boat, thank the Lord!

We have our bikes and backpacks to get to the stores we need and bring items back to the boat. Today it was 5 miles to Home Depot and Walmart for misc. items. We're still enjoying our hermit crab down below and we've made a better 'home' for Victoria, our tortoise to live in our cockpit. I do have to mention, its been great to get cactus, a great food for her. I also give her broccoli, some fruit, cabbage, lettuce and 'tortoise supplements'. (Once a mom, always a mom!)

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not as windy as we expected
02/25/2012, Caleta San Juanico to La Paz

By Feb. 12th, we were in Caleta San Juanico. It is known for the cruisers tree, where people use whatever they want to post their boat name, crew names of what have you on a tree on shore. We used an old CD and put our boat card on it with the dates of our major trips. We saw it in our great cruiser's guide Sea of Cortez by 'Shawn and Heather'. Again there were great hikes across to another bay and looking for treasures on shore. This would be as far north as we would get this trip, 150 miles from La Paz. We did 375 miles for the month. We started back down south and the highlight was surfing on north winds. Our one day was 70 miles, hand steering due to auto pilot failure but fun to be out there. At one of our last stops, we were at low tide and could collect rock scallops by just walking around in 2 feet of water! That was a great meal!

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02/25/2012, Ballandra Bay on Isla Carmen

- So our next stop was Ballandra Bay on Isla Carmen. This picture shows the bad weather over on the coast. Bahia of Conception ended up w/2.5 inches of rain! The next day, we got internet from anchoring on the roadstead of Loreto. This is open ocean but if the weather is 'ok', the anchorage isn't bad. We were the only ones there. We took the dinghy to town on our 2nd stop but it wasn't as nice as when Dale of 'Free Spirit' drove us the 14 miles from Puerto Escondido into Loreto and we sat at a restaurant and used free internet. Thanks again Dale for doing that.

The low point of our trip was finding weevils in the flour. This was common place in 'third world countries' but the flour was bought in San Diego! True, it hadn't been used for months but this is the first time since '95, probably.

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Its a good protected harbor
02/05/2012, Pt Escondido

So our list of islands/ports so far: Isla Partida to Isla San Fran to San Evaristo to Puerto Los Gatos to Bahia Agua Verde to Puerto Escondito and road trip to Loreto.
Its so quiet here and its a 14 miles ride into Loreto but we had to go see the Mission church from the 1600s. They have a lovely malecon to walk along also although the sewers were being worked on while we were there.

I love all the colors; red, green, brown, yellow in the hills. We walked to a local cemetery which is the picture I'll include later. This is a hammerhead shark that was on the beach. The local fishermen must have pulled in a net because there were manta rays, regular shark heads, tons of fish heads and this.

Internet was impossible and Mexican cell phones were only working way up on the hills but enjoyed meeting new people. One couple came on an RV but Scott helped them look over a boat for sale here in Pt. Escondito. Their 38 ft RV was HUGE compared to our 47ft sailboat. We drove 3 of us on a Honda Goldwing 3 miles to go see it! What those boaters won't do!

The water has been cold but we got in a few times and enjoyed under the sea. Brought home some rock scallops to try. Not enough meat but they were good. I'm keeping my 100 feet of waterline clean as well!

We added a hermit crab to our family. Scott enjoys hearing him climb around and they do stay on the move! Victoria doesn't seem to mind the activity either. She's still doing fine (our tortoise). Glad I can find cactus in the stores to feed her.

Next we'll explore some more islands then start planning our trip to Hawaii for March.

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