Well it's been 6 weeks since we got here to Santa Rosalia, we had not planned on coming here but are glad and fortunate to be here and safe. Santa Rosalia is a small city, pop. 4,000, fishing and mining are the mainstay of the town. The French have been mining copper here for 150 years or more, 25 years ago they abandoned the copper mines, leaving mountains of tailing, a rusting foundry, and a church built by Eiffel of the tower fame. It is a city that grows on you as it is small and very friendly. People wave, smile, greet each other, and the occasional guest, because they seem to care. The language here is Spanish unlike so many of the other large places we seem to visit. A form of Spanglish is spoken well enough that it becomes easy to not work on language skills.
We are here not as a goal but as a rule, this is the way the wind took us. We had planned to go to San Carlos/Guaymas, Sonora on the mainland side of the Sea. Well we made an attempt early in the morning, 3am, only to hit some rather contrary seas. In the process of pounding into the waves the big mirror on the bulkhead came off and broke, now I don't know if it is 3 or 7 years bad luck, but we got it off almost immediately. It trashed the carpet so it had to go also. We tried again only to find it 'uncomfortable', so we 'hung a left' and went down wind to Santa Rosalia. It was a good sail downwind. We found moorage at Marina Singlar, new docks, pilings, and facilities. We decided to stay as the car and bike were in La Paz and we could take a bus to retrieve them. We needed to make a trip to San Diego to pick up repair parts for the watermaker and another charger/inverter as it quit. So a bus ride to La Paz was fun and the road trip back was good. When we got back to the boat we let all the other cruisers on the dock know we were going to San Diego on a parts run. If they had every thing boxed and paid for I would bring it back, no shopping and no chasing around. We left on a Thursday and it is a 2 day trip or 15 hrs. We stayed at El Rosario in a really nice hotel for $27.50 a night. We got to San Diego and stayed with old friends, Ken and Linda Morrow, and the party continues. Saturday I was checking email and was notified of a hurricane coming and the 'track' was headed directly for Santa Rosalia. Saturday was spent power shopping. Sunday, Cindy and Linda went to a flea market Linda sells some of her art work. Well on Sunday the storm track was straight for us. Time to head for the boat. Cindy got back at 6pm and we left at 7:30pm, now it is a rule to not drive at night in Baja. The roads are narrow there are no shoulders and the livestock come up on the road to eat grass along the edges. We made it back to the boat on Monday and the hurricane hit on Wednesday afternoon. I was extremely happy to be at a new marina, in a fairly protected harbor with cruisers that have been through a hurricane and are willing to help others. The wind reached to about 90 knots with rain. It blew so damn hard, it blew the fish right out of the water into the cockpit and that's no shit. (Actually there were two dead fish in the cockpit) We survived fine, the boat was not damaged at all, Cindy should be put on shore however, as she is so nervous she almost wore out the floor pacing.
We all threw a party at the marina lounge after the winds subsided a bit and we could untangle all the lines criss crossing on the dock. It was great.
When we left San Diego we had not done all our chores and picked up some of the stuff we had ordered so it was back to SD with yet another grocery list of; lines, fenders, pieces parts, and other misc. stuff. We have been across the border so many times we feel like illegal aliens.
We took the ferry across to San Carlos. We decided we wanted to have the jeep and motorcycle waiting for us once we hit San Carlos the end of October. The ferry is pretty rolly polly - so if there is any seas at all it's not much fun. The trip over was fine but the one coming back was a bit rolly. We stayed with Cindy's cousin Brad who has a house in San Carlos. We had a great time with him and Millie (his girlfriend). They have a new addition - an eight week old Chihuahua. She is the cutest little thing - full of energy.
We will be heading north to Bahia Los Angeles for a few weeks and across to the islands, then to Guaymas to haul the boat out. We should be driving back to the states the first week in Nov. for maybe 2 months with a return the 1st of Jan.
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