This is our last night out at anchor in the Sea of Cortez for this leg. We return to La Paz tomorrow where we'll stay in Marina Palmira for a week, doing chores and de-commissioning the boat. We'll get Wings hauled after a week, get her put on stands at Atalanta Yard, and then we'll schlepp our stuff via but so Cabo San Lucas for some De-Luxe playtime at our resort. Our friends Buddy and Susan and their son Gus from New Orleans will join us there for a week. Seems like only yesterday that we started this leg……

Two days ago, we spent the evening in San Evarsito, a tiny fishing community with a large sea-salt producing facility. Well, "facility" makes it sound fairly upscale but it was really some drying ponds that are passively flooded at full moon and allowed to evaporate for the month. At some point, the residents shovel salt into bags that are then trucked to distribution points. Nevertheless, it's an interesting place. We had arrived there by sailing along a long channel between Baja and Isla San Jose. Although the cruising guidebook had mentioned the fact, there were these tiny fishing communities tucked on teensy beaches along the enormous and majestic cliffs that were home to a few hearty families each. There was no access other than fishing boat. It's an interesting choice of places to live.

San Evaristo is home to perhaps one hundred residents. There's a tiny school that looks hot as hell, and some tiny homes, all of which seem on the edge of destitution. It's just a typical Mexican village: hot, dusty, and poor, but set against the scenic backdrop of Baja and the Sierra de La Gigante mountains. We'll post some photos.

By the way, we can send text email vis SSB, but no photos or web pages. Remember that sometimes it takes a few minutes to send a few lines of text! Photo updates must await real internet access.

We had arrived in San Evaristo too late in the afternoon (when it's too darn tooting hot!) to do much sight-seeing, so we declared it cocktail hour and lingered aboard. The other five sailboats anchored up in the cove were doing the same thing and the raucous sounds of laughter and good times drifted over the anchorage until late. We took the dinghy ashore the following morning, walked around town, and then left San Evaristo early in the afternoon after our journey ashore. While anchored up in the very picturesque cove, we got to meet the Head Honcho of the Sonrisa Net, Bob and his delightful wife, on their beautifully-kept 1970s-vintage Irwin 43.5 sloop, Nirvana. Nice folks. We also skinny-dipped after everyone else had left, to cool down and wash off some dust and sweat.

After pulling the hook, we motor-sailed toward Isla San Francisco, an island that we visited last spring with the Doineaus and the McLean/Caplans. It's very pretty and proved a favorite with all of us. We were warned that the tiny biting jejenes ("heh-HEY-nes", similar to our no-see-ums") there have been ferocious since Hurricane Paul. The damned bugs are still iivin' large off the residual moisture from the storm. It was in the high 80s in the cabin and I didn't get any sleep until we lit a PIC coil to fend off the bastards. The local Corumel winds picked up at 2200 and gave us pause about our anchor's holding ( a worthy concern with about 10 other boats sharing this small, popular cove), so Bill assembled the secondary anchor (usually kept disassembled and stowed), jumped into the dinghy, and hauled out the anchor out to set. Boat safety comes long way past personal comfort! That was an hour or so of lost sleep, and then it took us a while to unwind and cool down. We keep all the hatches open, or at least all of those with bug screens, and run our fans, but it was still hot in here.

We went ashore this morning, before it got too hot, and explored the island. The changes from last spring are extraordinary! The most obvious is the rich carpet of green that's everywhere, started by Paul and maintained by the moisture-rich Southerly winds. These winds not only leave the plant life with a lot of condensed water vapor for maintaining their growing spurt, but keep things very hot. The other amazing change is that there is NO salt in the little salt ponds! Holy smokes! We marched to the salt ponds and they were full of brackish water but no salt at all due to the influx of fresh water.

When we returned to the boat and had the second anchor pulled, ready to motor-sail to Isla Espiritu Santu for our last night, the engine would NOT start! Actually, it wasn't the engine proper but the glow plugs. We worked on the system for 3.5 hours and finally got it going, but had no specific cause to which we could attribute the problem. There was a corroded connection amount those that Bill removed and the system worked so we'll call it good. It's just one of those things with a 28-year old boat. However, the long delay getting underway killed our departure time window to Espiritu Santu and get get anchored before dark. Conni was disappointed since she'd wanted to anchor there for our last night out, but we stayed at Isla San Francisco for a second night instead.

For Peter M and Susan L, there is a very pretty Nordhaven anchored here with us that is from Anchorage! Her name is "Serenity" and she's owned by an older couple who stay in the AC all day. We would too! Nice looking boat. They haven't invited us aboard, so I guess that you two get to be the first Nordhaven owners to show your yacht to us.

At long last, we'll head out tomorrow and arrive at La Paz before marina closing, we hope. Showers! Hurray! Clean laundry! Hurray! We have a lot of boat work to accomplish before putting Wings to bed, so we'll be busy. We can only hope that the temperatures moderate a bit and winter conditions arrive: cool and dry, or least cool and dry for Baja. We'll also have Internet there!