Since we decided to go back to British Columbia for the summer, we needed to find a secure marina to leave the boat in. We chose to leave it in La Paz because it's a great area for sailing around into the islands and because we love the town and feel comfortable there.
We went in to the marina 8 days before our departure date and we worked hard every day until about 2pm which by then it was just too hot to continue. We washed all the sails and ropes and anything else we wanted to store inside the boat. We removed the sails and some of the ropes, removed anything that can be blown off, deflated and stowed the dingy, cleaned the outboard and stowed away, and down below we washed all the food lockers with bleach, made sure all food being kept was in air tight containers, cleaned out the fridge of all food and set out borac acid and roach hotels in the hopefully unlikely event that cockroaches get in the boat. We don't want them having a party in our absence. We closed all the curtains, blocked out the light with tinfoil in window that have no curtains, wrapped the dingy with weather cloth, wrapped the bottom of the mast with all the halards stowed against it and closed all the seacocks (openings into the boat which water either goes in or out of the boat). The only thing left on is the bilgepumps and the solar panel (which is tied down as well as bolted on). As we were doing all of this I couldn't help compare it to the week before we left BC to come south. It was the same intensity of work except then we were loading the boat with stuff instead of taking things off the boat.
Having done all this all we can do now is hope that no hurricanes visit this area during the summer. It's been a few years since one made a direct hit on La Paz. We will be monitoring the weather from BC and hoping we won't have to make an emergency return trip before we come back at the end of September.
So now we are ready to go. It's 37 celcius in La Paz and 19 celcius in Vancouver today! Are we ready for that??? In some ways it will be refreshing but that novelty will probably not last too long. I'm hoping we bring some of this beautiful Mexican weather back home with us. We have packed our jeans and our fleeces so we are ready for it (I think), I guess we will find out tomorrow....