The other night we went to bed anchored in Bahia Los Frailes, one of only two boats in the anchorage, the full moon illuminating the high clouds in the east and making the long strip of beach glow white. A few hours later we were up and motoring toward Cabo San Lucas while 6 planets, with a 7th to join soon, lined up in that vast sky above. The celestial display was like a review of everything I learned about the planets and stars when I was a kid. Then, Cabo, the Big Party at the bottom of the Baja, a drastic contrast to the beauty and solitude of a remote anchorage or a night passage under full moon. The bars on the beach blast music - mostly bad, and the DJ from one particular bar rages on at full volume, spilling onto the beach, the restaurants on all sides, and into the anchorage, leading games, contests, goading everyone into a zipped up tequila-drinking frenzy. Worst of all, he sings "Happy birthday to you" and a lot of "Happy marriage to you" terribly off-key.

But it's okay. We're finally on the Grand Adventure, the Bucket List Box Checker that I've alluded to for the last few months. Because so many things conspired to thwart this endeavor, I was hesitant to speak too soon, plus, we're still learning about it. But here it is: we're on our way to the Revillagigedos Archipelago, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and national park 200 miles south of Cabo San Lucas, to do some serious and amazing diving. Comprising 4 volcanic islands - San Benedicto, Socorro, Roca Partida and Clarion, the archipelago is located at the confluence of the north and south equatorial currents, with something mixed in about the California current, making it a nutrient-rich place to hang out for migrating humpback and other whales, and a full-time home for hammerhead sharks, giant manta ray, tuna, tiger sharks, silky sharks, and oh so much more.

Spending time with these pelagic creatures is a goal we've had since 2010, when we pondered a quick stop after setting out on our Pacific crossing. At the time, it was upwind, would add at least 5 days to our already long passage ahead, and would consume more of our precious stores of food, water, and fuel. So, in concert with our crew, Greg and Tiffany, we made the decision to keep going toward French Polynesia. We can't say we regret it, because we know now that we were woefully underprepared for a diving stop in the Revillas, but since then it's been at the top of our long Bucket List. Finally, 15 years later, it's time.

I started investigating all I could about taking our boat to this special place, and here's what I've learned: the islands are a top destination for dive boats, bringing as many as 4000 divers per year from around the world to spend time in the pristine environment. The diving is challenging: strong currents, deep dive sites, rocky anchor-eating anchorages, and tough restrictions on diving make this a place you don't go alone. You don't go unprepared. You don't go without knowledge of exactly where to drop anchor, and other important things like, when the ash is spewing from the volcano on San Benedicto, don't be downwind! Most importantly, you need someone to run "top cover" (probably not a real diving term) in the dinghy while divers are in the water, since the divers may surface in a much different place than they went down due to the strong currents. Anchoring the dinghy and diving off is largely not possible in the deep water, and not allowed in most places, to protect the coral and not entangle the mantas. CONANP*, the national park system in Mexico, tightly regulates the visits, restricting the number of divers that can go in the water at a time, the required distance to maintain from critters, the tossing of garbage, food and other waste, and the soaps and cleaners that are washed into the sea from the boat. We're stocked with reef-safe sunscreen, dish soap, and shampoo, will not dump our holding tanks while at anchor (we never do that anyhow, eeewwww!) and will not be tossing food scraps out the window or, in the warning words of a fellow cruiser who spent many months in the Revillas, we'll have sharks circling our boat for days. In Frailes we scrubbed the slime and barnacles off the bottom of the boat, since we can't do that in the Revillas in order to avoid introducing invasive species.

All of this is why we're glad we didn't make that quick, unprepared diversion in 2010. And, also why we were in a bit of a quandary about our planned visit - it had become apparent that we needed a buddy boat for this adventure, and we had no idea how to find one. To begin with, the permit process to visit the park is daunting. There's a steep daily charge to be in the park - $100/day per person, and I heard that CONANP was doubling that this year. Luckily, as retirees, we're exempt, one of the few good things about growing old. Applying for the permit requires writing to CONANP (in Spanish) and supplying piles of documents to support the fact that you're on a sound, insured and legally owned boat, that you're divers who have advanced certifications or better and have dive insurance, that you have read and understood the 8,000,000 page document that lays out the rules, in Spanish, and lastly, for us, proof of our retirement status. So I did all that, with the help of others who had done it before, and after a few back-and-forth's with the park office we were awarded a month's visit in January with an official park stamp and everything. We paid our annual park fee and can now visit any of the national parks in Mexico. But still, finding another boat, with the permit, the time, and the soaps, how would we do that?

Well, leave it to my socially-inclined husband Allan, who fell into conversation one day in the boat yard in Ensenada with a newly-arrived couple, Derek and Deneb. Turns out, they were headed to the Revillas as well, in January, and moreover - best-ever - Daneb, a marine biologist, had been a park ranger on the islands for 4 years. (Giant exclamation marks!) She has recently formed a non-profit, the Centro Interdisciplinarion en Ciencias Aplicadas de Baja California Sur, commencing a 2-year study on shark cleaning stations, called, appropriately, "The Cleaning Stations Project." The'll live aboard their boat, s/v Amphitrite, and make multiple trips per year, basing out of La Paz, Baja California. Amphitrite is a beautiful boat, but currently not equipped with a dive compressor or a water maker. (This won't to stop Derek and Deneb, who are frugal with their water, and because of Deneb's connections in the islands and with the dive boats, tank fills are possible, although difficult.) But we have those things, and a great boat from which to stage. Deneb has intimate knowledge of the dive sites, the rules (she helped write them!) and the complex dance that makes up this whole adventure. You see where this is going? By the end of the conversation a mutually-supportive union had been formed, and we've been planning and fine-tuning ever since.

And trying to surmount the numerous inevitable events that conspired to thwart the endeavor. Things like the failure of the dive compressor a month ago, the multi-layered drama of getting a replacement compressor motor shipped to Mexico, Allan getting sick, Alison getting sick, Alison bruising a rib a few weeks ago, old dive gear finally giving up the ghost, and other things I've already conveniently forgotten. But the compressor got fixed in the 11th hour thanks to my smart husband and his creative and talented mechanical skills, and, icing on the already good cake, we were loaned a second compressor by my friend Ricardo. We got over the whatever illnesses beset us, bought new gear, tested it out, and my rib, although annoying, isn't going to stop me from diving with giant manta rays.

More about Deneb: raised in La Paz by marine biologist parents, she earned her master's degree in Marine Biology and in 2018 went to work for CONANP, helping to set up the newly-formed Revillagigedos National Park. She worked as a park ranger for 4 years, making months-long trips to the islands on Navy ships or dive boats, living ashore or on the boats, and was in charge of all marine monitoring. In that realm, she met her husband, Derek, a Canadian diver, sailor and ocean conservationist, and together, they have come to this point - the formation of the non-profit that would, under its umbrella, continue numerous projects in ocean conservation and education. They are both passionate about their work, and we, as kids who grew up watching The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau and harboring secret dreams to be marine biologists, are thrilled to assist, even if just for a short time.

After a 6am call each morning on the radio to coordinate the dive schedule with the dive boats in the area, Daneb will have a plan for our day. She'll dive down to around 95 feet to set up cameras on several of the known shark cleaning stations in the islands to record the behavior of the critters that come to visit. One of the hopes is to learn more about how the presence of divers affects the operation of the station. Do critters in need tend to stay away if divers are there? Do they leave and possibly miss out on critical care? The results of this study will inform CONANP and other scientists if further restrictions are necessary to protect the animals that come to the cleaning stations for this critical care. We'll join her on the dives, assist where we can, run top support when Derek wants to dive, fill dive tanks, fill water jugs, make vegetarian chili, and generally try to be very Jacques-Cousteau-esque, although Allan refuses to wear one of those tiny French bathing suits.

Let's talk about cleaning stations: these are not man-made places with drive-through service, but rather, locations in the ocean that the fish somehow establish - how they do it is a mystery. There are no signs and I'm not sure how they advertise, but apparently the word gets out. The cleaner fish - shrimp, gobi, wrasse, and angel fish to name just a few, are highly-trained and waiting for customers like sharks, mantas, mola-mola and many others to stop in for a nice de-bugging. The cleaner fish tend to the important business of cleaning wounds, removing parasites and bacteria from teeth, gums, skin. It's a win-win for all: although no money is exchanged, the big fish get a makeover, the little fish don't get eaten. It's a beautiful thing, an underwater miracle, and we get to learn more about it in one of the top dive spots on this amazing planet, with a marine biologist as our guide. You can learn more by checking out the link I put below, and/or by re-watching one of my favorite movies, Finding Nemo.

So, barring any other endeavor-thwarting events, we'll be in the water with giant mantas the size of living rooms in just a few days, keeping a sharp eye on the tiger sharks and hoping to spot a shy hammerhead in the distance. We plan to go through as many as 8 dive tanks per day, so we're grateful for the extra compressor, muchas gracias amigo Ricardo. We're stocked with food for a month, since the only thing in the islands is a small Navy base, and we're not allowed to go ashore anyhow. No groceries, fuel, trash cans or boat washes until we get to Barra de Navidad in mid-February. I'll be posting a few blurbs from the islands, since we'll have the Starlink in Priority Data mode (which means no Netflixing or Facebook scrolling, but email is good, phones work in Face Time or WhatsApp.)

In summary, we couldn't be more excited and proud to be part of the project. Speaking of which, it's a start-up, and looking for funding. I've put the link the website below, and if you're an ocean conservationist type looking for a fun place to donate a bit of extra cash, here it is.

More about giant mantas, lurking sharks, scrubby cleaner fish, rocky anchorages and trip-of-a-lifetime adventures in the weeks to come!

* CONANP - Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas

Ps: I figured out how to make these links work, so click away!

Click here for Deneb's Website

Cleaning Stations:
https://ultimatedivetravel.com/cleaning-stations/

Our tracker, and current weather:
https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/SV_FlyAweigh/

Knockin' Around La Paz

We're here, in a lovely seaside town in the Sea of Cortez, with perfect weather, just doing things. Nothing Earthshatteringly important, nothing very interesting, just things - laundry, servicing the winches, cleaning spots off the deck, catching up on stuff you catch up on, hanging with friends, getting some exercise, eating too much. Back home, Earthshattering things are happening - friends are losing their homes in the fiercest fires we've ever witnessed in Southern California. Entire neighborhoods have been rendered to ash, barely anything left. You've all seen the footage. Some of you reading this lost your home. Almost everyone knows someone touched by these tragedies. It's hard to write my lighthearted blurb while my heart is simmering in deep shock and sadness, wishing I were home, helping friends sift through what's left, offering some morsel of comfort.

"We need your stories of adventures, Aliwhoosh. They'll uplift us during a tough time." said my friend Craig, who I've known since first grade, who just lost his longtime home in Alta Dena. I can't be home helping Craig & Kathi sift through the ashes of their lives, but I can keep writing and hope the distraction, even for just a few minutes, might help. So, lacking a more suitable segue, a recap of the last month, dedicated, with love, to Craig and Kathi:

Last time I sail-blurbed, we were in Bahia Los Frailes, sailing in the company of Louise and Andy and their pups on s/v Eos. Los Frailes provided a nice respite from a very lumpy 10+ hour passage from Cabo San Lucas, and we all rested and put things back on the shelves and relished the quiet, although it wasn't that quiet because the wind was blasting down the canyon, offshore, stretching our boats to the limit of their anchor chains. But we were safe and Louise made banana bread and we enjoyed the break. We did get ashore the next day for a walk, giving the rambunctious dogs more space to jump and chase and swim, and giving the humans a bit of a walk. I mentioned in a recent blog that Louise and I had "princess feet." Walking barefoot on a rocky beach used to be fun, but this time, not so much! When I was a kid, our family invested in some land in the Fiji Islands. Our first year there I was 14. We were pretty tough kids, we ran around barefoot all the time, but the Fijians! They had these marvelous feet - wide, tough as leather, strong. They never wore shoes, and they walked miles and miles down the rocky roads to get to the next village, to buy food, to go fishing. "Fiji feet" we called them forever more - those feet that can go adventuring without complaint. Living in polite society, getting a pedicure every month and wearing shoes all the time has done nothing for my Fiji Feet!

Allan and I dug all the scuba stuff out for one more test of the gear and had a satisfying dive to about 30 feet over the sandy bottom. It was too rough to dinghy around the corner to Cabo Pulmo and dive on the protected coral reef, so we settled for sand and rocks, a few colorful fish, and the knowledge that the gear was in good shape.

After two days we left Frailes in the dark of night, hoping to dodge the worst of the wind and waves coming down from the north. The forecast for the next week was just grim enough for a northbound passage that we decided to grab this chance rather than stay in Frailes for another week. Not that that would have been bad! But we all had eyes on getting to La Paz for various, not-very-important reasons. The passage was fine, we motored along in mostly good conditions and dropped anchor in one of my favorite places along this part of the coast, Bahia de los Muertos, or Ensenada Muertos.

We were here almost 3 years prior with a few other boats after a particularly energetic crossing from Isla Isabela, and the restaurant on the beach was where we all gathered after naps, to tell our particular sea tales over cold margaritas. I have good memories of that bonding time, and looked forward to a few more meals in this sweet beachside restaurant, called 1535.

We spent another 2 days in Muertos, enjoying food in 1535 while the sweet, floppy-bodied teenage kitties charmed us (I love a good, relaxed, floppy-bodied kitty - trusting, calm, easy.) We were entertained by a wing foil clinic that comes down from La Ventana to train people in the calmer, flatter bay. For hours in the afternoon, every day, the colorful wingers would circle our boat, tacking, jibing, falling, shakily getting the hang of the sport while the attentive instructor jet ski'd nearby to assist (and, protect our boat!)

So Muertos did not disappoint, but it was time to move on to the Big City, a short day trip around the corner, gliding between Isla Cerralvo, which is now Isla Jaques Cousteau, and the peninsula. We arrived in the afternoon and were able to get right into the slip we had reserved in Marina de la Paz, grateful they had a space for us after months of being told every marina was full.

We've been settled ever since, wedged between a huge luxury fishing boat and a massive luxury motor yacht. The latter, although it blocks our entire view of the beautiful bay, provides welcome shelter from the daily winds and choppy seas, so we're happy. She's a beautiful boat, anyhow, and we have a good sliver of view off our stern to the eastern hills and the sunrise.

We've spent our time, as I mentioned, doing mundane regular things, peppered with a wonderful Christmas meal with old and new friends here in La Paz, a quiet Zulu New Year celebrated at 5pm with a bunch of cruisers at Club Cruceros, and our 4-day sojourn to La Ventana. La Paz has matured even since our last visit 3 years ago, with great eateries and bike lanes (with lights!) and excellent shopping, even an organic produce guy who comes a few times a week to the local market. We've really enjoyed our time in this town.

What we haven't told you yet is that after Allan decided to put kite boarding on hold in La Ventana, we took a wing foiling lesson together, and loved it. Of course, we only had a few hours on the beach, with just the kite, and have yet to move to the next step of getting on the water with the scary foil board or whatever they call it - a small, lightweight board with a "mast" that sticks down into the water and some fins that jut out at the bottom, the thing the board rides up on when you get good enough to foil. We've been warned that the learning curve is steep, so we'll sign up for that 3-day clinic that sailed around our boats in Muertos, maybe in the spring when we pass back through. In the meantime, we bought a pretty lime-green used wing in La Ventana so we can practice our wing handling skills on the beach. Of course, there's some logic missing there, and we know it, because if it's windy enough to fly the wing on the beach, it's too windy to land the dinghy, so there's that ... catch 22's everywhere you turn, but we'll figure it out. We're determined to try, because this sport was made for us: first of all, there's a "wing." And when you're on the board moving slowly at the beginning, you're "taxiing." When the board starts to lift out of the water, you "take off." And, when you slow back down and settle, guess what? You "land"! See? As two pilots, we have to. And, despite other dangers and discomforts, there's no body dragging in this sport.

And finally, the Big Bucket List Adventure is nigh! We leave on Sunday morning, sailing with actual wind in our favor instead of against it, back to Ensenada Muertos, where we'll stay for a few days, pet the kitties, eat some good food, and jump in the water with our friends John and Lisa who offered to drive over from La Ventana and help us clean the bottom of the boat. Then we'll move on to Los Frailes for a night, and then back to Cabo San Lucas, where we'll get the final diesel top-off, gas top-off, and produce top-off before heading south with our friends on s/v Amphitrite. Where are we going? Stay tuned!

And don't forget:
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New photos in the Photo Gallery - Just click on "Gallery" on the webpage!

Although a lot has happened since last I blurbed from Bahia Los Frailes, and I do intend to fill in some of those blanks, I want to skip ahead and start with now.

Right now, we're sitting on the little stone terrace of an adorable casita at the Ventana Bay Resort in La Ventana, Baja California, munching on sourdough pretzel nibbles and sipping cold filtered water. We're surrounded by palm trees that make whooshing noises in the gusty breeze, while a little bird peep peep's somewhere nearby, but otherwise, it's peaceful and quiet.

We're taking a vacation from our vacation. We rented a car in La Paz yesterday and drove the 45-minutes east to spend a little time with friends John and Lisa, who've been coming to La Ventana from the Pacific Northwest for many decades to play with the wind. There's a lot of wind here, and the people who make up crazy and dangerous ways to use that wind are all here: the windsurfers, kite boarders, kite foilers, wing foilers. It's a mecca of windy, watery sports. A thing about sports: whenever one gets particularly saturated, as in, everybody's doing it, someone comes up with a new one. And so it is with wind sports. Most windsurfers abandoned their clumsy big sails and booms 10-20 years ago in favor of kite boarding, an elegant sport with smaller boards and pretty parachute-like arced sails and lots of scary strings, which was suddenly way cooler. Then, along came kite foiling, where the board lifts up on skinny little foils and flies above the water. Next, wing foiling, with bat-wing shaped inflated sail-things that you hang onto with handles, no strings attached. Then the windsurfers started foiling their windsurfers, and some of the wing foilers abandoned the wing for just an electric powered foil, but none of them are here. This place is about wind.

So Allan, a former windsurfer, came with 3 used kites he got from a friend, a board he got from John, a harness he got from me - ready to get back on the water. He'd taken a few lessons about 9 years ago but needed a refresher, so here we are in one of the top wind meccas of the West. John and Lisa hooked Allan up with an instructor, Rodrigo, and they spent yesterday playing with the kite on the beach, just to get back into some of the moves. Today the water part happened.

Now, in my opinion, anything that has a training move called "body dragging" is suspect. Why would you want to actually choose to do that? But body dragging is part of the training, and Allan's body was dragged all through the wet, choppy water today while he managed the kite way high up above him, then sometimes way downwind of him, yanking him along, while Rodrigo coached him from the beach via instructions piped into his helmet. Next, Rodrigo added the board for some board body dragging. Then, after I was exhausted watching, not to mention a bit sandblasted, he attempted to get up and actually kite board. I figured by then, if was me, I'd just body drag myself all the way down the beach until I washed ashore and somebody brought me a spicy margarita, but he's feistier than I when it comes to water sports, and he stuck it out.

Apparently he did get up on the board, which is fabulous - but I missed it because he actually was halfway down the beach toward the spicy margarita place, and I couldn't keep up. So I went back to my sand-blasting spot on the beach and snuggled into the 10 square meter sail they had chosen not to use today, trying to forget that I had to pee. After awhile I started to worry - it's a genetic thing for women, I think - imagining him exhausted and water-logged and hoping none of the other 200 kiteboardfoilwingwindsurfers ran over him. But eventually, I saw him and Rodrigo walking up the beach, and I relaxed.

Rodrigo packed up his stuff and went south, we packed up our stuff and went north, hiked up to our little casita to rinse off all the gear and relax a bit. As we debriefed the day, Allan came to a big conclusion about this kite boarding thing: not gonna do it! Phew! You might say - good thing! Skip that dangerous body-dragging sport and stick to yoga! But no. Instead, he wants to try wing foiling - it's much easier to do from a boat and doesn't have any scary strings. In the meantime, it's almost time to join John and Lisa for those spicy margaritas.

We left Ensenada in the company of another boat, s/v Eos, whose owners hail from various parts of the globe but most recently sold their home in British Columbia to launch into the cruising life, along with their energetic dogs, Finn & Clover.

We were of rather like-minds about our approach to sailing the 700 miles south to the tip, or cabo, of the Baja Peninsula, and our boats were well-matched for speed, so it was a good fit. Plus, we like dogs.
Our approach on this trip was not to "gunk-hole," which means to dip into all the cool little anchorages along the way and take time enjoying the trip, but rather to follow the wind and seas and get around the corner to La Paz before Christmas. Andy still works and needs to get back to Canada for a bit, and Allan and I are meeting some friends in the La Paz area.

It was a good strategy: the wind favored most of our trip south, and we had our sails up for more than half the time, which is a good percentage, historically, for this boat and her adventures so far. The seas were also magnificent, with a following swell that gave us the chance to surf gloriously down each wave while the boat made the most delightful watery slooshing sounds. It was smooth, and fast, and (mostly) quiet. We made two stops, one in Bahia Asunción, and one in Bahia Magdalena.

Asunción is one of our favorites, attended by one of our favorite guys along this coast, Lery Espinosa. Lery is a lobster fisherman during the night and a (Critter sighting! As I write a mobula ray is jumping happily out of the water just behind our boat!) cruiser-helper during the day. He helps us get fuel, ferrying jerry jugs to the local gas station via his dinghy and pickup truck, then helping us pump it into our tanks, he'll take you to shore in his dinghy if you prefer that over attempting the waves for a beach landing, he'll refer you to all the local spots in this tiny town for food, groceries, etc. and he'll offer up any advice you might need. He's also a sailor and keeps his sailboat anchored in the bay.

As expected (and the reason we didn't stop earlier in Bahia Tortuga), the Santa Ana winds kicked up from the east, picking up all the desert-y sand and reducing visibility a bit, and churning the sea into a messy stay-on-the-boat situation. So we stayed on our boats for 2 days, texting each other, until it laid down. We got up early on the the third day and headed out before the sun came up.

It was a lovely 32-hour passage and we arrived in the afternoon and dropped anchor in Man-O-War cove, an hour inside the Bay, where it's blissfully calm. There's a little fishing village there, and a wonderful beach restaurant. After settling in we picked up Louise, Finn and Clover and went ashore, giving the dogs and the humans the first chance to stretch legs since we left Ensenada, 530nm earlier. The beach was strewn with spiny half-dried sea urchin, rocks, and occasional fish heads, so it was a short, guided walk with dogs on leashes. A bit later the humans returned to the beach for dinner, relishing cold beers and fresh fish and shrimp tacos as the sun went down.

Up the next morning for a comfortable 8:30am departure for Cabo San Lucas. We were pleased to find the wind within an hour of our departure, and sailed non-stop for the next 22 hours. Pure heaven for this catamaran, which absolutely loves a nice downwind sail. No critter sightings until nearing Cabo, when we saw our first whales. There was a bit of sail drama, though, to pepper-up an otherwise fabulous trip: in the night, while I slept, Allan had to make a quick heading change while under sail and the beautiful headsail I call the "Creature" got tangled up in pillows of sail fabric wrapped tightly in rope, an unrecoverable mess without help. Leaving it up risked ripping that beautiful sail, so Allan woke me, and under his calm direction, wearing headsets and life jackets and snugly tethered to the boat, we brought the whole mess down and dragged it carefully to the cockpit, where it lay in a fluffy pile, to be untangled later.

The next afternoon we rounded the corner into Cabo and all of it's chaos - a stark contrast to the simple fishing towns of the coast. Glass-bottom boats, pangas loaded with life-jacketed tourists, jet skis, massive millionaire boats, the hotel and condo-strewn beaches, the beautiful rocky arch at the entrance to the bay - it's an interesting and rather spicy end to the 700 previous miles.

We were surprised to find the anchorage fairly empty. Allan and I decided to get fuel before anchoring, dodging the tourist pangas on their way out (there seems to be a total lack of speed limit in there, so it's a bit wild) and sliding into the fuel dock without incident. Well, almost without incident - one panga cut right in front of us and we had to yank both engines into reverse to avoid hitting them - that must have been a thrill the tourists were not hoping for, being T-boned by a catamaran!

Once settled at anchor we took a short nap, and as we were gearing up for an evening aboard, listening to the loud DJ booming from the beach in some sort of obnoxious bar game and the music coming from other restaurants ashore, we lamented that we were missing the Parade of Lights back in our home harbor in California. But then we started noticing a familiar behavior of the boats, milling about, strewn with holiday lights, gathering as the sun dropped lower, and we realized "Hey! A Cabo Parade of Lights!" So we took our comfy camp chairs up on the roof, got some cold drinks and blankets, and watched the show under a bright, full moon with the last of the light glowing from behind the arch, the boats parading in a huge circle in the bay for the benefit of everyone on the beach and all of us in the anchorage. The show was capped by a short but delightful fireworks show, and then another from the beach directly in front of us.

We stayed two days, got the fuel, untangled the Creature, bought some groceries, had $40 massages, relaxed, caught up on emails, and generally decided we didn't hate Cabo San Lucas as much as we thought, in fact, we might have stayed longer but a decent weather window seemed to be opening up for the 7-hour trip up to Los Frailes, our next stop en route to La Paz. We knew the weather for the next week was likely to be a no-go for our northward passage and we'd probably spend some time in Frailes, but we wanted to keep moving in that direction.

Our passage started out nice enough, no wind and fairly smooth seas, but then Neptune woke up and decided to compensate for our fabulous trip down the Baja. Snarly and wet, choppy and uncomfortable, I called the next 5 hours a bashy-smash. (It felt like WAY more than 5 hours!) This boat makes sharp, loud "BANGS!" as water slaps up under the bridge deck beneath us, or hits the hulls in a certain way, it's like being inside a metal box while 7 gorillas throw rocks at you. It's a catamaran thing. Mono hulls endure these sorts of seas in other miserable ways, and the gang on Eos was suffering their own agonies, so by the time we reached Frailles we were all spent. We anchored into a stiff 20 knot wind blowing straight off the beach, which thankfully eased as the sun went down.

Yesterday was a quiet day spent mostly aboard, resting, catching up on misc. admin that seems to not go away just because you've left your "normal" life behind. I started a sourdough loaf (a 2-day process, or more) and Louise made banana bread. We washed our windows and Allan took a swim while I worked out, using scuba weights and stretchy bands. We all went ashore in the late afternoon and threw a tennis ball and a ratty dog-frisbee for the rambunctious canines, Louise and I lamenting our "princess feet" as we ouched-ouched-ouched our way along the rocky shore in bare feet. Back aboard Allan and I made plans to do a dive in the morning, before the winds kick up; we're still trying to get all our gear collated and tested since we have a few new things.

On the horizon: we'll stay here today and tomorrow, diving, maybe hiking, "relaxing" which were still not very good at, and tomorrow night we hope to have a chance to sneak north another 10 hours or so to Los Muertos, the last stop on our way to La Paz. We'll be in La Paz through the New Year and have some spectacular plans in January, which I have previously alluded to, and which I'll talk about later when things gel.

For now, as we ease into the last few days before Hannukah and Christmas, we wish you a wonderful season and lots of good food!

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We've left Ensenada, México and are southbound at last, and now the cruising season officially starts for Fly Aweigh. She's been scrubbed and spruced by the capable team at Baja Naval Boat Yard in Ensenada, with touched-up CopperCoat on the bottom, newly re-bedded windows all around the main cabin, fresh black paint on the outside of those windows, and a shiny, polished hull. The engines and saildrives have been serviced, the props painted with Prop Speed, a few chunks of missing fiberglass repaired, anchor chain inspected and re-marked, and the inside cleaned with vinegar water from top to toe. Allan installed a new starter motor on the port engine, and replaced the inverter-charger and control panel with newfangled stuff that gets the whole system talking better. And the new control panel is slick, although Allan points out that the old one was easier to read - the new one has smaller letters! We blame GenZ, but we're glad to have the cool tech. We were in the yard a total of 6 weeks with a few days in the marina after we splashed last Tuesday, but spent 10 of those days in Southern California for the Thanksgiving holiday.

I have to admit, I like being in the boat yard. I enjoy the challenge of everyday life (up to a point) and adore hearing all the whistles and whoops the guys give each other, the banter, the volleyball game at lunch. I like waking up on the boat and hearing the sound of early projects getting underway. I enjoy meeting other people also stuck "on the hard" while their boats get spruced, and the camaraderie we all develop in our common plights. I enjoy finding fun little places to eat locally since cooking and doing dishes aboard gets tiring with no easy way to dump the water. But all of that is good for about the 6 weeks we had, and then it's time to go, and thank all the folks at the yard for their help. I can only imagine how good, and weird, it must have felt for our friends Behan and Jamie on s/v Totem after their total refit, during Covid, for years. Right now, I'm doing a little dance for them as they continue across the Pacific, facing new challenges that only being on a voyage can present.

Our day so far: we had a similar start leaving Ensenada this morning as we did leaving Oxnard a few months back - a thick fog has been dominating the early mornings for the last few days and we were ready to plow through a damp morning today, but awoke to a gorgeous, clear day, with calm seas, no wind. So we're motoring along placidly, in the company of another boat, s/v Eos. At 49 feet, she's got a longer water line than Fly Aweigh does, which directly translates to more speed (but I bet we'd catch her with our sails up!), so she's blasted on ahead of us. We plan to catch up to them in Bahia Asunción Monday evening, unless they choose to peel off sooner and explore another anchorage.

We left the dock at 6am, with mugs of tea/coffee and nibbles of a South African biscotti sort of thing that Louise on Eos made, delicious! At 8am we had a Face Time call with our Canadian friends Michael and Gloria, who's boat, Paikea Mist, is currently in Valencia, Spain. It was perfect to start this day with them, as our early cruising days in 2010 were spent in their company as we crossed the Pacific Ocean, and we've shared many adventures with them on Paikea Mist in the last 15 years. Breakfast was the usual - big bowls of Allan's special oatmeal, laden with fruit and flax and walnuts and cinnamon.

Then I took a nap. Why not? We have another 48 hours to go, and there's not much happening. Our biggest task is to avoid the bull kelp and those diabolical long lines the Mexican fisherman tend to set. We've seen lots of kelp, but so far no lines. So I settled into a nice nap while the boat slid over the calm sea, the engine murmuring gently. Just as I was starting to wake up I heard the unmistakable sound of our prop getting jammed. Rope? Kelp? I leapt out of bed to help Allan in the next step, something we've done many times in our cruising years - suit up and jump into the water to clear the prop. It's almost a right of passage, so quite fitting it happened on the first day out.

He pulled on his brand-new wet suit and I grabbed the mask, fins and snorkel and down he went into the chilly water, he was back on board in a few seconds, the big ball of kelp floating away from the boat. We're keeping our eye out for more - next time it'll be my turn to jump in, so I'm waiting on my shower a little bit longer just in case.

Later, for dinner, I've defrosted the tomato sauce my friend Joy made a few months back and plan to make a veggie pasta with a little salad. Then we move into our night watch schedule, which we revise all the time, trying to find the perfect rhythm. This time of year at this latitude, the night is almost 13 hours long, so with 3-hour watches we divide the dark into 2 watches each. We try to match our natural biorhythms, which used to be me for the 9pm-midnight and then the 3am-6am watch, but as we age our patterns are changing, and lately I'm up until 1 or 2 and he's awake early, so we're trading. We'll see how that goes - it's never perfect.

Too bad the wind has decided to sleep this day out, but it looks like she'll be here tomorrow afternoon and then we'll get a good offshore kick on Monday. This calm start to our trip is appreciated, actually, a nice way to get back into movement on the water without too much drama. The kelp jam was just enough drama to remind us we're out on the planet's biggest ocean and we'd best be on our toes.

¡Ándele sur!

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When the boat yard is starting to feel like home, it's probably time to leave ...

Baja Naval Boat Yard in Ensenada was our "home" for 7 weeks in 2021, and we're at 3 weeks this time around. When you add those two together, it starts to feel like home. We know the guys who are working on our boat - Allan is compiling a list of their names on a piece of paper that floats around the cabin - Jaime, Mario, Caesar, Paco, David. We're learning what kind of music each one prefers, and who's got the better English. We know some of the other boats in the yard and their stories, we're getting comfortable with the roads around town, the lumps in the sidewalks, the best fish taco place, the best birria place, the fun vegetarian places (few and far between,) where to shop for the freshest vegetables, how to park the car, when the cruise ships come in, and which of them will play "The Love Boat" as a departure song on their array of ships horns. We watch the town spruce itself up when the cruise ships are in town and lay low for a breather when they're not.

Since our arrival on October 21st, progress has definitely been made, but we've had a few 2-steps-forward and 2-steps-back events. This is why we're still here when we thought we'd be gone a while ago. It's all good - the folks here are great and we're glad to see our beautiful boat slowly get the attention she deserves. We really don't have a grueling schedule to keep since our first real official commitment isn't until January. We have lots of things we'd like to do in the meantime, but there's no rush.

Our initial boat yard to-do list: touch up the bottom paint; remove the blisters on the sterns and repaint; service the sail drives; apply "Prop Speed" (something to inhibit growth) to the engine props; remove and re-bed the four large windows in the main cabin; do some gel coat repair here and there; add a "boot stripe" to the hull at the waterline; polish and wax the hull.

So far: bottom paint is a patchwork of fresh, coppery CopperCoat; the blisters are all smoothed and filled and repainted; sail drives are serviced with new oil and seals; the folding props have new parts so the tiny amount of slop is gone, they're prepped for Prop Speed; we've picked the color of the boot stripe; and then ... we start running into the inevitable snags.

Along the way, a new project got added to the list: in the window rebedding project, small chips occurred in the fiberglass around three of the four windows as they were being removed. We can't fault the guys doing the work - they were meticulous and incredibly careful, but it's a tricky job and the fiberglass is getting old. So, New Project! The options: #1 - patch up the chips and touch up with matching black paint, which would look admittedly touched-up, with new, shiny paint on top of old, faded and cracked paint. #2 - light sand on the whole area and do a fresh coat of black paint, which would fill the subtle cracks and look consistently black and shiny, but the cracks would return in time. #3 - deep sand, prime, and paint, which would take longer, cost more, but be the better long-term solution. We opted for the Full Monty, Option 3. That would add a few days to our stay but no big deal.

Paint dramas: on the first try the primer was bad and something ugly happened. Mario, the lead painter, (who speaks very good English) had to sand it all off on day two and start over. Day three, second try, wind! Wind - spewing particles and bits into the wet, fresh paint. Grrr! Mario says, "Now it looks like non-skid!" (A process in which a paint-like goo is applied to the walking surfaces of a boat and then a grit is applied to prevent slipping.) They had to wait until day four for it to fully dry before they could sand it off yet again and re-prep. On day five they painted early in the morning in calm air, but light winds snuck up and, well, you know. Finally Mario wisely decided it was time to tent us and give it a fourth and, hopefully final paint. They could have tented us to start with, but that's a huge job for a small area of the boat and I think they had just hoped it would work.

Overall, life here is fun. Between 8am and 5pm, there's a lot of activity. The guys who work in the yard are a hoot to listen to as they banter in their lilting, rolled-R's Spanish, play little radios with perky, cheerful Mexican music or American classics, and have rousing volleyball games at lunch. It feels like a happy place. I giggle at some of the scenes that flash by, like a painter in his white head-to-toe hazmat suit - footed, hooded - walking into the wind with the air inflating the papery suit so it looks like a giant dough boy, the feet and hood puffy and animated. A number of new boats have joined us here in the last week, it's quite crowded. We have a few huge power boats, a bunch of nice sailboats and most recently a very cool wooden double-ender sailboat owned by a young couple with a cool story, we'll share more about that later. The camaraderie is also nice, and since the hassle of cooking and doing dishes on board when you're not connected to water makes going out quite tempting, we all find our favorite cheap places to eat, and share a little time together.

Despite things being mostly fun, I decided to escape for a few days to Tecate, an hour-and-a-half north, where we have a little vacation casita, and took my boat yard neighbor Julie with me. Julie and her husband Curtis have been in the boat yard since August, so it's really feeling too much like home to them, and she was ready for an escape. While Julie and I were hiking and eating great food and taking long hammock naps and hanging out with fun neighbors, Allan and Curtis stayed behind and manned the ships, hung out with the other guys, teased each other, made man jokes, ate fish tacos and birria, and geeked-out talking electronics. When Julie and I returned, Fly Aweigh's main cabin was obscured under a complex structure of metal poles, plastic, vents, hoses, fans, double-layers - fancier than a Cirque do Soleil tent. They spared no expense this time, it's impressive. And somewhere, beneath all the tenting and vents and fans, the fresh black paint is now curing in a dust-free environment. I think we'll see it tomorrow, and welcome it to the world as one would a newborn child.

So now the gel coat repairs are largely done and awaiting the final coat of white, the boot stripe will go on toward the end, as will the Prop Speed, the boat will get a good washing down, and the polish and wax will be, of course, last. We have our own list of onboard projects, too, but some of them have to wait until we can get at parts of the boat that are currently tented or otherwise engaged. So we do other stuff. Allan has been dealing with the drudgery of paperwork and finances, and doing the wiring for the ongoing alternator project. He's given the dive compressor a good overall check. I'm cooking, writing, reading, and working on my Spanish - I've engaged the services of a wonderful online coach in Chihuahua for weekly Zoom classes.We've dropped all 300 feet of anchor chain onto the pavement below so Allan could reapply blobs of fluorescent paint every 33'. We have hot pink, bright yellow and glowing green, which make it a lot easier for the person on the bow to monitor how much chain has been dropped during anchoring. We do have a chain counter thingy in the cockpit, but if it ever failed, well, we like backups. The science and geometry of anchoring is important, you need to know how much chain is out there to keep you from dragging anchor in the middle of the night, never fun.

But right now, it's hard to imagine anchoring. We're just here on solid ground with dirt and paint dust all around, watching the cruise ships come and go, listening to the sanding and clunking and banging and drilling, the laughing and the whistling, the Love Boat serenades, the marching band in the park next door, the happy families strolling the malecón. We're just here, in our current "home," being in the moment. We hope to splash into the salty sea by the end of the week and put Fly Aweigh in a nearby marina. Then, a car trip to our other home in California for Thanksgiving. After that, we'll start our next adventure, sailing south along the Baja, finding more homes along the way.