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!

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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.

Our 4 days at Catalina Island was probably exactly what we needed after months of busy preparation - quiet and rather dull. The sky was gray most of the time, save the 20 minutes I took that beautiful picture of the casino, the was weather cool, and the summer crowds were gone. The mooring fields at both Isthmus and Avalon were wide open. We read, napped, strolled the town, marveled at the golf carts and tiny vehicles this little community sports, ate $2 tacos at the Sand Trap by the golf course. On a walk past the cute houses we found a tile mural affixed to the front of a house that we recognized immediately: "Alison's Reef", a watercolor my mom painted for me many years ago, digitally reproduced and printed on 4" tiles! Must have been taken from her website. But knowing my mom, she wouldn't care about having her art stolen, she'd have been flattered.

The main event for our few days there was to test our dive gear. We've been so busy at home, and the weather so foggy and cold, we didn't have the chance. So we snagged a mooring right next to the casino and adjacent to the protected dive park, where you can swim with the bored, giant sea bass and weave around the graceful kelp. We hauled the dive tanks out of the forward locker, dug out all the gear, squeezed into our brand-new wet suits, set up the tanks and regulators and buoyancy compensators, and turned on the air only to discover that my tank was empty. Allan's tank - empty. We checked the 3rd - empty. And the 4th, half full. Not, of course, what we expected - they'd been hydro'd and filled a few months prior in Ventura, and bore the appropriate labels to prove it, but somehow the air was gone.

But since our objective was just to test the gear, and not go deep or long or far from the boat, ½ tank would be fine. Once I had my gear on and Allan was checking it all out, we noticed the dive computer we borrowed from our friend Pat wasn't working. Then, the air hose completely separated from my BC. Plastic fitting failure. My fabulous pink Sea Quest that I've had for, oh, a lotta decades, finally threw in the towel. So Allan took the ½ tank and we set off for a quick swim in the dive park, me floating top cover in mask and snorkel, Allan 20 feet down in scuba gear. Turns out, his BC has a slow leak, and my new wet suit is too small, the water was murky and the cloudy sky left everything dull and gray under water. It didn't take long before we turned around and called the entire thing an abysmal failure. Diving is a lot of work, getting it all out and on and in the water, and equally difficult getting it all off, and rinsed, and hung to dry. Suffice it to say our moods were as gray as the day.

We left Avalon on Thursday morning for our next 11-hour passage to San Diego, which went smoothly (Critter Sighting: a huge pod of Risso's dolphin - strange and beautiful whale-like dolphin with square, flat faces and slow, graceful movements) and dropped anchor in time for the last of the sunset in the anchorage outside the harbor, off the beach from the Hotel del Coronado. A quiet night there and the next morning we moved to an inner anchorage near Shelter Island. The water was dead calm and the day was sunny and perfect, and our moods greatly improved. We love the nautical energy of Shelter Island and looked forward to wandering around, popping into the chandelries and getting boat-related errands done. I had some shopping to do, a wet suit to ship back, and a quick stop at an urgent care to check a minor injury, and the first day was gone.

We had a fabulous dinner at the San Diego Yacht Club, where a big soiree was in full swing on the gorgeous tall ship America, swallowing up the entire guest dock (and the reason we were in the anchorage and not on the guest dock.) The San Diego Yacht Club is a club to behold - they have a waiting list for memberships that takes years, maybe lifetimes, with a preference for young members (we heard it's more expensive to join if you're old!), has a thriving sailing program, tennis and pickleball courts, a pool, huge facilities, and a great restaurant. We felt lucky to be a part of it for a few days, one of the lovely perks of reciprocal yacht club membership.

In the afternoon we found a little shop that fills dive tanks and popped in with some questions. It was 3:00 and the shop closed at 3:30, but the sole proprietor, Michael, said "Go get 'em! I'll wait, I've got nothing going on!" So we ran back to the dinghy, zoomed back to the boat, grabbed the wheely buggy thing and 2 of the 4 tanks, dinghied back to the yacht club, dragged the tanks to the shop in the wheely buggy thing, only to find doors locked and nobody in evidence. We waited and bit and then sure enough around the corner he came, laden with cold drinks and a huge grin, apologized for being late, and set about looking at the tanks. Turns out they hadn't been properly cleaned around the lip, so the seal was bad and the air had leaked out. He carefully scraped the salt and corrosion and explained what he was doing and told us his life story and talked about boats and fishing and showed me his new cool mask and refilled the tanks and then ... when I mentioned my recently failed BC, ran into the back and came out with a newer Mares BC and gave it to me. "Here," he said, "a guy gave me this, I have three of them back there, I don't know if it works but take it." And then, as we loaded the refilled tanks and BC into the wheely buggy thing, he refused to take any money from us. He stayed late, saved our dive gear, turned me on to the coolest new mask I can't wait to try, gave me a $400 BC, and refused any payment. He's my new favorite guy on Shelter Island, so if you're there and need tanks filled/serviced, or just want to have a fun chat, say hi to Michael at The Tank Drop.

The next morning, Sunday, 6am, exactly 7 days to the minute from when we left Oxnard, we arose to a clear, still morning and were ready for our 11-hour passage to Ensenada, dive gear stowed, passage gear out, coffee made, and ... the port engine won't start. It won't even click-click-click. It won't nothing. We wondered if the boat was trying to tell us something. It was almost as though it, and we, and our dive gear had all grown too old and sedentary in the prior few years, and this cruising thing was just a whole lotta trouble.

But when we're on task, we're on task. We had our haul-out date the next morning at the Baja Naval boat yard in Ensenada, an appointment we made months ago, and didn't want to miss it since the lift and space in the yard can sometimes be booked out for, well, I don't know for how long, but we didn't want to miss it. So, choices:

1. Go with one engine. Not a big deal, once we're out of the harbor we usually run only one and then alternate for engine life and fuel efficiency. But, maneuvering on one engine poses certain challenges in tight quarters, since the thrust is asymmetrical and the rudders can only do so much to compensate at slow speeds, like, when you're trying to dock in a tight space with scary ugly poles sticking out of the water and wind blowing you in a way that is decidedly not helpful.

2. Stay in San Diego, in the boating mecca of the west coast, where parts are (theoretically) available and help is at hand.

We try to avoid falling prey to "get-there-itis" but after some yin-yangs and pro-cons, we opted for #1, giving Allan 11 hours to tear into the suspected problem - the starter motor - and hopefully fix it en route.

At 6:45am we officially logged our departure and left the quiet harbor for the Mexican border, which slipped by pretty much unnoticed. Allan took parts of the starter motor apart, cleaned contacts, cleaned other things that somehow matter in relation to the engine, put it back on, and lo and behold, it started! We patted him on the back and gave him kudos for being mechanically brilliant. We ran that engine for awhile, then switched to the starboard engine, then successfully started the the port engine, and finally another switch to the starboard for the last few hours.

We arrived a bit before sunset, and as we rounded the corner into the wide harbor, Allan went to start the port engine, and ... nothing. Not even a click-click-click. Damn. Now we had to contend with the scary ugly poles sticking out of the water just abeam where we had to park the boat, but luckily the wind was in our favor. We hollered at a sailor on a nearby boat to catch our lines, and he waited patiently as we side-stepped on one engine toward the dock, slowly - slowly, letting the light wind help push us closer. I apologized to our patient line-catcher, to which he replied "If you're not bored, you're not doing it right!" Words to ponder. When we were finally tied up safely to Dock A1 at Baja Naval, we made our introductions - Gunnar, Alison, Allan - nice to meet you - where are you from? Germany - Oxnard - what are your plans? Blah blah blah, nice to meet you! And we proceeded to bed down the boat for the night and enjoy some quiet after 11 hours of motoring.

But, the malecón, the wide walkway along the harbor in Ensenada, is not a quiet place on a Sunday! The huge mariachi band, with a horn section, drums, multiple guitars, and numerous well-seasoned singers, was in full swing, sounding at times like a German oompah band. Families strolled along the malecón, dressed in their Sunday best, little girls all fancied up with flouncy dresses and bows in their hair, little boys chasing after remote-controlled cars or tossing small balls around. The sun set behind the industrial-looking port, looking gorgeous in the warm, clear air, ignoring the chaos of cranes and containers stacked 5-high and commercial boats of all kinds.

So now we're in the boat yard, our short catamaran keels set on 2 huge chunks of wood with 4 metal things propping up the ends. 2 new starter motors have been ordered and we have a crafty plan to get them here in the next week. The too-small wet suit has been exchanged for a slightly bigger one. I have the "new" BC. The tanks are filled. A fresh new 9-volt battery powers the dive computer. My new mask is on it's way. We met some folks here in the boat yard and they invited us to join the Ensenada Cruisers gang at their weekly 2-for-1 margarita night. Sitting outside, sipping mango margaritas, listening to everyone's story, their adventures, enthusiasm and laughter - it revved us all up again and reminded us that we're not too old, we're not ready for the pasture, we love this cruising life, and most importantly, it reminded us why the whole lotta trouble is worth the all the trouble.

PS: Photo Gallery - pending! I have a lot of photos and it takes time to upload, so, soon!