Hokey Dokey,

Yeah, yeah, yeah it's about time we updated our blog. Alrighty then, I'm gunna give it a try. "I" Chris or Chrees as the locals call me.

First off Wease has been doing all the blog posting. She's been sick one way or another the whole way down the coast and really had it bad the further south we went. Soooooo, here's that story made as short as I can and still make some sense:
Sick #1 - As we came down the coast Wease was suffering from sea sickness. She was taking something called Sturgeron. It wasn't doing the job so she decided to try the scopolamine (sp?) patches like I was using. They worked great for me. They worked for her . . . BUT (this is the big but) unknown to us they were reacting with her other medications(not in a good way). She started to get more and more paranoid. We didn't really realize it was happening.

As she got more paranoid she started getting sea sick again. It got really really bad. Two nights she was absolutely terrified and hysterical. On those nights I was able to get her into her bunk where she was the most comfortable. I got to be on watch all night long but luckily we were anchoring the next morning in each case. So I never got really exhausted. Just really sleepy. Once each night I got pretty tired so I haled our friends Heidi and Terry on Cetus and asked whoever was on watch to talk to me for a while to wake me up. I worked great. Once we figured out that the patches were the problem she had a choice: use the patch and get paranoid and queezy or don't use that patch and get full on sea sick! Two bad choices.

Sick #2: Once we made it to La Paz she started feeling better but about the fourth day she started getting queezy and real weak. We went to Doctor Tuchmann here in La Paz. After hearing our story he went straight to her ears. Turns out she had plugs in her ears made up mostly of fiberglass dust from our boat work. She uses ear plugs at night to sleep and the plugs shoved the stuff in tight. It took three doc visits to get that cleared up. She started getting better again.

Sick #3: A few days later she got food poisoning. She was violently ill for three days or so. I called the doc and he had us pick up some stuff that helped. She didn't start feeling well for at least a week this time. As of today she's been feeling good for about a week and a half. Keep your fingers crossed!

OK OK Ok now for a catch up session:

11/10/13
San Diego to Ensenada
We left San Diego at 2am. We motored the whole damn way (again) to arrive in Ensenada Mexico at 2:30pm. It was an easy trip except for the lack of wind. In Ensenada we did our first foreign country check in. Luckily Terry and Heidi were there for us yet again. They helped us get through a fairly complicated process in about 3 or 4 hours. In the old days it took cruisers one or two days! The last step of this was to push a button. If a big red light came on the port authority would have to come out and search our boat. If a green light came on we were home free. The guy just in front of us got a red. Good news for us - bad for him. With the odds with us we got a green light. Yay!

11/12/13
Ensenada to Cabo San Quintin
We threw off the dock lines at 8:15am. Our original plan was to sail to San Tomas but we were making good time so we had a pow wow with Cetus and decided to keep going on to Cabo San Quintin. Well the weather apparently didn't read the forecast for calm seas. The wind and waves started to kick up pretty good. I didn't reef as soon as I should have and therefore when we did, it was a real pain. Finally got reefed down. Some of the jib sheets were tangled in the sail. Oh well, that's easy enough to take care of when it isn't blowing 20 knots. We had confused seas: waves coming from two or more directions. Wind was blowing 15 to 25 knots with gusts to 32knts. It was pretty bumpy. Two waves joined together and dumped a bucket of water down Wease's back. Not good. This was the first time Wease got attacked by the paranoid monsters. We put her in her bunk and I sailed the boat alone for 16 hours. 3 or 4 of them I hand steered her. Landover did absolutely great. She took it all in stride - no big deal. We anchored in a nice secure spot in Cabo San Quintin in 13 feet of water at 7:30am on the 13th. Chrees took a looooooooong nap.

11/15/13
Cabo San Quintin to Cedros Island (North Anchorage)
We weighed anchor at 7:40am and motor sailed all night and arrived at Cedros at 7:30am the next morning. It was an easy passage. The first mate actually enjoyed it. Cedros is a beautiful island: volcanic mountains, rugged, rising straight up out of the sea; some of the beach areas had a shelf so we could anchor in 20 feet. We used our full 200' of anchor chain as well as our sentinel (a weight hooked onto the anchor chain just in front of the boat to hold the chain flat on the sea bed). There were 100's of seals, sea lions, and dolphins making music and playing around us everywhere. Cetus and Landover were the only boats in the anchorage snugged up close to the shore. At this point we had logged 871 nautical miles since leaving San Francisco Bay. That's a long way at 5 or 6 knots per hour!

11/17/13
Cedros Island to Turtle Bay
We weighed anchor at 5am. Did I mention that pumping the anchor windless 400 or so times to get the anchor up at 4am isn't the best way to start your day.... However once done you're wide awake and thankful that once again the windless worked smoothly and the job is done for awhile.

We arrived at Turtle Bay on the 18th at 2:45pm.
During this leg we had the water maker making fresh water out of sea water for 7.5 hours. We netted about 10.5 gallons of fresh drinking water.

Turtle Bay is one of the two places to get fuel on the Baja coast. The dock is a tall old rickety thing with crooked slippery metal steps covered in bird poop and whatever else. The town is a poverty town with dusty dirty streets. The houses looked to be falling down and in terrible disrepair. The people seemed happy and they were all in neat clean clothes. The grocery stores sometimes were in peoples front rooms. It was weird to walk into a shop and find yourself in somebody's home while the kids were having lunch at the kitchen table.

11/21/13
Turtle Bay to Asuncion
We weighed anchor at 6:30 am.
Ten hours later we dropped the anchor at 4:30 pm.
Not much to say about this trip. Once we anchored we rested up for a day and a half for an early departure and a long haul.

11/23/13
Asuncion to Santa Maria Bay
We weighed anchor at 4am for a long overnight passage, 34 hours, arriving in Santa Maria on the 24th at 1pm. The water maker overheated on this run. It bit the dust. Luckily Landover carries 80 gallons of fresh water in two separate tanks. We still had plenty to last us.

We left in light winds motor sailing. By the time we were approaching Santa Maria the wind was blowing 15-21 knots and the seas were bumpy and confused again. We pulled into our anchorage and dropped the anchor in 22 feet. The anchorage was a little windy. Wease went swimming in 75 degree water. It was kinda cold cuz of the wind so Chrees stayed on deck (of course I did!). After Wease washed her hair she had a heck of a time climbing up our boarding ladder. We then realized that the bottom step was too high. What with the wind and wave action she drank up some of the ocean in her efforts. She struggled mightily and made it up. To this date we haven't figured out a good solution to this problemo. I rinsed her off with nice clean hot fresh water. Wease was a happy and worn out camper.

11/25/13
Santa Maria Bay to Magdalena Bay
This was a short 5 hour hop.
The coast line along here starts to get real impressive: big rugged red and dark gray mountains shooting up from the sea. Near the entrance to Mag Bay two whales were on a parallel coarse with us. We watched as their huge backs rolled out of the sea and back in. This only about 100 feet off our port side. Too close for comfort but wonderful and breathtaking all the same. After anchoring we heard a odd tap, tap, tapping on our hull. I went out to investigate and found some odd sea life: Terry and Heidi had snorkled over. They brought us a new pre-filter for our water maker to see if that would fix it. We jumped overboard too. The water was too cold for Chrees (of course it was). We did a few laps around Landover and struggled up the ladder again to a fresh water rinse.
Alas the filter didn't fix the problem...

11/26/13
Mag Bay to San Jose Del Cabo (bottom tip of Baja)
Got up too damn early again and left the anchorage at 5am.
32 hours later we pulled in to the San Jose Del Cabo Marina at 1pm on the 27th. This was a pleasant passage and we pulled into a slip - no anchoring - yay! It was a beautiful marina with wonderful landscaping. We went out to dinner with Terry and Heidi at an outdoor restaurant overlooking the marina. We topped off our fuel tanks, took showers and cleaned up the boats. Hit the sack early for an early departure. By this time we are now racing against the clock because we wanted to get to La Paz before the Northers kicked in and made going north very rough and slow.

11/28/13
San Jose Del Cabo to Caleta Lobo Cove
Left at 6:30am and rounded into the Sea of Cortez anchoring in Caleta Lobos Cove 25 hours later at 6:30 am on the 11/29/13. During the night we had our Thanksgiving meal. I prepared a sumptuous meal of quesadillas with cheese and turkey bacon heated up in the microwave. Yum! We went through the San Lorenzo Channel during the night. Normally we would not go through a squeezie place like this at night unless we had done it previously during the day, but we had reliable waypoints and were following closely behind our friends on Cetus. On the starboard side of the channel lies the Isla Espiritu Santo. This is the island we're looking forward to visiting to go hiking and snorkeling. Just before we were going to go swimming we found out we could get a slip early in La Paz so we up anchored at 12:00pm and were making fast our dock lines in La Palmira Marina by 1:45pm.
This made our trip from San Francisco to La Paz 1,508 nautical miles.

This is Chrees - over and out....