Sailblog 122619

We are anchored in Bahia Santa Maria

Phone and internet are sporadic in the little out of the way places we anchor. It has been nothing short of miraculous some of the bits of internet we have received. After leaving Ensenada, we sailed for 2 days and nights to the small village of Bahia Tortuga and we planned to spend 2 days and sail on. We had no internet at all but at O Dark 30 we were up and getting ready to go and I decided to check one last time and I got a miracle wiff of internet and got weather fax files at 20 kilobytes and they showed a low pressure storm from the south so we stayed 2 more days as there are few anchorages on the outside of the Baja with protection from the south.

The next day Donna got a text from our credit union that said they thought we had been hacked and there was a 1-dollar charge then 2- $1,699 charges one after another. It was unbelievable that we got that message so that Donna could call on our working Mexican cell phone and get the card canceled. After weathering the storm we sailed in rough seas to Bahia Asuncion and with no internet, I used an old radio to internet interface to get a 321 byte query out and receive the 20kb weather that I needed and I don't even know where it came from. Then we sailed 2 and half nights to Bahia Santa Maria and as we came into the bay at 22:30 at night we got a text from Nate that his baby girl was born.

Our Mexican phone was discontinued the next morning because the month was up and our USA phones were disconnected the same morning because our canceled credit card could not auto-pay. Donna, as a new G-ma, was desperate for some communication on the new baby girl and she tried everything and we spent hours talking to Mexican Telcel customer service as our only phone service was to the carrier but she tried a desperation call to the Mexican owner of the boat yard that we hauled out in. She could not get thru, but he called back and I told him of our crazy problem, and he said, “No problem, I will go and put 150 Pesos on your account and Merry Christmas!”

That held us over until we could get to La Cruz where we could use our American phones once again.