the days i don't write about

If you notice on our blog, huge expanses of time go by where we aren't writing anything. Days, weeks, sometimes even a month will go by and not a word will be written. There is a reason for this. A really sound, solid, and bullet proof reason: sailing and living in other countries is frequently a pain in the ass.

In the net, it's worth doing. Similar to having children there are some heavy prices to pay, but what you get out of it, ever just barely sometimes, is worth the cost. But let's talk about one of the days I normally don't write about.

0700: Alarm goes off. One hour to get everyone up, fed, and zooming off in the dinghy towards shore. 

0800: Dinghy loaded, we zip off into low 60's (f) weather with a 15 knot headwind, driving spray at us as we bounce through the chop.

0802: Oops, forgot something halfway to shore, turn the dinghy around, do it again.

0830: Waiting on the corner for the city bus to take us down the road. Dropped off the laundry, forgot something, on the dinghy, tossed the trash.

0845: Exit bus, walk six blocks to school with Cora.

0900: Walk back with Charlotte, realize I'm walking the wrong way, turn around. Walk ~3 miles to the library.

0945: Arrive in library, wifi is busted. It's 0845 in San Diego where my coworkers are so the day is really starting.

1100: I've spent two hours on the phone at this point, dealing with one of the most difficult professional challenges I've come across in years. Walking around a breezeway in front of the library.

1145: The wifi connection is working again, emails can flow and I can get on the VPN at my company.

1200: Close down for the morning, walk to the ~3 miles back to Charlotte.

1245: Arrive at the coffee shop where Charlotte spent her day.

1300: Walk the six blocks back to Cora's school.

1315: Get Cora.

1400: Walk another ~3 miles with Charlotte (Lyra strapped on) and Cora. The temperature in the shade since 1000 was about 93 (f) degrees.

1445: Hair cut done, Cora looks like a boy now because Mexicans don't cut little girl's hair and have no idea how to do it. Walk back to the library area where I worked.

1500: Hang out at the playground for a bit, avoiding the slides that are hot enough to issue second degree burns. I knock out 3 sets of pullups and dips. It's still in the 90's, in the shade. I'm not in the shade.

1600: Arrive at the dentist to find out that our appointment had been cancelled. They had tried to call our cell phones not really, since when they tried calling with Charlotte standing in front of them holding her phone it rang fine. 

1605: Took a cab back to the marina, boarded dinghy, pounded through 10 knots on the beam.

1620: We're out of water onboard, so I grab our three water cans and head back to the dock to water up.

1640: I grabbed the laundry, and bought some drinks for the evening. Slamming back into now 15 knots on the beam I get completely drenched in sea water.

1700: I take a cockpit shower in the blowing wind. I hadn't bathed in two days and smelled like an old shoe that had been wedged up a bum's ass, lubcricated with extrement. 

1730: I'm now clean and dry. I hang up my seawater soaked jeans and my wallet falls out into the ocean, floating away. I jump in after it, clad in my boxer briefs. 

1800: I take my shower all over again, dry off again, put on new boxer briefs, and go back to hang up clothes and organizing the cockpit for the windy night ahead but that has already started.

1830: I climb into Cora's berth, read her a book, and tell her a story. Over the next hour as the onslaught eases, I end up with her falling asleep with my arm over her as she tells me a story about a dragon and and how you need to be brave around them.

Needless to say, Charlotte and I went to bed early. In no small part because we had to wake back up at 0700 this morning and start all over again.

balandra, home of the ice cream cart-barge

One thing that makes the La Paz, Baja, Mexico area pretty cool is that there are a lot of neat places nearby. Hailing from San Diego, the closest “cool place to go anchor for the weekend” was 80 miles away to windward, at Santa Catalina Island. And honestly you couldn’t even anchor there as the primary destinations have moorings installed. Here in the sailing Mecca of La Paz however, there are several islands, many large bays, and countless smaller coves within a few hours. Further destinations are merely another hour or two away beyond that, and so the story goes for hundreds of miles up Baja’s interior peninsula.

Balandra isn’t the closest stop north of La Paz, but it’s the most popular. On a busy weekend you’ll have a dozen boats in the cove, half of which are local charters letting their sunburned gringo clients zip around on suped-up tenders and drink margaritas. And yes, that’s “busy” for here.

Though we had plans to head to Espiritu Santo Island, a student in Cora’s Mexican preschool we have her enrolled in gave us an invite to a birthday party on the beach in Balandra. We’d been here before for a single night when coming in from Bahia Los Muertos, and this time we spent three days and two nights anchored in this beautiful cove. 

We had some friends on Classy Lady II that showed up as well with their five year old daughter Solis. They sold their last sailboat, bought a powerboat, and are looking to build a new sailboat. If you think we have an interesting story, trust me, these guys have us beat hands down.

There are really two aspects to Balandra: as an anchorage and as a beach.

As an anchorage it is relatively straight forward although first time people in the La Paz area will likely be spooked by the Los Coromuelas that kick up around sun down, howling wind out of the south west until ten the next morning. There are also crappy little flies that don’t bite but otherwise manage to annoy the hell out of you as they land on your face, neck, ears, and every other square inch of skin. Happily, these odd insects don’t seem to enter the cabin all that frequently and don’t hang out after sun down. Their domain is the uncovered pitch heat: probably where you’ll spend the least amount of time.

The beach of Balandra, or Playa de Balandra, is the real gem of this bay. It’s weird to look two hundred yards out and see people standing in waist high seas but that’s how this place works. The water is crystal clear, fish zip around by your feet, there is no surf, and for hundreds of yards the water is so shallow and calm that even the most timid beach goer finds themselves happily flapping around in 80 degree (f) water. Also, the bugs that are present in the anchorage are mysteriously absent here.

The ice cream man has his little cart that he pushes with high volume wheels: not only do they handle the sand well, but in deeper water the whole thing floats so he can push it along like a barge. Like a lot of Mexico, it’s the strange blessing and curse of stunted economic development that allows beaches like this to be accessible to the average citizen and not have a resort built right on the sand. Charlotte and I frequently walk around and shake our heads saying, "Imagine what this place would look like if it was in the States." I sincerely hope that as Mexico continues developing and growing as an economy it can preserve locations like Balandra: the natural beauty around here is quite literally, priceless. 

Update on Sunday, May 19, 2013 at 19:19 by Eric

Sailor notes:

We've only been there in the month of May, and the Coromuels blow pretty steadily from sunset until about ten in the morning. Balandra seems to be affected more than the rest of La Paz so expect 25% stronger winds as a minimum. 

There isn't much fetch, so you can anchor wherever you like but we've gone about 100 yards off the south wall with good success. In 20' of water let's say you're letting out 150' scope, so keep ~200-300' off the wall because the daily NW winds will put you stern-to it. At night time though, when the Coromuels kick up, you'll be happier with the big rock wall in front of you and also no other boats to drag and screw you up.

If you're not totally confident with your ground tackle, make sure you're onboard before sundown and the minute the wind kicks up from the S-SW, back down hard on your anchor to make sure you've got it biting. That might be considered normal Coromuel advice, we didn't do it, but I saw another boat make it happen.

There are trash cans on the beach, vendors selling over priced drinks and snacks, the ice cream man shows up around 1400, and there are some built-in palapas if you can get to the beach early enough. 

It's about two hours from La Paz motoring. 

rebel heart video from the sea of cortez

Some various video clips edited together and put to AWOL Nation's "Kill Your Heroes" (which is figurative advice I think a lot of people might want to consider). Still getting the hang of the new Countour after ditching the GoPro (terrible product, terrible service, more expensive).

what a la paz'atively great day

Roughing it.Our immediate "let's get these things done in La Paz" list is getting short so last night and tonight Cora and I went off to reconnoiter. Two targets were high on our list: a place to exercise, and the general layout of our host city.

Last night we dinghied over to El Migote and explored an abandoned palapa. On the plus side it's got a roof and enough strength to support my gymnastic rings, but it was about 20 minutes to motor there and just like living in a city if you need to drive 20 minutes to get to the gym you're probably not going to go.

So instead we went down the malecon (mahl-eh-cone) today and found that the beach has a bunch of little palapas, is offset from the main street a bit, can have a dinghy beached easily, and is close to Rebel Heart's current position.

The bags are packed tomorrow to head to the "gym", which will consist solely of the 53lb kettlebell, a pad of leather, and some kicks for running around doing sprints in the sand. Oh, and my kick-ass sound system. So for any La Paz residents if you hear Tupac or Dre down on the beach tomorrow morning: sorry bros that's just how I roll. 

But for tonight half of our children are already asleep, the other is working on it, and things are good. I ended up reading all these horrible stories on wikipedia today and it sounds trite to say, but the difference between having your healthy family on a yacht in a tropical paradise and being all f'd up by circumstance or your own mistakes (or both) is a very thin line.

One car accident, one careless mistake, or a twist of fate through no fault of your own can seal you off from your dreams forever. 

For any of you readers out there that are in the mental, physical, or financial throws of trying to get a boat "out here", keep the faith and don't quit. It's not all peaches and cream down here but it is worth it. You've got the whole rest of your life to sit around not sailing.

we la paz'atively arrived

Charlotte and Cora reading up on the channel entrance.We left Bahia de Muertos and motored up the flats to Balandra. Spending the night there we learned it's somewhat like a bipolar friend. When things are good, it's great. But when things are bad, it's a nightmare.

I had heard that the Corumel winds described as a "nice cool breeze at nights to cool the La Paz area down". What we did not expect was from 6pm to 10am to have 20-30 knots howling at us with jagged rocks 100' to leeward. 

Since then the Corumels have been more subdued, but they can start anytime before or after sunset and can be weak or pack a nasty punch. A protip for anyone headed to La Paz: don't get lazy with your ground tackle and don't leave anything out at night that can blow away.

La Paz water is mill pond flat.The water so far in La Paz has been mill pond flat. The Pacific swells don't get up this high but again the Corumels with their wind and chop are waiting for you at night time. Plus, La Paz "harbor" itself has a ~3-4 knot tidal speed so the apparently flat conditions don't necessarily translate to benign, especially when you tack on that La Paz is sitting happily in the hurricane belt.

We've only been in La Paz for a few days so I'm reserving judgement, but it's definitely more boat friendly than mainland Mexico. Our galley freshwater pump broke the day after we dropped anchor and we were able to find a replacement within a couple of hours: completely unheard of for the majority of Mexico. In fact I can honestly say that Lopez Marine in La Paz might be the only store in Mexico that sells those products and much else.

Fishing: it's what you do in Baja.So after three weeks of beating up ourselves and our boat there are some things that need to get addressed here in port.

Everything from dentists visits for the family to engine oil changes for the boat, it's time to take care of ourselves and of the boat that has taken such good care of us. 

Plus, we get to check out this La Paz'atively cool city, meet new friends, and hopefully catch up with some old ones as well as they trickle in from the jungle-heat of the mainland. 

Update on Tuesday, May 7, 2013 at 21:35 by Eric

And we also ran into Bryan on Vela, which is nice because there aren't a ton of "underage" sailors out there like ourselves. And when two parents in their mid 30's represent the young crowd in any given scene, that might paint a picture for you non-maritime people as to the demographics of the cruising community.

In Bahia de Banderas there was surfing, kite boarding, and paddleboarding. Regardless of age, there was a youthful element at play that so far seems a bit absent in La Paz. Maybe we'll find more as we keep looking around but it does seem like the kind of place that sailors go to retire.

living life in the bay of the dead

Charlotte and Cora, Rebel Heart in the background. Click to enlarge.We are here in Bahia de los Muertos, so named because permanent moorings in Spanish are called: muertos. So although "Bay of the Dead" sounds really spooky-awesome, a more accurate and less literal translation would be "Mooring Bay".

There used to be a silver mine here and a lot of ships would load silver from a nearby mine, thus requiring a pier and permanent moorings.

The mine ran dry and the name doesn't sit well with developers so it's been renamed to Bahia de los Suenos, or The Bay of Dreams. In 1885 a Chinese fishing boat wasn't allowed into La Paz because of Yellow Fever: 18 crewman died waiting in Bahia de los Muertos. So regardless of what future condo developers may want, there are indeed dead things in the bay no matter how you want to slice it.

The lower spreader bar is perfect for knocking out a set of pullups. Click to enlarge.For our first taste of Baja as a family things are pretty darn nice. We're, as usual, waiting on weather, so we decided to go the beach today and we tried out the new suncover. I initially crapped all over the idea of such a device but I stand corrected. It can make the difference between dying on the beach or hanging out happy for hours on end.

I spent the first few hours of today doing my job. It's been a real learning experience over the last couple of weeks. I've done three conference calls underway, two with my satellite phone, and another in cell range paralleling the coast. We were motoring in flat conditions so I dropped the RPMs down and went up onto the foredeck to get some quiet.

Hey bro, you want some dorado? Click to enlarge.Last but not least we waved to some guys in a panga who then came up on the beach and asked us if we wanted a kilo of mahi mahi (in the bag, not the fish he's holding).

The rather friendly guy had the coolest name in the world: Eric. He works for Beulah Fly Rods and has the horrible work schedule of spending two months in Baja taking clients fishing. 

The wind is gusting around 20 knots but there's only a 1/3 mile of fetch so no big thing and hopefully we'll have a nice peaceful night's rest.

weather for a westward crossing the southern sea of cortez

Crossing the Sea of Cortez is a pretty normal affair for most boats on the Pacific side of Mexico. The Sea of Cortez offers many advantages to mainland Mexico.

In San Carlos many people haul their boats for the summer and leave them on blocks, somewhat safely out of the hurricane belt. The Baja side of the Sea is littered with beautiful islands, beautiful bays, interesting cities, clear warm water, and no mosquitoes to speak of.

La Paz represents the hub of Baja sailing, is a large city, and has numerous marine services and products that are in short supply elsewhere in Mexico. Additionally, you can rent a car and drive the ~800 miles to San Diego to purchase big expensive items, sneaking them back across the border (bypassing Mexican customs and the insanely expensive shipping rates).

So for as many boats do the mainland -> Baja 200 mile migration every year there was conspicuously little written about the transit. Diesel isn't getting any cheaper and although it's true that running your engine is synonymous with being on the west coast, from doing this trip twice now and studying the weather a bit both times I feel like I can offer some suggestions.

There are five primary weather patterns in the Sea of Cortez.

Cyclonic, in the case of tropical storms moving north and wreaking havoc, represent the first type.

The second type are chubascos which is a general Spanish word for storm but in the Sea it refers to northern high pressure that builds up and then vents out south across the sea. These are dangerous and do not cross when they are happening or within 12-24 hours of their dissipation as they generate a very short period sloppy wave train that hasn't had the distance to mature into a swell.

The third type is general northern winds (N-NW), 5-15 knots. This represents 80% of the time on the Sea. When heading south or south east, these are the winds you want.

The fourth type is glass. Waters so flat you can honestly stop the boat and jump in for a few hours. Water so flat that when stopped you can remember calm anchorages with more roll period. If you're motoring, these are the conditions you want.

And lastly, and sadly least, there is the type of wind you want for heading west or north west: non-cyclonic southerlies. Just nice happy 10-20 knot breezes out of the more-or-less south. We started seeing more and more of these 1-3 day periods as late April and early May showed up. Conveniently there are periods of glassy conditions typically between southerlies and northerlies, as the weather switches around. 

I'd highly recommending crossing from Mazatlan if you can. We hop-scotched from Punta Mita to San Blas to Mazatlan then hopped over. Some boats stopped in Isle Isabela as well.

Regardless, crossing from Mazatlan with a day or two of southerlies puts in you a great spot for reaching the east cape of Baja. If you can really nail the weather you'd want glass off Mazatlan, building to southerlies quickly, which will give you some clear weather to negotiate the breakwaters and vessel traffic.

Then you'd want the southerlies for as long as you feel it would take to get you within a few hours of Baja. There are no good southerly protected anchorages in southern Baja and even if you found them, southerlies flip quickly and you'll probably want some rest.

So study the weather, have hope that you indeed find decent weather windows when going "uphill" in the Sea, and if you want to be a sailboat more than a motor boat just be prepared to focus on timing and opportunities. 

made it (back) across the sea of cortez

We're sitting in Muertos Cove, maybe 60 miles south of La Paz. It took just about two days to get across the Sea of Cortez and in an awesome twist of fate we were able to beam reach (sail) across at about 5 knots in reasonable comfort. 

There's a south swell rolling into the anchorage here but we're going to brave the chop and take the dinghy to the single restaurant on the beach. 

mazatlan harbor pilot hopping off the ferry

Click to enlarge.The guy in the white shirt at the bottom of the ladder is the harbor pilot for Mazatlan. His job is to board (and disembark from) vessels heading in and out of the bay. This was the La Paz ferry and I saw the tiny little door with the Hotel flag (white/red) open.

The pilot boat zooms underneath and pins itself to the moving ferry, and the harbor pilot scrambles down. In some ports they actually pick them up and drop them off with helicopters.

Harbor pilots are worth a read if you've never checked out the profession. Their job is all about handling huge ships in tight confines and doing it perfectly, not to mention having the physical prowess to hop from one moving vessel to another or from aircraft. It's an old job as well. The earliest harbor pilots on record date back to 700 BC.

and sometimes north american paternalism is dead on

Great way to drown at sea.From the "thank god I'm not on that death trap" file...

Sitting in the Mazatlan anchorage this morning we watched this coffin-of-the-sea head out past the breakwaters, overloaded with families who are under the false impression that they are safe aboard this "vessel". 

Lacking in PFD's (life jackets), equipped with two life rings and no life rafts, what will have these people returning safe to the dock is simply the odds that on a calm day like today you can get away with carelessness. 

But the ocean doesn't suffer fools for very long. In what seemed like a personal reminder to me, two years ago the Mexican sport fishing vessel Erik capsized and spilled all its passengers into the Sea of Cortez. Floating for twelve hours no one on shore knew there was a problem until the first survivors crawled up onto the beach.

So, United States Coast Guard, with all your laws and regulation, I love you.