Beltane Video

This was shot crossing the Sea of Cortez from Mazatlan to La Paz in March, 2007. It's short and sweet. We made chili for dinner and it was delicious!

For Sale

Beltane is for sale because we bought a bigger, if older, Hallberg-Rassy in September. Litha, the new boat, is in Sidney, B.C. this winter getting fixed up for a summer season in the northwest next year.

If your RSS feed date for this blog is stuck on 1/1/07, maybe you should click the "Subscribe to" button at the bottom of the blog (or right here) to get the updated feed. BUT, before you click to subscribe:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 attempts to download links to site feeds, rather than display them in the browser. You can right-click the link to copy the location into your feed reader.

When Google bought Blogger earlier this year, they changed from RSS to Atom. I think that caused the date problem. The download issue -- who knows! You might want to check that this new feed works before deleting the old one.

Researching this issue reminds me of one of the reasons I left my old job.

Journey's End

We explored a few new anchorages on Baja and wound up at Punta Chivato to wait for the right weather to cross back to San Carlos, near Guaymas (5 hours from the Arizona border) where the journey began. We departed April 22 at 7 a.m. with lumpy seas, but they eased and the wind built and we sailed for four hours before having to turn the engine on again for the rest of the trip. We arrived in San Carlos at 7 p.m. with several layers of clothes on (it was chilly) and anchored. Ahhhh -- it's good to be back.

Got a list of things to do to put the boat up for the summer, so we'll be running around for a week or so. But our truck is here and it's good to have our own wheels again as we start transitioning back to life on terra firma and eventually reintegrate into U.S. culture. See ya next winter!

Spring in the Sea of Cortez

We left La Paz under a brisk wind March 31. Robert (and Dusty) sailed in his boat, Destiny, with us to Partida and San Francisco Islands and that was great fun since we had dinner together each night and hiked the trails together on both islands. He even joined our daily Scrabble game a few times. We snapped photos of each other sailing as we left La Paz and we got to use our spinnakers for a while on the sail to San Francisco.

After Robert returned to La Paz, we went a little further north and ran into friends Alex and Edith and Andy and Deb at Evaristo. Steve worked on Seagull engine and battery issues. Then we headed up to El Gato, 30 miles north.

As in all the other anchorages we’ve visited, fishing is a way of life here and the families that live on the rocky Baja coast depend on it because little else is available. We see the men out in their panga fishing boats collecting or casting nets and diving along the reefs. Some of these families also keep goats to make cheese from their milk.


Some high points from this section of the adventure: hiding out in a safe anchorage listening to 30-40 knots of wind howl all night, getting the dinghy outboard working again, beach walks, desert hikes, getting the anchor stuck (temporarily).

The Pause that Refreshes

We stayed in La Paz almost a month, learning our way around more, finding a better grocery store and more restaurants. We even took in a movie or two. Our friend Robert drove us and his Australian Shepherd, Dusty, in his Prius to Todos Santos on the Pacific coast one day and on another day to a nearby beach, Tecolote. Dusty likes to play Frisbee on the beach and I really enjoyed having a dog around. I also reconnected with my basset hound friend who lives near the marina.

Elixir

I caught a cold that turned into something like a sinus infection. One of the taxi drivers that hangs out near the marina asked "Como estas?" I replied, "Estoy resfriado" (I have a cold). He said "Tomas tequila" (drink tequila). I laughed thinking he was kidding, but after my next margarita, my sinus infection cleared up.

Slow Boat to La Paz

We stayed a week in Mazatlan waiting out a gale in the Sea of Cortez. We toured the old town, about a 10 mile bus ride away on the south side of town from Marina Mazatlan through the "gold zone" (aka "golden age zone"). Mazatlan is a lot drier than Puerto Vallarta and points south, and we liked that. It was cooler too, and the Home Depot and Walmart gave it a homey feel.

We left Mazatlan Tuesday, March 6 and had rough seas in the shallow water along the coast to the north. The next day, we were in deeper and calmer water and had a great sail all day. There was nothing to see though, no diving birds or flying fish or whales, only about 5 shrimp boats the whole way, and having an almost full moon made the night watches better. We got into Marina de La Paz Thursday morning after navigating the unmarked San Lorenzo Channel, which this time was rather calm. It took as long to go from Mazatlan to La Paz as it did to go from Baja to Puerto Vallarta. It was fewer miles but we were headed into the wind. All in all, a good trip and it's great to be back in Baja.

PV to Mazatlan

We started to leave Banderas Bay Feb. 21, but as we neared the mouth of the bay, the wind picked up and the big cloud bank to the west looked menacing, so we anchored in Punta Mita, the last nook inside the bay on the north side. The next day, we headed out again and made Chacala at noon.

Chac-aaaaaaahhh-la
We loved Chacala. It's a small bay, about 1-1/2 miles wide, with a beautiful wrap-around beach, good dinghy landing, beach palapas, easy swim to shore, nice tourist resort, wonderful. We reprovisioned some and left 2 days later for San Blas.

Beltane of San Blas
The trip to San Blas turned out to be perfect. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the "The Bells of San Blas" in 1882 about the forgotten friars who established a mission and introduced Catholicism there. We had a slow, pleasant sail across shallow (10-12m) Mantechan Bay, which has hosted international surfing contests, to our anchorage on the north shore near San Blas with about 7 other boats. We were playing Scrabble in the cockpit when the noseums came out at dusk (which we'd been warned about), so we headed inside and left in the morning for Isla Isabella.

Isla Isabella

We had a rocky ride all day to this volcanic island set aside as a Parque Nacional due to its bird rookery. We were so glad to anchor and get out of the wind and rough seas. The next day, we hiked the trail through the rookery. The frigate and boobies (red-, yellow-, and blue-footed varieties) let us come within a foot of them, their nestlings, and eggs. We also saw many iguanas, seagulls, and other types of seabird.

It’s pretty special to eat dinner in the cockpit, swaying at anchor, volcanic cliffs around you, live with the sound of seabirds, and the clear, green sea just a few feet away.


Mazatlan
We left Isla Isabella at 4:00 in the afternoon, February 27, arrived at Mazatlan at 9:00 the next morning after 3 hours of sailing and the rest motoring on calm ses, and docked in Marina Mazatlan. The sky scrapers are quite a change from the wildness of Isabella. We'll wait for a weather window here before crossing to La Paz to meet our friends, Alex and Edith.