HOT MOTORSAILING TO PUNTA NOPOLO; SAILING OUT OF THE ANCHORAGESaturday, 05 November 2005

The combination of very uncooperative winds and a deadline to reach La Paz (Monday) means that we are forced to motor. Most times we do get up the mainsail on the theory that we might just get a half-knot more speed. I usually put up the staysail as well but, to be frank, I really only do it for aesthetic reasons: I don’t think it really helps. The main other reason for sails when we motor is to provide shade for the crew without having to rig an awning. Nevertheless, the awning already having been rigged from our breakfast Klatsch with Ronald and Barbara, we decide to motor over the dead-calm Sea of Cortés with the awning and forget about the sails. The heat builds up over the day and we take turns at the helm. In the cabin below the temperature reaches 37 ° C (100 ° F).

I am reading a collection of short stories by Daphne DuMaurier called Don’t Look Now. The style is old-fashioned and the plots definitely dated; horrible things might be suggested, like a knife attack by a horrid dwarf, but whereas a modern writer would give you the gory details in sickening volume Du Maurier lets you imagine it yourself. It’s nice to read well-constructed sentences and paragraphs, though. I keep wondering if I shouldn’t try my hand at fiction. So far I never get past the blank page. That may be because I am trying for a home run when I should initially just be trying for a base hit or a bunt.

We thought we might stop at Los Gatos, a smallish anchorage that we passed on the way north last spring, but the weather is good and we shall need to make a lot of miles to reach La Paz on Monday. We therefore push on to Punta Nopolo. We run along opposite San Jose Island. On the Baja coast the mountains return to the coast and there are cathedral-like cliffs that rob us of the late-afternoon sunshine. In shade we round the point, see a white ketch anchored in the southern anchorage and opt for the little bay with a pebbly beach tucked in just under the point. There are about five or six well-constructed little houses, not shacks like in a fishing camp, in an open area of about one-third of an acre and hemmed in on three sides by cliffs and on the fourth side by the beach. In addition to the houses there are a number of palapas with fishing gear underneath. We move in quite close to the beach to find five fathoms and let the Bruce go into the clear water. We are a little restricted in how much chain we can let out as we do not want the wind to blow us in the night up into the shallows. I therefore let out about twenty fathoms of chain and set the sentinel as well. As dusk settles in, we all decide we need a swim to refresh ourselves from the hot day. The water is crystal clear, warm and inviting. In deference to the locals, one of whom has been scanning us with binoculars from his porch, we wear swimsuits. We are all so brown now, however, that at a distance and in the weak light we would probably appear to be wearing white bathing suits.

Absent any luck in fishing today, Kathleen goes below to make spaghetti while Laila and I sit and watch the gathering dark and the stars appearing. There is some coming and going by fishermen in pangas. None of them use running lights and, if they have large enough motors, they run full speed. We set our little solar-powered anchor light but no doubt they can see Vilisar’s outline against the electric lights inside and outside of the houses ashore. I don’t hear any generator running and I did not see any overhead wires around the houses. So I assume they are all using solar power. They certainly don’t spare the electricity. Everything is lit up and people are sitting outside in their breezeways (yes, there are breezeways) chatting with each other. Kids and dogs are running around.

Just before dusk several people begin blinking flashlights at a fast-moving panga heading north past Punta Nopolo. The boat changes course and comes full speed right up to the beach. There is a little confabulation from the bow with people on shore, a package is handed over to the boatmen and they turn the bow seawards and roar off again, disappearing into the darkness around the point. I guess that was the equivalent of flagging down a taxi.

After dark a panga arrives with several men in yellow oil-slicker trousers and white gum wellies (standard gear for fishermen here). They pull the 22-foot panga up on the beach and unload nets and other gear, a strong electric torch being used to illuminate their activities. Eventually they set up a folding wooden table next to the boat and, under the bright light, begin an hour of cleaning fish. They definitely also had manta rays among the catch. Eventually, the fish are all cleaned and put into plastic boxes and then iced down. At some point no doubt the fish buyer will come round in the morning – by boat no doubt because I didn’t see any road into the village.

By nine o’clock we are ready for sleep. The village stays lit for a bit longer and there is still some coming and going in darkened pangas. I decide to sleep again tonight on the bridge, this time however without the awning. The wind is still blowing a bit from the south, i.e. putting us on a lee shore. I want to be aware quickly if the wind intensifies and, anyway, it’s nice to sleep outside. The Milky Way stands out in the moonless sky. Venus and Mars are clear. I count three or four satellites crisscrossing the sky before I drift off. About three in the morning I wake, my injured shoulder aching because I have been sleeping on it. I am also chilly because the fleece blanket I have been using is not quite warm enough. I gather up my things and head below to stretch out on the starboard settee.

It is very frustrating to have to run the engine at all but it is the bain of coastal sailing that you actually have to use it quite a bit. At sea, you just take whatever wind you can get and, unless you are stuck in the doldrums or perhaps you have no solar panels and need to charge your batteries, you never turn on the engines. You just keep going day and night. In coastal sailing you try to make an anchorage by nightfall – at this time of year the days are a little shorter too - and since the anchorages are not always conveniently placed, you run the iron genoa to make it before dark. On top of it, in sheltered cruising grounds like the Straits of Georgia or Puget Sound or the Sea of Cortés, there is often far too little wind.

This morning after a slow coffee during which we hope to see some sort, any sort of wind, we finally detect a light breeze coming off the beach and blowing towards La Paz, now some sixty miles away. We decide to sail out of our anchorage by putting up the red drifter. Since the conditions are calm and Laila can stay at the helm, it is a good time for Kathleen to try her hand at pulling up the anchor without the aid of the engine.
I had set a sentinel last night and Kathleen has never had to deal with one before. Recovering it takes a bit of practice but goes all right. Getting the anchor up from thirty feet of water where there is even a slight wind to push the boat downwind requires a little bit of cunning. The trick is not to use too much muscle power. Using the windlass or even just pulling the chain in by hand, you pull only enough chain onboard to get the boat inching its way towards the anchor. To keep the boat moving you have to pull in a yard or two of chain as soon as there is slack enough to do so. The big problem is when there is serious wind trying to blow Vilisar away from the anchor. Then you either use the engine or use the windlass. I my opinion the windlass is just about as hard on your back as hauling in chain. But when the wind is blowing …! Even without wind, once you have brought the bow of the boat over the anchor, if the anchor has set the night before, you will probably need the windlass to break the Bruce out of the sand. The windlass can really do it. But once it is out of the sand you need to get that anchor up into the rollers as quickly as possible since, free of the ground you are already sailing whether you have a sail up or not. Sometimes I put up the main beforehand or just before I break out the anchor. Other times, like this morning, I decide to keep the lesson simpler but to worry about sails once we have the anchor on board. The bow is already pointing downwind by the time the anchor is secured and tied down. I haul up the red drifter in the fluky and pitiable little breeze vouchsafed us.
I reckon from the passing flotsam that we are doing less than one knot. It’s nice and quiet but we are never going to make it even to San Everisto, visible five miles away, in any acceptable time frame. Ah, coastal sailing. At 1030 we throw on the engine, douse the drifter, and motor.

TROUBLE IN LORETO; HONEYMOON COVE; REPAIRING THE JIBSAIL; THE RED DRIFTER; BAHIA CANDELEROS SURWednesday, 02 November 2005
Trouble in Loreto

Our little jaunt into town is enjoyable. Our first stop is the internet café. The owner is just opening up after a three-week shutdown for expansion and renovation. Sure enough, inside he has doubled the number of computers and everything is freshly if olfactorily rather overwhelmingly painted. I have dragged my laptop along so I can upload my blog and send some photographs from my hard drive. I realise too late that I could have put all this stuff on my memory stick and uploaded from there and even downloaded anything else I wanted to keep. I spend an hour checking emails. I have another nasty email from my ex in her ongoing quetsch over $20. She threatens to keep the children from me. Ain’t modern communications grand! I draft my usual very nasty reply and then erase it and send a more reasonable one.

Kathleen has brought the headset and she calls her sister in La Crescenta, California, Debra Damron in Germany, and leaves messages for various other people. This VOI (Voice Over Internet) is great. Not only does SKYPE cost pennies to call from the computer to a home or cell phone and is therefore much, much cheaper than any other voice system (it cost nothing if you call to another computer), it really works. I can remember when the Deutsche Bundespost used to make you pay DM 400 in advance, let you wait six months before they hooked you up and then charged you the earth to make long distance to overseas calls. Now Deutsche Telekom charges about € 0.03 per minute to call from Germany to the U.S.A. and SKYPE is even cheaper than this. When we first arrived in La Paz and found out about SKYPE, Telefonica Mexicana, a privately-owned monopoly, was blocking all outgoing traffic via VOI. That seems to have come to an end, someone told me, because the U.S.A. protested about this harassment along free-trade lines. Maybe it’s true.
While Laila and Kathleen go off to check out the cathedral and the town, I walk up to the Ferreteria Nautica and buy two large tubes of 3M 5200 marine sealant. I repaired our mainsail last spring in Puerto Escondido, not far from here, using patches made from old sailcloth and 3M 5200. Not only did this look better than sail tape and/or sewing, it required no special skills, and was done in a few hours. It has also held up extremely well in the UV-intense sunshine this past summer and you can hardly see the patch from deck level. To my surprise the shop actually has what I need; last spring they did not even know what I was talking about (this time I took an expended tube for show-and-tell time).

I meet Kathleen and Laila at the Thrifty Ice cream shop in the tourist street, gorge on a cherry ice cream cone and we walk back to the harbour after stopping briefly for fruits and veggies and at a housewares shop to find a new can opener and buy some matches.

As I feared, although you could not detect this in the town, the wind has built up and the waves are showing white-caps. Vilisar is now no longer rolling, at least, but she is pitching into the wind and waves which now in natural unity are coming from the same northerly direction. We trundle down to the dinghy and row out. Getting on board a pitching vessel is just about as dicey as getting off a rolling one but everyone is quick to make the leap and I hand up the bags including the red backpack with the computer stuff in it.

As I set feet aboard I feel a wave pass under us and a sudden sickening thud as the boat touches the bottom. The ten feet of depth I had to accept in order to tuck in out of the swells this morning has now shrunk. The waves are a couple of feet high, meaning also that they are a couple of feet deep as well and the tide has dropped a little. I tell Kathleen to get the engine started immediately and I dash forward as I feel Vilisar bump again after nearly each second wave. I struggle to get the sentinel up; of course, it chooses this time to tangle around the anchor chain. I curse as I hang over the bowsprit. It finally gives in. I unscrew the shackle and bring the heavy weight up to deck level before carrying it back to the foredeck. I signal to Kathleen to go forward on the engine. The chain which has been straining at an oblique angle to the boat begins to become vertical and I haul in as fast as I can, all the while the deck pitching up and down and getting the occasional splash as the bow plunges into the short-frequency waves. As we come over the anchor I haul for all I am worth, the pain in my ribs nagging me. We drive straight out into the waves to get some water under our keel and within a few boat-lengths we get no more bumps.

We hold a quick discussion about where we want to be tonight. We could go straight across to Ballandra Bay; it is only about 9 Nms away but it would mean pitching into the waves. It is, of course, well sheltered and fun to be in. We stayed there on the way north. On the other hand, it is only about 17 Nm to Honeymoon Cove opposite Puerto Escondido, it is all downwind, and we have never stayed there. On the principle that “gentlemen only sail downwind”, and given the fact that we did not get to visit it on the way north, we opt for Honeymoon Cove. We put up the staysail to steady us in the seas (our jibsail is torn) and motor comfortably arriving after about three and one-half hours at about 1615.

Honeymoon Cove is very popular with cruisers because it is not that far from Puerto Escondido. It is also good shelter and very pretty. We poke our nose into the northern cove to protect us from the northerlies. The cove is long and narrow and as we creep forward it shoals up rapidly whilst still a long distance from the beach at the head of the cove. Standing at the bow ready to drop the anchor, I signal for us to circle around and go back out; I will take another run at it and not go so far in before I drop the anchor. The wind coming across the island is weaker than outside the cove but noticeable coming down the cove at us. When the anchor goes down in twenty feet of clear water and into white sand, we are home for the night.

While it is fun to revisit popular spots that we already know, it is also nice to see something new since there is very little chance of us every coming back this way again. We want to stop at Aqua Verde because we both liked it there and because there is a little tienda in the village. Otherwise we shall try to hit new places in the week we have to get to La Paz.

Repairing the jibsail

Laila and I launch the dinghy and she takes her first row on her own, heading up to the beach to explore and to wash her hair. I strip the torn jibsail off and try to stretch it out on the foredeck to repair it. The seam is torn out for a length of about two yards. My plan is to tape one side with sail tape in order to hold everything in place. Then I shall turn the sail over, cut several 3-inch-wide lengths from the remnants of the sail given us by a fisherman in Esquaimalt Harbour; we used the bulk of it for the sprit-sail for the dinghy and have been using the remnants for patches ever since. It is a struggle on the small foredeck to get the huge sail laid out enough to work on it.

I ask Kathleen to come up and she helps to get the sail tape applied. That part goes really well. 3M 5200 is called a sealant but it is actually more like an adhesive. It can be used for a million things around a boat since it survives well in a saltwater environment. But when I read the instructions, I realise that there are quick-curing and “normal” versions and, of course, I have the latter. This means that the adhesive will be tacky to the touch in 48 hours and fully cured in 7 days. That’s far too long for us! We want to put this darned sail up tomorrow!

A “discussion” follows. I am annoyed and easily frustrated in the last few days, tending to get easily grumpy. I know that I should be drinking the sueros mixture (electrolytes) to combat the dehydrating effects of the wind and sun. I would feel so much better and could handle problems like these much more easily. So why don’t I do it?

Anyway, we decide to leave the 3M 5200 repairs until we get to La Paz and have a few days ahead of us. We have another jib as well as a small genoa sail stowed in lockers below the forecastle. It will be a proverbial pain in the nether region to get them out. But we have no other choice. And anyway, maybe it’s time to retire this jibsail.

Kathleen goes below and I hear her struggling and muttering beneath the foredeck. She is always willing to do the digging down there even though it is hot and ill-lit. She’s a really good person to go cruising with because she just gets on with it though there are times when she, like I, would gladly catch the next stagecoach out of town. Eventually I jump down through the forward hatch and together we heave a white bag with a red stripe around it out of a locker. Because there is no label on it and because we haven’t used it for a while, we are not sure if it’s the jib or the genny. All will be revealed on deck. Kathleen restores our sleeping space to order and while I drag the bag on deck. It’s our old jibsail though, to be frank, it looks a lot cleaner and less rust-stained than the one we just removed from the jibstay. I recall cleaning all the sails on the dock in the Long Bach marina last year with a specialised sail-cleaning product containing some sort of acid. Nice to see a white sail on our boat.

Eventually, toward dark, Laila comes back from the beach and we consider dinner. Kathleen heads below again and begins chopping veggies. The second half of the tuna that we caught yesterday has gone stinkingly bad within one day so clearly that will have to be fed to the seagulls and crabs. Tonight it’s vegetarian sweet & sour stir-fry with rice. A can of beer about now would be good. I jump into the water to refresh myself after the labours of sail repair.

The red drifter

It will be recalled that we bought a drifter sail last spring shortly after arriving from a couple, Michelle and Vern, who were anchored in Guaymas Harbour. They may, for all I know, be still there since they were out of cash and the engine of their John-Alden designed wooden boat was on the fritz. Roger van Stelle, from whom we bought Vilisar four years ago in Port Townsend, Washington, had always maintained that a drifter would be a good addition to the suit of sails that he sold us with Vilisar.

A drifter is a big, lightweight sail used to get more pull downwind. Unlike the better-known and larger spinnaker, which flies free, a drifter is somewhat smaller and is hanked on. This makes it rather easier to handle, perhaps, than the spinnaker. We decide to get it ready to use in case we get light winds towards La Paz. The piston hanks all get a spray of WD 40 to limber them up and we tie pennants to the clew to have it ready to attach to the jib sheets when the time comes. Our drifter, I forgot to mention, is a bright tomato or cherry red (the ladies are unable to agree quite; I’m red-green colour-blind so know nothing), the same kind of red as our Canadian flag flying from the aft stay.

The next morning we get up slowly. I know we should be getting some sueros into us because of the way I slept so badly and feel so slow this morning. We debate about simply hanging out here for another day; another sign of our lethargy. But Laila’s time is somewhat limited; she needs to be in La Paz in a week and so do we to meet Bob Ferguson, who may in fact, we learned yesterday at the internet café, be taking a bus down from Huntington Beach, California! His vessel is still stuck there waiting for better weather. He thinks he will get there in about a week, I gather. His flight back to Kingston, Ontario, via whatever other airports, leaves from La Paz on 09Nov05. It’s better if we keep moving.

The winds are forecast to be light and variable. Aha! The perfect time to try out our bright red drifter! We eschew the motor, hank on the drifter, pull up the anchor, and “drift” quietly and slowly on the light breeze out of the anchorage. It works! The length of its luff is exactly the right size to allow us to fly it without first having to remove the Yankee. That’s a relief.

As we are moving out of Honeymoon Cove at 1.5 knots on a barely discernable breeze, we overhear two sailboats talking on the VHF. We realise from the conversation that one of them is about two miles or so ahead of us and the other is just coming out of Puerto Escondido straight off to our right about a mile away. They refer in their conversation to the pretty sailboat with a beautiful red headsail coming out of Honeymoon Cove. “Maybe they’re pirates!” says one jokingly. We are of course as proud as new parents.
The ride is very gentle though we do eventually make it up to 2.2 knots with a following wind. Things are so gentle that I can leave the helm for longer periods and move into the shade of the big sail to escape the glaring sun. November 02 and we are getting mid-80’s temperatures. I have to keep reminding myself how wonderful this is. The mountains in the distance along the Baja coat are still blue and stick out of the haze. Kathleen uses the quiet time to tidy up the galley. Laila takes her book to the foredeck; she’s reading probably the only German book we have on board: Der Keltische Ring by Björn Larsson. It was a farewell gift from our friends Georges and Ursula Hoppe in Bonn before we left four and one-half years ago to live aboard a sailboat.
As we approach the southern end of the Isla Danzante and are ready to negotiate the rock-island-guarded passage to more open waters, the wind dies completely and then returns but very fluky and weak. We are drifting on the current towards one of the rocky entrance islands. We tighten up sails until we are close-hauled and skirt the island in the nick of time. The wind picks up and then dies again. It is clear that we can never make Aqua Verde, our original destination some twenty miles to the southeast. So, we decide to pull in the sails and motor the remaining mile or so to Bahia Candeleros Sur, a tight little cove just big enough to take on a few boats.

There is an expensive motor yacht already anchored there near the beach but we find room to swing in twenty feet of water. The cove is actually poor shelter from northerlies. But the winds are very calm now; we shall just have to be ready to skiddaddle if a north wind comes up in the night. By 1530 I have stripped off and am in the refreshingly clear water. After half an hour it’s time to get to the computer.

M/V ISLA BONITA IIThursday, 03 November 2005

It is mid-afternoon when we arrive at Bahia Candeleros Sur yesterday and quite hot in the windless sunshine. Unbelievable still that it is the beginning of November. I jump in the water periodically to cool off but we never get around to putting up the awning. We see people swimming off the stern of the motor vessel near the beach and then later having drinks on the long bow of the boat. Pulling on some clothes, I decide to row over and say hello.

After a brief introductory chat from the dinghy, I am invited aboard by Ronald and Barbara. It is strange enough to find Germans here and even stranger to find a German having the same Christian name as me. We exchange life-stories over a very civilised glass of chilled white wine and some guacamole. After an hour or so I need to get back to the boat; it is already nearly dark and I see no one left on our deck and a light burning the galley. I invite Ronald and Barbara to drink a cup of coffee with us tomorrow before a breeze comes up and we sail on to Aqua Verde. As it turns out they are puttering down the coast too to the same harbour.
They are fun people to talk with in either English or German. This is confirmed when they arrive on Vilisar about 0830. Coffee-drinking becomes an extended and animated Kaffeeklatsch as breezes refuse to show up. It is now so hot that we finally break out the awning. Before leaving, we agree to meet in Aqua Verde for drinks in the evening. They could get down there in an hour or so if they got real steam up. But Ronald says that they tend to drive a lot more slowly with the price of fuel being what it is these days. We look forward to hearing more tips from them about harbours to the south of us.

After one more quick and cooling plunge in the water, and after finally adding that litre of oil to the engine that I had been meaning to do for several days (for future use, I show Kathleen how to do this), we pull up the anchor. With Laila at the helm we chug out of the little cove onto a mirror-like Sea of Cortés.