THOUGHTS ABOUT SETTING OFF AGAIN; OFF TO ISLA ISABEL
Saturday, 03 December 2005

Kathleen is usually quicker to get her mind around leaving and pushing on to the next destination. I find it harder to break away. I wonder if this is because I am getting older and not as keen to rough it any more. I know that it is definitely safer and less challenged in a snug harbour. Feeling responsible for all the systems on board, I imagine all the things that can go wrong.

That said however, I contemplate this next overnight sea passage southeast down the coast for the first time ever with some sense of equanimity. For one thing, I feet a certain sense of achievement with having completed most of the boat projects I had planned for our stay in Mazatlán. These projects are sometimes frustrating. On the other hand, I no longer expect anything to do with a cruising boat to happen quickly. I now schedule no less than one full day for each project, am not surprised if it takes longer, and count myself fortunate if things go smoothly and can be completed quickly.

Getting the staysail repaired was a breeze and turned out cheaper than I expected. Getting the VHF radio looked after yesterday was happened totally by chance and went without a hitch; it didn’t even cost much. The two 12-volt, deep-cycle batteries seem to have taken on new life now; their rehabilitation took less than fifteen hours and cost under ten dollars. Changing the oil filter was the most demanding and frustrating but turned out in the end to work just fine. I even slushed part of the parcelled and served, galvanised rigging last week. In the course of all this we met some interesting cruisers, two very interesting musicians (Gordon Campbell and Jock, the jazz musician), and some very nice Mexicans and we were able to tank up on some music. So, after 16 days in the shadow of the El Faro (the lighthouse) in the old harbour, we complete our stowing, pile the dinghy on the foredeck, scrub her down, and plan to put to sea about noon on Saturday.

Unfortunately, there has been no wind all morning. About eleven a small zephyr picks up from west-southwest. It smells of sailing. Actually it smells of the sewage plant behind Club Náutico but we have come to see that as a sign of good sailing. While we are getting the dinghy split apart and stowed on the foredeck an inflatable dinghy powered by an outboard pulls away from a recently arrived sailboat called Royal Treat out of Malmö, Sweden, and heads towards us. Aboard are, we discover, Anders, a Swede who has been living in California, and his step-daughter Patricia (her mother is still back on the yacht). Anders is an avid and accomplished sailor and, providing his new family is still keen after their first voyage, is planning to sail to French Polynesia and on to Australia in the spring. During our chat he lets drop that, as he was leaving La Paz yesterday, all the newly-arrived cruisers from the Baja Ha Ha Rally were abuzz about 40 or 45-knot Santa Ana winds due to come through there and here on Saturday (tonight). About twenty boats took off to get to Mazatlán before the blow. Nervous, we are at first a little inclined to stick it out in Mazatlán. But that would mean hanging around for another three or four days. The weather forecast originated with Dan on S/V Summer Passage, (or as I call him “Sainted Don of Summer Sausage”. “Don” is a legend amongst Baja and Mexico cruisers because he has been providing detailed meteorological forecasts for the cruising fleet for years now. He comes on at least two ham or Single-sideband nets and gives his forecasts personally.

We discuss things a little. The Mazatlán Cruisers Net is at least honest enough not to bother with any weather at all since most of the boats are not going anywhere anyway and the ones who are going to sail somewhere have SSB or Ham radio. We would too except our little Grundig died and the new one SSB receiver we bought is still in the box in Tucson, Arizona, whence it was to be delivered to us in San Carlos by acquaintances. We finally gave up waiting and went to sea.

As I understand it, Santa Ana winds are strong northerlies blowing down from the deserts into the Sea of Cortés; they lose their punch farther south than the so-called “southern crossing” of the Sea, i.e. La Paz to Mazatlán.

I am for getting started right away since, if a blow is coming, the initial stages will be weaker with winds in the 15-25 knot range. They will be blowing from behind us as we head SSE or SE down the coast some 85 miles to Isla Isabel and San Blas. If the anchorage at Isabel turns out not to be suitable, we need only push on a further 45 miles to San Blas where there is good shelter. These are the kind of decisions we are regularly faced with. The problem with meteorological forecasts, as everyone knows, is that they are notoriously unreliable. We checked the marine weather on the internet before leaving and saw no sign of trouble. “Don” apparently thinks otherwise but his forecast are now two days old and we have seen nothing yet of Santa-Ana winds. We decide to go. If the weather turns bad we can always heave to, run under bare poles or lie a-hull. Two or three years ago we would have stayed snug in harbour; now we have more confidence about the boat and about ourselves.

For my part, I based my decision on incoming northerlies. It is only after we are motorsailing along about an hour out of Mazatlán that Kathleen says she understood that the strong winds would be southerly and not northerly and that the anchorage at Isla Isabel would be open to the south and therefore totally unsuitable. Whoops! Well, we shall see.

As we discuss this little bone of contention, the Pacific is very calm and there is next to no wind at all. Back to the north the sky is hazy with pollution from Mazatlán electricity-generating plant and alto-cirrus clouds are spreading in from the west and southwest. At sea level in that direction everything is under an umbrella of dirty haze. Except for the lack of sailing wind, it is otherwise a perfect day to be on the water: the air temperature is about 80 ° F; there is a very light SW wind if any at all; the sun is shining but it is not too hot; we have all sail up though we removed the drifter and double-reefed the main to make it easier to run downwind and use the Cap Horn windvane steering. We lunch on crackers and cheese in the cockpit and set the watch-keeping schedule before I go below to write (Kathleen takes the 1800-2100 and midnight-0300 shifts). The engine with its new oil filter is purring along and the boat is rocking very gently. The total distance to Isla Isabel as the frigate bird flies is 85 Nm. It will take us about 24 hours at the speed we are motorsailing. I am reading And the Sea Will Tell by Vincent Bugliosi, a true-crime story of two couples who met on a tropical atoll a thousand miles south of Hawaii; one couple was murdered. The author was the defence attorney for the young woman who was accused of being the accomplice to her murderer husband. Grizzly but fascinating not least because it is about boats and cruisers. If we get some wind and the windvane steering works, I should be able to devote some hours tonight to finishing the book.

OVERNIGHT TO ISLA ISABEL; TWILIGHT ZONE; TEST QUIZ
Sunday, 04 December 2005

Overnight to Isla Isabel

Not only do the Santa Ana winds never show up, there is basically no wind whatsoever. We motor the whole way. Since our Cap Horn only works with wind and we have still to rig a mount for the reconditioned Navico 5500 tiller pilot, we are condemned to sit in the cockpit during the watch. Aside of course from the tediousness of getting up at midnight or three in the morning, this night turns out to be much less onerous than others we have experienced. For one, the air is balmy and warm; coming on deck I slip into my fleece trousers and jacket but soon find I can take them off and enjoy the tropical temperatures. What very little bit of wind there is follows us and is therefore not cold. For another, the sea is so calm that it is possible to lash the tiller using shock cord and the helmsman can read a book. The tiller still has to be adjusted every half page or so and you can go below to get a snack or a glass of something to drink without the boat yawing off course. Unfortunately, you cannot stand watch from the main cabin as you can with the windvane steering.

The sunset is a fabulous Technicolor show as the sun sinks plops below the horizon and lights up the bottom of the mares tales and mackerel scales filling in from the Pacific to the west of us. There is a sliver of a moon but it sinks an hour or so after the sun and the sky is abandoned to the stars. Kathleen has prepared a bean stew in the pressure cooker and we eat several bowls of it on deck before I go off watch to read on the starboard settee.

I switch on the running and steaming lights and check the engine for oil leaks. I see a small dribble dark fluid, which I mop up and hope that it is not a precursor of anything at all. Having earlier poured a dose of degreasing fluid into the bilge I now pump the water out.

We have been regularly getting a large amount of water in the bilge when we have been travelling. At first, I thought it might mean that the packing gland around the propeller shaft where it passes through the hull might need to be tightened. Then I wonder if the dry desert heat of Baja California and Sonora has perhaps dried out the planking and, with the stress of sailing, the planks are opening a little and letting in water. Kathleen thinks there is a leak somewhere in the drinking water plumbing and that we are normally losing a large part of our fresh water supply when we heel over. Throughout the night I make periodic checks. But there is no more oil and no need to pump any more bilge water. That at least confirms my handiwork with the oil filter and perhaps eliminates the packing-gland suspect. But of course, we are not heeling tonight so the plumbing or stressed planking could still be the source of the problem.

The 0300 watch is a drag despite the balmy weather. During the 2100 watch I spotted a sailboat off to the right that appeared to be going the opposite direction and now I see one several miles ahead of us. We seem to be gaining on it until we get to within a mile or so when it suddenly speeds up and by dawn is hull-down over the horizon. It always stays right ahead of us so I assume it too is heading for Isla Isabel. As we were leaving Mazatlán there were some twelve or fifteen shrimpers all dragging their gear back and forth almost in formations about five to ten miles out. I motored right through them and am glad that they are out of our way now that it is dark. I pray we shall not run into any more of them; it’s not that they are in any way invisible. In fact they are lit up like Christmas trees. But you are not sure just what kind of fishing operations are going on and how much distance you need to keep. Shrimpers, for example, simply drag their two sled on outstretched booms and haul them up from time to time to harvest whatever they find. Purse-seiners, on the other hand, use a large tender to carry the end of the net purse way out in an arch while the mother vessel if steaming full speed ahead. When the tender brings the net back around to the mother ship, the purse is then closed and the nets hauled in. These boats need a lot of room. We encounter no more fishing vessels, however, and do not run into any drift lines either; these are synthetic cords with hundreds of large baited hooks. The lines are buoyed with more-or-less invisible plastic coke bottles and the lines can stretch for miles. The panga fishermen set several lines and come back in a day or two to glean the fish. We inadvertently ran into three of these drift lines crossing from Baja to Guaymas last spring and had to reach over the side with a kitchen blade and cut them. It was impossible to sail over them and impossible to find a way around them.

The only thing we see along the way was plenty of bioluminescence, sometimes bright spots here and there on the surface (Portia says the sea was full of jellyfish on her voyage here) and sometimes in large less intense barrels of light below the surface, which are probably large fish or dolphins.

Twilight zone

Red sky in the morning; sailors take warning
Red sky at night; sailors delight.

But what does a sailor do when the sky is red both at sunset and sunrise?

The sun came up in just as much glorious colour as it went down last night. This has been our frequent experience here in the south. Our solution is just to keep going. As the sun comes over the horizon and I go off watch, we still have twenty miles to go to reach Isla Isabel. We can see it now with the naked eye. We should be there by mid-morning.

While I was waiting for the end of my seemingly endless dogwatch, I had time to recall the different types of sunrises and sunsets. Astronomers and weathermen refer to both as twilight. There are three steps:

Ø Sunset takes place when the lip of the sun disappears out of sight to the naked eye below the horizon;
Ø Nautical Twilight lasts until the 52 navigational constellations are visible to the naked eye;
Ø Astronomical Twilight extends until it is possible to photograph the stars.

In the morning the line up is reversed. Depending upon where you are on the earth, the time between each stage is something like 20 to 30 minutes. While I was waiting for the sun to rise this morning I was able to detect each stage.

We ran into Portia aboard S/V Genoveffa. She left Mazatlán the day before us thinking it might take her twelve hours to reach here. There was so little wind that she took 28 hours, arriving after dark and heaving to south of the island until morning.

We head around the island to the south anchorage and, after one unsuccessful attempt to set the anchor finally shut off the engine after 22 hours of motoring over calm seas.

We both turn in to catch up on our sleep. The sky is cloudy and grey for the first time that I can recall. Maybe we shall get a blow after all although for the moment all is calm. The anchorage is spectacular because Isla Isabel is famous as a bird rookery. Jacques Cousteau apparently made a film based on this island alone. We are too tired today. But tomorrow we shall launch the dinghy and go ashore for a few hours before leaving for San Blas. We want to be able to telephone with my daughter Antonia on her 16th birthday (December 6).

Test Quiz

Who actually thought up the concept of longitude and latitude? I was curious about this myself and researched it on the net one day in Mazatlán. Stay tuned for the amazing answer. The person with the correct answer wins a free subscription to this blog!

EXPLORING BIRD LIFE ON ISLA ISABEL
Monday, 05 December 2005

I am awake early and see the dawn again while I am making and then drinking my coffee in the cockpit. There is no wind and the Pacific swells coming in are gentle and long. Every couple of minutes a swell rolls across the reef astern of us near the entrance to the anchorage – the anchorage is enveloped though not in any way encircled by two points of land rather like lobster arms. I can see the bottom in the crystal clear water; I see that we are anchored over round rocks, which explains why the anchor was having trouble setting last night. I wonder if we shall have trouble getting the anchor back up later when it comes time to leave. I look around the horizon and see not only Portia’s boat, Geneffa, but Bingo, Adios and another boat with a Hawaiian -sounding name. Farther out is Beaufort, a very large private motor yacht. Portia I guess decided to stay on for another night to party a bit with the young guys on Bingo.

After coffee, we launch the dinghy. The more we practise it the faster and easier it gets. Launching it – basically throwing the individual parts over the lifelines on the foredeck and then bolting them together at the side of the boat - is always easier than recovering the dinghy and stowing it in pieces on foredeck. But we are determined not to let this minor consideration stop us from using the dinghy and enjoying our stay in various coves, bays and harbours. After all, lots of other boats have to inflate their dinghy to use it or deflate it and fold it all up again when they are ready to put to sea. This time it takes us about 15 minutes.

Since Portia had asked us last night if we are going to launch the dingy and go ashore, I row out to ask her if she wants a lift in. We are going to walk across the island before it gets too hot. She is stretched out fetchingly in a string bikini on her cabin roof having just had a swim. She was feeling a little thick-headed from too much to drink. She has an appointment with the guys of Bingo to scuba dive this morning and walk the island this afternoon. We row by and the guys amend their plans to come ashore with us. I am sure the attraction is Portia but, all ashore at last, we meet DeMeritt (sic), the co-skipper, Scott and Ben. The other co-skipper is arriving soon at Puerta Vallarta and then the four of them are planning to sail to Ecuador, the Galapagos Archipelago and on to Australia. Scott is going along for the ride but has to be in Queensland for August when his masters programme in, I think, environmental management, begins.

The path across the island is groomed and well-marked. It begins behind the fishermen’s huts and white-metal outhouses and leads us uphill on prepared steps. After that, although most of the loose rocks have been removed, the path narrows and reminds a lot of the horse paths at Rancho el Nogal. At the same time, the height differences are nothing like those at the ranch. The highest point on the whole island is only about 250 feet and the island is less than a mile long. We soon come across a small, stagnant lake, the crater of the extinct volcano. Up and down small hills, we pass stands of corn, banana palm and cocoa as well as a rock-lined well. But there is not farming any more here. The path is mostly shaded and the almost dark.

Isla Isabel is noted for its bird life and everywhere we look we see birds nesting. The Magnificent Frigates seem to lay their eggs on the confluence of several leafy branches; there does not seem to be anything beyond the most rudimentary stick structure. The white-breasted female sits on the eggs while the male, all in black, sits next to her. The branches appear flimsy but are clearly strong enough to hold both of the big birds with their long beaks with a hook on the end. We frequently walk right under the nesting birds without disturbing them. Perhaps they know that they are in a bird sanctuary here in this national park. As we walk we here what sounds like a woodpecker at work, something like the ratta-tat-tat of a snare drum. In fact, as we pass beneath one frigate we hear it purring loudly; it has a huge red puffed-up pouch or bag under its chin. The book says these are males showing off in order to get a mate. In the air above the trees and all along the coasts of this island there are thousands of birds, most of them Magnificent Frigates and boobies of one sort or another.

Frigates have the longest wingspan in proportion to their body size of any bird on the planet. They spend long hours over the sea but never land on the water, picking up their food as they skim low over the waves. When we passed the dozen or more shrimpers on the way out of Mazatlán yesterday, I noticed that the rigging on each and every one of them was filled with frigates birds. We saw our first frigates between San Diego and Ensenada and they will surely be accompanying us through the tropics.

The island is a haven too for yellow-footed and blue-footed boobies. I personally cannot tell one from the other because their feet are not visible when they fly past. At the north end of the island we spotted what we think is a masked booby with a white woolly cap around its head and under its chin like an old granny. It was nesting on the ground and did not seem to mind us coming quite close. There were plenty of nests or nesting places, i.e. not really nests at all, all around the rocks. Where there were trees – banyans, and the like – the frigates nested in the branches. I reckon that these birds have no natural predators on the island. We did see iguanas of about a foot in length but we only saw them near the fishermen’s shacks where they were waiting for fish offal. Like Ireland, there are apparently no snakes on Isla Isabel either. Perhaps the feral cats brought here by fishermen could be predators but they too live well off the fish guts at the beach.

It is noon by the time we finish our walking tour. On the way back out in the dinghy we stop to yak with Ray and Jane on S/V Adios, Channel Islands, California. They have been down here for a year or so and spent last summer on Baja in Bahia de los Angeles where we sailed with William and Antonia last summer. They are drifting around enjoying life on the boat. They are experienced sailors and have sailed in Fiji and French Polynesia. They are also very sociable and good-natured. While we were talking another couple arrived from the neighbouring boat (S/V … ); Alexander was born in Brazil of German parents and lived for several years in Germany before being sent by his company to California. He met his wife, Sue, there; today was her birthday. After a little more chat, a beer or two and some peanuts, we rowed the last 100 yards back over to Vilisar.

We have decided to leave at about sundown. The winds have been getting stronger all morning and we might be able to make San Blas by morning, find a wi-fi connection and call Antonia on St. Nicholas Day, her birthday. While Kathleen dozes, I do a couple of little jobs around the boat including, finally removing the lazy jacks which have been attached for several years now only to the boom but not fastened to the mast. I got sick of the mainsail head flopping over when I loosen the main halyard and jamming up in the lazy jacks every time we want to drop the sail at sea. The lazy jacks are meant to keep the mainsail from spreading out of control over the cabin roof when the sail comes down. But the other problem just mentioned offsets that benefit in my eyes. Perhaps our next sail will have a Dutchman system.

ISLA ISABEL TO SAN BLAS; TEST QUIZZ ANSWER
Tuesday, 06 December 2005

Isla Isabel to San Blas

After working around the boat and dozing all afternoon, we both snoozed away the evening. We briefly contemplated beginning another round of canasta; my game has got a lot better since last summer when the kids were here but I did not fancy playing tonight.

The alarm goes off at midnight and we groggily climb on deck to ready Vilisar for sailing. We loaded the dinghy on the foredeck just at dusk; that particular operation is now going much faster and smoother.

Since on arrival here the anchor was dragging across a stony bottom until it caught up on something, I was somewhat apprehensive that the Bruce anchor might be lodged in a big crevice. If we could not get it up tonight, we would just wait until morning and ask Ray to dive on it; he is a so-called “free diver” meaning he goes to twenty or thirty feet without any scuba gear.

The engine comes alive and, with its chug-chugging interrupts the breezy midnight silence of the anchorage. It is really dark although, after a few minutes on the deck I begin to get my night vision. There are several other boats anchored about but only a few of them have anchor lights on. I try to pock out any others with a flashlight but cannot spot any. Portia’s S/V Genoveffa was anchored farther out and too far to pick up with the light; either she has left, as she thought she might around 2200, or she is sleeping and has no anchor light burning. The stars look watery tonight and the sky is partly overcast. In the gloom, we shall just have to feel our way out of the anchorage between the boats and the point of land where we can hear loudly and see weakly the Pacific swells crashing over the reef and resounding in the caves.

Giving hand signals from the foredeck to the helmsman is difficult in the dark. Kathleen keeps a flashlight aimed at me but it is sometimes necessary to shout back over the noise of the engine. I have to keep a small LED flashlight in my mouth so I can see the anchor chain as I pull it up with both hands. We are both grumpy in the dark and things occasionally start getting testy. Damn! I shall have to apologise later! Why didn’t I turn on the deck light?

To my relief, the anchor comes up without problems. I put off tying it down until we are out past the other boats. I flash the torch around us and light glints off reflector tape or white hulls. When we are well clear I go forward, tie down the anchor and hoist the two head sails. We then play with the Cap Horn windvane steering and have it steering the boat at a bearing of 100 ° magnetic at the first go. The breeze is light and there are only gentle ocean swells to contend with. Although we are going less than 2 knots, we decide that we will just let Cap Horn sail it for us.

I stay on deck in the mild moist night air to make sure the mechanical pilot is going to stick to it. Kathleen will take the 0300 watch and goes below and back to sleep on the settee. Soon I go below to finish reading my book on the starboard settee. It’s the usual watchkeeping with a windvane steering. Every 15 minutes I go above and scan the horizon and check that we are still on course. Our motion through the water is very quiet, the head sails occasionally collapse for lack of wind and rustle their skirts at me. I see the lights back on Isla Isabel for a long time and then I see the occasional light ahead of us. Shrimpers, no doubt. When Kathleen comes on watch, I rig the leecloth and get my head down on the port settee for a few hours of shuteye.

When I come on deck at 0600, Kathleen tells me that the deck block that I had stropped so beautifully a few weeks ago has worn through and the staysail is flapping out to leeward. I go forward and tie it to the starboard pinrail. The breeze is very weak and, in the dawn grey, the sea is oily. We still have 29 Nm to go to the waypoint off San Blas harbour and our speed is a very modest 1.3 to 1.5 knots. At this rate we will have to spend another night standing off the harbour, a not very enticing prospect. We put up the main but it just flops around. We finally give in and switch on the Lister. This brings our speed up to 4 knots.

I decide to leave the mainsail up to steady us from rolling and to douse the Yankee and staysail since they are contributing nothing and are brushing constantly against the mast stays. I untie the staysail boom from the pinrail. As I go to move it amidships, it feels suddenly heavy and unwieldy. I go forward to check. The staysail is hanked to the forestay, i.e. the galvanised iron wire that runs from the spreaders to the bow of the boat (the jibstay runs from the top of the mast to the forward end of the bobstay.) The staysail boom is attached at the bottom of the forestay by a shackle. The adjustable bronze turnbuckle that fastens the forestay to the bow has sheered off and the forestay is no longer connected to anything at all. What I have is a pile of sail and a small wooden boom and a wire running up to the spreaders.

It is close to 0700 and light enough for me to see. I scan up to the masthead fearing the worst. I am afraid the parting of the stay will allow the mast to sag and that, in the worst circumstances, we could be dis-masted. Thank goodness there are only gentle swells and no wind. The mast does not move, the jibstay holding quite well. I clean up the “wreckage” and lash the staysail boom and sail to the cabin handrails and go back to sit in the cockpit for a few minutes before going below to make coffee.

While the Lister pushes us across the glassy swells, Kathleen and I discuss annual maintenance. This is the third bronze turnbuckle that has had to be replaced. Brion Toss replaced two whilst tuning the rig in Port Townsend a few of years ago (2002), one at the base of a port shroud and the opposite end of the very turnbuckle that has sheered again. There are nine turnbuckles altogether. Perhaps as an act of preventive maintenance we should just replace them all. I get the Toplicht catalogue out; this is a German mail-order company for equipment for traditional boats. As such it is more likely to have the bronze that I need and, if we have enough money, I can order it for Kathleen to pick up when she goes to Germany to work in January/February. The prices are a bit daunting, however. Maybe I can find another cheaper source on the internet or even some good used ones.

This opens up the possibility of a complete overhaul of the rigging including slushing the whole galvanised rigging using a bosun’s chair when the stay and shrouds are loosened and hanging down beside the mast, replacing all the old turnbuckles, and other related bronze hardware and replacing the chains that make up the bobstay, the bobstay shrouds and the boomkin shrouds. These are badly corroded from the salt water and I had planned to replace them using some of the excess anchor chain that I have stowed under the cabin sole.

It has now been 31 years since George Friend launched Vilisar in Victoria in 1974. The sails are tired, the engine, though still very reliable, is no longer the youngest and, apparently, the rigging needs some attention. This brings up the matter of money of course and we get into a discussion about how tight our finances are. So what else is new? It all works out somehow.

Test quiz answer

Ptolemy of Alexandria conceived of the idea of dividing his world map into sectors based upon celestial constellations. He laid out a grid for the eastern end of the Mediterranean as this was the portion of the world about which he had the most data.