We're in a whirl of getting ready for another leg. Peter arrives tomorrow. I have the permits to camp on the islands in the Loreto Marine Park. Our clothes are clean. The wind has backed off. And I'll do the shopping in a little while. We realized a few days back, when the VHF radio's battery needed a charge, that I had forgotten the charger. Oops. That's kinda key. It's our only means of making a mayday call, should such a need arise. We turned the car and boat inside out looking for it. It turned up at home. Think of that. I had about 1000 details to organize and I managed to forget the one thing that was going to save us from being marooned on a desert island. Our housesitter, Lee (bless his heart), is taking the train to Albuquerque today to bring the charger to Peter, who will bring it down here. Gotta love it.
Last night I got us take-out from "Gran Pollo." Translated that's "Big Chicken." They have all these barbecued chicken places down here. You get chicken, corn tortillas, french fries, salsa, and salad for incredibly cheap. And it's awesome, even cold, as we ate it last night after I drove all the way back to San Bruno. I got us the makings for spicy drinks too. I got back to our beach in the dark and there was Tim sitting next to a nice little Indian fire. When I was at Gran Pollo waiting for my order, I heard the rooster crowing out back. I kid you not. Right at the turn-off to San Bruno (leaving Mexico Highway 1 for a bumpy road down an arroyo), there is a military checkpoint I keep having to pass through, in both directions. They think I am kind of a hoot, a gringa who actually speaks Spanish. That's a novelty. Last night when they stopped me and checked the car (for drugs), I told them they could look in the car as long as they didn't eat our dinner. The car reeked of Gran Pollo. Along the 4-mile stretch of arroyo out to San Bruno, in the dark, I saw two bunnies, one hawk, a fox, two bunches of startled cows, and 5 burros. The other day, when Tim walked out to the highway, he said he freaked out the cows and they took off running, bouncing off the fences that border the road. Only a few more trips on the San Bruno road and we're outta here.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Blowin' in the wind
We are sitting out a big blow from the north at San Bruno, north of Loreto. San Bruno is nothing you would dream about. It's sort of a hell hole of a fish camp with the heads of decapitated manta rays laying all over the place and a few pangas pulled up on the beach. But let me tell you we like it just fine because the hillocks on the point (an andesite flow planed off by a Pleistocene wave-cut terrace, to be precise) are affording us from protection from the wind. You can't trust this Baja weather. It can turn in a heartbeat. A day can make all the difference in the world. The day before yesterday, we were sailing down the coast at 2 knots with all the sails up about 100 m off a lee shore, just poking along looking at the rocks, a beautiful cross-section of a rhyolite dome where the viscous lava had smooshed up over some white block and ash flows and then on top of all the light-colored rhyolite layers and layers of black and dark red basalt scoria and thin flows. The conditions were so benign we could have hopped out and swum alongside the boat. We pulled into Bahia el Mangle (meaning 'mangrove') about 3 PM in the afternoon and scoped it out for sitting out the norther that was predicted for that night or the next day. The harbor looked good but besides the abandoned partially constructed hotel and two abandoned houses there was no evidence that anyone goes in or out by the road. We didn't want to get stuck there in a blow and get to Loreto late to pick up Peter, who is coming in on Friday, Feb 26 to sail with us. I was being lazy and didn't want to go any farther. Tim decided we should. So we put the sails back up and poked on down to San Bruno, arriving at about 6 PM, a little before sunset. And it was none too pretty. Tim said sometimes you have to sacrifice aesthetics for protection. A fisherman and his son drove up as we thought about parking there for several days. They had a teeny little aluminum skiff they were about to launch in order to fish all night. We asked them what they knew about the weather. Predictably, they didn't know anything. We asked them if they had heard if it was going to blow. The fisherman looked out at the water and said, "It's calm." These guys live in the moment. Tim told me to ask him if we would be protected from a big north wind if we moved our boat a little farther down the beach. I told Tim, "Look, these guys are going out fishing all night in a 12 ft skiff. They are just going to laugh at us worried about moving our boat 50 ft." So we moved the boat. The guys went out fishing. They came back in around midnight. The wind started blowing like fury at 3 AM. And at 7 AM I looked out the tent to see Tim bare naked moving the boat back up the beach.
I am in Loreto right now. You may wonder how I got here since the boat is 20 miles up the coast. Yesterday AM Tim walked 4 miles out to the highway and hitched back up to Bahia Coyote, where we left the car. He drove back down with the trailer. At high tide last night, around 9 PM, we thought we'd pull the boat out of the water so we could go into Loreto and run errands without leaving somebody tending the boat up at San Bruno. However, come 9 PM, we had a failure of nerve. The boat was bucking like a bronco and it was dark and we were cold and it just looked impossible for the two of us to get the boat on the trailer without causing ourselves harm. Today, the winds have backed off a bit (enough to fool some cruisers into making the passage from San Juanico to Puerto Ballandra on Isla Carmen, bucking some huge rollers and likely causing some unhappiness among the crew).
A few days back we anchored in a cove on the south side of Punta el Pulpito, a looming point that juts out into the Gulf and messes with the currents and the winds. Some years ago, several students on an Outward Bound course died as they tried to kayak around el Pulpito in a norther. One of the crusing guides we are carrying refers to the "obsidian vein" on the south side of the point. Ha, they should have asked ME. Obsidian vein, my you-know-what. The whole thing is made up of rhyolite lava flows that are still totally glassy and therefore black. Obsidian is volcanic glass. We hiked to the top of el Pulpito (which seems to mean 'the pulpit' but in Spain would mean 'little octupus') and got an incredible 360 degree view. NOLS has their students camp up there in calm conditions. We had the calm but my knee has been killing me for some reason, so we opted to stay in the boat. The boulders on shore were giant rounded blocks of volcanic glass and wobbly. Not good for making camp. We left the cove after two nights there and sailed down to a small cove with a stretch of white beach called La Ramada Cove on some maps and Caleta Almeja (Clam Cove) on others. There were three boats that arrived before us but we sailed past all of them and anchored in the primo spot in two feet of water and made camp on a beach backed by low cliffs of mocha-colored rhyolite block flows. Mind blower of a camp. We weren't there long before I set off on a little walk. I wasn't gone five minutes before Tim was whistling and calling me back. I couldn't figure out why. He said, "You'll never guess who just showed up on the beach. Markes Johnson." Markes Johnson is a professor of geology at Williams College who has written extensively on the Pliocene marine deposits of the Sea of Cortez. I have been reading his papers this whole trip. Tim noticed this bunch of people in engineered clothing (Anne's term) peering quizzically at the rocks. "You must be geologists," he said. Markes introduced himself and Tim recognized the name. I told him, "I read part of your book about Punta Chivato." One of his colleagues laughed and said, "Only part of it?" "Well, the guy I borrowed if from on Coyote Beach wanted it back." Markes was there with his wife, also a geologist, a geophysicist who lives in Loreto, and two colleagues from Lisbon, Portugal. He said his Mexican colleague, Jorge Ledesma, was back at the house where they were staying. It turns out they were staying at one of about three houses on Bahia San Juanico, the next bay down, a favorite stop of cruisers and sea kayakers. It oughta be a national park. It is so striking. I mentioned that I'd like to see Jorge, not having connected since 1993 at a meeting in Ensenada. They invited us to the house, saying "You have to see the house." We drove over with them to find that they were staying in a magnificent home built by a Spanish marquesa but now owned by an American developer, who has an interest in geology and invited them there for a couple days to see the geology. Well, one thing led to another and the owner, Tom Woolard, invited us for dinner. He had a chef and staff there at the house (which has a long narrow mosaic pool on the vast patio fronting the bay). They were preparing cabrito (baby goat) with a panoply of chile sauces for the guests. We sat down (us salty dogs, encrusted with two weeks of salt) to a huge square table on the patio covered with a giant white cloth. We were offered sangria, red or white wine, cold beer, as well as the cabrito and beans, tortillas, chile, and chopped lettuce. About 8 PM, we remembered we had just up and left out camp, totally unsecured, and didn't even think to bring a flashlight. Somebody lent us one and off we trooped, picking our way back to camp in a tiny spot of light over boulders awash at high tide. We got back to camp, and I sat down in a chair, looked out at our lovely little bay and said, "That just happened for a reason. I don't know what it was yet, but that was not an accident. If Tim had gone fishing five minutes earlier, we would never have made that connection." If we had been any number of decisions differently, we would not have made that connection. Jorge Ledesma had recognized me immediately. We hadn't seen each other in 17 years. We chatted about Baja geology at dinner and I told him about some curious cobbles I had seen on a beach up the coast. He told me about a fault near those cobbles that brought that rock to the surface. I told him about some marine beds I saw on Isla San Marcos and he told me about some at San Ignacio that show that there was a trans-peninsular seaway 12 million years ago that connected the northern Gulf with the Pacific before the southern Gulf had even begun to form. He put so many ideas into my head, it's still spinning. He told me about outcrops I have to visit on the islands off Loreto, places we'll go with Peter this next week. The fun just doesn't stop.
Have to go do laundry now. Believe me, I HAVE to do laundry. Had lunch at McLulu's Tacos. Baja fish tacos. Got our permits for camping on the islands in the marine park. Once we do some shopping and pick up Pete, we'll be ready to sail up to Isla Coronados, a Pleistocene volcano (really young, probably has flows a few thousand years old) with a fossil marine bay on its south end.
One more thing. We were invited to a beach potluck the other night at Bahia San Juanico. We didn't have a way to get there as we have no dinghy. Our friend George had said that everybody wanted to meet us. I told Tim that we'd see just how much they wanted to meet us. And a little while later a couple of dikes from Nova Scotia came around the corner making a hullaballoo to pick us up. We laughed all the way there and all the way back. They said something that captured my fancy, "There is no bad weather, just inadequate clothing." Something somebody from Canada would say.
I am in Loreto right now. You may wonder how I got here since the boat is 20 miles up the coast. Yesterday AM Tim walked 4 miles out to the highway and hitched back up to Bahia Coyote, where we left the car. He drove back down with the trailer. At high tide last night, around 9 PM, we thought we'd pull the boat out of the water so we could go into Loreto and run errands without leaving somebody tending the boat up at San Bruno. However, come 9 PM, we had a failure of nerve. The boat was bucking like a bronco and it was dark and we were cold and it just looked impossible for the two of us to get the boat on the trailer without causing ourselves harm. Today, the winds have backed off a bit (enough to fool some cruisers into making the passage from San Juanico to Puerto Ballandra on Isla Carmen, bucking some huge rollers and likely causing some unhappiness among the crew).
A few days back we anchored in a cove on the south side of Punta el Pulpito, a looming point that juts out into the Gulf and messes with the currents and the winds. Some years ago, several students on an Outward Bound course died as they tried to kayak around el Pulpito in a norther. One of the crusing guides we are carrying refers to the "obsidian vein" on the south side of the point. Ha, they should have asked ME. Obsidian vein, my you-know-what. The whole thing is made up of rhyolite lava flows that are still totally glassy and therefore black. Obsidian is volcanic glass. We hiked to the top of el Pulpito (which seems to mean 'the pulpit' but in Spain would mean 'little octupus') and got an incredible 360 degree view. NOLS has their students camp up there in calm conditions. We had the calm but my knee has been killing me for some reason, so we opted to stay in the boat. The boulders on shore were giant rounded blocks of volcanic glass and wobbly. Not good for making camp. We left the cove after two nights there and sailed down to a small cove with a stretch of white beach called La Ramada Cove on some maps and Caleta Almeja (Clam Cove) on others. There were three boats that arrived before us but we sailed past all of them and anchored in the primo spot in two feet of water and made camp on a beach backed by low cliffs of mocha-colored rhyolite block flows. Mind blower of a camp. We weren't there long before I set off on a little walk. I wasn't gone five minutes before Tim was whistling and calling me back. I couldn't figure out why. He said, "You'll never guess who just showed up on the beach. Markes Johnson." Markes Johnson is a professor of geology at Williams College who has written extensively on the Pliocene marine deposits of the Sea of Cortez. I have been reading his papers this whole trip. Tim noticed this bunch of people in engineered clothing (Anne's term) peering quizzically at the rocks. "You must be geologists," he said. Markes introduced himself and Tim recognized the name. I told him, "I read part of your book about Punta Chivato." One of his colleagues laughed and said, "Only part of it?" "Well, the guy I borrowed if from on Coyote Beach wanted it back." Markes was there with his wife, also a geologist, a geophysicist who lives in Loreto, and two colleagues from Lisbon, Portugal. He said his Mexican colleague, Jorge Ledesma, was back at the house where they were staying. It turns out they were staying at one of about three houses on Bahia San Juanico, the next bay down, a favorite stop of cruisers and sea kayakers. It oughta be a national park. It is so striking. I mentioned that I'd like to see Jorge, not having connected since 1993 at a meeting in Ensenada. They invited us to the house, saying "You have to see the house." We drove over with them to find that they were staying in a magnificent home built by a Spanish marquesa but now owned by an American developer, who has an interest in geology and invited them there for a couple days to see the geology. Well, one thing led to another and the owner, Tom Woolard, invited us for dinner. He had a chef and staff there at the house (which has a long narrow mosaic pool on the vast patio fronting the bay). They were preparing cabrito (baby goat) with a panoply of chile sauces for the guests. We sat down (us salty dogs, encrusted with two weeks of salt) to a huge square table on the patio covered with a giant white cloth. We were offered sangria, red or white wine, cold beer, as well as the cabrito and beans, tortillas, chile, and chopped lettuce. About 8 PM, we remembered we had just up and left out camp, totally unsecured, and didn't even think to bring a flashlight. Somebody lent us one and off we trooped, picking our way back to camp in a tiny spot of light over boulders awash at high tide. We got back to camp, and I sat down in a chair, looked out at our lovely little bay and said, "That just happened for a reason. I don't know what it was yet, but that was not an accident. If Tim had gone fishing five minutes earlier, we would never have made that connection." If we had been any number of decisions differently, we would not have made that connection. Jorge Ledesma had recognized me immediately. We hadn't seen each other in 17 years. We chatted about Baja geology at dinner and I told him about some curious cobbles I had seen on a beach up the coast. He told me about a fault near those cobbles that brought that rock to the surface. I told him about some marine beds I saw on Isla San Marcos and he told me about some at San Ignacio that show that there was a trans-peninsular seaway 12 million years ago that connected the northern Gulf with the Pacific before the southern Gulf had even begun to form. He put so many ideas into my head, it's still spinning. He told me about outcrops I have to visit on the islands off Loreto, places we'll go with Peter this next week. The fun just doesn't stop.
Have to go do laundry now. Believe me, I HAVE to do laundry. Had lunch at McLulu's Tacos. Baja fish tacos. Got our permits for camping on the islands in the marine park. Once we do some shopping and pick up Pete, we'll be ready to sail up to Isla Coronados, a Pleistocene volcano (really young, probably has flows a few thousand years old) with a fossil marine bay on its south end.
One more thing. We were invited to a beach potluck the other night at Bahia San Juanico. We didn't have a way to get there as we have no dinghy. Our friend George had said that everybody wanted to meet us. I told Tim that we'd see just how much they wanted to meet us. And a little while later a couple of dikes from Nova Scotia came around the corner making a hullaballoo to pick us up. We laughed all the way there and all the way back. They said something that captured my fancy, "There is no bad weather, just inadequate clothing." Something somebody from Canada would say.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Valdesca's bottom
Here are a few photos of the day Valdesca got her bottom painted as well as one of the NOLS boats in their boatyard at Bahia Coyote.
Our GPS track
You can follow our progress on the SPOT Adventures site where our GPS tracker records our location whenever we tell it to.
Waiting out a blow
Sailing into Mulege was quite a ride. We set off from Punta Chivato the day before yesterday with a lively offshore breeze. We were flying across Santa Inez bay. Then the wind died. I started to row. We put up the sails, hopefully, a couple times. Ate lunch. Felt a puff and put the sails up again. And started beating UPWIND towards Mulege, as the wind had changed about 180 degrees. Slowly the wind picked up and pushed us south. I kept telling Tim that we should be heading on a course of about 174 degrees. He said, "You mean towards that island out there?" "No," I told him. "That's not Mulege. Mulege is more to the north." "Well, how about that gumdrop shaped point?" "OK, shoot for that for now." We sailed a course of more like 150 degrees for a couple hours. I played around with the tennis ball on a string that I made for gauging our speed through the water if I lose the GPS. And I lay on the side bench in the sun to soak up some rays. I fiddled with the GPS to see what more I could learn about all its functions. I realized that I could move the pointer to the Mulege lighthouse and it would give me a compass heading. That's cool. I watched the bearing on Mulege go from 175 degrees to 196 and then to 213. I wondered what I would see if I looked out there at 213 degrees. I looked under the sail off the starboard beam and saw a lighthouse. I said to Tim, "Is THAT Mulege?" Yup. So we hopped to and changed direction to run downwind wing and wing straight towards Mulege on a course of 213 degrees. We were 2 miles out but got there pretty fast because we had a lot of wind behind us from the ENE. I saw the shrimp trawlers get bigger and bigger. And I could pick out some rocks near the lighthouse. Some pangas were running in and out of the estuary near the light. Finally, when we were about a half mile out I told Tim I thought we should take the whisker pole and sprit boom down and reach up towards the lighthouse. We got there pretty fast in a big sea and force 3 winds pushing us onshore. We doused the sails, fired up the motor, and realized we were getting really close to shore. I saw some barely submerged rocks and pulled out around them to get us closer to the lighthouse, where the channel was, but not before dragging the rudder on the bottom. Good thing it's a pop-up rudder. Oy! Once we got close to the light and into the lee somewhat, we killed the motor and Tim got on the oars. We rowed in to the panga beach and asked about going upstream to town. Didn't get much helpful advice. And it was really shallow. So we opted to anchor off what looked like a good beach by the light with some protection from the wind. As it turns out, this is where we have stayed for the last two days. It's a comfortable anchorage for Valdesca. She just rides the tides out there about 10 ft off the beach. On the other side of the spit between land the and lighthouse island, there is a magnificent beach where the waves crash in, bringing all kinds of shells ashore.
After Tim got back yesterday from running errands (2 gallons of water, 2 8-lb bags of ice, a qt of milk, a six of beer, vegetables, fruit, 3 packs of tortillas, 4 empanadas, two guava-filled cookies, and assorted other things), I took a walk across the puddles at low tide to investigate the area around the estuary. I wanted to find the church we can see from our camp. I finally found it, with some direction from a kid playing with a ball near the river. I took some sunset photos from up there of the church with the Golf behind, in full fury of wind-whipped waves. Then I started back to the boat. Right near where I needed to turn from the road to cross the tide zone, I stopped at a little restaurant to see if I could get us dinner to go. I ordered some shrimp tacos and some Tecates. They put it all into a bag for me. By then it was totally dark, and though I wasn't far I knew Tim would be worried because there was no moon and my knee had been hurting me the whole day. The owner, Francisco Villa, asked me if I had a light. I didn't so he lent me his. And then said he'd escort me over there. We walked down to the bank of the estuary, he picked up a paddle, and shoved an aluminum rowboat in the water and took me across. Ah, sweet! And there was Tim with a flashlight looking for me. We ate our tacos with pineapple salsa and sipped the Tecates under the stars while I told him about my adventure. Now, here I am back at the restaurant (Francisco picked me up in the boat again and hauled me and my laptop over to use his wifi!). I took a shower in the campground (I don't exactly see where it is but the sign says there is a campground). And when I pay for the shower, I'll pay for last night's dinner too. I only had a 500 peso note last night and they didn't have change. They told me to come back tomorrow and pay. Gotta love this place.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Sail away, sail away...
Today we start for real. We are packing Valdesca, who sits on her trailer, and the car and heading north to San Lucas cove, near Santa Rosalia. We have some friends who will meet us there and shuttle the car and trailer back to Mulege. From San Lucas, we will cross to Isla San Marcos and spend a few days maybe circumnavigating the island. There are apparently some sweet coves protected from the wind. There is also interesting geology there--the type locality of the San Marcos Formation, which is a stack of relatively young marine deposits (beach sands, shell beds, and the like) from an earlier era in the Gulf's evolution. I hope to do some hiking out there and see some sights.
We came back a couple days ago from a 3-day shakedown cruise in Bahia Concepcion. We went with another Drascombe, believe it or not. Anita Stalter lives in Bahia Coyote, a beautiful cookie-bit of a cove in Bahia Concepcion. She lives in the summer in Santa Fe, with her husband Tap Tapley (of considerable fame in the outdoor education world as a founder of Outward Bound and then NOLS). Anita has a Lugger, same as our boat but 3 ft shorter. It was a blast sailing with another boat for a few days. Anita will meet up with us again in a few weeks once we get to Loreto. On our shakedown, we sailed across the bay to the other side, to a protected beach called Amolares. Then we motored (no wind) up the east side of the bay to Punta Guadalupe, where we arrived just as a squall moved in. There is a defunct fish farm there and a lone fisherman invited us to use the high-tech PVC palapa with roll-down curtain walls. Boy, were we ever lucky! It absolutely poured rain that evening. We all set up our tents under rickety wooden structures and even inside the PVC palapa! What a godsend. The next day was beautiful, with wind, so we beat to windward for a couple hours up toward Punta Santo Domingo, where we had intended to camp the night before. In the end, we never made it as storm cells swirled around us and we decided to run back down the bay to Playa Coyote. We raced Anita and Bob home. They were braver than us and kept all sails up as the winds built on the edge of a squall. We opted to drop the main, then hoisted it back up with a reef, then shook the reef out as the wind died. We managed to find some wind, as we rounded a point, and sailed slowly back into Coyote Bay. Didn't quite make the anchorage before the wind died completely. Part of the beauty of Coyote Bay is the protection by headlands from the northerly winds.
We learned a lot on our shakedown. We figured out that the built-in bilge pump works. We blew out some stitching on our mainsail, which I had to repair. First time I repaired a sail and did a pretty good job, if I may say so. We had to tune up the oars a bit, too. All the copper brads were falling out. Also, I had added some turk's heads (a special kind of knot that is tied around an oar to make a stop that keeps the oar from sliding through the oarlock). The turk's heads needed to be secured with a few tacks. I tied them with pink parachute cord so they look mighty jaunty on Valdesca. We learned how to tie things down, finally, which was big progress. Until the shakedown, we had been doing day sails and never had to find a home onboard for the stove, the Paco pads, the dry bags of gear, the water jugs, the cooler and dry box, and propane tank. We tied some pieces of webbing through scupper holes in the bilges and up through the floorboards. Hopefully, if we capsize (please no!) the floorboards and all the gear will stay in the boat, and as a bonus displace a lot of water to reduce the bailing.
The gulf is beautiful this time of year. Perfect weather. Temperatures in the seventies by day and high fifties at night. The pool temperature (as the local weatherman likes to say) is about 64 degrees, which is pretty tolerable. Lots of birds around, including a brown thrush who is lucky to be alive after Tap's cat raked some feathers off its back the other day. The bird's mate came down squawking at the cat and she dropped the other bird, who flew off and sat on a wall for while thanking its lucky stars.
We also have Oscar, the pelican who has forgotten how to be a pelican. He has become a beach begger. He likes to sit next to us as we wash dishes. When that giant beak comes at me, it makes me a little nervous.
Out little cat friend Bicho has abandoned us. I guess that's what we get for abandoning her when we left for the shakedown cruise. She hasn't been back to see us, likely because we haven't been cooking shrimp in the past few days.
Signing off for now. Will likely not reconnect until we get back to Mulege by boat in a few more days.
We came back a couple days ago from a 3-day shakedown cruise in Bahia Concepcion. We went with another Drascombe, believe it or not. Anita Stalter lives in Bahia Coyote, a beautiful cookie-bit of a cove in Bahia Concepcion. She lives in the summer in Santa Fe, with her husband Tap Tapley (of considerable fame in the outdoor education world as a founder of Outward Bound and then NOLS). Anita has a Lugger, same as our boat but 3 ft shorter. It was a blast sailing with another boat for a few days. Anita will meet up with us again in a few weeks once we get to Loreto. On our shakedown, we sailed across the bay to the other side, to a protected beach called Amolares. Then we motored (no wind) up the east side of the bay to Punta Guadalupe, where we arrived just as a squall moved in. There is a defunct fish farm there and a lone fisherman invited us to use the high-tech PVC palapa with roll-down curtain walls. Boy, were we ever lucky! It absolutely poured rain that evening. We all set up our tents under rickety wooden structures and even inside the PVC palapa! What a godsend. The next day was beautiful, with wind, so we beat to windward for a couple hours up toward Punta Santo Domingo, where we had intended to camp the night before. In the end, we never made it as storm cells swirled around us and we decided to run back down the bay to Playa Coyote. We raced Anita and Bob home. They were braver than us and kept all sails up as the winds built on the edge of a squall. We opted to drop the main, then hoisted it back up with a reef, then shook the reef out as the wind died. We managed to find some wind, as we rounded a point, and sailed slowly back into Coyote Bay. Didn't quite make the anchorage before the wind died completely. Part of the beauty of Coyote Bay is the protection by headlands from the northerly winds.
We learned a lot on our shakedown. We figured out that the built-in bilge pump works. We blew out some stitching on our mainsail, which I had to repair. First time I repaired a sail and did a pretty good job, if I may say so. We had to tune up the oars a bit, too. All the copper brads were falling out. Also, I had added some turk's heads (a special kind of knot that is tied around an oar to make a stop that keeps the oar from sliding through the oarlock). The turk's heads needed to be secured with a few tacks. I tied them with pink parachute cord so they look mighty jaunty on Valdesca. We learned how to tie things down, finally, which was big progress. Until the shakedown, we had been doing day sails and never had to find a home onboard for the stove, the Paco pads, the dry bags of gear, the water jugs, the cooler and dry box, and propane tank. We tied some pieces of webbing through scupper holes in the bilges and up through the floorboards. Hopefully, if we capsize (please no!) the floorboards and all the gear will stay in the boat, and as a bonus displace a lot of water to reduce the bailing.
The gulf is beautiful this time of year. Perfect weather. Temperatures in the seventies by day and high fifties at night. The pool temperature (as the local weatherman likes to say) is about 64 degrees, which is pretty tolerable. Lots of birds around, including a brown thrush who is lucky to be alive after Tap's cat raked some feathers off its back the other day. The bird's mate came down squawking at the cat and she dropped the other bird, who flew off and sat on a wall for while thanking its lucky stars.
We also have Oscar, the pelican who has forgotten how to be a pelican. He has become a beach begger. He likes to sit next to us as we wash dishes. When that giant beak comes at me, it makes me a little nervous.
Out little cat friend Bicho has abandoned us. I guess that's what we get for abandoning her when we left for the shakedown cruise. She hasn't been back to see us, likely because we haven't been cooking shrimp in the past few days.
Signing off for now. Will likely not reconnect until we get back to Mulege by boat in a few more days.
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