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.