Author: paulcollister

Having seen Kathy off on her flight back home in Mexico city, I headed back to La Paz where Jim would be arriving from Canada later that day.

Before going through security, I marched off to the other side of the airport to see if I could see the runway and Kathy’s flight taking off. It turned out the other end of the airport was just as bad for a view, so I headed for security to get airside. At that point I realised I no longer had my suitcase with me, I quick marched back to my starting point and found my bag just sitting there, all on its own. Fortunately nobody had bothered to pay it any attention, so off I went to get ready to board. I had a few hours to kill, so out came my macBook and I started working on the software for my Raspberry Pi computer.

The Raspberry Pi computer is a tiny little thing, that packs a mighty punch. I picked one up a few weeks ago so I could play with automating some technology on the boat. First off I wanted a way to record the wind average and wind gusts constantly so I could work out if the gales were getting worse of perhaps receding by looking at graphs. It’s imprecise, but a bit of fun. Eventually I expect it to be sailing the boat around the world, automatically booking itself into marinas, and sending emails to me at the old folks home, telling me what a great time it’s having!.

While I waited to board, a couple of old folks turned up being pushed in wheelchairs, with matching gold and silver bags, each of which contained a chihuahua .

On arrival at La Paz airport, I found all of the Uber’s to be booked out, so rather than pay 3 times the Uber price for a normal taxi, I decided to wait, and catch up on my emails for a while, a few minutes later a young man approached me and asked for help, normally I would be wary of strangers asking for help at the airport, but there’s something about Mexico, and the people here that puts me at ease. This chappie had flown in with me on the flight from Mexico and wanted to know if I knew my way around La Paz, he had heard bad things and was nervous, he was told there were no hostels to stay in. I offered to let him ride into town with me in my Uber for free and I would try to help him find accommodation. As it turned out, Patricia in the marina pointed him to a hostel just around the corner. My new friend, Arturo, had travelled to La Paz to experience the sea of Cortez, he hoped to get work in a dive school, and explore the sea. He had just finished his exams for a Linguistics degree and his English was very good. We agreed to stay in touch, he might be able to help me learn Spanish and I could help him improve his English. 

A few hours later Jim arrived by coach from Los Cabos, he dumped his bags on board and we headed downtown for a meal. The next day Jim had a look around town, and I chased up the various people who were doing jobs for me. The outboard engine repair man hadn’t done the Suzuki service yet, but promised it for the next day. The canvas man was still not responding to my emails. Eventually a date was fixed for him to come and measure up.  Jim and I took the boat out and we had a pleasant day motoring up the bay to the fuel dock about 5 mies away, and then back.

At the fuel dock we were very impressed by a massive motor Yacht/gin palace, I didn’t see it but apparently there was a high speed motor launch accompanying it, used by the special services. Later we heard that the Motor Yacht was owned by Steven Spielberg and the guests on board were Barrack and Michelle Obama. We heard they had been out paddle boarding and kayaking in the coves and bays around La Paz and the islands. I expect they had been following this blog and wanted to check the place out for themselves. 

A few days later and the dodger had been measured up and templates made for its replacement, this will take a few weeks, but when I return to La Paz with Jim they should be able to get stuck into finishing it.

Jim and I visited a funky diner close to the marina where they cook burgers on a hotplate fitted into the front of a big truck, a bit gimmicky, but the whole place had a nice feel about it.

At last my passport arrived, the main hurdle keeping me in La Paz,

I was expecting the European reference to be removed, even though we are still full members of the EU, but still sad to see it go. By the time I publish this we will have left the EU, a stupid act that I think will harm the ordinary people of the UK massively. Hopefully Britain can realise its new position in the world order and adjust accordingly. I feel confident that it will rejoin Europe in a decade or so and play a more involved role than before.

The outboard arrived back serviced and performing like a new machine, and with my passport stowed away safely, Jim and I provisioned for a few weeks at sea and headed of to the islands of Espiritu Santo. We had a pleasant motor up to our first stop at Ensenada de La Gallena (Gallena Cove). There was a bit of wind and swell, but we had a pleasant night there and the next day we pushed on to Playa Candelero. Here we spent two nights snorkelling and swimming with the many colourful fish. We saw many Rays jumping out of the water and it was so clear we could see the bottom in 30ft of water. We watched turtles swimming around as we dinghies ashore.

The next stop was on the island to the north of Espiritu, called Isla Partida. First we visited Partida Cove. I had a great Kayak ride along the shoreline. There was a small seasonal fishing village here, just a few shacks, locked up. And a little stream that connected the main cove on the west of the island with a cove on the East.

The next day we moved up a few coves to Ensenada Grande, another idyllic setting, white sand beaches, clear water, and a trail we took to the eastern side of Partida Island. 

From Partida we continued north west to Isla San Francisco and a bay known locally as the hook, looking at the picture you can see why.

This was a stunning location, ashore we explored a dried out lagoon, and walked to the eastern shore of the island. Back on the boat we were a bit put out when the large motor yacht next to us started blasting out bland Mexican pop music. The young couples on board were being served by white suited waiters on the fly bridge dining area! Not long after that we saw a huge shoal of fish flying out of the water in panic, followed by a huge whales mouth. The whale chased the fish into the anchorage. 5 minutes later, a huge spurt of water, a snorting sound and the whale was just 20 metres off the side of our boat heading our way. Five minutes later it passed us and resurfaced next to the motor launch. The women on board all screamed in unison, they seemed quite scared. But in true whale watching style, their staff prepared the tender and the all jumped in and took chase after the whale. The whale being no idiot, dived and we didn’t see him/her again.

The next day, Jim decided to climb to the top of the hill overlooking the anchorage. You can see him (just) in the picture.

From Isla San Francisco we continued north to San Evaristo, via the salt mines at Salinas. A processing facility there had been abandoned with bulldozers and trucks left to decay in the elements. 

A short hop from the salt mines over to Evaristo took a couple of hours and we anchored with 8 other boats in the big bay there. It had been a while since we had internet, so our weather forecasts were now unreliable and we needed to get a better prediction. 

San Evaristo is a lovely bay, the people here are very friendly, there is a small tienda (shop) and a little restaurant. Maybe 30 houses in the village, a small school, a desalination plant and quite a few fishing pangas. We were able to buy freshly caught fish on the beach from fishermen as they arrived with their catch. 

That night in Evaristo we had a very strong westerly wind arrive, this might have been a chabasco, which is a wind caused by a difference in pressure between the big pacific and the narrow Sea of Cortez. The winds rush across the peninsula, particularly in the La Paz region where the land is relatively flat. We had mountains here and thought we would be safe, but perhaps not. The wind blew hard and I couldn’t go to bed, as I was worried we might start dragging our anchor. Around 1AM it became clear we were dragging, and soon we were in deeper water and moving fast. Fortunately we were being blown offshore and there were no boats in our way. I started the engine and that woke Jim. I brought the anchor in enough to remove the snubber, a long rope used as a shock absorber on the chain, and then let out an extra 20 metres of chain hoping we might set. However we continued to drag at about 2 knots in the strong wind. I had to recover the anchor now and motor back into shallow waters and reset it. Jim did a great job of keeping the boat pointing into the wind while I brought in ten meters at a time, after each 10 metres I ran below and flaked the chain. Eventually the anchor came into sight, however it didn’t look like an anchor, more like a monster from below. We had collected a stack of weed, probably as we dragged. There was a mound of grass/kelp, maybe 1 metre in diameter and a metre high. I had to get my hull scraper tool out to slice away at it. This took a while, fortunately while I did this, Jim skilfully manoeuvred us back in-between the other anchored yachts and held us there ready for another attempt at anchoring. This was no easy feat for Jim as it was pitch black, and the wind was howling though the bay. I cleared the weed, dropped the anchor and we quickly set in the sand below us. All in all we spent an hour getting the hook up and then back down. Jim went to bed, and I stayed up until 5:30 waiting for the wind to subside a bit. The anchor held well. I still don’t know why it dragged, but suffice it to say ‘nothing is guaranteed’ 

We left Evaristo for El Gato, named for the Cougars that used to occupy the area. So far every anchorage we had visited had to protect us from northerly winds, El Gato could do this, and as the wind was moving to the west/south west, it also offer great protection for that possibility as well.

El Gato has great geology, the rock strata is real school textbook stuff. Sadly it was very overcast during our stay so we didn’t even go ashore to check it out. We have made a note to explore on our way south.

From El Gato it was a short hop to Agua Verde, considered to be one of the most beautiful bays on the coast, and it didn’t disappoint.

We popped ashore and did some basic provisioning at the local shop, really not more than a shed in someone’s garden, but good for eggs, no doubt from the hens we saw wandering around the property. 

While we had a drink and fish tacos at the restaurant, we met Robert, an American from Las Vegas. Robert was typical of the people we meet, by being very untypical of most people. He had been working in the construction industry, house building, for most of his working life and had progressed up the ranks really well. So well he had been promoted to a lofty position which entailed him managing managers, working long hours and not doing very enjoyable work. His housebuilding was mostly about paperwork and stress. He had a heart attack and a quadruple bypass operation. This made him think about his priorities and he quit work and bought a boat. He has sailed down to Mexico and is on his way to New Zealand/Austrailia via the South Pacific on his own. We were discussing the best places for people watching and he mentioned how interesting it was seeing weirdos at Venice Beach while he was remodelling Charlie Chaplin’s house. Later he mentioned how much fun he had when he was gold prospecting in North California. As you do! Robert is such a nice Guy, I’m hoping we will meet up with him in the Pacific again.

Aqua Verde, like many of the places we have visited in Mexico have impressed us with their dedication to the environment and wildlife. The restaurant was advertising the dangers of plastic to animals and fish. It’s great that these communities, that have so little in material things are so committed to the cause. 

A small cruise ship arrived while we were there, the Safari Endeavour, it has about 80 passengers and seems to be trying to be eco friendly, if this is possible remains to be seen.

The local press tout this as a great opportunity for the economy, as there hasn’t been a cruise ship in the sea of Cortez for a long time, citing zillions of pesos for the local economies. Let’s hope they can keep it small and eco focussed.

We left Agua Verde for the short hop up to Puerto Escondido.

We were headed to Loreto, to visit the Missions there. Basically the missions were the churches the original Spanish invaders built throughout the country as bases for the conquest. I think there’s more to it than that, but I haven’t really looked into it yet. However they only built the church, not a decent harbour or Marina, so yachts had to wait another 250 years for one to be built 20 miles south at Puerto Escondido.

Here the hills create an almost landlocked lagoon. It’s considered to be one of the best hurricane holes on the coast here, and I may well consider moving the boat here later in the year when the hurricanes start. The marina was to pricey for me to stay in, so we picked up a quite pricey mooring ball for a couple of nights. We have full use of the marina facilities, including the laundry, showers and swimming pool/jacuzzi. We decided to hire a car and head into Loreto rather than try to anchor off the coast in a very exposed area. Just after we arrived we bumped into Robert, we had seen him on the AIS heading up here from Agua Verde so offered him a lift into town in our hire car, which he gratefully accepted. He had blown out the clew on his headsail and ripped his spinnaker on the way up here. His gas(LPG) regulator had also failed, so wanted to look for a replacement.

Loreto is a lovely town, full of friendly helpful folk. We had breakfast after a walk around the mission church. We did some shopping for presents and souvenirs.

Later we headed up into the mountains of the Sierra Gigante to find the other mission church.

When we arrived we were bowled over by the location and the church itself. Built around 1750 and still the original building, it looked fantastic, surrounded by orange and lemon trees, we sat in a cafe and had freshly squeezed orange juice, no doubt made from some of the oranges lying around the trees there. 

A short ride back into Loreto and we provisioned up at the supermarket with enough food to get us back to La Paz. We leave tomorrow (Wed 5th Feb) for a fast ride back so Jim can catch his flight home. Strong Northerly winds are forecast so we should have a great sleigh ride back.

By the time we had loaded up the dinghy at the Marina for the 10 minute ride back to the mooring field, the wind had reached 20-25 knots and our little dinghy was no match for the waves, we bounced up, off and into the waves. We both got soaked, but at least the water wasn’t that cold. 

Paul Collister

B.C.S stands for Baja California South. We are now in La Paz, I say we, Kathy is actually in Milan as I write, visiting family, and Jim, who looked after my boat in Sointula B.C. (British Columbia) is with me for a few weeks.

Arriving at La Paz, we were greeted by a fleet of oil/petroleum tankers berthed outside the harbour. La Paz has a small oil processing facility, I’m not sure if it’s a refinery or just a storage depot, but is a bit of an ugly affair right at the narrow channel entrance to the harbour. The approach into the town follows a narrow dredged channel that weaves its way behind a large peninsula called Magote, and then either side of a bank that splits the channel into two.

Careful navigation is required here as the channel is narrow and there are lots of pangas whizzing around. We were greeted by a shoal of dolphins frollicking around our boat on the way in. The previous night we had rested in a little cove just a mile or so north of the channel with Clay and Brenda on their boat so that we could arrive early the next day and find a place to anchor.
As it turned out we could get a berth in the marina ‘Marina de La Paz’ and so we booked in for a month, time for a rest.

We had decorated the boat for christmas, which was the next day. A trip to the supermarket and we had everything needed.

The next morning we woke and exchanged presents. This year the presents were limited and not the least bit surprising, as we had discussed what to get each other as we pushed the trolley around the supermarket the day before. We couldn’t be bothered with all the faffing around of trying to secretly check out each others presents, so I threw a couple of bars of chocolate in the trolley for Kathy, and I helped her pick a tin of my favourite spanish tuna for me. Aren’t we romantic in our old age.
Christmas day was great, we chilled, the lead up to the day had been completely stress free, Kathy did a bit of cooking and later on we headed over to Clay and Brenda’s boat for a vegan feast.

While I was shopping I was a little shocked to see the faces of ‘Missing Children’ on the milk cartons. A stark reminder that so many people just disappear every year in Mexico.

La Paz is a lovely town, a little touristy, but that’s mostly confined to the Malecon (Promenade), stepping back is a simpler way of life, with lots of small shops and services. It’s quite laid back here

Sadly a few days after Christmas a boat reversing into the berth next to us misjudged their turn and whacked us across the stern. There was no damage to the hull, but they smashed the rudder on the windvane steering, dinging it and twisting the sacrificial connecting tube. The captain, a lady, was very apologetic, and paid me for the cost of a new tube. She blamed the incident on the fact she was from Alberta, a landlocked province in Canada, and so didn’t have the sea in her blood!

It wasn’t many days after Christmas that Kathy had to head home. We had arranged it so that we would fly to Mexico City on the Wednesday, she would be interviewed at the British embassy for her passport on Thursday, Fri-Sun would be for exploring the city, and on Monday she would fly home and I would fly back to La Paz to meet Jim who was flying in from Canada. What could possibly go wrong. I wasn’t sure if I would be allowed to fly on internal flights with just my driving license as ID. In fact not much did go wrong. I was quite relaxed until the embassy official pointed out that even with the new passport, and a letter from the police, Kathy would not be able to board without her visa exit slip, which was lost with the passport. We would have to visit immigration and buy a new visa for 600 peso, just to allow her to get through the gate. A further search on google revealed horror stories of long queues at immigration causing people to miss their flights. Low stress levels had started to rise!

On our first night at the hotel in the city, we watched a film on my macbook about the life of the artist Frida Kahlo, and her relationship with the more famous, at least at the time, mural artist, Diego Rivera. This was a great film, and it gave us a focus for our exploration of the art in the city. Of course once you know about something in a bit of detail, you can see it all around you much easier. We visited the old presidential palace and saw great murals Diego painted, we visited his house where he lived with Frida for a while, and Kathy bought A Frida Kahlo Day of the dead figurine/sculpture. I really enjoyed that part of our trip.

Of course, no city trip would be complete if I haven’t dragged Kathy through downtown Fruit and Veg markets, I love seeing the brightly stacked goods, seeming to go on forever, the slightly dodgy looking racks of dead animals never seem quite as attractive, but are a sight in themselves.

On Sunday, our last full day in town we headed south of the city to a district called ‘San Angel’. On the way we took in the main central drag which is closed to traffic on Sundays and becomes a huge malecon where the locals come out and ride bikes/skateboards/roller blades etc. The atmosphere was lovely

San Angel has a little area which has been designated a ‘world heritage site’ because of its outstanding beauty. This has to be one of my favorite places ever. It was charming. so peaceful, relaxed, and the air here was much clearer than in the rather polluted centre of town.

We walked around the two town squares, small stalls sold lovey genuine local craft products and paintings. Kathy bought quite a few gifts to bring home. Several houses had been opened to the public and it made me long to own a property here so I could furnish it with these amazing objects.

A little further down the road we stumbled on a concert being performed in a gorgeous courtyard of an old house, now museum.

Further on we visited an old monastery. Inside was a temporary exhibition local school children had been involved with. There were some great day of the dead creations. I love the way they celebrate the dead here. They seemed to have removed the fear from it and made the whole thing more fun.

An example was found in the crypt below the monastery, we watched a young child exploring all the mummified remains of what I assume were once important people, without any fear, just curiosity.

After San angel, we had a final meal in the city centre and in the morning headed off to the Airport early to get in the queue at Immigration. As it turned out, there was no queue, and the immigration official was ever so nice in helping us get the new visa quickly. So far every official I have met in Mexico has been extremely pleasant and helpful. The people of La Paz are ever so nice, I think I might be here a while.

Kathy got her flight without issue, I flew back to the boat and met Jim. We headed off to the Islands to explore. More in the next posting.

Asuncion was touted as being a step up from Turtle bay, so it was with great anticipation that we prepared the dinghy for our trip ashore. Kathy was a little nervous due to the roar of surf breaking on the beach, but I assured her that it sounded worse than it was, and with careful timing we would get ashore without any issue. We wanted to find an internet cafe, or some wifi so we could attend to various tedious matters that were pressing back home.

So let me paint two somewhat different perspectives on what happened next, see if you can work out who is who.
1) Great we’re off to town, might get some internet, and do some decent shopping. First get makeup on, look smart and get into the dinghy. Next thing it’s as if someone has jumped out from an alley, and thrown an icy bucket of water all over your head, then they are pushing you into a swimming pool backwards. Not much fun.

2) Wow were off to explore a new place, and we get to go in the dinghy, brilliant, big surf, exciting, wonder if we can ride a wave right up the beach, better just wear swimming trunks, with any luck I can have a little swim. Woosh, what fun.

Of course Kathy wasn’t happy when the big wave hit her full frontal, and then to top that there was nothing in the town of interest, the internet cafe had just shut and the shops were very basic. Still it was a pretty little town.

Abreojos
The next day we did a short hop to Abrejos, which means ‘open your eyes’ . The pilot guide says this is because there are many rocks and dangers on the route there. Our plan had been to find a local panga (Small run around boat) owner who could take us around the nature reserve lagoon where whales return every year to calf and nurture their newborns. However we were a few weeks early and the pangas were nowhere to be seen. On top of that the weather wasn’t great and the surf on the beach was worse than at Asuncion, and Kathy had no interest in going ashore. so we stayed on board, and had a lazy afternoon.

Bahia Santa Maria
The next day we headed off doing an overnighter to Magdalena bay. This was a 140 mile trip, not a lot happened on this passage, but once we arrived near the bay, we opted to overnight in Santa Maria Bay, a lovely quiet spot and for the first time since we left the USA we were out of the pacific swell.
For those who don’t know there is a difference between swell and waves. Swell is caused by large storms or gales that happen out in the oceans, where waves can be mountainous in size. Once the weather clears, the big waves calm, but continue to travel across the ocean as a long period undulations on the surface. When you look at the surface it appears flat close up, but as you look further away you can see the rise and fall of the sea. When the swell is hitting us side on, the boat rolls terribly, the boat has a resonant frequency for swinging, and if the swell is near this the boat can end up swinging quite violently, with just the slightest swell. We often have the mainsail up, even when there is little wind, as its inertia helps reduce the swinging.
Swell tends to get into everywhere, as it wraps around headlands and reaches into what you would think of as protected bays. It was great to be so far around the headland here that the swell was almost zero.

Mag Bay
From Santa maria Cove we did the short 30nm hop into Magdalena bay itself and anchored off the town of Magdalena Harbour. Here we were also very sheltered and had a lazy few days swimming, kayaking and walking the pristine beaches in the bay.

Belcher Point
From the town we moved down to Belcher point in order to be ready for the long passage down to Cabo San Lucas, which would be our next long passage.
Belcher point is a small strip of land that once had a phosphorus plant, a small airstrip and a cannery. Now all that remains is a lot of broken concrete and a small camp some temporary fisherman that have set up there. I went ashore in the kayak and found the place a bit depressing, the temporary camp was very basic and quite bleak.

Onwards to Cabo San Lucas
We left at first light for the overnight passage to Cabo San Lucas. This port is at the bottom of the peninsula, and marks the end of the Baja Haha Rally, which completed a few weeks back. We were hoping to get a few nights in the marina there and restock. It has everything you expect of a modern town, with several big box hypermarkets out of town.

We arrived mid day and anchored off the main beach in front of some flash looking hotel complexes. The water here is amazingly clear. Cabo is very popular with Americans who come here for the water based activities, sailing/fishing/glass bottom boats/Paragliding, all the usual stuff.

On our way here I felt a glitch in the steering while we were on autohelm, next the autohelm was broken, the motor was whizzing around, but the wheel wasn’t connected anymore. I managed to look in the lazarette and could see the chain had come off, due to a short length of rope that had fallen into the locker and got caught up in the cogs. We had a long way to go so I hooked up the Monitor wind vane steering and that took over for the next 20 hours. In the morning the wind was dropping and I realised that if it dropped much more we wouldn’t be able to sail, and would have to hand steer for the next 6 hours. I had a closer look at the autohelm, and could see that the drive shaft was not connecting to the motor, in fact it was hanging out of the casing. This looked like a major failure, and I was resigned to spending many thousands of pounds getting a new system. I expect my current system is so old it won’t be possible to get spares.
We did end up hand steering for the last three hours doing 30 minute watches, which wasn’t so bad.
While at the anchorage I was able to dismantle the motor and gear/clutch assembly. The shaft had ripped itself out of the clutch mechanism and the key had fallen out stopping it from engaging. Miracuously all the bits went back together, the main problem being two circlips that had been stretched when it broke. It took a few hours, but eventually it all went back together and has been working fine since. Phew!

So we moved from the anchorage into the IGY Marina, a very expensive place, but we haven’t been in a marina for so long we felt like treating ourselves and ended up staying three days.
The town is built around the marina with the main boardwalk/Malecon running around the inner basin that contains three marinas. All around the marina you are constantly being offered boat trips/Tequila tasting/fishing excursions/trips to the famous arches/Cuban cigars, and even weed and coke. Thankfully a ‘No Gracias’ is all you need to say to most of them.

Passport problems
So Cabo is a port of entry and has a harbour master, as do most mexican ports. It is a requirement to clear in and out with each harbour master, or ‘Puerto Capitan’ so off we went up the hill on a very hot day to log in. The bag below had all of our paperwork and our passports in it, it also has a slit down one end where things like passports can slip out when your least expecting it, and be lost forever, which is just what happened.

Now losing your passport in a far away place is something I have always dreaded, and not only had I lost mine, but I lost Kathy’s and my previous expired passport, which I keep as it has my 10 year B1/B2 USA Visa in it, this wasn’t easy to obtain.
I had the receptionist at the Marina write a little note for me that I could show to all the vendors/bars I had passed between the boat and the captains office, it said something like ‘I have lost three passports, has anybody handed them in to you, por favour’
I had seen some unfortunate people approaching me, looking very sad and holding a bit of paper asking for money to alleviate their plight’ now I was in the same boat, in as much as looking miserable and pleading for help! Of course I was fortunate enough that I can just buy my way out of the problem, not an option they have the luxury of.

So I was able to get travel documents issued to me by the authorities here that allow us to move around Mexico without issue. Kathy needs an emergency passport to be able to get home in January, so we have to travel to the capital of Mexico, Mexico City, and visit the British embassy where Kathy will be interviewed, before she is issued the relevant papers. I just need to apply online and they will post it out to me here. I presume Kathy will need to answer the British Citizenship test, she better start brushing up on how many overs there are in a test match, which way to pass the port and who will be ‘getting brexit done’. In a way it’s no big deal as we get a holiday in the City, Kathy was flying via there anyway, so it’s just the cost of a few nights in a hotel, and we get a free trip to the big city.

We went looking for a restaurant that night and found an Indian one, which is usually a safe bet for vegans, besides fish I am mostly vegan now as well.
It was closed but next door had a lovely restaurant where the staff made a fresh salsa to our design as a free starter to our meal.

We had a walk around town the next day and there was a small market with some street performers. Very pleasant

On our last day we had a walk around the marina and Kathy ended up trying some magic creams that the street vendors are constantly pushing. It was quite funny, but the poor guy didn’t get any business from us. Later we looked online and this ‘poor guy‘ had scammed many unsuspecting ladies out of a small fortune by quoting in Peso’s and billing their card in $US, a 20:1 gain. Also a lot of people had bad skin reactions after testing his creams. To be fair we couldn’t be sure it was this particular guy, but that seems to be the MO of the sellers here.

Next we leave Cabo San Lucas and make our way around into the Sea of Cortez. Some bad weather is on the way so we are going to hide for a few days. We won’t be heading any further south this year. In fact we are in the tropics now, but will move back out of them by the time we reach La Paz.

Paul Collister.

8th November 2019 , Mexico at last!

I never feel like I can relax in a new country until we have cleared customs/immigration and port control/harbourmaster. Fortunately we had Victor, the marina manager to help us. Victor is a lovely cheery chappy, he went through all the paperwork we would need, made all the copies required, and then walked us to an ATM where we could get the required Pesos out for the visas and boat permits. As he escorted us across town to the relevant office he pointed out places to eat and other useful stores. Once there Victor did all the leg work and we just had to stand there, smiling and signing forms for the relevant officers. It turned out to be very easy, perhaps not the cheapest country to visit by boat. But we were soon signed in with a 6 month visa each and a ten year pass for the boat. Later we would buy fishing licenses and nature reserve passes. 

First impressions of Ensenada are that of a vibrant town on the up, but also a place with no shortage of poverty. In the last few years they have opened up a cruise terminal and there are 3-5 visits a week even now in the winter, we watched the carnival ships Inspiration and Imagination pop in and out on 5 days round trip ‘taster cruises’ from Long Beach LA and also the Disney cruise ships on longer trips. The town now has a nice Promenade, or ‘Malecon’ which leads the cruise passengers from the ship into the main high street where they can be fleeced silly by the local vendors, before they are beckoned to have a meal of ‘fish tacos’ and be serenaded by a local mariachi band. The whole thing  doesn’t appeal to me, as I marched down the same street and had a chicken taco 😉

We had arrived at the start of the Revolution ceremonies, Mexico has had a few revolutions over the years, but the 20th November is the official one now. The town square is right next to the marina and sports a giant flagpole and the ceremonial raising of the flag by representatives of all the forces and official bodies, police/fire/rescue etc became a regular event.

We also saw a concert in the square of traditional Mexican song and dance which was very entertaining. 

Once settled we were off to check out the shops, I was hoping that the town only had a few supermarkets, but it turned out to have about ten main ones and quite a few smaller mercados. After a bit of shopping around I managed to buy a couple of android phones, a Huawei for Kathy as her old Redmi had packed in after she took it for a swim, and a Moto 7 for me, I had hoped to ‘root’ and enable hot spotting, something I can’t do with the iPhone on my at&t plan. I’m still fighting with the phone to get in and flash new software.

While we were here we endured a few days of very heavy rain, the temperature dropped and we were running the heater for a while. This wasn’t quite what I had ordered for the winter and wondered if I had ticked the wrong box for ‘paradise’.

We had a very nice day visiting the local museum, this was housed in an old hotel complex built in the 30’s when the town was very small, it was built for wealthy Americans to come down and drink and gamble in the casino, it was an impressive building, and after the museum we had a drink in the bar there and bought a few trinkets from the stalls setup outside the bar in a pretty courtyard.

Back at the boat, it was time to make our preparations to leave and start the long passage south and into the sea of Cortez. The tap water is not potable (Drinkable) here, so we order 10 * 20 ltr bottles at $1 a bottle, to be delivered to the boat. I took a taxi ride to the garage to fill our jerry cans with 70 ltrs of diesel, this being how much we had used getting here from San Diego.

Before we left we did a big shop at several of the mercados, this being our last chance before we reach Cabo San Lucas. Shops along the way will have very limited choices. 

On our way to the shops we walked through the start line for the Baja 1000 motor race. I hadn’t heard of this before, but apparently it’s a big deal in motor sports. There was quite a collection of off road vehicles, along with lots of stalls setup to service them and the tourists who had gathered for the event. The race which starts on the river banks in the centre of town had to be delayed by a day due to the heavy rain causing the river to flood. 

Finally, fully loaded we were ready to leave. We said goodbye to our neighbours, Brenda and Clay on Sansucci, who we had met first in Monterey, then later in San Diego and off we headed off early the next morning hoping to do a short hop down the coast, and spend the night in a little enclave about 32 miles south called San Jose. However as we left it became apparent that the Pacific Swell was quite big and might make that spot uncomfortable. As we approached it, we heard two yachts in front leaving the cove saying it was too rough and the kelp there was terrible. So I made the decision to go straight to San Quentin which meant an overnight passage to cover the 120 odd miles. 

Arriving at our destination revealed that quite a few squid had decided to jump onto the boat during the night, and expire on the deck. I wouldn’t mind, but on expiring they had left huge ink stains I still haven’t been able to remove fully.

San Quinten, (pronounced San KeenTeen) is quite well protected from northerly winds, of the type we expect to have for a few months now, but turned out to be quite Rolly all the same. It has an entrance to an estuary which I had hoped to explore by Kayak, but altogether the weather was grim, the water choppy, so we slept a lot and the following day pushed on to our next port of Cedros Island. 

Before we left, I popped up the mast to replace a halyard that had shredded. I use it for the spinach pole uplift. I spent a bit of time rejigging the whole spinnaker setup and it’s much better now. I can get my pole up without a huge wrestling jousting match.

Leaving for Cedros town meant another overnighter, and we arrived an hour before sunset. We spent 30 minutes trying to get the anchor to set, on the third try it dug in, but it dragged a little when I gave the boat max revs astern, but as it was very calm I left it at that and set up an anchor alarm on my iPhone, just in case. We hurried ashore before the light left us as the pilot guide suggested this town was one of the more sophisticated along the Baja coast. We weren’t convinced. It reminded me of my few months in Afghanistan, dirt roads, dust everywhere, destroyed buildings, with dogs rummaging through them. Was this a taste of what was to come?

We found a shop and said hello to a few locals. Everyone seems very friendly here, but the town was very run down. There is some fishing done here, but mainly the island is home to a huge salt distribution centre, with a deepwater dock a mile south of the town, with mountainous piles of salt piled up there.

On a rather technical point, I had a shocking, and it was all about shock loading, experience in San Quinten. This is about how not to set an anchor, so skip this paragraph if you like. Basically we normally set the anchor by gently falling back on it , with the engine in low revs in reverse. When I feel it has dug in, we usually increase the revs, to near maximum, depending on the weather and expected weather. Before we reverse, I put a small snubber of the anchor chain from in front of the windlass, back to the Samson post, so that the strain is taken by this line and not the windless when we reverse. Once we are set, I put a bigger snubber line out that goes into the water. We had been reversing, with moderate revs, but the anchor chain kept going from taut to slack, presumably as it wasn’t holding. I was confused, it seemed to set, but then the chain went slack. What was actually happening, and I hadn’t twigged, was the swell was quite large, and was lifting the boat up 5-10 foot on the crests every 15-20. Seconds. Later In a period of low swell, the anchor seemed to be holding so I asked Kathy, who was on the helm to give it maximum in reverse, she did, the chain went bar tight, the snubber taking the full force and I was happy we were set, just needed to check our speed on the gps and we would be done. However at that moment a large swell came in and lifter the boat up high, it was more than the snubber could take and it snapped in an explosive kind of way, the chain hook left the chain and shot off like a bullet, and the remaining rope recoiled back onto the deck. The windless clutch wasn’t engaged, so the anchor chin started screaming out at full speed. I got the brake on the clutch and concluded we were set. Fortunately I had a spare anchor hook, and the one I lost had been a cheap galvanised job, so no great loss. Also the rope I had been using for this short snubber was an old piece of halyard, probably the worse choice as they are designed to be non stretch. The next day I found the old hook sitting on the bow platform right at the front ready to fall off. 

This wasn’t going to be the end of my snubber woes this week.

Wed 27th November, Cedros to Turtle Bay.

As we left the next morning we passed in-between two sets of crab pot marker buoys. I had assumed the two buoys 100 ft on the left belonged to one set of traps, and the group of buoys 100ft to the right, another. Imagine my surprise when I noticed we had gone over a length of floating polypropylene rope joining them together. Normally the rope would glide along our keel and pop out the back without any issue. The shape of our hull means the prop and rudder shouldn’t be able to trap the rope. However this time the rope didn’t pop out and all the buoys were now following us. I had already killed the revs and gone into neutral before the rope had got near the stern of the boat, and I couldn’t go into reverse for fear of snagging the rope, so we just drifted slowly forward towing the buoys as I pondered my next move. Kathy was asking me what are we going to do, and I really couldn’t think what, this shouldn’t happen, there’s nothing for the line to snag on. I’m guessing there must be barnacles on the underside of the keel big enough to hold the rope. Anyway, we hadn’t travelled more than a boats length when the ropes went taught then popped out the back of our boat and we were free to continue our voyage. Over the next few days we found a lot of floating lines are used on marker buoys here and it’s a very dangerous situation, especially for more modern boats that can snag lines easily.

As we left the weather began to turn bad, the rain started and really picked up. I could have filled our water tanks if I had a decent capture system. 

We also had to navigate through endless amounts of marker buoys before we got to Turtle bay. It was only a short day trip across, but required me to put on full foul-weather gear. By the time we arrived in Turtle bay things had improved and we motored close to the town pier and the beach to make it easy to dinghy ashore. 

Turtle bay is the main / biggest town between Ensenada and Cab San Lucas and the first stop on the Baja Haha Rally. A lot of boats refuel here as it’s the easiest place to take on fuel before Cab san Lucas, however the second source of fuel stopped, leaving Enrique with a monopoly. The going rate is normally around 22 peso a litre, but he has upped the price to 33 peso, a 50% hike, plus he charges 10% extra if you want to pay by card. There is a Pemex petrol station in town, but Enrique tells everyone it doesn’t sell diesel, which it does. If you insist on going there, he tries to stop you by saying he will get the police onto you for breaking his exclusive contract to supply diesel in the town. One of the skippers went to the police to get the story and was told Enrique was talking nonsense. Failing all else he tries to intimidate you with his friends on the jetty. All in all this left us with a very bad impression of the place. It wasn’t helped by the very run down nature of the town. It’s such a shame, word will get around and people will stock up on fuel or go to the next port of Bahia Asuncion where there is a Pemex selling diesel for 22 pesos.

On our first day we didn’t go ashore, I wanted to fix our bilge pump. It was making a whirring noise, but not pumping. It took a while, but eventually I had it out from the bottom of the deep bilge, and years of oil removed from its case. When I ran it it seemed to work, but the centrifuge was actually not connecting to the drive shaft due to a retaining circle being absent. I managed to fit a new one, I carry a huge selection, thanks to Aldi who did plastic boxes of this type of thing for a few quid, I have copper washers and fibre washers and springs, all from the same source. I do miss Aldi and Lidl for these bargains. Saying that I expect it’s meant to be stainless steel and the mild steel circlip will soon fail, but I’m going to get a new pump anyway as this one sounds a bit growly, I suspect the bearing in on the way out.

Turtle bay is well protected from all directions except the south west, winds from that direction are very rare at this time of year, however the forecast had been for 10-15 knots from the west, which might bring some swell into the bay. Back at the boat, I checked the forecast and we were now looking at 15-20 knots from the SW, others had a prediction of 20knots from predictwind, which is often very accurate. This was a worry as we are so close to the beach/rocks and 20 knots would be pushing us towards the rocks, should our anchor fail, it would be a matter of 5 minutes before we hit the rocks at best. The wind was forecast to peak at midnight, and by sunset it was around 15 knots and rising. Our anchor was holding well and I was optimistic that we would hold well even if it rose to 20 knots. I was now in a horrible situation, I knew if we left now we would have a very tricky time getting the anchor up in a crowded spot, the swell / waves were getting big and we would have to get everything right to navigate through the anchorage 2 miles across the bay to a more sheltered spot, unsure just how much shelter that spot provided, and the holding over there was reported to be worse the here. So I decided to stay, a few more hours at 20 knots then it was predicted to drop. So by midnight we were up to 25 knots, massive waves rolling and conditions still worsening. The anchor chain and snubber rope were very taut, and we were taking a bashing from the swell. I told Kathy we had to do an anchor watch system, 2 hours on/off, keeping a close eye on our GPS position, and watching for the other 17 boats upwind from us to make are they didn’t drag onto us. By 2AM the wind was hitting 40 knots and the waves were massive. One boat said he saw 50 knots on his anemometer. My eyes were glued to the GPS position on the chart plotter when I heard a loud bang from the bow, as I had feared our snubber had snapped, I later found out the slack chain had been rubbing against the snubber around were it snapped. Climbing up to the bow I could see the chain was iron taut on the small snubber I have by the windlass, since the previous failure I had found some strong nylon rode for this snubber, but I worried it wasn’t going to be enough to absorb the loads we were seeing. I lashed a spare bit of 3 strand nylon around the chain, fed it through the starboard hawse pipe and cleated it off, that would be a temporary solution, but I needed to slacken the other snubber and let out some chain, unfortunately, this rope had locked itself somehow that I couldn’t undo it from the Sampson post, such was the force on it. I decided to try to haul the chain in a bit with the windlass, I waited for a gap between the waves , pulled in the chain, got the hook off, released the chain and let the new snubber take up the slack. It just worked out. I then had to get some new rope to rig up the port side of the snubber, and use a chain hook. This took another hour or so, it was about 4 am before I had it all sorted and the wind seem to have steadied then around 30 knots. All this time the anchor had not budged at all. 

By around 5am the wind was dropping along with the waves and we started to relax.

Come the morning things were more settled and we managed to dinghy ashore.

We had a nice walk around town later, it’s a very scrappy, dusty, muddy place, however the church was spotless and well cared for. I had some lovely fish tacos in a restaurant overlooking the bay and we chatted with other cruisers. In all their were about 20 sailboats at anchor here, as we motored back to sister Midnight from the pier the wind was picking up. 

I had heard of two other cruisers Mike & Chris who were stranded there because there steering had failed. It was a wire and chain system like the one on stardust and Sister midnight, so as I had just rebuilt mine in Sointula I offered to help them fix theirs. A few hours in their rear lazarete the next morning sorted the problem out. Their quadrant had slipped down the rudder post and the wires had left the grove in it, it took a bit of fiddling around to get it all back together, the biggest problem was the swell was causing the rudder to flap from side to side as I was trying to re-attach the cables. It’s great to be able to help people out in a jam, that’s a great thing about the cruiser community, everyone helps each other out.

The following day we hauled up the well dug in anchor and headed off, glad to be out of Turtle bay and heading for Bahia Asuncion.

Since we left Ensenada, cell coverage has been awful, when we do get it, it’s usually 2g with next to no data connectivity. Right now we get a good signal once in a while.

Paul Collister

From Moro Bay we headed off to Los Angeles. We had originally planned to stay in Marina del Rey, however the marina was expensive and when I called they where a bit snooty and required no end of documentation sending to them before they would take a booking, one thing they wanted was the purchase/sales invoice from when I bought the boat. I don’t know where I have put this, but in the end I decided I didn’t want all the hassle, so we booked a place in Oxnard, which is an hours drive north of LA and Venice beach, and with the money we saved, we hired a car for 3 days and did a bit of exploring. First off we visited Venice beach

Above you can see me buying a limited edition hand drawing of a theme around ‘Satoshi was here’ on the sidewalk at Venice beach. The guy selling them was a bitcoin nutter who had a plan to sell these limited edition sketches (100 off) and then for each one sold another ten would be made, but at double the price, which I could purchase at the same price as one of the first 100, which was $10. I lost his plot after ten minutes of him explaining how a building would be built with the proceeds, and the sketch would entitle me to a place on the first floor, but if I bought more of the next batch, I could move up a floor. All of this was recorded on a private blockchain. Basically it was like a pyramid scheme, and was unlikely to come to anything, but for $10 I thought I would support this guy’s enterprising vision, and you don’t get much for $10 in this part f the world. A few days earlier a guy pushing his life along the road in a shopping trolley asked me if I could spare him ‘a twenty’, I was some way along the road past him before I got over the shock of it! $20, Am I getting really mean in my old age, or is $20 the amount people give to homeless when asked these days?

Next we headed off to find the ranch where Charles Manson lived before it burnt down. Basically I was going to walk around a field for an hour while Kathy would be exclaiming ‘Amazing’ ‘ I can’t believe we are here’. She will explain in her blog I’m sure, but I think it’s connected with murders and the houses we visited in San Francisco.

Of course it’s halloween here and all over Venice Beach people had put on great shows in their gardens and windows.

Venice beach was lovely, I posted a video of some great public skating on our facebook page, you can see that here

From Oxnard we headed onto Redondo, en route we passed Magu point where there is a military firing range, I must have missed the warnings sent out on the VHF radio as we were steaming into the firing range but were intercepted by a fast patrol boat that instructed us to change course to 180 degrees (south) and to stay on that heading for 3 miles before turning east again. I think it’s actually quite hard to get into a live firing range.

Bow & Stern moorings are required in Redondo, I haven’t used this type of setup before, but it was actually very easy. Kathy brought the boat up alongside the pick up pole, something she can do much better than me. I grabbed the pole, and as usual wondered why I forgot the gloves. Poles and ropes that live in the sea are not usually nice things to hold, slime/barnacles etc

Redondo was a bit like Venice beach, but without anything happening on the beach. It had a great pier complex full of funky restaurants and shops.

We headed of to Santa Catalina next. Santa Anna winds were forcast so we popped around to the west side of the island to get shelter there.
It was funny that I had just updated the operating system on my macbook a few days ago to the latest release, known as ‘Catalina’ Apple name their releases after famous places in California, such as Mojave and Yosemite. I took this picture below as we rounded the eastern end of Catalina Island and was reminded of the login screen on my laptop

This is the icon Apple use for Catalina which I’m pretty sure is the same bit of the island. They have a better angle, but I got a bluer sky.

We picked up a mooring in Catalina Harbour, the west side of ‘two harbours’ and went ashore to pay. They charged $50/night to tie to a mooring ball, so we payed for one night and the next night moved to the anchorage which was a bit further out. Below is the ‘anchor art’ from our chartplotter that shows how we swung between two locations as the tide turned.

Our next destination was to be San Diego, but to break the journey up into two 7 hour daytime passages, rather than a 14 hour overnighter we called into Oceanside for a night. Here the seals had taken over our end of the harbour and at one point I had to have very strong words with the biggest sea lion you have ever seen. He was blocking our path back off the boat and everytime I approached him, clapping and shouting, he lurched towards me with a wide open mouth full of very sharp teeth. He wasn’t going to move. Eventually he backed down, it turns out he was all front, no substance, but very scary all the same.

So on we pushed to San Diego. The plan had been to avoid the Baja Haha. The Baja Haha (pronounced bar hah, hah hah) is an annual rally for about 150 sailboats that sail down to the sea of cortez from San Diego. I wanted to miss them as I expected marinas to be full and noisy, so quite how we end up arriving in San Diego 4 days before the start is beyond me. Of course everywhere was full, we got two nights on the police/public dock before we had to move out and anchor in a designated spot for the weekend, then I managed to snap up the last berth on the the dock for another 4 days. The boat had to be inspected before we could use the anchorage.

San Diego is a great place, and like LA and San Francisco, is a mecca for watersports, especially sailboats. There are thousands of them here in scores of marinas. It’s also home to a huge military base, loads of warships, submarines and airplanes and helicopters. The choppers are constantly flying out to sea and returning, often 2 or three at a time in close formations that remind me of war films I have seen. Its also a cruise ship port.

Our first job was to pickup the new raw water pump I had shipped out from the UK. It cost more in the uber cab to get to the DHL collection point than the postage from Southampton! but once there I was relieved to find it was the right part, there are two similar but incompatible versions of the pump.

We had a good walk and cycle around town, I managed to buy a stack of gifts which I later posted home as Christmas presents to be distributed later. I’m not sure how reliable the parcel service from Mexico would be so played it safe with USPS.

We had just missed the Day of the dead festivities, but there was no shortage of deadish looking things around!

Here is the said pump, it’s now fitted nd doing sterling work.

Back at the police dock we had a visit from a local Perry boat owner, Harvey. He runs the Tayana group, which is very similar to our Baba group, of which I am a moderator. He has cruised the Pacific Northwest for many years and we had a great chat about sailing there.

Before we left San Diego, I had to visit the Maritime Museum, but we were running out of time, so we just visited the USS Midway, which is a massive aircraft carrier, commissioned in 1945, and was the lead ship in the desert storm war.

It’s always a conflict for me with military sites, as on the one hand, it’s hard not to be impressed by the sheer scale of creativity and industry that went into these ships design and construction, but also accepting that they are giant killing machines that sometimes mistakes wedding parties for terrorists with horrific consequences.

Finally a bit of boaty stuff, I bought some Dyneema rope and a round thing. Apparently this is the future and all racing boats have gone this way. I will post a picture of the finished item when I have spliced a loop in the rope, but basically this will replace the damaged car/block for the yankee sheet.

We left San Diego around 16:00 on the 7th November, finally we had had a call from the marina in Ensenada that they had a berth for us, we had an uneventful motor down after the wind died three hours into our sail. Mexico is much closer to Malaysia than San Diego, in terms of wealth, infrastructure etc. But I got a great feel from the place as we approached our berth and the manager and his assistant were waiting for us and took our lines with a very smiley welcome. Victor, who runs the marina side of the facility, as it has a much bigger operation as a boatyard, took us downtown, helped us find an ATM, and took us to immigration, harbour master, customs and TIP offices. He very quickly got us signed into Mexico and now we are all legal and here for 2 weeks to chill, refresh our basic Spanish language skills and acclimatise to the hispanic way of life.

Paul Collister.

Wednesday 16th.

We left our mooring buoy at Morro Bay around 09:30 for the overnight passage to LA. We were actually heading for Oxnard which is an hours drive north of Venice Beach. I couldn’t find a cheap berth in LA proper, and this seemed like a good alternative. We had originally considered Ventura, but this was closer to LA and more importantly to me, Mexico.
This passage was about 130 miles, which is about 26 hours at 5 knots speed. So by leaving at 9:30 we should arrive in the early afternoon the next day.
The official weather forecast from NOAA had gales predicted for Thursday night and Friday, so I didn’t want to linger. The sea state was good now but would deteriorate on the passage, but nothing too bad and nothing we hadn’t handled before. I was looking forward to about 15-25 knots of wind from behind, making for a fast passage.
We got the sails up as soon as we left the breakwater. with the wind aft of the beam (from behind) we were making good progress.

By the afternoon the wind had picked up more and the swell was growing, and for some unknown reason to me the autohelm started giving up, I took the helm, got us back on course , but it happened again fairly quickly. So out came the wind vane for the monitor self steering. I hadn’t used this in a while and it took a bit of fiddling to get it running, but once I did, the boat steered a great course south. I hit my bunk around 8pm leaving Kathy on watch, but around 11pm she woke me as we had gone way off course, a lull in the wind had caused the wind steering to fail. I fixed this and then started my midnight watch a little early and Kathy hit the sack.
A few hours later the predicted gale started to appear and winds were gusting to 25/30 knots. We were now in the middle of a load of oil/gas platforms that inhabit this part of the coast. I had managed to get a double reef into the mainsail, and we only had the staysail out, but we were hitting over 10 knots according to the GPS and that’s a lot for this boat, so I decided to furl up the staysail a bit. Unfortunately, the furling line was taught and I couldn’t pull it in. A quick trip to the bow revealed the furling line had come off the drum and wrapped around under/inside the drum and was far too tight for me to pull out by hand. Back in the cockpit I could see the wind was still strengthening and the seas building, it was starting to get a bit worrying, so I grabbed a torch, it was quite dark out, and a sailors knife and headed back to the bow. Sitting on the bow platform above the bowsprit, with the aid of the torch, I could see that the line was wrapped around the forestay several times below the furling drum, and I spent half an hour feeding the rope back through the drum, undoing the tension, while the rather rough sea was bouncing me around. Eventually it was all back on the drum. All the time we had been sailing directly towards an oil rig, it was looking pretty big now. The thing with oil rigs is that they are so bright in the sea, they look a lot closer than they actually are, at least that was my plan/hope.

Back in the cockpit things were getting worse, the wind steering was struggling and we were heeled over much more than I liked, the rails were close to the water. Furling the sail on my own was going to be difficult in the strong wind, so I called for Kathy to get out of her bunk and head on up to help me. This worried her a lot as I rarely need to call for help, and she was being thrown around in the cabin getting ready to come on deck. I had the usual explaining that we weren’t going to die etc etc but could she control the sheets while I winched in the staysail. once the staysail was mostly in, and with the fully reefed mainsail, the boat settled, I could get us back on course and everything was fine again, Kathy went back to bed, although it took a while for her to relax and fall asleep. Before Kathy headed below she took the helm for a bit while I worked on the windvane, unfortunately Kathy managed a crash Jibe, this wasn’t that bad, and only happened because I had undone the preventer from the starboard side of the boat, this is a rope that tames the boom when we might Jibe, I had forgotten to re-attach it after all the flapping (literally) with the headsail. A few hours later when the wind should have been really strong, it disappeared and we had to turn the motor on, which we used until sunrise when there was enough wind to sail again.
Arriving at Oxnard was simple, as we travel south the bars at the harbour entrances get less serious, this one looked a bit wild as we approached, but once around the breakwater it was very calm. Motoring into the Marina complex it was staggering to see so many boats here, perhaps a few thousand. In fact there are a few marinas and yacht clubs at Oxnard, and beyond them the water flows around a massive housing development where every house backs onto the water and has its own dock/pontoon.

Looking over the boat later I found the solar powered vent above the shower room had smashed off the coachroof leaving a 3.5″ diameter hole in the deck.

Also the line for the staysail furler had shredded its outer braid.

More about LA later.

Paul Collister.

Above is a shot of Sister Midnight sitting in Aquatic cove, part of the Museums grounds in the heart of San Francisco’s waterfront.

After a few days swinging on the anchor here we moved to Pier 39 to hang out with the sea lions. Pier 39 is just along from Fishermans wharf. Both places had once been very busy commercial operations, either dealing with fishing boats or general cargo. They both have now become major tourist attractions, full of restaurants/bars and gift shops. Property prices here are so high it doesn’t make sense to be shipping goods through these wharfs, all of the trade is done by container ships over at Oakland, or similar terminals.

Pier 39 does have a marina, the east side is full of day trip boats, ranging from big boats doing ‘around the bay’ or ‘sunset cruises’ to a sailing experience on an old Americas cup yacht. On the west side, there is room for a few dozen yachts, but more famously there are a dozen pontoons set out just for the sea lions to laze around on. We had 2 days with the sea lions before we were able to move to a slip on the east side. You can see some sea lions on our pontoons at night. At one point I had a face to face showdown with a sea lion who wouldn’t let me get back to the boat.

We spent 2 weeks in San Francisco exploring the place. I hadn’t realised just how hilly it is, but the transit system is easy to use, and for $5 you get a day pass that covers all the trolleys and busses, but not the famous cable cars. I have included some pictures of the great architecture below and scattered around this post

The Long Now Foundation
The foundation are a group of enlightened people who have decided to build a clock out in the desert that will run for 10,000 years without any human intervention. The project is nearing completion now and the organisation behind it has a bar ‘The Interval’ just a few piers along from Aquatic Cove. I had to visit, mostly because they have a piece of art behind the bar that I was heavily involved with the design of. It was a commission I got from the artist Brian Eno a few years back to display his art project called 77 Million Paintings on 4 slim LCD displays. The images change on a continuous basis and should not repeat until after 77 million iterations. I designed the software and hardware that is on display at the bar, but I didn’t know it was destined for an organisation that deals with extremely long time periods. This piece runs on windows XP and uses SD Memory chips for storage, and so by its very design, has a short life expectancy. Still it was good to see it running in a very trendy bar.

At the end of one of the piers is an old amusements aracde with antique exhibits. I particularly liked these machines, but also enjoyed a game of space invaders on the big old upright consoles.

There are many funky buildings here, It’s interesting as most of them were built or rebuilt after the great earthquake in 1906.
Below Kathy is on one of the refurbished piers with some historic ships behind her.

Alcatraz
So as part of my birthday present to Kathy I bought her tickets to Alcatraz, I checked but they only did returns 😉
It was a very interesting tour, and must have been a pretty grim time for those incarcerated there, especially with the sights and sounds of SF wafting over the short stretch of water between the two.

The bridge
Of course the Golden Gate bridge is probably San Francisco’s most famous landmark. We had fun sailing under it, but Kathy had an old photo of her by the bridge taken in 1983 some 36 years ago, and wanted to go back and find the same spot. This seemed like a good challenge to me, so I fired up google street view and started looking for possible locations.

Fortunatley street view had great images from all the roads and footpaths in the area, and using the wires and the point where they cross the supports and the background hills made it fairly easy to get the spot.

Of course when we got there it was quite different, a new fence and viewing area. What pleased me was to see the square holes in the concrete filled in where I suspect the old wooden fence was fitted. In retrospect I think we were out by around 6ft, but that will have to do.

The engineering is stunning for the bridge, the wires that run the length of the bridge are amazing just in themselves.

City Lights & the Beat Poets
SF has a proud literary background and played a big part in the sixties counterculture movement, some of our favourite writers and poets made their mark here, along with many great musicians. Kathy had a particular desire to check out all the Manson related locations so I took pictures of her in front of lots of houses, places were either gruesome murders were planned or committed. We also saw the house were Kerouac wrote ‘on the road’.

Below is the room were the Beat Poets would recite their works and it was in this room that Ginsberg (He of Howl fame) and William Burroughs unleashed their radical poetry on the world.

No shortage of cruise ships here, this one was particularly massive, I think it was dutch.

Mission & 24th
Mission is a region just south of the main downtown area and we accidently found it when looking for some book shops, it has a very Mexican feel to it, which might explain some of the goods proudly being displayed for sale.

We had a great indian meal there. the area is also famous for large murals

Leaving the bay

Before we left SF I had some boat jobs to do, a few weeks earlier the cable from the solar panels to the battery charger / controller had failed. This runs down the backstay, then follows a tortuous path through the back of the boat, through the engine compartment and quarter berth. I had run a wire from the panels through a portlight down to the controller and it was getting in the way. This meant emptying out the lazzarette and all of the quarter berth. While this job was under way I decided to finally hook up the inverter that came with the boat. This is a big pure sine wave 2kw inverter/4 stage charger with sensing switch over. It’s a fancy bit of kit and probably costs thousands of dollars, but it had sat there idle all this time as it works with 110v, I had rewired the boat for 240v and I couldn’t see a role for it. However I realised that the boat has been in North american waters for a year now, and will probably do another 1 or 2 years before we head off into the pacific where I’m not expecting much shore power at all. On top of that I was not happy with the toaster that ran on 240v from a step up transformer, and given that the gas grill has stopped working, toast at sea has become a problem. Finally Rick up in Sointula baked a loaf for me using his breadmaker running off his inverter, so I bought a 110v toaster and I’m on the lookout for a bread making machine. I found that the inverter was already connected to the batteries via a big isolating switch, so rather than replumb it into the boats mains wiring, i just ran a trailing socket from it and popped a couple of slices into the toaster.
It was very fast to make some great toast, but it was disturbing seeing the meter displaying 90 AMPS being drawn from the batteries, I did the maths and worked out 4 pieces of toast cost me about 40 minutes of sunshine (Solar Power). I had got used to making ice from the sun, but peversley it seemed more odd to make toast from the sun.

So we left San Francisco in the afternoon to make a night passage to Monterey, this was a voyage of about 90 miles, to long to make in Daylight, so by leaving in the afternoon we would arrive in the following morning, the wind was forecast to be 20-25 knots from the NW which would have been great, we got the sails up and made a good 5 knots for a few hours, then the wind dropped and on came the motor.

Kathy cooked a nice soup for the evening

The next morning was quite calm and peaceful, I made toast with the new setup and that worked well. We saw Dolphins and Whales on the way down.

Arriving in Monterey
Just as we approached Monterey the wind picked up, as we followed the marks leading to the entrance their was plenty of sea life on view.

Of course Monterey was the home of John Steinbeck, and we had to visit Cannery row, the title of one of his books.

Monterey is lovely and we are enjoying just chilling out, I have picked up a few days of programming work which fits in well, and helps pay for the berth and the new Water pump needed for the engine.

Our favourite supermarket so far in California has been Trader Joe’s. the local one here has a great pumpkin display, as it has been halloween here for a few weeks already.

We should be in LA within a week.

Paul Collister.

We left Noyo River ( Fort Bragg) on the afternoon flood tide, just before slack water and got through the bar without much effort, but the channel was quite narrow and there were quite big rollers just 20 metres either side of us. Once clear we got the sails up and enjoyed a sail south with NW winds of 15 knots. Sadly the further out we got the bigger the swell became, about 15-20 ft at times and they were often on our beam (side) or coming from behind. This caused the boat to roll quite wildly, something Kathy and I can handle just fine, but the poor old sails kept collapsing then filling with a loud ‘whack’ shaking the whole boat. I had a spinnaker pole out to try and tame the headsail, and a preventer on the main to stop it swinging around, but I couldn’t bear hearing the sails taking such a battering. This kind of stress really reduces the lifetime of the sails, so after a while I sheeted the main in tight, furled up the Yanke and we motored on. It was about to get dark, and I thought this would at least make Kathy’s watch (20:00-00:00) easier, and if possible I would get the sails out later. Strong winds had been forecast.

As it turned out the wind dropped and we motored all the way into Drakes Bay, just north of San Francisco. This was a sheltered anchorage and very pretty. It is located just behind Point Reyes, which is where the weather fax transmissions come from.

We went ashore for a walk and saw a coyote stalking a deer. There were more Sea Lions making a great deal of noise.

The next day, Saturday, we headed off at 08:30 to cross the San francisco bar just after slack on the flood tide. My daughter Yasmin suggested I periscope the trip under the Golden Gate bridge, this is an app that allows you to video stream over the internet from your phone. I had a play and it seemed to work, so I strapped the camera to the top of the solar panels where it would have a bit of a view looking forward.

The video is still there I think under paulcollister, approaching SF. however just before we passed under the bridge we had a slight problem. I went to the bow to film the bridge passing overhead and left Kathy on the helm, I was filming the bridge as we approached it when I looked back to see a sailboat ploughing directly at us, and only a few boat lengths away. He was bombing along under sail, and so had right of way. I think he was of the mind that we had to get out of his way. Looking at Kathy, she was a bit tied up with her messaging app on her phone and hadn’t seen this boat. I raced back to the cockpit, Threw the autopilot switch to manual, knowing in my mind that I wouldn’t have time to get out of the way, but I jumped back anyway, grabbed the wheel just as the other boat changed course and passed behind us. they didn’t wave back to me or even smile at me, in fact they looked decidedly unhappy! Oh well, we must try harder next time to ignore our phones and concentrate on the navigation side of things.

We both were a little shaken by how close the other boat had been, but pushed on, I carried on filming, but didn’t press the record button, so we didn’t actually get the bridge passing recorded.
Once through the bridge we turned to starboard and headed for Aquatic cove, a little protected anchorage in downtown San Francisco. It’s a lovely spot, and only $10 / night to anchor.

San Francisco is a great city, we have spent a couple of days walking the streets, and it has a great atmosphere. I will leave the details to Kathy as it’s much more exciting for her too be here. I’m hoping to see some science/tech/maritime technology in the varuious museums, plus I gather there are some great art galleries here.

We expect to be here for a few more weeks before we head on.

Paul Collister

We left Astoria on the 10th September 2019 for Newport. Astoria was good, great shops and a lovely waterfront. The people there have been very friendly. Before we left we visited the heritage museum where Kathy checked out wheelchairs, she liked this model.

Also in the Museum they had pictures of the old hospital and below the hospital governors meet, this won’t mean much if you’re not from the UK, but Jeremy Paxman doesn’t seemed to have aged at all since then

The trip to Newport meant leaving in the late afternoon so we could cross the bar on a weak flood tide. Then an overnight sail to Newport, however the timings meant we had to cross the Newport Bar at the worst time. Thankfully the weather was mild and so although the waves looked scary it was fine in the middle of the channel. Once we were under the bridge it was a short hop to the marina.

Newport is a lovely town, with 2 lighthouses and a beach. We managed to fit in all the highlights in a day’s walk around town.

One of it’s main attractions is a group of concrete pontoons built for the sea lions. It’s a tourist draw alright, and quite amusing, however after 20 minutes we decided we should get ready for an early start to get out to Crescent City. The weather forecast wasn’t going our way.

Our trip to Crescent city was uneventful, we sailed half way but the wind turned to the south and we ended up motoring the rest of the way. We saw very few boats on the way, but at night the fishing vessels seem to have very bright lights, I must find out why, but they are like football stadium lights pointing forward from the bow.

Crescent City is good, as there is no bar to worry about, but plenty of rocks all the same. The lighthouse below, as you approach the harbour isn’t on the Navionics chart, which is a bit worrying.

The marina was wiped out by a Tsunami from Japan in 2011 and has been rebuilt to be the strongest on the west coast. The piles and pontoons are very sturdy and twice the normal size.

We arrived on Kathy’s birthday so went in hunt of a restaurant that might have a vegan offering, sadly Crescent City doesn’t excel in this area, and poor Kathy ended up with an ‘eat all you can’ Salad bar in a seafood cafe. She actually quite enjoyed it, she is going to have to wait until we get to San Francisco for a present from me.

Well the pontoons at CC are great, but we didn’t get to sample any of its other delights (if they exist?), as we needed to head on early the next day in order to escape some strong southerly winds that were on the way. Also it was pouring down and the rain was predicted to last 3-5 days. I took the opportunity to check everything was ok at the back of the engine, gearbox oil and water pump, as they had had a good thrashing since I had them in bits in Sointula. I was very disappointed to find the water pump I rebuilt with the help of John in Sointula was pissing sea water out the back end. We couldn’t continue with this problem. I guessed the Lip Seal had broken, and as this was what we had just replaced, I guess the damaged shaft is the problem, so I need to buy a new pump, at around £300.
Fortunately, due to me messing up on the last replacement pump kit order, I had another spare kit which included bearings and a lip seal, I just wasn’t sure if I had the tools to replace it on board. As it turned out it was quite easy and 4 hours later the pump was back on the engine and running fine without any leaks. The oil cooler I replaced also seemed good along with the gearbox oil level. However the Impeller hadn’t fared too well, I’m not sure why, as it was also new back in April, only 200 engine hours ago.

So at 7:30AM we left Crescent City for Fort Bragg / Noyo River.
I kept a close eye on the water pump for the whole passage and it seems to be holding up. Hopefully it will get us to SF where I can get a new pump ordered and fitted. We had to motor the whole way, but once around Cape Mendocino the wind dropped and the sun shone bright, it really felt like we had arrived in a new country, suddenly for the first time in a long time it was t-shirt weather.
We were assigned a berth, B5, by the harbour master, but ended up mooring three times before we found the correct berth. Mostly due to the complete lack of signage on the pontoons.
There is no fuel available here, so I’m going up river in the dinghy to another harbour where I can get fuel tomorrow.
We are only two days from San Francisco now, but it may be Sunday or Monday before we get there, as we are going to checkout the state park at Drakes Bay.

Paul Collister.

Thursday 15th August
Walters Cove, Vancouver Is, West Coast

We went to the Cafe, ‘Java the Hut’ for some dinner early in Walters Cove, the reason being that the cafe closes early on a Thursday as the supply ship the Uchuck III arrives.  The Uchuck is a converted minesweeper built in 1942 and is made from fir planking.

She now brings supplies and passengers to several of the remote coves and settlements along the west coast of the island. Passengers on board have to find accommodation ashore at each of its night stops and a few dozen people disembarked and were divided up amongst various locals who housed them for the night. Later they would all head to the ‘Java the Hut’ for their dinner, hence we had to be out early.
It was fascinating watching the kayakers being ‘Wet Launched’ from the ship as I caught in the videos below.

We also had great fun watching a couple of sea otters, one looked like he was getting ready for a night on the pull!

Friday 16th August

After watching the postman arrive we departed Walters Cove for Dixie Cove, it was fun navigating the many rocks on the way out, I tried to use the GPS to keep our position in between the rocks, but it wasn’t updating fast enough and I got quite confused. Once through we went to a cove within a cove, it was very quiet and peaceful, except for the distant sound of machinery coming from the logging operation on the other side of the hill. Just as soon as we had the hook dug in, a fast motor boat approached us to explain that they were blasting over the ridge, but that we were quite safe there, just not to be alarmed by the blast. About an hour later, poor Kathy nearly jumped out of her skin when the blast happened, it was huge! fortunately there was only one, they were blasting through rock for a new logging road.

Sat 17th August
We headed over to Rugged Point beach, had a very nice walk, saw bear prints and possibly cougar prints, it was great walking along with Robert & Vanessa as they could point out what the various footprints were. I was reminded of how much grief I gave my father as a 7 year old when buying shoes. I wouldn’t have anything that didn’t have a compass in the sole, or made animal prints, I never imagined I would one day be walking along a beach seeing these impressions for real. Later we found a sand dollar and saw a real black bear.

On Sunday 18th we headed over to Nulchitz, an abandoned First Nations village. There was little left of the village. Sailing into the various remote parts of the west coast has made me appreciate just how much of the coast was settled by the first nations and what a bad deal they got from the British invaders.

Later I walked across a shingle spit which connected to an island only accessible at low water.

Mon 19th We motored to Tashis except for last hour where we managed to make 5 knots with the headsail out as we headed up the long inlet that leads to the old wood mill town of Tahsis. Once a thriving settlement with two big sawmills and a decent population, it is now rather sad with the mills closed down. The Westview marina has taken over as the centre of activity there. Waggoners guidebook to the area stated we would find a well stocked supermarket, a wine store, a bank/ATM, a cafe, cell phone service and internet. In reality there was poor wifi and no cellphone coverage. All the other delights were to be found in the one store. When I asked in the store for ‘No Alcohol beer’, the shop owner looked aghast and asked me to explain what I meant, when I did, he asked ‘why would anyone want that?’. The Marina mostly caters for Sports fishing and was rammed with little speedy fishing motorboats. 

Back at the dock we enjoyed a nice dinner in the cafe, and I had a O’Douls non alcohol beer with it!  (Obviously not sourced locally) 

We watched them cleaning freshly caught fish at the gutting tables at the end of the cafe, and all the tourist fishermen stood proudly in front of their prize catches to be photographed.

Earlier Kathy had jumped into the sea to get some of the fish heads and guts floating around. It would have been better if she had left her handbag ashore but it seemed to be an impromptu event she hadn’t thought through fully. We all rushed to her aid and pulled her out back onto the dock. There’s a slim chance her mobile phone may have survived as her handbag seemed quite waterproof.

Tue 20th Bligh Island  Ewin inlet

Left for Bligh Island in a building wind, eventually we saw up to 30 knots of wind, we also spotted a bear on the passage.

Spent the evening on Sister Midnight chatting with Rob & Vanessa. They were a bit surprised how big the seas had been crossing over to the island, I was surprised at how many rocks we had to navigate around to get into the inlet, I was reminded of cycling around cones as we did in our cycling proficiency test at school. 

This is the area where captain cook re-masted his ship Resolution and just around the corner in Friendly Cove, Captain Vancouver tried to negotiate the ownership of Vancouver Island with the Spanish, failing at first, and almost bringing Britain and Spain into a war with each other. In the end, Britain gained total control. 

Wed 21st August

Meet up with Kevin & Karla on Gargoyle, they have a Benateu Oceanis 50, very nice and are heading down to the sea of Cortez like ourselves. 

Later meet up with another nice chappie on his Bristol Channel cutter, a classy looking sailboat, a bit like a baba but with a flat transom, but more traditional looking. He had tried to leave for Hot Spring Cove but his engine was playing up, so he sailed back and anchored near us under sail. 

Thur 22nd

We depart for Hot Spring Cove, seas build as we pass out of the inlet and towards Estevan point, at one point the swell & waves are around 2 metres with the odd big wave of 3 meters or more roaring in, as we turn to head south towards our destination we are taking the waves on our beam/quarter. We have been travelling with Robert & Vanessa for a few days now and hopefully they will join us for the trip down to Mexico.

Sadly on ‘For Good’ they are having trouble with their sails and decide to motor sail the rest of the way, another 4 hours or so. Robert calls me on the VHF to say he has engine problems, he isn’t getting any sea water flowing through the engine to cool it. He wants to head for shore but I suggest he just sails the remainder of the route and if needed later I will tow him into the anchorage. Poor Robert and Vanessa are getting thrown around a bit in their boat and their speed is down to about 4 knots as they are having trouble keeping the sail full with all the wave motion. This is by far the worst conditions they have experienced to date. The wind is only about 10-15 knots, from behind, but they struggle with the main blocking the headsail and without safety lines to go forward on the boat they stay in the cockpit. I turn Sister Midnight around and head back to them as they have dropped back by 1/4 mile now. We are going head into the wind and waves, our bow is crashing down onto the waves. I’m pleased to see the new cedar bow platform is taking the waves fine. We reach them in about 15 minutes and I turn and follow them closely for a while. The wind backs slightly and I can see they change course slightly to keep the mainsail filled, however they won’t make the entrance to the cove on that course and will need to gybe both sails before we get there. I suggest we round up into the wind a bit and reach into Hesquiat Bay, which is well protected given the NW light winds, and has a bar (shallow sandbank at the entrance) that keeps the swell out. This bay is massive and around 9m deep throughout so they can drop the hook anywhere without risk. As we approach the entrance the wind moves closer to our bow so we haul in the sails, Robert hasn’t adjusted his sails so they flap a lot and he drops to 3-4 knots, I roll up 50% of my headsail so I don’t get too far ahead. Within an hour we are over the bar and drop the hook in a very settled area. 

I had checked that Robert was ok to anchor under sail on the VHF radio, and he was happy. It was then that I realised I had never anchored this boat under sail alone, and as it was calm, in a big empty bay, I decided I would do the same too. I rolled up the headsail and asked Kathy to steer into the wind, she thought this was so I could drop the mainsail and was a bit freaked out to hear the anchor chain running out. I was also a bit freaked out as a small squall came through just as I let out 30 mtrs of chain, the bow blew down, the main filled and we took off at some speed. I legged it back to the cockpit, let out the main a bit, ran to the mast and dropped the mainsail rather quickly, then back to the bow to continue with the anchoring. 

Fri 23rd

Robert gets engine going, but it’s too late to leave, they are still resting after their rough ride here.
I dinghy into Rae Basin, an even safer spot at the head of the bay, a river flows into here and some impressive trees lie there. I hadn’t realised but it’s a very short walk to the huge Hesquiat lake that lies at the head of the river. 

Sat 24th
Depart Hesquiat Bay for Hot springs Cove.

Nice motor, no wind, swell building

Forecast has swell dropping from 2-3m to 2m by Sunday but wind rising to NW 30, so now seems best

It takes just 3 hours before we are happily anchored in Hot Spring Cove 

We head off to the springs, the custodians of the springs have built a wonderful walkway through the forest, it runs for 2km and there had been a tradition for visitors, mostly yachties to leave a plank with their boat name carved into it.

Once at the springs I spent a long time sitting in the hot water which gushed down the hillside then out into the Pacific Ocean. It was so relaxing sitting under a hot waterfall being pummelled by the water falling, just like a jacuzzi. However it might have saved a bit of time if I hadn’t gone in with my fancy sunglasses on, I became very intimate with all the various pools between me and the ocean before I found them. Kathy reviewed the pictures she had taken of me to determine when I had lost them and on searching that pool they turned up, Phew.

From the Hot springs we took the inside route around Flores island and stopped in a lovely spot at the head of the Bacchante inlet. Here we spotted another big black bear prowling along the beach.

Bacchante was beautiful and we could easily have stopped there for several days, but Kathy was worried about not having had any wifi/cellular connections for a while, and we were running low on chocolate, so we headed off to the fleshpots of Tofino.
Vanessa had called ahead and found there was room for two boats to raft at the hammerhead of the end pontoon. They rafted to us, a first for them, of course rafting, or ‘parking alongside’ is easy to do when the weather is fine and currents aren’t an issue, however when you have never done this before, I can remember, it’s quite a scary thing. As it turned out, Robert brought his boat alongside us perfectly and we were soon all sitting in the cockpit having a good natter.

After 2 days paying to be bounced around at the end of the pontoon by the constant stream of day tripper and whale watching boats we headed out to anchor. Currents run fast here, and a healthy sprinkling of rocks and shallows causes quite a few rapids and whirlpools. After a few hours, Robert & Vanessa decided to head off to God’s Pocket, a quiet cove just an hour or so to the north. We left them to it as the whirlpools, and planes taking off over us didn’t bother us much, we also had a lot of internet stuff to catch up with.

Tofino is a lovely holiday resort town, it has a long beach famous with surfers, and it’s a bit of a young surfer kind of place, however I enjoyed the art galleries there and Kathy was made up to have a modern well stocked supermarket.

After a few days we headed up to meet Robert and Vanessa in God’s pocket. another peaceful spot, we dinghied over to them and watched footage of movies Robert has made in the past and picked up videos and photos they had taken of us.

Sunday 1st September. We said our farewells, Robert & Vanessa had decided that they were going to postpone their trip to the Sea of Cortez, and would hopefully try to make it in 2020. We really hope we can meet up with them next year.
They headed off to Ucluelet and we waited a few hours before we went back to Tofino to get a few supplies before we left for the USA. Our plan had always been to leave at the end of August, and the weather was now good, also Monday is Labor Day, a Public holiday in Canada and the USA, so being at sea all day suited us, we would arrive in Astoria on Monday. The plan was to leave Tofino at 22:00 in the dark in order to arrive at the Columbia river entrance around midday on Tuesday when the tide would be flooding and we could safely cross the bar. A bar is a big sandbank at the entrance to a river that can create dangerous conditions if the currents flow a certain way and the ocean swell opposes it.
Until 22:00 we had a few hours to kill so we wandered around town, after picking up some supplies in the co-op.

We had some fun watching three racoons stage a break in at a fish processing plant, they seemed to be working as a well co-ordinated team, with one keeping a lookout while the others climbed in through a hole they had found in the wall. I presume the building had a lot of salmon in it.

At 10PM we set off into the rapidly fading light, no sooner had we weighed anchor than the fog descended. We navigated our way out, I had already taken bearings on the only pot marker in the harbour in our way and we slipped past that into a grey foggy night. Soon we were bouncing up and down as we left Tofino and hit the Pacific swell. The fog stayed with us for about 20 hours, so Kathy and I kept a close eye on the AIS and Radar. The AIS gives us details on any big ships out there and how close we will get to them. Of course there were quite a few fishing boats without AIS we had to watch for on the Radar.
Monday morning and the fog lifted, we could now see the ships out there.

We were able to make coffee and with the new camping device I bought in the co-op hardware store, we could make toast on the stove.

We rolled out the Yankee sail and turned off the engine. We were making 5 – 5.5 knots, which was just perfect for our planned arrival time. The weather forecast was good for a bar crossing and soon we were heading up the river Columbia using the rhyme ‘Red Right Returning’ to remember to keep the red buoys to starboard on our way in. This is the opposite to the European way of doing things.
The bar is considered one of the worst in the world, it has a nickname of ‘The Graveyard of the Pacific’ with over two thousand shipwrecks to its name. Looking at the rollers crashing over the banks either side of the entrance one could understand why.
As it was we were soon over the bar and fighting to avoid hundreds of sport fishing boats that seemed to be everywhere.
Finally we could see the bridge that signalled the location of the marina.

A quick call to the marina got us a space on the fuel dock where we could register and check in with the USA authorities, primarily the CBP (Customs Border Patrol). The CBP have had a lot of bad press recently, but I was very impressed with the reception I received by the officer here, he was quick, helpful and sorted everything out in just 15 minutes. We now have a 1 year cruising permit and 1 year stamps in our passport. I recommend Astoria for clearing in, this is actually why we came.

Tuesday evening and we headed out to find a restaurant, Buoys brewery hit the spot, it’s a micro brewery / restaurant on the waterfront. they have a section of the floor made of glass and you can look down to the piles supporting the building and see the resident sea lions chilling there.

Wednesday 4th September.
We took the trolley car to Safeway to get some fresh fruit and veg as customs forbid us bringing any in from Canada. I had eaten a lot of fruit on the passage down!

The trolly car is old, I expect Kathy will write more about it, but it’s a museum piece, literally, and plies the old railway track along the waterfront. It’s a wonderful ride, and only $1 each trip, or $2 for a day pass. It’s operated by volunteers who give a lively commentary along the route.

We will be in Astoria for a few more days before we probably head south to Newport.

Paul Collister