Author: paulcollister

Wednesday 28th October 2020.

The storm is peaking, although it’s not really a storm, 25 knot gusts in the bay and the harbour master has closed the port to everyone wanting to leave. You may still arrive in an emergency.

The marina office calls the harbour master for me and gets us permission to move out to the anchorage less than a mile from the marina as long as ‘we take all the necessary precautions’ whatever they might be.  First we must do a few jobs

In the morning Carlos the diver and his cousin arrive, scrape down the bottom and we are all good below, clean prop and bow thruster is a must when leaving the slip in strong winds. Arturo calls around and helps me take the canopy down. We have been very lucky with the weather as we will not roast with the aircon and canopy missing, the days are noticeably cooler, and with this wind it’s actually very pleasant.

We leave the dock without any drama, We have to turn the bow into the wind to leave which is always difficult, I get as much speed as I can going astern, as the bow is swinging the right way under the shadow of the big boat next to us, we get quite close to the boat on the opposite pontoon but hard to port and full ahead and we are on our way. Sadly we reach our destination in about 5 minutes, the anchor digs in first time and we sit about 1/4 mile off the Malecón which we have just heard is closing tomorrow, except for joggers in the morning, as too many people have been promenading without masks and not keeping the 1.5 metres apart.
This morning on the Ch22 VHF net, after the Malecón announcement was made, the village idiot, who occasionally pops up with his latest covid conspiracy theory announced that we would all be saved if we just take Vitamin D3 supplements. I think that this proves a worrying fact that if you keep shouting random nonsense, you might actually stumble on a truth. I had heard theories about this before, and although there is no firm evidence, there’s a growing body of research in this area that is interesting. I think we do well for Vitamin D by being on the boat, fair skinned, and mad as the proverbial Englishman in the midday sun. I do hope we learn of stack of useful stuff from this pandemic.
Kathy is reminded how nice it can be at anchor as we bob around in the diminishing swell as the storm drops away.

Thursday

No great rush to get the day started, we are only going as far as Esperito Santo, we don’t have a destination yet as I’m not sure how windy or how much swell there will be in the islands.

We motor up with a fast ebb tide to the most famous beach around here, Balandra. It has one of those mushroom stones, that appears on every postcard. We make over 7 knots with the ebb and the newly cleaned hull. Balandra, although very pretty, has too much swell to consider staying, so instead we take a few pics and push on to Esperituo Santo. We meander between the coves on the Island and my first and favourite choice of Canelero bay is full of luxury  motor yachts and plush Catamarans. I then decide to go to Ensenada Partida, right at the top of Santo, before Isla Partida, It’s very safe and calm there, and if we spend a night or two there, then we can work our way back down the island visiting the other coves and hopefully next Monday find ourselves in a much calmer Bandelra Bay before heading into La Paz to restock and watch the election.
Ensenada Partida has two big sports fishing boats here, but besides them we have it to ourselves, we have a great dinghy ride over to where a colony of Pelicans live and drift around watching them dive bomb. The fish have a worrisome life here, I caught one on the way into the bay, just as Kathy brought us head to wind so I could drop the main, the line went screaming out and I was sure something big was on the end. It turned out to be a tasty Skipjack Tuna I had for dinner later. 
By the time we had dinner, we had been joined by 8 other holiday boats, Cats and big motor yachts. Good old Mexican Banda music filled the air from all sides, mixed in with laughter, hysterical shrieking, jets skis and lots of shouting. A new joy entertained us in the form of a loud buzzing sound above, a drone no less, how nice! We retreated below and got on with our 2010 version of Scrabble which doesn’t need the internet.

Friday
We had to row back from the pelicanos last night as after four vigorous pulls on the outboard engine starter cord, it refused to start and the fourth pull would be the last as the rope snapped off. It was getting too dark to fix. I redid the cord this morning and it’s working fine again. A must for our trips ashore here. I was disappointed as four years ago in Langkawi I bought 100 metres of starter cord in Kua, I wanted some general purpose rope for tying things. This rope is thin and very strong and designed for the job, sadly it has no UV protection so wasn’t that good for outdoor use, I looked but I couldn’t find any. I think I have used 100 meters on tying up odd bits and bobs around the boat over the years.
After breakfast we dinghied ashore, the water shoals very slowly here, so it was very shallow for about 100 meters from the shore when we left, the tide was going to drop even more so we anchored the dinghy in knee deep water some way from the shore and waded the rest of the way. When we returned the dinghy was aground and we had to drag it for a few minutes into deeper water.
Later in the evening the bay filled with big lagoon charter cats, Many big charter cats are made by lagoon, I don’t like them, they’re like floating bungalows with lots of uPVC double glazing and patio doors. Saying that, they are very spacious and comfortable, but I’m of the school that it’s not meant to be that comfortable.

Saturday
We retrace our steps back two coves south to Ensenada Candeleros, my favourite spot on Isla Esperitu Santo. I have been here with Tim & Asta, Jim and Arturo, And now with Kathy. I’m pretty much on first name terms with the goats here now and could certainly get a job as a tour guide. I had been expecting the place to be full of boats, but we arrived at 11 AM when most are transiting to their lunch locations, and I was pleased to find we could get close in as there was really only one big cat in the bay. I anchored off the north wall, 100 metres away from some nasty looking rocks. My plan is to be far enough away to be safe, but close enough that no one would risk anchoring between us and the cliffs.
Just in case anyone thinks this lazy idyllic life we have to endure doesn’t have its problems, then think on.  We have a family of little creatures who have decided to come sailing with us, They look like small roaches, or maybe large Beetles, they move quickly and last night as we lay on the sofa watching ‘The Social Dilema’ they took to scurrying around us. They had confined themselves to the breadboard area up until now, but this was an expedition too far for my liking. This morning Kathy and I removed all the cushions from the cabin, then all the locker cover and doors and proceeded to treat all the surfaces with a mixture of boric acid and sugar, Inaccessible areas received a spraying from a product called ‘Poder Mortal’ Which I’m thinking won’t be to popular with the little creatures. The boric acid is a sneaky chemical, once ingested, by them eating the sugar, or just getting it on the skin, a slow death starts, they return to the nest and die, where upon the other roaches will consume their dead brethren and die themselves from the poison. This does rather test my Buddhist  leanings.
After lunch we head ashore, there’s quite a few tourist boats that have arrived and some have set up small marquees to dine under on the beach. We walk up to the old well and take some pictures of the bay. It’s extremely picturesque and most pleasant here. Later I swim around the rocky islands and see lots of tropical fish.
As the sun sets the feeding frenzy starts, Pelicans dive bombing all around and crazy activity in the water around the boat as big fish attack the tiniest of fish, which you can just see in the video below.

Sunday

We spend a second night at Ensenada Candelero and have a lazy Sunday morning. I start work on some website and backend code for my customer back in the UK, I have agreed to about two weeks work to be started asap. Fortunately I can do most of the work without an internet connection. I like working offline, it makes me focus on the task at hand better, however it does make you realise how dependent you are on on-tap knowledge. I often google stuff I know, but can’t remember. I have a good offline source of coding manuals which can be useful, but mostly I’m just regurgitating code I have used before, web interfaces, database routines etc.

At 2pm Kathy suggests a walk up the valley pass, it’s not too hot so we give it a try, we end up in a dead end canyon, and decide it is quite hot after all and head back. I snorkel around the big island and see many fish, but nothing like as many as when Arturo was here and the island was closed. Still not evidence to be conclusive, we saw one goat today, but when the island was closed we saw many. A large motor yacht arrived at lunchtime and up on the fly deck, there was a DJ with a desk and big PA speakers blasting out music to the four guests on board, the whole bay was subjected to this horrendous onslaught. Several boats close by upped anchor and left. By the time we returned from our island hike they had left, thank goodness.

I also made good progress on the boats systems, I have the PI reading in data from the GPS dongle, it will also provide an accurate clock for the PI, something the designers left off. I have it reliably recording the Wind data after a reboot now as well. I think I’m going to go for MySQL Replication to move the data from the boats system to this Blog site. I do need an internet connection to get this working. 

Monday
We leave Candelero to head back for a WiFi or 4g signal, we arrive back in Balandra Bay a very popular tourist beach, claimed to be one of the most beautiful spots in Mexico, it is nice, and the swell, although a little annoying should reduce through the night as the northerlies are long gone now. As the sun is getting ready to set, we dinghy ashore and I run up the white sand dunes in my bare feet wondering what Kathy is shrieking about below, I soon find out as I stand on several of those little cactus thorns that are everywhere. Now I’m up for a bit of shrieking. We wander along the beach and out to the mushroom rock as the last tourists are leaving. but just before we can get our photos lined up a new tourist boat arrive and dumps a load of passengers into the water to get their obligatory pic with the rock.

I hope I don’t get into trouble for saying this, but I’m rather dissapointed with the Mushroom. I do think the stone masons have done a great job of restoring it with rebar and concrete after it was recently toppled by tourists, but Kathy has much better pictures of massive potential mushrooms just around the corner.

Tuesday
We leave Balandra Bay around 9am to make the hour long journey back into La Paz bay, where we drop the hook and prepare to go ashore and get some fresh bits and bobs. We wonder if we need to buy pretzels in order to watch the election coverage later. Things don’t quite go to plan. The authorities are stepping up their enforcement of the covid rules here, and because people have been ignoring the masks and distancing the Malecon is closed in the afternoon/evenings now. I suspect the supermarket may enforce the ‘only one person from a family‘ rule and not let us both enter. So Kathy goes ahead into Chedraui while I cunningly cycle around the far end of the car park. Once kathy is safely in the store I approach only to be told that geriatrics can’t enter in the afternoon. Foiled! On top of that I have the money, the shopping bags and one of the shopping lists. Kathy is waiting inside for me to join her and I can’t contact her as she didn’t bring her phone. It all works out in the end, but Chedraui are now blacklisted by Kathy and Soriano is our new Supermarket of choice, where I’m allowed in an hour later. I’m just grateful that I didn’t get in and Kathy was refused on age, I would have been to scared to come out I think.

We are two hours behind USA EST (East coast time) and so the Florida results start coming in as we are settling down for sunset and dinner around 5pm. It doesn’t take long before we both realise that no one is going to be talking ‘Landslide’ in this election. I stay up until 4am watching the numbers come in and the tweets go out. Poor Poland 😉
Thoughts of sailing off into the blue on Wednesday or even Thursday with a result confirmed are dashed. However it’s so pleasant out here at anchor, and we both have a lot of things to do that require the Internet that we may well stay here until the weekend, when hopefully a preliminary result will be clear.

I really wanted to be in Mexico for the Day of The Dead festivities but they were cancelled this year. I first became interested after visiting an exhibition back in the 90s, I think, at the British Museum. Looks like it will have to be 2021.

Paul Collister.

We haven’t done a lot this week, but things are noticeably changing here. The temperature has been steadily dropping, days are now in the lower 30s as opposed to the higher 30s, nightimes are much cooler and we don’t need the aircon running to be able to sleep now. Also we are just getting our first northerly blow of the season. From hereon in we can expect increasingly strong blows coming down from the north. This means I have experienced the whole cycle of Northerlies, Southerlies and Westerlies plus my first, albeit benign, hurricane season.

We leave here in two days time, so today and tomorrow is all about stocking up on supplies, downloading books and videos we want to watch later as we will have no signal wifi or Cell Phone for a few weeks once we leave La Paz. On Wednesday we take down the covers, stow the aircon, haul the dinghy onto the foredeck, top up the freshwater and head out. We plan to head back in a week solely for the purpose of listening/watching the US election results. Because we are heading back out into the sea again for two – three weeks after this we could easily wait until we reach Loreto to hear the result, but we are quite invested in it now. Being in the Americas we have been in the right time zone to be able to watch the presidential debates live. I think I was with Kathy on board in Thailand 4 years ago when Trump got in. Previously my good friend Tim was sailing with me when the Brexit result came in, I forecast both results would go the other way. Third time lucky eh?

We are glad Kathy got out of the UK when she did, Liverpool is know under strict lockdown (Tier 3) and the rest of the country is facing increasing restrictions. Parts of Mexico are seeing increases in the virus, but our area, BCS, seems to be doing ok right now.

I’m pleased with my migration over to Amazon for this blog site. Now I have full control over the server (Virtual) that is hosting things, I can try to write some interesting code. I plan to add a live data feed from the boat to this server, this means that you should be able to see our location, speed, course, water depth, wind speed and direction and other stuff, in realtime on the blog. I’m working through a design for it now, but I’m thinking of storing all the information in a database on the boats PI computer (MariaDB) and syncing it with the same database on this server. That way I can sync the databases when I get a signal. If I can get both my brain cells to work together on this I may be able to recreate past journeys by re-running the database from a previous date/time.

I’m also thinking of buying myself a telescope for Christmas, I had dismissed this as a mad idea for a boat, but my last trip out to the islands was wonderful for stargazing, the binoculars revealed so much, so I’m thinking I could set up camp in the beach at night in these remote places and see what I can see. I last had a telescope when I was about six, my uncle dropped it on the stone floor of our kitchen, smashing the lens inside. He sneaked off without taking any responsibility and that was my last telescope. I may have picked up a couple of weeks coding work so that would allow me to treat myself. I haven’t looked, but I gather there’s a lot of options out there, I understand you can get computer controlled tracking mounts and all sorts of extras. Research is needed.

Paul Collister

La Paz, BCS, Mexico

It’s been another quiet week. Life continues slowly here, yet the days fly past. Kathy made Vegan tacos in the week, based on some rather dull shredded soy. This gave me the chance to try one of the sauce trays I had seen in the supermarkets. It seems, and I could be making a fool of myself here, that you tip the contents into a blender and a few minutes later you have a fresh sauce. I think if you want to punish yourself you can use a mortar and pestle. The pack costs about 60p and made the tacos taste great. I removed half the chilies first. We also had a guacamole sauce which was lovely. Shame they have to use plastic packaging.

Salsa Rojo

On Friday we went for a meal at Estrella Mar on the waterfront close to the marina. They made a vegan pizza especially for Kathy and I had an assortment of fish beautifully steamed with rice.

Anyway that’s about as much food talk as I want to have for about for a year.

For fun I have migrated this Sister Midnight blog over to the Amazon Web Service AWS. I’m not sure how well it’s known, but Amazon are huge in the computer cloud business. They power many of the big web sites, streaming services and a stack of Internet stuff like eMail, eCommerce, Bitcoin, I could go on..
It was mostly fun, but it took many days to get the email notifications to work as Amazon are crazy to make sure Spam and fraud can’t originate from their systems. I’m all for it, but I had to jump through a load of hoops and be evaluated by a human! The previous email system suffered from being blocked by different ISPs from time to time, but hopefully these emails should be trusted and less likely to be dumped or shoved into the junk box.
Im hoping also to be able to stream videos faster, I have attached a HD video at the bottom as a test.

Paul Collister.

Not a lot happened, shopping, a trip to the Mogote and dinner in Bandido’s restaurant where Kathy was promised a Veggie burger, she was offered mushrooms with it, which she opted for; just as well as the burger turned out to be some mushrooms in a bap. Presumably their idea of a veggie burger is a meat burger with the burger removed!

Still it’s a lovely place to visit, I doubt we will return.

We did a bit of cycling this week and went out of town to the box stores to see if Kathy could get anything vegan there. I checked out the printers in Walmart, my current printer has run out of ink and the cost of the new cartridges is the the same as buying an identical (but with wifi) printer which includes cartridges. Just crazy. This will be one of the first things I change should I ever be voted world king.
We noticed very familiar labels on several products, like the pesto sauce and realised it was the same as Asda in the UK, who of course are owned by walmart, or where until recently.

The temperatures dropped a little today, mostly due to the cloud cover, but the sea also seems a little cooler so perhaps we might be near the end of the heat. I’m worried it might be too cold soon 🙁

Paul Collister

Monday 28th September.
We have a walk along the Malecon.

Tuesday: Nothing.
Wednesday: Bike to shop and beach.
Thursday: much like Tuesday except I make a joke based on the ‘Things, that in 2019, you would never have thought you might say in 2020’.
“Two bubbles walk into a pub and scan themselves in”

Friday:
Covid freedom day, It’s been 14 days since Kathy left Liverpool, and we have decided today that we are probably safe enough to go out for a meal. The temperature readings and oxygen levels are good, although it would appear the finger on my right hand might have Covid, often reading just 85%, the left hand is fine though, usually getting 98/99%.
We go to the Vegan taco restaurant and Kathy enjoys her first ‘meal out’ here since January.

Saturday:
Finally we get to the farmers market just off the Malecon, I feel for the stall holders there, there’s next to no customers. Then again, a lot of them sell artisan stuff, so they could well still be living off the profit on an artisan spud they sold in January. I’m mainly there for the Vegan Pesto, Arturo is coming over on Sunday to meet Kathy and we plan to do Pasta & Pesto for him with some of the real Parmesan cheese kathy brought back from Milan (Thanks again Bobbie), however she said she wouldn’t have any pesto until Tuesday.
Later in the day we cycle to Chedraui Palacio, a bigger version of the local Chedraui Abasolo. At least they have Cilantro, which seems to be in short supply here. It’s a lovely bike ride, especially on the way home as the sun sets and a cool breeze accompanies us on the 15 minute downhill cycle back to the boat.

I have setup a server in the Amazon cloud (AWS LightSail), and I’m spending a bit of time playing with this, it’s good fun, well mostly, and a side effect is that I can connect to the BBC iPlayer and we can watch our favorite programs now. I’m amazed how cheap this is, I wanted to do this a while back, but it was going to cost me around $50 / month, now it’s only $3.50/month with discounts and a free month. If this works out I’m going to move all my websites and this blog over to Amazon.

I have been struggling with the loud bangs/cracks I have been hearing in the boat since I arrived in the marina a while back. My first thought was that the mooring lines were two tight and creaking on the hawse, Something that happens when the lines are very tight, but this wasn’t the case. Sometimes the bangs are quite loud and I had wondered if debris was floating under the boat and bashing into it. Then I noticed after a few weeks that it seemed to be loudest around sunrise and sunset. I worried that the boat was expanding and contracting with the crazy heat and that perhaps parts of the hull expanded faster than other parts and that caused the cracking sounds. I was worrying that it might be damaging the boat, and today I could hear constant cracking and banging around the head area. Normally when I run outside I can’t see anything in the water and the lines are slack, but today underneath the head area I saw a large group of big fish taking turns to attack the hull, and as they did I could hear the cracking sound. I’m still not sure if it’s their teeth hitting the hull, or the crack of the barnacles being ripped off, but at least that mystery is finally solved.
The antifoul I have on, which is a Jotun Seaforce from Malaysia does not seem to be holding up anymore. I have provisionally booked a haul out for the middle of November in Puerto Escondido and will have some of the locally proven paint applied.

Sunday:
Arturo calls over in the afternoon and we take a trip to the Mogote for a swim, Later we have dinner on the boat and Kathy gets to know Arturo better.

Hopefully now we are out of our quarantine period we can do some more interesting things around town.

Paul Collister.

Monday , shop for bread and drinks
Tuesday, walk on malecon
Wednesday, walk to baseball court, run out of propane on tank 1 , buy bread
Thursday, walk through town.
Friday, day off.

Saturday
Kathy asks for help on her laptop as she has started to compose her blog. She is running windows 8 on a Sony Vaio. This is hell. It’s been a long time since I had to deal with a Microsoft product, but within minutes I’m shouting at the screen because of its insane idea of how humans should work. I can honestly say that coming from an Apple perspective, this system is nuts. After trying to save her word file, its reporting errors, an investigation reveals it’s file formats that are not compatible, does Kathy fully understand this? All of the recent docs have been deleted, so why show them as available files? We have to reboot to get the wifi connection back, quite what the link between file saving and WiFi is I wonder. The circle spins, it says connecting, then the circle and text disappear. Does this mean we are connected? there’s no obvious way to tell, I hover over the icon and it gives me the option to connect, I click, it says you can’t connect, ‘would I like to run the troubleshooter’, No Thanks. Just pausing with my finger over the mousepad makes unrelated windows and new screens pop up with no obvious way to get rid of them. I close Word and can’t find anyway to restart it, I could go crazy if I had to use this for long. Now I’m thinking of the protests in Trafalgar square yesterday, they had placards blaming Bill Gates for the virus, and claiming he got the idea from a computer virus. I’m thinking bigger, I’m thinking the reason that the USA and the UK have their knickers in such a monumental twist is down to Bill Gates and Windows 8. If I went on twitter now I might well lash out at someone, it’s only because I’m back on my Macbook Air that I can calm down again. Rant over.

It’s a very hot day today, I have moved everything off the pushpit, mostly MOB (Man OverBoard) kit into the shade as it must be suffering from the UV.
We have been onboard now for 8 days since Kathy set foot into Manchester airport and the potentially dangerous covid world of international air travel. We have been self isolating on board, with me making the odd quick trip to the supermarket and a couple of walks in the evening all masked up and avoiding others. We plan to wait until 14 days have passed then we will head out and have a nice meal in one of the many restaurants now open.
I managed to find a use for my Pesos that were locked up in the online shopping site ‘Mercado Online’, I bought some H&S kit.

It seems like the timing has worked out well as Liverpool is heading into serious lockdown along with the rest of the UK, with Brexit looming I’m quite happy to be watching how it pans out from a good distance.

Sunday 27th.
Another super hot day so we pop out to the Magote for a swim. It’s busy there and a local family are racing up and down the coast towing kids on some kind of board, I would say water skis, but I suspect they went out of fashion many years ago, along with my big floating windsurfer board.

Paul Collister.

Monday 14th September 2020
This week is about getting the boat ready for when Kathy arrives, so to avoid doing any cleaning I decide to head off to the chandlers and pickup supplies, I manage to purchase 40 metres of 5/8″ 3 strand nylon to use as warps to tie the boat up with. Later as the cleaning beckons, I spend time splicing large eyes into the rope which I have cut into 4 x 10m lengths. I need plenty of rope as if a hurricane does come this way, it’s all going to be about the rope. I replace all my braided ropes with the new lines and get my old ropes soaking in a slightly soapy bucket of warm fresh water. They can soak for a few days and hopefully will lose some of the salt that has made them quite rigid.

It’s Kathy’s birthday today, and as a gentleman I wouldn’t dream of revealing her age, lets just say a lot of things are free for her now. We chat on the phone for a while, I had a present delivered to her by Amazon a few days ago, but the card and present I sent from La Paz hasn’t arrived yet. I sent it three months ago, and I think I now understand the look the postman gave me when I said I didn’t want the more expensive tracked service.
My government back home has just this minute passed a law (at least it passed first reading) that makes it legal to break the law. Whilst at the same time asking the public to snitch to the police on any neighbour that might be breaking the law by having more than 6 people in the garden. What strange times we live in.

Tuesday
I start cleaning up the boat, leaping into any distractions at the first opportunity. I’m not sure how, but I seem to have about 20 micro USB phone charger cables around, which is odd as I use the Apple connector.
In the evening I walk down the Malecon for some exercise and to see the Pre-Independence day celebrations. It’s lively tonight and there’s fireworks and a big formal do in the town square, which I just manage to miss.

Miercoles, Septiembre de 16th – Independence Day
Yes it’s independence day in Mexico.

“Mexico, once known as New Spain, was a colony harshly ruled by the kingdom of Spain for over 300 years. The native population was oppressed, farm land and personal wealth was confiscated and only Spaniards were allowed to hold political posts. Finally, a Catholic priest in the town of Delores named Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla had enough.
On September 16, 1810, he rang his church’s bell and delivered a speech now known as the Grito de Delores (Cry of Delores), demanding the end of Spanish rule. This started the brutal Mexican War of Independence, which lasted over a decade. On August 24, 1821, Spain withdrew and officially recognized Mexico as an independent country. Today, Father Costilla is known as the Father of Mexican Independence. Mexican Independence Day has been celebrated every year since that momentous day on September 16, 1810.”

So I celebrated by washing some clothes and tidying up. Later I walked down the Malecon with Arturo and practised some Spanish. he got jumpy when a very agitated couple passed us both frantically talking down the mobile phones. He overheard them talking about guns, and stopped and asked the next couple if something was going on. They told him there had just been a shootout in a bar nearby. We carried on to the main square which was busy with families and kids jumping in the coloured water jets that have just been installed.

Thursday 17th
More tidying up, the boats looking smart inside, but the varnish has just evaporated off the rub rails outside. So far all the flights are still on schedule.
In the evening Arturo buys me a birthday dinner at a local seafood restaurant, which is very tasty.

Friday 18th
Up early and off to Mexico city, Kathy has left Manchester and started her journey. All these flights are going to require a lot of recycling to undo our carbon contribution. Besides the flights we are pretty good on the eco front, Kathy is vegan, I don’t eat meat, our only transport is bicycles and the boat, which I try to sail as much as possible. Also we generate most of our power from the solar panels.

It was a surprise to land at a cold and wet Mexico airport.

The hotel at Mexico is smart, but eerie with so few guests. Everyone at the airport and the hotel are very covid aware, masks everywhere along with gel and disinfectant foot mats. They ask me at the hotel check in desk if it’s my birthday, I had to think for a minute and confirm it is. They must have thought, poor old man, checking in to a hotel all alone on his birthday, which was fine as an hour later they sent up a complimentary birthday cake/dessert dish for me which the chef had prepared. Very nice, thank you NH Hotels T2 Mexico airport.

I get an early night and before I sleep I watch the news breaking of the Supreme court judge Ruth Ginsberg’s death. It’s a major story in the states, and I had been hoping she would survive a bit longer. She was a great lady from everything I have heard. Of course if the election race wasn’t already crazy, this throws another major spanner into the works. I have two english language tv stations on the hotel TV, this is a luxury for me, one is CNN (Anti Trump) and the other FOX news (Pro Trump) so flicking between the two I see the problem with the world so clearly, one channel stating it could be unlawful to delay the new appointment, and the other claiming the opposite. One saying the republicans are being incredibly hypocritical as they blocked the appointment under Obama, and the other saying it’s everyones duty to get this done quickly and there is no comparison with the past. At the same time back in the UK Boris has just announce the 2nd wave has arrived on our shores, as if the French or Belgians slipped it in overnight when nobody was looking. At the same time the top scientists on the subject are being ignored. What a crazy situation, whatever happened to reasoned logic and truth.

Saturday 19th
I’m up at 2am as flightradar24 says Kathy’s flight is nearly an hour early, and will land in 10 minutes. I’m confused as the map puts her over the gulf of Mexico which has to be 90 minutes away at least. Aeromexico has the flight delayed by 20 minutes on it’s arrivals page, so I go back to bed. At 3:30am I’m up again and sitting outside the arrivals area. Kathy appears after having her bags searched and we are finally reunited. It’s great to see her again.
We manage a couple of hours sleep back at the hotel and then it’s back to the terminal and a lot of flapping around while a paramedic interviews us for covid history and to take temperatures, I saw him using his oximeter on the passenger ahead of us. We had to fill out online questionnaires for the track and trace system. It all takes a little time, but nobody is arguing or complaining, it seems that a developing country like Mexico has a better grip on Covid than the UK, at least at the airport, it’s a different situation out in the public, especially in the city itself (CDMX). Kathy had to fill in paper forms at the UK on both her flights here and her round trip to Milan, but nobody collected the forms, so a bit pointless. Presumably the government know where everyone is, where they have been and who they have met anyway, and if not they could just ask Zuckerberg.

Back on the boat Kathy unpacks lots of goodies for me, from replacement credit cards, to USB dongles, a Raspberry PI hat, books and a decent supply of quality chocolate. She also brings me a present of a huge block of Parmesan cheese from Bobbie and Bruno in Milan, Thanks to you both, the European cheeses here are a little lacking.

Sunday 20th Sept
Kathy wakes me to point out that when she put the kettle on the mains power tripped, this happened when she first came out to the boat in Malaysia, causing some trouble in the marina as the whole pontoon lost its power and other boaters started shouting at each other, while we kept our heads down. The power supply is rated to allow the kettle/aircon/toaster to co-exist, but I think if the hot water heater is also on, then we could be pushing our 30A limit. Anyway, groggy eyed I crawled out of bed and onto the pontoon where I could see the cutout trips were intact and the power was good to the sockets, what was unmissable was the stink of electrical burning and the very charred and hot plug.

I’m not really sure why this has happened, I thought everything is rated correctly, if the current was too high the breaker should have tripped, so I’m assuming the connection inside the plug or more likely the connection between the plug and socket pins was poor, anyway I cut the cable back and replaced the plug. Everything is back and running, and the plug isn’t getting hot as far as I can tell. Something to keep an eye on.
Back on board I cook poached eggs on ciabatta bread, something of a Sunday morning tradition we haven’t been able to do since Kathy left 8 months ago.
Kathy has a lazy day while she gets over her jetlag and I potter around doing odd jobs.

Paul Collister.

Monday 7th Sept -Friday 11th
Not a lot to report, My SDR radio arrived, it worked, I listened to the Harbourmaster, some AIS signals and the local FM Radio, not sure what to do with it now.
I spent some time cleaning up my WiFi and router setup, on this pontoon, the wired ethernet doesn’t work with WhatsApp video. Very strange as the pontoon WiFi does. Also my WiFi on the macbook is half the speed of that on my iPhone, 24mbs/50mbs.
I cycle the Malecon and tonight I walk half the length, I’m 20 minutes out when I realise I forgot my mask, but looking around I notice most people havent bothered so I push on, trying not to cough on anyone. 😉 I’m pleased but also a bit surprised just how many people are out, the bars are doing well and there are kids on go karts and many cyclists. The infection rate continues to rise, but the critical care beds at the hospital remain around 60% full. It could quickly get worse, but I’m beginning to think that social distancing outdoors with a mask is probably quite safe for most people. I’m hoping I will live long enough to be able to read the research on the virus that should emerge over the next 5-10 years once the data is really analysed. It should make for some interesting facts.
I’m not doing much at all right now, due to the crazy heat, saying that, we had a bit of cloud cover for a few mornings, and one almighty downpour on Tuesday.

Saturday 12th
I head off to the town centre early as I heard the organic market had restarted in a new location, sadly I’m going to have to wait another few weeks before I can restock on Organic Pesto sauce as there was no sign of the market anywhere, sometime I wonder if the news on facebook isn’t always 100% right.
There’s some kind of a parade going on and the military have a band outside the Museum of Art.

Later that day I have a nice Raspado sitting at a cafe on the Malecon, this is made from Mango and shaved ice, it might even be healthy?

I spend Sunday trying to get my head around the various pronouns and conjugations in Spanish, it doesn’t help that I was rubbish at English Language at school and barely know the difference between an adverb and an adjective, let alone understand direct and indirect object pronouns. I’m still avoiding the subjunctive like the plague. Arturo was going to call over for a swim and then dinner but he got some work as a tour guide taking a stag party from Mexico City out to Isla Islote, and showing the guys how to snorkel with the sea lion colony.
No hurricanes this week, so I’m expecting some action in the next fortnight.
I’m flying to Mexico on Friday to collect Kathy, assuming all the flights are as planned. Hopefully she will start writing some more literate and entertaining blogs for you soon.

Paul Collister.

I thought I was light of a few days on the post before last, I just found them in the draft bin. A bit late but just for the record….

Tuesday 18th August 2020
Around 11 we slip our mooring, and head down to the fuel dock. We had very strong winds in the night and I checked on the mooring line and the backup around 2AM to find that somehow our line to the strop had wrapped around the main buoy and had slipped down onto the barnacle encrusted chain. So with the line being taut due to the 25+ knot winds it was only a matter of time before it parted. I’m glad I had a backup line attached and I was able to attach a third line to the strop before releasing the trapped line altogether. I was a bit worried I might do something stupid and end up losing our mooring. We were just a few boat lengths upwind from Warren on his boat, but it all worked out and it was good to see the strop take the weight again. My problem was down to too much slack in the lines to the strop, in future I will make sure the strop is at the height of the mooring buoy so it can’t wrap around it.
Fueled up and with both water tanks refilled we head north for the small uninhabited island/nature reserve at Isla Coronados, just 15 miles north of Loreto. We get both sails up and have a pleasant trip. It’s a popular spot being so close and we were pleased that there was only one power boat moored there, albeit a huge Bill Gates type of vessel. We anchor in about 5 metres of water over a sandy bottom with excellent holding.
It’s baking hot so we are quick to jump in the water, which is a perfect temperature compared with Escondido. Arturo dives down to 3 metres and reports back that it’s wonderfully cool down there and I must try it. For the next hour we fool around taking turns to haul ourselves down the anchor chain decompressing on the way and trying not to breathe. I get about 3-4 metres down and I’m very pleased my ears are equalising, Arturo manages to bring some sand/shingle up from the bottom, at this point we thought we were in 5 metres of water but when we finally get back on board find we are in 8 metres. Arturo is made up to know he free dived down to 8 metres. I’m hoping to get him looking for Oyster pearls soon 😉 .
After dinner in the cockpit we sit watching the zillions of fish that are swimming around the boat making quite a racket.
We are sleeping in the cockpit and a lovely breeze builds and builds, the lightning starts and the winds finally peak around 35 knots after 2 AM. I’m normally a bit on edge in these circumstances, but the anchor is set well, we have great land cover from the wind unless it does an 180 degree turn, and the waves are very small. Also the mega yacht is a mile or more from us at the other end of the bay.

Wednesday 19th
Hurricane Genevieve is advancing towards the Baja Peninsula and will pass Cabo San Lucas today. There is a warning of flooding in the Cabo area, but it looks like it’s just going to brush the peninsula and miss us. La Paz will see some strong winds, but up here we won’t feel much. The chart below, courtesy of NOAA, shows the probability of high winds where we are as being low.

However the hurricane is spinning off lots of cloud cover our way which reduces the temperature a lot. We dinghy over to a small cove and beach at the north end of the bay and enjoy a great snorkel over a large reef. Most of the coral here looks to be dead, but a few healthy bits show up. I don’t know if the coral died a natural death, or if warming seas or some other man made action is the problem. Arturo drives the dinghy to the main beach and we notice many rocks just below the surface some distance from the shore and later a big RIB from the newly arrived mega yacht screams across the water and hits one of the rocks. I was watching it in amazement wondering if the helmsman knew the area really well or was a complete plonker. As his passengers all shrieked following two big bangs, I was expecting at least a broken prop, but no, he slowed down for a second, then got back up to full speed on a plane and continued towards the cove. My estimation of the helmsman was now firmly in the plonker category.
Back on board we dd a bit of Spanish practice, focussing on how to handle restaurants. A big red trimaran sailboat arrived, and I taught Arturo the finer points of making Pasta & Pesto, pointing out it was always going to be pretty rubbish if the Pasta wasn’t fresh and the pesto recently homemade, not to mention the perils of using a cheap Padano cheese instead of an authentic Parmesan. Still he liked it and it was filling. He ate tostadas with it which made me wonder if he might have missed some of my finer points.

Monday 31st August.
Shopping and tidying up take most of the day up. I order a few bits on Amazon for Kathy to bring out with her and I order a SDR (Software defined Radio) for the PI computer to be delivered to the marina.

In theory this will add AIS, Weather Satellites, coastguard traffic and pretty much anything that happens in the VHF frequencies, to the ship’s computer arsenal.

But mostly it gives me something techie to play with for a while. These devices seem amazing, with an upconverter I will be able to receive HF fax broadcasts as well, so possibly I can leave it running 24/7 and have a rolling last few days of weather charts handy. There are plenty of areas around here where MF/HF (shortwave) radio is the only way to have any form of communication, unless you pay for an expensive SatPhone contract.
I take advantage of having an empty quarter berth, to stick my head through the engine access hatch in there. This is where I access the sea water filter and seacock for the engine cooling feed. Given the crazy growth on the hull outside , I’m expecting a very clogged filter, but it turns out to be remarkably clean, presumably because it’s made of brass or bronze?

I clean it up, but have to make a new sealing gasket for the top. Then I run up the engine and check everything still works. Omelette for dinner while I enjoy the new view from the cockpit.

Tuesday
I get the laundry done, now I can access my bed again. I have less success ordering some printer cartridges for my trusty cannon all in one pixma machine. It seems my printer and ink is only available in Malaysia, it’s a very different model name and number in Malaysia, Mexico and England. I’m sensing a scam, the three models all look the same as do their cartridges, so I take a gamble and decide I will try the Mexican ink for a different model printer, that looks identical and I find a good deal on ‘Mercado Libra’, a Mexican version of Amazon/eBay. I order it and hand over my credit card details, they take my money then ask for my Mexican Citizen number, which of course I don’t have. I can’t complete this form and there is no way out. I crash out and find I can’t cancel the order because I haven’t completed it. What a pain. I reorder using another cash method, where I get a code and at the local mini-supermarket I can pay cash with the code. That goes well, besides the unexpected £2 commision they add, checking back on my order process I find it went through and the order was placed only for the vendor to immediately cancel my order. Now I have no way for them to return my money. My experience with Mexican Web based IT systems so far has been a little disappointing.

Wednesday
I add a little extra functionality to the Solar Reporting system back in Latvia that I maintain, it takes three hours and I quite enjoy the work. Later I spend far too long on TikTok, mostly watching 30 second clips on carpentry or rebar bending in India, I hate their algorithm, but it has me hooked regardless.

Thursday
I do some database cleanups for work, a bit of shopping, then a lot of Spanish. I’m just about to set off to the supermarket when I get three txt’s from the airline I’m using to meet Kathy and bring her back from Mexico, they say to get in touch as the flight has changed. I was hoping this wouldn’t happen, but it’s a pain. Putting this to one side I set off on my bike, I’m halfway to the supermarket when I realise I didn’t bring a bag, then as I reach the supermarket I notice I didn’t bring my wallet either. I think this flight thing has annoyed me more than I realised. Skipping the supermarket I carry on down to the beach, it’s a lovely evening and a nice walk along the beach, lots of people are out and I come across a class of keep fitters dancing around and generally looking a bit silly.

Later I work out Plan B is as good if not better than Plan A, and there’s also a Plan C that doesn’t cost too much so I’m not too bothered about the flights.

Friday
There’s nothing like an hour on a bad voip line to customer support in a remote country to get the day started. The airline tell me they don’t do refunds for Mexican flights, I argue and get passed to a supervisor, I stay on hold for 15 minutes then I’m cut off. Somewhere there’s a bit of code, Let T2 = 15*60, if !T2–, KerChing. I will call back tomorrow, they can’t offer me flights that work, so it’s either an unlikely refund, or credits against a future flight. Perhaps we can visit somewhere on the mainland for our Christmas shopping, or maybe fly to Tijuana for a William Burroughs style adventure weekend, perhaps not!.
Over at Aeromexico I get flights that were around the same time as the canceled Volaris flights, I also change the hotel as everything is now at T2, which makes life simpler, and safer. Spanish lessons are early as I’m off to brave the shops with Arturo at lunchtime.
Despite feeling tired we march through the heat to a bookshop and I buy some Mexican magazines, one is a bit like the economist and the other a more topical gossip rag. They will join the pile of Spanish reading material I am yet to get to. I try a famous and popular Mexican drink, Horchata. It’s an Agua Fresca.
“If you have never heard of agua frescas before, it literally translates to “fresh waters” and they are thirst-quenching, light non-alcoholic beverages made mostly with water sweetened with a little sugar and flavored with anything from fruit, to nuts, to flowers, to rice.” Thanks to https://houseofnasheats.com/horchata-mexican-drink-recipe/ for the details. It’s lovely, and possibly vegan.
On our way back we stop and discuss the architecture of the newly restored bandstand, It looks fine from a distance but close up we notice it’s a mishmash of Roman, Greek, Mexican,French and Fascist styles of architecture. I arrived quite liking it, but left rather disappointed.
We take in the only Vegan restaurant in town, I say restaurant, they only sell Tacos and Vegan cakes, but Arturo is keen to try a vegan beef taco, and he loves it. He’s also impressed with all the ‘right on’ posters proclaiming the evils of animal farming that adorn the walls. I’m more impressed with the lovely slim young lady who is running the show and serving us, but you just know in this kind of setup, she will have an ultra cool boyfriend, a guy who has saved sharks, whales and other animals from peril, worked on the Sea Shepherd, looks like a young Brad Pitt and is entirely charming in every way. He probably plays guitar and piano as well. Still the platano (banana) smoothie tastes great, and the Tacos are nice enough. I expect we will visit here a lot when Kathy arrives, for the food of course.

Saturday/Sunday
Not a lot to report, I dinghy over to the magote for a swim, Arturo comes along and later we practise my Spanish over dinner in the cockpit and I help him with some of the weirder english pronunciations. I’m a bit worried the USAians & Canadians will struggle with his strange english versions, I don’t notice it much, but I’m told it’s very obvious with phrases like “I’ve got to” pronounced “I’ve Gorra” over here.
I have just ordered the Pi Sense Hat so I can record temp/humidity/barometric pressure etc and log it into the database. This should be fun.

Paul Collister