Author: paulcollister

Monday 20th July 2020
The headache is still there, I had a long lie in. Later I looked for the comet, but nothing could be seen due to poor visibility just above the horizon.

Tuesday
Headache going, another long lie in. Looked for Comet, saw it and took a picture of it over the Magote just after the sunset

Unfortunately it didn’t come out so I have used one taken by
Zixuan Lin from China, taken in the Gobi Desert, I think he had a better setup than my iPhone. Thanks also to the NASA Astronomy picture of the day site.

Thursday:
I took a trip over to the Magote and came across a guy dragging his dinghy along the shore through the mangroves. I popped over to find he had problems with his engine. I offered a tow, his dog, that was perched on his bow, barking at me like I was an unwanted intruder, didn’t seem to understand the etiquette of boat rescue. No sooner had we started towing, than I ran out of petrol. I had planned to top up at the beach. A quick refill from my fuel can and we were back into rescue mode. I towed him a kilometre or so back to his boat, he told me he had lived there at anchor on his boat for the last 15 years! On the way to his yacht we were joined by three dolphins swimming alongside. After a swim at the magote I headed back and pulled the dinghy out, I was quite shocked to see the extent of 10 days of growth.

Friday:
I set about cleaning the dinghy, quite a job. My first scrubbing got rid of most of the barnacles but left the crusty sharp bits so the hull was quite dangerous, you would certainly be bleeding if you ran your hand along the bottom..

I took my trusty Japanese paint scraper, then spent a few minutes on the grindstone giving it a very sharp edge. Using this I was able to slide it over the paintwork and the rubber without harming the surface, but lifting the barnacles. I had to work very slowly and carefully but after a two or three hours it was looking quite good.
I suppose that’s the flip side of having an environment that is overflowing with aquatic life, the water is lively stuff. I’m going to have to get the baba’s hull cleaned by divers before I leave in a weeks time, even though they cleaned it fully a couple of months back, it will be too rough now, in fact the prop will probably be very inefficient and the bow thruster may not even turn!.

I gave the inside a good clean and felt quite happy that after 3 years it’s not looking too bad.

Saturday:
Time to start getting the boat ready properly. I start the day with a really good clean up, I have to move the flares container to sweep under the table and think I better check the dates, phew, I have some that are only a few years out of date. Most of them belong to another century. It’s interesting with flares, they are hard to dispose of responsibly these days, and there’s always the thought that after you have let off the last of your ‘in date’ flares, and the container ship has carried on past, your flare not being bright enough to wake the officer on watch, that you might get some life out of your old flares. So I keep them. However I have run out of space, so I will have to buy some new ones and find a way to dispose of the oldest batch.
I wonder when the next big Mexican festival is 😉

After a thorough clean under the cabin table and around all the nooks and crannies around the cabin sole, I’m pleased to find no dead cockroaches.
The next job is to replace the manual pump on the head, something I have been putting off, because I’m also replacing some of the hoses, and they are a sod to work with. As I’m doing this work, I check the roach hotel in the head I put down after the last one got away.

As you can see, it’s hard to understand how a cockroach could resist such an inviting place, but checking them around the boat had me wondering if the cockroaches here are a bit more fussy than the Asian ones. So I was delighted to see the one in the head had had someone check in. It seems these really are like the hotel California.

I’m hoping, or more likely deluding myself, that this is the guy who escaped from me the other week. and that he was the last one on board. I certainly haven’t seen any others since then. It’s also reassuring to know the hotels can work.

After dinner of omelette (French Brie) I programme the mexican SSB net frequencies into the SSB and label up the channels. I have two frequencies named as hurricane watch, I’m not sure if they are still in use, and as all these nets are voluntary, I’m not sure which ones will be live, but I have 7 programmed in, and next week when I’m back out at anchor, I can check them out.

Sunday:
Feeling 100% today, if you ignore the dodgy back and the sore neck. I’m not mad about this aging thing.
I have spent the last few evenings watching YouTube videos of people building log cabins, one guy, in Latvia, really only had two tools, a chainsaw and a scraping thing for removing bark. It was interesting to see the chainsaw used as a chisel, a planer and sander. I wish the boat builders would hurry up and get some videos out. They both just went into the forest, chopped trees down and dragged them back to their site and then built ‘a log cabin’.

Instead of that I spent most of today building a computer program to throw random numbers between 1 and 999,999 at me, either as a number, or as a Spanish translation. I have to guess the correct translation back to english or spanish, depending on what the program randomly wants. it was fun working out the rules for constructing the spanish for say 981,596 which is    novecientos ochenta y uno mil quinientos noventa y seis. Doing this will test me on numbers but was also handy for learning the rules for constructing numbers.
It was a lovely day, not too hot with a gentle breeze, so I spent a while in the cockpit with the laptop, around 5 I headed out in the kayak, I haven’t done this in La Paz, but the wind had dropped and the water looked very calm. Once out I paddled over to the Magote and explored some creeks into the mangroves. It was such a lovely way to pass time, get exercise, and stay cool. I paddled into the bay against the current so that when the wind rose as the sun set, I would have the wind and tide to push me back to the marina. I took a very leisurely path back, taking in all the docks and little beaches south of my marina. I spotted some very interesting boats but because I was convinced I was going to capsize in the Kayak, I didn’t take a camera with me. Next time maybe. You can get a lot closer in to the shore in a kayak, and people don’t mind you being so nosy compared with a dinghy.
Back on the boat, I gave the covers and solar panel a wash down, the sand gathers on everything here, that’s one of the problems of a desert environment I suppose.

Paul Collister

Monday 13th July 2020:
The morning net had an announcement from Bill, he thanked everyone for helping him find his missing cat, which had been gone for a few days. Social media had helped spread the message, however on facebook, the cat had become a dog and also had changed its name. I chuckled at how this kind of summed up the accuracy of facebook stories. I don’t know if we can blame the same source, but later a man called in with a panicky voice asking if it was true there had been a massive outbreak of covid in our marina with some deaths. The marina manager took to the radio to explain that he wasn’t aware of any problem, but to keep wearing the masks.

Tuesday:
Today I acquired a sheet of expanded polystyrene that was surplas to the needs of SV Jersey Girl and used it to make a surround for the aircon which is now above me on the coachroof.

This has worked well and the unit is delivering chilly air into the boat pretty much 24/7 now. I used a big knife to cut the foam sheet. Here’s a picture of the knife, you can probably guess the next bit.

It was quite funny really, The knife is new and very sharp, and I was thinking how I need to be super careful with it, I don’t want an accident and have to head off to covid city central for stitches, so after each use, I carefully put the knife safely out of reach so I wouldn’t step on it as I moved between the cockpit (Workshop) and the coach roof hatch. It was while I was carefully cutting through the foam, that the foam split, and suddenly there was only air between the tip of the blade and my knee, which the knife instantly decided to explore. It sunk about 10mm into the skin just above my kneecap and I was a little freaked and expected a torrent of blood as I legged it down into the cabin to treat the cut. Amazingly it turned out to be ‘a mere flesh wound‘ as the python sketch once had it, and healed within a few hours. I guess that’s the thing with accidents, they still happen despite your best efforts to avoid them.

Later on I call in on Arturo to swap Spanish books on my way to the supermarket. Sadly I get there too late to buy my beer, despite being alcohol free, it’s still subject to the 18:00 curfew on beer sales.

Wednesday:
Long day of spanish, I offer to buy dinner for Arturo later as he has been putting a lot of extra hours into the tuition lately, so we arrange to go to a place he has heard is good called Bismarkcito. The bismark comes from the famous WWII ship and I point out to Arturo that we don’t have a lot of Bismark themed restaurants in the UK. Probably in a similar way they don’t have many eateries themed around Mr Trump. Although I did see news that Mexicans have been stealing the razor wire from ‘The Wall’ and using it to enhance the security on their homes. There’s a joke that Mexicans are saying they stole parts of the wall so they could build a wall around their home, and Trump paid for it!
I’m thinking that the restaurants may be forced to close again soon given the way the covid numbers are rising here.

Thursday:
7 Hours of Spanish today, it’s a lot easier to stay inside with the aircon and study now. The lesson is mostly about the history of linguistics as that’s something Arturo is fascinated by, even if it isn’t helping me learn to speak the language, I’m getting a good understanding how the science/art of translation has developed over the last 3000 years. Later I rush to the Supermarket to build up stock of beer, I’m expecting it to disappear again soon.

I’m able to buy some cinnamon sticks there which I use with the Ginger to make the Jamaica (Hibiscus) drink. I boil up the flowers with the herbs and sugar to make a concentrate which goes in the fridge for a later date.

Friday:
Almost a week with the air conditioning and I’m realising why I hate it so much. I haven’t been out to the Magote to swim and snorkel with the fish this week, I haven’t walked around the marina trying to catch the breeze, I haven’t spent much time outdoors at all really. I could be anywhere when I’m inside the cabin. When it gets too cold in here, and I turn the aircon off, then within a few hours it’s unbearable. So I’m trying to use the time to study hard and as soon as the hot season ends it will have to go.
One thing I have been impressed by is how my macbook seems to have worked out I’m learning Spanish. It has silently gone from trying to correct my spanish spelling into the closest english word when I’m making notes in Spanish, to now only underlining the word when I have spelt it wrong in Spanish, as if the laptop has been configured to be Spanish.

I read today that the Covid infection rate here is rising quickly and the weekly provisional figures will mean we have to move back from Orange Alert State to Red if they are confirmed. Even if they are not confirmed now, they will be next week sometime. So I’m pretty sure full lockdown is on its way back here.

I’m planning to leave the marina in two weeks time and head north. There are places to moor on mooring balls in Puerto Escondido which is near Loreto, So I will spend a week or more heading there, a week or so there, then head back down here for the start of September. Puerto Escondido is a very safe hurricane hole I have been told, I could also haul out there if needed. Arturo is coming with me so he can get to swim with the dolphins/sharks, and I get full on Spanish lessons. All of the beautiful Islands and beaches we pass are closed, but we can probably spend the night at these as we are on transit to another major port, and that kind of passage is allowed.
Kathy will be flying out in the third week of September if all goes to plan and the only question I have at the moment is if I should try to fly back for a few weeks at the start of September and hope the boat is safe without me. September is peak hurricane season here, although they can occur anytime now up until December.

Saturday/Sunday.

Quite a dull weekend really, I had a headache for most of Saturday and Sunday, usually when I get persistent headaches it’s down to my eyes. If I lose my last pair of decent specs overboard and move to a earlier prescription lens which isn’t quite right I end up with headaches. This last week has been very disappointing for me as I have reached a milestone with the deterioration of my nearsite vision. I have had 61 years of being able to read without needing glasses, in the last few years I have used reading specs for some small print on labels, but this week there have been days when I couldn’t read from the computer screen, and I can’t read books at all now without glasses, the change happened quicker than I expected. So most days I have been straining to read stuff, I’m assuming that’s the cause of the headaches. Of course it could be something else, like a brain tumor and my eyesight might return to normal, just before my head explodes, who knows.
The heat outside most days (39 deg C, 102f today), has caused me to stay inside during the day enjoying the new Aircon. Once the sun is low in the sky I have been cycling along the Malecon,

I recently re-read Steinbeck’s book The Pearl which is set here in La Paz, I read it when I was at school, but can’t quite remember how old I was. It had a big affect on me at the time, and I think fueled my early cynicism about life in general. I’m not sure, but I’m guessing this sculpture on the Malecon is related to the book.

Clay and Brenda, who have been bashing their way north for the last few months left San Francisco on Saturday morning and made a dash north in the small break in the weather. That night, off the coast of Northern California they heard a mayday from a 40ft vessel and went to their aid. It was too foggy for the coastguard helicopter to assist and the boat was sinking faster than the coast guard cutter was going to take to get there, so the crew, an elderly and a younger couple transferred to Clay and Brenda’s yacht, and later transferred to the coastguard when it arrived. As I understand it the stricken boat is now lying on the seabed. Very sad, but at least everyone survived. The sea state wasn’t good so hats off to everyone involved in getting the crew off safely.
I had a look for the comet tonight, but visibility was poor. Still there’s always next time round 😉

Paul Collister.

Monday 6th July 2020.
Did I mention it’s getting hot here, this morning I popped to the supermarket and bought some bananas which seemed fine there, but by the time I reached the boat they had ripened into a mush. My neighbours were fitting an aircon that looked just like the one I had been eyeing up in the supermarket.
Besides my Spanish, I don’t get a lot done due to the heat.

Tuesday:
Over to the Magote for a swim, I spot a few rays as I snorkel around. I have brought my cheapo GoPro copy and its waterproof case but as I swim around filming the fish underwater I can see bubbles floating up from the camera. It takes a few seconds, but I figure that means as the air is heading out of the camera case, so must water be heading in. I manage to get the camera out and dried fairly quickly, and it seems to still be working, but I expect the rot has set in now and it won’t be long before the salt crystals get to work on it.
I pay for another month in marina, I’m going to be here until the start of august then I really need to get out and do a bit of sailing, It has been too long and I might forget how everything works. Kathy is planning to return here in the middle of September if I don’t return home before then. I need to asses the Covid situation, flight options and the hurricanes before I can decide to head back. If I dont head back I will sail the sea here until Kathy’s flight, then return to La Paz to meet her here or in Mexico City.
Last night we had quite a strong gusty wind, I wondered if it was a Corumel, a strong wind that comes in from the Pacific over the land. I thought about getting the sails down soon and then remembered that the yankee headsail had jammed once on the way up, and I started to worry it might happen on the way down, and if that happened in a building wind I could be in trouble. So while it was calm I took both the headsails down. They didn’t jam, but the staysail was quite stiff, and the Yankee furler was jammed and required a bit of a tug before it ran free. I need to give it a good service soon.

Wednesday:
I pickup a kilo of fish from the fishermen on my way home from the beach, I think that’s enough work for one day, given the heat. I do manage to put the sheets (Long ropes) from the headsails in buckets of fresh water to try and get the salt particles out.
My neighbours have not been seen outside their cabin since the aircon was fitted.

Thursday:
The hurricane that didn’t get named Cummings, but is in fact Christina is south of us and building in strength, 50 – 60 knot winds at the moment, possibly reaching 90 knots tomorrow, but its track takes it west of us so we won’t need to worry, Cabo San Lucas is going to get some good surfing waves from it.
I’m glad I took the sails down now.

Friday:
My Spanish lesson is delayed as Arturo has to help a friend take her son to hospital. I have heard the hospital here is now approaching capacity with Covid cases and if numbers continue rising at the current rate they will be struggling to cope in a few days time. La Paz is the capital of BCS (Baja California Sur) and I think all the covid patients in the state are brought here. So it doesn’t mean that La Paz itself is a hotbed of infections, but it is a problem. I’m not aware of any track / trace/isolate system in operation, there’s no testing for the general public until you reach the hospital, but you can buy a test locally for a few hundred dollars.
After the lesson I head off for an evening shop and notice the aircon in Chedraui is on special offer at around £105. I take this as a signal from above. They only have two left, so I decide if one the units is still there in the morning I will buy it. My theory is I only need it for 3 months max, say 90 days, if I sell it for £50 then, I will have had 90 days of cooling for £50, so about 55p/day.

Saturday:
In preparation for the aircon purchase I have to practice some spanish. My problem here is that I need to get a taxi to bring the Aircon from the supermarket back to the marina, yet I have read that Taxi drivers are suffering a lot more infections than the public in general, thereby making it riskier for me to travel with the unit in the cab. I start of by telling the security guard at the marina that a taxi will be arriving with an aircon and can he guard it until I get back on my bicycle. He understands me completely, even shows me where he will store it. Next I cycle to the store, pickup the last remaining unit and wheel it out to the taxi rank. I then explain what I want, that goes well, and when I arrive back at the marina on my bike the taxi driver and guard are putting the aircon unit into a cart for me to take to the boat. I love it when a plan comes together.

I’m going to have to build some ducting / coaming to get the unit the work on the coachroof over the hatches, but for now I shove it in the companionway hatch stuff a pillow in the gap and switch it on. I wait and wonder if I should get a jumper out ready for later.

The temperature drops from 36 deg to 32 over the next hour, It feels a lot cooler and the humidity is right down. But I’m expecting better, when suddenly it stops working. I notice the mains power has gone, I check the time and it’s 14:00 and I remember they are turning off the shore power to the whole marina today until 19:00. Oh well…
I jump into the dinghy and head off to the Magote, I can’t think of a better way to cool down.

One of the problems with coming from Liverpool is that you can’t get away from the bloody beatles. In a small sailing club in Japan we had to karaoke to ‘Let it Be’ , In Borneo we could hear Macca coming out of the piped music, and now here they have a bloody yellow submarine! I hope it doesn’t go the same way as the scouse one which sank, twice, in the famous Liverpool Albert Dock, with passengers on board, before they took its license away.

I thought the whole point of a submarine was that it could sink ok. Thinking about it, one of the first ever submarine sinkings was on a maiden voyage from Liverpool, the HMS Thetis? I think a good motto might be, ‘avoid submarines with a Liverpool connection’!

Sunday:
I have the best sleep in months last night, other than the fact I dreamed about Liverpool Empire being in ruins. It’s a great theatre/venue in Liverpool, many world famous acts have performed there, but in my dream it was in a very sorry dilapidated state. I wonder how it will fare in this post covid world. I expect a lot of arts venues will struggle, most of the ones I know could barely pay the bills before.
The boat is so cool I even pull a blanket over me at one point.
I spend the day mostly inside enjoying the cool air, but hating the noise of the aircon and feeling so confined.
I practice the Spanish I have learnt during the week.

I have taken to labeling things so I don’t forget their name.
Apologies for a rather dull blog this week.

Paul Collister.

Monday 30th June 2020.
Today is really hot and humid, and the cheery man giving the weather report on the morning net informs us that we can expect to add another ten degrees to this over the next few months. That has me worried. My google search history is now mostly made up of the phrases ‘Mexico’, ‘Aircon’ and ‘Cheap’. I have seen window units for about £130 at the supermarket, and if they make it bearable in the cabin, just for the next few months, and allows me to get some sleep, then I’m up for it.

I head out for a swim in the afternoon and end up returning via the south side getting close to the shore so I can look into people’s gardens and also check out the abandoned hotel from it’s beach. It also means I pass through the Navy’s dock and get a good look at their setup, I’m hoping they don’t get upset. I see a man on the back of their bigger warship look my way, then he goes back to his half asleep watch from his hammock.

Tuesday:
I have a recipe for making the Jamaica tea, but I’m lacking fresh ginger, which I can’t find in the supermarket. I’m hoping it has rejuvenating properties, as I feel I may be aging prematurely here. Just the other day I was in the supermarket checkout queue under a sign that said ‘Priority Aisle for the elderly 7AM to 11AM’, Which given it was now the afternoon was irrelevant, however a younger lady in front of me looked around, saw the sign, looked at me and started apologising, saying she hadn’t realised it was for the elderly. If I hadn’t started this dammed Spanish language learning nonsense, I would have been blissfully unaware of the sign and her exclamations.
I suppose I need to get used to this.
Today it rained for much of the day, which was wonderful, however I hadn’t quite realised how the rain and heat makes for humidity, in such a stark way as today. The rain stopped around 11 and the sun came out, full on, within an hour the humidity was unbearable as the wet surfaces quickly gave up all moisture to the air. By the evening it had become quite pleasant, with the temperature below 30c for the first time in many days/nights. The only downside being the amount of bitey things flying around the cockpit.

Wednesday:
Today I watched a new video from our good friends Robert & Vanessa, who set off from Canada on their boat ‘For Good’ at the same time as us. We boat buddied (if that’s a word) with them around the outside of Vancouver Island from Port Hardy to Tofino last year. They have produced a wonderful film of their trip and I suggest you connect your computer up to a big screen with surround sound before you watch it as Robert, who is a real filmmaker, has made a high quality production, and it isn’t doing it justice to watch it on a mobile phone screen. Most of the footage is stunning and makes me want to go there and see it myself, but then I remember I was there. He documents the places we both visited much better than I ever did. I feel slightly guilty about the terror they describe as I encouraged them to set sail in the big swells, I knew it was perfectly safe, but had forgotten just how scary it might feel first time around.

I noticed two more Mega Yachts arrived yesterday.

I’m hoping they don’t break free and drift down on me in a storm.
Now on the subject of GPS, a lot of you will think of GPS as a system for finding out where you are, which it sort of is, however most people probably don’t realise that GPS is the USA brand for their global navigation satellite system (GNSS), and there are several other GNSS out there. It’s a bit like how Google became a verb, despite them going to court to try and stop it. GPS is just one version, The Europeans have Galileo, the Russians have GLONASS and the Chinese have BeiDou.
The British planned to launch their own system before they saw the cost, as they can’t fully use the European one after Brexit. and instead have bought into a satellite broadband internet company, some say by mistake, but perhaps the military will be using google earth on their phones instead of GNSS.
Anyway, some recent launches have meant that all four systems are up and running to various levels and I wondered if I can use any of them. Looking at the satellites on my ships main GPS receiver I can see 11 GPS (USA) satelites, but nothing else. This is a shame as the GPS is actually a Chinese brand! I downloaded an app to see what my iPhone8 could see and was quite surprised that it is receiving signals from 35 GNSS satellites.

There are 7 GPS (USA), 10 Galileo (EU) and 14 BiiDou (Chinese) and no Russian ones, if I’m reading this correctly. That’s a lot of Satellites to choose from, I expect I would see more if I could use my external GNSS antenna on the boat.

Later while eating my dinner I felt something slowly crawling over my bare foot, which for some reason didn’t bother me, I think I imagined it was a gecko, but when I looked down it scurried off into the dark, I just saw it was big, a couple of inches long maybe. I wasn’t mad on going to bed with this guy wandering around, especially as it headed into the dark near the V-berth where I’m sleeping. I grabbed the biggest bowls I could find and went into hunting mode. I could just make it out in the dark and pounced. I figure this particular cockroach has been smoking weed or something as he/she was so slow. I removed it and started it on it’s first swimming lesson. Given that it was marching along the main thoroughfare of the cabin, I’m hoping it blew in through the open hatch in the wind and got confused. We have been very lucky and have never had a problem with roaches onboard, despite being in the tropics for most of the time.
Regardless, the poison is out along with several roach hotels, which if you don’t know, are pretty little houses made of cardboard that are full of attractive smelling roach food, in the middle of very sticky glue.

Thursday:
I head off to Chedraui Palicio, which is a bigger supermarket, or ‘super’ as the locals say. They have a bigger range of veg and I manage to score a few roots of jengibre (Ginger) for my tea project. It’s a fair trek on the bike and it’s also baking hot, even at 9:30 in the morning, I go early in case I am mistaken for a pensioner again.
Later my Spanish lesson is fun, and we end up discussing the Falkland Islands or Las Malvinas as Arturo knows them. Of course I hadn’t appreciated quite how opposite the Latin American understanding of the dispute was.
Later I call around to the chandlers to see if my pump for the head has arrived, but I find they are shut.
The heat is unbearable now so I take the dinghy over to the Magote and drop the anchor a little off the beach and snorkel around. It’s absolutely stunning, when I am in just a few feet of water, near the beach, I am surrounded by so many small fish, hundreds or more, If I look into the water from the beach they can’t be seen, but just dip below the surface and they are there, quite amazing. I really am very lucky to have this on my doorstep. I will take my gopro next time and try to capture some of the magic.
I fall asleep watching a boat building video, he was just fitting the knees when I fell asleep, when I woke up he was painting the hull, I slept through several episodes and it was now 1AM, heading to bed I spotted a cockroach on the bulkhead in the head. A Benny Hill chase ensued, where I had him captured twice and he escaped both times. So I don’t have a one of visitor, more likely an infestation. I wonder if I will sleep with the thought of thousands of Cockroaches climbing over me, but in the end I have one of my best sleeps ever.

Friday:
Back to the chandlers and my pump has arrived from Cabo San Lucas. The man I normally deal with is at the counter and he knows nothing about my order, I did it via emails, the manager comes out and brings the pump with him, The assistant looks amused as he produces the same pump from the shelf behind him, he says they had it in stock in La Paz all the time.

Back on the boat the temperature is rising and I have a stack of homework to do. The one hour lesson with Arturo goes on for nearly 3 hours as we keep going off topic, I’m teaching him the finer points of English, at one point we have a great laugh as he asks me to rip out a piece of paper from my notebook, but he uses the phrase, ‘Take a piece of sheet’, now his accent is quite Mexican and I’m sure you can work out how it sounds, he can tell from my expression there is a problem, so I take this as an opportunity to get my own back for his uncontrollable laughter the other day. I have him repeating ‘Piece of sheet’ over and over trying to get him to say sheet properly, Sheeeet Sh eeeeeeee eet I keep saying but he keeps saying ‘Piece of Shit’, eventually I tell him to only ever say ‘Sheet of Paper’ unless you are talking about certain famous world leaders, and we move on.
Later I head off to Soriano, a more down to earth supermarket to tool up for ‘Cockroach Wars’. They have a great selection, but which one to go for. I pick up a killer spray, but see on the label it says, safe for children, I put it back, I’m thinking I can take a stronger brand, but realise I’m unlikely to find one that says, ‘Kills Children’, but I want ‘kills children, old and weak people‘. I’m not taking any prisoners. I end up buying a Powder Spray, a liquid killer and an Aerosol, I have a stack more roach hotels. I wouldn’t want to be a creepy crawly on this boat right now.
When I bought Sister Midnight some 4 1/2 years ago in Malaysia, it had been sitting unoccupied for a couple of years, it had had a lot of cockroaches living there but they had all died, probably because there was no water or food onboard, I removed dozens of dead guys then. They don’t seem to decompose like most creatures. Since then we have only ever seen one and it was quickly caught and removed. I have been a bit lax, Kathy would regularly brush up the crumbs and dirt in the main cabin, I tend to do it only if I have spilt a bag of of flour or similar. Now the work surfaces are spotless.
Before I leave the supermarket I look for a lighter for the stove, the electric ignition is broken and we use the plastic gas lighters that are everywhere here. I’m sure you know the type

Anyway, my phone can’t get the internet so I don’t know the word for it in Spanish and I’m wandering around the kitchen section looking with no luck when an assistant asks if she can help, from the top of the ladder she is on. I’m able to say thank you, and explain I’m looking to buy a …. for a stove, and I perform the lighting action, which is basically holding the invisible lighter and pulling on the trigger while pointing it at her. I then realise it looks like I’m in a rap video trying to pretend shoot the poor assistant on the ladder. I quickly stop, she shouts across to another assistant to come and help, and thankfully I’m led away to the correct aisle.

On the way back from the super I pop down to a little fisherman’s cove, this is the place where Arturo had to babysit the restaurant overnight.

Cycling along I’m realising how much nicer it is nearer sunset, a better breeze and generally cooler. In the mornings when I normally go out, I rarely see another cyclist, right now it feels like the Tour de France is passing through town. It’s very pleasant, I muse on the sounds of the birds as I pass under some trees, there a regular squawking sound I can hear, it stays with me after I pass the trees and I soon work out a spot of oil on the pedal will fix that, all the same it’s a beautiful evening.

I stop off at the basketball court and sit at the edge looking out over the bay where one of the original fishing families is based. There are two families that have fished here since the land was settled, possibly before, and this location is home to a dozen or so of their descendants. I’m hoping to learn more about this history at some point. the other family is based at the other end of the Malecon.

Back on the boat I prepare for action.

The moon seemed very bright tonight, but I didn’t hear of it having a special name this time round, I’m going to jump in and name it a ‘Marina Moon’

Saturday is a lazy day, no Spanish lesson, but stacks of homework I mostly ignore. It’s hot so I razz over to the beach and cool down.

Sunday, more heat, another trip to the Magote for some very refreshing swimming and lots of homework. I fall asleep watching wooden boat building videos, again.

Paul Collister.

Monday 22nd June.

A very jolly chappie on the morning net points out that we have two potential hurricanes forming roughly 1000 miles SW of the Baja Peninsula, but it’s a lovely sunny day so let’s not worry about them! In fact they are not much of a threat. I use this site at the US National Hurricane Centre for my initial data.
I spend the morning writing up the documentation for the work I did yesterday and then installing and testing it. That takes me right up to my Spanish lesson, which goes well until the end when I pronounce a sentence in a half hearted way, and for some reason, Arturo bursts out laughing, he can’t contain himself, I ask him to explain what I said wrong, as I don’t want this kind of thing happening down the Mercado, but each time he starts to explain, he starts the uncontrollable laughter again. This goes on for far too long, eventually I gather I mispronounced Ba and Ja, with a Ha sound, but I sounded like a grumpy old Mexican. Apparently it’s the funniest thing he has heard in a long time. Oh well.
Perhaps I’m a bit grumpy because we had just spent 15 minutes practicing my pronunciation of the phrase ‘Por Qué and ‘Porque’. The stress, and emphasis seems to be very important as the words can mean a lot more than ‘why and because’. Something I am leaning is that syllables must be pronounced completely flat. no sing song, but stress on the correct syllable is critical. Also I have to do the actions now, to emphasise I mean ‘For God’s sake Why’ I have to be waving my arms in the air shouting ‘Por Qué’

Lesson over and I jump into the dinghy to get away from the heat, and head over to the Magote. This strip of land has many mangroves and inlets along the shoreline, I headed SW and found an interesting inlet/creek. Now as it seems Santa is still having trouble delivering my DJI Mavic Pro Drone, I have had to make do with some google and bing images to show you the aerial view. I have also tried to do a zoom in as the drone descends from the stratosphere with the help of some circles and lines.

Before I enter the mangroves I notice a fire has started in the distance, I think this is probably the La Paz refuse centre, it seems to catch fire a lot.

The entrance to the mangroves is hidden until you are almost on it, the water shallows to just a foot or so and I have to lift the motor up and row towards the entrance. There’s a build up of sand, or a bar as it’s sometimes called, at the entrance, but I can get around the side of it where there is a channel that drops to 1 metre deep once inside the creek.

Inside I can see the bottom well, as in most places there’s only a foot or two of crystal clear water. The small fish are darting around at what seems like a fast pace, but every now and then, a large fish zooms through like an underwater missile, if you blink you miss it, and the little fish, somehow seem to scuttle away even faster.

There’s another half metre of tide to rise yet, but all across the sandy river bed I can see indentations which I work out are foot prints, and I expect someone has been walking through casting their nets here.

I get out my little paddle and work my way deep into the inner reaches of the mangroves, through gaps the dinghy can just fit. Then I find myself in a place with lots of little buzzing flying stinging creatures so I make a quicker retreat.

Once I’m back in the bay I chuck my little anchor over the side and enjoy a very refreshing swim.

I notice the fire is now creating a lot more smoke and the change in wind direction at a certain altitude is quite visible.

Tuesday:
Lots of Spanish practice today, but to break the lesson up I head off to the ferreteria for a spot of exercise and to buy some very fine wet & dry sandpaper with a grit rating of 2500, I didn’t even know it came that fine.

Before I went into the ferreteria I realised my bike lock was missing from my basket, I suspect it fell out on the way here, so after my shopping, I head back retracing my route. I recall hitting a hole in the road down a side street that quite shook the bike. I need to find that road. Retracing my steps is a little fraught, as I travelled down two main roads that are one-way, but it makes for more fun. Eventually I find the hole, but there’s no sign of the lock. Now I start to think what might have happened? I have it in my mind, that due to the poverty here, and the fact I’m a little bit out of the centre, that perhaps somebody has picked it up knowing it might have some value. Of course without the key, which is in my pocket, it has little value. So I slowly cycle around the block and sure enough I spot a bedraggled chappie standing on the corner staring at the lock in his hands. I’m now focussed on the fact he has locked it closed. I’m trying to quickly work out the implications of this. He found the lock open. but without a key. At this point the lock is almost useless, it has one last thing it can do, and that is to change to the locked state. Once locked, without the key, it’s all over. What he has done gained him nothing, yet removed his only option. I figure I have the advantage on him now, so I approach and explain that I had lost that lock and would like it back, I reach into my pocket and produce 10 peso, which is about 40p or 50c, I offer it to him, and he says it’s not enough, I look him in the eyes, and he knows his bargaining position is quite weak, especially as I have two new ones on the boat and I don’t even like this fluorescent green lock. He hands over the lock and seems happy. I spend the rest of the journey home wondering if my logic was right for the lock, until I reach the Oxxo store by the marina and indulge myself with a Magnum Double Chocolate.

At some point in the past somebody, probably me, has used an aggressive scourer on the stainless steel sink in the toilet, it’s letting the new shiny tap down and has been bothering me.
I set about sanding the steel down and get quite a decent shine to it, not quite mirror finish, but by starting with 1000 grit then 2500 I manage to get the gouges out.

I need some polishing compound now. I had all of this at home in England, but threw it when I sold the house. Later the urge to do the same polish on the galley sink overcomes me and I spend half an hour on one sink with great results. Of course now I have to do the other sink, and get the polishing compound and buff it up to a mirror finish. This is the problem with having too much time and nowhere to go!
I think I have cracked the future tense in Spanish today ‘voy a’ etc. Arturo seems to have stopped laughing now, which helps! I tried to ask if the adjective always changes gender to follow the noun, and he didn’t understand my question, so I tried to use my new word caluroso, for hot (as in the weather) and wanted to know if it would become calurosa if the hot thing was feminine, so I tried to say would it be ‘calurosa chica’ as I couldn’t think of another feminine noun that might be hot. Rather than answer that question, Arturo gave me a stack of phrases to use instead to mean ‘hot babe’ including chica sabrosa meaning tasty babe, none of which I need, but sabrosa is a good word for restaurants, es muy sabrosa.

Wednesday:
Today the supermarket has reinstated the tea mountain. It’s called Jamaica, I think we know it as hibiscus tea. I stuffed a few years supply into a bag with the plan to brew it up when I get back to the boat, in fact I will in reality take it on a tour of a few continents before tipping it overboard. If you know what I’m meant to do with it, do leave a comment. I have been drinking it cold in taco bars and it’s very nice, at least I think that’s what it was.

Hurricane threats are on the up, with 5 possible events showing up, but they are all unlikely to be a problem.

I decide I ought to check if the engine still works, just in case I should ever venture out of here again.

Firstly I do the normal checks and see the oil is a bit low. I thought I had topped it up, and looking under the engine I see there is oil in the drip pan.

So I dig out the nappies. If I was rich and stupid, I would use marine oil absorption pads, but I find Kiddies Atifugas work just as well. The biggest problem is getting them past the checkout girl without her wondering if I might have kidnapped a baby or something. I accept I look a bit too old to have a baby. I wonder how Mick Jagger coped.

I check the engine is in neutral, only to find the gear stick, lever won’t budge. A little bit of firm wiggling and it moves but with a very rough grating manner, I can hear things rubbing/catching in the binacle, so I assume it’s no big deal. I will need to investigate, but for now I can change from ahead to astern.
I turn the key, normally the engine would start within a second, but not today, it takes a couple of attempts letting the starter run for about 5 seconds. Then it starts just fine. I think the fuel must have drained back into the tank as it sat here for the last couple of months. I put it into reverse and the gearbox doesn’t engage, which is a worry, but after some stronger wiggling with the lever, it engages. I’m thinking something is not quite right in the binacle where the lever joins the teleflex cable.
Next I try ahead and astern again, and all is fine. I turn the bow thruster on, but the light on the control stays firmly off. Not good, I suspect a bad connection.
I had every intention of spending Thursday taking it easy and getting really stuck into the Spanish, however I can see myself having to take the binacle apart and also sort out the wiring for the bow thruster. With all this boat stress I think you will understand how I could lose 6 of the last 9 games of Scrabble with Kathy.

Thursday:
Please don’t tell me I’m the only one, who at the grand age of 61 to has just twigged that “The word alphabet is a compound of first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta.” I just found this out when I learnt Spanish for alphabet is Alfabeto.
If you own a Baba or similar boat with a knock off Edson binnacle, you may be interested in the rest of today’s activities, however should you be a more normal person, you might as well skip to Friday.

Once I could look inside, the problem was apparent. The securing nut for the bolt that keeps the big cog on the spindle sticks out and was catching the small nut on the morse/telefex cable

I need to reposition the cable so that this can’t happen, It’s not going to be a problem in reality as once the forward gear is selected, the lever falls back a little and the nuts don’t touch. To do this I need Kathy waggling the lever while I climb to the back of the engine to adjust the transmission end. Something that is a lot of hassle. As a temporary fix, I file the bolt and nut down to present less of a target for the cable.

While I have the binnacle in bits I slap a coat of varnish on the compass base, and get rid of a varnish run that had been bugging me for over a year.

I find where the cables to the bow thruster are joined and wrapped up in tape, expecting some moisture might have got in, but before I start ripping them apart, I consult the manual to find out which wire has the power so I can test that first. Well I’m sure you have heard of the ‘turn it off then back on’ as a way to fix things, looking at the manual, I realised all I had to do was turn it on. Feeling like an idiot, I turn on the big circuit breaker, and all is working fine. I never normally turn this breaker off as there’s no need really, unlike the big breaker for the anchor windlass, that could easily be activated by stepping on the foot switched on the bow.
So all is working again.

Saturday:
Spanish homework, then a trip to a Mexican bookshop to buy a book I can practice reading from. I’m going back with Arturo in a week or two, as he can help me get one that doesn’t have long words, but for now, I pick up an attractive book on the history of the peoples of the Baja Peninsula, going back to before the Spanish missions. The bookshop is supposed to be one of the best in town, but has a feel of a Malaysian shop. There’s no love for the books here, all very practical shelving in rows more like a discount supermarket. I think I have been spoiled by the British and American bookshops which are closer to a Diagon Alley (Harry Potter) vibe.

A check of the hurricanes shows the earlier threats have gone, but there’s a new one called Boris, but as you might expect it’s all wind and won’t last long, it has caused quite a depression though. I’m more worried about the next two as they will start with the letters D & C, which is a lot scarier than Boris 😉 (UK Specific joke)

Sunday:
A very dull day, stinking hot and I don’t do much other than work out how the man with my padlock could have used it. I had been pondering the value of a lock that you don’t have a key for, and eventually it dawned on me that this is how you are reading this blog. It’s called Asymmetric encryption, or Public/Private keys. Basically he could have put my lock on ebay/amazon for Kathy to buy, she could have used it to lock a parcel she sent to me which only I could unlock!
I bet he’s kicking himself now.

Paul Collister.

Monday 15th June 2020

Up early and a bit more coding while it’s cool. Come 3pm and Arturo hasn’t appeared on line, so after a little wait, I pile into the dinghy, and head off to the beach. It’s another stinking hot day and it’s just great to do some swimming in the cooler water.

La Paz has opened up a lot today, I haven’t been into town to see, but the main Malecon (boardwalk/promenade) which runs for several miles along the waterfront is still closed to pedestrians, but vehicles can use it now, and they certainly are. From the far side of the bay, on the Magote beach I can hear the continuous rumble of traffic trundling along. A passenger jet flies overhead having just taken off from the airport and I realise that this is the start of the end of the peace. A lot of people are very excited that they can go out shopping now, or hang out in coffee shops, but not me. I don’t suppose there will ever be such a lull in life again, at least not in my life time. I hope I made the most of it.

I let the wind and the current push me back towards the marina, by the time I get there I could do with another swim to cool down. I think I might do this more often. Today felt like a Sunday, and I toy with the idea of making it a Sunday, thereby working on an 8 day week. I would need a name for the extra day, maybe Exday would work, I would put it between Friday and Saturday. I’m not sure, but I think after 7 weeks, I would be back in step with the rest of the world, and could hop back onto the 7 day week again. I should have started this plan a month ago while everybody treated every day the same. Another thought is to delete wednesday, for a 6 day week, 7 week trial.

Back at the boat and Arturo calls to apologise, but he got a job in a restaurant, in a dodgy part of town and he couldn’t leave when he was expecting to so we reschedule the lesson for the evening.
The lesson goes ahead with Arturo teaching me from an empty restaurant on the waterfront. It seems the dodgy part of town is just a block down from where I am. I think it’s just a little isolated on the beach at night with everything shutdown. Arturo is only doing the work as the owner also runs a diving tourist operation he is hoping to work for.

Tuesday:
Sitting down in the cockpit for breakfast and I kick the cafetiere over, covering all my lovely new teak in Mexico’s finest brew. If it’s not one thing ….
My noisy neighbours left a few days ago, and it looks like Paul and Jana on the big motor launch next to me are getting ready to depart soon.
I call Kathy and she laughs when I tell her about Arturo and last nights lesson; Arturo had taught me some good phrases, like ‘en serio’ I’m serious, or are you serious. I asked him if I could have used it when the security guy said I was too old to enter the supermarket. Arturo was surprised, but not enough, in my book, he laughed and said I should use that phrase next time. However instead of saying ‘hey paul, you don’t look that old’, he actually offered to do my shopping for me if I got stuck, which was even worse. Sure Arturo, thanks and see if you can pick up a zimmer frame for me while you’re at it! I did wonder if it was Karma, and when I was offered free entry to the museum as a senior a few months ago I should have refused. What’s the saying, live by the free bus pass, die by the …
Later my neighbours call by and invite me to dinner tomorrow. I’m rather unsure due to Covid, they aren’t taking it too seriously, but I don’t know how to say no. It might be a British thing, but we hate to be rude, so I will just have to catch the virus and die, rather than upset them.

Wednesday:
It’s so hot today, but before it reaches its peak, I cycle down the recently opened Malecon to Marina Palmera.

There’s a guy there who has been running a diving school from his yacht, Covid has put an end to that and he’s selling up and heading back to Canada. He had a load of diving and other gear going at very good prices, but I’m a bit late finding out. In the end I buy a used BCD (diving inflatable jacket thing) and a very nice mask and snorkel, all for $60. I also get some good tips on the best places in La Paz for diving equipment and service. Cycling back I stop of at a ferreteria and pick up a small tarp to cover a gap between the big tarp and the little one on the bow, this will keep the sun out of the cabin in the afternoon. Unfortunately Sister Midnight is starting to resemble a refugee camp from the dock.
In the evening I head over to my neighbours for dinner, an experience I will never forget. Starting with my hosts boast of running with the bulls in Pamploma as a young man, to ending with their joint vow not to travel to Florida as there are two many democrats there. I learnt so much about the true origins of Covid, why it had been invented and who it was designed to take out, along with much new information on how to kill it should it ever reappear. I left enlightened and with a much better understanding of the US presidents popularity.

Thursday:
I take the dinghy over to the Magote beach today. It’s been a really hot week, mostly around 37 deg C during the day and sometimes as low as 25 in the night. It’s so nice to have a swim and I try out the new snorkel mask I bought yesterday, only it’s just sand with the odd shell below me. To think the whale sharks are just around the corner, but I’m not allowed to visit them without a guide.
On the way back I snap a couple of pictures of a big mega yacht that seems to live at the end of the marina,

I think it’s a bit ugly, but I now know it’s one of several yachts owned by Carlos Slim, who used to regularly swap places with Bill Gates for the title of Richest Person in the World.

Back on Sister Midnight I received a visit from my new American friends I dined with last night, they had brought some fruit and veg over that they were chucking before they leave for the US. We chatted for a bit and I was asked what I thought about Trump, I explained it was difficult for me as a Brit to criticise another world leader these days, in fact any misplaced feeling of superiority I might have once felt traveling the world has definitely gone now, which is a good thing anyway. I pointed out we have a well educated idiot running the UK, and I thought they had an ignorant idiot running their country. She sighed but reminded me, that despite all of that, he was a financial genius, and America was going to need that after the virus. She pointed out how the economy had been massively on the up since he came into office, I pointed out it was already on the up before he came into office, but apparently that wasn’t significant. The man’s still a genius.

Friday:
So in for a virion, in for a pound (of SARS-CoV-2 that is) I arrange to meet Arturo and do some shopping downtown at the public market. he has had me rehearsing my lines for shopping, and striking up conversations with people. On our walk to the mercado, I learn a lot of names for street furniture and pavements steps, railings etc. by the time we reach the market I have forgotten them, and with all the confusion in my head I have even forgotten how to say “hello, can I have a kilo of carrots please” not that I ever wanted to buy any carrots. So we sit down outside the market at the bus stop amongst the local people and Arturo whips out his travelling whiteboard and marcadora (marker), and boradora (eraser) and we set about going over all the words I have just learnt and immediately forgotten. I know we will be there until I learn them so I make an almighty effort. Of course the old man sitting over from us is very interested in us and my broken Spanish and Arturo says we must bring him into the conversation, which is a bit scary. So Arturo explains he is my teacher and can he help. the old man is delighted and exclaims in fast La Paz style, he is happy to help foreigners as we are all the same under the eyes of the lord. An interesting start I think. Arturo pushes me hard, “Greet him Paul, Quickly” So I’m in with the old “Hola, Buenas Dias, Como estás”, it’s going well. He replies with some foreign language, probably spanish, who knows. Arturo intervenes and we find out the man has a brother in America, I tell him I am English and I live in a boat in marina La Paz. My boat is very beautiful and I have a house in Liverpool. That’s it for me, out of stock phrases, but Arturo is pushing, say more paul tell him more about yourself, I’m struggling, so. I go with the “Tengo sesenta uno años” I’m sixty one, he replies “I’m 84”, which I’m pleased I understand. But not so pleased when I realise I’m in a bus stop talking to an old man going “I’m 61 you know”, and he’s going “I’m 84 you know”. Kathy and I have agreed that it’s over when we start telling people are age like that!
We move on into the market and I have to buy the vegetables and fish, that goes well, I tell the green grocer “I’m 61 you know” and Arturo starts laughing. That’s it. I can do the age thing, no need for that anymore.
I manage to ask the fishmonger where he gets his tuna from and is it frozen, which it is, and buy 1/4 kg for a very reasonable price.
We head back to the boat and Arturo cooks up a shrimp bouillabaisse type soup.

This takes some time so we practice Spanish which is great. Sometimes I speak French to Arturo which is fun because he doesn’t realise we switched languages right away. I only know a few french phrases, but I can slip in the odd ‘Mais Oui’ instead of ‘si’ and it takes a little while before he twigs. Later he tells me his portuguese is quite good and he learnt it by playing with Brazilians in online World of Warcraft type games.

Once cooked we move into the cockpit for a late lunch. It’s very tasty.

As it’s now about 4pm and very hot I suggest to Arturo we take the dinghy over to the beach for a swim, he’s keen, he hasn’t been to a beach since the start of lockdown in March. We have tried to social distance all day, but I expect if either of us had the virus we both have it now. but we have been in the sunshine and as my new American friends told me, that will kill it! (need an emoticon for a bewildered shaking head at this juncture).
We have a refreshing swim, and on our return we checkout a sunken yacht that has half the hull visible above the waterline. It has had every deck fitting unbolted and a hole cut around the depth transducer. Nothing was wasted, other than a ton of fiberglass that nobody seems to want.
We finish the day at a burrito bar where Arturo has made friends with the owner. As I’m not eating meat these days, my maestro has me go over all the possible fillings with the owner that I could have, in spanish of course, we settle on Champiñons, cebolla, Avocet y salsa. Very tasty.

Saturday:
Yesterday I managed to fix a software bug in my solar data collection system, or so I thought, today it appeared I had actually just added another bug. The changes I made to the software were trivial, and I was sure they would work fine, it’s not easy to test on a live system, and building a test system takes ages, so I winged it, consequently today I sent a few hours fixing my bug and doing proper testing. It didn’t help that one of our data providers choose today to have a fault on their system and they were sending me bad data.
My Americans friends from next door left for America on Thursday and returned on Friday night, I saw them this morning and found out their car had broken down in the desert and they had to limp back to La Paz at 20mph. They are hoping to try again on Tuesday. The Americans on the boat that recently arrived opposite me seem to have declared the Covid incident over, and are having parties in the cockpit, everyone invited, leave your mask at home. Sadly I can’t make it, I have some drying paint that needs my attention.
On my trip to Chedraui I notice work is now progressing on the new building site on the waterfront. The building at the back that I posted a while back, was I thought an abandoned apartment block, but in fact it is a derelict hotel, the Hotel Grand Baja. I found some information on the web..

“1976 seemed to be dominated by the completion of what most considered the pinnacle of the tourism complex in La Paz, the Hotel Presidente Gran Baja California Sur.
The eleven story, five-star resort hotel was the tallest building in the state, and boasted tennis courts, a pool, bars, restaurants, a nightclub, two floors of suites at the top of the hotel, and a total of 250 rooms for guests, who could also make use of the beach on the Bay of La Paz, and the pier, for mooring yachts.
Twenty years later, the Gran Baja would be an abandoned shell, blighted by vandalism and a monument to the failings and near demise of the La Paz complex“

There was talk from the state governor of pushing to get it re-opened, but I can’t see how that will work, especially now. It may not be the last hotel to end up as a derelict eyesore along the coast of BCS. To be fair this is the biggest building in La Paz, and is a bit unusual, but get down to Los Cabos, and there are scores of building like this.

Sunday:
A lazy day again. It’s just too hot to get much anything done. Last night I brought the bike down to the boat and gave it a service while it was cooler, it had been making embarrassing noises when I applied the brakes. It needs new pads. Today I take it back to the bike racks in the marina car park.
I promise if that’s all I can find to write about going forward, I will stop the blog and spare you the tedium of reading it.
I finally managed to code up the web pages I said I would do a week or two back, now I have to update the documentation and do some more testing before I release it, but I will be glad when that’s out and I can get back to being lazy again.

Covid rates have doubled here these last few days, still lowish numbers, but more places are opening and there were queues for some of the beaches this week. Also the UK should be seeing the start of a significant increase around now, but that hasn’t materialised. I suspect in the UK the numbers aren’t accurate, the government are under pressure to get the country open again, and the scientists have all been silenced so we will have to wait and see. Kathy and I review our plans constantly as to when she should come out here or when I should go back there, but right now I think I may take the boat north in July/August and fly home in September for a few weeks, feed the cat and pick up my mail.

Paul Collister.

Monday 8th June 2020
Off to Chedraui, the supermarket for some fresh bread and beer, pleased to see a good stock of my favorite Heineken there, but totally shocked to see that someone has taken 3 bottles out of the six pack.

This beggars belief, not only are those 3 bottles now stranded at some checkout till, but the remaining three bottles are also stuffed. I can only imagine the idiot who did this hasn’t been reading my blog lately. Some people are so irresponsible. And in these times of crisis. I only hope the staff manage to reunite them.

On a much more serious note I heard today that Patrick Childress has just passed away. I mentioned a ‘go fund me’ account for his treatment on our boats facebook page. This was very upsetting. I had been following his progress across the Indian ocean and along the coast of Eastern and Southern Africa with great interest. We will be following his route ourselves in the next few years, we have a lot in common with him and his wife Rebecca. We have similar boats, and try to live a simple life, and enjoy pottering along the seas enjoying as much of the local surroundings and people as we can. Patrick became ill with Covid-19 and although he was clear of the virus, and his lungs seemed to have almost fully recovered and was almost off the ventilator, the rest of his body suffered massively and despite good care in a South African hospital, he didn’t make it.
If Patrick, who seemed very healthy, fit and active can succumb to this virus, then so can anyone else in this marina, and may well do so if they don’t start taking things a bit more seriously.

Tuesday:
Guess what, it’s varnish time again. Seems like only a few weeks back I was slapping the varnish down, and that’s probably because it was only a few weeks back. I’m a bit dissapointed at how quickly the finish has dulled since I put the last coat on. I’m going to finish off this tin of Epifanes high gloss varnish and then start experimenting with some other longer lasting finishes. The rub rails have lost most of their varnish so they will be a good place to experiment on. Before it gets too hot I rub down all of the bowsprit / Platform and cap rails but by the time that’s done the temperature is in the 30s so way to hot for varnish. I plan to be up at first light on Wednesday to slap the varnish on.
Later my Spanish lesson is fun, but I can’t remember half of the previous days work, I think I probably learn 1 or 2 nouns or verbs each day. At this rate I should be able to put a sentance together in time for my 80th birthday.
The radio bursts to life in the morning with an enquiry to find the owner of a 30ft sailboat that has left its mooring and is now aground on the Magote shore. No one replies.

Ok, I need some help with a couple of simple questions here related to my recent plumbing activities:

Can you please answer the two polls below

[poll id=”3″]

And, secondly…

[poll id=”4″]

Wednesday:
Up early to varnish, it goes on easily and quickly just as the sun is rising, No dew which is great. By 9am it’s all done and I make some breakfast. Later a trip to Chedraui and then Spanish practice for the rest of the day.

Thursday:
Coding and documentation for the solar sites system. I spend most of the day on this, mostly sorting out notes and scraps of documentation which are all over the show. It’s a bit better organised, but I’m probably only 10% of the way in. I don’t get paid for the documentation bit. In the afternoon I write some PHP code, test it and deploy it to the live servers in Latvia, I do get paid for that, almost enough to buy a tin of epifanes varnish here 🙂 Tomorrow I have to design and code up in raw html/php a new user interface for part of the system. That’s a days wages so, several tins of varnish.

Arturo has me doing silly pronunciation exercises today, the result seems very subtle to me, but he thinks I’m sounding more Mexican each day!

Sometimes he says, ‘Quick run outside , find a local and repeat what you just said, they will be so confused as you will sound like a local but look like a gringo’. I think he is a good motivator, perhaps not 100% honest.

Perhaps the local birds are mistaking the baba for an aviary, this afternoon I had a hummingbird hanging out in the cockpit. The chaffinch, as Neil has helpfully identified for me, now pops into the main cabin most days to checkout the crumb situation. There’s a little video below

Friday:
A long bike ride, some groceries, Spanish lessons and bed. It was so hot today, it’s been 30-35 deg C all day and all night, that I wasnt up for anything very energetic.

Saturday:
For the last few days my wifi and cellular data connections have been playing up. It got me wondering what the dock ethernet was like, there’s an RJ45 Ethernet socket on the dock for each boat, next to the power hookup. You have to buy a cable from the chandlers with a proper Marine Connecter on it to be able to use this and I baulked at the price of $40. So instead I have been paying $50 a month for a data plan, which required me to buy a motorola phone to hack so I could get the hotspot to work. Not very clever logic.
So today I bought the cable, plugged in and found I was getting incredible speeds, broadband levels as good as I ever got back home. I’m very happy with that. I’m hoping to get my Pi computer visible on the internet soon so I can monitor the boat from afar. I’m now watching Mexican TV soap operas online to help with my learning, you kind of know the plot, you just need to know a few phrases, like ‘how did he find out’, ‘if I ever get my hands on him’, ‘your going down for this’, ‘he doesnt deserve you’, etc etc.
Once this was all up and running I jumped on my bike and cycled off to Ley Supermarket, I locked my bike to the railings and headed on in for some vegan burgers, being the only place I know that sells them. As you enter the supermarket, you have to wait while a member of staff squirts some antibacterial gel into your palm before you enter, sometimes they even take your temperature. Today the young lady looked kindly at me but didn’t offer the gel, she put her hand up to say I couldn’t enter then waved a security guard over. He asked if I was English, and could I speak Spanish in Spanish, which is something I can understand and reply with ‘poco’ , with a little bit of sincerity. he then pointed to a sign in Spanish that said ‘Seniors are only allowed in before 10AM’, this is a restriction they have implemented to restrict contact between Vulnerable people and the rest of us, or as I must now say, between us vulnerable pensioners and those young uns!
I was a little taken aback, especially as I had just cycled 5km, mostly uphill and didn’t think I looked that old. The humour of it won over and I laughed as I climbed on my bike and cycled off, except I forgot I had chained it to a rail and promptly fell of the bike. Perhaps they know more than me. Nurse Nurse.

The Present Subjunctive –
It is vital for the data to be precise
In the Present Subjunctive form
It is vital that the data be precise

If the above means something to you, I’m impressed, you probably understand the past subjunctive form as well and the problems of using was instead of were.
My problem is that some of the translations I do from the internet news posts in Spanish use the past subjunctive and present subjunctive forms and I have no idea what they are talking about. I didn’t do very well at English at school, woodwork and physics were my favorite, followed by maths. I still struggle with terms like adjective, personal pronouns, adverbs etc, I’m ok with nouns and verbs.
I think I’m going to have to skip this bit. In all I’m very pleased with my progress, I’m finding I can read over 50% of most things I see when out and about, some of the tweets I get are in Spanish and I’m enjoying working them out. It’s fascinating how the Mexicans can’t hear differences in pronunciation that I think are massive, like when I say the sound ‘ll’ it starts with a ya sound , as in Yazmin, Mexicans say it with more of a Ja sound as in Jasmin, I can say either and they don’t seem to hear any difference, same with Ba and Va, they only say Ba for both, if I say either they hear Ba . Most odd. Yet if I don’t get the rr in Carro right, it sounds like Caro, one is car and they other ‘expensive’ so an expensive car is ‘un caro carro’ .

Sunday:
I sit on the other side of the cockpit for my breakfast today, and my lady chaffinch arrives and seems put out because I’m sitting where she normally finds some breadcrumbs, in fact she flies around me a few times then proceeds to head straight inside to the cooker then breadboard. She’s getting a bit too familiar for my liking. I’m not very pleased with her anyway as I look around the cockpit and see little presents of bird shit she has left everywhere for me. I finish my toast, get the hose pipe and brush out and give the cockpit a good washdown. While I’m doing this I decide to try some of the magic pink cleaner that works so well on the stainless. It performs really well and the grey teak looks like new.

This gets me thinking that I could fix up the caulking that’s a bit rough, glue down the few planks that are lifting, give it a light sand and it will look fantastic. It’s quite worn, but in reality, it’s still thicker than you find on many new modern production boats. I did plan to have it all replaced when I get back to Thailand, but who knows when that will be.
So in a way, I’m grateful to my little fluffy friend for sending me down this path.

Next I pop off to the supermarket for bread and pick up some lovely fresh fish on the way back from my favorite fisherman just around the corner from me.

The rest of the day is spent coding, mostly making web pages, I hate it, HTML and CSS are two ‘languages’ that are all over the show. I started this solar monitoring web site nearly ten years ago, and it shows, I can’t make user interfaces to save my life, and add in my colour blindness and general bad graphical design taste and you end up with some very ugly screens. On the other hand, if you are a fan of 80’s computers, you will feel right at home.

I finish the day with a huge fish dinner in the cockpit while mosquitos devour my legs.

The latest Coronavirus news is that a lot of places start to open up tomorrow, beaches and national parks open, but with restricted numbers, restaurants with limited capacity etc.
Kathy’s flight back here was cancelled, that was meant to happen in about 4 weeks time, now we have to wait and see. There’s no point in rebooking yet, as flights advertised for July/August still risk being cancelled. Tempting as it is to think everything is getting better, I think in 2-3 weeks time we will have a much clearer idea of the impact of the lifting of restrictions. Until then, I will just have to grin and bear it in the constant sunshine out here. Please stay safe out there, as far as I’m aware the virus hasn’t heard of any changes and plans to carry on as before.

Paul Collister.

Monday 1st June 2020
Things are meant to start opening up a bit today, but nothing seems to be happening. I go for a cycle to another supermarket a good way on the eastern side of town just for the exercise, but in there I notice a man stacking a fridge with beer, behind the beer I see some alcohol free cans, which are quite nice. I ask him if I can get some and he says “no way José”, pointing a his watch. It takes a minute, then I remember alcohol sales are not allowed after 6 pm. I’m quick with my , “Pero es sin alcohol” and he relents, I’m right in there with “Quatro por favor”, and he passes 4 cans to me, I look at my watch and wonder if I should run to the checkout in case they hit me with the ‘after 6 pm rule‘ instead I go for the “perdon, quatro mas, por favor” and now I have 8 cans, I feel like I’ve just robbed a bank and got away with it, or as they might say in the future, done a Cummings! (Sorry if your not from the British Isles, but Cummings is our much hated leader, apparently, as we are only just realising).
Back on the boat I watch a video about La Paz put out by the President of the hoteliers assoc here. He mentions how La Paz has one of the top 50 beaches in the world, and the best beach in Mexico, and is moving up the most desirable destination list. They hope to have 5 new hotels completed in the coming few years but want to maintain the local feel to the place. Good luck with that mate. It would be a shame if this place ends up like Cabo San Lucas, La Paz is quite Mexican, in a Baja way, but Los Cabos, which includes both holiday destinations of Cabo San Lucas and San José del Cabo are just full on Vegas style gringo resorts. Great for a two week piss up, but not for me.

Tuesday:
Water appears on the floor of the head, I have seen this for a few days now, at first I thought it was a splash from the shower, the next day when it reappeared I went for a splash from the sink as the culprit, as I hadn’t used the shower, today I had to accept there was a leak somewhere, probably from the sink, and that I was going to have to get on my back on the floor and crane my neck, contort my body and search for the source. Sure enough the tap was leaking.

I will check tomorrow, but I seem to have stopped it leaking by re-attaching the water hose to the copper tube that goes into the tap, however the tap is badly corroded underneath. As you can see the whole fitting is not looking it’s best, and certainly not doing justice to the marble sink top. Quite why somebody thought marble was ok for a worktop is beyond me, is the boat not heavy enough! I’m going to take this opportunity to buy a new mixer tap and replumb below. If I can’t get a suitable tap, then I might look at servicing this tap, it may be possible to get it rechromed here cheaper than buying a new one.
Later I have my Spanish lesson then pop back to Chedrui supermarket to scoop up the remaining Alcohol free beer. I read today that many of the breweries have reopened across Mexico, so I’m hopefull supplies will resume soon.
We had a little excitement tonight when a boater and his male companion where run out of town, or forced to leave the anchorage. Apparently they were naturists but were performing what some consider unatural, or at least, not for public consumption, acts on the foredeck of their boat anchored just off the entrance to the marina. I heard the boat owner is a convicted sex offender and is wanted in the state of California. Later I heard they had returned to the anchorage a little further away from us, and that the cruisers here were organising to get them arrested tomorrow! The most worrying thing to me is that he is alleged to have his 80+ year mother on board who has dementia and, allegedly, can sometimes be heard screaming for help. I would like to say, never a dull moment here, but in fact it has actually been quite dull since January.

Wednesday:
The morning radio net has an anouncement under the Emergency Help category, which is reserved for people in desperate need usually, about the flashers. They are anchored outside Marina Cortez and the plan is to get the police to move them on today.
I decide I’m going to tackle the head tap today and head of to the plumbers early in search of a tap, I find one in the second plumbers I visit that is similar to the existing one and costs about $45 or £40. It’s chrome plated and will probably only last 5 years or so, but at that price I’m happy. I also pick up the cable I wanted so I’m now able to start the Cockpit LED lighting project soon.
Of course nothing is simple, once I have pulled out the old hoses, one of them won’t be long enough to reach the new tap, it could do with changing anyway, but chasing it through the bilge I discover a load of corrosion, it never seems to stop. I have to get a grinder on the job to remove the old hose clamps they are in such a bad way. After a few hours of workout contortions the job is done. I’m very pleased. Next I’m going to varnish some of the cabinetry and get the whole room looking smart.

On the way back from the hardware store I pop into the supermarket for some fresh bread and can’t believe my eyes when I see the fridge full of cans of Hieneken Zero beer, my favorite. There’s also real beer, the drought is over. Suddenly I get a whiff of the virus pandemic being over, and life being back to normal. It’s a lovely feeling but the reality soon returns at the checkout with the 2 metre distancing and everyone in face masks in the long queues. However I do understand now how an easing of restrictions can lead to people getting carried away with their new freedoms. I’m not going to stockpile the beer, there might be others who like it, but next week I will get a few cans in as I expect the lockdown to return big time soon. Mexico is heading downhill fast.

Thursday:
I put a few more hours into my Spanish this morning in the hope I will perform better in my lesson. Yesterday, my teacher Arturo, insisted on putting all of the women in his household, and there seemed to be quite a few, on the video call with me and getting them to start a conversation. I was quite flummoxed, they were kind, but I think they were keen to get back to peeling spuds or doing the dishes, rather than try to understand my rubbish Spanish.
As it turned out we spent a lot of the lesson trying to find the english way to address teenagers, There is a word in spanish for it, Joven, but I could only come up with scouse terms like La, or ‘alright there lad’, ‘Excuse me young man’ isn’t a phrase I would normally use. I love the vagaries of language that reveal cultural differences. I was reprimanded by responding to a ‘how are you’ from one of the ladies yesterday, with a ‘Good thanks, and you?’ where I used the informal ‘you’, tu instead of usted. I think I blew my chances there!

So after my lesson I jumped on the bike and cycled around town to all the electronic shops I had identified on google. One was shut until September, the other just shut, a third didnt exist, the building that looked so promising on streetview wasnt even there, so I gave up and headed back. On the way I found a new hardware store and picked up some plastic cable trunking I plan to use to mount the LED strip lighting I’m making for the cockpit.
Back at the boat, I make my usual Guacamole, read and watched the sunset, then set about cutting up plastic and gluing LED lights together.

Friday:
Before it gets too hot I head off to find the Electronic components shop on the outskirts of town. It’s a good long cycle ride, around 12km in all, but interesting.

I don’t know if I’m cycling into a rough area or an upmarket area. I had recently read about a serious stabbing in a car park outside an Oxxo store (7-eleven) out that way, when a down and out had been refused money he had been asking a stranger for. I never worry too much about these things, you could find the same problems within a few miles of where I lived back on Merseyside, I think most big cities are the same. Nonetheless I keep a keen eye on my surroundings.

I find the shop and it has a great selection of bits and bobs I could use. Next I pop over the road to a huge Soriano supermarket in a big edge of town mall/estate. This is better than the one I visited last week as small businesses, taco stalls, bars and shops have grown up around the estate and have allowed it to blend into the area better. from there I drive down a road called Calle Puebla which is ever so pretty and runs for a few miles, lots of individual houses with lovely gardens, and very friendly people who wave and say hola as I cycle past. I could happily live in this street.
Further on and I’m back on familiar turf, near the marina and I spot a gecko on the cycle path.

I fit the LED strips under the solar panels and crudely wire them up to the cigar lighter socket in the cockpit.
Later my Spanish lesson leaves me strugling with very subtle , at least to me, pronunciations. My optimisitic self has always assumed people would work out what I meant if I just got close to the right sounds, but that’s definatley not the case. Arturo wants me to be fluent at counting to 100 by monday, I try and he tells me I have a lot to learn. In particular I’m struggling with Six, or Seis, pronounced Says, or is it Saiz, or maybe Sayis it’s probably none of those. Pondering on this I try to imagine if you can slightly change the pronunciation of six in English and still be understood. I then realise that a slight change to the sentence “I want to buy six dolls for a kids party” might get you arrested if your not very careful with the pronunciation. Tricky stuff this language thing.

Saturday:
Most mornings as I sit in the cockpit having my toast and coffee I’m joined by a little bird that flits around me, sometimes it scares the living daylights out of me by appearing right in front of my face and hovering there for a few seconds before settling on the deck next to me. It seems the cockpit crumbs aren’t good enough for it now, and the cheeky bugger is heading down into the boat most days and checking out the bread board and cooker. I don’t mind too much, it seems to know its way out ok.

After breakfast I pop to the shops for some fresh bread then I launch the dinghy. It needs an outing and I want to ensure the motor is still working ok, at least that’s going to be my defense should the authorities come for me. I’m hoping they won’t spot my swimming trunks, sun tan and beach ball 😉
So I row out of the marina then slowly motor over to the far side of the bay to the stretch of land called El Magote, and beach the dinghy.

It’s lovely walking along the shore in the water, On the way back to the marina I stop in the middle of the bay over the big sandbank that splits the bay into two channels, it’s only about 1.5 metres deep, I sling the little grapnal anchor over the side and then jump in and have a wonderful swim. It’s so refreshing and cooling I may do this every other day now.

Back at the marina I haul out the dinghy and give it a good wash, it’s not looking bad given that it’s 4 years old now. I think the covers on the sponsons have helped a lot.

Later I see a pelican has joined the fisherman in their joint quest for dinner. As the fisherman guts his catch the Pelican practically eats from his hand. While he is fishing the Pelican sits there motionless. Quite a sight.

Sunday:
A very lazy morning, then in the afternoon I run some cable for the new LED strip lights and fit a switch into the cockpit locker. I have the option of 2 or 4 strips illuminated. I’m very pleased. It works well, the LEDs are a bit too blue, but it’s only a temporary solution until I can find something more homely. I don’t know if the LEDs will survive more than a couple of seasons, I’m expecting to lose the whole shooting match of canopy/solar panels and wind gen should a hurricane come this way anyway.

This week my computers/phone were reminding me to get my flight from London Heathrow back to the boat. I should have been arriving back here a few days ago getting the boat ready for Kathy ,whose flight is due in mid July.
Kathy’s flight hasn’t been cancelled yet, it was booked a long time ago, maybe even last year, way before Covid hit the headlines, so we don’t know if it is going to be cancelled closer to the event. I expect the airlines don’t cancel until the last minute, that way they hang onto your funds, and maybe they are also being optimistic. As it stands Kathy plans to fly if the flight is still on, if it’s cancelled then we will look at all our options. It’s quite a fast moving situation, with the North West of England now with an ‘R’ value of around 1.0 and climbing, the government may bring back full lockdown to Merseyside, in which Kathy will be better off out here, however she would have to transit via Madrid, which shouldn’t be to risky, but then she arrives in Mexico City with no guarantee of an onward flight to La Paz. Regional flights get cancelled hours before take off if they don’t have enough passengers. Hotels are shut and Mexico city is a real hotbed of virus infections now and the hospitals are in a dire state. So getting stuck in the city for a few days isn’t attractive, and should Kathy pickup the virus and needs a hospital the local hospitals in La Paz are getting quite busy now. On the other hand, many are predicting the second wave in the UK has already started and could be quite a big problem there.
I have a new neighbour here in the marina, they arrived in their big catamaran on Friday, they must be based here as there has been a steady stream of visitors to them, nobody is wearing a face mask. I’m going to tell them I might have the virus so to keep a distance, should they speak to me. I think it’s true, any of us could have the virus! 😉

Cuarenta y uno, Cuarenta y dos …..

Paul Collister.

Sunday 24th May 2020:
I woke up feeling quite ill, I had a bad nights sleep and now I had a serious headache. I climbed into the cockpit for some fresh air and had my morning banana and toast & coffee, I could tell I wasnt right, so I ran through my checklist of Covid symptoms: Coughing, no, just the runny nose as usual. Taste & Smell, well that banana didn’t really taste at all, and the coffee was just like hot water. So Covid Rovers 1, Hypochondriac Athletic 0. However many people will confirm my coffee doesn’t taste that good. Breathing, well pretty rubbish really, quite laboured, Covid Rovers 2, Hypochondriac Athletic 0. Better take some readings.
Temperature now 38.5 degrees, in the fever range, pulse 150, double my normal rate, blood pressure through the roof. Looks like Covid is just getting penalty shots now. My breathing is getting harder so I head below and lie down for a bit. While I’m lying down I check out the emergency covid phone number for La Paz and have it handy. After an hour I check my temperature again, it continues to rise nearly reaching 40 deg C, I reach that blissful point where the hallucinations start. So I’m now convinced the Covid has an Anfield style lead over the hypochondriacs, so I put in call in to Dr Reddin in Ireland. He’s not overly concerned and manages to reassure me. I’m lying face down, that really does make the breathing easier.
I pop online to the Mexican Covid reporting site to see how that works just in case things get worse. I fill in the questionnaire, question number 2 being, “How will you pay for any care, insurance details etc”, I can see why the reported number of cases here might be a bit lower than expected. Anyway, they give the team a big boast and tell me to go away and stop being a big girls blouse. Suddenly the team are revived, Covid Rovers 2, Hypochondriac Athletic 2.
You don’t want to know the details of the next few hours, but I lose a lot of weight quickly. Then I sleep for the rest of the day. When I wake, my temperature is down, and my blood pressure is dropping slightly. I can also breathe a lot better. I go back to bed and doze for the rest of the day until nightime when I sleep well.

Monday:
I spend the morning being very lazy, my temperature is normal again, as is my blood pressure and pulse. I’m thinking I either had food poisoning or a touch of some bug. I’ve had nothing to eat since Saturday and I don’t have anything in, so in the afternoon I pop along to the supermarket to get some bread. Passing along the aisles I spot my old friend the Cervaza cero, this poor bottle has been hidden somewhere, and is now up for grabs. I pop him in my trolley if only to give him a little trip to the till and back. I’m not optimistic.

The beer bottle almost makes it, until the Mexican checkout lady wishes it ‘good luck’ in English and it replies with a ‘thank you’ (if you don’t get that reference, you need to watch this ). Back to the camp for this guy!

I’m exhausted cycling back to the boat, but can’t help noticing lots of taco stalls open, and kids playing in the park. I wonder if the cummings effect is reaching this far.
Later I login with Arturo for my Spanish lesson, but struggle to follow much.

Tuesday:
Still feeling rubbish, but eating again now.

Wednesday:
It’s really hot now, so I throw another canopy over the bow. I think it helps a little. Sod all else happens today

Thursday & Friday are mostly lost, except I have to attend a conference call with some systems guys in Belgium, it’s the end of the day on a Friday for them, and I expect they have beer, chips and mayonnaise calling their name, but it’s 7am for me, and I have to look like a smart computer engineer representing a multinational organisation, worse they want the meeting on ‘Skype for Business’ which I cant get working. As it turns out I’m more together than them, the meeting goes well, they get all the action points, and I get to make breakfast. Later I do some reading and studying of openPlotter, a system I’m looking at implementing on the new boat computer. I think I may have a solution to my intermittent autopilot problem by getting the PI to drive the tillerpilot connected to the monitor windvane.

Saturday arrives and I realise I’m just not getting enough exercise, I’m putting on weight, and given that I’m not eating much, that can only mean I’m not using any calories up. So I decide to head off to the out of town shopping estate, or big box stores, as the Americans call them. I plan to buy cable and connectors from Home Depot (B&Q) and rig up some propper LED lighting in the cockpit. It dawned on me that the PI computer can do PWM lighting control over the LEDs to give me a mood effect, perhaps some AI can predict my mood, but I think I’m getting ahead of myself, first let’s get the wire.

I fail to get the wire, and the connecters, it’s not that they didn’t have some wire, more I hated the whole thing of being in this cavernous store, that could have been anywhere on the planet, and you wouldn’t know based on the store itself. I decided there must be plenty of small ferreterias in town, family businesses that I would rather give my money too.
My trip to the store hadn’t been a good experience. I chose this destination partly as it’s a long cycle away (18km round trip) and the exercise would be good, plus if I was stopped, I had a good excuse for being there, food shopping is allowed and many gringos go to the big box stores for their supplies.

In our travels from Malaysia to here we have seen many modern shopping developments, in many countries but they all generally come down to two types: The Mall, and, The Out of Town Big Box Estate.
The picture below was taken on route, I expect this is what the countryside here would have looked like in every direction for the last tens of thousands of years, certainly back to when humans first arrived here. In fact It would have looked like this up until a few years ago.

First the road is built, nothing against roads, and the major highways in Baja California have allowed the area to thrive where it was once, only a few decades ago, quite isolated. Many of the resorts down here were very exclusive as the only way to access them back in the 50s and 60s and earlier was by private plane, some of the resorts still have their airstrips that were used by partying celebrities popping down from Holywood for a secluded break.

But these sections of the road are unloved, nobody wants to live next to the box stores, and at some point the box stores estates will look old and faded and a new estate will pop up on the land next to them. So acres of scorched fields sit awaiting that time. I expect the locations are chosen based on the cheapest land available outside of the city.

Acres of car parks surround these buildings and look quite odd when the customers aren’t allowed in. Most of this estate isn’t open as it’s deemed non essential, 10 pin bowling, designer shops, cinemas etc.

If the covid disaster lasts for another year, I expect much of this estate may not reopen. In town, many small businesses will struggle and may fold, but the buildings have performed under many guises before and will find a new life. the city should still be attractive but these estates might slip easily into a dystopian world, it’s hard to love this much poured concrete.

I expect land must have been cheap, and some developer imagined being on the doorstep of Walmart and Home Depot would be a selling point, as a housing development has sprung up over the highway, nestled in the scrub.

This doesn’t feel like progress to me.

Sunday:
I decide to capitalise on my new exercise urge and head off on the bike again. This time in the opposite direction of the ‘out of town box stores’ instead into the heart of La Paz. It’s Sunday, the churches are closed and I expect it to be quiet, however off the main malecon, the streets are busy, quite a lot on stores are open and I notice people queuing at the barbers. I need a haircut, but I’m not ready to get in line for one just yet.
The flowering plants are lovely, I think a lot of it is called Bougainvillia, and the cacti are looking great with the palm trees. I have put some of the pictures of the streets around downtown below.

Back at the marina I snap this guy who seems to have made this spot his home. I would call it a heron, but I’m not sure.

Paul Collister.

Sunday 17th May
Today we hear the lockdown in La Paz has been extended from the 1st June for an unspecified period. This is due to the rate of infections in Mexico not having peaked yet, although it’s still pretty low here in La Paz. The hurricane season has officially started here as well (15th May) so I could be blown away at any moment, although historically not a lot happens until the middle/end of the summer.
I decide to head of to Ley, a giant Mexican hypermarket, in fact the largest Mexican chain of supermarkets in North West Mexico. I hadn’t been here before, but found it much busier than the supermarkets closer to the Marina. It’s a little bit further out of town, so good exercise.

There wasn’t much difference in the goods on offer, but I did manage to buy some Mexican made vegan chorizo and hamburgers which actually tasted quite good.

Back on the boat the last of the cushions was fitted, and I retired for the day not wanting to over exert myself.

Monday:
I wake to several emails asking why the systems I built to monitor wind and solar installations are failing. A quick check reveals the server has run out of disk space, this is an oversight on my part and a warning system needs to be put in place. I spend an hour deleting log files and archiving off old data. I now have 30% free space, but will need to work on this to ensure the problem doesn’t repeat in a few years time. The system, which is mission critical(ish) only has 50GB Storage. This might have seemed ok at the time it was built, but I now have memory sticks with more capacity.
It’s too hot to be outdoors, so I set to work on decoding the data from my ancient ST50 Speed and Depth instruments. They talk a secretive language to each other over a single wire network. I have no idea about the electrical or data protocol, but decide to put a scope on the wire and see if I can work something out. I don’t have a scope so set about using the sound card on my laptop to act like one, only trouble is the macbook air doesn’t have an audio in jack, so I move onto using a USB audio stick to capture the signal. I don’t know if this will work but it should be fun.
The previous night I had sent an email off to a guy who makes a hardware device that converts this SeaTalk 1 protocol to the more open standard of NMEA, asking for any tips, and just as I’m rummaging around for hardware bits to start my project he sends me an email with stacks of data on the electrical signals and the data content. Just amazing, I realise I can interface the SeaTalk to my raspberry pi with just two resistors and a FTDI USB serial adapter, which I have. They only cost peanuts to buy. A few hours later and I’m pulling in the depth readings and the Speed over water. Tantalisingly I’m getting data packets showing the water temperature, but it’s always 0xFF which makes me think it’s not reading it. Brits of my generation and older often have a fascination with water temperature, as we spent all of our childhood holidays at beaches were the temperature is generally in the hypothermia generating range. Water temperatures above 20 deg C tend to over excite us.

Now I can log location and depth as I travel around and use this information to generate my own chart data, It’s like having my own black box data to analyse, next time I go aground!
Arturo, my new Mexican friend I met at the airport some months back phoned and we agreed that I will pay him to teach me Spanish via Skype for an hour each day, starting on Tuesday.

Tuesday:
I had a disturbing dream last night based on a report I had read about Prime Minister Johnson just before I retired to my bedchamber.
He was at a meeting when a quite complex process was being laid out and he said, “crikey, that’s a lot of work, and quite complicated, who’s responsible for seeing that through then?, he said looking around his ministers”. Ministers looked around awkwardly in silence until a civil servant spoke up and said, “Well Prime Minister, I think it’s you”.
Then the Prime Minister was on the TV reading from a todo list, and he was saying how much he had to do, he reached an item, ‘Pay Europe several Billion pounds as promised’, which he read out and said, “Crikey, I forgot about that one, bugger”.
I will leave you to work out which one was real and which one was my dream/nightmare.

Come the afternoon I hooked up for a video call with Arturo for the first of my daily 1 hour Spanish lessons. I was rather apprehensive about how this would go, Arturo isn’t a teacher, but has recently qualified with a degree in language studies and speaks good English and French, so he knows a lot about language structure. He is also a very enthusiastic clever guy. I needn’t had worried, it was a great lesson and we firmed up my understanding of conjugating AR verbs, which was nice. Later I firmed up his bank balance a little, which was under strain as there is no work in town for him at the moment. So a win win situation.

Wednesday:
I took off on my cycle this morning to find a Ferrateria (Hardware store) to buy some lamp oil for an old battered lamp I had found in the locker in the shower. It was rather rusty, but should clean up. In the UK these lamps are expensive, if you can find them, but I remembered they were only a few Euros in Nidri, Greece the last time I was there. I found a store that had the oil and it had shiny new lamps for just £4, so I bought one and threw the old one away.

I like to read in the cockpit as the sun sets, but the cockpit has no lighting since I replaced the spray dodger/canopy and I thought this lamp would be nice. However as it turns out, the flame burns very low. I don’t know why this would be, other than the fuel isn’t up to par. Most strange, it looks great though.

I’m going to have to wire up some LED lighting for the cockpit.

I cycle around a bit as it’s such a nice day and I need some exercise. The blossom is lovely right now.

After a delicious fish & salad dinner I set about writing software to process the new readings coming in from the instruments I now have connected to the ship’s computer. It’s really only the depth readings I’m interested in. I had thrown together a little bit of Python code to read in the data and display it in a raw format, but Python isn’t a language I’m fluent in, so I started again in C, this is my bread and butter language. However, reading from devices like USB sticks on Linux isn’t something I do often and had to read up on that. Eventually just after midnight, I managed to get the packets in and decoded ready to store in a database. This will be more fun, I’m expecting Facebook and Cambridge analytica will be banging on my door soon wanting the data, I’m sure they have algorithms ready to turn tide height, speed over ground and wind speed in La Paz, into a ‘prime selling opportunity’ for somebody.

Thursday:
Up early, feeling groggy, and off to Chedraui for some fresh bread. The weather is lovely now, cool nights, and 31 deg C most of the day with a gentle sea breeze.
Another great Spanish lesson where I learn how to use the verb Poder (really useful for “I can not understand you”, “can you speak in english please” etc).
People arrive late in the day and move onto the boat next to me, it’s a fast sailboat, Jeanneau 49 DS I think, fin keel, and they have come to return it to California. They plan to leave on Saturday.
I make Guacamole and sit in the cockpit coding my new Tide height system. By 23:00 I have it working and running on the PI Computer as a task logging the tide depth every minute to the database. In a few days time I will have enough data to compare with the official tide predictions for the area. I bet like me, you can’t wait to see how that turns out 😉 .

Friday:
I wake up at 01:00 after having fallen asleep watching some boat porn, I’m not sure what it was, but I think it may have been ‘Salt & Tar’ stepping their new mast. Anyway YouTube has rolled on to a BBC programme about Sailing in the Sixties, and I would usually switch off and drag myself to bed, but instead I wake myself up and watch an hour of people building kit dinghies like ‘The ‘Mirror’. A lot of dinghies were sponsored by newspapers back then, I actually raced a ‘TV Times Dinghy’ in Portsmouth as a kid. It was cut out of a big block of polystyrene, I’m lucky to tell the tale, it started disintegrating half way through the race, these boats would dissolve in most chemicals, and portsmouth harbour was full of oil slicks back then. Later in the show they move onto Chichester and then Knox Johnson with their ‘around the world voyages’ There’s a lot about Donald Crowhurst, which is a very sad tale, if you don’t know it I suggest you check him out. Sadly there’s little mention of Mottisier, a Frenchman who really stole the show as he was really the first man to sail solo non stop around the world, he would have got the prize but couldn’t be bothered to sail to England to collect it, instead he carried on and did another half a world eventually chilling out in somewhere nice like Tahiti. It seems to me the French have always had the edge over the British in sailing matters, but I wouldn’t expect the BBC to highlight that (Obviously I’m excluding Nelson).
Enjoying breakfast in the cockpit I noticed there are a lot of small birds around right now.

Next door the crew are busy provisioning for their trip and getting all the boats systems ready. I quite envy them, they should have a lovely sail/motor up to the USA.
I pop to Office-Depot for some stationary and take a detour on the way back for extra exercise. I had often spotted a big hotel/apartment block that I assumed was under construction, or maybe shuttered now for the virus but managed to get a bit closer today and was disappointed to see it’s in a bad way.

Back at the Marina, I unpack, taking time to wash down all the goods with soapy/bleachy water before they go into 3 day quarantine in the Quarter Berth.
Then my Spanish lesson, I’m just about hanging in there, but I think if I left it a few weeks I would forget everything.

Saturday:
So before I head to bed I get the last of the database entries for the tide height as logged under the boat here in the marina. I now have 24 hours of tidal data from 00:00 on Friday Morning to 23:59 Friday Evening.
I have plotted it below. I have had to remove a few samples which were out by more than 50%, not sure what is going wrong there as I average out 60 samples taken 1 per second for an average reading every minute. You can see the results below.

Then I overlaid the forecasted tide from my tidal prediction software app. This uses a formula which is based on the effect of the orbiting bodies out there, mostly the moon, and some local parameters. As far as I’m aware it’s not table driven. The overlay is in white. I was very impressed at the match.

‘Exit Strategy made their exit this morning. I now have a lot of space to starboard.

Off to the laundry to do the washing, it can’t be put off much longer, and we’re coming up to the monthly change of t-shirt anyway.
I know it’s important to be working on a vaccine right now, but does that mean work on the ‘Automatic Tissues in pocket detecting Washing machine’ is going to be delayed!
I spend the afternoon mostly glued to the twitter screen and the BBC news as it looks like the leader of the British government, Dominic Cummings, may be about to lose his job, It’s possible his part time assistant, Mr Johnson, may be in trouble then. Exciting days.
Watching the sunset from the cockpit, I notice my new neighbours pointing at the water, closer inspection reveals a small fin moving quickly along the surface. A few minutes later there’s quite a commotion in the water, somebody is trying to eat somebody else. All goes quiet for a bit, then starts up again 5 minutes later, this goes on for an hour. I never get to see any fish, just frenzied activity just below the surface.

Paul Collister