Hauled out in Loreto (Puerto Escondido)

Saturday 14th October 2020.
We leave La Paz around 11am, firstly we made a run to Chedraui to get some fresh bread, fruit & veg. Being there early ensured our admission with scores of other geriatrics. I’ve heard of Covid safe places, but this felt more like Covid assured.
The timing of our departure seemed good, the weather was acceptable, even if it meant a fair bit of motoring to get north in the prevailing winds. But not just the weather was right; we had returned to La Paz to hopefully see the demise of Orange Head, but as a bonus we got the announcement of a vaccine and the demise of Dominic Cummings. So all in all, things are looking up.
While we were in La Paz we enjoyed a few meals out, and did a bit of shopping, but mostly I was programming and Kathy reading. I still have a lot of work to do and I’m hoping to get a fair bit finished on this passage.
We met up with a lovely German couple, not from Germany, but from America where they have lived for many years. They have circumnavigated the globe once already and are on their second trip. We had a laugh about out respective father/motherlands, they wondered how their country could allow right wing groups to flourish, given their history, and I postulated my theory that the UK is suffering ‘empire demise’ syndrome and that Brexit might ultimately be good for us. That was a fun conversation!

Kathy might write about how to recover from losing your bike keys at the supermarket. While in La Paz the local government shutdown the Malecón in the evenings, Covid is on the up again, as it seems to be in many places. At least we are away from it for a few weeks now. The La Paz carnival has been cancelled along with the Christmas market. 

We motored up to the small uninhabited island of Partida, just above Isla Esperitu Santo. Anchoring was easy, it’s a safe place to stop for the night with lovely beaches, but we will leave early for Isla San Francisco. We have an appointment with the travel lift to haul the boat out a week on Monday, and I would rather spend time up near Agua Verde and beyond than down here.
I caught a massive fish on the way up, so far the cedar plug I bought, has been out twice, and each time brought me a lovely catch. I rather badly filleted this guy and ended up with 1.5kg of dinners. The cove here has quite a few big motor launches and massive Catamarans, some enjoying their loud party music. 

Sunday.
We leave at 9am for the three hour trip to Isla San Francisco. But as soon as we leave the sheltered bay it becomes obvious the waves from the North are quite big and instead of making 5-6 knots, we are soon down to 2-3 as we start pounding into the sea ahead and 20 knots of wind (apparent) on the bow. For half an hour I consider turning around and finding another cove on Partida for the day, but optimism, false as it turns out, makes me decide to push on anyway, by the time the waves are 15ft high and the bowsprit is hitting the sea on a regular basis, we have gone too far to make turning back worth it. So we push on. We hadn’t prepared for such a rollercoaster ride, the first this boat has seen in a year or more and we had become complacent. I had closed the main hatches but hadn’t screwed them down tightly, consequently the bed got soaked when the foredeck was covered by one wave. A little later the Aircon unit that had been sitting on the sofa with the new printer on top took flight. It landed on the cabin sole, I haven’t really inspected the damage yet, but I fear the teak & holly may have a few more marks on it. If the printer still works I will be very pleased, especially as my visa runs out this week and I plan to print out the new application when we get to Loreto. We are the only vessel heading north and after nearly 6 hours of bashing into the sea we turn into the protected cove of Isla San Francisco.

Previously I had worried that with the boat sitting idle for many months in the heat with a half empty tank of fuel that the dreaded diesel algae might have flourished, and that on the next rough passage it would stir from the depths of the tank and kill the engine, I’m confident now that’s not going to be a problem. In fact hats off to the engine, it’s doing a great job, but I must get it serviced soon, I think the cam belt is well past its set by date.
There’s quite a few luxury motor yachts and high end charter cats here. A jet ski is whizzing around and several marques are setup on the beach. We don’t mind, my main task now is to make the poached eggs for our breakfast, that we had delayed upon leaving with the idea of having it for Brunch, or Lunch if we were delayed. It turns out to be a lovely early dinner.
Tomorrow we will spend an extra day here, I have to climb the mast as there’s some white thing flying around at the top, as if a plastic bag has wrapped itself around the windex (Wind direction pointer thing). 

Monday
We walk over to the other side of the island and pass some salt pans on the way.The salt has a pink colour Kathy tells me, something like the expensive stuff you might see in Waitrose. I’m tempted to fill a bag with it, could easily pick up a few hundred pounds (£) worth of salt for free!
Later I snorkel around the boat, as usual the fish put on a spectacular show for me, there are several shoals of different species swimming around me. 

Most of the motor boats have left and there’s around ten sailboats here, three of us are Bob Perry designs. I climb the mast and find the white thing up there is the white insulation tape that was covering the unused Raymarine socket , I rip it off, check the other fittings and take a few pics.

Next a kayak over to another baba looking boat, it turns out to be a Union 36, the hull is very similar to a baba, and probably came from the same mould. We chat and I get some news from him as he left wifi land a little later than us. He tells me Oregon and California have gone into lockdown, he explains that it’s down to lefties and he worries about his home state of Oregon and how now they have legalised hallucinogenic mushrooms, it will all go to pot, actually that’s already legal there 😉 He quotes how Amsterdam has been ruined by prostitution and pot!

Tuesday
We have a pleasant overnight stay, a few more boats arrive but it’s mostly sailing yachts like ourselves and there’s little noise other than a generator running on a big beneteau., We depart early, around 7:30 AM, Kathy is able to flake the anchor chain into place without really leaving her v-berth slumber. She joins me on deck half an hour into the passage with a remark about how nice the mornings are and we must get up earlier more often!. We are on the way to El Gato, a lovely spot, but rather exposed to swell from the north. I tried twice to stop there with Arturo, but both times it was too rocky. I decided to leave early as if we can’t stop there, after this 6 hour passage, we will still have enough light to push onto Agua Verde which offers slightly better cover for a northerly swell. Also the winds tend to be less in the morning, and travelling up the strait between the Peninsula and the Isla Jose generally means going into a headwind and oncoming waves.

Halfway up the strait I remember there’s an island on the chart and our path takes us directly through it, It wasnt there back in January, but seemed to appear, at least on the chart during the summer. Yet I couldnt see it as Arturo and I steered around it. This time I decided to sail directly through the island, It looked so green on the chart I imagined it must be full of slippy grass that the keel would ride on, as you can see from the chart below we skidded right over the island and back into the sea on the north side, the depth sounder never dropped below 80m.

We have a very relaxing trip and at one point get the sails up and enjoy an hour on a close reach, later we motor sail the remainder of the way.

Arriving at El Gato we find a yacht and a motor boat, The yacht is called ‘True Love’ and has a younger couple on board (Finger down throat time), how do they call into the coastguard with that name, imagine, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, it’s True Love here! Or what about if true love hits a rock?
We chat with them as they dinghy back from the beach where the motor boat has his dinghy a little way up on the sand. The tide went out, and it’s too heavy for two men to drag back to the water. It has a 35hp outboard and is about 12ft long with a sit down steering console. I silently congratulate myself on having gone for the lightest dinghy and outboard possible. We may go slower, but even Kathy could drag the boat and motor off the beach if needed.
Kathy is enthralled by the rock formations here and she will no doubt post some of the pictures. There’s not a lot at El Gato other than pink rocks that look alien.

Wednesday
A lazy start to the day, we depart for Agua Verde around 11:30 and arrive 3 hours later. We pass between a big rock/small Island off the coast. They were once joined and in fact still are below the surface, the pilots all agree it’s very dangerous to go through the gap, yet modern charts and google images show there to be no obstructions.

All the same I follow a carefully plotted line between the two. Agua Verde is empty of boats and very calm. We walk around the village and Kathy is amazed at the variety of wildlife and animals, goats, chickens, dogs, vultures, horses, all roaming free. We buy some internet tickets, 1 hour for £1, I assume it’s a satellite based system and later I reconfigure our boats wifi extender (Bullet M) to pick up the weak signal from the tienda and after a lot of head scratching, I turn the router into a bridge and the extender into a router with a dhcp server and we are all devices go. Sadly I waste our first hour of internet just trying to get it to work. We then feast on BBC/twitter/Facebook until our 2 hours are up. Kathy learns of ups and downs back home, but all is ok, I learn that not a lot has changed at the white house, but I’m very worried about the last minute rush to sell off drilling rights in the Arctic. I can’t get the lowdown on machinations at number 10, I expect I will have to wait for the memoirs to come out. It seems Brexit is turning into a complete shambles where a deal may be done, but it looks like a deal that nobody will want. So all in all, no change there. 

Thursday – Sunday
Still alone in the bay, Very calm and peaceful here. The village is very sleepy, some lads are crabbing on the rocks across from us. 

Kathy and I spend these 4 days dinghying around the little coves in the bay. Kathy dons her snorkel mask and gingerly gets back into a little underwater exploring. It’s difficult, she’s not a fan of salt water, or of a lot of things that are in it, like sea snakes and urchins, but she does really well and by Saturday we are able to make a long excursion around some headlands a long way from the beach. It’s such a lovely spot here.

We are joined by Chris and Gerry on two sailboats that we saw earlier in Isla San Francisco. Gerry sends over a plate of fish and taco ingredients for me, to make up for the fact he has to run his generator for an hour each night and morning, fortunately it’s quite quiet and worth it for the fish, which I think he recently caught and breaded, I would rather think that than imagine they have been in his fridge since Costco in Los Cabos. The Suzuki outboard is playing up again, but I think I’m on top of it, I think it’s as simple as the carb filling up with water, if I take the carb apart, swear at it , and then reassemble, it works great, so all I’m really doing is cleaning the water/fuel out. It started playing up just after I emptied the dregs of the fuel can into it. Sadly the drain at the bottom of the carb has broken, also when I reassembled it, I must have damaged the makeshift washer as it leaks fuel from the carb now. I count this as a success all in all.

Monday 23rd November.
We leave at 07:45 for the 22 mile trip to Puerto Escondido. Here we haul out. It’s a lovely passage and when we arrive, half an hour early, we try to get fuel, but the man on the dock who raced past us to get there first takes forever, and half an hour later the travel hoist has lowered its slings into the water and is calling us over. I give up on the fuel and slowly head for the lift, unfortunately as we approach they tell me I have to reverse into the slings. There’s a 10 knot crosswind pushing the bow down to port as I reverse, After many attempts I’m getting closer, but the lift sits above a very sharp and rough concrete set of piers, and once the stern is in, if the bow blows around, I’m going to be paying in teak and gelcoat. Fortunately a passing dinghy offers to help and I get him to push my bow back as I reverse, this works right up until the stern is in-between the piers, but then he is gone, I can’t see him, but the bow is swinging toward the concrete and I’m about to rush out again, which may not even be possible, when suddenly he is back on the job and the boat is lined up perfectly. Phew!
For the first time in 4 years, and 4 travel hoists, I find myself in one with a working weight sensor. I had always assumed our boat weighed 18 Metric Tons, but found out today the back end of the boat weighed 10 Tons and the front 7 in the slings, and we are light on 1/2 ton of fuel and water right now, so I’m very happy with that.Of course I would like the same boat in a ten ton version, for speed, but then I might not win so many battles with the rocks that jump in front of me. The hull looks ok, a small chunk is missing near the rudder, but only gelcoat, about 30 cm by 3 cm. I blame that on Canada, we probably hit a tree at some point, a USA tree would be too scared of litigation, and they don’t really do trees in Mexico.
Tomorrow at 8am a man will start sanding the surface down, I need to see how deep the barnacles have left their mark. I also have a very small number of blisters, maybe 5 mm across and just slightly raised, I’m not losing sleep over them. The starboard big anode had gone completely, the prop anode is about as far gone as you would like, but the port anode is still doing great service. I haven’t changed the hull anodes ever, so that’s good. The Max prop has no grease in it as usual, I will repack it, I’m not sure when the grease leaves, if it’s slowly over several months, or the first day I run up the prop?

We are here for a week, hopefully that’s long enough to get everything done. We shall hire a car and do a bit of sightseeing. 

Paul Collister