Author: paulcollister

• Tropical Storm. Winds 39-73 mph.
• Category 1 Hurricane. winds 74-95 mph (64-82 kt) …
• Category 2 Hurricane. winds 96-110 mph (83-95 kt) …
• Category 3 Hurricane. winds 111-130 mph (96-113 kt) …
• Category 4 Hurricane. winds 131-155 mph (114-135 kt) …
• Category 5 Hurricane. winds 156 mph and up (135+ kt)

Nora approaches, currently a tropical storm, but expected to become a hurricane any hour.

The main problem is down to location, as I mentioned before, the boat and the hurricane seem to be in the same location. I’m a few thousand miles away.

The hurricane could still change course, but it seems unlikely. It is predicted to make landfall over the southern tip of the Baja peninsula this weekend and will then pass over La Paz. The only hope at the moment is that it stays as a Cat 1 hurricane. Even as a cat 1, the winds could reach 82 knots, or 95 mph. This could be very bad for many boats, but with some limited protection in the marina, it may not be too bad. If it becomes a Cat 5 hurricane, then I might no have a boat to return to.

Being the optimistic sort, I’m hoping it will weaken and change course a little to the east.
Despite my personal interest, it’s certain that many people will be badly affected, many homes will be damaged and there will be lots of flooding and potential landslides, which often lead to loss of life.
Let’s hope for the best.

Paul Collister.

Tuesday 20th
My tooth is kicking off again and I’ve been attacked by something that likes to bite in the night. It’s the worst biting I’ve had to endure for many years, I must have a hundred bites on each hand, some have swollen up a lot. So between the bites and the toothache I didn’t get much sleep. I rush around as best I can doing final jobs on the boat, but I’m exhausted quickly and decide Kathy is just going to have to return to a mess, better I focus on the critical jobs. Arturo comes round for dinner, even though I can’t eat, we have a good laugh and he is invaluable in helping me get the heavy sailbags into the cabin, and also in getting the boat covers and AirCon inside.

Wednesday
Up early, my hands looks a mess and I’m hoping the airline won’t get worried. I laugh with Kathy on a quick WhatsApp call that I look like I have leprosy. She doesn’t find it quite as funny as me. It’s getting close to flight time before my Covid results appear, I’m Negativo, so will be able to board the flight. The government have said to use the VeriFly app to speed up my processing at heathrow, so I look for the app and can only find one app called VeriFly, written by a company I have never heard of, with not many downloads and a 1 star revue slagging it off. In the days of Pegaus (nasty surveillance app) I don’t want to use it, however when I see it recommended on the BA site as well, I give it a go. I upload my flight details, my details, my test results, my booking ref for the two tests I had to order for the UK (£90)and my personal locator form. It churned for a few minutes before telling me everything was checked and approved. I was impressed, and keen to see if it made a difference.
I locked the boat up at 10:30 and ordered an uber to the airport, after more form filling there I was on a flight to Mexico city.

Once there I had many hours to kill before the BA flight to Heathrow, I tried to sleep, but there was nowhere to get comfortable. I was feeling a little feverish now and was desperate to get on the BA flight and get my head down.
Once boarded and fed, I was able to lie down, I was in the middle aisle and had all three seats to myself, as did every other passenger travelling alone. I wonder if that change to the seating assignments was built into the software or had to be patched in. I don’t remember future pandemic planning ever being mentioned in any of my software specs. I slept until we were flying over Cork in Ireland and thought fondly of my time there, and for some odd reason an encounter with a man who ran a launderette out in Ballincollig, a small town I used to live and work in. His accent was so strong I couldn’t understand a single word he said. We had a long conversation while I was trying to retrieve my washing once where he explained something to me and I responded with “Sorry, I still didn’t understand any of that” and this repeated for a long time, I think until I went home without my washing.
Soon we were walking the corridors and transporter trains of Heathrow T5. I had a different route from most as I was transiting to a flight to Manchester, at the transit immigration desk, the people in front of me were having a hard time as they had not given an address they were isolating in, nor had they ordered the testing kits, they were told that would all have to be sorted before they could come in. There were only about 20 of us in the queue and I was near the front, but after a scan of my passport I was waved through and reminded to take my Day 2 test. On the one hand I thought this VeriFly app has really worked, but then I thought it more likely he just wasn’t interested in checking anything, because he only mentioned the Day 2 test and not the day 8 test I wondered if he thought I had already been vaccinated, or maybe not come from an AMBER country. I didn’t really care, I only had an hour to find my next flight.
The flight to Manchester was delayed by an hour due to the APU (generator) failing, the cabin had overheated and they had to hook the plane into the airport Aircon. One of the other passengers worked on these planes and was giving a blow by blow account of what was going on to his mate, I loved hearing the technical details, but didn’t like the bit when he said the plane would be pulled out of service as soon as it landed in Manchester.

Arriving in Manchester quite late I missed the train to Liverpool I had hoped for, the next train got halfway and I had to change to a train that had been cancelled, I believe due to staff shortages caused by the pingdemic, as they call it, staff who had been notified they had been in close contact with covid positive people. Contrary to the media, it seems to me the real problem is they might be infected and should isolate, rather than we are losing too many staff because we are getting too many people close to infected people.
Eventually I get into Lime St where Kathy is waiting for me. It’s great to see her at last.

Friday 3oth July
My test results are in and I’m cleared to rejoin humanity. Liverpool people on the whole don’t seem to fussed about masks or social distancing, it’s not required by law, and even where organisations request it, like on the trains or in supermarkets, most people don’t bother. It’s weird. I might be a pessimist, but I have just travelled from the boat to Kathy’s flat wearing a mask (6 in total) for 40 hours with just a break for meals. I had to sleep on the planes with my mask on, even then I thought it was worth doing for the collective good. Saying that, the numbers coming out of the government look quite good. I was expecting them to be much worse.
It’s been a busy 8 days since I arrived, mostly ordering stuff on ebay and Amazon for the boat, getting things renewed and updated online, mostly paperwork. Kathy looked after me well for the first few days when I was exhausted. My bites are mostly deflated now and I have a few big black scabs!
My knife from Friday Harbour has arrived. This was a present to myself. Basically Kathy and I are fans of John Steinbeck, In 1940 he sailed from Monterey, a place we stayed in on SM, in a ship called ‘The Western Flyer’ to The Sea of Cortez to document the intertidal marine life with his good friend and marine biologist Ed Ricketts. He wrote a book called ‘The Sea of Cortez” and subsequently ” The log from the sea of Cortez” which documented the voyage. This year I have basically followed his route around the sea. The Western Flyer was later left to rot, until recently when fans of Steinbeck formed the western flyer foundation, with the aim of restoring the boat into a floating classroom where people could continue to study the marine world. Getting back to the knife, some of the old timber frames (White Oak) were beyond repair, and rot free sections were used to make handles for knives produced up in Friday Harbour (San Juan Islands, WA). I bought one of these at a seriously artisanal price, but given the history, the fact they are great knives, and also that they take the guy a week to make each, I figured it was a good deal. You can see how they are made here

There hasn’t been any hurricanes developing since I left, but today we have one that’s forming and looks like it might get to hurricane strength, but it looks like it will keep heading out to the west and not be an issue. I will be checking the hurricane situation every 6 hours until I return.

Sadly I missed the visit to La Paz of the Mexican Navy tall ship Cuauhtemoc training vessel last Saturday. She looks splendid.

Paul Collister

Tuesday 13th July 2021
I’m feeling good and there’s lots of cloud cover today, so the temperature should be lower. A perfect day for replacing the outlet pipes on the toilet!
I need a whole day for this job as so many things can be a problem. There are three hoses, one from the toilet to the Y-Valve, this determines if the waste goes to the holding tank, or out of the boat. From the Y-Valve a hose goes high to the Anti-Syphon fitting, this stops water flowing back from the sea into the toilet, and another hose from the Anti Syphon to the through hull which goes out of the boat. I have pumped lots of water through the system and disinfectant, so it’s not a bad job really, however the hoses are badly clogged with Calcium deposits. It takes about 4 hours to replace the pipes, and I make quite a mess, in the head and also in the cockpit where I’m chopping up the hose. Eventually I get to hose the boat down, then I hose myself down. I’m expecting the system to work much better now, but in fact I can’t really tell much difference.

Wednesday
I’m now starting to tidy up the boat and start packing for the trip home next week.

Thursday
I check the bilge pumps today and find one of them has stopped working, the big one for emergencies only. It turns out to be a break in the wiring hanging down into the bilge. This area is pretty hostile with oil, sea water and engine fumes all hanging around. It takes me a few hours to fix, and I completely cover myself in oil.

Friday
I’m finally able to book my covid PCR test, websites in Mexico aren’t really designed for foreigners, or for Chrome it would seem. Stick with firefox or better still Safari if you want the clever javascript to work.
In the evening Arturo and I head off for some Fish Tacos and for me to test out my Spanish a bit more.
After Tacos we walk up to the ice cream shop, and buy some Trolebuses, They have a grand display of famous Mexicans on the wall and Arturo persuades me to ask the owner for permission to take a photograph, so I try with “Puedo tomar una fotografía, por favor?”. The owner very happily agrees and then kicks off a conversation with Arturo who he recognises from a year ago when Arturo first visited the store.

Saturday
I wake up at 3am with toothache, the same place I had before, where the dentist said I needed root canal treatment. Since one of the fleet here died from covid, presumed to have been caught from his dentist, I’m going to wait until I’m home for treatment, so for now I’m having Codine/Ibuprofen and antibiotics to keep the pain down.

Sunday
My tooth is up and down pain wise, but I decide to head out to the Magote for a swim today. It’s been rather hot here, 36c+ ish most days, and the last few days, rather humid. However when Arturo arrives, around 3pm, the sky has gone black. Perhaps Tropical storm Guillermo is sending the clouds over, but as the sky darkens, the temp drops a little and squalls start to pass by. Guillerm is passing us way to the south and heading out west. by the time we can see blue sky again, it’s time for dinner so we head off to Restauante El Zarape.

Monday
Up early for a PCR test as required by HM Gov back home. It’s not a lot of fun. I had no idea what it feels like to have a 1 foot long cotton button shoved up my nostril and into my frontal lobes. I’m glad that’s over, but I think I have two more tests waiting for me in a box wending its way to Liverpool.
My neighbour returns, they are a 60ft Sailboat, with a dinghy almost as big as Sister Midnight. All very flash. I usually keep my distance from these ships as they are generally on charter to rich folks and the crew run around like crazy servants. However in reality, the crew and skipper are generally nice people, and this proved to be the case again. When they were reversing into the slip, the dockhand lost the stern line and the wind blew the boat onto me. The skipper was on the case and avoided a crash, but not before he saw a concerned Collister rushing to the side with a fender in hand. Once docked he came around to apologise and ask if he had done any damage. He also wanted to know if I had a barbecue gas bottle as the had run out of gas and his guests were waiting for dinner to be cooked, freshly caught Marlin I believe. I lent him a big bottle of gas and he went away happy. Later he returned with the gas, and a plate of fine food he had cooked for me. He is Mexican but said in his best English/American “Thanks you saved my ass there”, which in all honesty is a little over the top for my English sensibilities. Still it’s nice to help a neighbour out, and he will be here during the hurricane season, and has offered to keep an eye on the boat for me as well as Arturo.
Today I have also booked my two AZ Vaccine shots in the UK, the UK does not recognise the Chinese Sinovac yet, so in order to spend my evenings/early mornings raving in the sweaty clubs of liverpool, I will need to have the UK Vaccine passport. Now having two shots of Sinovac, followed by two shots of AZ will either kill me or make me bullet proof. I need to do a little research, but I expect it will be more of the latter.
This reminds me of a little cryptology story I heard. With most symmetric encryptions, you run the algorithm with the secret key on the data to get the encrypted result. You basically repeat the operation to decrypt. However some people had encrypted several documents individually, then added them into a bundle and encrypted the bundle, which accidently decrypted the original. Thinking a double encryption was better when in fact it was the total opposite. I’m no expert, but I’m hoping vaccines are different. I will do my homework.

The following is an extract from the English language Mexican newspaper “The Mexican news daily” and it always surprises me what a diverse country Mexico is.

‘Vaccination is such a vexed issue in some Sierra communities, such as the Mayan town of San Juan Chamula, that if an outsider even mentions it to residents, he runs the risk of being detained, led to the town square by a rope placed around his neck and fined 100 to 200 pesos (US $5-$10), the newspaper Milenio reported.
Neighboring Chamula is the municipality of Zinacantán, where vaccination against a disease that has claimed the lives of more than 200,000 Mexicans is equally unpopular.
“Everyone agreed not to allow vaccination,” said local artisan Juana Bárbara Vázquez, explaining that people believed that many deaths have been caused by inoculation against Covid-19. “They’re scared,” the 46-year-old told Milenio.
“The truth is I’m not going to get vaccinated either. I think I’m fine as I am because everything is calm here in town, thanks to God nothing has happened to us,” Vázquez said.
She said that most people believe that pox – a traditional corn-based spirit commonly fermented in people’s homes – will protect them from Covid because it’s considered an infallible remedy for all ills.’

So if I wasn’t on the wagon, I could try some of this Pox.

The Vaquita is a dolphin of which only ten are estimated to exist, and they are only found here in the Northern part of the Sea of Cortez.
They are being caught as Bycatch in the massive illegal gill nets put out to catch Totoaba. Totoaba are only found here as well, but are not yet extinct. These fish are very important to the Chinese as they can make their penises grow and help them live forever and ward off evil spirits. I made that bit up, but it’s roughly right. They only use the bladder from the fish, and one bladder can fetch $10,000.

Of course with such prices on offer, the fisherman, and it is claimed their cartel backers have bought big expensive fishing boats and outboards, spent a lot on nets and are not going to let the government or NGOs like Sea Shepherd get in their way. There have been battles between the fishermen and the Navy over the last few years, as these fish and their grounds are protected, but the fishermen need the cash. Petrol bombs have been thrown at the Navy and Sea shepherd ships. More info here
This week the Mexican government announced they are removing the protected areas the fish inhabit and so have basically given in to the mob.
A very sad day, The Vaquita will be lost to this planet very quickly and the Totoaba not long after.
The fish farm Arturo works on is actually all about Totoaba, its ambition was to provide a less damaging supply of fish, but also a percentage of their fish are released into the sea to keep stock levels up. Their cages are well offshore and they claim to be very environmentally safe. But I suspect all fish farms say that.

So this will be my last blog from Mexico until September. I might put a note up to describe the process of repatriating during Covid, but I don’t thing I have much to contribute until Autumn when Kathy and I return and will head off out, back into the sea before the water cools too much.

Paul Collister.

Monday 5th July 2021
I think Sunday’s meal out with Arturo was too much for me, I have stomach ache today and do sod all.

Tuesday:
I’m feeling better so decide to get this oil change done. I understand that it’s better to change the oil before the engine is left standing, rather than after, as the combustion creates sulphur, which in turn becomes sulphuric acid, which if left in the engine oil etches away at the surfaces. However, I’m no expert on this at all.
I am however getting good at changing oil on the boat. The engines oil should be changed every 100 hours, according to Volvo, but people often leave it to 200 hours, but I tend to do it after a decent bit of cruising, and when I’m back at a ‘base’ port. So after my recent trip, now seemed like a good time. The actual hours since the last change is 150, so that’s not too bad.
I think about videoing the operation, as it should be slick and impressive, but I forget.
My aim is to change the oil without spilling any on me, my clothes, or the boat. I’m getting better each time, and I’m so confident I wear a near fresh white t-shirt. The job requires me to suck the oil out of the engine with a special pump, it looks like a bicycle pump, but made of brass with an in and out pipe attached to it.

I run the engine to get the oil hot and runny first, then remove the scrunched up paper plug from one end of the pump, ready to attach to the engine oil sump pipe, but oil starts dripping out, so I position the pump over the dirty oil collection container to let the oil drip, it occurs to me I might speed this up by pumping the pump but it seems stiff. I pull hard on the handle and there’s a big pop and I see a compressed wad of kitchen roll, fly across the cabin, followed by a big squirt of oil. This was the bung in the other end of the pump I forgot about. Basically I have just sprayed the inside of the cabin with dirty engine oil! Scrub my previous boasting. Not sure if this would have looked cool on video after all.

I clean up and push on, only to find I have run out of oil filters, so another trip to the ‘Lubricantes’ shop is in order, they have them for pennies, so I buy three, and having found they fit fine, I’m going to buy another 5 as they will get used. After 3 hours, it’s all done. The engine has a capacity for 6 litres according to Volvo, but I never seem to extract more than 5 litres, so either they are lying, or there is a litre hiding somewhere.

Wednesday/Thursday
Not feeling great again, so relax and push on with Obama’s second book, covering his time in the White House. I loved his first book, but this is a little harder to read as it’s mostly, “I did this, this happened, I did this, this happened, …..” It’s interesting to see what was going on behind the scenes in the White House as the crash of 2007/8 rolled out.

Friday
The drugs are working and I’m up and about again. News on covid here is bleak, the hospitals are full, ventilators all in use. I’m glad I had my two doses. Apparently, there’s lots of social media showing gringos acting like covid is long over in Los Cabos, fueling resentment with many Mexicans who are suffering badly, yet the government are boasting that they are getting the tourism revenue up. It’s very difficult, Los Cabos in particular, and to a large extent La Paz rely on tourist money, people will suffer badly if the tourists vanish, at the moment many government staff, hospital workers, teachers, police etc are not getting paid. so the state government have a real struggle to strike a balance.
I head out to get some boat supplies for various projects including a length of hose for the worst job …

Those of you who recognise the hose should have sympathy for me, those who don’t, well you’re better off not knowing.

I have started bringing things inside the boat, like the Man Overboard gear (MOB). It doesn’t need anymore sunlight and probably isn’t fond of hurricanes.

I’m hoping Arturo will keep an eye on the boat while I’m back in the UK. There’s not a lot for him to do unless there is a hurricane, then it’s probably too late to do much. Location is the main thing when it comes to hurricanes, your location and its location. I understand the last time there was a serious hurricane here, the marina took a lot of damage and lost a few boats, I heard a couple of sailors died out in the anchorage, one of a heart attack. Neil the manager here tells me that the reinforcements they fitted, along with some breakwaters should make it quite safe now, but that is yet to be tested. The wind and wave direction is unpredictable and would determine the outcome for me. Above is an older picture of the Marina before they built the Marina Cortez next door. I have an arrow pointing to my location, which is close to, and protected by the landmass that now has a large apartment block on it.
It’s a worry being away for 2 months, bang in the middle of the hurricane season, but statistically the odds are in my favour. but the nature of the path they take is random, so I’m not sure if hurricane Enrique passing directly past us, but having fizzled out, makes the odds better or worse? I think the thing is with ‘Random’ that you can’t tell. I struggle with random and probability, how come you have a 1 in 6 chance of rolling a six on a dice, surely you have as much chance of never rolling a six if it’s really random.
Arturo has phoned me, we would be going for dinner now but he tells me he can’t because he has been driven to the middle of the desert, and he can’t tell me why because the driver speaks english and might be listening, but he will call when he gets to La Paz. I’m assuming he hasn’t been kidnapped, I don’t think it’s usual for kidnappers to let you phone friends to adjust dinner appointments, but we shall see.

Later I meet up with Arturo for some Tacos, seems he survived his desert trip.

Saturday 10th July
Feeling good today, so I tackle the quarter berth, the job is to bring in all the bits hanging off the back of the boat, like the lifebuoy, the danbuoy, rescue harness, self steering rudder and vane etc and shove them all in the quarter berth (QB) out of the sun and wind.

However I need to turn off the seacock that supplies cooling sea water to the engine, in case of a leak while I’m away. Access to this seacock is through a small hatch at the back of the QB, So first I empty the area, crawl in and turn it off, but like most jobs things get complicated quickly, the seacock handle has a bit of play in it and it’s not clear if I have it exactly in the off position, also I notice quite a bit of salt building up around the sea water filters top seal. It must be leaking.

I did put a new gasket in a few years ago, but it can’t be working. So I dismantle this, allowing me to see if I actually have turned off the seacock, which amazingly I have. Then I make some new seals, I will order a service kit when I get home, but for now I will have another attempt at making my own gaskets and washers. All goes well, amazingly there’s very little matter in the filter, just a couple of broken shells, I had hoped that might be related to the slight overheating on the engine.
Back together and tested, I turn off the seacock, remove power to the engine so it can’t accidently be started with no water supply and shove everything into the QB from the cockpit. By now the sun has set and it’s time for dinner.

Sunday
Another hot day, so I dinghy out to the magote and have a swim. It’s generally around 35-36c most days with a lovely cooling breeze in the evenings. So far I haven’t been bothered to setup the aircon, hardly seems worth it now for the few remaining days here. It’s interesting how global warming is playing out. You would think it would make the tropics unbearable, but it seems to be further north that the real problems are. Canada has seen record temperatures, and along the pacific coast of the USA temperatures are crazily high again, with wildfires starting to kick off.
A sumptuous meal on the Malecon with Arturo winds up the day.

Monday 12th July
Today was meant to be the horrible job day (Replacing the sanitation hoses), but I didn’t sleep well and don’t feel like the challenge. My pet mosquito must be quite fat by now, to fat to fly, which might be why I can’t hear her. However I am covered in annoying bites. So I work on the bicycle, the rear wheel is making a disconcerting noise. It turns out the nuts on the axle that hold the bearings in place are loose, and it’s rough as hell, when I turn it. I’m thinking bin job, the bikes been good for a few years now, and axles/bearings are two mechanical for me. However with the wonder of youtube and google, my first search for “Shimano rear bearing service” pops up a video showing exactly what I have to do. However I do need a special tool, but I bet a search on ebay would find that in seconds. Anyway, it’s the brakes and flat tyre that are the main issues right now, so I fix them as best I can and head off to the cycle shop and buy 4 new brake pads and an inner tube for about £5, I also arrange to bring the wheels in for new tyres and bearings when I return to the UK. There’s life in that bike yet.

Paul Collister
La Paz, BCS, Mexico

Monday 28th June 2021
I just read that the hurricane has claimed two lives further south, strong winds and torrential rain are causing problems there. However it looks like the hurricane is about to be downgraded to a tropical storm and will not be that big of a deal when it arrives here. All the same the marina management visit me and request I remove the furled headsails. It’s blowing quite hard, but a lull is expected later. The two headsails are wrapped around wires that support the mast using a revolving drum and sleeve mechanism. So by pulling on ropes you can release the sail or wrap it up, in the old days it was more difficult to adjust the amount of sail out, with furling systems you can do this all from the cockpit quite easily. The problem comes when the wind takes control, sometimes the sail can flap if not fully furled, then the sail can start to shred near the sheets (ropes to pull it out) and the sail parts from the ropes and starts to unfurl itself. in a viscious wind the sail flails around in quite a dangerous way and is almost impossible to tame. Once it has got enough sail out it presents a big hazard as it can pull the boat around putting lots of force and stresses on the boat and its mooring. I have seen boats almost destroyed by this process. So as soon as the wind dropped, I got both sails down. I will probably bring the mainsail in as well in order to reduce the windage, and to do some minor repairs on it and its sail bag.
I do the shopping, clear in officially, and dump off a load of laundry.

Last night Arturo insisted on treating me to a dinner in a fancy Italian restaurant I haven’t been to before. Very nice it was as well

Later I have a Trolebus (fruit flavoured shaved ice) drink at Cinnaroll’s cafe on the Malecon and enjoy the view as the sun sets. Of course the Malecon is closed as we are on red alert, the Indian/delta variant has been a big hit here, with many people bringing it down from the North to holiday with them. Cabo San Lucas, the fun destination for many visitors from the USA and Canada is now out of beds and respirators for covid patients. Just as the Delta variant was establishing itself in the states, California removed all covid restrictions. At least everyone here seems to be taking it very seriously, it is illegal to be outdoors without a mask, I heard yesterday how many of the marina dock workers have ill family or have lost family to covid. So BCS is still some way from the end, in fact we are now in a worse state than at any point since the start.

Tuesday 29th June.
Farmers market and I restock on vegan pesto, and find a new vegan stall setup. I buy some lentil burgers, partly to see what they are like, but also to show support for the guy who doesn’t have many visitors to his stall.

Wednesday
Enrique fizzled out today, about 50 miles away over Isla Partida. Very disappointing, just some rain in the night.
Flight to Mexico city booked for the 21st and I’m now preparing a list of things that must be done before I leave the boat in exactly 3 weeks time. An oil change must be due, so I grab the logbook to get the mileage and end up pulling up a soggy wad of paper from the chart table. Closer inspection reveals everything on the chart table, log, pilot guides, notebook etc is sitting in a big puddle of rainwater. It suddenly dawns on me that the erratic flashing of the PI Hat LEDs situated next to the chart table might be related to the water, and sure enough, the PI computer is sitting in a plastic box submerged in 1 cm of water. Bugger.
The cabin returns to a familiar configuration, where every surface is now covered with a seperate piece of soggy paper trying to dry.

That’s one good thing about sailing in the tropics, things dry quickly. It turns out I hadn’t closed the portlight in the middle of the night properly, it must have rained harder than I realised. I wash then hang the computer up to dry on the fan and later it comes back to life just long enough to deliver a web page, then it dies again. Fortunately they only cost £30-40 so it’s not the end of the world.

Later I speak with my son Isaac who, with his partner Holly, has just taken the keys for their first property. An apartment in London. Hats off to them for getting on the housing ladder so early, both of them are not long out of university. It’s crazy how inflation and london prices work, but their 2 bed flat has cost more than the four flats and one house I have owned in my lifetime, combined!

Thursday
I sit up in the cockpit with toast and coffee for my morning call to Kathy when an old friend comes to join me for toast.

I can’t be sure it’s Maria, but she has very similar markings and struts up to me in a quite bold manner as if to say, ‘come on then, get some food out for me’. As I get up, rather than being startled, she hops back onto the guardrail and waits for me to return with some crumbs which she then eats. Later she is in the cabin checking out the breadboard. She seems to know where everything is so I’m guessing it’s her. I must add some nuts too the shopping list.

In the evening I meet up with Arturo and we get some lovely fish tacos just off the Malecon. While I’m there, Claudia, a Pacena (a person from La Paz) friend calls me to say they are doing second jabs of the Sinovac Vaccine on Friday. This is great news.

Friday
Up early and off to the university on the edge of town for my jab. It takes about 40 minutes on the bike, but it’s all good exercise. Unlike Mazatlan, I don’t have a nice English speaking lady to jump out and guide me to the needles, instead there are two long lines snaking around the campus. I use my best spanish and find one if for Pfizer and the other for Sinovac. After 30 minutes in the heat the queue moves forward, but only to reach a lady telling everyone ‘No hay vacuna’, or there isn’t any vaccine. A man in the queue who had confirmed to me I was in the right queue is looking unperturbed, so I assume I should wait. I soon realise that I’m in the Sinovac and other vaccines second dose queue, except they have no other vaccines on offer, other than Sinovac.

There is a sign on the door saying Asta Zenica, presumably from another day, and a man in the queue is getting very agitated with the lady as he has been here for ages waiting for his AZ shot, and he keeps pointing to the sign, even though the women has told him many times there is no AZ vaccine.

I find an official and ask in my best Spanish if I am in the right queue for Sinovac and she points to a different queue several miles long reaching to the Guatemalan border I think, damm. I wander over and find they all think they are in the Pfizer queue, going back to my spot, my space in the queue has gone, and they give me evils, so I wander back to try and find the right place. I strike gold and an official gives me a card with the number 32 on it and sends me into a tent to wait.

After that it’s only 30 minutes till I go inside for paperwork and onto the Jab stations. I’m trying to keep my expectations down, as I have read how they give out the jabs until they run out , then send everyone home. There’s not a booking system like in the UK. I’m thinking about the last flight out of Saigon, the tension, so close…
Three hours in total and I’m back on my bike heading home all jabbed up.
Sadly the Sinovac doesn’t seem to be performing well against the delta variant, and in Asia many people have arrived at hospital with the delta variant after two jabs of Sinovac. Hopefully it will at least take the edge off the disease should I succumb. I’m a little concerned as the UK is probably a bad place to be visiting in 3 weeks time, infections should be at record levels given the relaxation of lockdowns, the football events and the lack of vaccination for young people and schoolkids who I think are going to be spreading the delta variant far and wide. They may not need to worry themselves, but it’s any older unvaccinated people who may be at risk.

Back on the boat and up go the covers/canopies, it’s hot work. hopefully tomorrow I can have the lie in I have been looking forward too all week.

Finally I must say a big thank you to the people of Mexico for getting me two jabs of the vaccine. I have always believed that you can tell a lot about a country and its people by how they treat visitors. For a country that’s not very rich, and is struggling to get enough vaccines, it is humbling that they are keen to help foreigners as much as possible. Thank you Mexico.

Out of curiosity, I checked to see how a Mexican, illegally in Britain would be treated, expecting Priti Patel to have a special deportation truck just for this event ready and waiting, but was very pleasantly surprised to find that anyone, legal or not is entitled to free testing/treatment and vaccination. So well done Britain as well.

On Saturday night I met up with Arturo to go for some tacos, we met in the square next to the Art Gallery which I had read had reopened. This is confusing as at the current Covid level I expected it to remain closed, The have a new exhibition starting on Monday, but you have to prebook to visit. We wandered over and found we could walk around now and enjoy the Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera exhibition for free. The gallery is new and is the first public art gallery in the state of Baja California Sur. I very much enjoyed the exhibits.

Paul Collister.

Sunday 27th June 2021
I’m back in La Paz and all tied up in the marina, close to where I left a few months ago for my solo circumnavigation of the lower half of the Sea of Cortez. A trip of about 1000 nautical miles, started 15 weeks ago and covering three states, Baja California Sur, Sonora and Sinaloa.

Monday 21st June
Stepping back a bit, it’s Monday and my dove has gone, I start preparing the boat to leave and head over to the office to clear out in advance for an early start on Tuesday. The office lady chats with me about the dove, and says she thinks the dove knows the weather well and decided to leave before the storm. Which is nice. However she also tells me the port is closed, so I’m not going anywhere in a hurry. The red flag is flying from the port capitania’s office. The recent storm, Dolores, to the south, which didn’t make it to hurricane status did create some walloping big waves which are creating huge swells at the entrance to the marina. I dinghy out and sure enough the waves are crashing over the breakwater. Maybe tomorrow.

Tuesday: Maybe Tomorrow
Wednesday: Maybe tomorrow

Thursday, Yes, a yellow flag is flying so I pass my key to a security guard, throw the bike on board and head off around 10:30, which is when there will be enough water to get out the channel. I cautiously motor through the swell at the entrance, some of the staff at Marina El Cid which is right near the entrance, wave me on. They know me now from my daily visits in the Kayak to check on the waves. After 15 minutes I’m in the sea and past the rollers and big swell. It feels great, I hoist the main and get the other two headsails out. The wind isn’t where it’s meant to be, and I can’t lay a course direct to La Paz, so I head a little north, close hauled but making great speed in 10-12 knots of wind

It takes me 35 hours to cross the sea, 5 hours better than I had expected. besides a bit of sail trimming, watching dolphins and flying fish, there was little to do. I didnt see another vessel for the whole passage, not even on AIS once I was offshore. I stayed in the cockpit and had modest meals I had ready to go. Napping for 15-20 minutes in the night.

Spanish omellete

Having arrived on the BCS side, the wind had picked up, I think it’s a corumel, but I’m not sure. I decided it would be too exposed to go into la paz bay, and despite the southerly swell I changed course and headed for the safety of a bay on the east side of Espirito Santo called Bonanza. It was quite dark and I was trying to remember if I had ever anchored this boat in the dark, or done it solo in the dark. Thinking it through I realised that I wouldn’t be able to see the markers on the chain as it went out. I need to put out just the right amount. I had a secret plan to go to the waypoint where I dropped the anchor last time I was here, when Tim & Asta visited. However somebody had stolen my spot and there was a boat either side of them. The bulb has stopped working in the depth sounder again so I couldn’t read it. I grabbed a couple of torches and set course for the beach. It’s amazing at night how close the beach looks. By the time I got the anchor down, the wind was gusting 28 knots, but we had the island protecting us from any waves so I slept well

The next morning was a little calmer and I headed round into the main La Paz bay, I was determined to get a swim in before I hit the docks and dropped anchor in Balandra Bay. This is a stunning area with picture postcard beaches. I snorkeled some rocks and a small reef, saw some great fish, and forgot to look under the boat while I was down there! Maybe I will take the boat out again.

Sunday morning and I leave for the Marina. It’s been blowing hard all night and around 20 boats have all taken shelter in the corner of the bay I’m in.
On the way back I spot the cruise ships are still here.

I was a bit worried about getting into the slip as the wind was gusting quite strongly, but as it turned out the marina staff turned out to take my lines and all went very smoothly.

A short time later, the boat is washed down, plumbed into the marina’s electricity, water and broadband/ethernet. Tomorrow I have to try and get as much canvas down as possible, if the wind allows me as a hurricane is headed for us. How exciting is that. More below.

Hurricane Enrique

Below is the forecast for the waters south of me, and a good five hundred miles south. The hurricane is tracking slowly to the East of North right now and that means it may well travel up the sea of Cortez and reach us soon

PMZ023-280930-
Entrance to the Gulf of California including Cabo Corrientes-
228 PM PDT Sun Jun 27 2021

...HURRICANE WARNING...

.TONIGHT...HURRICANE CONDITIONS. Near Cabo Corrientes, NW to N
winds 65 to 75 kt, shifting to E to SE late. Elsewhere, W winds 
60 to 65 kt, becoming SW to W 45 to 50 kt late. Seas 11 to 17 ft 
in S to SW swell. Period 15 seconds. Scattered showers and 
isolated tstms. Vsby 1 NM or less. 
.MON...HURRICANE CONDITIONS EXPECTED. Near Cabo Corrientes, S 
winds 60 to 70 kt. Elsewhere, SW to W winds 25 to 30 kt, 
increasing to 35 to 40 kt in the afternoon. Seas 10 to 16 ft in S
to SW swell. Period 16 seconds. Scattered showers and isolated 
tstms. 
.MON NIGHT...HURRICANE CONDITIONS EXPECTED. S winds 55 to 65 kt 
Near Cabo Corrientes, and SW to W 45 to 60 kt Elsewhere. Seas 9 
to 14 ft in S to SW swell. Period 15 seconds. Scattered showers 
and isolated tstms.

Below is the forecast for the area La Paz is in, much more manageable, but things could change. To think I scooted all the way here from Mazatlan to be in the path of a possible hurricane!

PMZ021-280930-
Southern Gulf of California-
228 PM PDT Sun Jun 27 2021

.WED...TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS POSSIBLE. 
.WED NIGHT...TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS POSSIBLE. 
.THU...S winds 20 to 25 kt, diminishing to 10 kt in the
afternoon. Seas 2 to 4 ft. Period 16 seconds. 
.THU NIGHT...S winds 10 to 15 kt. Seas 3 ft or less. Period
16 seconds. 
.FRI...S winds 10 to 15 kt. Seas 3 ft or less. Period
16 seconds. 

Th

I’m pretty confident it will fizzle out and it will be wet and windy here, but at least it will be cool and the boat gets a good washing.

Paul Collister.

Tuesday 15th June 2021
Last night and this morning was spent playing with the pactor modem. It’s working now and I briefly connected to a shore station (HAM) and sent an email. However if I use high power, or anything more than quite low power really, I get interference back to the modem. Apparently this is very common, in fact a few weeks ago, I just happened to be chatting to my neighbour on his T37 about SSB and he said he couldn’t use his modem for exactly this reason.
When I was 15, I operated my HAM station (G4dly) out of my bedroom and initially caused interference on everyone’s TV and Radio, I remember the neighbour had the home office radio engineers out they were so fed up with it. I offered to help, but they insisted I was the problem, not their telly, however once they were told by the home office that there telly was in fact illegally receiving my transmissions, and I was in the clear, they were happy for me to fit some filters, which I think solved the problem. Anyway, the reason I mention this is, that during that time, I researched the socks off radio frequency interference (RFI), and I think got quite good at it. So solving the problem here should be a doddle, if I can just remember what I knew 47 years ago 🙁 .
If I can get this working well, I will have a way to get weather forecasts and update friends and family on my whereabouts, wherever I am in the world. For the South Pacific passages, I may well have satellite comms, and if Mr Musk hurries up, I might even have broadband, I’m on his waiting list. Having this is a good backup.
So lunchtime Tuesday and I head off into the heat on my bicycle to search for Ferrite Rings, these are the modern way of reducing interference. Pictures below.

Sadly after a few hours of cycling and visiting 5 electronic component shops I had to give up. It looks like an amazon.mx job now.
I pop into Ley on the way back, and find the vegan section, I now have a selection of Chorizo sausage and meatballs to try.

Wednesday
I arrange for Rafa the fridge engineer to call back and see if he can find the coolant leak, this involves emptying out the cockpit lockers again. Before I do that, I take the SSB ATU connections off and remake these, I notice the earth of the ATU is connected to a 2″ wide copper strip/wire. This stuff snakes around the bilge and I’m not a fan of it. A bit of a waggle and it crumbles apart. I’m wondering if it was doing any good at all so I fire up the SSB without the earth on, and it tunes up just fine, telling me the ATU is finding its earth back from the SSB rig via the coax, or down the 12v cable. Either way, this is not good for the rig, tuning, transfer of power to the backstay/atmosphere, and especially not good for keeping the stray radiation inside the boat to a minimum. I dig out some heavy cable and route it from the ATU down into the bilge. While rummaging for said cable, I find a couple of ceiling fans that run on mains power. I tie one to the ceiling, remembering how well it worked in the past somewhere, probably Malaysia, before realising it’s 240v, so not a lot of use unless I run long leads around. So I head off to the Hipermarket to see if they sell a 110v version of the same thing. There’s something comforting about having a large revolving fan in the ceiling, perhaps I have some British empire colonial DNA kicking around.

And this is what I ended up with 😉

Thursday
Rafa confirms there is a slow leak from the evaporator in the fridge and that I might as well buy a whole new system, $1000 in the USA but more like $1700 by the time it gets here with shipping and taxes. And that’s between countries that have a trade deal and a land border. I would be tempted to sail up to San Diego and buy it there and fit it myself, as I could also get a load of other stuff I need, like a VHF Radio, VHF handheld, Watermaker stuff etc etc, but I don’t have the required visa anymore, and would have to get that in London, also Covid would probably stop me anyway.
While the locker is empty, I crawl down to inspect the earth bonding connections, and tie in the new cable I pushed down for the ATU. Perhaps I should explain, the ATU is the Aerial Tuning Unit and makes the backstay that holds the mast up, appear to be the perfect length wire for the SSB transmitter. The SSB being the radio I use for long distance, over the horizon, communications. I clean a lot of connections up, put new lugs on a few wires and tighten down the connections to the sintered bronze earth block and the Zinc Anodes.
Back at the SSB, the background noise seems much lower, and the rig is tuning up better, so I’m very pleased, however with MF/HF Radio signals, you can never be sure if it’s just a good/bad day for radio propagation. I try the Pactor modem again, and it’s slightly better, but still falling over as the radio transmissions are getting into the Modem. Later I pop over to have a chat with Denis on Ultegra, a fine sloop from Vancouver, the boat that is. We have a nice chat, he was a pilot operating float planes out of Alert bay for a while, I feel so cool to be able to just say, “Oh yeah, we know Alert bay well, been there many times” , of course he knows Sointula / Malcolm island well as it’s only a mile or so away and confirms my suspicion that there’s a little bit of tension between the two islands. Alert Bay is on Cormorant Island which has very strong roots with the First Nations people, whereas Sointula looks to Finland for its history. As far as I could tell, both Islands got on well but it’s a reminder to me how tensions exist between practically every grouping of people, no matter how similar they and their situations are. Enough philosophy, the main thing here is that Dennis had some ferrite rings which I borrowed.
They helped a lot and I managed to send an email to myself via a mexican HAM Pactor station. I also sent one to Dirk, but I’m not sure if that arrived yet. I need more ferrite, and perhaps a different routing of the cables. But all in all I think we are almost there with the Pactor/SSB.
No sign of activity at the top of the mast, it has been 16 days now since I saw Egg number 1, it should hatch anyday, however I think it might take a little while before I can see any babies up there. I’ve just realised that I don’t know much about this, I presume it’s one baby per egg? How do double yolkers fit into this? And if you want to tell me hens eggs for eating are different to chick carrying eggs, then I say visit the markets in Thailand!

Friday 18th June
Rafa returns, he has left his pressure gauge on the fridge overnight, and he confirms the pressure has not dropped. He, and I concur, that the leak is in the evaporator. I don’t know if you remember I went on at some length about the overwhelming urge I have to hack the ice off the evaporator when defrosting 🙁
Anyway, it seems that with the ice buildup from the last two recharges, that the ice is stopping the leak. So as long as I keep the fridge frosted I might get away with it. It sounds like a plan, and I’m going for it. Just as soon as I can get a replacement I will though.
We have a tropical storm that is threatening to turn into a proper hurricane and it’s only a few days away. It’s heading towards Mazatlan, at least that’s the clickbait version of things, I expect it will fizzle out before it gets here, and even if it does get here, it’s unlikely to harm us given our location up a long channel inland.

Still it’s a worry, and we will almost certainly get some wind from it. I worry for my feathered friends as they might have a job coping.
I take a walk around the marina to stretch my legs and on the way back I notice it has got dark rather quickly, looking up I can see very menacing clouds racing above, very soon the whole sky is a dark grey and the wind has picked up. I know it’s not storm Dolores, as she’s been named, but I expect it’s a squall thats spun off her, or at least been in some way affected. It could also just be caused by a local heat spot, either way, back at the boat the wind has picked up to maybe 20-25 knots in gusts, and I have to take down some covers I had up to deflect the sun, as they are trying to head north. I hope the bird(s) are ok.
Just before sunset I head over to Dennis’s boat to return the ferrite rings and upon looking up the mast I can’t see the nest. I grab the binoculars and wander around the pontoon to get a better view but I can’t see the nest anywhere. Now I’m quite worried. It’s too late to be going up the mast to check, and when I’m at Dennis’s boat he says he can see the nest from his angle, I can’t but perhaps they have squashed up against the light to avoid the wind. I decide a mast climb is in order for first thing in the morning.

Saturday.
The Hurricane hasn’t happened, the storm headed inland, but we can expect some wind and rain soon. So with some trepidation I head up the mast, I have already had a good look with the binoculars from various places in the marina and I’m pretty sure they have left. As I approach the top it’s clear they are not there. The mother has flown away, and there’s no nest, as for the egg I think there were two possible scenarios. 1) The squall blew the nest away and the egg crashed to the ground, or 2) the egg had hatched and the mother and baby flew away when the squall started, and the squall scattered the nest to the winds.
Now in all my years I have generally found that stuff that falls of the mast ends up on the deck, despite the strong wind, the boat wasn’t rocking much at all, and so I am certain if egg or chick had fallen, it would be on the deck below, and it isn’t. I have had a good look. So I am going with the fact that Mother and Baby are safe and happily cooing away from their new home.

I have started to tidy the boat, and have booked my place in Marina La Paz for three months starting next Saturday.
I hope the baby bird got away, I can’t think that I could of done much more to help, in the end it had to deal with the forces of nature, as birds have been doing since birds began I expect.

Sunday
It rained last night, around 3am, there was lightning and thunder and a serious downpour. This will not seem like much of an event to those back home, but for me, it was the first decent downpour I have seen for probably a year now. we have had maybe 2 or 3 showers in the last year, but no propper rain. The only downside to this is that the mosquitos now have plenty of places to lay eggs.

In the morning I load up the dinghy with 6 * 20 ltr empty diesel cans and head around to the fuel dock, only to find they must all be at church. I will go back tomorrow. I have a full tank of 200 ltrs, but at 5 litres/hour (on a bad day) thats 40 hours of motoring, and it’s about 220 miles to La Paz, at 5 knots, that would be 44 hours, so I would like some reserve. Saying that, I plan to sail for most of the passage. After launching the dinghy, I scan the foredeck closely for any signs of egg, and there’s nothing.
Another trip to Walmart to stock up on a few things for now, and for the passage. I took a snap of a missing manhole cover en route that I nearly cycled into the other night. It was dark and I just picked it up with my bike light. My bike would easily fit through that hole. One hopes that after sailing two oceans, one might eventually be able to go out in a bit of style, lost at sea, is fine with me. But not by falling into a drain on the way home from Walmart.

So I will publish the blog now as tomorrow, Monday, I’m going to be quite busy preparing the boat for sea. I have to take down tarps that have been keeping me cool, stow the bike and the new fan, get the fuel and provisions, get the dinghy back on board , etc etc.
I plan to hit the sea on Tuesday morning around 8:00, I have to find out the latest dredging schedule. It’s looking good for swell at the moment, and hopefully once I’m out of the marina it should be a simple 2 day passage.

I’m desperate for some peace and quiet, without the tourist boats blasting out their Banda and Rap music, so instead of going straight to La Paz, I will get within a half days sail and slip into a cove near Balandra or on Espiritu Santo and enjoy some peace and do a bit of snorkeling and swimming. I have booked a place in Marina De La Paz from Saturday until the end of September. Once there I will start to strip the boat outside, sails/covers/canopies and even the solar panels will come off as I will be leaving the boat all alone during hurricane season, it needs to have the least wind resistance possible. Just in case.

Tuesday 8th June 2021
Rafa seems to have done a good job on the fridge, it’s very cold and holding up to the seriously hot temperatures here. It’s now hitting 35c inside the cabin and only drops to around 32 at night. Outside it has been hotter. People in La Paz warned me that Mazatlan would be very hot, but funnily enough it’s been much hotter in La Paz, getting into the 40’s there I hear.
I have decided that if the worst case predictions come true, then the eggs may not hatch before my flight home. I would then either have to book new tickets at some cost, or not go home. There’s no way I’m going up the mast to kill two baby doves while there mother flys around me going crazy.
However I haven’t seen the mother today, and perhaps she has abandoned the egg(s). I decide to climb the mast, take some pictures with the GoPro as that’s easier to handle, and if she is not there, to take the nest with the egg away and try to set it up in a new home. If the new home doesn’t work, it should still be less stressful than the alternatives I hope.
If I am delayed here by the doves, then I may have to move the boat if a hurricane approaches, and that’s definitely a possibility, if I move the boat, I expect the nest and eggs or baby doves will come crashing down onto the hard deck as the boat rocks.
I’m very optimistic as I approach the nest, until I’m very close and the dove appears in front of me, sitting on the egg, and I think there may be a second in there. As I move around her with the camera, she flaps her wings at me in an offensive gesture, they make a very loud clap sound and it certainly makes me jump a little. I’m hoping she will fly away, but she’s resolute in protecting the eggs so I realise there and then, I’m here for a few more weeks at least.
You can see the video below.

My right hand is outstretched holding the GoPro camera, like a selfie stick, and my feet are in the mast steps, and I’m basically holding myself on with just my left hand. I feel confident because my safety harness is attached to the mast via a bit of rope, it’s only when I start to head down and I check the harness that I notice the knot is undone, the rope dangling down and I would have just had time to briefly think on that as I sped past at 9.8 meters per second per second.
Must try harder on the safety front.

Wednesday
I ask in the marina office if they have had any experience of this, while explaining my 7 day stay here may turn out to be 5-6 weeks. The lady in charge says she may be able to get someone in to relocate the nest, I ask her to investigate, but I’m worried if they will really relocate or just pop it all into a bin on there way out. It’s not an issue now as they never got back to me.

Above I have put a stock picture from National Geographic of a mourning dove, next to mine. It’s close enough for me, but others may point out that one is a dove and the other a rare orangutan, I’m not very good on animal or bird identification. I think it’s time she had a name.

Thursday
I’m being very lazy, if she’s sitting around all day and night on an egg, I feel like I can slow down a bit too. I do a little programming for a customer, that will cover the cost of the fridge repairs, and I start to read the “Handmaid’s tale”
Later I visit the Soriano supermarket in search of some veggie/vegan goods, but it seems like Sinaloa is not the place to be a veggie. I pop into Office World to get some printer cartridges for my little cannon. It’s a model 6100, I have ranted about this before, and in my mind this should be on the G7 agenda this weekend, as they don’t stock cartridges for that model anymore, I mean why would they, It’s 6 months old. There is a new model, the 6110, Cartridges that look identical, but apparently won’t work. I wonder if the EU can put an end to this madness, how about all ink cartridges must be easily refillable, or let’s go back to ink ribbons.
I eat out at one of the bars that line the edge of the marina. I sit down with my kindle, hoping the pounding house/banda rap music coming from the boats opposite will stop soon, once their passengers have disgorged but no, the music is coming from above my head, and as the sun sets I notice there’s also disco lights sweeping around and my table turns bright blue every 20 seconds. And it’s not several boats making the noise, it’s the restaurants either side of me playing similar music, but competing with each other for who can make the worst mix of drums and bass. At least Margaret Atwood’s writing is interesting enough for me to ignore this for the time it takes to eat a hamburguesa camarones, (Shrimp Burger). Very nice it is too.

Friday
On Friday I’m starting to suffer from the heat, or more specifically the humidity. I dig out the Plastic covers for the boat I had made in Miri, Borneo, some time back and after an hour of tugging heavy plastic around the boat is covered. The inside temperature drops from 35 to around 30 over the next 24 hours.

Saturday
It’s funny how one still thinks Saturday must be approached differently to the working days of the week, even though I’m in a country where most people seem to work a six or seven day week anyway, and I retired long ago from the normal routine. Still I feel shopping is in order, I hate consumerism but feel if I have to go, then a Saturday is the best day to join in the convention. In order to add some spice to my outing, I visit Sam’s club. I’m not really sure how this all works, I think it’s a cash and carry, like costco, and you pay about $20 / year to get their discounts. I presumed when we arrived in Mexico 19 months ago, that we wouldn’t be here long enough to get our $20 back in the discounts. I think I was wrong there. I like the spaciousness of the place, but mostly I like the supply of chocolate they had. Kathy will like the wine supply. Time to join the club.

After Sam’s club, into Walmart then home to the boat.

Like much of my childhood, Saturday started with promise but ended with little achieved. At least as a child I always had Doctor Who waiting for me at tea time. Here I have episode 9000 or so of Leo sanding his hull in Sequim, and RAN sanding his bottom.
On the cycle ride home I feel some rain, the first in a year I think. It’s quite exciting, and as I approach the marina it’s getting stronger. Once on the boat it starts chucking it down and the sky is dark lit up by great streaks of lightning. I feel a little concern for the dove now, being on the top of a mast on water in a lightning storm is not the smartest of places to hang out. These birds often only live for a year, but can live up to 5 or 6, I wonder if this is her first thunderstorm? I temper this by remembering that she is the intruder. When mice invaded my house in London and Liverpool, I was open to the idea that I was the invader, Mice will have been nesting in those spots for millenia, my West Kirby flat was built on what was beach just 150 years ago. But here, on water, and I suspect this has always been a waterway here, there would have been no trees or nesting spots, so she is well out of order to move onto my mast.

Sunday
I feel I should rest today, maybe go to the beach, goodness knows why, I’ve been resting most days now for the last ten years. I load up the bike with my towel and swimming trunks and head north. Theres a spot I saw on google earth, north of the development zone, where it looks like there may be a small beach away from the resort hotels and Condos. When I get there it’s full of extended Mexican families enjoyed the protected waters there. A row of rocks breaks the surf up. It’s lovely and there’s lots of food available, however the humidity has killed my appetite.

We have had a few tropical storms develop near the southern border of Mexico, mostly they have headed out to the west or northwest, found colder water and died. but the side effect is clouds being spun off and sent my way, which is fine with me. I’m bored with the constant sunshine every day.

Weekends are busy in the marina with day trip boats rushing in and out with their revellers. Below is a typical scene.

I am also amazed at how the brass band, I’m not sure if they are Banda or Mariachi, or a combination of both, join the trippers to provide music. As below you can see the band take up half the boat, and are very loud. I don’t quite see how this comes under enjoyable. I love it, but purely for the surrealistic site of a man playing a huge Tuba in a boat that’s not much bigger.

Monday 14th June 2021
The plan was to go up the mast and film an update, she has been out of site, or absent for 2 days now. But as I look up in the binoculars from a pontoon finger two slips away, I can see her sitting there brooding. I won’t go up, it won’t tell me anything new, and I don’t think she thinks much of me so far. Instead I shall give her and her fella a name, how about Mary (Shepherd) for the female. Named after another unexpected guest who stayed a little too long. Fitting for a mainly Catholic country.

I think it’s funny how having the hatching egg on the mast is a pain for me, but would be Sailing Vlog Gold for many of the channels I watch on YouTube. They could really milk this, I wonder if there is a way I can syndicate it 😉

So still no babies, I have no more than 4 weeks left if I want to get my boat to La Paz and fly home. If I keep the boat here I will have 5 weeks. It’s going to be tight.
The goal for the next few days is to get the Pactor Modem working with Airmail, so that I can send and receive small emails from anywhere in the world for free, using the modem and the SSB. This will be invaluable from the south pacific. I have most of it working except for the control of the radio from the computer. If I’m not completely mad, it seems you control the rig via it’s headphone output. That can’t be right.

Finally it looks like I do have a leak in the fridge coolant, as the temperature is dropping daily.

Paul Collister.

Wednesday 2nd June 2021.
I’m getting ready to leave tomorrow, I will need fuel and some food, so I decide to check out the big municipal market before I leave. I’m on deck about to retrieve the bike when my neighbour points out that I have a visitor on the top of my mast. Looking up I can see a nest has appeared. The area that’s available up there is only the size of a beer mat, yet it looks like a ‘Mourning Dove’ has moved in. Apparently they can build a nest in a day if needed, typically 1-2 days.
I’m no expert on these things, but I may be soon.
I climb the mast to investigate and as I approach I can see the mother bird right in front of me, she stares for a few seconds then flies off, revealing a big egg she was sitting on. I take a picture and retreat. Not before I ponder slinging the egg over into the sea and brushing the nest away. I decide there’s no need to make a rash decision just yet, I will go to the market and ponder.

The market is great, one of the best I have seen in Mexico so far. In my mind, I’m optimistically wondering if the chick might hatch while I’m out shopping, and be ready to fly away in a couple of days, I have no idea on these matters. However, I’m struggling to justify killing the baby dove and distressing the mother just so I can meet an arbitrary deadline of being in La Paz by Monday. I can actually wait here for a couple of weeks, it’s slightly cheaper, but I won’t get to spend as much time with my new friends in La Paz as I had hoped.
One neighbour, and a couple of online friends have suggested I be brutal and explain to the mother she needs to start again in another place. A worry is that I could be stuck here for weeks, and then if a hurricane appears I may not be able to make the crossing in time to prepare the boat for my flight home. All to save a chick, that has a low chance of survival here anyway.

As I ponder this, I become acutely aware that I’m wandering through the poultry section of the market and there are hundreds of birds in various stages of dismemberment hanging and stacked all around me. There’s probably worse than Pollo here if I looked deeper. I don’t eat chicken or any meat anymore, so I didn’t feel an immediate guilt or duplicity about this, but I have eaten more than enough in the past. It seems we have a problem killing little pretty fluffy vulnerable things, best let them grow up and get tasty first.

From the market I visit the art gallery which is now open, they only have a small exhibition on but it’s amusing and reminds me of the work an artist friend does in London.

The other museums seem to be closed so I cycle down to the industrial dock area, I’m curious to see where the ferry to Stone Island is. This is supposed to be a great place to visit, miles of lovely beaches, but I’m confused because none of the islands here have any real big beaches. It turns out that it’s not an island at all, just a bit of coast that’s difficult to get to. I feel very cheated and want to complain to some kind of standards body. Surely the definition of an island should be easy to enforce.

I find the ferry terminal, but now feel that I would rather cycle the 25 miles or so needed to get to the beach rather than take a fraudulent ten minute island boat ride.

Friday 4th June.
The mother is still sitting on her egg(s), I’m a little wiser having met people who have had the same issue, two sailors have advised being brutal, another explained how he decided to wait and enjoyed watching the babies hatch in a nest inside his mainsail cover, then fly away. I’m with him on this one but worried his chicks took 2 weeks to learn to fly, I expect mine will be advanced learners. I also heard there’s more than a 50% chance a predator will attack the nest, survival rate is low for chicks, hence the mother’s nest 5-6 times a year I’m told. Somehow the idea of a pelican, or frigate solving my problem doesn’t seem so bad. Nature’s way?
For now I have put out a call to refrigeration engineers to come and fix the fridge, that’s going to take a few days, should they turn up, and I may have to wait for parts, then we can reassess the situation. I’m not sure if these birds are migratory, but if so, most countries have strict rules about approaching / disturbing their nest, in the USA and possible Canada, I think you can be imprisoned for interfering, I have read of people having to leave their boats and move ashore. Fridge man just called to say he will arrive on Monday and can work on my fridge, so that’s good.
A local diver has just finished cleaning the bottom of the boat, he spent an hour underwater, he tells me the antifoul is very good, just a few small barnacles at the stern and that my anodes are all good. All this for $40.
There are a few boats here, that the owners have left for the hurricane season and gone home. I wonder how bad it would be to relocate a nest to their boats? 😉
So I have a free weekend now, I have no work, not many boat jobs, and miles and miles of fantastic beaches and eateries, I guess I will just have to find a way to cope.

The weekend.
Later on Friday I noticed a lot of emails arriving, after an hour I had over 5000 messages from Microsoft (MSN) telling me I was spamming them. I shut my mail server down and started to investigate.
It turns out my server (I rent from Amazon) has been hacked. The email server I configured is secure, I put a lot of effort into that, but I can see ways to improve now. The problem comes from WordPress, at some point I had used a plugin (some fancy code that gives your site bells and whistles) that had installed malicious software onto my server, allowing baddies to upload more evil code at a later date. I actually host about 10 websites on my server, mostly old or test sites I play with. One of them, a wordpress site I used to have at bluehost was the source of the infection, in fact it was almost certainly infected there, possibly by another user on the shared server. The file dates point to this. So it was only the websites on the server that were vulnerable, however the wordpress sites, in fact probably all the sites have the ability to send emails, and that was the hackers intention it would seem, so last week around half a million Wells Fargo Phishing emails left my server for the users of MSN. Microsoft blocked my IP fairly quickly and sent me complaint emails for each one they received. I also had about 25,000 emails, backed up in queues waiting to be delivered.
I spent most of the weekend trying to figure all of this out, and I hope my site is secure again, but the nature of the hack makes it hard to be certain, without re-installing wordpress on all my sites (3 in total). We shall monitor it closely. I also will be throttling my email server so it can’t send more than 1 email a minute or so, once I work out the syntax. One of the side effects of this is that my emails might not get through to people, or end up in junk folders until I re-establish my servers credentials with the spam agencies.

I managed to fit a trip to the beach to cool both days though, so not all work.

And a visit to the supermarket.

Monday and I have a cold fridge again, Raffa, the local fix everything engineer refilled the gas for £50, but tells me the unit is 11 years old and needs to be replaced. The connections are leaking oil and the evaporator is rusting. I might get a few more months before it needs to be refilled. This could be expensive. But for now I have cold Cerveza sin Alcohol.

Paul Collister

Tuesday 25th May 2021
After a slowish sail down from my failed attempt at getting into Altata, I arrived early at Mazatlan, the dredging was not meant to start until 10 am So I was hoping to sneak past that obstacle on the way in. There was a fair amount of swell bring breaking waves close to the entrance so I was a little apprehensive, but I have done a few entries like this before, the scariest might have been in Miri.

The marina had assigned me a berth, but I must have misheard and ended up in the wrong one, It didn’t really matter, there are party boats everywhere blasting out lovely Banda music (not) from there PA systems.

I clear in, the office staff are lovely and offer to sort out my expired visa for me when they see it.

Later I cycle down the Malecon to see what this town has to offer. Sadly I’m very disappointed, The marina is in the ‘Marina’ district, an area that 15 years ago was just fields I expect, but was designated a development site where a big fancy marina, in fact several marinas were built, lots and lots of condos, shopping malls, superstores etc. A lot of it looks very smart, but overall it’s not finished, and large parts are already in decay, while other fields are being prepared for huge skyscraper type hotels and condos. In the UK, Marina generally is used to describe a place where richer people keep their boats. I have noticed in the rest of the world, it means an opportunity for property developers to make a killing. The marina district here only has about 5% to do with boats, the rest is big malls, strip malls, autozone type stores, fast food and lots of condos.

This marina is the base for many day trip / tour boats. Big catamarans, and power boats, plus a few other oddities, like a giant sailboat called the black pearl, that seems to take about 30 people just on it’s foredeck. They fill up with boisterous young people, many of them a little ‘happy’ , many smoking cigarettes that have a very distinctive smell I remember from California 😉
The boats put on some really loud thumping music and head off out into the bay for an hour or so. At the weekend there’s a constant stream of them.
To get to the famous malecon, I have to cycle through the hotel zone, that’s really depressing, massive hotels for a few miles front the beach. Again, only for the use of patrons, I get to cycle along the back of the hotels where the streets are lined with tourist trinket stores, fast food, and fancy diners, casinos etc. People here travel like they do in Thailand, little open backed trucks that take 8 people, often decorated, with disco lights and loud music blasting out. Or they use smaller golf cart type vehicles. Congestion is bad, fumes are bad, noise is bad, plus you have lots of diggers/cranes/trucks delivering steel girders & rebar iron to building sites set up wherever there is a chance to build. In my mind, just one ugly site after another for miles.

When I do reach the Malecon, it’s a characterless concrete affair, next to a busy highway making it noisy and polluted. However the sea and waves do look good. I plan to go to a supermarket, but realise I have lost or forgot (Lost it turns out) my padlock for the bike. So I can’t leave it outside anywhere. I cycle around and end up in the older part of town, things are looking up now. The cathedral looks great, and in a street next to it I find a bike shop, where I buy a new lock for £3.
Cycling back I call into Ley and get some fresh food, back to the boat and an early night. That’s a ten mile round trip.

Back at the marina and I confirm that the boat over from me on the next dock is indeed ‘Sailors Run’ Geoff & Debbie’s baba 40. It’s the same as mine but in Ketch format, an extra mast at the back. I followed Geoff daily as he sailed this boat single handed, non stop, solo around the world. He was 70 at the time, and an inspiration to us all. He was pivotal in my mind in deciding to buy this baba for our round the world trip, and I learnt a lot about extreme weather sailing from his blog updates and later his book. Sadly he’s not on his boat, as I would have loved to say hello.

Wednesday
I head on down the Malecon by taxi to the Oficina de Turismo, I have been told they can help me get vaccinated. Amazingly as I’m looking for the right door, a lady comes out and offers to help, she explains that they can vaccinate me tomorrow, but they only have the Chinese Sinovac vaccine, she thinks the Astrazeneca is better, but that ran out. I book an appointment for tomorrow.
Later that day I realise that there is a Walmart just 5 minutes away on the bike, so I head over there. I hate multinationals, and I prefer to shop in Mexican owned shops when in Mexico, but I have to say, they have everything I have been missing, and spend far too much on European chocolate, spanish omelette, whole wheat bolillo etc.

Thursday
I get a cab to the vaccine location, a big sports hall near the stadium, I’m wandering around, wondering where us foreigners queue when I’m pulled out of the crowd by a young lady who tells me to follow her, it’s the same lady from the tourist office, she is there to help out foreigners. She gets my paperwork done, and within an hour I’m jabbed up and sent on my way. Thank you Mexico for your kindness. You may be a poor country, but you show much generosity & humanity to foreigners.
I’m thinking I should get a taxi back to the boat in case I feel any side effects, but instead I set of an a 15 mile walk around town.

Before I get too far I decide a meal on the beach might be fun

6 Hours later I call a taxi from the far end of town. I sleep well.

Friday,
A man from the Immigration office turns up. I know a lot of people who complain about how things work in far away countries, but in the UK, had my visa expired, (due to covid I haven’t been able to renew it easily), I would be rounded up, possibly put in a detention centre, then deported. However, here I just pay a man from immigration (at least that’s what he said) some money and it’s all sorted. Seems much more civilised to me. I get a visa, he and his family get a night out on the town, everyone’s happy.

Saturday 29th May
Boat chores today, wash my clothes, have a little cycle around the marina. Now I have the vaccine and the visa sorted I can leave and head back to the Baja, but first I want to visit the cultural sights, tomorrow will be a bit arty and archeological, sadly the weather looks like I might have to stay here until next weekend, I’m sure I will find jobs to do.

Sunday
I cycle downtown, the roads aren’t really designed for cyclists here, and the drivers aren’t mad on us either. they have cycle lanes, but they’re dangerous to use and cars treat them like an undertaking lane. Also lots of pot holes and steep drops make them bumpy. The art gallery is closed, so are the other museums. I can’t work out when they should be open, but the lady at the art gallery says Miercoles (Wednesday) we will see. Still I have a great time cycling around the old town. Wonderful spanish colonial style buildings. I’m reminded of Barceloneta, Barcelona in places.

I cycle down to the beach and find a quiet little cove away from the crowds and jump in the sea to cool down. The waves are strong here and there’s lots of rocks, so after half an hour I jump on my bike and head back along the malecon, however the sea is calling again, so I wheel the bike down to the big beach and do some more swimming, it’s just perfect here, the temperature is great, the waves are fun, but eventually I have to head back.
I pick up some ice on the way as the fridge has packed in.

Monday and I checkout a big shopping mall, it has a C&A but no clothes that I want, I do find a big clothing store that claims to be in liquidacion, and I buy 5 pairs of shorts at a very good price, onto Ley and fresh stuff for a slap up fish dinner. I can’t really store food now so it will have to be fresh every day.