SV Gallant Fox

The Great Yanmar Rebuild of Aught-Nine - Part II

The Fox spent 6 full weeks on the hard, the longest it has ever been out of the water. Most of this time was spent waiting for parts to be shipped from various elsewheres. The Total Yacht Works team of mechanics took our Yanmar 4-JH3 all apart, cleaned it, buffed out the salt water damage, and put it all back together. I'm sure they didn't have any parts left over, like we would have if we'd tampered with the thing. They reassured us that the engine cylinders had been spared from significant salt water damage. Yay.

We swung by the yard just as the guys prepared to reinsert the engine into The Fox via crane. The new exhaust elbow/riser is beautiful in its beauty. That's a close-up of it in the pic to the left. In the pic to the right where the crane is raising the engine up to the boat, it's the contraption sticking out at the engine's upper left corner. This view shows the forward part of the engine on the right, the aft part of the engine on the left.

We had Total Yacht Works and their affiliates do other necessary repairs and work while they were at it with the engine rebuild, including the stern tube mentioned in the previous post. Total Yacht Works replaced that corroded stern tube with one a a bit thicker, and hopefully cast from a better batch o'bronze.

Then there was the user error that caused irreversible corrosion in the heat exchanger. Another $1500 lesson learned. Finally, the bottom paint. Seems that the bottom layer, closest to the barrier coat, had failed so the hull had to be sanded all the way back down to the original barrier coat and repainted. Too bad that a mere  5 months previous we'd spent $1500 and a week's cruising time hauled out in San Carlos, so GB could slap some extra coats of paint on the bottom. Total Yacht Works said that GB's part of the bottom paint looked just fabulous and could have stayed if only it hadn't been on top. Ah well. The new bottom paint that the Boyz 'n The Yard did looks sleek and classy, so all's well that ends well. Paint-wise.

Once splashed, we had the 50-hour running of the engine to seat the valves. Plus a boatload (so to speak) of cleaning to do to remove the detritus of 5 weeks on jackstands in a busy boat yard and next to a construction site. Not to mention the removal of 6-legged stowaways: microscopic-sized ants, refugees from the construction site next door, who colonized The Fox by climbing up the power cord in search of the open bag of sugar that one of us had stowed in a locker. Two weeks post-splash and I'm still finding ants.

Finally, about 20 hours in to our 50-hour valve-setting time, it seems our new lip seals on our propeller shaft failed. (Lip seals are 2 nitrite seals with steel bands in them; the aft one keeps salt water out and the forward one keeps oil in. They ride in an oil-filled coupling that fills from a reservoir located about 2 feet above the propeller shaft.) GB has always been leery of this design, although our first set of lip seals performed well for the first 1500 hours of engine run time. However, this new set of lip seals packed it in after only 20 hours. Apparently, it is no surprise to diesel mechanics that lip seals can go either way. Upshot of this latest lip seal failure: we shall now wait while Total Yacht Works orders replacement parts - but this time, to replace the lip seal design with a non-oil based, bellows-style, reputedly more reliable PSS shaft seal system. Once the parts are in - may take a week. Or two - we will get hauled once again and while The Fox is in the slings the new parts can hopefully be installed. Whee.

Best not to talk about the added expense of the parts, the cost of the extra haulout, or the fact that the slip rates at El Cid go up significantly tomorrow as Nov. 1 is the start of high season. Or that, psychologically, we wanted to get out on the water Now Please. Sailing - and boat repair - is like that sometimes.

m

The Great Yanmar Rebuild of Aught-Nine - Part I

We returned to Mazatlán late this past summer, not only to hide somewhere for potentially the worst part of hurricane season, but also to visit the fine mechanics at Total Yacht Works. They'd done work for us before and the timing of our return coincided nicely with Yanmar's recommended 2000-hour engine maintenance, so we decided to throw the work their way.

The situation with the engine had all started innocently enough. During the past year GB had observed an increase in oil consumption, especially at high rpms but negligible at low rpms. When we'd had the oil cooler replaced in the summer of 2008 these and other engine/oil symptoms improved. However, during June and July 2009 as we were cruising the northern half of the Sea of Cortez, GB noticed that the oil consumption problems were back, and increasing. I'd noticed black smudges on the fiberglass around the outer exhaust vent, but frankly I'd seen those smudges for so long I thought it was normal. GB kept his concerns about the engine to himself - not wanting to cause me any worry, he later alleged. Instead, during July he started needling me about being impatient for the entertainment of the big city, and not wanting to spend any more time on the hook in the Sea of Cortez in "all these anchorages that look alike." What a smooth talker.

The Fox and its Yanmar 4-JH3 did us proud. Got us back several hundred miles to Mazatlán with no apparent problemo. After we returned from our August road trip to Morelia and Pátzcuaro GB arranged with Total Yacht Works to perform not just the 2000-hr. routine maintenance, but also a compression test to determine the cause of the oil consumption GB had been seeing. Meanwhile we wanted to check the condition of the bottom paint which seemed to be flaking off in areas so we were prepared to have the boat on the hard for some hull work, too. All told, we thought the whole deal would be, oh, a 5-day haul-out, splash-back-in piece o'cake.

Yeah, so the next thing we know Bob and Rafael at Total Yacht Works have performed the compression test and are breaking it to us gently that Mr. Yanmar has experienced some significant, long term salt water intrusion and needs to be removed from The Fox for a rebuild - unless, that is, further testing shows that Mr. Yanmar has totally packed it in and needs to be replaced.

Say what?

Nothing corrodes metal faster than hot salt water. Ergo, salt water intrusion into engine equals rebuild. It seems those madcap Swedes who installed the Yanmar way back in late 2001-early 2002, omitted a crucial engine component. Namely, a riser/exhaust elbow that rides directly behind the engine and is supposed to provide a Yanmar-specified 12" vertical clearance between the engine and the muffler. When a proper size riser/exhaust elbow is installed to specification it prevents salt water from flowing out of the muffler and back into the engine when the engine is not running. The system that was installed on The Fox had a smallish, horizontal, L-shaped exhaust elbow that provided not 12", but less than 6" vertical clearance. The effect of which was, that each time our engine was shut off and we were sailing - especially sailing on a starboard tack into head seas - the residual salt water in the muffler flowed along an almost horizontal slope back into the engine, sloshing merrily atop the valves, rings and pistons. When the engine was restarted the salt water got sucked back out...most of it. What stayed behind happily corroded the engine valves and piston heads while we traveled hither and yon, our ignorance blissful.

Facing an engine rebuild on a boat that is only 7 years old is suboptimal. However, we'd had a lot of luck. We were lucky to have had Mr. Yanmar go kerflooey after it got us back in to port, right where there were reputable Yanmar-certified mechanics with mad engine skillz, readily available to do the work during a comparatively slow time of year. We were also lucky to learn from Total Yacht Works Bob that had it not been for GB's years of attentiveness to oil changes and topping off the fluid levels whenever they got low, the salt water damage would have been much worse and we'd have had to buy a completely new engine instead of just an engine rebuild. So, thank you, GB, for having saved us the extra $7000 a new engine would have cost us over and above the cost of the rebuild.

Once The Fox was hauled, Mr. Yanmar was yanked out, along with various and sundry associated parts, including but not limited to the propeller shaft, Aqua-Drive system, propeller and stern tube. Good thing all this was removed and inspected: we discovered that the bronze stern tube encasing the propeller shaft had some serious corrosion - likely caused by an accidentally incomplete mixing of metals at the foundry, Bob guessed. So, we added a new stern tube to the list of parts that needed ordering.

We usually stay aboard for an ordinary haulout, but not for this one. With everything in the engine compartment being worked on, the stern cabin was commandeered for side access and the companionway steps were removed for front access. All that stuff had to go somewhere, which meant the salon and the V-berth were chock full o' cushions, wood steps, and other artifacts. Daily liveaboard life was now impossible, given the space limitations alone. Not to mention the grinding and sanding work going on - on The Fox and other boats; as well as the bulldozing and construction happening in the vacant lot next door to the boat yard. The weather was still kinda hot & humid. It took GB and me about 5 seconds to conclude we needed an onshore domicile for however long all this work would take - and at this point, nobody could estimate that. Thus, we selected an excellent dwelling conveniently located near the boat yard, bus lines, restaurants and mini-marts: the Bungalows Mar-Sol - we scored a pad with a king size bed, a mini-split air conditioner, a flat-screen TV with cable, and a fully equipped kitchen. All for about US $28/night. Awesome.

Once again life was showing us that there is hardly any problem that cannot be resolved with large infusions of money or time. Or in our case, both. Which we'll further discuss in the next post...

m

Guadalupe was Purépecha

Please forgive any factual inaccuracies or omissions in what I am about to relate. This is complicated stuff and I'm an idiot.

In the Lake Pátzcuaro region of Mexico's central highlands live a loosely affiliated group of indigenous tribes collectively called the Purépecha (aka "the visitors"). We've heard that the Purépecha (or....maybe it was the Aztec, I forget...) word for Mexico translates into English as "the navel of the moon." The Purépecha's central deity is a moon goddess. Similar to many other cultures, the Purépecha interact with spirits everywhere; and they view life and death as inseparable events along a continuum that may not necessarily play out in a straight line.

Centuries ago the Spaniards arrived in Michoacán with holy men in tow. Mostly Franciscans. The Franciscans got to know the Purépecha and their matriarchal religious beliefs, so decided to market Christianity to them by emphasizing the awesomeness of the Virgin Mary as opposed to her son.  The Purépecha obliged by supplying their own version of the Virgin Mary: the Virgin of Guadalupe and the story of her miracle. (A sample story is here. ) Guadalupe was a brown woman who happened to be closely associated with the moon and its powers; and she may have appeared shortly after (or perhaps before) the locals' first contact with the Spaniards. In any event, the Franciscans incorporated Guadalupe into the image of the Virgin Mary and vice versa. After all, the priests were on a mission to built churches and fill pews throughout the New World, so if they accomplished that much, the Church was happy to overlook exactly who their parishioners were worshiping.

Even now, a visitor to Mexico can see the effects of this blending of organized religion and down-home spirituality. In big-city churches you'll typically find Guadalupe's image off to the side somewhere or perhaps like in Mazatlan's basilica, depicted in etched glass at the front door. Yet a close look at the etched glass shows where thousands of fingertips still touch the crescent moon at the Lady's feet.  In small-town churches like those surrounding Lake Pátzcuaro, the parishioners' true preferences become much more obvious. You're more likely to find Guadalupe standing front and center at the main altar. Mr. Jesus, if he is present at all, is off to one side or the other - clearly a secondary figure. Most interesting is that a crescent moon is always at Guadalupe's feet - to this day depicting Mexico as "the navel of the world." Look closely at the following pics and you can see the crescent moon looking up to Guadalupe - we've seen this same image in modern icons taped up on buses over the driver's head, as well as in stone altars above town fountains built in the 1540s:

You don't have to be a believer to enjoy walking around churches all over the world. Symbolism runs deep in the human experience, so like every frame in a well-created movie, every image in a church tells a story about the area's people, their history, economics and politics, and the relationships of the town's social classes to one another. So get out there, look for the moon, and be hip and have a few coins handy to drop into the poor-box.

m

Fan of 16th-Century Spanish Colonial Architecture

One of the reasons we don't have a land-house is, my dwelling preferences are unrealistic. I am most comfortable looking up at 14-foot ceilings and beams made out of whole trees; stepping lightly upon floors of hand-made tile, and caressing 2-foot-thick walls of adobe. Passing beneath hand-carved stone arches with finely-executed artistic appointments are a plus. An interior courtyard with a fountain would also be very nice. I imagine life in such a structure is secure, cool and quiet. Where one can scamper about unencumbered by raiment, if the fancy strikes.

Mexico's central highlands including the state of Michoacán is full of houses, churches and government buildings dating from the 1500s. The early 1500s. Just the kind of visual texture I like.

Submitted for your approval: those two vertical photos down on the left show glimpses of a 16th-century muleteer's home in Pátzcuaro, now the fancy bed-&-breakfast Hotel Mansion Iturbe. A girl could live here.

Next, directly below, are two views of some commercial property, so to speak. Details of a former Pátzcuaro convent, later turned into a hospital, now an artisans' enclave:

Check out how the stonemasons laid the pavers in one of the patio areas of the convent complex. It may be a bit hard to see in the photos down over there to the left of this here excellent text, but some pavers are laid flat the traditional way; then some smaller bits are laid on end to create a refreshing textural counterpoint. Like so, by the large planter pot, and in the second photo, aiming toward the fountain from each corner of the courtyard it's centered in:

Now directly below, we have a couple views of another former Michoacán convent that went through many incarnations - and was even abandoned for a couple decades - before being revived as a very beautiful community center. This place covers at least one square city block, and has crenellated arches like these all over the place:

It seems like in this central region of Mexico, even the government offices enjoy occupying the former mansions of the Spanish colonialists. It's not just the federal bureaucrats who work in 465 year old buildings on the World Heritage Site registry; the state and city employees can get some historic action, too. For example, if you're a government worker in the city of Morelia, you might be pushing paper in places like these:

Not exactly a prairie-dog town of cubicles, eh?

m

Road trip: Mazatlán to Morelia & Pátzcuaro - the Pátzcuaro Portion

So, we'd bused it from Mazatlán to Morelia and had a great time. We rented a car in Morelia, the better to tour Pátzcuaro and its nearby lake. Late August is the off-season and we pretty much had the whole district to ourselves for the 4 days we were there. If you can find your way out of the Morelia city core by car, the highway to Pátzcuaro is a piece o'cake and you can get there in about an hour. The countryside is gorgeous in August: rolling hills and ancient volcanic cinder cones, all covered with the rainy season's lush green growing things. Pátzcuaro is a beautiful town, founded first occupied by the Spanish in the 16th century. Spanish Colonial architecture is everywhere, with a daily market in one of the beautiful plazas. Occasionally a folk-dancing troupe passes through.

Every small town around Lake Pátzcuaro is different from the others. For example, Tzintzúntzan and Ihuátzio have some very well excavated and maintained pre-Columbian plazas and platforms upon which the native tribes (generally heaped into the Purépecha tribal group) erected wooden/thatch structures for business, sport and/or ceremonial purposes. They're not exactly Aztec pyramids or Polynesian moai, but they're built similarly so if you've seen one somewhere, it gives you the idea of the construction and the size of all the others. Here are a few photos of what I'm talking about. These sites are well interpreted and easy to get to; most folks would probably tour both sites in about 2-1/2 hours but we lingered for a while longer. That friendly little white dog you see in  one of the photos appeared out of nowhere and guided us around the Tzintzúntzan complex before disappearing into the town below. He was a good dog, but in the moist high altitude jungle environment he carried a few too many ticks for me to get very affectionate with him. But I digress. The bases of some of the platforms include petroglyphs embedded here and there. Behold:

So if you enjoy old-timey architecture and old rocky ruins, you'll like Lake Pátzcuaro. If more contemporary art or fine craft work is more your thing, you'll be pleased to learn that each town in the Pátzcuaro area has its own specialty. Tzintzúntzan offers reed and basket work; Santa Clara del Cobre specializes in all kinds of fine copper work; other towns offer solid wood furniture; and Tócuaro is home to a precious few artists who carve wooden dance masks. We met such a gentleman, Felipe Horta, who carved this mask, a horned devil enveloped by two snakes and topped by an eagle:

You bet we bought a Horta mask. (That one, actually.) You can read more about Mr. Horta here, and if you want to meet him in person and discuss his work when you visit Tócuaro, he's the very pleasant looking bloke in the black T-shirt, standing next to GB.

m

Road trip: Mazatlán to Morelia & Pátzcuaro

One of the many advantages of using Mazatlán as a summer cruising destination is the ease of inland travel. Maz summers are oppressively hot and humid, giving incentive to travel to the drier, cooler climes of the central highlands. Last summer we'd bused from Maz to San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato (still my favorite city in all Mexico) in the state of Guanajuato. This summer, we aimed for Morelia and the Lake Pátzcuaro area in the state of Michoacán. In a word: RECOMMENDED.

Both Morelia and Pátzcuaro flaunt the Spanish Colonial architecture I love. Morelia has museums aplenty (I liked the State Museum the best). Its historic government buildings, though still in daily use by civil servants, remain wide open to the casual visitor. Why would a tourist want to see where the Michoacán State Office of Finance does business? Oh, maybe because it's located in an 18th-century former granary, festooned with 20th-century murals of the 19th-century revolution. You have to love a country that has such open access to their government buildings -- and no metal detectors at the front door, either. Just walk up to the nice guy sitting at the front desk and sign his guest book so they can keep track of the tourist load for budget reasons, and you can wander around gawking to your heart's content. Mexico may have its problems like every other country, but there are a lot of ways (like history, art and architecture) in which Mexico is irreversibly hip.

Here's what we did: August 24: hop on the Primera Plus bus to Morelia (about US $50 per person one-way) at 7:30pm, earplugs & light wrap ready to sleep the night away as the very air-conditioned coach wound its way from Mazatlan to Morelia, a 13-hour trip. Arrive in Morelia the next morning about 0830, taxi to our hotel in Morelia's centro district for an 0900 check-in, mosey to the nearest street cafe for an 0930 breakfast, and Bob's your uncle. By riding a plush bus overnight, we gained a full day of turismo. Did the usual touring of museums, cathedral & churches. Found one museum named the "natural history museum" that was actually a 19th-century upper-class Mexican physician's house with the remnants of his cabinet of curiosities. If you know ahead of time what a "cabinet of curiosities" is it's all very interesting and historic. If you've never seen one before, it can be a little...gross, when you first encounter all the mutant embryos of animals and humans preserved in jars upstairs.

We stayed in Morelia for 4 days. Enough time to watch the weekend fireworks display the city performed in the centro cathedral; get a good look at the aqueduct; buy way too many "souvenirs" at the extensive candy market; and find a bar near our hotel that served good martinis. Of course we went there every night. Just to determine the consistency of the quality of beverages purveyed. Because we were being all scientific, inspired by the cabinet of curiosities, so we were.

m

Hurricane Season in Mazatlán

We arrived in Mazatlán on July 31, 2009, technically 2-1/2 months after the start of hurricane season. From our own experiences and from what we heard from other long-term cruisers during the summer of 2008, most of the tropical storms and other strong weather events don't get active this far north in the Eastern Pacific until later in the season. Thus we'd decided to very cautiously push our luck this summer and stay out on the water for the early half of the season, always keeping abreast of the daily weather reports. As it happened, the early summer of 2009 was an unusually uneventful season which had allowed us to explore the Sea of Cortez in comfort, and almost as thoroughly as we'd wanted. We returned to Mazatlán just as the midsummer thunderstorms were becoming active along Mexico's mainland.

As is always the case when we pull into a marina, we set about cleaning and making whatever equipment inspections and repairs we could - which as per usual resulted in pulling everything out of the lazarettes and into the cockpit, like so:

During August, we innocently assessed a few projects that would keep us busy but none that involved any major outlay of time or money. We only had a 2000-hour routine engine overhaul to look forward to, by the fine mechanics of Total Yacht Works in Mazatlán. Blissfully ignorant of what lay ahead for us in September, in late August after we'd cleaned up The Fox and gotten some chores done, we treated ourselves to a little 9-day road trip inland to Morelia and Pátzcuaro in the central highlands of Michoacán. Just to keep things chronological, I'll address that delightful wee vacation before moving on to what befell us and Mr. Yanmar when we got back...

m

Turning South, Part II

Once we passed the upper-Baja drift net and entered the port of Santa Rosalía we had a grand time seeing cruising friends again, and meeting new ones. Most cruisers in Santa Rosalía in July were making their way north; only The Fox and a very few others were going south, ever mindful of the summertime weather forecasts. We began listening to SSB weather reports twice a day; ultimately July proved to be a quiet, storm-free month, occasional mainland convection and chubascos notwithstanding. We got it easy in July 2009.

Upon leaving Santa Rosalía we took shorter day trips, exploring new-to-us south-protected anchorages whenever possible. Thus our itinerary took us to Sweet Pea Cove on Isla San Marcos (27deg. 14'N/112deg. 06'W) where we weathered a delightful midnight chubasco that included thunder, lightning, and gusts to 38-40 knots. Our anchor held well, and GB let out an extra 30 feet of chain at 0300, ultimately giving us 160 feet of chain in 25' of water. We slept in the next morning.

Other anchorages came and went - admittedly a bit faster than we typically like to cruise, but The Fox was smellin' the barn in Mazatlán and would not be denied. We battled aggressive, swarming bees in Playa Santo Domingo at the entrance to Bahía Concepción (26deg. 52'N/111deg. 51'W); snorkeled and looked for seashells in the southern anchorage of Caleta San Juanico (26deg. 21'N/111deg. 25'W); and checked out three anchorages on Isla Carmen's east side before a threatening thunderstorm chased us in to Puerto Escondido for a night. Note to sportfishers: in July the area between Caleta San Juanico and Isla Carmen has a lot of marlin just begging to grab the line you're towing for dorado. I am very glad that both of the marlin GB hooked, were able to easily self-release. I have no idea how the two of us would ever land a marlin but they sure are purty when they jump.

Next stop was Isla Monserrate and the beautiful anchorage off Yellowstone Beach on its northern side (25deg. 43'N/111deg. 03'W). In calm July weather we got to enjoy the turquoise blue water of the shallow shelf that extends from Monserrate north to the Rocas Galeras, contrasted with the dark yellow bluffs of Monserrate's beach. This is a really pretty place that deserves at least 4 days of your time. We didn't do Monserrate justice, but spearfishing and beachcombing both yielded favorable results for us. Plus now, I need a geologist or seashell expert to explain to me whether the high layers of crumbly yellow rock on shore that contain all those scallop shells are a recent deposit formed by a mudslide or deposited by a storm, or some kind of very old deposit that has eroded to expose the shells? Ideas, anyone?

We continued south from Monserrate to Punta San Telmo on the Baja mainland (25deg. 20'N/110deg. 58'W), and to Isla San Francisco (24deg. 51'N/110deg. 34'W). Due to unsettled weather we tried two of Isla San Francisco's anchorages before giving up entirely and moving to the SE shelter of the entrance to Amortajada Lagoon on the SW side of Isla San Jose (24deg. 53'N/110deg. 35'W). We had a lot of company there that day.

We used Amortajada as our jumping-off spot to cross the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlán, some 255 miles away, instead of taking more time to move further south and cross the Sea to Mazatlán at Bahía de los Frailes, where the distance across the Sea is only 165 miles but where the anchorages are all exposed to summertime southerly weather and swell. Our strategy was to also avoid the nightly thunderstorms that were building and proceeding north along the mainland and Baja shorelines this time of year. Ultimately our strategy succeeded: no thunderstorms came near us as we stayed roughly in the center of the Sea...though there was little in the way of wind, either. And thus we bobbed our way off the Sea and in to Mazatlán on July 31, 2009, ending our second circuit of the Sea of Cortez. And a fine one it was.

m

Turning South, Part I

Folks who cruise their boats up in the northern Sea of Cortez during the whole summer - and there are quite a few of them - are far tougher than we are. Things were really beginning to heat up in the northern Sea during July. The hours from 1100 to about 1400, when the sun was hottest, saw us either passed out in the cabin from the heat and increasing humidity, and/or bobbing in the warm water, hanging on to our anchor chain in the shade of The Fox's bow. In contrast to June's hot days but relatively cool evenings, during July the nighttime cooling-off of the land was negligible. I've always been heat-intolerant, and now even GB was getting the vapors, so we decided to leave Puerto Refugio and slowly return south along Baja, eventually to cross the Sea to Mazatlán. Where the summers are just as hot, and there's even more humidity. No; it isn't logical. Sailing is like that sometimes.

Anyway, we sailed south along the eastern side of Isla Angel de la Guarda for about 42 miles to the island's SE end, and an anchorage above a rock-and-gravel bar that extends from Angel de la Guarda to Isla Estanque (29deg. 03'N/113deg. 06'W). Heermann's gulls nest here on dried seaweed cushions they build right on top of the rocks. Dolphin frolic in the channels.  And occasionally, you meet friends at anchor. We had fun with the crew of Trumpeter, exploring the beach, collecting seashells, and generally enjoying one another's company. There were 4 of us, including 3 good cooks and one very lucky diner (me). Sadly, we were on the move soon and said our quick goodbyes.

Trumpeter and another vessel had shared with us that for the preceding 5 days, conditions through the Midriff Islands, including the nearby and much sought-after Isla Partida, had been quite windy making the Partida anchorages uncomfortable and choppy. (We hear this is often the case in the Midriffs; they seem to get (or create?) weather that might be somewhat enhanced, compared to similar anchorages nearby on either mainland shore.) With reports like these, we decided to bypass Partida and make for the Baja mainland to try a popular anchorage just 22 miles away from Isla Estanque: Cala Puertocito de Enmedio (28deg. 50'N/113deg. 14W). Enmedio promised mucho snorkeling and fishing adventure.

Yeah, so the next morning, there we were, snorkeling. About 1000 we felt the water get a bit choppy for no apparent reason. The wind was only blowing about 15 knots from the SE but by now we'd learned enough about the Sea of Cortez to suspect that something might be coming our way. Back to The Fox we hied. We were already pulling down our shade curtains, raising the outboard and stowing the dinghy on deck when the SE wind gusted to 32 knots and stayed there, putting us on a lee shore in 3 directions. We followed the same tactics we'd done in late June when we were last in this area: bail out to the SE shelter of one of the anchorages of Bahía de las Ánimas, less than 6 miles away (28deg. 49'N/113deg. 18'W). Result: a calm-water anchorage with maximum wind gusts of 19 knots. Sweet.

From there,we returned 40 miles south to Bahía San Francisquito. We left San Francisquito shortly before 0100 the next morning, in order to make Santa Rosalía, 82 miles away, by midafternoon. The winds stayed out of the SE the whole day, increasing with the sunrise from 10 knots to about 27. It was a very lumpy ride through head seas, but that day was the day we wanted to make a port, so we sailed when we could and motored when we needed.

Notice to all mariners transiting this section of the Baja coastline: commercial fishermen set large drift nets (the one we encountered was 6 miles long) anywhere from 1 mile to 5 miles offshore. You may want to adjust your course to take you offshore of these nets, especially if you transit this area at night - the nets' floats are very hard to see and sometimes they are left untended. That said, this was the only area of the Sea of Cortez's entire Baja coastline where we encountered fishing activity this significant. The more you know...

m

Isla Angel de la Guarda

On July 5, 2009, the wind rose with the sun and at 20 knots out of the SW it made our anchorage at Isla Mitlán too choppy for snorkeling. However, it was perfect wind for sailing, so sail we did. Destination: about 35 miles NNE to the northernmost tip of Isla Angel de la Guarda ("Guardian Angel") and the multiple anchorages of Puerto Refugio ("Port Refuge").

Once we left Isla Mitlán the wind soon picked up to - and stayed at - what we estimated was 30 knots true. Luckily, it stayed steady out of the SW, which meant for us an energetic downwind sail with genoa only. Our anemometer showed wind in the mid-20s downwind. The waves stayed at 2 feet or less so the ride was not bumpy at all. Still had to pay attention, though. Especially as we approached the reefs and islets near Puerto Refugio, such as the guano-covered Roca Vela ("Sail Rock") up over there on the right.*

* Note: it has been my experience that no matter how windy the conditions, waves photographed from a boat's cockpit always look much flatter than they do in real life. I don't know why. But believe you me, we rounded Roca Vela in frisky conditions. Yessir.

Anyway, we rounded Roca Vela, bypassing the anchorage called "West Bay" as it was wide-open to the SW and thus to our wind; and also because one can technically drop an anchor there, but it's not really a "bay" but is actually a passage between two islands - one very small in size relative to the other. Meaning, the currents are strong, erratic and change direction 4 times a day. Equals, no thank you. We chose to continue on around the outlying islands and sail our way into the much more sensible and commodious Middle Bight of the large "East Bay". Guess what? Early July is early season this far north in the Sea. We had the whole place to ourselves. Nice.

If you've been looking at the details of our landscape pics (Jeez, get a life), you'll have noticed a conspicuous absence of vegetation north of Santa Rosalia. When life is too harsh for even a cactus to get a toehold, your environment is definitely challenging. Seriously, GB & I occasionally pretend that things have fallen apart and we're on shore trying to survive. We're pretty resourceful, but if we found ourselves marooned on Angel de la Guarda , it would be very hard to find fresh water -- or shade. Even the pelicans fought each other for rocky perches inside small sea caves along the shoreline. The frigate birds preferred much higher perches, so they panted on the tops of tall rocky outcrops, with wings akimbo, in full sun. So much for penthouses as the fanciest real estate.

Our strong breeze continued for 3 days. Two large power yachts came - and quickly went - from Puerto Refugio's other anchorages. With the absence of other boats it was close to a true wilderness experience, which for us is the best kind of cruising. Puerto Refugio in early season is definitely one place to get away from it all.

Hoo-boy, the snorkeling was great, everywhere around Puerto Refugio. Dinghy fishing and spearfishing yielded favorable results. Seashells were plentiful on at least the 2 beaches I explored. The water was warm so we could ditch the wetsuits, yet the temps were still barely  cool enough to spend the hottest part of the afternoons wrapped around our anchor chain to avoid the 110+F degree temps. After which we'd crawl back aboard, dry off, and pass out under the fans in the saloon for a couple hours until the sun was lower in the sky. Find a way to manage the heat, and Puerto Refugio is YOURS, baby.

One day, we dinghied about a mile back over to the "West Bay" to try and figure out why some people actually anchored there. It is certainly the most visually stimulating of Puerto Refugio's many anchorages; but we still saw and felt very strong currents here (I recall reading somewhere that they max out at 4-5 knots in the narrow spots) - eddies, whirlpools, overfalls, the works - throughout the West Bay. Granted, we were there on a spring tide. If you can get your anchor to hold in all this action, great. But how confident would you be to go ashore? How well would you sleep? What would you do when things went wrong?

We wanted to see the place in West Bay where, some years ago, a cruising sailboat learned there was a hurricane a-comin', and chose West Bay for shelter. Their boat was lost. They scrambled ashore and survived the hurricane by sheltering in a small concrete panguero shrine set atop a rocky outcrop (you can see the little shrine in the pics from 2003 in the above link. Here's a couple more that we took in 2009. The interior looks large in the photo on the left, but in reality only 4 people could fit inside -- in semi-fetal positions). It must have been horrible weathering a hurricane in there. We came here because we wanted to learn something from this tragedy. But, 20-20 hindsight and all, we could not understand why anyone would think it was a good idea to anchor here in any kind of weather. I emphasize: West Bay is not a "bay," it is a passage between two islands of greatly disparate size. From my point of view, regardless of whatever shelter might be had from certain wind directions, this location is excessively risky, considering the tide rips alone. Now, we've anchored in passages between islands before - for several days, in fact; but those islands were of similar size to each other and the weather was settled. Add sudden, adverse winds to strong tidal currents like what happens in the northern Sea during the summer, and anchoring a boat in a location like this becomes very tenuous. Examples: we saw an 80-foot motor yacht anchored in West Bay, and they bailed out of there within a few hours when the wind got above 20 knots. We also found a nice seashell deposit on one side of West Bay -- 30 vertical feet, and 100 horizontal feet, away from the shoreline. If you find your seashells washed up behind stony berms high and away from the shore, chances are you have found a place of strong winds and big waves - in other words, NOT a place to anchor a boat. I cannot imagine trying to ride out hurricane-force winds and whatever waves accompanied them, on a lee shore.

All that said, West Bay is a nice place to take your dinghy from a safer anchorage and spend the day. As a whole, Puerto Refugio was a wonderful destination and the middle bight of East Bay was comfortable for anchoring and using as a base for all kinds of aquatic and terrestrial exploring. Anchor wisely, mind the weather, be prepared, and you'll have a swell time here.

m