The 4th of July Cruisers Potluck Party

Every morning on the Sonrisa HF radio net a very extensive weather forecast is given “in color” for the outside of Baja, the Sea of Cortez, and Pacific Mainland Mexico by a US ex-pat who now lives in a palapa in El Burro Cove in Bahia Concepcion.  He gets up at 5am every morning to pull together the forecasts that cruisers have come to depend on to keep them informed of what weather is coming and what’s going on in the “tropical kitchen,” and as far as I know, he doesn’t seem to ever take a day off.   Every year Gary the weather guy hosts a 4th of July party in El Burro Cove where he provides the hot dogs, and everyone else brings something for the potluck, and, of course, the locals set up beer for sale.  As soon as we first heard it announced on one of the nets, we decided we wanted to try to make it in order to meet Gary and all the other cruisers.

As usual, we pulled in loaded down with garbage and someone told us that Gary lets the cruisers drop their trash with him for 10 pesos a bag or so and he gives the money to a local to haul the trash away.  We were around the corner in the adjacent anchorage, so we asked Alex, Brenden, Kyle, and Joel (Lady Carolina), to take all the trash from both boats to Gary.  A little while after they get back I see Steve (Lady Carolina) jump in the dinghy and head around the corner.  It turns out he asked Kyle if they met Gary and ended up finding out that they had just left all our bags of trash on his doorstep.  Can you imagine?  We show up and haven’t even met him yet and we dump our garbage on his front porch!  Luckily Steve got there before any bad feelings could materialize.

The next day before the party we sent the boys again, this time to go ask if there’s anything they could do to help set up.  This time they met Gary, and he didn’t give them any jobs to do, but he did give Brenden a hat, which he wears all the time now.  I really have no idea why Brenden got the hat, and he doesn’t seem to know either.  The party was a lot of fun with a lot of good food, and Alex especially liked the hot dogs, so much that he ate six of them.  It’s such a trip to meet people that you’ve only talked to on the radio and see if they look like the mental image you’ve already created for them in your head.  We met one other kid boat there, Heavy Metal, with two more boys on board, and the younger of the two got along great with Brenden and Joel.  We all spent a lot of the day in the water trying to keep cool in the heat.  After dark there was a “fireworks” show, you know the kind where when it’s over you thank the lucky stars that no one caught on fire or lost a limb or anything.  We definitely weren’t in El Segundo any longer!   The evening ended with a fire show.  One of the single-handed cruisers juggles fire and puts on shows to raise money for his cruising kitty.  The kids seemed to really like it.  Overall, it was a great day and a great kickoff to our summer in the Northern Sea of Cortez.