Author: cruisingrunner

On the SSB radio nets the typical order of business is taking any emergency/priority traffic (seldom), then check-ins for vessels underway (usually one or two), then all the general checkins for boats at anchor.  During the summer we had gotten used to the net traffic being very, very sparse.  It would pretty much typically be our little gang checking in to each other each day.  So, early in our passage from Puerto Refugio to San Felipe I tuned in to the Southbound Net, and Steve (Lady Carolina) was the net controller.  Obviously he knew we were underway, since we just left them at Puerto Refugio, so he totally cracked me up when, after calling for emergency traffic (and getting none), he moved to taking checkins from “any Exoduses wishing to check into the net.  Any Exoduses out there, please come ahead now.”  Me, “Exodus.”  Steve, “I hear an Exodus.  Exodus, please come ahead with your checkin.”  Then he took checkins from other vessels underway.  Wow, personal service from the southbound net.  We wouldn’t pull anything like that these days when the nets get much more traffic since cruisers are all back from their summer holidays, but the summertime did yield some good times.

As mentioned above, the windlass decided to stop working again when we were reanchoring in the channel at Puerto Refugio.  Tim did quite a bit of in situ troubleshooting while I just manned the helm and kept us from drifting into any rocks.  He eventually gave up and dropped the anchor manually.  Tim and Steve traced the issue back to the breaker swich, so as a band-aid, they decided to bypass it altogether.  Steve, being an Electrical Engineer by education and trade, is our resident expert.  He put together a four fuse in parallel contraption to use in place of the switch in order to protect the windless motor from overcurrent.  It was an ugly looking thing, but it got the job done.  Tim ordered a replacement switch and it was part of the loot I brought back down from the states.  (Note from 2/17/2014 as I write this… Tim has yet to replace the switch.  The fuse monster is still in place.  Long live the fuse monster.)

So, the windlass has been working, but shortly after leaving San Felipe the chain counter got fussy and the remote gives an error of “no sensor.”  This complaint is clearly a “first world cruising problem,” but we, especially I, had gotten very spoiled by just having to look at the display to know how much chain was out.  Luckily, while we were in San Felipe, Tim added markers on the chain to identify 33, 66, 100, etc. ft on the chain.  It’s a bit of a pain, but we’re managing.  When we anchor, ususally I’m at the helm and Tim’s at the anchor, but occassionally when I’m at the anchor I have to call back, “What color is 100 ft again?”

October 1 – November 2, 2013

Our summer in the sea was over, and it was time to head… North?  It’s not a common direction to be heading from BLA, but that’s what we did, and it was for one reason only.  Danna’s wedding was in Las Vegas on October 20, and there was no way I was missing that.  My preference would have been to head south to Loreto and fly from there.  But unfortunately, it was just a week or two too early for our comfort level to head south (early relative to the end of hurricane season).  Many of the cruisers were heading south and some had actually left already, but like I said, it was too early for *our* comfort level.  So, we settled on heading north to San Felipe so I could take a bus to Mexicali and then either rent a car or walk across the border.  Since I grew up in El Centro, I was no stranger to Mexicali.  In fact, I found it quite humorous that on my cruise around the world I was bussing around my old stomping grounds: San Felipe to Mexicali.  Very few Sea of Cortez cruisers make it all the way up to San Felipe, in fact, the authors of our guidebook didn’t even venture that far up.  And when we got there we figured out why.  First, sailing in the far northern sea can be a bit harrowing.  Second, San Felipe, relatively speaking, isn’t really that nice.  Sure, it’s a nice vacation spot for folks from southern california wanting to get away but not too far away, but compared to the many other places we had been on the Baja Peninsula it just didn’t compare.  However, it was a safe place for Tim to stay with Exodus while the rest of us headed home, and it’s kind of fun to be able to say we circumnavigated the Baja peninsula.

Puerto Refugio

We left BLA village with Lady Carolina on Oct 1 headed for Puerto Refugio, which was a natural stop between BLA and San Felipe.  It was about 45 miles away, and we had been there before but didn’t stay as long as we would have liked due to the rampant no-see-ums.  We had heard from other cruisers that this time of year, when it has cooled off a bit, the no-see-ums wouldn’t be so prevelant, so we happily headed that direction.  We got a bit of late start, so we didn’t make it all the way to Puerto Refugio the first day. We stopped at Alcatraz for one night.  The sail from BLA to Alcatrz was kind of crazy.  We went from moderate winds to absolutely nothing, and then not 10 min later we had 25 kts and had to reef the head sail.  We also lost our big trash can overboard and were much too slow to retrieve it before it sank to the depths.  We pretty much failed at that man over board drill, although most of the time was wasted debating whether we should go back for it, which I’m guessing we wouldn’t have done if it was one of the boys that had fallen over.

Our sail from Alcatrz to Refugio the next day was pretty uneventful and we joined Charra in the Middle bight of the East bay.  After being in BLA village for several days the guys were all itching to get in the water with spears and guns, and I’m not kidding, they suited up and dropped the dinghy in record time.  Bob and Joyce were having us all over for dinner on Charra that night, and they asked about taking fish out of the freezer just in case, but we (Carolina and I) were pretty confident they wouldn’t come back empty handed.  And they didn’t.  We had a great evening eating, drinking, and talking, and Joyce brought out a deck of cards for the kids, so they could stay entertained as well. 

There was a big Northern blow in the forecast, so we either needed to leave the next day ahead of it to get to the next anchorage north up the coast (at Bahia Willard) or wait it out at Refugio, which doesn’t really have a stellar anchorage for north wind protection.  We decided to stay at Refugio to enjoy the anchorage and hanging out with Lady Carolina just a little longer.  Where we were anchored in the East Bay was wide open to the north so we moved over to what is called the West Bay, but it’s really just the channel between Isla Angel de la Guarda (the huge island) and a much smaller island that we had to pass through to get to the East Bay.  When we first moved over there it was pretty rolly from the SW swell, and we thought it would settle down once the wind shifted to the north, but it was strong enough to bend around the point and come through the channel as well.  Both we and Lady Carolina moved around within the channel a couple times trying to find the best, most protected spots.  While dropping anchor one of those times, the windlass stopped working again (see more info below).  Unfortunately because of the strong wind and swell we didn’t really do much while at Refugio until our last two days, but those days were amazing, and more than made up for it.  We hiked up on some of the hills and had some amazing snorkling.  One day we had a family snorkle, and I called it “land of the minis.”  The fish were all very striking with many different colors, but they were all very very small.  Not too far away, though, were some bigger fish and Tim and Brenden encountered a school of Yellowtail (mmm… sahsimi).  We have a great video of Tim spearing a yellowtail, that one day I will have enough bandwidth to load to facebook .  As he was pulling it in it got away and Brenden was johnny on the spot in the background and shot it through the eyes before it got too far.  Our last night at Refugio we had desserts and drinks on Exoudus with Lady Carolina to say good-bye and to celebrate our successful summer in the sea (no tropical storms and no chubascos).  It’s too bad that because the wind had died the no-see-ums actually found us and we all got eaten alive that night.  We toughed it out though and hung out playing cards well into the night.  We weren’t going to see Lady Carolina for about 6 weeks, which would be quite strange considering we had been pretty much inseparable for 4 months.

Passage to San Felipe

The passage from Puerto Refugio to San Felipe was about 111 miles, and we planned to go straight there rather than stop at any of the few anchorages along the way simply because with the anchor windlass issues, we didn’t want Tim to have to lower/raise the anchor manually.  We had been tracking for a weather window and we left in the mid morning on Oct 8 when the wind was supposed to be high teens low 20s from the SW.  Since we were heading NW this would give us a strong beam reach.  That’s not exactly how it worked out.

San Felipe

The relief I felt when we pulled into that marina will always result in me having a soft spot for San Felipe.  Yes, it was a safe haven, but actually it wasn’t much else.  One of the first things to notice about San Felipe and the far northern sea are the immense tide swings.  Around the full moon the difference between low and high tide can be up to 22 feet!  The harbor is dredged but there are severe shoals, one being right next to the marina berths.  The marina was a small, Fonatur (government run) marina, and we were the only cruising boat there among local fishing boats and a couple of research boats.  The marina wasn’t connected to running water, so they had a well that was periodically filled.  They were very conservative with the water, and they shut it off every evening around 5pm when the guys were off duty.  When I first went up to use the bathrooms, they were locked, so I went to the marina office to ask about it, and he said, “yeah, now that you guys are here we will leave those unlocked for you.”  They had laundry facilities that kept eating my tokens, but I figured out they left the top unlocked and I could reach the mechanism to start the washer without a token.  I gave up on the dryers and dried our laundry in our cockpit.  Overall, the Fonatur was comparable to the one we stayed at in Santa Rosalia, however, it was less secure because the dock entrance was outside of the gated marina area. 

The marina was located a couple miles south of the town of San Felipe, and we enjoyed walking along the beach at low tide to get there.  Well, I know I enjoyed the walk.  Alex and Brenden only complained a little bit, so overall, not too bad.  San Felipe has a small malecon lined with restaurants and shops, and our first day there we landed at the Taco Factory, which was nothing special, but it’s always fun to eat out after being away from civilization for a couple weeks.  The town is very tourist oriented, but it seemed misplaced because it wasn’t exactly hustling and bustling with activity.  We found a pizza joint owned by a Canadian where we could watch the Dodger game, and he told us this is one of the slowest times of the year.

Provisioning in San Felipe wasn’t much different than anywhere else, but there were small things that made you realize how close to the border you were.  Like lemons.  They had huge, juicy lemons, which we hadn’t seen at all anywhere else in Baja.

Although there weren’t a lot of other boats at the marina, we did meet a few interesting people.  The same morning we arrived, a very small (19 ft) sailboat pulled into a slip across from us, and the guy got out and went directly over to hang out with the Mexican guys who were working on the research boat.  Later we talked to him and had him over for dinner, and he was a single hander who was going to sail the Sea of Corez for a few months.  He had launched his boat in BLA and headed North to San Felipe.  Like us, he had read that the Northern Sea is a road less travelled, and that drew him to it.  However, he was at anchor off the coast just south of San Felipe during the storm that we experienced, and he had a pretty harrowing night at anchor.  So, he was rethinking his plan.  He was there in San Felipe with us for about a week and ended up loading his boat, Updog (What’s Updog, I don’t know, what’s up with you?) back onto the trailer with intent to drive down to La Paz, relaunch, and cruise around there for awhile.  We never heard from or saw him again, so we hope had a satisfying experience, regardless of what he ended up doing.

We also met the scientists who were conducting the research.  They were studying Vaquitas, which are small porpoises who only live in the northern Sea of Cortez.  They are endangered due to fishing nets, so the research effort is to try to assess the size and health of the remaining population.  They had a very successful expedition a few years ago, but this time, mostly due to the weather, they hadn’t seen a single one.  They gave us some literature and coloring books for the boys, and Brenden became quite interested in the plight of the Vaquita and did one of his science projects on them.

While we were in the states, Tim befriended one of the guys that worked in the Marina, whose English was spotty at best, but better than Tim’s Spanish, so I can only imagine the extent of their conversations.  Of course, everyone speaks beer.  He had worked before at a cook in a restaurant, so he showed Tim how to cook shrimp.  He also showed Tim around the town, and by that I mean mostly the bars.  When we were back and we went out to dinner, a bartender at a restaurant came over and hugged me like we were old friends!

I’m very happy we went to San Felipe for many reasons, but when it was time to leave, we couldn’t get out of there fast enough.  I think the thing we absolutely liked the least was the bird poop!  The marina is in the flight path and it was near impossible to clean Exodus fast enough to keep up.  Good riddance, stupid pelicans!  We left San Felipe on November 2 with a plan to stay nearer to the coast this time.  We were hoping to get to Puerto Escondido in time to catch up with Lady Carolina, and we were looking forward to stopping a few places along the way.

Summer is over, the weather is cooling off, and we are going to have to go our separate ways from Lady Carolina very soon. I’ve said before how happy I am that we stayed in the sea this summer, and I will say it again.  However, we are starting to get that twinge of moving on to new places and new adventures, so our sadness at leaving BLA is balanced by excitement of what might come next.  And we’ll only be away from Lady Carolina for about 4-6 weeks, so I’m sure we can survive that.

We had a spinnaker dousing mishap that could have turned out much worse than it actually did.  We were sailing from Alcatraz to La Gringa on a nice spinnaker run, and the wind was up around the low 20s.  We’ve doused the spinnaker many times, usually Tim has me loosen up one side, either the sheet or the guy, and then when it depowers he pulls down the sock.  This time we were having trouble getting it depowered.  On the port side the guy and the sheet were configured so both were under load (if you don’t understand, it’s not essential) with the guy around the winch and the sheet around a cleat.  While Tim was trying to loosen the sheet from around the cleat it slacked and then filled and it pulled him violently around and he leaned way over the lifelines before letting go.  I was standing right there at the helm and I really thought he was going in, which would have meant I would have to get the spinnaker down myself, with help from the boys, before I could engine up and turn around to go get him.  Quite a trick.  We did eventually get it down, but not without Tim sustaining a broken toe as it banged against the toe rail when he almost went for a swim.  And we’ve got another lesson learned in our ever growing file of lessons learned.

The first time the anchor windlass didn’t work was very early in our journey and the symptom that time was a “no sensor” error on the chain counter.  So, the issue wasn’t with the motor at all but with the electrical contacts that count the rotation of the drum to be able to display how much chain is out.  When that happens the windlass will work but only for a few seconds then it stops to tell you there’s no sensor.  But if you just keep pushing the button you can get the chain up/down you just don’t know how much chain is out.  So, on the to do list went remarking the chain with distance markers so we aren’t dependent on the chain counter display.  Tim and Steve fixed that but when we got to BLA the night before the Regatta we encountered a whole new problem.  When lowering the anchor the windlass stopped working and there was no power at all to the display.  We cycled the breaker switch and it would work briefly and then shut off again.  So, Tim disassembled the gypsy and gave it a good cleaning with fresh water, and that seemed to solve the problem and we were able to get the anchor set. 

Given that we had this trouble the night before, in hindsight I’m not sure why we didn’t start the anchor raising process earlier before the regatta, just in case.  As alluded to earlier, the windlass wouldn’t work the morning of the regatta, and no amount of water spraying or flipping the breaker switch would help, so we raised it manually.  While raising it hand over hand, Tim was straddling the track where the chain is between the gypsy and the bow roller, and if Alex and I got a little ahead feeding the chain into the locker the tension would cause it to raise up and we got yelled at more than once for “busting my nuts!”  I just reminded Tim of that and he doesn’t recall it with as much humor as I seem to.  I guess perspective  matters.  After the regatta we chose a shallower spot to anchor and dropped it manually as well.  The next day the boat was turned into a workshop and Tim with help from Steve as well as Alan (Sara M) trouble shooted the problem including taking apart the motor housing.  They eventually traced the problem to a loose connection at the breaker switch and the simple fix of tightening that connection solved the problem.  (Spoiler alert — at the time we thought it solved the problem, but stay tuned for the continuation of our anchor windlass woes in future essays)

Strong wind and big swells weren’t  the only issues we had at the Isla Mitlan anchorage.  On passage to get there the boys had caught a nice sized sierra, and Brenden was looking forward to some sashimi that evening.  Unfortunately it was hanging on the stringer a little too close to one of the props, and no one remembered to move it before we used the engines to maneuver around and anchor.  Before we had finished anchoring Brenden realized it was gone, so he suited up and was in the water seconds after the engines were off on a mission to find his sierra.  He was unsuccessful in that mission, but he came back to get his spear reporting that there were parrot fish, and not long after that he came back with not one but two parrot fish.  So, instead of sashimi that evening we had ourselves a huge bowlful of ceviche.

And that’s not where it stops.  At the head of the anchorage there is a pinnacle rock identified in the guidebook with a GPS waypoint, and because there was already another boat there and we needed to fit Exodus and Lady Carolina in there as well, we tried to anchor inside of the other boat but not so far inside we would swing into the pinnacle rock if the wind shifted.  We were cutting it close, and we knew we were cutting it close.  We always drop a waypoint at the anchor, so I knew our distance and bearing to our anchor and our distance and bearing to the rock, and I was trying to calculate the distance from the anchor to the rock.  I knew I had “side angle side” but for the life of me I couldn’t remember my trigonometry, so I texted my favorite retired math teacher (my dad) through the inreach and he reminded me of the law of cosines.  And the resulting distance was well within the accuracy of GPS, so yeah, we were cutting it close.  Tim decided to dive on the rock and he found it and marked it with a float, and determined we would be fine, and we didn’t need to move. 

Apparently he changed his mind, because he woke me in the middle of the night declaring that, “we need to move.”  When I got up I saw that the wind had shifted, and the float marking the rock was just off our port side, and it looked to be well inside our swing radius.  So, we hauled anchor in the dark and moved to the outside of Lady Carolina out in much deeper water with less protection.  It worked out OK.  Tim was monitoring the situation and took action when the risk was clearly high enough.  My only request in the aftermath was that we take precaution before the sun goes down whenever possible, since maneuvering around a small anchorage in the dark presents it’s own additional risks. 

We had some excitement on passage between BLA village and La Gringa when I was rinsing my veggie bin and accidentally dropped it in the water.  (While in an achorage I throw food scraps in a bin on the counter rather than in the trash.  We often go a week or more between being able to dump trash, and it will start smelling if it’s in the trash.  The bin we can dump in the water anytime we are moving in between anchorages.)  We circled back to get it, and when we spotted it, without hesitation, Alex dove into the water off the port bow.  He retrieved it, but then missed the back step as we circled around.  Then it was like a man overboard drill… Brenden grabbed the pole and we pulled him in.  I promise, grandparents, that at no time during this  exercise was Alex in any danger.  It was good fun, and Alex got to be the hero. Of course, he said next time it’s my turn, but he always says that.

There are a few other minor boat issues that have had to be resolved along the way: 1) Tim installed a fan inside the fridge and wired it to 12 V so it comes on when the fridge does in order to circulate air and keep the fridge colder.  Seems to be working.  2) The fresh water pump acculumator needs to be “pumped up” every so often and Tim does that with a bicycle air pump. 3) Our navigation system “sea talk” network had intermittent issues in that sometimes some displays get data while others don’t.  The order we turn on displays seems to help, but I decided to diagram the whole network just to see what we’re dealing with, and I discovered that the autopilot is connected twice, once via sea talk 1, and once via sea talk ng.  According to one of the manuals I downloaded this seems to be a violation of correct network connectivity, but we don’t have the autopilot manual itself, so I didn’t want to disconnect anything before reading that.  (Spoiler alert: We disconnected the sea talk 1 connection, and the autopilot still functions correctly, but it hasn’t fixed the intermittent communication problem.  Tim’s also updated all the software on all the instrument displays and that hasn’t fixed it either, but it has caused us to have to recalibrate the autopilot, which is a whole other issue.

So, as you can see we are still learning, but I’m pretty pleased to say that we’ve met each challenge with creativity and flexibility and I’m getting more and more confident that we can handle whatever comes our way (with a little luck of course).