Gresham Family Exodus

May 22 – June 30, 2013

Most cruisers in Mexico leave for the summer to avoid the heat and the tropical storm season. So, our kid boat flotilla broke up near the end of May so that the rest of them could secure their boats in marinas and head to their various destinations.  This phase of our journey covers the wonderful visit we had with Tim’s parents, Gary and Marsha. Their visit was a lot of fun and definitely helped the boys get over the breakup of the kid boats. Having Grandma and Grandpa around is always such a treat. This phase also covers the circles we did around the Loreto area before we finally headed north for the summer. We circled and returned to Loreto so many times Alex cleverly commented that “Loreto is the new La Paz.”

It was a one hour passage each way from Isla Coronados to Loreto to pick up Gary and Marsha for a 10-day visit. They arrived on May 21st, and Tim took a taxi out to the airport to meet them, while the boys and I packed a load of groceries back to the boat to be well provisioned for the duration of their stay. They came with four very heavy suitcases. At home, they had to carefully weigh each one in order to even out the load, so that each one was just under the 50 lb. airline limit. Needless to say, most of their load was stuff they brought down for us. The load included new anchor bridle hooks, a gallon pump of sunscreen, two pole spears for spearfishing, about 20 lb. of Cliff Bars, and lots of other boat-related items including a wind scoop that Tim designed and Marsha sewed for us. We spent the night back at Isla Coronados, and in the morning, Tim, Gary, and the boys went for a hooka before we set sail north to San Juanico. San Juanico is still one of our favorite places. It is a huge, east-facing bay with several spots to anchor on both the North and South Sides. When we were arriving, the wind was blowing pretty hard out of the SE, so we scoped out the small cove on the southernmost side. It was perfect. We had it all to ourselves. There were several boats on the Northern side of the large bay, and due to the large swell that was knocking them around, there was mass migration to the larger southern anchorage next to us. Here, we met up with Star Passage and enjoyed some meals together on each other’s boats once again. The snorkeling in our little cove was absolutely amazing; I called it a fish superhighway. This is where Alex and Brenden first learned to spearfish for the first time. There was also an excellent running beach and some dramatic sea caves that I kayaked around. One of the other cruisers organized a potluck, so we got a chance to meet some new people, and the boys played a few games of Bocce Ball.

After about 4 days, we said good-bye to San Juanico (for now) and headed back South to Bahia Salinas, a South facing anchorage on the East side of Isla Carmen. The anchorage itself was not that spectacular except for the small crashing waves that the boys could actually boogie board in and the sunken Tuna Boat in the middle of the bay. It sunk back in the 80s, and it was in fairly shallow water. In fact, you could see one of its edges peeking out above the surface of the water. It was a rare occasion to dive on a boat wreck and need only snorkel gear. We all enjoyed it immensely. After the morning dive, we motor-sailed back to Agua Verde. We enjoyed Agua Verde so much the first time that we wanted to take Gary and Marsha there. This time we anchored on the North side of the bay where I enjoyed a nice hike and easier access to the tienda (small store) in town. This is where we said our final good-byes to Star Passage, but this is also where we finally met Lady Carolina. They are another kid boat with two boys, Joel (age 8) and Kyle (age 13), and we’ve pretty much been with them ever since.

After Agua Verde, we had a very nice sail North to Honeymoon Cove on Isla Danzante. We had planned for an early morning departure to Loreto, but we left even earlier than planned, because when we woke up, the foredeck was completely covered with bees. The dew had collected on deck and a massive number of bees were enjoying the fresh water. Raising the anchor was precarious work, but Tim took the job on the anchor while I manned the helm. It was very sad for all of us when we dropped off Gary and Marsha in Loreto, but I put the boys to work right away with another big backpacking provisioning excursion around town.

We spent the next couple days back at Isla Coronados, and in the short time we had been away there had been some sort of algae bloom, and the beautiful turquoise water had turned a very distasteful pea green color. We said final good-byes to Sweet Dreams and Fluenta, and we also met Resilience for the first time. Beth and Jim of Resilience are both marine biologists, and one morning, they held class for all the kids on the beach. They investigated the sea wildlife and discussed King Philip Came Over For Grape Soda (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species). All the kids enjoyed it, especially Brenden.

From Isla Coronados we spent a little time on our own. We spent one night in Puerto Escondido getting light provisions, doing laundry, and fueling up. Then we went a little further south to a small cove just outside the Loreto National Park area, called Candeleros Chico. The guidebook describes it as a one boat anchorage, but we squeezed in there with one other small boat. There was amazing snorkeling at Candeleros Chico, rivaling San Juanico for our favorite spot. There were just schools and schools of Parrot Fish. We did a lot of stargazing there and even had a bonfire one night. It was nice to have a little bit of family time. We had a great sail from Candeleros Chico back to Puerto Ballandra on Isla Carmen, and from there we made another day trip to Loreto. Since it was Sunday, we went to the Farmers market, which was really more of a small swap meet with a few vegetable stands. The produce selection and freshness were amazing.

When we left Loreto in the afternoon, we decided to practice raising anchor under sail since there was wind, but not too much, and there was plenty of maneuvering room. It was a success, but even after all this time, we are still working on our communication approach when needing to do things quickly and correctly. We spent one more night at Isla Coronados before heading back up to San Juanico to hook up with Lady Carolina and Resilience. When we pulled into the very large bay it was totally deserted, which was understandable, since the swell from the Southeast winds would have made for a very uncomfortable anchorage. We found Lady Carolina and Resilience up around the corner to the North at a bay called La Ramada, which had much better protection from southish winds, but wasn’t nearly as pretty an anchorage. However, there was a dirt road and then a trail that led to the North side of San Juanico. The dirt road was littered with Obsidian, so the boys enjoyed some collecting. We also visited the cruisers’ shrine, which is basically a tree that people hang homemade items from, documenting their visit. Some items have been there for 20 years! Unfortunately, we had another good-bye to say as Resilience headed north to eventually cross to San Carlos and then head home. And then there were two. Two kid boats, that is. Exodus and Lady Carolina. And we’ve been mostly inseparable ever since.

From La Ramada, Lady Carolina headed South to pick up some wifi, and we stayed one night at our favorite little south cove at San Juanico. It was a little rolly but not too bad. Then we also headed south and stopped at Nopolo, which is just a little ways South of Loreto. At Nopolo, we fed our own wifi addiction; in fact, I spent pretty much an entire Saturday in the salon on the computer. There is a resort at Nopolo that has open wifi, and we were able to pick it up pretty easily from the boat. Then we met back up with Lady Carolina at Bahia Candeleros after a quick pit stop in Puerto Escondido for groceries and water. The boys were in the water almost immediately with Joel, and they played “try to knock each other off the kayak” with the sunset as their backdrop. It was Father’s Day, but we didn’t get day passes to the resort like we did on Mother’s day. This time at Candeleros is where we first experienced the night time westerlies, which we affectionately call the “hot wind.” After sunset when the air temperature is finally starting to cool a bit the wind picks up from the west and blows the hot air from the land all over us. The temperature rises again taking away the little relief we had.

We stayed several days at Candeleros then we left Lady Carolina and did another day stop in Puerto Escondido to do laundry. This time we were actually down to only 4 loads, probably because it’s so hot we barely wear any clothes. Then we crossed over to Bahia Marquer on Isla Carmen. We had a bonfire there and only later remembered that we were on an island where fires are prohibited. Oops. In the early morning we crossed back over to Nopolo to meet back up with Lady Carolina. Alex and I were up, so we let Tim sleep, and we raised anchor, crossed the channel, and dropped anchor in Nopolo all on our own. That really raised my confidence level. Of course, since we had already been at Nopolo I had the waypoint stored from when we anchored the first time, so picking a spot to anchor was very straightforward. We stayed in Nopolo several nights and made a couple trips into Loreto, first in a Taxi, and then we even rented a car for a full day. We hit the farmers market again and did a significant amount of provisioning since we had the car and all. On our last day, Tim drove the car to Loreto, and the boys and I motored Exodus down to Loreto and anchored. Who needs a captain? It worked out well, and we were able to fill diesel and gas in jerry cans and use the car to get between the gas station and the dock and then dinghy the fuel out to the boats. Our method of filling the boat fuel tanks from jerry cans was, well, to put it mildly, a bit less efficient than Lady Carolina. But we got everything we needed for final Loreto provisioning before leaving for the last time and heading up into the sea for the summer. Of course, we made one last stop at Isla Coronados for a couple nights. Here, we experienced our first mini-Chubasco with lightening very close by and 25 kt winds. The worst part was when it died down the wind shifted so then we were beam on to the leftover swell and had a very rolly time in the wee morning hours. On our way North, we couldn’t pass San Juanico without stopping one more time. But we only stayed one night, because we needed to keep moving North, so that we could make it up to Bahia Concepcion for the cruisers’ 4th of July party. When we left San Juanico that time, we were back into new territory, and we were much more than ready.

This kid boat flotilla that we were fortunate to be a part of was our first experiment with the dynamics of making cruising friends.   Generally, the boys didn’t have any trouble and seemed to fit in with whatever combination of kids they were with, although Brenden had a few difficulties at the very beginning.  To give some background: At home, we always thought of Brenden as the most social of the family.  He had a lot of friends as well as a small group of really good buddies.  He was at ease in groups and really liked being around people.  Our first night with the other families at The Shack in La Paz all the kids had gone outside while the adults were finishing meals and drinks.  Brenden came back in looking very sullen and told me, “the other kids won’t play with me.”  In order to avoid dealing with this in real-time since we were with a group of people I didn’t really know and I didn’t immediately want to accuse their kids of being mean (which I was pretty sure they weren’t being) I just suggested to Brenden that he play with the little boy whose dad owned and operated The Shack.  (Brief aside: Brenden played playdough with Cam all evening, and when I bought him his own Playdough a few days later he set some aside to take back to Cam.  We never did make it back to the Shack, though, and Brenden was very disappointed.)

Later, before I talked to Brenden about it, I decided to ask Alex if the other kids were being mean to Brenden, and Alex validated my intuition that no one was being mean to Brenden.  So, I asked Brenden about it and he also said no one was being mean, but no one was playing with him and it made him sad.  Then I realized what was probably going on.  Brenden was very popular at home, and when he was with a group of kids he was probably pretty used to people paying attention to him.  And since he had been with the same kids at the same elementary school since forever, he had never really developed the social skills needed for his current situation.  Interestingly, this is when Alex jumped in and told Brenden what he did.  He said he just paid attention to what the other kids were doing.  He saw one boy lightly shove one of the other boys and then the other boy chased him around a bit.  So, he did the same thing and that’s how he joined in the impromptu chase each other around game.  So, the less social, less outgoing one used his observation and cognitive skills to assess the situation and figure out how to fit in.  Of course, it didn’t take Brenden long to fit in as well.  And while Alex tended to gravitate to the older boys, Brenden did pretty well fitting in with the older boys as well as playing with the younger kids.  Perhaps it’s all the legos in his cabin and his playful nature that gives him a stronger connection to the younger ones.

With such a large crowd of kids, there was constant concern over fostering inclusion.  Our first experience with this was the day in La Paz at Costa Baja with the Star Passage crew.  They have 2 kids:  a boy, age 11 and a girl, age 8.  The boys bonded rather quickly, especially once they discovered their shared love of the computer game, Minecraft.  However, Sophia was a bit left out.  They didn’t intentionally exclude her, but they didn’t intentionally include her either.  That evening we had the first of what would become somewhat of a recurring conversation with the boys.  Tim emphasized that since there aren’t that many kids out here cruising they need to make an effort to include everyone.  All ages.  Boys and girls.  Brenden ended up somewhat embracing this role.  He would sometimes pick up on a situation himself and notice someone might be feeling a little excluded, and even if he needed to be reminded he quickly jumped it to try to do his part.  It’s a tricky thing, though, because we didn’t want to force the issue of inclusion so much that we stifled the development of special friendships.   We needed to let it be OK for some of the kids to do things together sometimes without forcing them to include everyone and without feeling slighted for not being included.  So, we have tried to teach the boys balance.  A very constructive and positive thing that one of the other boats did was start up the “kid boat radio net” every morning.  This provided a consistent and totally inclusive way to coordinate any activities for the day and it helped us not inadvertently exclude anyone when planning an activity that didn’t need to be with just the smaller group you felt closest to.  Independent of the inclusion/exclusion issue it was also nice because it just made coordinating that much easier.

Any amount of effort would have made it hard to break the boy-girl division.  Each of the other families had one boy and one girl, but we broke the pattern and tipped the score in favor of the boys, 6-4.   At the group level they did a few things all together like Capture the Flag and building bonfires.  One night all the kids went over to Northern Passage for movie night.  This was no ordinary movie night.  They raised a sheet on deck and used a projector to get that big-screen effect.  Alex and Brenden loved it.

Our last night at Isla Coronados there was no end to the fun of feeding hot dogs to a Moray Eel.  Seriously, the eel swam up close to shore, and I’m not sure which one of them thought of feeding it hot dogs first, but I’m pretty sure they all took a turn.  I couldn’t watch!  Not because I was worried the eel could hurt them but because I was grossed out that it was eating hot dogs!  The group of six boys had so much fun together.   They played football on the beach and the older boys taught the younger ones how to skim board and dinghy surf.  It seems like most afternoons wound down with swimming at Exodus.  The boys liked to jump off the bows and try to stand up on boogie boards holding on to the anchor chain.  I didn’t have as much insight into how the girls spent their days, but I was invited to the girls’ spa day when we were at Puerto Los Gatos.  They dressed up, had tea and baked goodies, and the moms gave manicures and pedicures.  I didn’t have any little girl nails to paint, but it was fun just to hang out and eat the yummy snacks.

There was a whole lot of grown up fun too!  We had several pot lucks both at the beach and here on Exodus.  When we were at Puerto Los Gatos Don Pedro ordered a bunch of Lobsters from guys in one of the Pangas and they went out and caught them and brought them back we had a big Lobster feast on Exodus.  We had to look up in a cookbook how to prepare them and how to make “drawn butter.”  There were enough for two lobsters per family, and my joy was obvious when our boys had filled up on chicken and sausages and didn’t want any lobster.  It was absolutely delicious.   On Isla San Francisco we went for a “kid-free” hike up the crest to a peak and then down to the other side of the island.  It was nice getting to know each other independent of our role as kid boat parents.  We had drinks and socializing evenings on all the different boats.  And I’ll insert an observation here that there seems to be an unspoken rule that you don’t use the bathroom on another person’s boat, the obvious reasons being limited water and tank capacity.  We noticed this because when we first started giving tours on Exodus we would point out the bathrooms, “that they were welcome to use.”  No one used them, no matter how long the evening went.  And when we went to other boats, the offer of using the bathroom was never granted.  I almost exploded on a couple occasions.  I just can’t hold it that long!  Anyway, I never really got to know anyone well enough to ask about the unspoken rule, but maybe I’ll get a little bolder as time goes on.

With all this socializing going on, I valued my down time that much more.  I’m trying to run as much as I can, and I’ve developed a routine I call the “new triathlon.”  Rather than swim, bike, run, it’s kayak, run, swim.  I Kayak from Exodus to a nice running beach, run laps on the beach until I reach 3 miles or run out of water, whichever comes first, then throw on my snorkel gear and go for a swim.   I still miss really long runs, especially with Jen, but I’m not really in shape for that anymore anyway.  I’ve also been spending a lot of my free time trying to learn Spanish.  When I realized I didn’t know as much Spanish as I thought I did early on in the trip I somewhat shut down and was reluctant to even try.  Then one afternoon when we were in Agua Verde I ventured into town with a couple of the other moms to find the tienda.  One of them had mentioned to me before that she spoke Spanish.  Along the way we found the restaurant and arranged dinner for our group that evening, ordered tortillas for pick up the next day, and found not one but 4 tiendas in town.  The thing was, I understood most of the conversations.  I wouldn’t necessarily have been able to come up with the right words myself, but I was close.  Also, her accent and pronunciation were marginal at best, and they still understood her and she was able to communicate, no problem.  What I learned that day were 2 things: 1) my Spanish was better than I thought it was and 2) my Spanish doesn’t have to be perfect to adequately communicate.  So, now I pour over the phrase book almost every day and I’m also using the book of verbs, pocket grammar guide, and Spanish-English dictionary I still have because Andrew took 4 years of Spanish in school.

We had such a great time with the kid boat flotilla, but that chapter in our cruising book is now closed.  We are looking forward to meeting many other kid cruising boats, but I suspect five boats together for that long has got to be kind of rare.  The companionship for the boys was invaluable.  I said once that I really wish we had ordered our new anchor the first time we were in La Paz so we wouldn’t have been stuck there so long, but Alex countered that he was glad.  He said, “Then we might have left before meeting the kid boats”.  I conceded that it was indeed worth it.  I really hope we have the opportunity to meet up with some or all of them again, especially since some have plans to cross the Pacific about the time when we plan to.  Of course, we only fessed up about the radio lurking (stalking?) to one of the other boats, so it’s possible we will be avoided in the future if anyone actually reads this.

We’ve had a few more boat issues along the way, but nothing of the magnitude of the inadequate anchor we experienced early in the trip.  The biggest issue has had to be the starboard engine.  For a while, we had been experiencing that intermittently the starboard engine wouldn’t engage in reverse (to be more specific, the saildrive was not engaging the propeller).  Tim was pretty sure he knew what it was and how to fix it (he actually found a blog post by another sailor explaining how to fix it), but he didn’t have the right tools,  and he was waiting for when Gary and Marsha were coming to visit so they could bring them down.  It was an issue when anchoring so we sometimes found ourselves having to spin an extra circle because starboard reverse wouldn’t work right when you needed it to.  We started assuming it wouldn’t work and never planned an approach near land that depended on it.  Then during one passage when we were motoring (when the engines were in forward gear, obviously) Tim asked me if I had shut down the starboard engine and when I answered no he asked me if the two engines were at the same RPM.  He was asking me this because he was observing that the wakes of the two propellers in the water looked differently.   So, we figured out that the starboard side wasn’t working in forward, and Tim decided we should shut it down and not use it until he was able to get it fixed.  When we went into Puerto Escondido we decided to anchor rather than pick up a mooring ball, because anchoring with one engine would be much easier.  He went to the boatyard in Puerto Escondido to see if they had the tool he needed socket, and they didn’t, but they tried another approach that initially seemed not to work until Tim came back to the boat and re-read the blog post and realized that the whole time they were tightening what they wanted to loosen.  He went back to the boatyard and they tried again and this time it worked.  Success seemed to be near but sometimes it can be so elusive.  When he was back at the boat he realized he had put the assembly back together wrong.  The boys and I were at the restaurant at this time enjoying wifi while the laundry was finishing, but I’m pretty sure we faintly heard the expletives emanating from Exodus by one frustrated Captain.  So, he went back to the boatyard a third time, and this time success really was near and even with all the back and forth, Tim fixed the problem in under a day, and we were back to a fully operational, two engine, catamaran.

Another issue that came up is the fuse would sometimes blow when trying to empty the head (specifically the waste holding tank) in Brenden’s room.  (“Brenden’s head is empty!”  Yeah, there’s no end to the amusement that joke brings.)  Replacing the fuse was a quick fix, but eventually the root cause had to be found.  Turns out the macerator at the exit of the holding tank was jammed with a small piece of plastic (not a lego, I feel obligated to point out).  OK, problem fixed.  Well, not quite.  Something must have gone wrong reinstalling the macerator because soon the odor in the bilge made it clear that Brenden’s holding tank was leaking.  So, that mess had to be cleaned up (not by me!) and Brenden’s head was out of commission until that could be dealt with.  It turned out that the macerator had a paper gasket that tore during the reinstallation, so Tim was able to borrow some liquid gasket from one of the other boats, and we were back to a fully functioning, three head, catamaran.  So, those of you who judge by the photos I post that the life of a cruising boat captain is all swimming, eating, and lounging around should know it takes al of hard work keeping this boat livable and sea-worthy.

We’ve also had a lot of fun tracking down some SSB radio noise sources.  I figured out early on that our fridge is the source of the very large chirping noise in the 6-8 MHz frequencies.  When using sailmail the instructions say over and over that you need to listen before transmitting because digital noise on the channel means someone else is using it and if you transmit you will step on them and neither one of you will be able to get your email.  So, the first few times I mistook the fridge chirping for digital noise, and I was baffled how the 7 MHz channel at the San Diego station was ALWAYS in use.  Anyway, although I was able to do digital transmissions through sailmail, it took a while before we found all the noise sources that were rendering voice communications all but impossible.  The obvious ones after the fridge were the inverter and the navigation equipment.  Then in La Paz, another cruiser said it could be the solar charge controller, so we shut that down too, and still couldn’t hear anything on the nets.  Then, one morning when I was straining to pick out Gary’s weather forecast out of the noise floor on the morning Sonrisa net Tim flipped off power to the water maker, and it was like the sky cleared and the sun broke through.  We could hear Gary loud and clear, and I was able to hear everyone on the Amigo net that morning for the first time.  The water maker wasn’t actually running at the time, but there are telemetry display electronics that are always on, so by cutting the power it shut those off.  I would never have predicted that would be such a huge noise source.  Getting rid of that has now uncovered a really loud hum at the 4 MHz frequency band.  I can still usually pick out the voice traffic, but it’s really annoying, so we still have to figure that one out.   When I listen to the Amigo net, some mornings there’s not much noise and some mornings it sounds like a train is driving by in the background.  So, I started thinking about what could be different from day to day that I could control.  I knew it was possible it was just varying propagation, but I wanted to at least try something.  The only thing I could come up with was the solar array orientation.  Some mornings I forget to point the solar arrays at the sun, and even when I do it’s not always the same direction since our heading could be different.  So, on a morning when the train was particularly loud I asked Tim to humor me and vary the solar array angle.  Aha!  Another mystery solved.   Our noise source investigations are still ongoing since we still seem to not have as good reception as some boats.  Of course, it could just be our antenna size.  Most monohulls put isolators at the top and bottom of their backstays and use that for the antenna.  We don’t have a backstay, so we have installed a 23’ whip antenna on our aft deck (right next to the solar array, incidentally) which is smaller than most backstays.

All in all, these issues have been manageable, and if you find all of it quite boring, I apologize, but I also feel compelled to write about the total cruising lifestyle, not just the turquoise water and happy hours.  However, we are more than happy to endure the difficult and the mundane in order to enjoy all of the amazing.

Fortunately, we haven’t dragged since getting our new anchor, but we were witness to another boat dragging that could have ended up much worse than it did.  To add a little context, there aren’t that many charter boats here in the Sea of Cortez when compared to places like the Caribbean or the Med, but there are a few, and cruisers quickly learn to keep their distance because the experience level of charter sailors varies widely and the quality of charter vessels and equipment does as well.  While staying at the North anchorage in Isla San Francisco we five kid boats had a perfectly spaced, staggered, anchoring constellation when a Moorings boat plopped right between us and Star Passage, a little too close for comfort.   Don Pedro actually politely suggested they move just a bit, which they agreeably did, and by the way, they were a very nice couple from Switzerland that we enjoyed getting to know at our potluck that evening.  Well, when I got up the next morning and was enjoying my coffee at the salon table I saw the Moorings boat’s stern aft of our port stern.  That wasn’t where I would expect to see it given where they had anchored.  So, I went out and looked around and watched them, and sure enough, they were dragging.  I tried multiple times to hail them on VHF Channels 16 and 22 with no response.  Even if they had their radio on I wondered if they would recognize their boat name since it wasn’t their boat.  I certainly don’t remember the names of the boats we chartered all those times to Catalina.  So, at this point, I woke Tim and he went outside and started yelling to try to wake them up.  Still nothing so he was getting ready to paddleboard over to their boat when we hear Max from Fluenta on what sounds like a bull horn trying to rouse the people on the dragging boat.  He had heard Tim yelling and took a personal interest since if they kept dragging Fluenta was right on their probable path.  This worked!  They came out and reset the anchor, and all was good.  In hindsight, the bull horn part was pretty comical, and it turns out it’s not a bullhorn but a PA system they have on their boat.  We’ve gotta get one of those.