Author: Neil Scheuerlein

We got up to a pretty windy day. We added more dock lines and walked to church.

This is a bilingual service. There are a few cruisers here, and we have been invited to a bible study on Wednesday morning at 10 am.

This is a change for us, as we have not really been able to attend church (we did a couple of weeks ago in San Jose Del Cabo). This church shows that it is not just about listening & reading the Bible or hearing sermons, we need to be in the christian community. We need to be involved.

We read Psalm 8, it was read in Spanish, then read in English and expounded on from personal experience.

Most of the music was in Spanish, but at least one song was English. There were about 60 or 70 people in the service. There are only about a half dozen gringos in the service. One is the pastor, her husband was the pastor, but he died about 2 years ago, and she felt called to take it on. They moved into this building last year, and spent the time renovating it and getting it ready for church.

The room is much like Community Lutheran in Oceanside, complete with the support beams in the middle of the room.

This is a young church, they have an active internship with two interns learning to be pastors, included in this is music and English. There were about 15-20 students under the age of 12 that were called to the front of the church to be blessed by the church before going to the Sunday school.

The pastor gave the message in English, with a translator. It was done very well. I suspect that I may have been the only one in the room that needed it done in English. As I really don’t speak any Spanish, but most of the gringos that I talked to down here do speak some. The message was solid, and a call to believe, and follow Jesus. With a reminder that our duty as Christians is to help others to choose life with Jesus.

On the walk back to the boat we saw a kite boarder on the bay. He was doing loops in the air, 20+ feet up!

We got up as normal, had breakfast and did our devotions. Then went for a walk.

We wanted haircuts (it has been about 2 months) and to look for Baja Brewing company beer. We got the haircuts, walked for about 4 hours, found some other cruisers staying at the same marina (they were looking for a bank). When we found them we were about 2 miles away from the marina. But we did not find the beer.

Over all a very quiet day. Sometimes you just need those.

Well! That was quite a night. We checked our weather programs yesterday, and were expecting a fairly quiet night at anchor. Yeah… about that. Wind speed got up over 30 knots sustained, and waves in the anchorage (which is part of the Sea of Cortez, so typically smaller than ocean waves) were 4 to 6 feet, breaking on the bow of the boat. One of our buddy boats, Lost Pearl drug their anchor a couple of times. By the time he was done dragging, he had out about 300 feet of chain, and the rear of his boat was almost in the surf zone. He said his next option was to cut his chain, leave the anchor and chain and go to La Paz in the dark. All of our books on all of our boats, caution against going into La Paz in the dark. But it would be better than putting his boat on the beach.

I texted a question about this to PredictWind, as they are a paid weather source for us, and the response was enlightening as to how to get a better understanding of what they are telling us with the app and information. BUT, when I reviewed the info that I had downloaded last night, and compared it to what we experienced, there was nothing in the predictions that suggested anything like this. Nor was there anything that suggested that there was any uncertainty in those predictions.

At this point all three of our buddy boats are out on their way to La Paz (Lost Pearl, Merry Lee, and Kirah) as of 8:30, I got a report from them that wind speed out there is over 20 knots already. We will probably be getting underway to follow them shortly.

We got underway fairly early, and motored to La Paz. Along the way, Renee’ made some phone calls and got us a reservation at Marina Cortez on C dock. Some good some bad about that:

1. Yes it has water

2. Yes it is a floating dock

3. No it does not have power

4. Yes it is about a 1/2 mile to walk from the boat along the dock to the gate (no, I am not kidding, I measured it with Google Earth at 2,100 feet!).

5. Yes the bathrooms are about a block away from the gate

6. Yes the bathrooms are on the second floor, and to get to the stairs you have to walk the full length of the building.

7. But the best part…. the price! $200 US per week. Consider the marina we stayed at in San Jose Del Cabo was $1700 per month, the bathrooms were marginally closer, but still quite a walk.

We went for a walk around town this afternoon, Ok, not really around town just down the beach street. Found a microbrewery/pub that sold Baja Brewing company beer. Very good! We are going to look for it in the local grocery stores/liquor stores.

We have about had it for today, I will catch up on my posts for this blog and go to bed.

We are at Puerto Balandra On the approach to La Paz. We motored up here from Ensenada de Los Muertos. The books said expect a south bound current, up to 2.5 knots, and winds funneled from the north, so we only did an overnight at Los Muertos. We will save that for another visit. The snorkeling was supposed to be good at both ends of the beach there.

We checked the weather late yesterday, and it said today would be mild to no wind, with lots of wind Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and the next calm day would be Monday.

So, we left at 6:45, and motored up. There was a little wind, but not really enough to help us move. We got here at 2pm.

So far, where we are right now (Puerto Balandra) is probably the best spot we have been to. White sandy beach, clear water no waves, and water temp just a bit cooler than we would like. Renee’ and I snorkeled about 1/2 way to the beach, and decided it was further than we wanted to swim back, so we turned around and went back to the boat. The water is very clear, and the bottom is sand. There are lots of tourists here, a bunch of Panga’s running them in and out, but not as bad as we had at the arches in Cabo San Lucas.

We have talked about staying here until tomorrow, which would put us in La Paz on Saturday. We plan to anchor, (I think there is a fee to anchor in the harbor).

We got up at 6 am, and under way by 7. We had breakfast and did our morning devotions using Jesus Calling, as we did not have internet access.

It was a bad day for sailing, as the wind was coming directly from the direction we wanted to sail, and until about noon it was only about 10 knots, with occasional bouts of 12 knots for just long enough that it looked like we could tack and take advantage of the wind, but then it would die back down to 7 or 8 knots. Then around noon, the wind started to pick up, and went straight up to about 17 knots. But the waves came with it. Pretty soon it was just miserable so we reefed the main, put the jib away and powered through it. Eventually getting to where we planned on being Ensenada de Los Muertos (cove of the dead, maybe?). We anchored in about 25 feet of water on the west side of the anchorage with 7 other boats already here. We were in by about 3 pm.

We have looked at the weather and the books on the next passage to La Paz, and we will probably take off at first light to get through on Thursday, we may stay in an anchorage outside of La Paz tomorrow night, so that Renee’ can investigate (via internet and phone calls) where we should go in La Paz. It is a solid 12 hour day from here to La Paz, and we would rather anchor outside, and go in during the morning hours anyway.