Category: 2019-12 (December)

We went ashore, had lunch, walked to a couple of marine stores and finally took the bus to the Costco. It looked just like one in the states, except prices were in Pesos. Did our shopping, and then took an Uber back to the marina. Back to the boat past the cruise ship that had come in. Water was VERY rough!

Renee’ put the Christmas lights up, and after dark we took the dinghy out and got pictures. Then we went to bed, and did not sleep very well. Like I said the water was VERY rough.

Finally about 8:30 we anchored in Cabo San Lucas about 100 yards off the beach. Now it is time to get some sleep. I will post this and the previous stuff a bit later. Renee’ went right to sleep, but I was tortured by a fly, and had too much coffee last night. So an hour and a half later here I am typing up what is going on and posting stuff to our webpage.

We had a very quiet day, did not go ashore. We went snorkeling, checked out the condition of the bottom of the boat, found the anchor and had dinner and went to bed by about 7:30. About 9 pm I heard a text come in on Renee’s phone and found out that Josh and Cozette were coming in. I communicated with them on the radio for a few minutes, turned on some lights to help them find their way, and then went back to bed.

The rocks in front of Cabo San Lucas

We got under way at about 6:30, still dark, got to watch the sun come up, and had to deal with some current at the mouth of Mag Bay. Would have been nice if the timing had worked out to give us a push instead of holding us back. We got out 3 miles and dumped the holding tank, then started the water maker and a load of laundry. We have 24 hours to go on this heading. There is no wind (<5 knots, from the port bow), so we have the mainsail up and are motor sailing. We are going about 6.5 knots speed over ground. Listening to Christmas music. Renee’ is napping.

We are still motor sailing. True wind is abut 12 knots, but is from directly astern. Apparent wind is about 7 knots. This is not enough to move our boat. We have gone about 65 miles roughly 1/3 of the way. It is hot, the sea is fairly flat. Pretty dull stuff today.

Well, a bit later, as in after dark. I was getting ready for a nap, we were having issues with the radio, Bluetooth, and cell phones, and so I rebooted the radio. So far so good. Unfortunately I dropped my life jacket/harness by the DC circuit breaker panel and …. bumped the breaker for the chart plotter/radar. OOPS! No control, about 15 minutes later, chart plotter/radar and auto pilot are communicating again, and we are back on course. Renee’ is driving/watching etc. I lay down and take a nap.

A couple hours later, I am driving and Renee’ is sleeping. I take a look at the depth gauge, we are 18+ miles off shore, the chart says 2700 – 3000 feet. BUT!!! Our depth garage is at 50 feet and gradually getting lower. I called Renee’ back on deck to help me watch as we slowed down to about 2.5 knots, and the lowest depth I saw was 10.8 feet. The swells there were pretty strong. We turned west and went slow and eventually got back into deep water.

A couple of hours later, Renee’ was driving and I had just gone down to sleep, and we repeated the previous paragraph, with the shallowest being mid 20’s. This one was on the chart, but said that it was about 55 feet deep at the shallowest! We were originally going to miss that one, but when we changed course for the first one, wound up going right over this one.

We listened to a sermon from North Coast given by Chris Brown on the rich young ruler, the blind beggar and the chief tax collector. Bottom line out of all this, we are called to be servants, not to be served.

We woke up about 7am, and realized that we were supposed to be communicating with the crew of Wild Blue. Renee’ got on the radio and found out that they were in the process of leaving for Cabo. They go a bit slower than us under power at least. (They have a 60 hp engine, and he was told RPM should be 1800 RPM max, which gives them about 4.4 knots). This doesn’t sound right to me, as the boat is a 45 footer, and as such should have a hull speed of about 7.5 knots. It seems wrong that they would be so underpowered at 60 hp, that they can only get half of that.

Today, the crew of the Merry Lee, and the Lost Pearl and I (Neil) used our dinghy to get across to San Carlos (about 9 miles away) it took us about an hour to get there and used about 1.5 gallons of gas to get the 5 of us across the bay. When we got there, a couple of guys in a pickup gave us a ride to the first Pemex in town (but no diesel) so we got back in the truck and he took us across town to the other Pemex to get diesel and gas, then stopped at a grocery store for us, then a liquor store to get beer, then back to the dinghy! We tipped the kids filling the gas and diesel cans, and gave the guy who drove the truck a 200 peso note for his effort. (At about 17 pesos to the dollar, that was a bit more than $10 for his effort). For us, he saved us a couple of hours hauling empty containers to the Pemex and back (probably 5 miles across town each way).

We are planning on having the Merry Lee and the Lost Pearl crews over to play cards this evening. We might also run over to Aloha to get a tour of their boat, and Hans 505. Very nice new boat. We have postponed the trip to Aloha until we meet again in San Jose Del Cabo.

Well, we played Rummy 500 to show them how to play. Then they left and we put our dinghy away, and generally got ready to get underway the next morning. While putting the dinghy away, we watched a pelican catch a fish about 20 feet from the back of the boat. We had the light on to see what we were doing, and apparently that brought a fish near the surface and a pelican to have dinner. A little later we saw a crab in the water (probably 10-12” across) Renee’ tried to catch it overnight, but no luck. The first night here we saw a sea horse near the surface. We have seen some interesting sea life. When everything was put away, we FaceTimed with the grandkids, then went to bed.

We had an interesting sail, we stayed about 3 or 4 miles from Aloha all night. At one point about 17 miles off shore we saw a couple of lights ahead. There was nothing on Radar, and as we got closer we saw that we were on a pretty close approach and considered altering course to avoid. But I figured that I could stay on course keep an eye on them and avoid as necessary. It turned out to be a small Panga, with two very bright lights and a couple of guys fishing. That was our excitement for the night. We anchored at about 8:30 in Bahia Santa Maria. This bay has a pretty big mountain/hill between it and the ocean to the west, but to the north it is just a small spit/beach pretty low, so while it blocks the swells, it does nothing for the wind. Which at the moment is pretty light.

The Merry Lee and Lost Pearl are here and are anchored not far from us. Aloha is still coming in. They are better sailors than we are, as I talked to him periodically on the way down, and they only motored for about an hour and a half, whereas we gave up when the wind came from directly behind us, and dropped to about 10 knots apparent. He was able to maintain 5+ knots with approximately the same course as us. We ran the engine, but I kept the RPM at about 2500, vs our normal cruise RPM of 3000. This kept our speed over ground to about 6 knots. I did not want to get here before sunrise, so that we could see where we were anchoring. We left at 4 pm, and arrived at 8:30 am, so 12.5 hours. There are quite a few boats here (about 6 or 8) and I saw 3 or 4 leaving as we were pulling in. Compared to what we have seen on this coast, the only place that compared was Turtle Bay. This was a long night, we are going to go to bed and get some sleep.

We slept for a bit, then got up, and I called my uncle Gary. After getting the info from my mom that he was awake. That took an act of congress to get him on the phone. The operator at the hospital was convinced he was still in ICU, nope, not in the first one, not in the second one, back to the operator. Finally found out what room he was in, but he was busy, and the phone did not get answered. Wait a bit and try again. Found out what room he was in, but when I tried to call that number, found out I needed to know which bed he was in (private room only one bed) back to he operator, this is the room he is in, and I want to talk to the nurse. Yeah, he is not in this department, so hang on and another transfer. Two hours later…. I talked to him and he is doing pretty well. Could go home tomorrow. The blockages are inoperable. So, some more phone calls to health care providers for him and his neighbor etc. Also called AT&T to figure out why my iPad can’t find my iPhone for hotspot. Two more hours on the phone and a promise to call back tomorrow (I have heard that before) now an hour after the last phone call it is working. Who knows why? Who cares?

I don’t know if I can post pictures yet, we will see.