Category: 2020-03 (March)

We got up early but did not get out of bed, (at least I did not) laid out reading. The weather is a bit “dreary” raining and some fog. By about 10 it was mostly clear.

We had breakfast and did our devotions. Followed up with catching up on Facebook, sometime there is some pretty funny stuff there:

Q. What medicine do you give to someone who keeps buying sailboats?

A. Antibuyyachtics!

By 11 am or so, we decided it was clear enough to run into town and check out the brewery here. As far as we have seen, there are two breweries in Baja California (if you know of anymore please let us know and we will check them out!). Baja Brewing in Ensenada and Mulegé Brewing here in Mulegé. This one has Stout at 7.1% ABV. Very good taste!

We used the dinghy to get into town, the city is about 2 or 3 miles up the river from the beach. When we left the boat, it was clear but about the time we rounded the point to start up the river, it started raining. It was not hard but it got harder the longer we were out. When we were just about all the way into town, we found some rocks in the river, which were not visible through the murky water. We continued up until we found the bridge and found a dock on the river bank to tie up to. We only hit a couple more rocks on the way in, and then back out.

When we got ashore, we were soaked, oh and we were on the wrong side of the river for the town, the normal bridge (low down on the water was being worked on and the taller bridge for Highway 1, was pretty busy. We found a trash can and got rid of our trash and then saw a car where there were selling shrimp, we really did not want the shrimp but we talked to the guy selling and asked where the brewery was and asked about walking across the river somehow, he offered us a ride and did not want any money. We accepted the ride and gave him 200 pesos for his efforts. Probably more than it was worth, but it was the right thing to do. He took us into the heart of town, and it was really raining by this time. We got under a porch at a shop and went in and found a hat for me, a blouse for Renee’ and a straw mat for the beach. We also got better directions to the brewery, and by this time the rain had mostly stopped. So, we walked to the brewery.

The beer was really good, the owner is a gringo and the shop has only been open a few months, we had guacamole and chips and two stouts each. At the end of our time in there, one of the patrons who was leaving to go get his wife offered us a ride back to our dinghy, which we accepted and got back to our spot and discovered that while we had been gone someone had pulled our boat further out of the water than we left it. We also had a couple of inches of water in it. I bailed it out and Renee’ loaded the stuff we bought and brought with us back into the boat. Then we headed back down the river. As I said before we hit a couple of rocks going this way as well. Though this time we were basically idling the whole way. The rain picked up and we had our umbrella out, in the beginning, I had it and was staying dry while Renee’ used an oar as a feeler to see if the bottom was there in front of the boat, once we got past the shallow spots, I gave it to her and she huddled in the bow with it just over the front of the boat, and I sat in the back. This allowed us to get up on a plane with the dinghy and go faster. Renee’ was already pretty wet, but now it was my turn to get soaked. Eventually, we got back to the boat and then worked through the process of getting the dinghy put away and all the stuff spread out to dry. One thing we found when we had the dinghy back aboard, the outboard prop is toast, good thing we have another one.

Since it has been overcast, the solar has not kept up with the power usage. So, we ran the generator for awhile to charge the battery and heat the water and run the heater inside the boat. This helped to dry everything and heat the water for our showers.

At this point, we have had dinner (tuna casserole again, still the same fresh BBQ’d tuna) and Topo-Chico (sparkling mineral water) pretty great dinner!

We do have room for guests, if anyone is interested in visiting and spending a week or so with us, drop us a line and we will coordinate. What you have to do/have is you need a passport and will need to be able to get to where we are when you are going to be down. When we know what time frame you are thinking about we can let you know where we expect to be so that you can make your travel arrangements.

If you want to know where we are, click this link:

https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Make_Me_Laugh_Again

Added later a picture taken by friends

We woke up a bit later than normal and did not get out of bed until almost 8 am. The water tank still shows us at 30%, I am not comfortable having it this low, but it is. We had plans to go into Santa Rosalia and stay a day and then head across to San Carlos. We were going to run the water maker on Friday. We would have had 60-70% in the water tank then. This is Tuesday and we won’t be running it until tomorrow.  We do have a jug of water as a back up to drink if we run out of water in the tank before we start the water maker.

We don’t run the water maker in port, or near shore as there is a lot of stuff in the water closer to shore. Not just the fact that the cities discharge their sewage there, (this is true in the states as well as here, just in the states they pipe it out 3 miles) but also run off from streams and rain fall, and if it is shallow then the sand in the water is stirred up as well. All of this challenges the water making system, the filters get clogged and the Reverse Osmosis membrane gets fouled.

We had breakfast, did our devotions, and got the dinghy down and went ashore. There is a large resort here on the point that has been closed for about 10 years, and was open for 10 years before that. The owner (as told to us by a guy that was removing copper air conditioning lines) is an Italian who also owns resorts in La Paz and Cabo by the same name. There is not much of value left here, except the building (maybe?). From there we talked/chatted with Colin and Claudia on Capella III, and Jeff and Angie on The Lost Pearl and Josh and Cozette on Merry Lee. Capella III was headed in to this anchorage and we were scheduled to spend the day with them gathering shells.

Josh, Cozette, Jeff and Angie were in Puerto Escondido and are planning on going as far north as Bahia Concepcion then they will turn around and go back to San Diego. We debated on the pro’s and Con’s of sticking around and meeting up with “our boat kids” or crossing the Sea as planned to San Carlos. We decided that we will head south to Bahia Concepcion, after further deliberations, the plan is to go out for a few hours, run the generator and the water maker tomorrow, then anchor at Mulegé (about half way to Bahia Concepcion) then Thursday go and meet up with the Boat Kids for a last day together before they go back to San Diego. When they leave, we will come back here to Punta Chivato, spend the night then get a very early start for San Carlos on Saturday or Sunday, (something like this anyway).

In the meantime today we connected with Colin and Claudia and went ashore to collect some shells. There is probably 5 or more miles of beach starting at the point had going west then south that are just covered several feet deep in shells. We talked to an Ex-Pat that sort of lives here who was out walking her dogs, and she said that she had once dug a hole to see if she could find any better shells deeper down, and she said that the shells were still there 4 feet down where she dug. She also gave us pointers on where to get the best shells, so we went back out and moved down the beach with the dinghy, we saw lots of shells, and quite a few rays, some pretty small (3” in diameter) and some pretty good size (12-15” in diameter). We got lots of shells. Renee’ will have to figure out what to do with them.

After gathering shells, we went back to our respective boats, and dropped off our “loot” then we met at the Capella III for happy hour. We chatted about lots of things and nothing in particular. It is interesting to compare boats (theirs is an Island Packet 420, which is the model we had been looking at before we bought this one. Today, we were in the cockpit for a bit on their boat, and I looked at the table that hangs off the backside of the instrument/steering pedestal, and recognized it as the “fish cleaning table that had been mounted on the stern rail of our boat but was missing some hardware to make it work. We moved it next to the BBQ and configured a leg for it and made it a work table for the BBQ. But it is nice to know that it was not missing parts, just wasn’t what we thought it was.

Dinner tonight is tuna casserole, which at first doesn’t sound that great, but remember the fresh tuna that we had for dinner two nights ago in Santa Rosalia? Well, some of the fish got sent back with us that night, and we have had Tuna Salad Sandwich’s for lunch today, and we had Tuna on our salads for dinner last night. All of the Tuna we have had for three days comes from what we were given, and it is really good. Renee’ just pointed out that even after the casserole there will still be fresh BBQ’d tuna left over. This is some really good fish, but we are just about tired of fresh tuna.

After dinner and dishes, we got showers. Again that might not seem like such a big deal, but we have gone 10 days since filling the water tank. We took showers a couple of times in the marina, but other than that we have each gotten showers here on the boat probably 6 or 7 times and the indicator still shows 30 % in the tank. This tank holds 260 gallons of water. In the future, I will plan ahead to ensure we don’t go more than a week with out filling the tank.

We do have room for guests, if anyone is interested in visiting and spending a week or so with us, drop us a line and we will coordinate. What you have to do/have is you need a passport and will need to be able to get to where we are when you are going to be down. When we know what time frame you are thinking about we can let you know where we expect to be so that you can make your travel arrangements.

If you want to know where we are, click this link:

https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Make_Me_Laugh_Again

We got up a bit early, probably between 6 and 6:30. No particular reason really, just we were up. We had Colin and Claudia over to watch a sermon from North Coast church, and shared breakfast. Afterwards, we went to work on their boat. Clint and Reina came in as well. Clint was the guy who knew how to check freon in the refrigeration system for the refrigerator and freezer that are not working, and had the gauges to check the pressures. 

So, the situation there is a Frigoboat system with a sea water pump, two compressors (one for the refrigerator and the other for the freezer). The sea water pump was not running or was running occasionally, we jumped power directly to the sea water pump and were able to get everything to run, and started cooling down both units. We poked around and started checking the circuits, and found that the controller for the pump is supposed to get a signal if either compressor is running. Well the box that does that was working, and we tried the sea water pump again, flow looks low but it does pass water, and we were able to get it to run with the freezer compressor, but could not get it to run for the fridge. We tried replacing the controller for the fridge (which should have fixed the problem, we swapped the controller between the two compressors and no matter what we did, or how we had it hooked up to the sea water pump controller, only the freezer compressor will run the sea water pump. In any case, Colin has a much better understanding of what he is working with and currently the freezer and the fridge are both cooling down.
Next up was work at the top of the mast for Colin, this is an area that I have no desire to do. I have a serious fear of heights. We spent the next couple of hours with him going up in a bosuns chair and trying to thread a weighted messenger line down the mast to install a spare halyard (a line from the base of the mast to the top used to pull things up, like sails, specifically in this case a spinnaker). At the end of the day, Colin has a better understanding of what is at the top of his mast, and has the confidence to go up there, and Claudia now knows what she has to do to handle the lines on deck to get him up and down. 

This evening we are getting together for dinner, Yellowtail! Someone had too much and Colin was able to help them out by taking it off their hands.

We had dinner next door, with the six of us, and two really big slabs of tuna, Mexican rice and coleslaw. Fantastic dinner and company. Clint and Reina are leaving at 3:30 in the morning headed north, and we are leaving a bit later, headed south to the shells, and Colin and Claudia are staying here, they have to finish putting their boat back together from our work on the fridge. 

After dinner we came back to our boat and will get showers and then turn in to get some sleep before tomorrow and leaving.

We do have room for guests, if anyone is interested in visiting and spending a week or so with us, drop us a line and we will coordinate. What you have to do/have is you need a passport and will need to be able to get to where we are when you are going to be down. When we know what time frame you are thinking about we can let you know where we expect to be so that you can make your travel arrangements.

If you want to know where we are, click this link:

https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Make_Me_Laugh_Again