Make Me Laugh Again

(posted 04/30/24)
We went ashore for lunch and a walk through “town” it’s pretty small, less than 200 people. A few small ranches, a Tinda (market), a church and three restaurants on the beach. We had lunch at Brisa del Mar. Lenore is the proprietor. The fish tacos come 3 to a plate 60 pesos each. It’s a large meal and exceptionally good! We talked to Thorn who has a ketchup, and is a neighbor of Brian Coleman in Posada Conceptión.
Then back to the boat and put the kayak away and make sure we are ready to go in the morning.
I plotted the course to Isla San Francisco. It’s about 52 miles away. Which will make for a relatively long day on the water. We normally target about 40 miles maximum. But, we want two nights there before we start our crossing to San Blas (350 miles across). We ended our day sitting on deck and reading.

 

(posted 04/30/24)

We anchored here in Agua Verde B.C.S. Mexico last night. After we dropped anchor and had dinner a small “cruise ship” came in. We were told later that it is National Geographic and they do a week at a time and include tours and explanations. Great!! Down side, they ran a noisy generator all night.
When we got up and around this morning we noticed a couple of other Island Packet sailboats. We got our kayak down and went for a paddle. There are 5 IP’s here!!
One 445 (us)
Two 420’s
One 379
One 370.
This the biggest convention of Island Packets I remember ever seeing.

Anna Marie, Reality Check, Tasi, and Solitude are the names of the other four Island Packets.

We are here at Puerto Bello for lunch.

(posted 04/30/24)
Up at 6 and into port on the dinghy for showers and laundry. Then a tour of Mikes boat, followed by breakfast.
Back to our boat and underway by 1130.

The way the mooring ball works, there is a big hunk of concrete (or an engine block or….) at the bottom and it is attached to the white ball via rope or chain or a mix, the the yellow float is attached by some fairly stout line to the white ball. This line has an “eye” in it. When you come up to it in the boat the person on the bow (Reneé) uses a boat hook to get it up to the level of the deckand then threads a dock line from each side of the boat through the eye. the other end of the dock line is then cleated on the oppositte side of the boat at the bow.

(posted 04/30/24)
Up early and underway by 0640 into Puerto Escondido by 1030.

Sandy and Mike are together and Ralph is a guy we met in Santa Rosalia.

Some stories about it being a small world, Ralph and his wife have been sailing for awhile and we gave her a tour of our boat (she remembered) sometime in the past, and when we got to Santa Rosalia he was really excited to see our boat and see what it looked like inside. Here we are in Puerto Escondido about 150 miles south of Santa Rosalia (and a couple of weeks later).

Mike G. is a guy we met in Puerto Peñasco in 2020 when we first went to put our boat there at the end of our first season. We have played “tag” with Mike when we have been driving around the country. On one occasion we were  visiting friends in Michigan (Mike and Sue Klos) and with them we drove about an hour north of their house to go to a small German town for the day. When we got back, I posted about it on Facebook, and Mike Gingerich commented that he was visiting friends about 15 minutes away from the town we were no longer in.

(posted 04/30/24)
Up at, underway by 6:45. Breakfast and morning routines underway.
We saw about a dozen boats, only a few of them had AIS, and had it broadcasting.
AIS, is an Automatic Identification System, it uses a VHF radio (on a different frequency) to broadcast information about your boat.
For much more information about it, check out this link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_identification_system

In the various sailing and boating groups that I am a member of (both on Facebook had other websites) there is a semi frequent discussion about which is better RADAR or AIS, and if one is on a limited budget, and you can only afford one which should you choose. We have both, and as we saw today, probably 10 – 15% of the boats we saw were using their AIS (if they had it) all were visible on the RADAR. A frequent argument is that RADAR is too difficult to use, depending on what you are trying to use it for it can be difficult to use it well. But as with any tool, practice and it gets easier.
For example, I was able to identify boats on the water about 5 miles away from us that required binoculars to clearly see that it was a boat and not just haze. In this case, they were not using AIS.
Reasons to have it off include concerns about pirates (not a huge concern here in the Sea of Cortez), and not wanting to broadcast your location worldwide. I am not in that group.
Bottom line, we have both AIS & RADAR, and use both most of the time. AIS virtually always.
We arrived at Balandra (this is on Isla Carmen, off the coast near Loreto) at about 11:30. We were able to sail for about 30 minutes, there wasn’t much wind today.
After lunch and a nap we went for a swim.
The water is warmer than it has been, about 74 degrees. Certainly clearer than anything I have swam in here this year. I was able to see the bottom of the boat and that is time to get it cleaned.
Now that we are out, Reneé is going to fish for dinner and see if she can catch anything she saw while we were snorkeling.