tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26352944782073836012024-03-13T18:13:00.396-07:00No Bad Days No Bad Days Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2635294478207383601.post-72400015110367094902015-05-30T19:18:00.000-07:002015-05-30T19:18:58.771-07:00A Utah Yankee in King Edwards Court
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I have done
quite a bit of small boat cruising here in the US and in Mexico.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, an article that <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had once read about a guy that cruised for
250 miles along Baja in a small boat was the inspiration to get me started in
sailing in the first place, and I have spent many wonderful<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>weeks and months sailing my little boats
hither and yon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For years I have participated
in a few online small boat cruising forums,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>with most of the members residing and sailing in the UK.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sailing the tidal rivers of Great Britain has
always held a special fascination for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>None of my sailing, even in Mexico, required much thought to the tides,
other than pulling my kayak up above the high tide line of driftwood on the
beach to ensure I still had a boat nearby in the morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When my son moved to London last year with
his job, I knew I would soon get the opportunity to sail with the big boys. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">As an island
nation, England invented sailing, right? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, I guess if you don’t count the Kuwaitis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or the Phoenicians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or the Chinese. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or the Polynesians. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But we have to admit, the English did pretty
well at it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Building an empire that the
sun never set over required a fair bit of sailing expertise. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the blokes fishing out of wee boats in
every sort of wild weather have fed the whole nation for a long time. (The
whole fish and chips thing requires a boatload of fish.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That small boat passion resides to this day
in the hearts of the crazies who sail with groups like the Dinghy Cruising
Association (DCA) and the Hostellers Sailing Club. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I booked a 2
week trip to London in late April, 2015, because it was convenient for both me
and my son Porter and his wife Erin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
wasn’t <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>sure if that was a good time to
go sailing <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in the UK or not. I knew it
didn’t freeze much there, so how bad could it be? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Turns out the DCA had a sailing event planned
for the weekend I was there!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perfect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The plan was<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to sail up the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tamar River out of Plymouth Harbor (yes,
Plymouth, as in the Mayflower and the Pilgrims) and explore some of the creeks,
and pubs,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in that area.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was especially cool for me because I
had been watching a 12 episode BBC special <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>showing how life was on a farm up the Tamar
valley during the period of King Edward (late 1800- early 1900 s). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The river with its sailing barges was the main
form of transport of goods to and from the cities all over England.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vegetables and flowers went<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>down river to the cities, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>horse manure from the stables of the cities went
back up river to fertilize the fields!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It was a well balanced system for <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a thousand <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>years, but permanently<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>interrupted by the train and truck.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">From what I had
been reading, I had this probably over-romanticized idea that dinghy cruising
in the UK involved sailing with the rising tide up a river through beautiful
wooded and fielded countryside to some secluded little moorage, tie up to the
bank,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and let the flat bottomed boat
settle down on to the mud as the tide went out. We would walk up a little cow path
to a village and spend the evening in a pub, enjoying the warmth of a fire, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>drink a pint and eat some bangers and mash, and
sing some songs until they kicked us out, then trundle our way back to the boat
and sleep on board under a little tent erected over the cockpit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the morning the tide would be high again
and lift us off the mud as we awoke and brewed up a pot of coffee (no tea for
these blokes) , then ride the falling tide back on down the river, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to repeat again up another creek.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Guess
what? Turns out it was pretty much just like that!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh yeah, and did you know it rains a lot in
England?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who’d a thunk? </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I rode a bus
5 hours across England from London to Plymouth, where I was met at the station
by DCA members John and Josephine <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perry,
who it turns out had been writing many of the sailing stories I had been
reading online all these years!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They
graciously invited me to stay at their home overnight and the next day we drove
to the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mountbatten slipway to meet up <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with the club president Roger Barnes. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Roger had invited me to crew with him on Avel
Dro, his <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>replica of a 100 year old
French fishing dinghy. This a really <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>cool design based on a traditional wooden working
boat. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hull is clinker built
(overlapping planks), with an <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>open
cockpit, no decking anywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mast
is a solid wooden log lashed into position with a rope around 2 belaying pins.
</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The sail is a beautiful deep red tanbark lug rig, with no boom. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the old days in these boats, the guys were
too busing fishing to worry about a boom swinging around and conking them on
the head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even today that is a nice
feature,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>as I was to learn. The main
sheet is looped onto a cleat (wooden, of course)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>on each aft corner, and needs to be moved
from one side to another each time you come about, and the movement thereof
needs to be timed precisely mid-turn while the sheet is<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>slack <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>before the wind fills in on the new tack, or
it gets yanked out of your hands and flogs mercilessly. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It took
me a while to get the hang of that, especially while gybing, and a boom would
have been lethal, although if I had lived through it I am sure I would have
learned quicker….. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We sailed across the
bay and up into the St Germains <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>river <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with the rising tide. We were meeting other
folks up there <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in Forder Lake near<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>John and Jan Lidstone’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>John was the organizer of this club event, and he was prevented from
joining for too much sailing,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>but he was
a fine host for the evening. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As it was
still early yet,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Roger and I sailed up
the river <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a ways further just for fun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had a bit of a beat back against the tide,
but it was starting to slacken so we made it back OK.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I learned a bit about running aground in
mud so soft you couldn’t feel a thing until you notice you aren’t moving at
all, and boat wouldn’t come about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
centerboard was our depth sounder, letting us know when we mudded, and then
easily retracted to let us go free.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p>Really, I was having more fun than this picture might suggest....</o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Back at
John<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and Jan’s, where we tied up for the
night,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we met up with the Perrys on
their self designed and built dinghy, a beautiful craft,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and Alastair Law in his self-built Paradox
“Little Jim”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Up the trail to John’s
house</span> <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">we went<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>( we weren’t sure which house was his, but
the DCA burgee flying on the porch was a clue…)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>for tea and toast, then up to the pub for dinner and drinks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Back at the boats, we crawled under the boom
tents where even in the constant drizzle it was cozy </span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">warm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Roger had a bit of a drip on his head all
night, but I lucked out and was drip free. (Or maybe he had gallantly<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>offered me, the guest, the non-drip side…) In
the night we heard a horrible racket of falling hardware and we thought maybe a
mast had fallen down or something, but since it was raining we decided we would
wait until morning to investigate. Turns out someone driving by on the road
above the bay had tossed out and down over the bluff a child car seat (no child
attached) and a child’s bike.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I guess
they were done with kids!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">After a
breakfast of fried bacon sandwiches and coffee, we casually sailed on back down
to a bay and across to Mayflower marina where we had a lunch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>amidst all the shiny new GRP and chrome
yachts,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>was a huge old wooden trawler
that immediately caught my attention. She had been recently restored and looked
in good working shape. Talking to the restoration-weary but justifiably proud
owner, we learned that she had been involved in the evacuation of Dunkirk!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I noticed that she had a tiller for steering,
which was refreshing. I have never been a fan of wheels, and am tired of yacht
owners that bleat on about how THEIR yacht is so big it couldn’t possibly be
steered by a tiller. They need to talk to this guy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This ship is much bigger than any of those
goofuses!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We sailed on
the rising tide on up the Tamar river. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was a nice wind blowing up river which
schooled me on the fine art of smartly moving that main sheet across to the
opposite cleat <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>each time we came about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was still learning as we entered a crowded
mooring field and there was no room for error without expensive consequences,
so I handed the helm to Roger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We worked
our way up the tight U turns of the river,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>pulling out at Cotehele in a driving rain for a warm-up snack of Cream
Tea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The soft mud shore was ankle deep
at that landing, but we were so wet from the rain anyway that a complete immersion
rinse to the waist didn’t make us any wetter. Cotehele is a historical restored
manor house,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>stone quay, lime kiln, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>tea shop, and barge landing, with the restored
sailing barge Shamrock floating there (although I was told the restoration job
was poor, and she is quite incapable of sailing worth a darn...)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">On up the
river we went, under the beautiful graceful <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>arches of the old <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>bridge soaring 120 feet above us, to the
quaint little village of Calstock with a floating dock , which we were informed
was off limits to the likes of us, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>so we
tied up to the stone quay wall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>We
wandered the town a bit, walking out on the train bridge (against the sign that
said not to…)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>spanning the river far
below.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was evening, and there were
many finely dressed-up ladies getting on the train, apparently heading into the
big city for the evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Back at the
Tamar Inn by the quay, we were shaken down for 5 quid <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>by a local hot shot with fancy <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>hair and black leather jacket<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>who smugly told us we were not allowed to tie
up unless we contributed to the local rowing club. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hmmm. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So
much for the friendly welcoming locals!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Maybe that was back in the olden days when people there worked for a
living. Now it seemed like a pretty exclusive crowd of rich folks, sort of like
Aspen or Zermatt. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had dinner and
drinks there again. The group assured me that the DCA did not routinely eat out
this much, they usually cooked simple one-pot dishes on board, but since the
weather was so nasty , (and perhaps to let me sample as many pubs as possible!)
we ate out a lot on this trip. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sort of
broke the bank for most of us but it was still great fun. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The dawn
brought a thick fog, which my local mates assured me meant that the day would
be fair once the fog burned off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure
enough, it wasn’t long before we were enjoying a clear sunny morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The wind was calm <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>as we drifted on the ebbing tide
downstream,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>sculling a bit to make a bit
better time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was still early, but
looking forward with a <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>navigator’s
brain,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>we needed to get down and thru
the Cremyll Narrows before the tide turned at 1:00 or we would spend another night
there, so we had to keep moving.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
funny, we didn’t consider ourselves “racers” per se, but in a sense we are
always racing the change of the tide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Roger
was trying to teach me the fine art of sculling, and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>was
working at it, trying my best to move us faster than the current, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>when Alastair drifted by us idly <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>on the current,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>going faster than me waggling the “stick”
back and forth!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hmmm. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sculling is harder than it looks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I sat down and bent to the oars, while Roger
manned the helm and guided us back through the crowded mooring field. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were
rowing merrily along,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with Alastair
sculling nearby.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Actually, he was using
a yuloh, (so I guess he was yulohing merrily along…)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a curved shaft bending to a horizontal<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>blade, of Asian design.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said it made the task almost foolproof,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>which would have been perfect for l me…. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I never did get the hang of sculling with the
flat bladed oar, which required a deft twist of the wrist on each stroke.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A couple of folks in a motorized inflatable
came by, asking us if we were OK, and did we need a tow?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As if anyone who was rowing must be in
trouble! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We cheekily wanted to ask if,
since they were motoring, was there something wrong with their oars?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We made it
thru the narrows with a bit of time to spare. I was again at the helm,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>being squeezed by a big boat in the channel
on one side and the navy yard Exclusion /“no go” zone on the other. We were
supposed to keep 100 meters away from the submarine moored there at the quay,
but there were no markers that I could see, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and really, who can estimate 100 meters? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not me, apparently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was slowly headed towards the navy side of
the equation, watching for the best time to come about. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suddenly the police boat guarding the nuclear
arsenal roared right up on us, and I mean RIGHT up on us, with a man shouting
at us to get away. NOW!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Roger hollered
back (over the sound of their engines) that we would be happy to but they were
in our way and would they please back off and give us sea room so that we could
come about. The guy yelled back,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“No,
you<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>back off <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>NOW! Don’t you have an engine?” After
realizing that we did not, and that we did indeed need a wee bit of room in
order to fulfil the order, they backed off and we came about and moved
harmlessly away without further confrontation. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I guess even navy guys don’t really understand
what small un-motorized boats are all about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(I was later told by a friend who
had worked there a while back that there would have been a man with a rifle on
shore watching the entire encounter, calculating<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>whether to “get involved “ or not. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am
glad he calculated that I was just a bumbling fool and not a dangerous terrorist
just trying to look like a bumbling fool…)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The wind
picked up and we had a rollicking good sail on across the bay, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>back to the slipway at Mountbatten. I really
loved sailing Avel Dro.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She seems like a
boat that can really get it done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
were tacking through the mooring field up against the tide, and I got a good
lesson in “tide adjusted<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>leeway”, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>where the direction you are pointed really <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>has very little bearing in where you end up! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We arrived at the ramp with the water still too
low <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to pull out the boats so we tied up
to a nearby mooring ball and had lunch sitting in the rain for an hour as the
tide came back up. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">What a fine
adventure this has been for this Utah<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>yankee <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>sailing into the court of
good King Edward, a fulfillment of a long-time dream, which I hope to repeat
repeatedly. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thanks to John L for
coordinating the event. Thanks so much to Roger for letting me sail with him
and teaching me the ropes of tidal sailing. Thanks to Alastair for being a
great neighbor and showing me how sculling really should be done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thanks to John and Josephine for sharing
their home with me before and after the cruise, as well as shuttling me back
and forth to the bus station. You all are welcome any time to come sail with me
in the colonies.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2635294478207383601.post-11887229206623267952015-03-23T10:34:00.000-07:002015-03-23T10:34:14.680-07:00pic of Mulege to Loretto<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Drying my sleeping bag on the mast</div>
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Cool flowers growing out of a cliff made of shells<br />
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Giant whale bone, head/top jaw of a gray whale, it is about 8 ft wide, and 20 ft long. It is visible from outer space on google earth. It was cast up on the beach in an arroyo about a hundred yards from the water, so a giant storm tossed it up there, there were no other bones anywhere around. <br />
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cooking fish <br />
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Antonio and Juan taking a break from brush cutting<br />
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Bahia San Juanico in the sunset<br />
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Kyle the brush master<br />
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the crazy German suspersize RV<br />
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waves crashing on the shore me here a while longer<br />
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the bay in calmer conditions</div>
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Antonio and family in the ranchero kitchen<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2635294478207383601.post-22919582871564802982015-03-14T09:44:00.001-07:002015-03-14T09:44:37.296-07:00Road trip home March 2<span lang="EN">Road trip home March 2<br />
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After leaving Agua Verde we stopped briefly back at rattle snake beach and Puerto Escondito for showers, water and internet. We stopped in Loretto for a bit more food and headed north to the turnoff to San Juanico. I had stopped there in my kayak, and it is so nice I wanted to stay there again. The road in is long and rough, and we took a wrong turn once and ended up at a fish camp way a bit away from the bay we wanted. At juanico all the good camping places on the beach were taken so we had to camp back in the bushes away from the beach. That was okay though. That night it started raining and rained hard all night and all the next day and all the next night. We set up a dining fly to protect us from the rain and it blew down during the night . we met a family camping out in the bushes, James, Mai, and their son Michael and his family. ,they had drove in with a big white school bus camper . i was shocked they got that huge thing in there on that road. they were really cool. They were from mainland Mexico , yankees living in Mexico for the last 16 years and had never been to Baja. they were fun to talk to. the lady, Mai, was a midwife and told us of some really cool births. She told us about 1 that was a water birth attended to by dolphins to actually help the the mother in her labor as she was in the water. <br />
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we packed up early the next morning and headed out. The road out seemed easier than coming in. <br />
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We had read about some ancient cave paintings in a canyon way off in the mountains North of Mulege. The guidebook we have described a nasty hard road in, but it is almost 25 years old and much has changed all over Baja since then. A local guy said it was now a good gravel road in, with a village of 1000 people in there. If we had known how wrong he was we would not have started in. It turned out to be a very bad track in and out of an arroyo, over and around big boulders, and loose sand, much worse than the road into San Juanico or Agua Verde and longer. 22 miles. It ended at a rancho that was very nice but no one was there. Many dogs greeted us loudly, so we know someone would come along eventually. The guide book says that we need to hire a local guide to go in to the caves, but it also said that there were 2 locked gates that we needed to get keys for after paying a fee, and every gate was just tied with rope, so like I said, everything has changed since 1993. We camped up the way from there and would expect to find someone there in the morning. <br />
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In camp as the sun was setting we heard some birds in the bushes singing a really complex call. It was so cool, I have never heard anything like it. It went on and on, changing style and tempo in a pattern that ran for several minutes and then repeated itself. I tried to record it but they fley away when I got up to get my phone. Dang. <br />
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Wednesday. This morning we walked up the arroyo following the directions from the book the best we could. It was all pretty vague but we kept seeing what we thought were recognizable landmarks and walked a few miles more along the arroyo, looking for the cave. . It was only supposed to be one mile. We finally gave up and headed back to the truck. We drove back to the ranch house and there was a lady there today. She said she was a guide and would take us there for 200 pesos. Cool!. We made room for her in our car, not an easy feat, since the back was loaded full. We had to pile a stack of gear on her patio to make room to fold down the back seat. She got in and directed us back down the road we had come up yesterday! Today we had been looking in the totally wrong direction. We headed up a different arroyo on a very bad track, worse than yesterday. After a few miles we came to the end. It was funny, we are in the middle of friggin nowhere and there was a modern new bright blue road sign for the "pintura" cave right out there in the arroyo, erected by Mulege city. <br />
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We then walked for another mile on a trail that went in and out of the arroyo just like the road did. Finally we came up to the cave, a very large alcove in the cliff, very deep back in, about 50 or 60 feet, with a ceiling about 15 ft high. The ceiling was covered with paintings of very large full size people, in red and black, many with the color split down the middle. Many of the characters had spears or arrows run thru them. There were also pictures of big yellow fish, yellow fin tuna?, a giant frog, a stag with huge antlers, and something that looked for all the world like an upright dinosaur like a T Rex or something. Our guide Senya was not an expert on the figures, she just knew where they were and had a key to the gate. These panels are said to be 7500 years old, the oldest known in north america. <br />
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On our drive back to drop Senya off we encountered another truck with a guide bringing a visitor in from Mulege. Senya told us she gets about 200 visitors a year, and her guest registry listed another one that same morning. <br />
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On the way out, a burro fell in with us running, right there behind us. He followed us quite a while, only leaving us when we passed a ranchero and he seemed to be chasing a dog. Barb was feeling bad for him, sure he was starving or lonely. A little bit later along Barb had her window down and there was another one again, running right along side us with his face right in the window and he took a snap at her! Dang that was scary. Attacked by a rogue donkey.<br />
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The last few days have been exhausting, what with the bad road drive out from Agua verde , then out to San juanico and back, and now this trip out to the cave paintings, all on nasty bad tracks out across wild country. We decided that we have had enough off road 4x4ing for this trip. We will stick to the pavement from now on. Of course that resolve didn't stick long...<br />
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We drove out and it was about 4:30 when we finally made it out to the highway. We looked around for a place to camp near there and settled in in an old gravel pit. Nice place but the ground is thick with dried cactus thorns everywhere. They are almost invisible the way they hide in whatever other plant stuff is lying around and are super brutal. I had one go right thru my sandal sole and stab my toe. I had to dig out several from under my tent. I hope I got them all!.<br />
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Thursday. OK, no cactus punctures! Hurray!<br />
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We drove to Santa Rosalia and went to a bank to exchange $ for pesos, then on to Guerrero negro, about 100 miles along to the north. This town is near one of the big famous grey whale calving lagoons Ojo le Liebre , the eye of the rabbit. Don't ask me, I don't get it either. Anyway, the whales travel here every winter after summering in the far north arctic. They have their calves in the shallow warm protected bay in November and December, and by now the calves are a few month s old and pretty playful.<br />
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We camped out in the sand dunes for the night. The wind was pretty strong and kept shifting around, we moved to truck to block the wind from our kitchen, and had to move it again when it shifted. <br />
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Friday. We went on out to the lagoon where there is a visitors center and boats that take us out to cavort with the whales. Private boats are not allowed, to prevent people from harassing the whales, and also I am sure to ensure work for the Mexican panga captains. We were on a boat only partially full, there were six of us, including some very fun German folks. When we got out into the middle where the whales hang out there were 2 pangas already there, with a mom and baby playing with them. We were feeling pretty cheated but then the other boats left and we were out there alone with the pair. They would come right up to us and let us pet their noses. The mom is huge, over 70 feet long, and the baby is about 25 feet long, weighing several tons. 2 months old. The baby would bump its nose up against the side of the boat, for no reason we could tell except to get our attention, (as if we could ignore it! ). They both would spout right by us and spray us. I have smelled whale spray before , it usually smells like rotten fish, (even tho they don't eat fish, they sieve krill thru their balleen plates) but this didn't have any smell. I think the mothers don't eat during this period of their life, and the calves are nursing, so no nasty smells. This went on for about 20 to 30 minutes then we left as another panga came in. I was told there are about 1400 mothers with calves in the lagoon, but only this one was getting any attention from the boats we could see. The lagoon is huge, with several tour groups launching pangas from all over, so I maybe the love is spread about. <br />
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The whales are black, with mottled patches of gray scattered across them. Small fins and bumps along their backs , huge wide tails. Their mouths are gigantic, to sieve the krill thru, but they never opened their mouths while we were there. The skin was smooth and rubbery feeling, and sort of soft, on the head where we were touching. They had barnacles stuck to their skin, even the baby already. The blow hole on the top of their head was interesting, it consisted of 3 slits side by side, separating out in sort of a fan shape, about 6 inches long. I had thought they had one hole and it was round. Perhaps other species do, but not these. <br />
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There are 3 of these types of lagoons in Baja, and they have a tragic history that thankfully is getting better. Back in the big whale hunting days the hunters found these lagoons and slaughtered the trapped whales very quickly. I am glad to hear that one of the boats sank, it was so over loaded!. In the last several years there have been treatys signed limiting whale hunting all over the world and in these lagoons especially. Whales live up to 70 years so there are whales alive today that could remember the horrible old days and survived to tell tqhe babies about it. They are very smart so i am sure they understand what was going on and who was responsible for all the carnage. It is amazing the mothers would allow their babies anywhere near us now. If I was them I would teach the kid to smash us with their tails and keep away. I guess they are more forgiving than I am. <br />
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Saturday march 7. We drove up across the Great Central Desert of Baja, the road taking us from the Sea of Cortez over to the pacific ocean. . We saw a sign that said next gasoline 230 kilometers, and we had a quarter of a tank. Yikes! The last pump behind us was a good hour drive back. As we drove along we saw a mechanic shop and thought, surely he has some to spare. As we pulled into the yard we asked a man walking along and he pointed to his truck out across the road. He had 3 big barrels of gas in the back, ready to sell to stupid people like me. We bought about 45 liters for 900 pesos, about 20 per liter. The gas station price is about 14. That is the premium we had to pay for being stupid. Dang. <br />
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Out along the road were looking for some cave paintings that were described in the 25 year old book. We looked for some landmarks like "the 2nd dirt track after an arroyo 2 miles after a roadside hotel (that didn't exist anymore...)". We didn't see any of that, but there was a roadside archeological display with a nice parking lot, palapa, outhouses, and trails with interpretive signs , all in Spanish. After a while we decided this wasn't it and were looking around some more but from a higher vantage point I could see that the trail led up a hill to a cave with a sign. Yep. That was it. When in doubt, trust the signs. Even if you can't read them very well. <br />
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As we came out of the desert towards the Pacific ocean. The map showed a sea lion colony so we took a dirt track out across some very steep eroded mud hills. We were intrigued by a modern looking power line that followed the road. It looked out of place with such a bad road. Even if the sea colony turned out to be lame, we became interested in what was out there that needed such a big power supply!. Eventually we came out to the sea shore, a big rocky cliff above the water, and perched on the cliff, fed by the power line was a giant old restaurant now turned into an oceanic research facility. An old man came out to collect a dollar from us, and pointed to a trail that led to a giant hole in the ground that dropped down overhanging cliffs to expose an underground cavern with a beach and a bunch of sea lions. An underground passageway let ocean swells directly into the cave and onto the beach. It was so cool. Like a lost world sort of thing. The sea lions were pretty comatose, not moving much or barking. I can imagine another day in another season they would be packed in there and making a racket. <br />
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We had lunch on the rocks in front of the building. It must have pretty cool back in its day, with a huge patio now covered with old boats plumbed for pumping water in and out for sea life experiments. There was a swimming pool and hot tub, now dry. The inside of the building was full of giant tanks and plumbing to manage the water flows. There was nobody else there doing the science stuff , We couldnt really tell what they were doing, and the old man was just a watchman and couldn't tell us, but it looked important and fascinating. He did have ice cold Cokes to sell us though. <br />
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We drove on north along the coast road, which is not really very close to the coast. We couldn't see the ocean for many miles. We took a dirt road out west and ended up camping at the same dunes that I camped on my first night down here in baja 2 months ago. Life is just a big circle, eh?<br />
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Yesterday we drove across the border of Baja Sur (south) and Baja Norte (north) 2 Mexican states . Sur is in the mountain time zone and Norte is Pacific, so we changed our clocks one hour, even though we really aren't moving east to west like you would normally be doing when you go from Mountain to Pacific. The result is that sun is now rising at about 5 AM and going down at about 5 PM. No problem, life is the same, we still get up and go bed with the sun but it seems strange to crawl into the tent in the dark at 5:30. And tomorrow is daylight saving time so we will have to change them back anyway!<br />
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As the evening came on I wandered around the dunes and saw a horny toad. That was cool, i havent seen one of those since i was a tiny kid out in south central Oregon. Then there were 2 really beautiful coyotes that slowly eased into the brush as I approached. They didnt sprint off like coyotes usually seem to do, but seemed to be watching me as they oozed away. There were 3 rabbits that sprinted away at the same time and I am sure I spoiled the coyotes supper. Dang. Sorry guys!.<br />
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I hadn't seen any cactus out here on the dunes at all, but when I wasn't looking I kicked into one with the back of my heel and I was wearing sandals. I was really lucky, the spines mostly dug into the trim of the heel strap, with only 1 spine getting a good dig into me. That was close to being a nasty one!. After 2 months with no injury, and on the next to my last day in baja, i almost got really badly hurt. Can't let down my guard for even one moment!.<br />
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For the last few days I have been missing my old sun hat that I have worn every day for the last six years and have repaired it more times than I can count. Dang, I love that hat and was afraid I had left it at those cave paintings a few days ago. But it showed up today in the truck, jammed down under one of the storage bins. Yahoo! Celebrate the return of the prodigal hat. We had beans and rice tonight to celebrate. <br />
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Sunday, we drove out of the dunes. The road was really wet in a few places and I was spinning and sliding. It was flat ground, with no rocks or trees to hit, and cliffs to fall off of, but for a minute it seemed likely that we might get stuck. I could move but no matter which way I turned the wheel, the car would not turn!. We finally got out of there but the truck was covered with mud. There was a car wash right there when we hit pavement so we pulled in. It wasn't a self wash, nor a drive thru. They had a pressure washer and a few buckets and rags, and with their hard work, we were shiny in no time. This is the best that truck has looked in years. <br />
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As we approached Ensenada, we turned off down to El Bufadora, the second largest sea geyser in the world. There is a tight crevice in the rock right at sea level and when big swells come in, it shoots water high into the air. It is a big tourist attraction, with paid parking, and a gauntlet of gift shops and eager vendors we had to walk thru to get to The Buf. The swells were pretty small so not much of a show. We need a good cyclone out in Thailand to send us some good 40 foot swells. The most interesting part was that most of the tourists there were Mexican families out for a Sunday drive, not gringos like we have been used to seeing. The people watching was great fun. Kids at that sort of place are the same all over the world, in any language. Begging for sweets, and tossing a tantrum when they don't get it. <br />
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I was wondering about the business of the gift shops there, as well as all the others around the world. Guys walking down the beaches in Costa Rica, people on the sides of the road in Africa, 100 stalls packed in cheek by jowl here at La Bufadora, all the stuff looks the same. The hats, the dresses, the toys, the snacks, the shot glasses and fridge magnets. All the same. I am thinking that they all must be owned and managed by some giant consortium of curio trinket big guys who control it all and hire these hawkers for pennies to schlep it to us tourists. I was wondering, too, about which of the stalls get the most business. We ignore the first couple of stalls, start looking at stuff a few stalls later, then try it on a few stalls later, and then finally buy it from a stall on our way back to the car. I am sure these guys know the buying habits of us better than we do, and position themselves to capitalize on it. I wonder if there is some sort of rotation order to keep it fair, or maybe the best salespeople work their way up to get to sit in the best locations. Hmm. The things that keep me awake at night. <br />
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Our drive back to the states is via the Mexico highway 3 to Tecate (instead of the 1 to Tijuana). The 3 goes up to the east thru wine country, and is spectacular. It looks just like Napa valley, or some Italian country side. Huge elegant corporate vineyards with huge processing plants and giant mansions like in Europe, are interspersed with small humble farmsteads. We were looking for a place to camp for the night and the big vineyards did not look very amenable to us camping in the yard of the Big House. We found an ejito which was perfect. An ejito is a plot of land, usually very huge, many thousands of acres, that was once owned by some giant colonial land baron, of course stolen hundreds of years ago from the natives who were forced to be virtual slaves on the big ranch. Several years ago, the government made some massive land reforms and took the land from the egalitarians and gave it back to the peasants. The ejito is a cooperative venture with the local people in charge of dividing it up, allocating home sites, deciding what they do with it, etc. Most of the fish camps and tiny villages I have visited have been administered this way. Some of the ejitos have a school, a store, some sort of infrastructure. Others are just a loose collection of small homes. This one is pretty small. We drove in and found a beautiful little spot on a rise looking out over the valley with higher hills all around, and green fields with happy looking cows grazing, stretching on down the canyon. There is an abandoned building here that looks like it could have been a small school once upon a time.<br />
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The coyotes are howling as we had supper and cozied into bed. <br />
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We could see a bon fire across the village, and as we were falling asleep some local folks were having a sing a long with an accordion. I was very tempted to grab my guitar and join them, but I was afraid of just walking up in the dark as a stranger. <br />
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Monday. It was a beautiful cool morning, very dry, not a drop of condensation this last morning in Baja. <br />
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We had read about some hot springs somewhere along in here, and tried to follow the directions in this old guidebook. They mentioned a highly developed compound of 20 campsites with private pools with water from the hot spring piped into each one. Something that big would surely be noticed by the locals and have signs directing folks to it, right? Wrong. No signs anywhere and Again, nothing on the maps nor in the book seemed to match what we were seeing. We had 3 maps, none of which agreed. We asked several people, all knew where it was but all giving us contradictory information (at least from the way we understood them. ) One lady was funny, we asked her if she spoke english and she waggled her finger at us and sternly said "no!". We drove up and down one lane several times, and I am sure the man trimming the giant olive hedge along there thought we were nuts. Finally we found a guy, a beautiful ancient looking man, very tall, with a long gray beard and a gnarly cane He pointed us on up the road we were on and said talk to his wife, Josephine. It was only a 20 minute walk he said. We found the lady, and there was a big sign, Valle de San Jose de Guadalupe Agua caliente, hiking, rappelling, and waterfalls. Success! She took our 50 pesos and opened the gate for us to drive on further. At the end of that road, a few miles, we started walking. On up beside a small stream. 30 minutes. Past a giant cliff that would be a giant waterfall when it rained but was dry today. No hot spring. On up the canyon. Almost an hour. Eventually we found a spot where some rocks had been placed in the stream to form a pool and there was hot water tricking into it. Hurray! We had found it and had such as nice soak. One of the nicer back country undeveloped pools I have ever seen. But nothing like the book described. Hmmm. <br />
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PS. We later learned that the book was describing another hot spring oasis almost 100 miles away, with the same name as the one we found! Oh, well liked the one we found <br />
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La Mordita. On into the town of Tecate, a US border crossing, and home of my favorite beer. We found the brewery and bought some to take home. Then on to find the big central plaza where we would have lunch. But as we approached, we saw that the entire plaza and street was boarded up, closed for remodeling. The traffic was crazy and we were trying to find a place to park when a motorcycle cop pulled us over. He approached the car , i was driving, and Barb didn’t hear what he said at first and she told him " no thanks, we don't need any help". he laughed and “Said no you don't understand, you ran 2 stop signs and almost ran over 2 people and a child“. None of which was true, but it was his word against ours. He was very nice, pleasant, he apologized for his poor English. He said it was a very serious offence, almost running over 2 people and a child, but since we were on vacation. Yes? he didn't want to spoil our good time and we could take care of it then and there, no ticket, no report to the DMV, just pay $70 and he would then escort us to the border. What? That's outrageous!. We dont have that much. Yes he said he understood, yes he would be inclined to let us go but, he pointed to his radio, his boss already knew that he had pulled us over and expect that we paid the fine and these were very serious offences almost running down 2 people and a child,, ànd he asked how much could we pay. I said I have 20, he said, maybe we should go on down to the station. Then he said “how about $50?” I had more than that but I didn't want him to know that, and I was trying to fish in my wallet and my secret hiding spot without him seeing the wad of hundreds. I didn’t have another 10 for the $50, but finally dug out 3 20s as discretely as I could and handed him that. He said oh no, not like that, show me the papers, I said what papers, the registration? He said yeah whatever. I wrapped the bills in the registration, he palmed the bills and handed the registration back. So he had told me 50, I gave him 60, but I wasn't expecting any change back.... He drove off, we followed, he escorted us to the border with a friendly wave. “Ya all come back now, ya hear?”<br />
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At the border we got busted again for having 4 potatoes in the car, " please drive over here for an inspection. ". Dang. Not again. But this one was easy. After a brief wait, a guy came out, we handed him the potatoes, he didn't want the onions we tried to hand him, no problem he said, he gave us a list of "enterables" which included almost everything, it seemed , except potatoes . <br />
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so we finally made it across , up the road to Barbs house, where we celebrated with Vons market fried chicken and potato wedges washed down with Tecate beer straight from the factory.<br />
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Baja. What a wonderful magical place. I’ll be back.<br />
</span><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2635294478207383601.post-69892100939971531782015-02-28T13:40:00.000-08:002015-02-28T13:40:43.871-08:00Agua Verde Feb 19 - 28Agua Verde Feb 19 -27<br />
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Yesterday brought a bit of excitement in the Escondito area. A whale was spotted off shore tangled in a fishing net. Some divers went in trying to cut it loose but it kept diving and they couldn't complete it before it got dark. I guess they will keep trying tomorrow but they may never find it again. It could well die if it isn't removed.<br />
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I called porter and my brother yesterday. That was nice. Porter told me all about his trip to India, and Terry told me more about dads funeral. It sounded nice. Sort of a small crowd. That is the problem living a long life. Anyone else who would come to your funeral is already dead!.<br />
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I had supper with Lance and Michael, the same Lance that I met up at San Juanico. He had come down here and is camped near me. Small world. He and Michael just got back from a 5 day kayak trip out to Isla Monsarrat. It is about 8 miles offshore, and rarely visited. Michael is from Ontario Canada and is pretty hard core. He carries a cast iron skillet with him even on backpacking trips. He likes to cook over fires and feels the cast iron is the only way to do it right.<br />
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I also called my friend Barb in San Diego and asked if she wanted to catch the bus and meet me down here and we could drive back together over the next 2 weeks or so. She was excited to come so the plan is i will paddle to Agua Verde, she will get off off the bus here in Escondito, get my truck, and drive down to meet me there. We will rendevouz in about 5 days, which leaves me plenty of time to get there, allowing for bad weather.<br />
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Friday Feb 20. I packed up and started towards Agua Verde. The winds were predicted to be from the south, right on my nose, so I didn't expect to get very far, but they stayed pretty light and I made 7 miles before I beached just south of Candelero Chico. The coastline is, again, spectacular. I hate to keep using that word so I need to find some synonyms. High jagged cliffs coming right down to the water, with beautiful sand beaches in between.<br />
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I caught 2 fish today!. Well, actually I hooked 2, both got away. One felt pretty big and it seemed like he dove and tied up in the rocks and line broke. The other was a croaker, not really anything to eat, and while I was getting the camera to document the glorious event he spit the hook and swam off. But I have hope that I may not starve after all!.<br />
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Saturday. Last night it was dead calm when I went to bed but not long after it started to blow hard. I was camped on sand, and had anchored the tent with lines tied to sticks and weighted down with rocks. After a while some of them gave way from the pressure of the wind and I had to go out and find bigger rocks! It was a really warm night, cloudy overcast skies, and no dew at all. It was the dryest i have ever woken up with down here. The wind sort of died and popped up again all night, calm by morning.<br />
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I was in no big hurry, 5 miles to go, and I expected the winds to be light from the south again like yesterday. I caught a light canyon breeze and rode it for a while, and hooked another fish, this time a small but very pretty Sierra. I realized that having a fish thrashing in the boat with twin treble hooks is a quick disaster. The fish hooked me too!. I had a pair of needle nose pliers in my kit so I dug that out to grip the hook and disgorge it from him, and let him go.<br />
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About then a nice wind filled in mostly from the south, coming off the land. . The shore is trending largely to the southeast so I could sail pretty parallel to it. The wind kept building and was getting pretty serious. Even that close to shore, a few hundred yards, I had whitecaps and short steep waves. The boat was doing well but I decided to reef. I am so glad I reworked that part of my system the other day. It was quick and easy, worked slick, and in a minute I was back sailing fast and comfortable. The wind and seas kept building but I was handling it well. I reached my destination by about 10:00, 5 miles upwind, not bad. This was the best sailing I have had on this trip.<br />
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As I was approaching the protection of a giant rock, I was sailing hard, the rigging was being stressed, and leeboard was flexing in its socket. I had beefed that up last summer and knew it was strong, but I didn't like the way it was flexing. That is a thick heavy bolt holding it on. Shouldn't be flexing. All of a sudden there was a loud pop and the bolt snapped right off and the leeboard dropped into the water. I have some lines attached to it for controlling its position in the water so I didn't lose it, just pulled up and set it in my lap. Luckily I was only a few feet from the protection of that big rock and was able to coast in those last few feet and pull up to rest and figure out what was happening. I was very lucky it broke in a place where i could duck in out of the wind. If it had broken a bit sooner when I was out there I would not have been able to sail, and I am sure the wind was too strong to paddle against it. I may have just had to drift offshore with the wind until it settled down and I could make way with just the paddle.<br />
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I waited a while and things actually settled down pretty soon. I was able to get back on the water and paddle around the corner to a little cove called Punta Carrizalito. It is a wilderness beach, but just around the corner from San Cosme, an area reached by car from the road leading down to Agua Verde.<br />
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There is a hot spring that bubbles up in the rocks at low tide. People have scooped out the rocks to make a nice pool. I soaked for a while, a very nice relaxation after my crazy morning sailing.<br />
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I happened to have the right parts with me to repair the broken leeboard socket. I am glad I brought that stuff! I also noticed that the glue on the some of the reinforcing patches on the reef points were starting to peel off already, so I sewed them on. That was hard, all I had was an ordinary sewing needle and it kept bending when I tried to push it thru the heavy fabric. I used the pliers to push it thru and pull out the other side and that worked well, but was slow. I thought I had tossed in the speedy sticher awl but I guess not. Need to remember that next time. <br />
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When I was walking around today I saw a road runner! Never seen one before. It was pretty brushy so didn't get to see him pour it on, but what little I saw him run was pretty cool. and no "meep meep" either. I wonder if that is all just fake....<br />
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Some people walked along the beach from their camp over by the road here to the hot spring and we visited, Cory and Ann from Idaho. Cory was fishing, and he gave me 2 lures that he likes, and some wire leader to reduce the chance of breaking the line. Wow what a nice guy. In discussing my trip, Ann asked if I had been to San Basilio (Juanico ) and when I said yes she asked if I had met her friends Ryan and Keegan. Yes I camped right by them!. They were the ones who paddled this same trip I am doing ( more, actually, Mulege to La Paz) 6 times before. Cory and Ann had done a 10 day paddle around Isla Espiritu Santo down by La Paz. That is supposed to be the very best place, very popular.<br />
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I am sleeping under an old palapa, no tent tonight. The bugs don't seem too bad, and the wind is down.<br />
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Sunday. Last night it was dead calm when I went to bet in the palapa. Not long after the wind picked up and howled for hours. The dilapidated walls of the palapa did little to blunt the wind, and I had stacked all my gear bags as a wind block but that didn't help much. At least there were stars out, I reasoned, so things won't get too bad. About midnight it was still howling, I hadn't slept at all, but the stars were now blotted out by a cloud cover. Dang. This is not getting better. I tossed my tent and sleeping gear in a bag and headed for a more sheltered spot I saw earlier in the day, tucked up in a tight grove of trees. It was calm in there and I set up the tent and settled in for the rest of a very comfy night.<br />
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Today I puttered àbout and fished. Checked out the hot spring again, still only luke warm. Later I spoke to some folks who were just coming back from it and they said it was scorching hot. Dang. My bad timing. When i started fishing i promptly lost one of the new lures that Cory had given me. Dang, those are expensive. I think I had a pretty big one on but when they get hooked they head for the rocks to hunker in and the line gets cut. I was tempted to stop so as not to lose any more, but then i realized if i didnt use it then i might as well lose it!. I rerigged and trolled a bit around the rocks. I caught anther small sierra that I released, and then finally caught a fish big enought to keep and eat. A small sea bass, or cabrilla. I started a fire to fry it over, and tossed it into my regular bean dish. It was small, but still there was about as much meat as from a small can of tuna. Perfect for me.<br />
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While I was paddling about I ran into Scott, the guy I first camped near up in Coyote .dang, this is too wierd. I keep seeing the same people. Nice though.<br />
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A while later I ran into a group of 6 paddlers from the other beach heading for the hot spring. We sat out in a flotilla in the middle of the bay and visited. They were cool.<br />
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I paddled over to the next beach over and it was really cool. A perfect half moon bay, sandy beach, a nice broad meadow with the rugged peaks back behind. A big outdoor kitchen, a couple of palapas. One was built up on top of a giant rocky hill , with 105 steps carved out of the rock and faced with adobe bricks with pretty little stones and shells set in the mortar. Wow, that was a huge job, but a very nice result. Shame, the whole place looked pretty ignored and abandoned. Someone later told me it a private place and the owner hated anyone coming ashore. No signs, but I guess they got blown out from the hurricane. No one there to yell at me anyway.<br />
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Monday. Travel day. My last on water this trip. The wind was predicted to be moderate today, and tomorrow would bring on 3 days of hard blow so I wanted to get to Agua Verde today. It is 8 miles of open water, without any type of protected landing along the way, so I got an early start. There was a light breeze out of the north, seemingly not enough to sail in so I was paddling but after 2 hours when I checked the GPS, I had gone 5 miles, so the wind was definitely helping me. I have never paddled that fast before.<br />
The 3rd hour the wind filled in and I pulled into the harbor by 10, a very nice run.<br />
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Agua Verde is a good harbor with a nice little town there, seems like about 50 homes. . Mostly a fishing camp. There is a good artesian spring up in the hills that is piped into town and every house has running water clean to drink. There is a tienda, church, a school. Several homes have gardens because of the generous water. The mountains are rugged all around, and the road in is pretty new I think, within the last 40 years, and rugged. I will find out how rugged in a few days when Barb gets here with my truck and we drive out.<br />
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As I pulled into the harbor I came past a really nice yacht anchored, Kaia, don't know the type, but very traditional looking. Daniel and Michelle loved my boat and invited me aboard for coffee. Their boat was big, at least 37 ft, and tiller steered. I love that. Hate wheels. They also said that even though they have an engine they never used it. They had just come down from Los Angeles and were on their way north into the Sea of Cortex, sailing the whole way. That is tough this time of year, most of the wind is from the north so they have been bashing their way along, and then only for 4 or 5 hours a day. They said that when they got to this harbor a few days ago they were becalmed just outside for a day and a half before they could sail on in. Didn't want to use the engine. Dang I love these kids.<br />
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I also saw Slow Mocean again, people I met up in Santespac. The big cruise ship was also in the harbor. Some of their folks were on a mule ride up in the mountains, a bunch of others were paddling kayaks around in big groups.<br />
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I came ashore and met Ken and Fransica, the only gringos camped in the whole area!. They are from Canada and come here for 6 months every year. Other folks come and stay a short time, but they stay. As I wandered about and spoke to a few local folks I learned that Francisca a was helping to build a restaurant, and she was also the only medico in the area. I don't know if she is a doctor, or nurse, or what. Cool though.<br />
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As I wandered on I met a group of ladies that were actually working on building the restaurant. They were putting up concrete pillar's for the roof. I joked "Arriba, tengo hombre" Hurry, I am hungry!. They laughed. There was a cute little white dog that came up, looked just like Kenzies little Shelby. I was so homesick.<br />
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Then I past a group of teenage boys playing futbol. They invited me to play. Funny. These guys were good!.<br />
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A man was tending a garden and we started visiting. He is Leonardo, the primary school teacher. His wife is the restaurant lady, good friends with Francisca. They invited me in for coffee. I felt bad, they were not having anything, but offered me some. They speak no English, ( except "okey dokey" we laughed. I have met several people that that was the only english they knew. I wonder where that comes from. )and my Spanish is poor, but we all tried and had a nice chat for a while. Their house is new, solid, cement block, with a solid cement roof and floor. Simple but clean and solid. They had a light from a battery with a solar panel. There was no internet in the town, but several people have satellite TV. Leonardo's dad came in and I was in one of the only chairs in the house and I offered him my chair but he said no problem, he sat on a bucket.<br />
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It was quite dark when I headed home, but there was a sliver of a new moon, so I did OK, but I have got remember to grab a flashlite when I go out any time after supper.<br />
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Tuesday Feb 24 first thing this morning I met met Bobby, a Canadian who had hitchhiked in yesterday. He has been traveling all over Baja with a backpack and his thumb. Nice guy. I wandered around the town more, it is built up on both sides of a wide arroyo that splits it all in half. There doesn't seem to be any sort of "our side" vs "the other side". There are many goats here. Hundreds I am told. They sell goat milk and cheese at the tienda but I am not getting any yet. I am running short of Mexican cash, I had plenty in the truck but forgot to get some for my wallet before I left escondito. I need to ration what I have for any sort of emergency. I have some US cash, that will work in a pinch.<br />
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I spent the morning visiting with Ken, the resident Canadian. He is pretty interesting, has a ham radio set up here, and makes sourdough bread in his camper. He described the local politics, land issues, water allocation, fishing restrictions imposed by the fishermen themselves.<br />
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A yacht couple came to shore in their dinghy and went shopping and when it came time to head back to their boat it surf was up and thy were going to have trouble getting launched. Bobby and I got into wet clothes and waded out to steady the boat while he got his motor running. He took off and was doing fine crashing up and over the waves but his engine died right then and he grabbed the oars and pulled on passed the breaker line and got the engine running again. Later he came over and asked if he could buy my SSB receiver so they could get weather. Since I am heading home I sold it to him for about what it will cost me to replace it.<br />
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Some other yachters came along, they were in a big 47 ft yada yada and they asked me "are you kayaker with the weather radio? We are having trouble getting a forecast. " that is a switch! Usually it is the kayaker begging info from the better equipped yachters.<br />
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Bobby suggested we go for a hike up the arroyo and maybe scramble up one of the ridges. I was dubious about the feasibility of off trail rambling because the brush has been so viscious. We walked up and saw a likely looking ridge and worked our way up, along and over to a pass that led us back down into town from the other direction. It actually worked out just fine. I was pretty injured when Bobby got tangled in a thorn bush and was pulling to free himself and I was too close and when it released it wacked me right in the face. I was really lucky it didn't put an eye out, but I had blood running from several wounds. As we came on into town we met a goat herder checking on his flock. There were goats scrambling all over the steep cliffs as we scrambled along under them. They looked just like mountain goats up there. We got back into town just as it was getting dark. I had told Bobby I didn't want to be out there after dark and he said no problem, there is a moon, we'll be fine. Yeah, I have had that experience of planning on the moon and it is late. Well tonight it is cloudy so no moon.<br />
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Back in camp bobby and I pooled our kitchen and had a meal together. He is an interesting character. Has a good bit of outdoor travel experience, and has hitchhiked all over the world.<br />
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Wednesday. Barb got here about noon. We rambled about a bit, explored a beach around the next point. The wind and surf is still high. Moved camp off the beach and into the bushes out of the wind. My tent was filling up with sand. We will stay here a few days and then move on.<br />
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Thursday. We hiked around to another beach, where there was a cave up high on a cliff, and some ancient rock art. The wall had been stained white, and red hand prints were plastered all across it. Also interesting to wonder what, if any , message was intended by rock art. None has ever really been deciphered.<br />
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Along the beach we happened upon a sea turtle laying in the sand at the waters edge. He looked very old, barnacles on his fins and face, he could hardly lift his head. I heard they can live for more than 100 years. I am guessing he was not going to live much longer.<br />
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In the afternoon we went to take the boat out for a little sail. I noticed that my little pelican box was missing. Dang. I had been robbed! I had left the boat down on the beach and had moved everything that I thought would look valaubel, but forgot about the box. It had a wind meter inside, sort of valuable. After we launched and were out beyond the breakers and went to set sail, I noticed that my main sheet (the line that controls the sail) was missing. Double dang. They stole that too!. Had to paddle back in and go find another line. Oh well, I blame myself, for leaving stuff out there. Ken and Fransisca told us that some trouble kids prowl the beach and steal stuff. Dang.<br />
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We bought some fish from the men down on the beach, red snapper. They were so beautiful. Really red! Fried it for supper.<br />
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After that Ken and Fransisca stopped by to visit, noticed my guitar, and invited us to join them in (with the guitar) walking over to her friend's house to visit. There were several people there, mostly family, and we had a good time. They loved La Bamba and Eres Tu. There was a young teenage boy who remembered me from the soccer game the other night, and one guy is the one we bought fish from. The boy filmed much of the singing on his phone. The lady, Leanore, is going to make some tortillas for me tomorrow. Sweet.<br />
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Friday. We went to Leanors for the tortillas. I visited with he nephew for a while, he is a fisherman, and i asked if he was not working today. He explained that no, he had exceeded his quoata for the month so he could not catch any more until March (tomorrow) . the quoata system is really interesting, especially being self imposed and voluntary by the fisherman themselves. I was later told that this guy is in school to become a schoolteacher. That's cool.<br />
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So this is the end of the sailing voyage. I will be on the road home over the next 2 weeks or so.<br />
We packed up and headed up the road out of Agua Verde. It is a pretty rough road, with many steep sections and washed out in arroyos. We stopped at San Cosme to soak in the tidal hot springs I found on my way down. It was perfect and hot today! We camped nearby.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2635294478207383601.post-45927040789622665332015-02-18T13:14:00.003-08:002015-02-18T13:14:40.068-08:00Loretto area, isla Carmen Feb 10Lorreto area , Isla Carmen. Feb 10<br />
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The day before yesterday I had ridden the bus up to Mulege to get my truck. I spent yesterday hanging about playa Santespac and went into town for a few groceries and internet. I call McKenzie and had a nice visit. She had been to my dads funeral and it sounded really nice. I was feeling really deflated and sad, cried a bit on the phone with her. She and Julio are doing so well.<br />
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I tried to call Porter in London on skype but there was no answer. I think he is traveling to india this week and i have no idea the time zone difference. It could be as much as 12 hours offset from me.<br />
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Back at Santespac I had drinks with Ron and Diane, they had already read my blog post from a few hours earlier and were interested in hearing of my voyage. After they left I had dinner with a fellow who is riding his bike to the tip of south america. He is a video expert and is making a film of it all.<br />
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Tuesday. Today I drove back to Loretto, 70 miles, beautiful country. Some of the road is along the coast and i could see where i had been sailing for the last 3 weeks. Other times the mountains along the coast were too steep and the road bends inland across the desert.<br />
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I stopped in town to get a pass for the national park islands. I will sail out there later this week. When I got back to the Puerto Escondito area I was not sure where I was going to camp. The marina area is not well suited for camping near the water with my truck, there is so much developed concrete shoreline. I drove out into a wild area south a few miles playa Quemado. AKA rattle snake beach. There are a bunch of RVs parked out here but there are many bushes and trees between them all so you cannot see one from the next. I found a really nice spot with shade and protection from any wind that might come up. It was a short walk along the beach to the marina were I got my boat from Greg and Sonya. I was a day later getting back than I thought I would be, and they were a bit worried since they were wanting to leave tomorrow. But all is well. At the marina I filled some water jugs and took a shower with hot water! My first since leaving SanDiego a month ago. It was heavenly.<br />
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As I sailed out of the harbor thru the boat anchorage, I heard someone on a boat say "honey, kyle is sailing out, quick get the camera, I want a picture of his boat under sail" that was fun. Then the wind died and I had to paddle out the rest of the way in ignominious failure.<br />
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It didn't take long to sail to my camp, and I fixed a really nice chicken and veggie pasta supper. The bugs were worse here than I have seen. That might suck for the next few days. My ankles are still an itchy mess from the bugs over at Escondito and this is worse.<br />
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Wednesday. Wandered along the beach and met several of the neighbors. Some guys were playing guitars and I joined them for a while. Fun. I hiked up a trail to the top of a hill that overlooks the whole area. Stunning. From above you can see the shape of the concrete marina at Escondito. There is a big circular section called the Elipse, and a bunch of canals dredged out to form islands and bays. They obviously had big plans for a huge development that has never happened. There is the unfinished shell of a long L shaped 2 story building that is just raw concrete, and now falling apart.<br />
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The mountains behind here are rigged steep cliffs with narrow canyons gouging into them. One of them, Tabor canyon, is nicknamed Steinbeck canyon. When John Steinbeck visited the region years ago he describes going on a hunt for mountains goats up in the hills and legend has it that Tabor was the place. I have read his description and I don't make the connection, but it is a fun hike to an oasis in a spectacular setting.<br />
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Down below, on the plains back behind my beach you can tell that part of the road in is an old airstrip. There are mature trees growing up out of it so it hasn't been landed on for a long time, but it makes a dandy road!.<br />
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Back in camp I worked on my project to add reefing capability to my sail. I had to glue on big patches of sail fabric to the spots where the reefing attachment points will go. Normally I would place grommets to tie the reefing down but I don't have any so I sewed on some loops of rope. I also needed to make some slider rings so the sail can slide up and down the mast. I had scrounged a short piece of PVC pipe from the marina shop and I used a hacksaw blade to cut it into rings. I got it all assembled by dinner time but tomorrow i still need to tune it all up and address how to manage the additional lines and stuff. I think it is going to turn out slick.<br />
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Thursday. Finished the reefing system and took it out for a spin. The wind was really honking so it was a good test, and it worked great despite the fact that a part broke almost immediately. A while back I had found on the beach a little plastic hook thing with a rope adjusting clip thingy. It looks like it came from an adjustable bungee cord , and it would have been perfect to clamp the reefing line down quick and snug, but I guess it had laid out in the sun too long because the first time I cranked down on it it snapped. No worries, just do a quick line tie and we were golden. The sailing was fun but since I had no weight in the boat the waves just tossed me all over the place. It would have been much better with my usual 400 pound load of water , food and gear! Something to hold me down and glide thru the waves instead of being tossed up and over.<br />
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Back on the beach I tweaked a few things, and added a tie in the middle of the sail to keep the foot from dragging in the water. It should have been an easy sew job but since the sail was still on the mast and the wind was whipping it around it was a lot tougher. I was pretty worried that I was going to stab myself with that big needle and bleed all over my nice white sail!.<br />
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Tomorrow i am planning to sail over to Isla Carmen for 4 days, and spent some time this afternoon getting food and gear sorted out. Some rain is forecasted for the next few days.<br />
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I visited with a guy camped near me, he was nice enough, a young ER doc from Colorado, out on a road trip. He had a bunch of really odd tattoos on his chest. Some sort of mathematical formulas. When I asked him what the significance of them were he went off a tangent about what they meant and how they were the basis of all life in the universe or some such. I wanted to learn actually what was the significance of them to him personally, that he would tattoo them on his body like that. Hell, I don't even put bumper stickers on my car because nothing really seems all that important. I never did get an answer out of him. Odd fellow. Nice, interesting, but very very odd.<br />
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I drove over to Escondito to get water , take a shower, and check emails on their internet. On the way home it was just getting dark and as I passed the Tripui hotel complex I succumbed to the whim of having a nice restaurant dinner. I was the only customer at first, but a few other folks showed up before I left. It was a very nice place. Linen table clothes, soft jazz on the sound system, and no bugs! I was hoping to try some Mexican wine but they were all out of that so I had to settle for Chilean. I had a combination platter of fish taco, chicken enchilada, and chilli rellano. I ate slow and sat and was mellow for a long time and savored the entire experience. had coffee and flan for dessert. Truly a decadent treat for me and i loved it.<br />
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Friday. I didnt sleep much last night, dang, too much coffee. But i was packed and on the water by 9. I had parked my truck down the way at the camp of Jay and Dianne from Montana. I paddled across to Isla Danzante and across the next channel to the south end of island Carmen , about 5 miles. It was a beautiful calm sunny day. I could see a whale spouting off in the distance.<br />
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I was sitting on shore taking a break when I felt a breeze starting to build so I jumped in to take advantage of it, and headed north along the east shore of Carmen when of course the wind died. Paddling more. Hot and calm, I jumped in to swim once in a while. I only had 3 miles to reach my destination. À slight breeze did finally pick up and was sailing slowly the last mile. Off shore not too far i could see 2 small boats sailing quite quickly in the other direction. They were the NOLS boats, rowing!.<br />
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As I approached my beach there was a yacht anchored there, it was Dave and Betty on Pegasus. They invited me on for beer and visiting. Turns out I had met them briefly the other day when I hitched a ride into Loretto to catch the bus, they were the other folks hitching the same ride going in to the farmers market. They are from Colorado. Very nice folks, turns out they know Steve and had heard several of his tales that included me! We had a good laugh at how small the world is. They have a really sweet dog, Zephyr, a brown labradoodle, the snuggled right into my lap. Several dolphins kept swimming around us and Zeph really likes watching them.<br />
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I paddled over to the beach and set up camp on a nice flat meadow on a bluff above the beach.<br />
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I have to admit i am getting a bit tired of having to paddle so much on this voyage. I was expectingng to be able to sail much more than I have. Tomorrow will be a rest day though, and my next camp is only 3 miles along. Then back down and across to my truck.<br />
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Somebody asked how I navigate on this trip. Pretty simple, I just follow the coast line. Hard to get lost. I have a guidebook with arial photos of each section with notable features and good camps highlighted with GPS coordinates and notes. Good camps are usually defined as having a shore landing protected by a land feature from the prevailing northerly winds. If the shore is exposed and the wind is blowing, the waves crashing on the shore make it hard to land and harder to launch when it is time to leave. I have a little GPS and as i travel south along the coast i just look at the latitude numbers to tell where on the chart I am. Each degree of latitude is 60 miles, each minute is a nautical mile, 1.1 land miles. I can tell distances between points just by subtracting the minutes from each other. It gets a bit tricky when you cross from one degree into the next because there are 60 minutes in each degree so i have to think in "base 60" not base 10 like we normally do.<br />
Each day I study the chart and make notes on a little tablet I keep handy in the boat with me. I jot down the latitudes of possible camp sites along my route and pull in when I get there.<br />
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Saturday. It started raining early today, not too hard but off and on. I stayed in the tent and napped a lot. Amazing how much I can sleep when the opportunities arise. The skies were beautiful and dramatic, with the peaks shrouded in low clouds and the sun peaking thru from time to time to make everything sparkle.<br />
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I fiddled on the boat a bit, adjusting how the sprit spar attaches to the mast. I needed to move an attachment point but I needed to drill a hole in the aluminum pole. lacking a drill, I wandered the beach until I found a board with a nail in it, and used the nail, pounded with a rock, to start the hole and then the screw did its thing to sink it home. I was quite proud of that beach repair.<br />
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Today was the day of the hermit crabs. I know they are everywhere along every beach I have been on this trip but have never seen them. Or maybe never noticed them. They are a small land critter, not a water crab, and they crawl inside an empty sea shell to serve as their covering. They are soft shelled, having no hard protective shell of their own, just the borrowed one they move in to and walk around wearing the shell, and when they feel threatened they pull their legs into the shell and are pretty well hidden and protected. As they grow they abandon the old shell and move into a new bigger one. I see their tracks in the sand all the time. It is a pretty continuous line of tiny little foot prints, and sort of resembles a skinny bicycle tire track. Last night I glanced out of the tent and saw one bumping into the tent, i am sure wondering "what the heck has gotten in my way, I walk this same path every night and now I am stuck!" I thought they are usually a night creature but I started seeing them everywhere all day today. Really odd. While I was sitting on my pad having lunch one wandered right passed me and when I made a move he froze until I was real still and he opened up and wandered on. I started seeing them crawling everywhere, sort of out of the corner of my eye and the moment i looked at them they would freeze. Kind of creepy. Like that scary movie where the mannequins would sneak up behind the guy with malicious intent and then freeze whenever he would turn and look at them. "Sure, it it perfectly normal that that mannequin is posed with an axe aimed at my spine. After all, this is the sporting goods department" Later I found one (a crab, not a mannequin) that had crawled up my sitting pad. (I wasn't sitting on it at the time...) I got my camera and took video of them. I will try to get it onto YouTube someday. Or just go google hermit crab, you will see plenty. Down on the beach I started seeing them everywhere also. They were crawling across the gravel and a bunch were chowing down on the carcass of a dead buzzard. I guess they are scavengers, just like cockroaches and lobsters. Yes, you fancy people, lobster is a just a marine cockroach. Think about that the next time you pay $72 a plate and roll your eyes exaggerating how good it is. Cockroach.<br />
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I also saw a bunch of marine crabs. As the tide goes out they crawl around on the rocks. They are pretty quick to scamper to cover whenever I come near, but one dumb one had crawled into a little cave in a rock with nowhere to go and as I moved in close to examine him he took a strong defensive position, waving his claws at me and looking all bug eyed. I am sure he was thinking, " dang, this cave seemed like such a good idea at the time. Now what do I do?". These crabs were mostly drab colored, brown like the rocks. There were a few bigger ones that were brightly colored blue and red. One odd thing, on the rocks where the birds perch and eat I see only the remains of crabs that are orange, like the ones you get by the bucketful down at Joes. But I never see those kind anywhere, I guess they are underwater, but the ones that look easy for a bird to get are these brown ones I never see remains on the rocks. Hmm. More study is required here.<br />
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The tide pools here are different form others I have seen. There is very little life in them, fishes and crabs, but no anenomes, barnacles, or mussels. I wonder if that is because it gets so warm here in the summer. And no coral here either. Not until you get down to about La Paz.<br />
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Sunday. Woke up to rain, but it stopped shortly after I woke up. I broke camp and hit the water heading north. I only had 2 miles to get to Arroyo Blanco . I dallied along, i saw some whales spouting a long ways off. and the sea was full of manta rays . These were small, between 1 to 3 feet across. Many of them were just lazing on the surface with their fins sticking out , and sometimes one would leap out of the water and land with a mighty splash. The experts don't know why they do this. Maybe to avoid a predator, maybe to dislodge some skin cootie, or maybe just for fun to show off to the bros. "Dude, I hucked the most righteous air today".<br />
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I was content to sit out there on the water and laze about with them but the storm clouds were building again and I could hear thunder so I hopped on over to the beach. Arroyo Blanco is really interesting. It is a deep narrow notch set into a huge white limestone cliff, with a perfect white sand beach. It was so white it hurt my eyes. I had just set up my tent when it started to pour. I crawled in and sat, and noticed that the water was pouring off the cliff wall and heading right for me. I reached out and dug a llittle moat in the sand and that did the trick. The water would pause just enough to sink in and not drown me. After the storm I looked up and noticed that there was a big pile of rocks up on the cliff just waiting for the next rain storm to dislodge one little rock and the whole thing would come down on me. I moved my tent away to a safer dryer spot.<br />
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It started raining again about supper time so I moved my kitchen over to a huge alcove in the cliff right at the water line. It would flood at high tide but was fine for a quick meal out of the rain. The stove didn't want to work so I had to dismantle it and clean the jet and all was well. I was keeping an eye on the tide tho! It was coming in. As I cleaned up and moved out there was a brilliant full rainbow perfectly framed by the limestone arch over my head. Spectacular. Sad there was no way to catch something like that with the camera I have.<br />
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Monday. Rest day. I puttered about. Got restless, trying to decide if I should move my camp back on down the coast towards "home". The forecast was for moderate winds today and tomorrow, then strong on Wednesday. If I didn't make it back all the way tomorrow I might get stuck somewhere for a few more days. No big deal, just stuff to agitate over. The skies were blue, the rain was over, and i could feel a nice breeze building. While I was thinking, I saw a whale spout out there a ways. That did it. I would go for a day sail whale watching!. The surf rolling in was surprisingly big. These were not the usual wind waves but they seemed like swells coming from somewhere far off. As they came into my little bay they seemed to get bigger and compress on each other and some would really pound in on the beach. I launched quick, and paddled out thru them. All was well and it was pretty fun.<br />
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Outside the bay, no wind. Just a few puffs from various directions. I could see the whaled spouting way off but didn't feel like paddling that far, and the wind sure wasn't going to take me. There were no manta rays jumping todsy. I didnt see one. Yesterday they were thick. I bobbed about for a few hours, waiting for love. None. I paddled back in .<br />
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The big white cliffs around me are pretty cool. They are composed of hundreds, maybe thousands of feet thick of sea shells, Every size and kind you can imagine, all mashed together and turned to stone. Many of them are in perfect condition and as they weather out of the rock they look exactly like the live ones down on the beach today. It is hard to imagine the beach situation a million years ago that would have shells collected that thick. I have seen some beaches that are all shells, but certainly not a thousand feet thick. What an amazing world it was then.<br />
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To get up on the cliffs and walk out overlooking the sea, on one side there was an easy little friction scramble and then an easy walk. I have done that one several times just to get up and stroll about overlooking the sea. On the other side it was a lot harder. I could see a way that went, but it had a lot of loose rubble on steep slab, not my idea if fun, so I aborted on that one.<br />
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I tried a hermit crab experiment. I had a bag with a bunch of cracker crumbs that I dumped out on the sand right by a rock that seemed to have a bunch of crabs wandering under and out. It was pretty good sized pile of crumbs. By morning it was all gone. Not a trace. And not even any tracks. These little guys clean up the beach and leave it spotless!<br />
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Tuesday. Travel day. The winds were predicted to be moderate today, and strong tomorrow, so I wanted to most of the way home today, 10 miles, maybe even all the way if conditions were good. I was up and on the water before 7. Paddling. Past my previous camp, past the tip of isla Carmen, into the channel between Carmen and isla Danzante. The wind picked up, but right on my nose, so I was " motor sailing " (paddling with sails up..) Into the wind.<br />
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Today was day of other kayaks. For the entire last month I have not seen other kayakers, other than a few playing around beaches. Today I saw 18. There was a party of 4 boats out in the channel, they were out on a 3 day jaunt. Then at Danzante there were about 10 parked on the beach. They were out for a day tour, accompanied by a power boat that brought along chairs, tables, sun shades, food. All the luxuries for a nice day out. Then I saw a group of 2 trying to find their group of 3 to hook up with. Wow!. Overwhelming to say the least. At least they were all paddlers wanting to get out and enjoy nature in a peaceful way.<br />
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On Danzante I wandered about on some rocks right by the water's edge. There were 2 crabs, an orange one, and one of those fancy blue and red ones. When I approached, the orange one went right into the water and escaped. The blue one would not go in the water!. I sorted of chased him one way and then the next, and he would scamper back and forth right on the edge of the water, but almost looked like he didn't want to get his feet wet. Very odd.<br />
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Heading on across, paddling, when about a mile out from my beach I caught a little wind and coasted on in under sail. Finally! That was nice.<br />
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The rain storm I had out on the island really hit hard here. They had flooding that took out parts of the road, and big gullies washed out on the beach.<br />
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I think I will take a few days here and then launch for a final leg down to Agua Verde. I have been hearing how nice it is. It is about 20 miles so I should be able to make it in 2-3 days, plus allowing 3 extra for weather. Then noodle slowly for home.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2635294478207383601.post-36208005419257453692015-02-09T12:16:00.002-08:002015-02-09T12:16:58.466-08:00baja mulege to Lorreto jan 19 to feb 7hello, again, so sorry this is so long. it is simply the unedited raw notes from each night in my tent. someday I will boil it down into a "magazine article" format for your pleasure. and I am having troubles managing photos now. I will try to add them when I can.<br />
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Mulege to loretto. Jan 19 - Feb 7<br />
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Concepción flashback- I met some wonderful people in Concepción the last few days. I already mentioned Ron and Dianne on Batwing. They came thru with another home run for me by introducing me to Larry and Kay who live right on the river in a gates community in Mulege. They were kind enough to let me park my truck in their yard for the weeks I am out sailing. And it is just across the street from the Internet cafe i use and Saul's Tienda (store), one of the best in town.<br />
The big music jam last week was hosted by Blake and Sonny on Slow Mocean, a huge catamaran in Bahia Santespac with a giant after-deck, perfect for parties and bar mitzvah s. I also met Caleb, who keeps a motor home on shore and a sailboat in the bay. Very nice situation. And Bill and Kim on Just Dandy. They buddy boated with my friend Steve last year, Kim is from Salt lake, went to East high. We felt like old neighbors.<br />
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Monday Jan 19. I spent the day provisionig food and water and scouting a launch site for the boat tomorrow, and had lunch at La Patron's , the last cafe on the Rio Mulege before it dumps into the Sea of Cortez. What a wonderful spot, great views, dirt floor, and the fish tacos were awesome. Ramon served me, while Lilli (his mother, Senora Patron,) ran the kitchen. I was the only one there, and she came out and visited with me. She has been running the place for 25 years and says she is going to turn over to the kids soon. This whole section of town along the river has been destroyed by hurricaines repeatedly in the last several years. They were telling that after almost 40 years without, that have been hit hard almost a dozen times in the last 20 years. Kay and Larry's place has been uninhabitable since the last storm in Sept, they are living in and RV in their driveway. (But they did get the bathroom in the house working first off. Priority uno you know. )<br />
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This next section of of coastline I am sailing, from Mulege to Loretto , is one of the most popular kayaking voyages in Baja. It is about 60 miles, mostly wilderness, only one tiny village and a few remote fish camps along the way. I have seen most of it on Steve's boat last time I was here, and am so excited to be doing it by kayak, touching almost every spot along the way. Most people do it in about a week, but I am thinking I may take as long as 2 -3 weeks, just to savor every delight.<br />
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Tuesday. I got another early start, up at 5:30, so I could get the boat rigged and loaded and moving by sunup . everything went smooth and I had the truck park back at Larry's and on the water by 7. I was launching in the Mulege river and had to paddle about a mile before I was in the Sea. This can sometimes be the crux of this first day if the tide is coming while you are trying to paddle out . Fortunately the tide peaked at about 6 AM today and was flowing out when i launched so I had an easy time. Another potential problem is with the big hurricane, all the usual launch spots are under tons of rubble, so it was good I had scouted out a spot earlier. Also, all the storm rubble has piled up in the mouth of the river making it hard to find a useable channel, especially at a lower tide level. I made it out with no problems, and was on my way. It was a beautiful card!m day, perfect for paddling, not so good for sailing. I paddled for about 5 hours and 12 miles before any wind came in, and that was light wind at that. It was fine tho, because just then a pod of about 10 dolphins showed up and they stayed with me (or I with them, not sure which...) For almost an hour. Always before when I have seen dolphins they seem to be in a hurry to be getting somewhere else and are soon gone, but these guys just lazed along at the same pace I was going, rising every few moments to spout and then down under again, first on one side of me, then the other. The water was very clear and could see them swimming under my boat. At one point on of them jumped clear out of the water and landed on his\her back with a big splash. It looked like just for fun. Or showing off!.<br />
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I was having so much fun watching them that I had forgotten to notice where I had planned to land. No worries, this section of coast is a continuous series of rocky headlands with a cove and beach right next to it. One looked like a better landing spot than others so I headed on in under sail. Turned out it was a pretty bad spot. The beach above the water looked pretty smooth, sand and small cobbes, but right under the water at the shoreline was a floor of big slippery rocks. When I jumped out of the boat to pull it in I almost went down and a wave pushed me in and washed over the side of the boat. And of course I didn't have the spray deck in place, since I had just opened it to climb out. Oh well, no harm down and a lesson learned. Check out the landing better, and be prepared to back out quickly if it looks bad up close.<br />
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The camp spot was pretty nice tho, a previous camper had cleared the cobbles away for a really smooth sleeping spot. I lounged about, got up and walked, then took a nap. It was a hard day, my arms hurt from so much paddling, and I was very tired. I had exceeded my distance goal by a few miles (I wanted to get around a few minor points on the coastline to be in more protected waters and I had done that. )<br />
The last few nightnights , and tonight as well, I am sleeping without a tent, just out on a tarp. A Storm is brewing later in the week but for now it is nice to sleep out. No bugs, no wind and not too cold.<br />
Wednesday. Today is a red letter day for my voyage. I trolled a fishing line while I was underway, and had fish for supper! Although the 2 activities aren't really related.... Other than the fact that I trolled my line by the boat of the man that caught the fish I had for supper. Close enough eh?<br />
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I got another early start today. I was so tired yesterday that I employed a different strategy today. Instead of paddling to exhaustion hoping the wind would blow, and then being too tired to sail, today I took a nice break on shore about 11, after paddling for 4 hours. I had made about 8 miles. I had rigged my line with a homemade lure. A lady had told me that she has as much success with lures made from strips of colored plastic shopping bags, so i had made a few of those back home for this trip. I selected a red and white one, thinking it migh remind a fish of a baby squid. No joy, but really, if I catch one small fish a week that would be plenty for me. After my shore break, I sat there until I saw evidence of wind out on the water and then launched. I sailed for a few hours, and when it started getting a bit fierce I pulled in to a picture picture Baja cove with a perfect pea gravel beach. There was a fish camp palapa up the beach and I could see people moving about. The panga on shore looked like one that I had sailed by earlier and they had waved at me. I scouted about for a place to camp in case the winds didn't soften, and as I sat in where I thought I might settle, a man from the camp over, introduced himself , Juan, and asked me (in Spanish) if I wanted to come up to the camp and get some fish. I said sure, and by the way was it OK if I camped here. He assured me yes no problem . he asked me if i had any sugar and i said a little, and that i would come over to the camp in a little while. "Mas tarde". I spent some time clearing an area to sleep. This spot appearantly had once been a place do toss trash fish. There were dozons of old dried out sharks heads and sting rays. All quite small, but really interesting to look at.<br />
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a while later I wandered over to the fish camp and brought Juan some sugar, coffee, a few tortillas, a few apples, and 2 granola bars. He was thrilled with it all, and wolfed down one of the bars right away. He took me over to a giant insulated tub full of fish and ice. He pulled out 2 cabrillo (sea bass). I said I didn't know what to do with them so he filleted them for me in about 2 minutes and put them in a bag. Wow! What service!<br />
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Juan said he has a house in Loretto, and is out at this camp for 3 months. Every so often They run a boat into town to bring in the fish and get supplies. The camp is well built but rustic and primitive. I did see a solar panel stacked in the back of the room, and an ancient propane camp stove, but it looked liked he cooked on the fire most of the time. There were a few cots on the dirt floor, and a few old truck seat benches on the ground. He was wearing a pair of sandles that were hand made with a letter sole and seatbelt webbing. He was wearing some tan dockers that were cleaner than the pants I was wearing. I felt a bit shabby next to him!<br />
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There were 2 small boys running around the camp and I asked them if they were his sons but he said no , they live at the rancho casa up the arroyo. I saw no house up there but it must have been. I had brought several tiny keychain flashlights on this trip, thinking they would make nice gifts. I gave one to the youngest boy, he was maybe 5 or so, with strict instructions to only use it at night. " solo en la noche". He ran over to show his brother , about 7 maybe, playing over on the other side of a big brush thicket and I walked over to give a flashlight to him. His little brother gave him strict instructions " solo en la noche". There were 3 other people over there clearing brush and putting it into a giant pile. A young man about 25, a lady about his age, and an older woman sitting on a log. She asked me if I had a light for her, I laughed and said of course. The young lady was standing there and I said Uno mas, para usted. On more, for you. They all seemed pleased. The man came over laughing, said he had seen me sail in. We all introduced, (all this in Spanish) but I don't recall their names. I asked what they were doing and they said making a sombra (shade roof or palapa. ) They were doing really hard nasty work but they looked as fresh and clean as if they were going to the mall! I need to learn that trick. I assume they live at the rancho casa but don't know for sure. There is a really bad road leading into this camp, but I did not see any truck parked. I asked the man if the 2 boys were his sons and he said no. I still don't know where they fit in!<br />
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I walked back to Juan, the fish guy, he was cooking a potato over a fire for his supper. I had brought my guitar over and asked if he liked music, yes, so I played La bamba. He really got into it, tapping his toe so vigorously he almost spilled his coffee. Then he asked me if I knew any Credence or Beatles or Rolling stones ! I guess I need to work more of that into my repetoir if I am going to travel the wilds of Baja!<br />
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I went back to my camp and started a tiny fire. I carry a small frying pan exactly for this possible scenario, but my stove would be too hot in one tiny spot. No bueno for cooking fish, I needed coals. when the fire had burned down I fried the fillets in oil and garlic (of course) . I also put on a pot of beans y arroz con cebollo, temate, y pimientos. When it was all done I tucked in to best fish burritos ever. And I have enough left over for breakfast. Mmm.<br />
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All in all this was the best day of my trip so far. I experienced a bit everything that I had imagined I would out here. Muy bueno<br />
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Thursday. OK , life on this little beach just just keeps getting better. I didn't leave this morning. Seas too rough. Most of the time the winds have been dying down over night and the sea calms down until the winds pick up again the next day, usually by afternoon. But last night the winds blew all night and all today, and the waves keep getting bigger, crashing onto the beach with a boom and a roar. I think it would actually be OK out on the water but just getting off the beach to start would be very hard. I need to make sure that no matter how calm it is when I arrive somewhere I need to consider the waves on the beach if I ever want to leave. <br />
<br />
As I got up and about there a lot of activity going on at the fish camp. A pickup truck came roaring down the dirt track to the camp, as the panga also came zipping up to the beach with 2 people in it. One guy got out, and the truck guy jumped on and the panga took off. I walked over to the camp and the new guy was sorting the fish kept in the camp on ice, putting them into plastic tubs by type and size. Antonio, the brush cutter from yesterday was working with him. Juan was hanging out. It took about an hour. There were many sharks, (with the heads cut off, because I guess they will still reflexively bit he you long after they are dead) and many cabrillo. One was huge almost 3 ft long, and bright yellow. They loaded the fish and ice into a giant insulated tub on the truck. I offered to help and Antonio had me help lug a few of the tubs to the truck.<br />
Juan told me that that was about 5 days catch of fish, and was about normal. The drive to Lorreto was about 4 hours, and they would return later that day with more ice to fill the camp tubs. <br />
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I wandered back to my camp and had breakfast, the leftover fish and beans from last night. Oh it was even better than before. When I looked back at the camp the panga had returned and been pulled up on the beach, and the truck was gone. I guess the road going on past the camp is the way to town.<br />
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Behind my camp behind the beach of rock is a nice little lagoon, brackish water. Many birds land on it and it is interesting to watch. I walked around it and then on up the road, the way the truck had come from that morning. About 2 miles along, it doubles back down to another beach with a very large developed camp. There were several small houses, plywood, painted bright colors, and one huge place, huge even by US standards. It was made of block faced with stone, with huge windows facing the sea. What a spectacular spot. I wandered about on the dirt track that connected the houses but didn't run into anybody. One lady with a child was at a house up the hill and I waved and hollered hola.<br />
I walked back over to my camp, it was sunny and hot but the wind kept howling and it was cool in my camp, where just a breath of breeze finds its way in. I layer down and napped for a while.<br />
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After that I needed shade. I could have rigged a tarp but I decided to walk over to the fish camp and sit under the shade trees that Antonio was cutting out of the brush. I could see him working on it so rather than sit and eat in front of him I found some other shade and nibbled my lunch. After that I walked over and asked him if I could help. He looked surprised but yes, and has me haul the branches over to the pile as he cut them. His wife and mother were not around helping this time so he seemed to appreciate it. He was cutting the beaches out with an Axe and a machete, both quite effective. These were thick thickets of brush that had been growing there for at least a thousand years and there was much dead stuff and just a nasty tangle of brush to cut out. Luckily there were no thorns, nothing lethal, just lots of it. Once in a while we would talk, trying to communicate the best we could . he was very patient with me. I guess he was planning a nice shady park-like area there, large, maybe a few hundred feet across. They had cows there and they needed the shade, and it would be nice for people too . he used to work as the computer programmer for a large tienda (store) in Lorreto, in fact owned by the guy, Pedro, who also runs the restaurant in Puerto Escondido, where I have spent several weeks once before and got to know him a bit. Small world. Now, Antonio and his wife live out at the rancho casa and tend the cows for the patron that owns it. They stay out there for many months at a time. His mom was there visiting for a few weeks with her husband Carlos (not Antonio's dad) . He seemed to really enjoy being out there. Dang, I know I would. At some point during the day he asked me if I would come have supper later with his family at the casa. And bring my guitar. Cool! <br />
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We worked until about 4:30, when he called it quits. That was a tough day. I think he was surprised that I stuck with it. He asked me if I was consado(tired) but I said no, this was the kind of job I did back in Utah. Cutting out brush and dragging it off. Just like back home! He asked me if I used a chainsaw, I said no, by hand "manos".<br />
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I went back to my camp and stripped down for a quick wash in the ocean. I didn't go in far, the waves were really crashing in hard, but it sure felt good to rinse off the dust and sweat and yes a bit of blood. I walked over to the casa. It was a really nice place, rustic, but clean and tidy. There was big kitchen area, plywood with thatched roof, with a dirt floor packed hard and swept very clean. There was a big raised cooking hearth made of cement block, with a fire going and several pots simmering. The yard was all fenced in, I guess to keep the case out. He had a fig orchard growing, and a small garden with cilantro and onions growing. They were growing in just bare soil and I so much wanted to discuss composting and mulching but the language barrier was too great. He had horses and a tack room, a corral with several goats, and a milk cow. He had chickens but no eggs yet.<br />
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He had a big well right in the yard, with a gas powered pump that they used to fill a giant cistern in the barn for the animals, and a tank up on the hill for the house. he said it was not good to drink, only for the animals, and cleaning, and watering the plants. They bring in purified water from town to drink. (Whew! Earlier, when we were working he offered me some water from a big jug, but I declined because I didn't know where it came from )<br />
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Aside from the kitchen there was a larger structure with several doors which were bedrooms.<br />
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Sitting in the kitchen, we had coffee. Seems brewing coffee is uncommon anywhere in Mexico, ( and even in the US in hispanic places). Everyone use instant coffee. Not bad, really tho. Its all good. They were shocked that I preferred it black, unsweetened. They add sugar and milk (right from the cow) like everyone else in the world.<br />
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For supper we had chicken mole con arroz (rice) with a pile of just-made-on-that-fire tortillas. It was so good. They handed me a pepper to much on to spice it up. Soo good.<br />
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Then I played a few songs. Carlos asked for Hotel California, and they seemed to appreciate my efforts on LA Bamba and Eres Tu in Spanish. Those little boys, that I still don't know how they fit in with the family, were there and dancing along. Very fine.<br />
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Antonio's mother, Isebell, said she had 5 sons, and 2 daughters (I think) . Her husband Carlos was a nice guy, quite tall and burly, a bit gruff, but nice. He had come in with a bag of fish he had caught and gave me one for my breakfast tomorrow. (Not filleted this time. I will need to clean and cook it whole!<br />
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As it was winding down, I asked if I could take their picture, so they all gathered around the fireplace for it. Antonio and I traded email addresses and I told his wife I would email it to them. She seemed very pleased. I think she said her name was Americanas. Antonio said he was 27, and she was 20. she was very cute and pleasant, very animated while cooking and serving the meal, and from what I could tell was very funny. She and Antonio cozied up for the music and seemed like a happy couple. He said she liked living out there at the camp and I repeated a few times he was "hombre fortunando" ! He said yes, he knew that.<br />
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A very nice day in every way.<br />
Friday. Wind still blowing hard. I listened in on the ssb cruiser net for a forecast and it will blow again tomorrow, but then Sunday soften. I hope the seas drop quickly , after the wind stops. That is one thing I have yet to get experience on. The waves come up pretty quickly with fresh wind, but after it blows so hard for so long maybe there is so much stored energy in the waves that it may take a while to drop. Anyway, I expect to stay here another 2 days at least. Not that that is a bad thing. This is very nice.<br />
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For breakfast I cooked the fish that Carlos gave me last night. I even had to clean it! That was easy. I placed a big flat rock over the fire place, thinking I could cook on that like those survival books show. Maybe, but after stoking the fire several times and the top of the rock still only warm, I caved in and used my pan. What a chump. Anyway, it was great, and I had it with beans and rice. <br />
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One thing happened last night I noticed this morning. I had pulled my boat up to the top of the gravel berm above the surf line, and certainly nothing yet had come anywhere near that far up. But when I woke up I noticed that the boat had been shifted sideways and had about an inch of water in it! Ouch. No real problems, but that could have been real bad. I do pull the anchor out and set it up the beach, just in case, but I never really thought it would be necessary!<br />
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I walked over to another little cove next door and saw the enormous bone of a whale. It had been there for many many years, but it was huge. No idea what part it was, maybe some sort of vertebrae that the fins took to. It was 6 feet across and 3 ft in diameter with some long piece sticking out of the middle of it at least 10 more feet. Really cool.<br />
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A truck pulling a small trailer with several men on board came by today and went up toward Antonio's place, no idea what was up with that. I walked over to help him with the brush cutting and he had started but had left, left his coat hanging on a tree, but I worked all afternoon and didn't see him. Guess whatever the men came for kept him busy all day.<br />
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It is really cold tonight. I still haven't set up my tent yet this voyage but I may regret that tonight. I did move my camp a few feet around the corner into a tiny clear in in a tight copse of brush for a bit more wind protection. I have everything I brought to wear on tonight, and have huddeld under the sleeping bag to type this and am plenty warm "inside".<br />
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Saturday. It warmed up a bit with some clouds coming in, and winds softening. I could have left today but the waves on my beach were still big until much later in the day. Need to make sure i land on good protected beaches. (But then i would have missed the wonderful experince of this beach camp!). Tomorrow looks perfect for continuing on. I expect to make it to San Nicolas tomorrow, a small town where I can stock up on water and whatever else.<br />
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I walked about some, worked on cutting brush again. Juan came over to visit ( Antonio later corrected me that I had it wrong, his name was something else but I missed it and so will just keep on calling Juan. I am pathetic. Sorry buddy.) Anyway, he mentioned that there were many snakes to watch out for in this thicket when it got hotter. Right now they were all out seeking sun. I had wondered about that, I have walked around a lot and not seen any snakes, or tracks in the sand. I am sure they are there tho.<br />
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Juan had been feeling ill in bed, in the morning. I am sure it was a hangover. His groceries came in last night, including beer and the floor was littered with empties. Once he was up he seemed dine. He was showing me his work tools. Snorkel gear, Hawaiian sling spears, huka pump, rifle for dear. He said he had been in the Marines and was a pretty good shot. He pointed out his handmade seatbelt sandals, very proud of them, and rightly so. I said I had noticed and admired them the first time we met! And he asked to see my boat! We walked over and he inspected every aspect of it. He seemed to know a fair bit about sailing craft. That was fun.<br />
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I ran into Antonio and his family late in the afternoon, I was on my way over to say goodbye and they were coming in from a day of fishing out on the point. They invited me over for supper again. Con guitara of course. I brought some apples for the kids, and a big onion for Isabell. They served lamb barbacoa. Very good. They asked me to play all the regulars. Hotel California, LA bamba, Carlos was drumming on the fireplace, Eres Tu. Isabelle was humming it all thru supper. They made a mountain of tortillas right there in a moment while we visited. They used a metal press, but said they sometimes press them by hand.<br />
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Antonio said they have about 100 head of cows, and 500 sheep. I saw several cows today but no evidence of sheep.<br />
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Antonio asked me a question about something I never did understand, and no one in the group speaks any English at all , so he was trying to help me understand. Something about "guessing " I think. Instead of just laughing it off and going on to something else, He wrote it out on paper and diagramed how it would be, and i got my little dictionary and found the words, but I still didn't get it. I felt so bad that he was trying so hard and I just didn't get it. I took the paper and promised to have my bilingual friends explain it and I would email him the answer.<br />
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He said that the NOLS group over at playa Coyote , where I stayed when I first got here, had been coming there to his place by kayak a few times, 15 people each group. That was cool.<br />
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I was dying to ask him about what motivated him to leave the computer job and move to the wilds to be a ranchero. He seems to be quite well educated, and could be a significant person in his town. But here he is out the wilderness. I know I would love it, but I would like to hear his thoughts. I had formulated the question from my Spanish phrase book and wrote it down , but i was sure I would not understand the answer in Spanish and it would just be a big frustration. When I get home I am going to have Julio help me translate a letter for him and ask it that way.<br />
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I also want to understand the business of the ranch and the fish camp. He was not working as a fisherman, but had help sort and load the catch. And Juan really didn't help sort and load. I wondered if he was an independent and got paid by how much he caught, but then there were 3 other men who came and went and their fish seemed to all be mixed up in the common weekly ice tank. Did they split it evenly? All fascinating questions I hope to figure out some day.<br />
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And 2 kayakers paddled by today going north. I hope they had a good day. And it makes me feel better knowing I am not the only but job out here.<br />
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When I was walking the beach there were several rocky sections being exposed with the falling tide. They were swarming with crabs, mostly little reddish browns ones, but some were larger, with bright outrageous colors blue, red, yellow, with spots, they looked really cool. I couldn't get a picture because the minute I approached they would scurry for cover. But wow what a show<br />
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Sunday. Launched early, headed for San Nicolas, about 14 miles along. Started paddling but ended up having a nice breeze much of the day and I landed there about 1:00. Spectacular coastline along the way. Much more green color. Big rocky cliffs with nice coves in between.<br />
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San Nicolas is a tiny village, more than a fish camp but just barely. Maybe 50 homes, hard to tell, it is all spread out along both sides of 2 long lagoons and up on the bluffs above. Seems like the main industry is fishing, and livestock. There are quite a few cows and donkeys roaming free , people fence thier yards to keep them from taking shade in thier palapas. There is a school and a small tienda but they were closed today, being Sunday. There are a few gringo homes here, I was told by Ron and Dianne to look up Terry and Lupe when i got here, and even Antonio and Isabelle knew them. When I arrived I asked and everyone knows them, but they were not home.<br />
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My landing on this beach was a bit of a learning curve. The beach is open to the north swell and even tho there really wasnt much wind today there were some waves about 1-2 feet high rolling in. The beach was gradual ad they were not pounders like at the last camp, but when I came in for my landing I was surprised how much the waves wanted to force me sideways which would result in a nasty roll, probably breaking the mast and the outriggers. Not trivial!. I couldn't use the rudder, since that had to be up for when I landed, and using the paddle as a rudder was not as effective since I was going the same speed as the water. I needed to take long powerful rudder\steering strokes to force the boat in line. I made it OK but it is sobering how much power even these littler waves have. If\when I come in on bigger waves there will be no room for error. <br />
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After I walked about a bit and scouted a camp site, I decided I wanted to move about 1/2 mile along the beach so i got to practice my "wave" launch and landing again. I did get a bit of water in the boat both times but no harm done and a bit more learning.<br />
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My campsite is along past the edge of town and up off the beach up in the dunes, behind some brush. Very secluded and protected if the winds blow.<br />
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There was a little taco type stand right in the middle of the beach front, and being mid afternoon when I stopped by the guy, Mario, said he was pretty well shut down but he could fix me a bowl of rice and beans, with coffee. Real brewed coffee! Not instant. I jumped at that. It had been simmering most of the day and was so thick the spoon stood up in it but it was delicious. He didn't charge me anything for the meal because it was all practically leftovers. He said he had only arrived there 5 days ago to cook for the fishermen. Seemed very nice, patient to talk with me with my pathetic attempts at Espanol.<br />
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I have ran into 2 men here missing about 4 front top teeth. I don't know it that is all the result of some past bar brawl, or there is something about this place...<br />
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San Nicolas is famous as a watering supply stop, appearantly there are really good wells here with drinkable water but the tienda guy is the guide to get it, and was gone, so tomorrow I will tank up. I expect to be here a few days before I move along.<br />
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Monday. it started raining first thing! Not much but enough to make the roads wet. It felt very nice. I worked on some gear repair, did some laundry washing. Went to find water and visit the tienda. Mario had some coffee for me. At the tienda there was a lady there helping explain where I could find water. Not far from my camp there is a for-hire camping spot with palapas and water spigot, she said was good drinking water. A shower too! As it turns out, she is Lupita, the woman i was suggested to meet! I walked right over, got my water and took a shower (cold, but nice) . there was a cute little dog that came to visit, he was limping. (Seems I see a lot of limping dogs in Baja. Only one 3 legged dog, but lots of limpers. I suppose they must step on a lot of thorns! And wonder if they get much care or are just expendable when they can't keep up any more.). Anyway, I check this little guys paw, didn't see any obvious sore or wound. And he didn't seem to mind me touch it. Maybe it was a ploy to get attention! He was licking water off the floor so I filled a bowl for him and he just ignored it until I poured it into a big sea shel.l, then he lapped it up. That was funny. The camp was a very nice place, well constructed, but looked to have not been used in quite a while. There was some new palapa construction going on nearby tho. I wonder if they try to cater to kayakers coming past. There doesn't seem to be much tourist activity going on, which is strange because it is such a perfect beautiful spot. It is definitely a place I will return to!<br />
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The weather report says that a big wind is coming in tomorrow and for a the next few days. I am happy to stay here a while. Plenty of food and water and friendly people here.<br />
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Just for fun I launch the boat in a light breeze and cruised up and down the coast. Nice to sail for fun and not to have be getting anywhere!<br />
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I took my guitar over to Mario's, he was busy preparing the evening meal for the pescadoros, but he drummed every implement he touched on every cooking vessel he was using. That was fun. He borrowed my guitar and played a few chords, actually knew what he was doing but was out of practice. Like the other folks, he requested Hotel California, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Credence. Funny he said the exact same as Juan and Carlos. He said one of the fishermen has a full size guitar and played "ranchero" (traditional Mexican) songs. I would like to meet him and play but they get up and leave early and come back after sunset totally exhausted. It may be hard to connect that one.<br />
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The building next to Mario's place was a nice concrete structure, small but new and fresh paint and had some sort of official looking logo on the side. Upon close look it was an Alcoholics Anonymous building! Mario said drinking and smoking is strictly forbidden for the fishermen. They all work for Santiago, the big company man, and wants his crew sober and hardworking. No smoking, no drinking. Wow. It makes sense, but I would never have guessed.<br />
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Tuesday. Big winds coming today so I stayed put. Visited with some fishermen who were launching pangas near the palapas where I got water, the one man was the son of Terry and Lupita. He pointed to the huge tree shading the camp, said they planted it when he was a little boy. Said his dad was already out fishing.<br />
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Took a long walk along the coast. Several miles. It was stunning. Big sandstone cliffs along the water, with occasional beaches, mostly pretty steep and rocky. There was a dirt road that contoured along the whole way. I passed several abandoned camps. I wonder why the people moved on. Some of them were really nice. I would live there! I came to one camp with 3 men there. 2 brothers and a cousin. They invited me in for fish tacos. They had a nice place, with a sleeping palapa with a concrete floor swept clean, several plants they were growing. Basil, bougainvilla, lime trees, yucca for medicinal salve , palm trees. They had to haul in water for everything so every plant was a special one. They had a big TV antenna on a pole and I asked if they got TV there, they said yes but someone stole their TV! And computer too! Dang. I asked if they were not working today and they said they were divers and worked nights for catching lobster and scallops. About to go to sleep for the day. I walked as far as playa Ramaditas, a fish camp with 2 good sized homes . one man said he lived there 30 years. I was really tired and foot sore when I got back, bought a grape cola drink at the tienda. That really went down nice.<br />
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Back in camp, i did a few more repairs. The zipper fly of my pants broke so I stole a button from my shirt and sewed it on my pants, cut a button hole, melted the edges. . Much better . no breeze now....<br />
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Cooked on the fire again tonight, this morning too. Almost as easy as getting the stove going now. Making some big quesodillas with all the trimmings. Mmm mmm good.<br />
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After supper I walked over to the fish camp with my guitar. , all the men were gathered around the kitchen area eating. Mario introduced me to Diego, they guy with the guitar. He got it out and we played together for the next few hours. So much fun. Again, they all wanted to hear Hotel California, and Credence. Everybody jumped in on La Bamba and Eres Tu. One guy, Salvador, had a bunch of Alan Jackson songs on his cell phone he played for me. He knew pretty good English, said he was a trained coffee barrista from Lorreto, working fish right now for a few months. Diego said he had only been playing guitar for a year, but he was really good. He knew some really sophisticated licks up the neck, mostly traditional Mexican folk songs. Several of the men gathered around and sang the songs with him. I showed him some chords for the songs I was playing , he caught on quick and jumped right in, playing variations up the neck. That was way cool.<br />
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It was a bright half moon as I walked back to my camp. About half a mile. I only needed my headlamp to manuever around the pangas and all the gear around them.<br />
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Wednesday. Big waves today, all the pangas were grounded and the pescadores had the day off. I visited with Salvador about the business. The men are in teams of 2, and they each get paid on a third of their catch. They work every day the weather allows, and take their relaxation days when the weather is nasty like today.<br />
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I have a big blister on my toe from the hike yesterday so did not wander off too much today.<br />
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Just down the beach from me where the palapas and water is there is an old panel van parked, old, obviously not running. But it turns out it is home for Jesus, one of the fishermen. I was washing socks at the spigot and he came up the same time, needed to fill his rubber boots with soapy water and then he walked around for a while to get them clean. Quite ingenious! He lives in the van, not sure why doesn't live in a house at the camp with the men. He keeps a pretty low profile, there is really nothing obvious that shows he is there, I have walked by it several times and never noticed until today. He said the men mostly zip across the bay in the pangas to fish over by an island called San Ildefanso. It is several mies but they get there in 20 minutes with their high powered pangas. He shows me his fishing gear, a hand line wrapped around a board with several hooks attached every several feet. He baits the hooks with fish and run it out. . Simple, but that is how he makes his living. I see big mounds of old netting on the beach, but none in the boats. Maybe they use the nets in other seasons.<br />
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Tonight I finally got a good fix of pelican diving. One of the things I so loved about living on my boat was every night watching pelicans feeding in the bay right by me. I have been quite disappointed this trip, I see them everywhere, but they never seem to be feeding. Tonight they were going crazy right in front of my camp. It was interesting , they were right in the surf, jumping up a few feet and diving into the very next wave for fish. I wonder if the storm drove the fish in closer. And several times 6 or 7 birds would all lift off together and dive right back in simultaneously. It was amazing the way they all seemed to know the fish were there. And it was not like they were flying up and looking around for a place to dive next. They were up and back down in so quickly it almost seemed like they knew the fish were right there before they even lifted off. Pelicans are so cool to me. They seem to just hang out and bask in the sun all day but then when it is time to work they just get after it and gitterdun. I need to get another boat so I can name her Las Pelicanas.<br />
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After supper I went over to the camp to jam with Diego. There were fewer men there than last night, it was quite the big scene last night, tonight only a few were there. I suspect a number of them went into town for some R&R while the weather was bad. One older guy sang with Diego, he was amazing. He sang the old ranchero songs with such feeling I didn't even need to understand the words to be touched by them. They sounded better than most professional bands I have heard playing in restaurants.<br />
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Thursday. I had planned on getting an early start today and sneak around Punts Pulpito early before any weather came in. Pulpito is the biggest point to traverse on this trip, and can get difficult in nasty conditions. The alarm rang at 5:30, I heard raindrops on the roof, turned the alarm off, and went back to sleep. No travel today. When I woke up at 7 things seemed better, the sky was only partly cloudy and clearing, the surf was manageable on the beach, wind was gentle out of the west, and I had 7 miles of east in order to round the point. Conditions seemed perfect. I can do this I decided. I loaded up and hit the water by 8:30. All was still well. I paddled hard and had the sail up too and rounded the point at about 11. Conditions still good, but the swell was coming on a bit larger, and the wind out of the north, as predicted, was building. There is a sheltered cove just on the other side of the point and I expected to pull in there and rest. However, Pulpito is a huge rock outcrop, much taller than the land around it, and the wind was howling more on the back side that on the front, and when it all mixed on the downwind side it was chaotic. The wind would clock around in all directions quickly, just like home in my Utah mountain lakes. the sea was flat but the wind was crazy. I decided to head for one of the coves just across the way and get away from the chaos as quick as I could. I made it across the the bay just fine, and drifted into a sheltered little cove with a very rocky shore. I pulled the boat up on the rocks and had lunch and a bit of a nap in a little cave in the rock. After a few hours, I decided to move on to find a beach with a better landing, I knew there was one within 2 miles. I could stay close to shore and out of any real nasty sea and wind, and I drifted along just fine. Paddling, no sail up, but just the mast gave me some momentum with the wind blowing hard like that. Within about half an hour my perfect little cove opened up, I could see a nice sand beach there at the back of it, and calm as a mill pond.. A seal lion came over and checked me out, and a pod of dolphins was lazily cruising about, so I figured this was the right place!<br />
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The cove is called Sequicesmunde. Cool name .<br />
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I set up my tent right against a big rock wall out of the wind and had a nice peaceful evening. All in all a very satisfying day. Rounded the big point in good style and found a fine wilderness bay to call home tonight.<br />
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Friday. It was spattering a bit of rain when I went to bed last night, but at about 4 AM it started pouring. My tent has seen me thru many bad storms and I have high confidence in its seaworthiness but tonight I had set it up a bit odd to accommodate the small space that I had against this cliff, and after a while I had a trickle of water coming in one of the corners. Nothing fatal, but annoying. I moved some stuff around and made sure my sleeping bag stayed on the pad and all was well.<br />
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One odd thing is that I had an infestation of rolly bugs during the night!. It was warm and humid earlier in the night so I left the bug screen open to encourage more air flow and while I was dealing with the rain trickle I noticed gazillions of these little guys in the tent. I have never seen them in this quantity before, nore ever in a tent. No harm, they dont bite, but it was weird. The next morning as I mopped up and mucked out, I also had to the sweep those little guys out from under everything and from every corner. At least they are easy to sweep! They don't run or scurry, they just curl up in that cute little ball and roll on out the door.<br />
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The rain lasted until at least 9, and was overcast most of the day. I didn't feel like moving on so I sat around and read. I am reading this book about a guy who sailed a 19 ft open boat around the world solo. He has endured single passages of over 4000 miles at a time, being shipwrecked and rescued himself, got locked up in a Saudi prison, and of course his wife divorced him during all this. He is a master mariner and tells a good story. I have yet to discover if he successfully completes the circumnavigation. When he got locked up in Saudi Arabia his freedom required that he fly to Switzerland and he had to abandon his boat, but in the last chapter I was reading he showed up in Cairo with a replacement and he is continuing on. What a guy. OK, I have to stop living and writing about my life now and read about his. Bye bye<br />
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Saturday. OK the guy gave up on his voyage in the Canary islands, off the cost of Africa. After 25000 he had had enough with only 3000 to go. Good for him. He did enough.<br />
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It rained again last nigt, but not as long and hard, and i stayed cozy dry. Got an early start heard towards San Juanico 7 miles along. Winds were calm but picked up a bit, still gentle, from the south, and I was heading south so I tacked back and forth into the wind. I paddled a bit to help the sails, and even just a lazy paddling stroke Mae a big difference in speed an tacking angle. I coasted into the cove about noon and it was a glorious scene. I had visited San Juan I do a fees back with Steve in his boat and it is one of the most spectacular places ever. The bay is about a mile across, with a soft sand beach stretching across the north side, with 2 huge rock outcrops in the middle of the bay. One a long series of red rock pinnacles with osprey nests perched on top of each. The other is a big flat topped haystack of white rock with grass and tall cardon cactus growing up there. The osprey catch fish and sit on top of the cactus eating them and then fly the leftovers to the nests. Along the one side of the bay is a huge long sloping arch if golden sandstone that swoops gracefully down and then up to a point . this place is so amazing, it has haunted my dreams for years, and is a huge draw for me make this trip, and I was back.<br />
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There were 2 boats anchored in the bay as I sailed in, the people on Gaelsong from Alaska were waving and taking my picture so I went over to meet Marci and Chile Willi. They offered me a beer as I pulled along side, what wonderful people. Then I saw Slow Mocean, the big catamaran where we had the jam session party up in Santespac 2 weeks ago. Blake was out fishing but Sonny invited me aboard, said " we are so glad to are OK, we wondered when you would get here. Blake will be back soon, please join us for lunch". She whipped up a fish fry with salad and some sort of veggie flat bread she made. Not to be repetitive, but what wonderful people!<br />
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Then I pulled over to the beach to make camp. There is a long bad dirt road into here, and mostly only the more hardcore adventurures make it. There were a few trucks parked, with camps set up. I would meet them all in the next few hours. Hans and his wife, from Germany, in a huge 4x4 RV on steroids. The tires were 3 feet tall. He calls himself the crazy German. He and his wife Carol have driven all over the world. He is a diesel mechanic and they stop and get a high paying job somewhere for a while and then keep on driving.<br />
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The couple on the beach near me, Ryan and Keegan from Montana, drove down here but have 2 really nice sea kayaks. They have done the trip that I am doing about 6 times before.<br />
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Lance is camping near me, a kayaker too but he also drove down here. He is from Oregon and has grown huge fields of berries and pole beans, the same that I used to pick for a dollar a day as a kid.<br />
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À lady camped down the beach stopped by to gather some firewood. It is pretty sarcce along this stretch, Since the wind usually blows the other way and deposits most of the wood on the far shore across the bay, plus a lot of people camp here and burn what little does come along. Anyway, she introduced herself, Gayle, and her husband Martin, from Banff Alberta, and invited me to come join their fire tonight. Marci and Willi were coming too. Before it got any darker I went out into the desert and found a few nice branches and dropped them off at their place. Martin came out and invited me to join them for supper . She had cooked fish and pasta, with wine, and some shrimp for "dessert". Wow what a feast. They said " we know you may be tired eating kayak food ". Well, not really, but that was very nice. The day had been partly cloudy and during supper we had a spectacular sunset along with a rainbow, and lightning in the clouds off in the distance. It also rained a bit again , but then stopped and started to clear off. They assigned me to light the fire. Everything was pretty wet from the rains, and I had to make 2 tries to get it. I started paying guitar and Martin is a great singer and joined me on almost every song. Marci and Willi came over, he told stories about growing up in Chile and migrating to the states as a teenager. They now run a small vacation lodge in Alaska. <br />
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Sunday. The night was really wet with dew. I took a walk along the road out. Not very far along there is a tiny farm off the road, new since I was here last. It is really cute, a small stone building, with a huge thatch palapa beside it, with goats, and a nice garden. I guess they truck in a lot of water to keep it going, but it really is very cool . people tell me they sell goat cheese and vegetables but nobody was there. I will go back tomorrow.<br />
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A new boat came in, a big pilot house trawler. I sailed over to see it. The wind was starting to stomp so it was quite a fun ride. They invited me on board and she looked familiar. Turns out she an avalanche specialist from Alaska, and has been in several avalanche training films I have seen, plus she has written several books that I have read. She is Jill, he is Doug, I don't recall their last names . when they are not sailing, they are big time into rowing. They rowed across the Atlantic. Doug was showing me how I could convert my kayak into a rowing rig and go much faster and easier. I am sure I could but not likely. they have left the chilly north behind and spend most of their time in Baja now.<br />
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Tonight we had a fire over at Hans place, it was fun. Another couple form Montana, Mark and Trisha, were camping down the beach and joined us, as well as Nancy and Drew who had just drove in this afternoon from British Columbia. Mark had a guitar and we had fun jamming.<br />
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Monday. Wow, just noticed that it is February. For a few days now. I have been in Mexico for about a month now. I have never lived in a tent in a "backpacking" type of travel mode for that long. Cool.<br />
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Today the skies were clear for the first time in several days. It got windy later but was a very nice day. I took the boat out and around the bay, it was à several mile jaunt. I put out a fishing line and trolled it while I went. Later when I pulled it in I realized that I had never removed the safety hook cover! I probably lost several fish that wanted to be caught but they couldnt get that cover off to do it. Later I snagged on the bottom and lost my lure and weight. Maybe I am just too dumb to be a fisherman.<br />
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By the time I turned around I was out of the bay and out in big wind and water. I hoisted the sail and Had a fun ride back to camp.<br />
As I sat in camp a big RV rig came In and got stuck in the beach sand. They got themselves unstuck but it took almost an hour. George and Dominique from Oregon. Very near folks. They said they have been there 5 or 6 times and have been stuck in the exact spot 3 times! I guess that Lance, the camper next to me, knows them from coming to this beach every year at about the same time. It sounds like there is a whole community of folks they all know. Just like the yachting crowd knows each other. Cool.<br />
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Mark and Trisha left today, and gave me a big bag of tortillas, bananas, oranges, and a tiny zucchini squash. That was nice.<br />
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Spent the evening at the campfire with Hans the crazy German and his wife Carol. They really very nice. He has a wicked fun sense of humor. This beach seems to be really picked clean of firewood and somehow he always has big logs for a big fire every night. I asked him where he finds it. " no problem, I just rent it from the little store down the beach!"<br />
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He was telling about them driving their super RV across the steppes of Mongolia, where are no roads, you just point and go. They drove for weeks, meeting herders living in horse hide yurts . they drove 36 miles up a dry river gorge thru a huge mountain range and came out to the edge of the Gobi desert and kept on going.<br />
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Tuesday. When i started out this morning, I never would have guessed I would be steering by celestial navigation by the of the passage, but as I began the 11th hour of paddling and the sun was down and the dark was becoming complete, I noted the white sand beach in the distance i was heading for and glanced up to grab a star to steer by and thought, "I am never going to trust another weather report as long as I live".<br />
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After a few days in paradise at San Juanico, I was feeling anxious to get moving on. I am not sure why. This is as beautiful and peaceful a spot as you could ever find. Maybe I was feeling that I had 200 miles more to go and even though I told myself I would be happy to just noodle along at a slow pace and and not feel any pressure to move on and finish, maybe I really did feel it. Or maybe it was that I was running low on peanut butter and needed to reprovision soon. Actually I have about 4 days of food left, but there is nothing that says " Danger Wil Robinson. Scarcity and famine ahead" like the rattle of a knife in the bottom of a jar of peanut butter. <br />
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But I had been thinking that maybe tomorrow I would move along. The next stretch of coastline is almost continous steep cliffs coming right down to the water with only a few places in the next 13 miles to pull out if the weather turned nasty. I tuned in to the weather report and he was predicting light winds from the north this morning, moderately brisk winds in the afternoon, with strong winds tomorrow and the next. It seemed that if I was going to go, today was the day. So I packed up and hit the water by 9. That is a late start for me but with the winds as predicted, I would scoot right along and be to my destination, Boca San Bruno, by early afternoon.<br />
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As I paddled along out of the bay I was met with a light wind from the south! I kept paddling thinking it was just a morning variant and it would shift to the north soon and I would be cruising under sail in style. Sure enough it shifted soon, but into neutral. No wind. I kept paddling. Kept paddling. Snacking and taking little breaks. I usually stop after about 4 hours, get out on land, walk around, then continue on and the winds will have picked up and I sail for the next few hours. By 1:00 I was still paddling, passing Punta Mangle, one of the possible pull out spots. I thought I felt some wind coming up and I didn't want to waste it going on land to rest so I raised sail and kept going. It was a nice little breeze for a few hours, not pushing me much faster than I would be paddling but at least it was a free ride and very comfortable. I was approaching Boca San Bruno about 3 PM and thinking I should pull in and call it quits. There was still a bit of wind, and I was thinking if I pull in now I will just have to get up tomorrow at 5:30 and paddle this next section in the calm, and maybe the strong winds will pick up early and I will be in a pickle with no safe place to pull out for 7 more miles. So I gambled on the wind today and kept on going. I normally don't like to be on the water much later than 3, but today it seemed to make sense. The weather was not likely to get nasty, and if this wind held I would be snug in a camp by 5. I lost that gamble. After about 30 minutes the wind died and I was back to paddling. I thought about paddling back to San Bruno, but I liked the idea of having this rough section behind me today, even if it meant paddling. Tomorrow I would be in protected waters with an easy stroll on into Loretto no matter what the winds did.<br />
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As the cliffs of the main shore stayed to my right, The volcanic peak of Isla Coronado loomed up on my left across the channel. I knew there were really nice beach camps there, and the channel is only a few miles wide. I thought it might be nice to cross on over and land there to camp tonight, maybe even stay a day and climb the volcano since I had covered so many miles today and would be so close to Loretto and peanut butter. <br />
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By now I knew I was looking at paddling on after dark, which doesn't bother me in these sorts of conditions. As the day faded the colors on the water were incredible psychedelic reddish golds and blues and purples all swirling on the smooth ink black water. Over next to the island I saw a bright white rock island poking out. Odd, I don't recall seeing a guano rock on the chart there. It kept getting bigger until the full moon rose completely out of the water and turned golden.<br />
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It wasn't long til it was pretty dark. I was following my star, it turned out to be Orion's boot. Thinking I should check the GPS soon. I could hear waves gentle on the rocks to my left, and soon a a little cove opened up, the white sand beach glistening in the moonlight. I pulled in and glided to a stop after almost 11 hours . wow what a day. I wolfed down a can of refried beans on tortilla and crashed out cold on the beach.<br />
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And I am never going to trust another weather report.<br />
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Wednesday. I was so tired last night and it was so calm I didn't bother putting up the tent, just slept right there on the beach. Big mistake. It was so wet with dew when I awoke about midnight I was completely soaked. I spread a tarp over me which may not have helped any since it just held it all in and captured the moisture I was putting out.<br />
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I woke to discover that I had landed in the most beautiful little cove with a white sand beach. Not the big on shown on the map but this was even nicer. It was so peaceful. I had a few visitors during the day but nothing like the hoards I could see zipping past to this main beach. This close to Loretto the other main beach is a big draw for day trippers from town. Later in the afternoon even a huge (but small) cruise ship pulled in and anchored so the guests could go play on the beach.<br />
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Some fishermen pulled up to clean and sort their gear. They had several hundred yards of gill net rolled up in their boat and they were sorting it out into smaller bundles to store for the season. They said they fish like that November, December, January. I wasn't sure if there was some sort of official netting season and they had to quit, or if the fish just move on and the catch was too small to bother anymore. The net was about 12 feet wide, with a rope of floats along one side and weights on the other. They were pulling it out of the boat and separating it into smaller lengths of about 45 meters (they told me) and tying those into bundles. As they pulled it out yard by yard, there were many big sections where the net was torn all part and there were huge gaps. They said lobos (sea lion) would tear thru the net, steal the fish and ruin the net. Dang. And they look so cute swimming by me in my boat!. They said they can fix it, but it looked like it would take a very long time to do so. Funny, one of them was looking for a small piece of line laying my foot and when I handed it to him he said " thank you" in English. I asked oh do you speak English? He laughed and said (in spanish) "no, just that . "<br />
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I went for a hike up the volcano. That was some of the roughest country I have ever seen. Endless builder fields of rough volcanic rock. It was odd. Other than being in the general shape of a cone shaped mountain , I could see no evidence of how the rocks would get moved into the position they were in. The rocks were not formed into a common mountain topograghy like ridges and gullies that water or a glacier would normally push or carve them into, just rocks strewn about In a random hillside with piles and mounds and hollows with no sort of continuity to it, as if this was the way they landed when the volcano erupted once upon a time. Very confusing to navigate thru. I would climb until I got to what I thought was a high point only to find it was separated from the rest of the mountain by a big random hollow.<br />
<br />
There was very little vegetation but what there was was seemed very robust. There was no soil evident anywhere, but sand and dust must collect in the crevices down below the boulders and at some point some tough desert plant would find a start. There didn't seem to be many old dead plants around anywhere. What was growing almost seemed like it was all first generation. And the development of an environment for more plant life must be very slow. These plants have very few leaves to fall to create mulch that would create an environment for more growth. With very little rain fall, no freeze thaw cycle, no flash floods, a spoonful of soil may take thousands of years to form.<br />
<br />
I didn't even get halfway up to the summit before I called it quits and enjoyed the view for a while and headed back down.<br />
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There were some Mexican fellows on the beach that had been fishing but when I visited with them I learned that they work at the airport in Loretto and were just out enjoying a day off. They spoke good English and were really excited to hear about my journey. One of them said "you speak such good Spanish! Where did you learn? Most gringos don't know anything " wow! I never thought I would hear that!<br />
<br />
They offered me a tamale and when I was finished I turned to toss the corn husk wrapper off into the brush, thinking it was a nice natural addition to the vegetative mulch. One of them hastily took a few steps towards me saying "here let me take that for you. We like to keep the beaches clean!.". Dang , I felt so bad. I never litter, even a tiny bit, and always pick up a bit more that I find, and here he was educating me on not even leaving a corn husk behind. As I walked back to my camp I picked up a can and a plastic bottle to make up for an onion skin I tossed out into the brush when I made supper.<br />
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After a little nap in my tent i went back to the beach and there 3 ladies snorkeling in the bay . they had no boat so i assumed (correctly) that they came from the cruise ship. As they got out of the water they noticed me sitting there and hastily held up their swim fins to cover oh my god they were naked! They laid down on their towels to sun themsleves in their natural state and so to prevent even the temptation of pervness I walked up the beach the other direction. When I came back they were dressed and I walked over and said, " I usually don't even get one mermaid wash up on my beach and here I get 3 at a time. welcome!" we had a nice visit. they are crew on the cruise ship and were enjoying some time away while the guests were out on the other beach. They were all from the states, the ship sails in Alaska in the summer and Baja in winter. It comes out of Cabo San Lucas up to here and back every week.<br />
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Thursday. Thinking no more mermaids were likely to wash ashore, I was up early and paddles over to Loretto, about 8 miles. I caught a bit of wind and pulled in just before noon. Loretto is the first Spanish settlement in Baja, the mission was built back in the 1700s. It is a cute small place with no big international chains of stores or malls or high rise hotels. No big harbor, just a small panga harbor used mostly now for taking out sport fishermen. However, it does have an international airport and a cruise ship stops here once a week so tourism is big business and most of the town is art galleries, gift shops, and restaurants. Big houses and developments as going up along the shoreline.<br />
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My plan was to grab a few food items (peanut butter...) Check email, and leave within an hour. I wanted to move along a few miles down the coast where i could camp. My boat was parked on a public beach which seemed safe enough but just to avoid mischief I wanted to lock the boat to something so I dragged it up to a palapa and as I pulled it under I forgot that I had a mast that is taller than the palapa and as I tugged, the bracket that holds the mast up in the boat tore out from the bolt holes . Damn. That sucks. Luckily, there is nothing too complex on this boat. I could have fixed it with a scrap of rope or wire, but I happened to have a few spare bolts, longer, with bigger washers, so I set to work with my swiss army knife and vice grips and had it all set right in about an hour. The bolts were way too long tho and would tear the spray cover, not good, so I added hack saw blades to my shopping list to trim them off.<br />
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As I was walking along looking for an internet cafe I bumped into a friend of mine, Gerrish Willis, from Moab. I knew he was going to be in Baja this winter but our itineraries were too vague to try to arrange a rendezvous but golly there they were right there ag a sidewalk cafe. With Internet. He and 3 other friend were driving around Baja, camping, kayaking, doing all the fun stuff. In chatting it turns out the other guy, Steve Peterson, was teaching at Snow college in Ephraim Utah about 35 years ago when I was there and we knew about a gazillion people in common, probably had even skiied together back then. Even better, I mentioned that my parents up in Logan used to know a girl from Ephraim, she was going to school in Logan and kept her horse in the field next door and she and my parents visited every day that year and became dear friends and they talked about her all the time. OMG he said, that is my daughter, and I have met your parents!! They gushed about how grateful they were to my parents for taking their daugher under their wing whie she was away. What a sweet connection to make in a foreign land thousands of miles from home.<br />
<br />
After they left I got on the internet and had a message from my daughter that my dad had died the week before. He had been in failing health all year and could go any time, but on the other hand he could live on for years. I left for this trip knowing that might happen and that the chance was slim I would get word about it time to get home for a funeral. I discussed it my with brother before I left and I felt good about going. My dad and I had always had a good relationship and had become quite close in the last few years since my mom died. He had always been so excited about my sailing adventures, he even came down to California to visit me on my boat and we have a nice 3 day cruise together. He would always introduce me to his friends " this is my son that lives on a sailboat and is going to Mexico in kayak he built". I visited him before he left and told him I was leaving soon and he seemed excited but I think his mind was too far gone to really grasp what that meant anymore. I was sad as I left but felt that death , whenever it came, would be a relief for him. It has been so long that he just seemed to have no joy in life anymore. He couldn't read, or watch TV anymore, it is all too confusing for him. He doesn't seem to enjoy eating anymore, food doesn't taste like anything anymore. He couldn't really hold a conversation anymore, his mind just didn't register stuff anymore. Each day seemed like a void of nothingness for him. I always wondered if he knew he was in a void and did it bother him or if the void was so strong that even that realization didn't register for him anymore. Odd thought. I wanted to ask him but it just didn't seem right.<br />
<br />
My daughter was able to get to Logan and be there with him when he died. He didn't know she was there, he was asleep and died peacefully. I am so glad she could be there, and glad he wasn't suffering (if he was suffering...) that nothingness anymore.<br />
<br />
Back at the beach i was ready to move on, i couldnt camp there, and didnt fancy getting a room, way too expensive. the wind had picked up and waves were wildly crashing on the shore . I waited a while to see how they might settle down. As I was sitting there a lady stopped and asked me " do you speak English, and are you going out in that?" She was from Minnesota and knew a little something about paddling in big water. She wished me week if I did go. About 5:30 i had decided it had calmed down enough to give it a go. I had 4 miles to get to my intended pullout spot, and with this wind I should be there in an hour, and even if the sun went down first I would have a big full moon to light the way. Just as I was getting ready, Steve came back down to see if I was still there. He offered to help steady the boat in the surf while I got myself situated and moving. That is always the hardest part of a surf launch, those first 30 seconds from when you get in and seated and get paddling, before the first wave hits you and rolls you over on the beach and really spoils everything. I said you bet thanks. We waded out, I got in and started paddling and he gave a good shove off. I had about 100 yards to go, straight into the wind and surf, before I got past the harbor wall and could turn and start coasting downwind. I did well, shipped very little water and rounded the corner as they were yelling yahoo for me. (I think that is what they were yelling. I hope it wasn't that I had forgotten something important on the beach....)<br />
<br />
As soon as I rounded the corner I reached up and got the sail launched and was really cruising, good comfortable conditions, and I could tell the winds and seas were softening. But within 30 minutes the wind had died out entirely. Not a breath. And I had 4 miles to go. I paddled and paddled, a few hours, the sun was down, but dang, no moon. I confess my understanding of lunar scheduling is woefully lacking, I know the moon rises a bit later each day, but it came up at 6: 30 only 2 days ago. Surely it would be up soon after that tonight. Nope. So I kept paddling. Nighttime paddling is always cool, but this had an especially cool aspect. Every few minutes I would paddle thru a school of some kind of fish that just went crazy trying to get away by jumping out of the water in a frenzy. The water would just boil and it startled me bad the first time, but I flipped on my headlamp the next time and could we them jumping. They were not flring fish, but they sure were trying to be. Jumping and skipping across the water in all directions, going several feet in the action. Some would even hit my boat! I was waiting for some to land in my lap. I was wondering if I should try to grab one. Many ocean fish have sharp nasty spines on their fins and can cut and skewer you badly, so I didn't want to, but dang what a story to tell if I caught one with my bare hands!.<br />
<br />
By about 7:30 i got to about where the GPS said my takeout was, but still no moon. I could hear waves crashing on the shore off to my right, I could hear more crashing onto a bar up ahead. And all in pitch blackness. My headlamp is way to small to illuminate a beach 100 yards off. I was hoping to find an old dilapidated pier that protects the shore from surf, and there was supposed to be a nice beach to land on just behind the pier, and I knew it had to be close but i could see nothing. I decided to do the good seamanship thing stand off until I knew what was what. I dropped anchor and waited. I was getting cold now that I wasn't paddling. I swabbed out the little bit of water that had gotten into the boat, put on every stitch of clothing I had, and snuggled down under the spray deck. It was actually pretty cozy, and I dozed off for a while. Finally , at about 9:30 the moon started to rise. It took almost 30 minutes for it to get high enough in the sky to show what I needed. I paddled around the gravel bar up ahead, could see the pier over on the shore, and in a few minutes coasted to a stop on the beach. Safe and sound. In bed asleep by 10:30. I love it when a plan works. But what was with that moon? Dang. I need to learn more.<br />
<br />
Oh, While i was getting gear out of my boat over on the beach, a truck came down the dirt road to the edge of the pier. I didn't know if it was a gang of rowdies or what, so I just sat there in the dark and waited. They stopped, the radio was still on, playing some romantic music, and a guy and girl got out and walked to the pier and snuggled up close. They probably even kissed. You know kids these days. I guess this is a local make out spot! Sweet. After a bit they drove off to his place for ice cream. Or something...<br />
<br />
Friday Feb 6. I slept in but was was up and on the water by 8:30. I wanted to get to puert Escondido, a big yacht harbor 8 miles along. This was where I will stay for a few days, rest up, reprovision, I will leave my boat and go get my truck, which I will leave here when I travel on to La Paz.<br />
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I paddled t hours, not a breath of wind, warm, nice sun. Every hour I would jump in the ocean and swim about a bit to cool off. At one point even grabbed a line and started swimming, pulling the boat. Hmmm that didn't last long. Back in and paddling. The shoreline was spectacular, with big mountains rising up from behind the beach. The Sierra Gigante range form here and run much of the rest of the length of Baja. They have spectacular pointy Matterhorn looking peaks with big cliffs going up to the summits. They look like it would be an amazing challenge to climb them. Just the approaches thru the valleys to the ridges look epic. I actually wonder if these have ever been summited!. I have to check on that.<br />
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The wind picked up the last mile and i fairly flew into escondito harbor. This is a totally enclosed natural bay, with a tiny opening on the south side, so i as I pulled into the harbor I now had to face the wind that I had been riding on the outside to get here. I was tacking and paddling hard to make way, and as I passed a boat I heard " hey kyle, over here, welcome!" It was Bill and Kim on the Just Dandy, who I had met in Santespac! They had just pulled in a few minutes ahead of me and had just dropped their anchor. I came aboard to visit and and enjoyed a beer with them.<br />
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The harbor was full of boats, some of which are here pretty permanently, some coming in and moving on. This the only full service marina in this part of Baja where people can haul out into a work yard and do major repairs. There is wifi on shore, and a small tienda, mostlly snack foods. Funny, i found myself craving cookies once i got here. Of course i bought a package. Chocolate creme on chocolate. There is a community of boaters here that is pretty quirky but overall a lot of fun. I look forward to hanging here a while.<br />
<br />
I sailed over to a beach out beyond the marina area and made camp. A few bugs here tonight. Had to get out the headnet during supper. I have not seen bugs in Baja (except for that infestation of rolly bugs a while back at Sequicesmunde) until now. I guess because of the mangroves over yonder.<br />
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Saturday. I was going to catch a ride up to Mulege today to fetch my truck, i had my camp all struck and loaded on the boat, but then at 8:00 on the local radio chat session they mentioned they were going to do a potluck and jam session here this afternoon so I decided to stay. I paddled out around the bay, watching the birds and fish. I have got to get some functional gear and catch something. Anyway, I ran into Jesse,, on the Francis Lee, beautiful twin masted Cheoy Lee ship I had seen here years ago. He had left for a while but came back . his ship is very "rakish" looking, if that is even a word. It has really nice wood aft rails, a sharp bow , looks very "pirate". He is a nice fellow.<br />
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Ashore I did some laundry, took a shower ,the water was cold, but very refreshing. Was going to get on the internet but The battery on my tablet was dead, I didn't bring a wall charger so I had to put it on the solar panel, and when I finally got charged, the internet was down so no email updates today.<br />
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At the laundry I got re-acquainted with Sonya and Glen on Gitana, had met them up at Santespac on the jam boat. It was funny , she had bet him that I would have a guitar along in the kayak, he said no way, he lost. They are going to let me raft my boat up with them while I go get my car.<br />
<br />
Since i wasnt leaving today after all, but had already loaded up camp, I had to paddle back over and set up my tent in the same spot I had just taken it down from a few hours earlier. My laundry was still a bit wet so I spread it out all over the bushes to finish drying.<br />
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The potluck was very nice. There was a butternut squash casserole that was heavenly. Wonderful desserts. Brownies and a lemon cake. I am really craving sweets. My provisions were pretty low so I didnt have much to bring, but I sliced up some cheese and tortillas on a platter and they were all gone so I guess that was OK. The music started, I played with Don from Kamas Utah with harmonica. Benjamin from Germany was a young fellow bike touring along Baja. He had a guitar he bought used in Ensenada, and poor thing, it is really taking a beating. The top is pulling apart from the body and he is holding it together with duct tape. He loved my little guitelele. And there was a guy with a saxophone. That was fun, don't play with the sax man very often.<br />
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I had to watch the clock and scamper out by 6 in order to paddle over to my camp before it gets dark.<br />
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Sunday. I am going to go to Mulege today to get my truck. I spoke with a guy driving to the states today, but he was leaving at 5 and that didn't sound good to me. Another group was heading in to Lorreto at about 9 for the farmers market and I arranged a ride with them. I arranged to tie my boat up while i was gone with Glen and Sonya on Gitana, anchored close to where I was camping, and near the marina. I expect to be back tomorrow.<br />
<br />
I knew i could catch the bus from Lorreto to Mulege which starts leaving by about 1 each day, and then a few more thru thru the afternoon, but I wanted to hitchhike and the bus was my backup. I got dropped off on the main intersection in town and stuck out my thumb. Many folks , especially locals, waved and pointed out to the side, indicating that they were turning off soon and would be of no help to me. After almost 2 hours I gave up and walked to the bus station.<br />
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While I was waiting, a fellow came up who was also waiting, it was the same fellow I saw out in Bahia Concepcion kayaking to his secret camp in a little cove way out there!. And I realized that I had also seen him the other day on the beach at Lorreto when I launched on that wave day. He seemed a bit crazy, talking weird and I sort of wanted to keep my distance. He got off partway along and I didn't see him again.<br />
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The 12:30 finally left about 1:30, and pulled into Mulege about 4:30. We had stopped at a military checkpoint where we all had to get off the bus and they went thru our bags, and then again at a little cafe on the outskirts of Mulege. Funny, I recall stopping at that same cafe on the southbound trip I made down here 5 years ago. It made no sense to me to make a potty stop that close to the regular stop so i figure the cafe must be owned by the mother of the owner of the bus company. The bus was very nice, new, not some rancid old chicken bus. It had air conditioning, reclining seats, and a movie on the overhead screen, just like an airliner but without the peanuts. Fortunealty I had brought my own.<br />
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In Mulege I walked across town, 10 minute s, to Larry and Kay's place where my truck was. They said they had been wondering if I was OK , and what should they do with my truck if I never showed up again. "Those storms were pretty strong while you were out. We worried about you". When I went to start my truck the battery was dead as a door nail. Not even a click. I think I must have left the dome light on from my pre-dawn start 3 weeks ago. Aftter a nice visit, Larry gave me a jump and I was on my way.<br />
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I wanted to visit with Ron and Diane on Batwing down at Santespac, I could see them anchored there so I pulled in and tried to hail them on the radio. no answer, so I went ahead and set up my camp on the beach. I started for a walk along the beach, and noticed their dinghy pulled up near a motor home parked not far from where I was camped! They were visiting some friends there so I joined them for a drink and visiting. Nice .Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2635294478207383601.post-88252349912235735562015-01-19T09:40:00.000-08:002015-03-23T09:45:16.255-07:00Baja Mexico Bahia Concepción Jan 11- 19<br />
Baja Mexico Bahia Concepción Jan 11- 19<br />
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Ok, sorry in advance this is so long. I just write what comes to mind in my tent each night and ramble on. as my batteries die I will write less and less...<br />
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After I left Mulege I drove on down a few miles to Playa Santispac, where I had met up with Steve and Diny a few years ago. There are a bunch of RVs parked there right on the beach with a nice palapa restaurant. I celebrated the end of my road trip with a beer and pescadora con ajo. Very nice fish with garlic. I had heard that Bahia Coyote a few miles along was nicer, less busy, more tent type campers, so I drove on down to there. After I set up my tent the most important thing was to launch my boat in Baja waters! It was late afternoon, warm, with just a breath of wind and it was fun to sail around the little bay, even though it was pretty slow. There were a few sailboats anchored across the way so I wandered over to check those out. One was a twin masted junk rigged schooner named Batwing that I had heard of. It is a somewhat famous boat in junk rigged circles. ( a junk rig is a type of sail , invented by the Chinese a billion years ago, originally spelled "junque" i think, and looks sort of like a giant fan a lady would use to cool her face. It uses several full width battons to give it shape, and is very pretty, easy to sail, and cheap and simple to maintain. ). As I approached, the guy on deck welcomed me and complimented me on my cool little boat! I came alongside and we had a nice chat. He is Ron, she was Diane, they had bought Batwing several years ago, live on it, had sailed up and down the coast as far as Equedor. Very nice and interesting folks. Ron had a dinghy that also had a junk rig that he had made out of bamboo and Tyvek building wrap fabric. We talked boats until dark, and I high tailed it back to my camp just as it became pitch black. With no moon until the wee morning hours, it gets very dark very fast here after sunset .<br />
<br />
That evening at the restaurant up the road they were having a dance so I wandered on over. I didn't dance and felt very out of place. I guess maybe that is why I was headed out for a 3 month voyage in the wilderness. I feel more at home in a tent on a beach then at a dance club.<br />
My first Baja voyage was going to be a loop arounf Bahia Concepcion. It is a big bay off to the side of the Sea of Cortez, about 25 miles long and 5 miles wide. I thought that would be a nice warmup voyage. The next day I spent getting my gear and food sorted out, transitioning from "road trip" packing to "kayak voyaging" packing. It took much of the morning and was frustrating trying to fit everything in to a very small boat and make the hard descions about what to leave behind. Even though I was packing almost exactly like I had for my Great Salt Lake voyage, it felt like I was starting all over again. <br />
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I needed to find a safe place to keep my truck for the week that I would be gone. I walked over to the NOLS camp but there was nobody there, and besides, it all looked very modern and corporate and I guessed that they would need to have a lawyer draw up a release form and contract and would take them about a year. Never mind. I went over to the dance restaurant from last night and was introduced to Mony, the owner , and he said sure, he had a nice safe place in back near his house, surround by very big, very mean looking, very loud dogs lunging at the ends of very strong (I hopes) chains. He laughed and said yes my car would be very safe. He asked me how much I wanted to pay and I said how about $2 day and he said sure and we shook on it. Done.<br />
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After lunch I paddled out to visit Ron and Diane again on Batwing. Of course we talked more about boats. A while back they had kayaked the same section of coastline that I was going to do and they had a ton of good suggestions for me like "take lots of fatty food. Cheese and peanut butter". They are really my kind of people.<br />
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There was a sing along along over at the beach that afternoon with the RV folks. Ron plays classical guitar, so we paddled over and hung out with more great people. They seemed to enjoy the tunes I banged out.<br />
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A guy named Louis came through the campsite every few days to collect payment. 100 pesos (about $6.75) per night. I was paying him and noticed my guitar and he said something I misunderstood, I thought he was suggesting that I play him a song, but he pulled a capo from his pocket and reached for the guitar and sang for me! He played the Frito bandito song which is actually an old folk song about Pancho Villa getting his ear sliced off with a machete (I think that is what he told me), and La Cucaracha (the cockroach) . I played him Folsom Prison Blues. We had great fun.<br />
<br />
That evening a group of bikers (bicycles) road in camped near me. They had been riding from Seattle and were headed to Venezuela. Hard core kids. 4 of them were brothers, (all with big bushy beards) and another guy they met up with was from Columbia. He had flown to New York City, bought a bicycle and started touring the country for the last 8 months. He was headed back home to Bogata, expecting to be on the road for about another 4-5 months.<br />
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The next morning the weather forecast looked good for another day before a Norther (wind storm) blows in. These happen when there is high pressure over the Great Basin of the US, and low pressure over the sea of Cortez, and it can blow like stink for a few days. This one looked to be fairly moderate, winds in the teens this afternoon, and building over the next few days and settle down by Thursday. I was all packed with a weeks supply of food and water, the boat still floats, I parked my truck over at Mony's, and I shoved off headed north towards the mouth of the bay to start a clockwise circumnavigation of the bay. there were several safe havens along along the way so when the wind kicked up I could duck in and wait it out. There was no wind at all yet so I was paddling, and it was easy going. I paddled 4 miles up to Punta Arena, and since there were not many good safe camping places beyond that I decided to cross over the mouth of the bay to the east side where it is very wild and remote, with good camping almost everywhere. The bay was only 2 miles wide at this point , it was late morning, still no wind, all was calm ,so I decided to go for it. It was a beautiful tranquil crossing. I saw a dolphin jump about midway. Just before I made it across the wind picked up so I set the sailed and coasted on across in proper style. I pulled the boat up on a cobbled beach and wandered around for a while. There was a game trail in the bushes back behind the beach that was loaded with some sort of dog tracks in the soft dust. . Very odd, I assume they are coyote, and it looks like a dozen animals must run up and down that trail every night. There is a fish camp about a mile along but I walked up there and didn't see any dogs. Must be coyote. I hope so. I was telling the sing along folks that on this trip I have been hearing coyotes sing almost every night, except in Bahia Coyote! That's up with that?<br />
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I had a snug camp set up in case the winds came in stronger but it settled down before evening and was dead calm . the nights are very wet with dew. Everything is soaked by morning, mostly the tent which protects everything else, but even inside it gets pretty wet and I have to spend time everyday drying out. I suspect the dew is the only moisture the plants here ever get so they must soak it in. Even the soil gets wet from dew.<br />
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The next day I wanted to move camp about 4 miles south, but the winds were expected to kick up about noon so decided to wait for that and get a free ride. There are big rugged mountains rising up above the bay here and it looked like a nice hike. There are very few trails here, and even as dry as it is, the brush grows pretty thick and thorny along the flats leading to the peaks. Bushwacking would be a bloddy task. I found an arroyo that had been scoured clean by the hurricaine and it seemed to lead in the general direction I wanted to go. Eventually it pinched off and got brushy so I worked my way up to a ridge and wandered up until that got too steep and the talus under foot was so loose it was starting to get dangerous, so I headed back down. I was about half way up the peak. Rough country. As I came down i saw some alcoves cut into the rocks in the arroyo next to one I came up so I dropped in to investigate. There were several, all pretty small, and loaded with animal evidence. Then I found one that was quite large, almost 8 feet tall in front, 10 feet deep and 15 ft wide facing north so it would be quite cool. The floor was covered with mollusk shells. Other than humans, I can't think of any other critter that would have hauled that many clams that far to eat in a cave. I am sure this cave had been home to someone one upon a time. There was no other evidence of habitation that I could see. John Steinbeck traveled this region back in the 40s and described people living here that were desperately poor. It would not be surprising to learn that people lived in this cave within the last century!<br />
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I launched the boat about noon, and the wind was blowing a moderate rate. I wanted to land at a particular camp about 4 miles south that I had heard had a trail up into the slot canyon back up behind it. There are very few definitive land marks along this coast, but i had a GPS coordinate for the camp that was set back into a little cove that would offer a little landing zone protected from the waves. as I sailed along the GPS was saying I was close, but I didn't see any indentations in the shoreline. I ended up almost half a miles past where it supposed to be, no little cove. The shoreline seemed dead straight. I pulled onto the shore (the waves weren't that bad today so it was no real problem to land just about anywhere ) and when I stood on the land, it was obvious how the shore curved way in to form the cove I had missed sailing by. That was odd, I had never experienced that before. From a hundred yards offshore it looked perfectly straight! I got back into the boat and started tacking back and forth against the wind to get back up to the cove. That was fun, much more fun than just drifting along downwind. Any stupid old kayak can sail down wind, but it takes a Vagabunda to sail upwind! I pulled up onto the beach, and started exploring and never did find the camp or the trail I had read about. Maybe the hurricane had obliterated that too. Oh well. I did find a nice place to camp anyway, and I will hike up the arroyo there and see where that leads. <br />
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The winds are expected to be 25 knots for the next 2 days so I may stay put here for a while.<br />
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I carry a little solar panel to charge up my tablet that I write this blog on each night in camp. Today was pretty overcast, so it didn't charge very well. Argh. That never happened with my pencil and paper.<br />
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Wednesday. The day started overcast and calm, but big winds were predicted for later so I went for a hike. I walked up a big wash and soon startled a big old jack rabbit. Later a big something took off crashing thru the brush. I got a glimpse of it and my first impression was that it was a burro. I had seen very small horse tracks around, and horse piles as well, so it could well be. But there were also cow sign everywhere so I am not sure. I followed the wash until it reared up steep into the mountains, up towards some cliff bands that the wash cut thru. The boulders were huge, the going was pretty tough beyond there so I wandered back down. The wind picked up about noon, and building, so by mid afternoon I measured 17 mph winds on the beach. Pretty strong for a small boat. I actually think I would have done OK but it was predicted to be has high as 25 today so I was fine hanging on shore. By now the clouds had cleared and it was hot out of the wind. I hunkered in my tent for protection from both sun and wind. I dozed, ate, played guitar, repaired 2 drybags that had cactus punctures. The solar panel got my tablet almost completely charged. I have my new little guitelele with me this time and it is a joy. So small and fun to play.<br />
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The area around me (and most of baja) has many cardon cactus growing. They are very large, to as much as 30 feet tall, about 18 inches in diameter. They can have multiple trunks, but mostly are a single trunk. The bark is green and holds the chlorophyll, and is covered with long thorns. Pretty interesting, the trunk is sort of pleated vertically, and when it rains, it swells to hold water until the next rain, which could be years. Inside the trunks are long straight rods that form the pleats . I saw a horse corral and some buildings made of them split into long rails and the rods were firm and straight Even after many years in this harsh desert climate. Tough to work with I bet, tho, with all those thorns. They seem to be the bird perch of choice. I see gulls, herons, ospreys, kestrels, little song birds, all perched atop them.<br />
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Cactus of every type would continue to play a major role in my camping in Baja. As cactuses die the thorns dry up and get blown around and the ground is covered with them. Before I can set anything down, I need to scrape it with my foot a few times to clear the area of thorns. Clearing the tent spot each day is a big task, as just one thorn would puncture my air mattress and maybe come all the way they and draw blood. Many of them at more than 2 inches long. I scrape with my boots, get down and inspect the area inch by inch to get them all. I have gotten stabbed a few times and they have a barb on the tip that makes them very hard to remove and the barb stays in there and continues to sting for a few days. Already I have had 2 dry bags get punctured (that I know of) and need to be very carefull all the time, and inspect them regularly. I have a patch kit with various tapes and gops, I hope I have enough!<br />
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With the wind today my tent and my ears are full of very fine dust. I took a bath down at the shore to rinse off the grime of the last several says. What a fine feeling. Even bathing with salt water I feel like a new man.<br />
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Thursday 15th . big winds predicted today but I had 6 miles I wanted to cover before they built too strong so I got a somewhat early start, 8:15 after I listened to the weather . I paddled for about an hour, covering about 2 miles. A light breeze filled in so I unfurled the sail was cruising right along. It wasn't long tho til it picked up , not sure the wind strengths but it was predicted to be in the high teens and things got jiggy. I was barreling along at about 6 mph, with surges to 7 I bet. The waves were not too big but i did get few over the deck. My new spray skirt worked perfectly to keep the boat dry. We handled it all pretty well but I was getting nervous that I was on the edge of being out of control so at the first little cove I saw I ducked in and reduced sail, then out on it again. That made a big difference and I felt better about being in those conditions but I did feel some relief when my destination came into view and we pulled in.<br />
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I pulled in to an arroyo and found a little compound of dilapidated ranch\fish camp buildings. They were very rustic, made all from native materials right from that spot, with the exception of some palm fronds that must have come from across the bay , and a few small pieces of plywood. It looked to have been abandoned for a long time, but besides the ancient buildings there was more recent stuff lying about like a broken radio and an old rubber boot. An odd mixture of ancient and modern. There were many many piles of mollusk shells lying everywhere. Big piles, at least 4 ft tall and 20 feet around. I cannot imagine how many years and how many people it took to gather and eat that many clams. I need to learn how to gather them too. I could live like that. <br />
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I walked up and down the beach, and up into the arroyo a ways. It didn't not seem to have gotten the same kind of storm damage that the other beaches that I have visited got. <br />
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The peaks back behind my beach are quite dramatic, big rocky ridges with white dikes of volcanic rock streaking up thru them. I wonder of the climbing would be any good up there?<br />
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Spent some time playing guitar, trying to memorize some songs I have been playing for a while but still need my cheat sheets. <br />
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My meals out here are simple, pretty much what I eat at home. For breakfast I brought a supply of my dried apples and apricots from home, along with some rolled oats and powdered milk. I put it in a bowl each evening to soak all night and it is ready to eat the next morning without needing to cook. I forgo coffee in the morning, GASP I hear, but true. Too much trouble to set up the stove and brew up when I need to be getting going. (And besides, coffee makes me pee to much which is fairly inconvenient in the boat..) When I am at the truck I splurge and brew up a big cup every morning. Lunch is trail mix and peanut butter on my home made zucchini crackers. Supper is a gruel of my pre cooked (and dried) beans and rice, with a big handful of my dried tomatoes. I have a system where I just soak it in the pot for an hour while I play my guitar, then bring to a boil, and put the pot into the little insulated pot cuzee I made. After about 30 minutes in the cuzee it is still mouth burning hot and ready to eat. I chop up some onions and cabbage to add and it is really good. I like making it thick and dipping into it with tortillas. I also slice off a big gob of cheese and snack on that to get more fat and heavy calories. One unique aspect of this type of camping is since I have to carry all my water as well as food, it does make sense to carry fresh and canned foods since I am going to have to add water anyway. I have a few cans of soup that are OK, a tomato basil bisque that is pretty good. The minestrone not so much. My beans and rice gruel is so much better. But the fresh stuff, like apples, carrots, cabbage, onions, really make a nice treat for the first several days of any voyage.<br />
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Tomorrow needs to be an early start. I need to cross the bay, 4.5 miles, and need to be under way before daylight at about 6:30 or 7. By starting paddling in the wee hours I will have only a short distance more to cover when the winds kick in about 9:30 and I can sail the second half.<br />
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Friday. Got up early, on the water by 6:30 to try to beat the big winds. Paddled at first but the wind kicked in early and I was sailing within an hour. I had already reduced sail and had my spray skirt on ready for big conditions and they came on fast. The waves were already big left over from yesterday and it didn't take much coaxing from today's new wind to bring them on bigger faster. I took a few waves over the deck but my little boat just shrugged it off and I had no problems. I was sailing across the wind and waves which was a more comfortable situation that downwind like the other day, seemed like I had total control no matter what would happen.<br />
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I had a GPS coordinate set for my destination across the bay but it was dark when i started and didn't look at it , i just picked a mountain on the other side that looked about right and headed in that direction. but when I was about half way I across I checked the GPS and I had been headed a bit too far south. I corrected coarse which took me tighter into the wind and made landfall about 2\3rds of a mile too far south and exactly 2 hours after I started. Not too shabby. I first landed in a really nice little bay and beach called playa Armenta, but had heard really good things about playa Perla up the coast a bit so I tacked up into the wind and waves to get there. It was nice too, a nice palapa that has given me really nice protection from the wind, but turned out it is a pay playa, 100 pesos ($6) per day like Playa Coyote. Dang. I should have stayed at Armenta! It was free. Oh well, this is nice and I have it all to myself, and have the wind break and don't need to set up my tent, and I am that much further along on my voyage.<br />
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I puttered about, took a walk, explored, like I do. later I even layed out my pad and took a nap! The mountain above this beach has a natural pattern of reddish lava rocks on it and someone has gone up and outlined it in white and it looks like a giant flame. Actually pretty cool. What an artistic labor of love to lug all that paint up that steep loose rock slope.<br />
Saturday. Up early again, i have 6 miles to go and it will all be against the wind when it picks up. But it never did until afternoon. I was back at my car on Playa Coyote by 11 and no wind. It was a delightful paddle along a very nice rocky coast line. There several isolated coves that I thought would make great campsites. In fact I met another kayaker coming towards me from Coyote and visited a while, he had been getting provisons and was headed back to his permanent camp in the cove I had just been admiring! I guess he lives there for months at a time. He is a US fellow but is family is Mexican. He was admiring my sailing rig and wanted to do something like that to his boat. I was admiring his camping homesite .<br />
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Back on land, I got my car and loaded up. My friends on Batwing had moved up the coast to Santispac so I drove over there and paddled out to them. We had a wonderful visit, talking about their Earthsip in Taos New Mexico and off grid living. that evening there was a pot luck dinner on a big catamaran next door and all the boats in the bay were there. I had bought some scallops from some Mexican divers on the beach and Dianne prepared them to bring. There were several musicians in the group, a fiddle and dobro player, along with Ron's classical guitar, and we had a blast jamming to the wee hours (yeah. were were done and in bed by 8:30...). So much fun. Good folks. some of them knew my friend Steve S from SLC and his boat Harmony 27 , who started all this boating in Mexico nonsense for me years ago. .<br />
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And when I pulled up onto the beach to my truck in the dark, some people in a car next to me called out to me " hey, didn't we meet you last week in the plaza at San Ignacio? We saw you out paddling today" wow. Small world.<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2635294478207383601.post-28357346938369618022015-01-19T09:27:00.000-08:002015-01-19T09:27:02.279-08:00road trip flash back On one of the early days along the Baja drive I stopped for lunch in the shade of a nice big tree along the road. It was farm country. I set up my little traveling table and chair ànd As I was preparing lunch a man came across a field , crawled through the fence and said bola. I asked him if it OK if a stopped there and he graciously said of course, please be welcome. It turns out his English was about as bad as my Spanish so we had a fine time chatting. The farm there was his, and his brother was next to that. I was not able to figure out what he grew. His name was Alfredo, and he assured me that when I came that way again and needed help with anything he would be glad to help. He went back under the fence and returned a short while later with nice boots and hat, said he was going to town to make a phone call. He brought me a big bunch of limes and oranges from his place. What a nice man.<br />
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Eventually the road came down out of the mountains to the Sea of Cortex and the town of Santa Rosalia. It is a very old and rough mining town. The silver mine has just been reopened after being shut down mor many many years. The town is booming, trucks driving everywhere. Steve and Diny and I spent some time there a few years ago before we crossed over to San Carlos. The mine was ramping up but not yet functioning, the town was clean and quiet, and there was a really funky old yacht marina there with several cool old boats and very cool characters who lived aboard their boats permanently. But last fall the hurricane destroyed the marina and most of the boats, and it is all a messnow. 2 yachts were still there, one sitting in the mud in the shallow water, tied up to the seawall to prevent it from falling over. I hope it can be recovered, it was was such a beautiful boat. All very sad. But it looked like the town was booming!<br />
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<span id="goog_1568635701"></span><span id="goog_1568635702"></span><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2635294478207383601.post-28793428207706693432015-01-10T12:59:00.004-08:002015-01-10T12:59:36.781-08:00Baja Mexico jan 3- Jan 10 2015Baja Mexico January 2015<br />
I left Salt Lake on Jan 3 driving with my kayak on top. My trip had been delayed a bit while I fiddled with car repairs but got that all resolved and the truck is running well. I spent 2 days getting to California and spent a few days visiting old boat buddies at Dana Point. I launched my kayak there and sailed off shore about 3 miles and saw a grey whale rise and spout a ways off, and sailed through a big pod of dolphins. Excellent start to my trip I think!<br />
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I went on down to San Diego and connected with my old friend Barb, who had moved there from SLC a few years ago. We had lost contact for quite a while and it was nice to see her again and rekindle an old friendship.<br />
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I crossed over to Mexico at the brand new San Ysidro facility into Tiajuana. While I was in the queue there for my visa, a guy asked me if that was my kayak out there on the truck. Seems I look like a dirt bag boater no matter how fancy I dress. Turns out he also is traveling with a kayak to the same place I am headed. We hoped to connect somewhere along the way. He seems like a pretty experienced Mexico traveler.<br />
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My plan is to drive about 450 miles down the Baja highway to a town called Mulege. I am in no big rush so I am taking my time, enjoying the drive and camping along the way. The road is paved but in only fair condition in many places. It is steep, windy and narrow with no shoulder. The pavement is pretty uneven and bumpy so I drove pretty slow most of the way. Rarely did I go faster than 50. Everyone driving was pretty nice and accomodating, even the giant trucks, by trying to make it easy to pass or be passed when needed. The road winds around near the Pacific coast for the first couple hundred miles, weaving in and out of the steep hills that rise up off the ocean. The road passes through dozens of tiny towns every few miles, most with no paved streets except this highway. There are really big speed bumps all the way through every town to really make sure that everyone slows down! They are really poor towns, very dusty, with many tiny shops and markets, many looking like just a tent near the road or a plywood shack with a spray painted sign announcing they sell tires or pharmacy or shoes or fish tacos. Other than in Tiajuana and Ensenada, there are no big stores like Walmart or Home Depot. Everything was home grown in these little towns, life looked pretty tough and basic.<br />
I camped the first night in the dunes near the ocean near San Quintuin. I couldn't see the ocean from my camp but it was very near and very loud, the big waves pounding onto the shore with a loud cannon-like boom. I was glad I was not having to land or launch my kayak in those conditions , but one the books I am reading is about a guy doing that very thing along that very same stretch of coast. (But I think he tended to find a sheltered bay, not trying to land on a surfing beach...) A chorus of coyotes sang to me as I made supper. That was to become a tradition almost every night of my trip!<br />
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The next day I drove on along through very dramatic Sonoran desert with every kind of cactus growing I think I have ever seen. Every so often the road would drop into a valley where there was much cleared land and farming. There were vineyards everywhere, I guess this is the new Napa Valley. There were also huge fields covered with gigantic shade cloth structures, I guess to protect the plants from the extreme heat (but a guy told me that they had snow there at Christmas! ) I was not sure what all was being grown but I saw cabbages, and beaver tail cacti in huge fields. Along the way there was a long line of cars stopped in the road from an accident up around the bend. I guess it was pretty bad, a guy had died, and it was going to close the road for quite a while. But fortunately right at the end of the line of cars was a really rough 4 wheel drive track heading off into the desert that allowed us all to bypass the accident and rejoin the road a mile or 2 along. Sweet!<br />
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I camped that night at Guerrero Negro, the town nearestest one of the big gray whale calving lagoons. I will explore more of that on my way home. It was raining a bit as I made camps, and then turned very foggy all night and much of the next morning. My tent gear was soaked by morning but I slept comfy in spite of that.<br />
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I drove on the next day to Lagoona San Ignacio, another whale calving lagoon area. I got there about noon and spent the day drying out and exploring. There several camps of fiber folk living out there, in old RVs or plywood shacks, some had cement block homes, all very small. There is no electricity or water out here, they all had a water tank on a little tower above each home, and a solor panel or wind generator. Whole families are living out here, kids playing in the dirt track, ladies doing laundry in barrels, men working on small boats and fishing rigs. I wonder if the kids live out there their whole life? I did not see any schools. The nearest store or water was 25 miles of good and very bad slow road.<br />
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jan 10 I drove into Mulege about noon. tanking up with water and tortillas and then head on down to where I expect to launch the boat for a 5-6 day cruise around bahia Conception.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2635294478207383601.post-46077747024589559592014-10-18T19:42:00.000-07:002014-10-18T19:42:11.724-07:002014 Autumn HarvestA few years ago I decided I wanted to try to grow as much food as I possibly could in my little postage stamp yard. The lawn had been removed years ago and had been xeriscaped with years of adding thick layers of mulch slowly becoming rich worm castings. This year I thinned out much of the desert plants and planted squash, corn, carrots, more squash, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, basil. All the good stuff. It really took off . <br />
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I have been harvesting and preserving since August. My main method of preserving is slicing and drying. I have 5 dehydrators going at any one time, 4 electrics and 1 big solar dryer (seen above). <br />
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At last count I have 350 pounds of winter squashes ready for the root cellar. (That big banana squash in the back row if over 25 pounds!)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlvIsFvSDLIaz_psvySGW61-A4vGN1N3t1Y2J7h3ScNt8HNByuKYJppW-UmldwN4CLyGvGY5cd6szvvElJ7r2YoDDx0ocAzJedOkwskEhXT7WdvzjAxv17q37IG2aCk1KfqRL4iG46QfGr/s1600/IMG_0945.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlvIsFvSDLIaz_psvySGW61-A4vGN1N3t1Y2J7h3ScNt8HNByuKYJppW-UmldwN4CLyGvGY5cd6szvvElJ7r2YoDDx0ocAzJedOkwskEhXT7WdvzjAxv17q37IG2aCk1KfqRL4iG46QfGr/s1600/IMG_0945.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></a><br />
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I also put away about 3 gallons of kale-krout, 20 qts pickles, 20 qt grape juice, 30 qts of dried apricots, 20 pints apricot jam, 30 qts dried apples, 2 quarts dried cantaloup, 20 qts dried tomatoes, 10 qts dried shredded zucchini, 2 gallons dried corn, 4 qts dried kale, 2 qt dried basil, 3 gallons grape wine, 3 gallons apricot wine, 3 gallons apple cider vinegar. I still have many pounds of tomatoes and peppers yet to harvest. I have yet to harvest my carrots but it looks like a good crop. I failed miserably on growing potatoes, onions, and garlic, the most important crops! I am afraid it is going to be a long sad unsavory winter for me. I will do better next year.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2635294478207383601.post-66356104808827950282014-10-10T09:41:00.000-07:002014-10-21T12:48:48.371-07:00A Baja Utah Sailing Adventure Sept 2014 <br />
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A Baja Utah Sailing Adventure Sept 2014 <o:p> </o:p></div>
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It was a dark and stormy night. No really. It was. I know writers
use that cliché to build suspense, and adventure writers use the dramatic flashback
to some dark and stormy night to allow their hero (usually them...) to reminisce
about what craziness had brought them to that dangerous situation on that dark and
stormy night. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this trip started on a dark and stormy night
from the git go.</div>
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<o:p></o:p> </div>
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For several years I have loved Baja Mexico and have made several
trips down there to sail. The wonderful wilderness, majestic desert mountains, the
sea and sea life, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>certainly the wonderful
people and great food make it a paradise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>With a trip to Baja on the agenda again this year with my new sailing kayak
Vagabunda, I was looking for a good long shakedown trip here nearby, about 2 weeks
or so, to make sure all my skills and gear would be up to the rigors of Baja. I
thought about Lake Powell, certainly beautiful, but not a good sailing lake. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lake Meade? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A reasonable option but with the low water level
the "bathtub ring" makes it a pretty dreary place. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I realized I have my very own Baja right here
in my own front yard. The Great Salt Lake! I had pretty much been ignoring “GSL”
for 40 years for not very good reasons. Too salty, I thought, too buggy, too stinky,
too shallow, with all the shoreline surrounded by miles of sucking mud flats. Boy,
was I wrong, and I lost out on many years of great adventure I could have had out
here.</div>
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GSL is one of the largest "dead seas" in the world.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>River water for hundreds of miles around
drain into this lake with no outlet to die a salty death. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The GSL is about three times as salty as the ocean,
and nothing much can live in the briny water except a tiny brine shrimp that is
harvested by very tough guys out on the lake for months every autumn, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and brine flies (no relation to the shrimp),
both of which feed on a few species of algae that also live there. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These, in turn, are food for millions of migratory
birds that pass through here on the Pacific Flyway on their way to the Arctic every
spring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The lake is a remnant of ancient
Lake Bonneville that once covered several western states about 1000 feet deep.
You can still see the old line of the shore up on the face of the surrounding hills.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At its modern peak, in the early 1980s, the
lake was about 100 miles long and 50 wide. Now, with the water level shrinking
from years of overuse and drought, and vast sections carved off by dykes,
levees, causeways, and evaporation ponds for extracting minerals, the current lake
is about 30 miles long and 15 wide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There are several islands in the lake, Antelope, Stansbury, Carrington, Hat,
Gunnison, Fremont, to name a few. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most
of these are technically not islands anymore, as the shrinking water level has
left them connected to the mainland by big sand flats that allow you to walk,
even drive, out to almost all of them. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There never has been any significant sort of recreation or real
estate development on the lake. For 100 years the Saltair resort on the south
shore has struggled to make a go of it. They built a big dance hall with giant golden
St Petersbergesque onion dome towers. Sort of an odd choice if you ask me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They once had amusement park rides back in
the day, and held pretty big concerts. Old timers recall seeing the Beach Boys
there. The place has burned down a few times, and got flooded out in the high water
days in the 80s. I recall seeing pictures of a guy in a boat rowing across the dance
floor!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has been restored again and open
as a concert venue.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The state has built 2 marinas, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>but low water has forced closure of the one at
Antelope Island, and the one on the south shore can now only handle shallower draft
boats. The bulk of any other development has been industrial. The west side of
the lake has become the domain of the mineral extraction folks, mostly via giant
evaporation ponds. <o:p></o:p></div>
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When I was a kid my family moved to Utah from Oregon. I had
loved small boats even back then and just restored an old homebuilt flat-water kayak
I got from a buddy. The first thing I noticed when I looked at the map of Utah was
this giant lake right next to town! This was going to be great. I didn’t drive
yet but it was so close to my home I planned to build a little trailer for the kayak
and tow it to the lake with my bike. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
when we got here, I fell in love with the mountains, climbing and hiking and skiing
became my passions for the next 35 years, and the lake and the kayak were
forgotten. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think my dad hauled it to
the dump when I was away at college. <o:p></o:p></div>
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When I got into sailing a few years ago, I met several folks
with sailboats out on GSL. The few times I went out with them were fun, but there
didn't seem to be anywhere cool to go, and everybody just seemed to go out, sailed
around in circles, watched the depth gauge and made sharp U turns when they hit
shallow water again and again and again, have a glass of wine watching the sunset,
and motor back in. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not that any of that was
bad, not just the sort of sailing exploring adventures I had in mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I met Josh Church recently and he said he
had been out on many multi day cruises on the lake, anchoring out over-night, having
a great time. It was true that there were vast sections that were too shallow for
his 4 foot deep keel, and he had to anchor a few miles off shore of some islands,
but he was out having a great time in a truly wilderness setting. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Talking to Josh I realized that the GSL would be
perfect for my kayak. I could hop from island to island, sail in water as little
as 6" deep, pull up on shore, camp in wonderful secluded desert
wilderness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just like Baja. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>OK, sure. It is missing the sea life, the whales,
the dolphins, the pelicans, the wonderful "south of the border"
charm, people, music and food, but it is still an amazing place to enjoy a
grand wild adventure, loving the desert, the seclusion, the magnificent mountain
vistas across sparkling water. <br />
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Saturday I had planned
to leave was one of the nastiest on record with cold rain and fierce winds. I
stayed in bed and started out the next day under partly cloudy skies and
moderate winds from the east, perfect for heading west as I was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My sailing kayak performed perfectly. I made
13 miles that day, one of the longest of the whole trip. I did run into some
shallows and had to walk the boat through a "rock garden" of tufa knobs
for a while. (Tufa is a soft rock that precipitates out of the water and settles on the bottom.) I camped on the south
end of Stansbury Island on a sandy spit. That night a big bad thunderstorm came
over and thrashed on me for about 2 hours. I have spent a lot of time out
camping in small tents in bad storms, but never in conditions like that before.
The wind was blowing my tent over so I sat on that side of the tent with my
arms up holding the wall from collapsing. I felt like that raw army recruit who
was always screwing up at basic training and his drill sergeant made him run
around all day holding his gun up in the air. (Of course he goes on to save the
platoon with his strength and valor). But I wasn’t in a war zone, it just
sounded that way. Lightning bolts and simul-thunder crashed around me for
hours. Flash-crash-boom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rain
pounded down in waves, like a fire hose turned on patriots demonstrating in a town
square. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was thinking perhaps I should put
on some pants in case the tent blew out and I had to scurry to another fox hole,
but it took both hands to keep the tent up, so I just sat there bare-bummed and
whimpering shamelessly. I can see the family reunion scene many years from now.
"Grandma Kenzie, was great grandpa Kyle brave when the worst storm of the century
paddled his bum out on the Great Lake?" <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"No Julito" she replied, "He wasn't
wearing any pants, and we all know that you can't be brave if you are not wearing
any pants. He just sat there in that tent whimpering shamelessly" <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Julito wanted to be brave, and he never again went to bed without wearing
Gore-Tex pants. No amount of pleading or threatening or bribing with Otter Pops
could change him. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bearded psychotherapists
with round spectacles would study his behavior and mumble among themselves and shake
their heads. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Years later he mentioned
this odd fact about himself in his Match.com profile and he met a spunky kayak
sailor named Wind-Song who understood him perfectly and they proceeded to complete
the second ever sailing kayak circumnavigation of the Great Salt Lake, and went
on to solve the mystery of why pelicans stopped nesting on Hat Island.)</div>
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<o:p> </o:p>My boat is a sailing kayak rig, basically cobbled together out
of spare parts. The hull is a very good two person touring kayak with a foot operated
rudder. I added home-made outriggers for added stability, a lee board, mast and
sail, and I sewed a spray skirt out of cast-off boat cover material I found in a
dumpster back in California. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have been
working on her for 2 seasons now, sailing almost every week from April to
October, upgrading to some store-bought parts, making little improvements continuously
here and there and she really is turning out to be a fine little craft. She is
rugged, reliable, sails well, and I can paddle when I need to. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I admit I am an unenthusiastic paddler. I know
many people love it and wax poetic about "the song of the paddle", but
I am a sailor, and for me every paddle stroke is a song yodeling my failure to get
to where I am going under sail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But certainly
paddling is better than needing a motor!</div>
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The next day I sailed up to the north end of Stansbury and
camped near what I think is the one and only beach-front cabin on the entire
lake. It seemed abandoned and didn’t look like anyone had been there in a long
time. The graded track into it was overgrown with weeds and brush. The cabin
was of modern construction, with vinyl siding, metal roof, huge 2 story glass
wall facing the lake. Inside was beautiful wide pine plank paneling and vaulted
ceiling, really a treasure. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Too bad
whoever owns it doesn’t seem to be using it. The inside was a mess, a window
was broken out, and there was a huge hawk nest on the second story deck! </div>
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<o:p></o:p> </div>
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I had arranged with my friend Josh to report in with him by
cell phone every few days. He had told me that he has coverage across most the whole
lake. He must have Verizon. I have T-Mobile. Big difference I am learning. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had cell coverage this morning and had checked
in with him after the big storm, but no signal up this far. Hmmm. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is small brine shrimp harvest marina on
the north tip of the island and I could see people there but I didn’t bother
them. Nothing to worry about yet. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Tuesday I woke up early to a drizzle and the forecast on my NOAA
Weather radio called for scattered thunderstorms all day so I rolled over and
went back to sleep. I woke up about 9 with bright sun and clear skies so I
packed up fast and launched for Carrington Island 5 miles away. By the time I was
moving, the sky had quickly clouded over again and a frisky wind piped up out
of the west and I made the crossing in a little over an hour!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vagabunda was screaming on that beam
reach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I walked around the island for a
while, climbing up to the summit and seeing an awesome camp site on the north
end, a mile away. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Up over the summit I noticed
the ground was pock-marked with big craters and odd looking rusty metal bits
scattered about. The craters were old, all grown over, and I wondered if some
treasure hunter had dug about looking for lost Aztec gold or something. Just
then 2 fighter jets from Hill Field went screaming overhead heading for the
west desert practice bombing ranges. I then recalled someone saying this used
to a bombing target and these craters were direct hits, and the metal shards
were metal bomb-casing shrapnel. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So glad
to know they could hit an island. (I heard Iraq air force veterans boast they
now can put a bomb down Saddam Hussain’s chimney. If they only knew which
chimney...).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I walked back to the boat
and another thunderstorm looked like it was coming in so I wrapped up in a tarp
under a bush and waited for all hell to break loose again like the other night.
It never did but I had fallen asleep and enjoyed a sweet little nap and woke to
warmer sunny conditions. I launched the boat again and headed to that nice spot
around the corner and put in a snug little camp. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because most of the land I was camping on this
trip was loose sand or gravel, I made it a practice to back up all the tent
pegs with rocks. At this camp, every rock I lifted up was crawling with lizards
that darted off to safer rocks. I wonder how many lizards I saw more than once!
They must have thought the world was coming to an end. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The next morning, Wednesday, was clear but cold. I noticed a
group of guys driving around on ATVs and doing some sort of work on the beach. I
walked over, introduced myself, asked if they phones with cell service. He said
yes, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and I could use it to call Josh and
report in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since that first morning 3 days ago I had not had
any coverage. Even up on top of the ridges I had hiked up. Nothing. Then as I walked
away from these guys my phone chirped and I had coverage just long enough to receive
a text message from a friend hoping all was well. By the time I tried to respond
the signal was lost, mood was spoiled and no signal ever again until Thursday evening
on Fremont island. I used to have a Spot messenger that lets you use satellites
to let everyone back home know all is well. I guess I should get one again. Or just
not tell anyone I am going so they don't worry!<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
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The brine shrimp guys were just out scouting for good places,
the season doesn't open until tomorrow so I invited them over for coffee. Several
came over to my camp and we had fun comparing projects. All of them were immigrants,
from Thailand,, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq. They lived at these company shrimper camps
out there, made $10 hour with food and lodging included. They all said it was hard
work but all seemed very happy with it all. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some had been coming out for years. I later
found out that they had spread the word around the lake that some crazy guy in
a kayak was out there.</div>
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<o:p></o:p> </div>
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<o:p> </o:p>I wanted to go on up to Hat island, only 3 miles north, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and the wind was blowing from the north so I just
paddled. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a slog but of short
distress. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I got into a big area of those
tufa heads and after trying to paddle through them and going aground several times,
again I just got out and waded, leading the boat like a tame little burro. It was
so nice to have my entire camp just follow along with hardly any effort at all.
So much easier than backpacking! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a
while I started to get cold and my feet were numb so I called it done, pulled
the boat into a rocky little cove about 1:00 and took up life on dry land
again. </div>
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<o:p></o:p> </div>
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Hat Island is a tiny pile of rocks out in the middle of the
lake where pelicans nest in the spring. It was totally deserted now. No
evidence of any mass nesting now, except for millions of bird bones scattered
all over the place. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So many in fact it
seemed incredible that any birds had survived to nest next year! But I guess
they do. Thousands every year. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Odd that
there were no carcasses of partially decomposed birds, just millions of bones. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With the island now connected to the mainland
by the sand bar I imagine coyotes, foxes and rats have a feast out there when the
birds are on nest. In fact I wonder how much longer the birds will use that place
to nest? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seems not so ideal anymore.</div>
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<o:p></o:p> </div>
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The forecast looked favorable for tomorrow, Thursday, to be good
for a crossing over to Promontory Point. That will be 13 miles of open water with
the potential for big wind and waves to happen, with nowhere in the middle to hop
out to safety so I was prepared to wait days if I had to for conditions to be right
but tomorrow looked good. The storm was moving out, high pressure was building,
and winds from the west (I was heading east). I wanted an early start so I set my
alarm for 5:30 and had everything as ready as possible for a quick getaway in the
morning. I admit when the alarm went off that early I rethought my strategy and
dozed on for another 30 minutes, then scampered to get packed and out to the boat.
It all worked out and I was on the water by 7:30 and it was just light enough to
see without needing a headlamp. The winds were brisk out of the west as predicted
and I was headed northeast so it was perfect. I was going pretty fast, average about
4 miles per hour. I was making good time; the sky was clear and sunny by midway
across.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a few hours with winds that
were pretty strong, and because of the long fetch (the distance the wind can blow
across the water to make the waves) the waves were getting pretty big, about
3-4 feet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pretty serious conditions, but
they were mostly swells, not breaking waves. They were come in on my hind right
quarter and the boat mostly just bobbed nicely as the waves rolled on under
harmlessly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A few, though, seemed to
roll back onto me from the down-wave side of the boat and would slosh back up
over the spray skirt. The skirt was working perfectly and the water would just
roll off with no problems. Even with all that I only had a few sponges worth to
swab out when I got to the other side. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
was very pleased with how the boat handled those bigger conditions, but I was a
bit worried what would have happened if it had gotten worse, with stronger wind
and bigger waves. That is the thing about gaining experience. All you can do is
just keep pushing the edge a little further each time, sometimes on purpose,
sometimes just because it happens, and you hope you make it. Each time you do,
you learn something and gain confidence in your skills and gear until at some
point you get in over the limit and it all gets very nasty. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But all was fine today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><o:p></o:p> </div>
<br />
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The travel distance to Fremont Island was about the same as
to Promontory, and since I was a few days behind in trying to meet up with my
friends at Antelope Island, and since there was nothing really very exciting for
me at Promontory anyway, I set the course for Fremont and landed there instead,
after a 4 hour crossing. I was tired and hungry since in those big conditions I
couldn't take any time or attention to rest or eat while underway. I don’t know
what sort of passages and conditions I will run into in the future but I can't
imagine having to do many other crossings that would be much bigger that this
one, so I was pretty pleased that it all went so well. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I sat on the beach, and drank the one beer I
had brought along just to celebrate completing this crossing<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
I hiked up to the top of the ridge on Fremont and got cell
signal so I called anyone who would be worrying and checked in with them all. That
was nice. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I hiked along I found the
skull of a big desert bighorn sheep. The horn curl was a full circle plus a
bit. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wandered about, exploring a bit, then
set up camp down by the beach. </div>
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<o:p></o:p> </div>
<br />
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The next day, Friday, I sailed and paddled the 8 miles on
over to Antelope island where my friends from the Wasatch Mountain Club would
be arriving for a 3 day car camp.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
low water forced me to beach the boat almost a mile from the Bridger Bay campground.
That made for a long foot slog with all my gear. I asked a ranger where I could
get water and he pointed to the visitor center about 2 miles along the beach
across the bay. I almost cried. I had been there before and had seemed to
recall there being a water spigot at this campground but no. A fellow just then
was walking out of a giant motor home heard us talking and asked "How much
do you need? I have plenty here in my rig , you can have all you want.". <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Schweeet! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It turned out he was there with the Wasatch
Mountain Club, John was his name, and the nicest guy ever. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was a bit surprised at his RV because I was
not used to mountain clubbers showing up in RVs bigger than my house. They have
tended to be a small tent crowd. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I
got to know him though, I learned that he has recently organized 5 day backpacking
trips into the Uintas and the Grand Canyon, as well as just doing a 200 mile self-support
bike trip in Yellowstone. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Certainly he
is no slacker. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since he was not using the
tent spot at his site he offered to let me use it, which turned out to be the best
site in the park, on nice soft sand right in the shade of the only tree in the
park.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span> </div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
The rest of the folks started showing up that evening and we
had a nice time. We hiked Frary Peak on Saturday, and huge potluck dinner party.
After a week of eating trail mix and dried beans and rice, I really tucked in to
the fresh salads, the barbequed turkey, and French fries. Those folks really know
how to have a backcountry potluck dinner! Thanks to John and Julie and everyone
for such a fine spread.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
The next morning, Sunday, was my planned departure day but I
delayed long enough to let a few folks play with my boat, and joined in on another
awesome potluck brunch with pancakes, eggs, bacon, potatoes. Thanks to Robert
and Turtle! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Incredible food once again. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
I launched about 11 AM. The forecast was for moderate winds from
the south, which sounded bad because I was headed south and pretty much expected
to beat into it all day and have to paddle much of the distance. However, by the
time I got going, there was a light breeze out of the north and I just ghosted along
downwind as easy as could be and had completed 8 miles by 4 PM and called that done,
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>half way along the shore of Antelope island.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I set up camp on a bluff near some huge rock outcrops,
looking up a vast broad grassy valley. It was one of the nicest most picturesque
camp sites I think I have ever had anywhere!<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
My camping strategy on this sort of trip is pretty much like
I was backpacking. I use a small tent, tiny cook stove, eat dried food.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since I didn't have any hope of finding fresh
water along the way I started out carrying about 11 gallons, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>planning on using about a gallon a day, and hoped
to be able to top up if I found some along the way. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since I used John's water at the club camp I still
had plenty.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
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The next day, Monday, was dead calm, so paddled 5 miles to the
south tip of Antelope Island and camped. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a hot day, but I found a big rock outcrop
with a huge crevice in the shade where I am sitting right now typing this. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Talk about an office with a view! I am so lucky.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
They say that sailing is the art of riding storms
around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We had a great storm last week,
with wonderful winds. But this week, with a high pressure system building over
the area, the forecasts were “Sunny, hot, light winds becoming calm”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not too happy for a sailor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I started out on the final leg of my journey
under dead calm conditions, and had resigned myself to paddling the entire 6
miles. No problem. I can do that. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just
grit my teeth and turn up the music on my iPod. And paddle on. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a few minutes, though, a fresh breeze
filled in from behind me and I flew across the next 3 miles in less than an
hour with no paddling. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I did have to
paddle in the last 3 miles, but it was a delightful day.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
As I paddled in and pulled on to the marina launch ramp
where my car was parked, a stern looking park ranger walked down and asked me <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Are you Kyle? We have been worrying about
you. We found your car left here for days with no word to the harbor master, we
looked inside and saw that we were dealing with a kayaker, and proceeded to
organize a rescue!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fortunately, they
had somehow connected with my friend Josh, who I had been communicating with,
and they realized that I was fine and had no need of rescue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I guess I should have left a note on the windshield
telling them what my plan was. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
So to my original “complaints” about GSL?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were very few bugs, at least at this
time of year, and mostly only around the marina and the Antelope island
causeway, and these were non-biting brine flies. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everywhere else was almost bug free.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Stink?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>None, just good salty air.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Too
salty?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only effect of that I saw was
that the cuffs of my clothes crusted up rock hard, (but then rinsed “clean”
again every day.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My zippers did seem be
pretty unhappy with it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had to rinse
them daily to keep them sliding. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Too
shallow? Maybe for a sailboat with a deep keel, and yes I did have to walk my
boat through the shallows to dry land, but it was no big deal. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I never did see any mud, sucking or
otherwise. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The lake bottom and beaches
were either hard sand or tufa rock flats, very good walking everywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>So was
it as good as Baja?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, true, there is no spectacular sea
life,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>no whales, no dolphins. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I had a grand wilderness adventure, I met wonderful,
kind, warm, generous people, I enjoyed great food, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I watched the most spectacular sunsets over
sparkling water with majestic mountains everywhere I looked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, it’s not Baja, but I can look around, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>breath in a big whiff of salty air, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>squint my eyes a bit, take a few shots of
tequila, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and maybe not be able tell any
difference. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Muy Bueno!<o:p></o:p></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2635294478207383601.post-14739963824450641612014-09-07T09:55:00.003-07:002014-09-07T09:55:59.855-07:00Vagabunda, my new adventureVagabunda. A 16 foot 2 person sea kayak with foot operated rudder. Car-toppable, beach launchable. my dream boat. I added the outriggers, mast and sail, all out of scavenged junk. The outrigger (extended floaties for stability) ) are made of PVC pipe. the sail is made from an old billboard tarp. (Dasani water. Appropriate, eh?) She is rigged with a "sprit" sail pattern, which is a simple 4 sided sail, with the "sprit" spar coming up off the mast at an angle to the outermost upper corner of the sail. This an old traditional pattern. Way back in the day, huge barges used this type of sail all over Europe. I rigged a "brailing" line that pulls the top of the sail close in tight to the mast for stowing quickly and easily. There is no boom to bonk me in head coming about, or to conk me while dropping. She is a very simple, easy to sail, and very seaworthy craft. I have put many days (and miles) on her over that last year. I have been out in very rough conditions, and never got a drop over the gunnels, I do use a velcroed spray skirt in case to do get splashed, (but that is very rare) and have never felt nervous or vulnerable. I have practiced sailing her without the outriggers, solid as a rock, and and have tipped her over (on purpose) and recovered, bailed out, kept on keeping on. She will carry about 400 pounds, and I have sailed her fully loaded. All good. After a long season of proving that she is the right boat for me, I finally upgraded the scavenged junk parts with a real store bought sail and outriggers. She is even better, but still retains the charm of the do-it-yourself sailor. She is a very sweet boat, ready for anything.<br />
PS: Long after I made and named her, I was given a book, Enchanted Vagabonds, about 2 kids in 1932 that made a 16 foot sailing kayak (out of wood slats and canvas, no plastic in those days) . They launched from San Diego, sailed down the entire coast of Mexico , into the Sea of Cortez, on down to Panama, a 3 year adventure. Paddling, sailing, camping out, living off the land, just them and their little boat. The name of their little boat? Vagabunda.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2635294478207383601.post-80217345333806379122010-08-14T15:22:00.000-07:002010-08-14T15:37:57.236-07:00genesis of a crazy idea - Guymas Mexico November 2009<div><br /><div><div> <img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5505396386975895730" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBx5_GjkBPQI7Zx3uhkA_65UhDrJtQMuzMCqiPCjaw-suiUGYY7M_d0rl3GCk75NbJq1Sq6xC5pVosc5oXxV_fBf-YPau_WseliwJSisUHXPY_L8lIXBbGpNB5-r-mMX9E5bCMOeYEMuO1/s320/IMG_0068.jpg" /><br /><br /><div><strong>Main Street Saturday night in Guymas: a Sea of Cortez adventure Nov 2009<br /></strong><br />My friend Steve had just purchased a sailboat down in Mexico and invited me to come down after Thanksgiving 2009 and help him launch and learn. He had done a lot of sailing as crew on other boats, I had done a lot of sailing on little boats. We figured that between the two of us we might be able to add up to one half-assed sailor. Sort of.<br /><br />His boat was in San Carlos Mexico, about 250 miles south of Tucson on the Sea of Cortez (AKA Gulf of California). Baja is over yonder, about 80 miles to the west, protecting San Carlos from the swells and storms off the Pacific, but the Sea of Cortez is still very “big water” to me, after sailing on Jordanelle lake my whole life.<br /><br />San Carlos is a beautiful small harbor town for yachters and sport fishermen. The twin rock pinnacles of Tetas de Cabras (“Teats of the Goat”) tower over the bay. It is a small town, only a few shops and open air taquerrias, a small boat shop, art galleries, a real estate office, but overall pretty quiet with lots of norte americano money. It is a luxury town that only north americans can afford. Houses on the bay cost half a million at least. Mexicans work there, but live in very small houses inland.<br /><br />Guymas was more “Mexican”, bustling with the old traditional seaport with big ocean going ships that come in and out and several shrimping fleets, a town square with bigger-than-life statues of famous statesmen, businesses, big stores, a small airport. Sport fishing used to be HUGE here, but seems to have died out. Not sure of all the facts why, but the fishing grounds are not as lush as they once were.<br /><br />Neither town is really infected at all with the mass tourism of so many other places. No McDonalds, no Gap, no Megaplex theater. The movie Catch 22 was filmed here back in the 60s. I preferred Guymas over San Carlos, since it seemed more like “real” Mexico (whatever that is. I wonder if the Mexican residents wished it were more “real” like Chicago or Los Angeles...)<br /><br />I actually went there once as a kid with our boy scout troop. We mowed lawns and earned money and spent a week there. I have a little chunk of coral that sits on my bathroom vanity from that very beach where they filmed the movie. At a church dance in Guymas I fell in love with a girl named Gloria who spoke no English. I spoke no Spanish. Our relationship consisted of one dance and one conversation “Mi nombre es Kyle, como se nombre?” ( “My name is Kyle, what is your name?”) When I returned to find her, 35 years later, I was heartbroken to find that she had not waited for me and had moved on with her life. </div><div><br /> </div><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5505396383725752562" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6E7SvLHtN-GuytpMTT-rwelxC3mCDgbpizhpNTI-lozgbsEa2PtW1PLhVn_KBHAgCcUaaiSeFbKC_FI3sz7YIGMeNnNYHGsoBxDAGUJyAqVmc1s28JUrIBaaqsb9pmkfnyqkN0mOdWP3B/s320/IMG_0057.jpg" /><br />Steve bought this boat from a friend of ours who had bought a bigger boat and was leaving for the south pacific. It is a Balboa 27 named Harmony 27. (the “27” was to differentiate her from another boat named Harmony already there. Never saw that one though.) She is a sloop rig, with a single mast, main sail and a jib. There is a ton (literally, about 2000 lbs) of lead ballast in a shallow draft keel, with a steel plate swing-keel that can be raised or lowered as needed to sail into shallow waters. It was rigged with the same sail pattern as my little 15 foot dinghy Sirocco back home, but obviously much bigger and much more complicated than any boat I had ever been on before. Steve had sailed several other boats even larger and more complicated, but we had a very steep learning curve to learn this particular boat. Fortunately, the weather conditions that week were very calm and forgiving for learning.<br /><br />It was a simple boat but very comfortable. Small V-berth “stateroom” in the forward part for the captain, and I slept on the couch in the “living room” . Portapotty, sink, stove, all we needed for comfortable living. We hung a solar shower (black plastic bag with a hose) from the mast to clean up with. Steve had installed a solar panel to power a few lights and a portable refrigerator, so we had cold beer. Both Steve and I were used to roughing it on cold mountains in small tents so this was total luxury, even without a Jacuzzi.<br /><br />Steve had gone down there earlier with his truck full of gear to take possession of the boat before the other guy left town. I came down to join him a few days later. Flights do come in there but are very expensive (“Muy caro”) so I flew to Phoenix and caught the bus from there to Guymas. An 8 bus hour ride, but the bus was a regular long distance rig built for comfort. Air conditioning, reclining seats, and in flight movies. In Spanish of course…… The bus ride was a big part of the joy of the trip for me, as I got to see the scenery and every little town along the way and met many nice people as they got on and off along the way. A few spoke English and I was working on my Spanish (in case I ran into Gloria again…) so I got along fine and had a grand time. Steve met me at the bus terminal in his truck and we moved onto Harmony that night.<br /><br />The next day we visited our friends that sold Steve the boat, Gene and Gloria (different Gloria..) and Zig, all from Salt Lake. Gene and Gloria had bought a 44 foot luxury yacht, “Pincoya” and were getting ready to sail for the south pacific. We took Harmony out for a spin and had a blast. Winds were pretty strong but she was a good solid boat and very forgiving of our learning curve.<br /><br />We had a little work to do on the boat before we sailed out for the week. Nothing big, installing the solar panels and refrigerator, installing an auto pilot, provisioning with food and fresh water, but everything takes longer than you ever expect, and we had to scrounge for parts. Like a chunk of wood 2x4 from a dumpster, and short chunk of pipe to rig an extension to the arm of the autopilot. We spent a few days doing that stuff, and were ready to sail by Monday.<br /><br />We had about 5 days to be out, and our plan was to sail up the coast, poking our nose into every little bay along the way. And there a lot of little bays there. 43 possible places to anchor in the next 70 miles, according to the chart. After the first 5 miles, the signs of civilization ceased and it seemed like total wilderness. This is Sonoran desert at its most stark. Don’t let all the beautiful water fool you. On shore this is the harshest desert on the planet. High rocky peaks and ridges cut by deep steep canyons, saguaro cactus, salt brush, creosote, an occasional palm tree in the deepest darkest of the canyons. A critter’s gotta be tough to live here. And humans ain’t! Beyond the small harbor towns the coastline was largely un-inhabited<br /><br /><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5505396390677976882" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghWMbsd3TGMzPFmSPQ-ya8MeCl-_qmJLK-z-csje4ExHWzGcmuh7TSLu2nALXB_nDv58balS87nHCTORcQxuOwUFxxzAzTJg5lFiJfvj8pcxtLFjkfn8Kz7eohWZNGBiUC7smdki_ijiQN/s320/IMG_0031.jpg" /><br />We saw very few other boats out. Odd, I thought. There are at least 300 sailboats in the San Carlos area, but we never saw more than 3 out at a time. Sure, it was a bit past the most popular season, but I think they were all waiting on repairs of some sort or another. It seems that spare parts are hard to some by down there, and mail is very unreliable, so it could take a month to get a package, if you ever get it at all. Seeing all the sailers not sailing, waiting for repairs, reinforced my resolve to never own a fancy boat. I have always thought that the simpler the better. Small, simple, cheap. Easy to fix with nothing fancy to break. They say the time you spend sailing a boat in is inverse proportion to it’s length. I saw that starkly in very sad reality at San Carlos.<br /><br />The weather was clear and sunny for the most part, but a bit unseasonably cool. Days in the low 70s, lows at night in the 50s. it felt balmy to me though, just coming from a blizzard in Salt Lake, but the locals had pulled out their winter jackets and wooly mufflers. We had rain one night, but it cleared and warmed as the week went along.<br /><br />The first day of our 5 day odyssey we sailed around a bit in the main bay and dropped anchor in a beautiful little nearby bay called Martini Cove. Surrounded by steep cliffs, birds of every sort flying around. My favorites are always the pelicans. They are so fun to watch. They fly in squadrons of 5-10 birds, skimming the waves, flying so low that their wing tips sometimes touch the water, and as they approach a swell, they curl the squadron one by one up and over the swell. Very cool to watch. When feeding (which is most of the time), they will hover 20-30 feet above the water, spot a fish, tuck their wings and drop straight down into a nose dive, hit the water with a big splash and come up with the fish. I am embarrassed to admit it but I once sat for hours doing nothing but watching pelicans fish and never got tired of it.<br /><br />We saw a crested caracara on the cliffs above us. This is a raptor very much like an osprey, mostly white, dark markings, with a black crest on its white head. Very beautiful and only seen in Mexico, I think.<br /><br />It was a bit stormy that night, with rain and wind, but there was a beautiful double rainbow over the cliffs to the East. “Rainbow at night, Sailors delight” the old timers say. I have heard from experts that many of those old weather sayings are usually pretty accurate, and sure enough the next several days were gorgeous. Something about with the sun setting in the west, shining through clouds already passed on to the east of us making rainbows that evening. Or something like that.<br /><br />The next day was pretty calm so we motored north a dozen miles along the coast. We passed abandon old fishing resorts, popular back when there were more fish. The winds picked up pretty strong as we approached our goal, Bahia (bay) de San Pedro and bucking it was a bit of a challenge, so we were glad to duck into the bay quickly. This is a very well-protected lagoon, with rocky shores hooking around us almost in a complete circle, with a long pebble beach running for 2-3 miles in between. There was a camp of local fisherman on shore. They had a small tent set up but most were napping right on the beach. They had a fire going and cooking some sort of meal. They waved, we waved. After a while, towards evening, they all loaded up into a small panga (open skiff-like fishing boat that is very popular there) and took off, leaving the tent. We didn’t see them again. We think the shrimp boats work at night and these fellows may have been sleeping the day on the beach, and took off at evening to report for duty on their ship. Visiting their campsite later, I noticed big stacks of small “conch-looking” shells in and around the fire pit. They were about 2-3 inched across, mostly roundish with spiney protuberances along the bottom edge, colored white on the bottom with speckled earth tones across the top. I’m sure that was what they were cooking, but I have never seen shells like that before. The next day we snorkeled in that bay for hours and never saw one in the water. I’m not sure where they were getting them from, maybe the shrimp nets dredge them up from the bottom out deep, but it looked like they had eaten a whole ton of them.<br /><br />A big shrimp boat pulled into the bay later. It was a huge old ship, rusty red and all work looking. Nothing festive, or leisure or shiny about that boat. Just work. There were thousands of birds flocking about, roosting on the cables and shrouds. They must have enjoyed a feast of shrimping leftovers.<br /><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5505396391143393970" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFRTq33fjfBxiDuom8_X66A9ty3r2PgNCVYxsraxSs_SM4c6l1k0a1-Tl-qMC6sLH7_l2ZCfTUHfFC2Qv9P3v7NvTuyzlkCAQov8sFYDvTnsy4h5aOFEu7Y7teC_aGfG8DJUQwoQ_m1Mu5/s320/IMG_0038.jpg" /><br />The next day, we weighed anchor and sailed west to Isla San Pedro. This is a big rock island about 8 miles off shore. The winds were perfect and we sailed briskly. Steve tossed out the fishing gear and caught more fish for dinner. There is nowhere to anchor anywhere on the island, as the water is hundreds of feet deep right up near shore, and no beaches. The rocky cliffs come right down to the water and straight on down, down, down. We circled the island, about a mile wide and 3 miles long, listening to the sea lions bark and roar. They were hard to see, as they were mixed in with the boulders at the base of the cliffs but we could sure hear them!. The cliffs were dark basalt rock but stained bright white by the millions of birds roosting there over millions of years. Steve and I are rock climbers and we guessed that there would be no possible way to climb up those guano stained cliffs.<br /><br />Sailing the big Balboa 27 was so much different from my little 15 foot Sirocco dinghy back home. Same sloop rig and rudder, but the “feel” was so much heavier and ponderous. With Sirocco I sail with the main sheet in one hand and the tiller in the other, ready at a moment to tweak either one to adjust to a sudden gust. My body weight, too, had to be an integral part of the “ballast”. Every tack required shifting of my body weight to properly trim the overall kit. Slow action there would result in a wild heeling over and probable capsize. With this boat, with a ton of ballast in the keel, and 3 tons overall, we tried to keep the main sail trimmed to control the heel at an efficient angle, but didn’t feel like we had to have the sheet in hand every moment, and moving around didn’t seem to have much effect to her trim. Very odd sensation. I could even sit comfortably on the lee side without feeling like she was going over. I am sure in harsher conditions we would need to be more careful, but in the 15 knot winds we were in, it just didn’t seem like a problem. She had a roller furler jib so it was pretty easy to adjust the size of the jib that we had out. The main sail had 3 sets of jiffy reefing, witch created a lot of lines to deal with and keep untangled. I know people single-hand boats like this, but it seemed like a real handful for that one hand….practice, practice, practice eh?<br /><br /><br />That evening we were back in Bahia San Pedro with the shrimps boat but no men camped on shore this day. Another sailboat, Safiyah, joined us in the bay and we chatted with one of them. Nice talkative fellow with a long white beard. They were from Florida and it sounded like they spent a lot of time on their boat down here.<br /><br />The next morning we snorkeled all up and down the rocky shores. Very interesting sea life, with fish of every type: sea stars, coral, some spiny looking critters I was not sure what they were. Sort of lobsterish, but not. Maybe sort of “shrimpish” Much larger than any shrimp I have ever eaten, it was at least 6 inches long. I was pleased at how clean the water and shoreline was. Many places I have seen in Mexico are strewn with washed up litter, but this seemed like a pristine wilderness.<br /><br />Living on a small boat for several days, for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised how comfortable it was. Even with 2 of us, I never felt cramped or claustrophobic. We lived simply, ate simply, spent the evenings barbequing fish we just caught, enjoying a few shots of tequila straight from the bottle, watching the sun go down. I played my guitar for hours, working on some new songs I never seemed to have time to learn back home. At night the boat rocked and rolled to the swells rolling into the bay. Sometimes it seemed like it rolled much more than the size of the swells would have caused. Never really uncomfortable, but interesting to notice the effect. We read a lot. Never bothered to fire up the iPod, and never missed the TV or radio. Not even NPR.<br /><br />Steve was a good sailing companion. I hadn’t known him all that well before this, but we got along great. We had similar dispositions and reactions to things like cooking, messes, fixing and rigging things. He was a very analytical thinker and tinkerer (a very handy skill on a boat!) , a quick learner and determined to master sailing, but still conservative enough not to kill himself (and me) in the process. My age, (50) he has been mostly retired for quite a while and when he isn’t sailing he is wandering around the world in his big tall 4x4 live-aboard van.<br /><br />Mornings were briskly cool. Sitting in the cockpit with a cup of coffee, watching the sunrise over the cliffs, a jacket felt very nice. Once the sun came up, though, jackets and caps peeled off and we were warm for the day.<br /><br />The next day we sailed back down south to spend the night anchored in Bahia Algdones. There is a small resort and an open beach bar there, but it was still very quiet. Only 1 other boat, no one on the beach. I decided I wanted to paddle the inflatable ducky kayak into the famous Soggy Peso cantina for a token beer while Steve made ceviche (fish cooked cold in fresh-squeezed lime juice. Delish!) The ducky was solid and easy to paddle, but as I hit the beach I mis-managed a killer 4" wave and the angle of the beach, and I capsized and rolled down into the water for a full immersion amphibious landing. The fisherman at the bar had a great laugh at my expense. I walked up the beach dripping wet and said "I hear you take soggy pesos here" and they said, "I'll bet you have some!"<br /><br />The next day we ended our little journey back at San Carlos. I had to catch my bus back north the next evening. We bummed around town, visiting with other boaters about their boats, went to a swap meet and an artsy fair on the boardwalk and such. I went to a bar on shore that night and Steve propped the dock gate open for me, but some well meaning security-minded person, thinking only of our safety, slammed it shut so when I came back to the boat later, I had to rock climb along the old masonry sea wall to get past the gate to get to our dock. It wasn’t hard, and it wasn’t far, but at night, in sandals, after a few beers, above the blackest water I can imagine, it was the boldest solo climb of my career.<br /><br />One of the hi-lights of the week was the 2 hours we spent wandering Guymas Main street before I had to catch my bus. It was just so very cool! Guymas families out on Main street on a Saturday night. Moms and dads and kids and grandparents, all out for the evening. It seemed that were a lot of shoe stores (ladies) , pharmacies, and toy stores. Steve got a blade shave from a classic barber shop. Saturday night, and the barbershop was a hoppin place! Out on the street next door, there were a bunch of teenage boys playing drums to some soundtrack, making a ton of noise and having a ball. I dropped a 20 peso bill ( about a buck and a half) on the youngest-looking kid’s drum and he beamed as if he were Elvis. We danced with them all as we walked by and for just a moment, I felt like maybe I had lived there once in a former life. What a cool place. Main Street Saturday night in Guymas.<br /><br />I left Steve there in San Carlos to keep sailing for another few weeks. My bus ride home was a “red eye”, launching at 8:00 PM. We rode all night, and reached Phoenix by daylight where I caught my flight back home. Landed in another blizzard in Salt Lake. Now I know why people retire to someplace warm. Maybe, just maybe, it would be possible to retire early, live “on the cheap” on a sailboat in Guymas. Sip your morning coffee watching the sun come up from the cockpit of a simple boat. Eat a fish you just caught. Get a shave on main street on a Saturday night. Maybe. </div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2635294478207383601.post-33003972176703855452010-06-13T21:35:00.000-07:002010-08-14T15:21:41.460-07:00First post - Sailing yellowstone Lake Aug 2009The Duckling that Came in From the Rain<br />A Yellowstone Lake odyssey. Aug 2009 By Kyle Williams<br /><br /><br /><br /><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 416px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 302px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5505329319883443234" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsTFY5icl4nY_jHw1JYSb9nMX_t8GSrpmN7_hDgcr2gqAZIGfvYBp5LPgTntGk7x_N38U3kwStzyQvEXsknIpS-_-zyjBRbqIkrGTtb7_RXTK91xkiAjtm1VHhwH1IDCuwhWVleMrmeEM3/s320/the+duckling+that+came+in+from+the+rain.jpg" /><br />You can set your watch by the winds on Yellowstone Lake. Every day in the late summer, about 8:00 AM, the all-night east breeze gives way to a morning Northerly wind, 10 knots or so. At noon the winds start gyrating madly, Elvis-hips-ishly, and all points of the compass are thoroughly represented. By 1:00 they settle into the afternoon southwest wind, up to about 20 knots, and at 4:00, the thunderstorms arrive with rain, hail, lightning, thunder, and 40+ gale winds. In 1838, Francis Beaufort, trying to define the wind, would have called it Force 8 conditions. The surface of the lake is instantly whipped to a froth, with streamers spraying off the 3 foot wave crests. All is a maelstrom. By 7:00, it quickly settles back down and is mill-pond calm for the rest of the evening.<br /><br /><br /><br />Sailing a small 15 foot boat in these conditions would be terrifying if it weren’t for the predictability. Like your crazy uncle at Thanksgiving dinner, you know what to expect and can plan accordingly. We only goofed once. The second day out, the storm caught us out on the water and we didn’t make it into our little harbor until 4:30. We pulled in white-knuckled, breathing hard, and thoroughly chastened for our ignorance. Lesson learned, not to be repeated. Sirocco is a stable little boat, with a sloop rig, steel centerboard, and a tiny cabin only big enough for gear storage. She handled all these conditions very well.<br /><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5505393897267388498" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOnJwe2819fhVL9QC9aMnj_vwwReVgiqM9J6RxFA5ZcojC6KqVA8DVd3Jfu2F1RnrhnXmjwLLf2KNkn9hAslWtf6UQNgp0_Zdy_CkR9jKdU6EmW74muIlCyUDdKCSAttsIIH3vpPw7XcHu/s320/Sirocco+and+gear+on+beach+camp+1.jpg" /><br />My neighbor Steve Townsend and I were out there for 8 days. Loaded with camping gear and an inflatable kayak up under the bow, we launched Sirocco at Grant Village in the West Thumb, and sailed for 2 days east and south across the lake, and down to the tip of the Southeast arm. This is one of the most remote corners of Yellowstone Park, (and maybe even the nation…) where motorboats are not allowed and true wilderness is near total. We were camping on shore, moving every day or 2.<br /><br />We had moored Sirocco in a protected bay and paddled our kayak across 3 miles to a trail access point. We saw a family of otters sleekly swimming along in front of us, and lost count of the bald eagles we saw, and as we pulled into that bay we saw an osprey on a snag looking intently at the water below. In a moment, she hopped up off the branch, hovered for a moment and dive-bombed into the water, came up with a cutthroat trout in her talons, and flew directly over us to perch back on the snag for dinner. Under bluebird skies we hiked to South Arm, and as we entered a vast meadow we saw a pack of wolves trotting across and out of site. 4 blacks and 1 gray, absolutely breathtaking in their strength and beauty. As we hiked back to the kayak to paddle back to camp, we stopped to visit John and Alf, who we has bumped into back in Salt Lake City and knew were going to be camped somewhere near here. It was 3:00 PM and we knew we couldn’t count on being across the water to our camp before the 4:00 storm so we hunkered down and waited. Black clouds were building and we didn’t have to wait long. The afternoon light show fired up right on schedule and we had a ringside seat on the bluff above the lake. We had foul weather gear with us but the rain was more ferocious than normal, pounding the ground around us, and wild winds ripping, so John pitched a tarp for us all to hunker down under and drink hot soup he so graciously offered. The rain was blowing horizontal so the tarp lean-to was perfect protection. That is, until the wind shifted 180 degrees and we had to hustle to rig another tarp in the mirror image of the first, making a fine-looking nylon yurt. As we sat there enjoying the storm in all its wonder, a baby duckling suddenly appeared under the corner of the tarp. Apparently lost, looking for momma, and as grateful as we were to be out of the storm. No country for old men, or cold ducks. He was shivering. I didn’t know ducks ever got cold! For heaven sakes, they swim around in water surrounded by ice, seemingly immune to the cold, but this little guy didn’t look comfy at all. I tried to catch him to tuck him into a warm cap, but he scampered off and disappeared into the brush. After a few hours the storm softened just a bit and we got out to stretch our legs. Just then we saw the duck swimming out the narrow mouth of the bay, out into lake, which surely meant certain death for him, either from the still-raging waters, or from the eagles that cruise over-head with a sharp lookout for such a morsel. The circle of life. He was duck-paddling strong and squalling loud to attract momma when we lost sight of him for the last time. Fair thee well, my fine feathered friend! By 8:00 the wind and waves had subsided enough to allow us back on the water safely and we paddled into our camp long after dark, ready for a long rest and warm bed, grateful for the kind hospitality of our new friends.<br /><br />The week passed quickly, with days filled with sailing, paddling and hiking. We paddled up the Yellowstone river delta, surprising a huge bull moose browsing on the shore-side willows, and checked out a 10 foot high beaver lodge. I’ll bet it was more luxurious inside than our tents! We saw many bear tracks in the mud on the shore, but I didn’t see a bear all week. One day in camp I was off on a hike (looking for bears) and as I came back Steve asked, “Did you see it?” “ See what” “A grizzer bear walked right past our camp, drank from the lake and walked right on back into the trees.” I’m still not sure I believe him, he can be a bit of a joker sometimes, but he sure seemed earnest about it so I gotta report that “we” saw a bear. We practiced “bear safety” with a zeal bordering on religiosity. Sleep way over there, cook way over here, don’t allow any food mess to remain, and put everything, including our clothes we ate in, into the bag to pull up into the tree tops every night. A kayak rangerette named Jacki stopped by regularly to make sure that every camp on the lake was obeying the rules. She had to leave us a nice nasty note one day, as we had failed to string a bucket up the pole one day.) Once a bear tastes human food, then no one in the area is safe until that bear is removed far away or killed. Usually killed, eventually, because they will find their way back and resume a life addicted to marshmallows and top ramen.<br /><br />Ready to head out, with a 2 days of sailing between us and French fries and hot showers, we had the boat packed for an early start, hoping to catch the remnants of the nightly east wind, which would have been perfect for sailing on a beam reach up and out of the Southeast Arm. We rowed out into the bay to hoist sail and drop the centerboard , and we discovered that our centerboard wouldn’t drop. Stuck up in it’s trunk! We had been dragging her up onto the pea-gravel beach over night, and pebbles had jammed the centerboard tightly inside the trunk, preventing it from dropping. ARGH!! Back to shore we went, and we careened her over, pulling on the main halyard to hold her on her side with her under-belly exposed, and I spent the next hour in waist deep water with a stubby screwdriver prying out the pebbles. Next time a long skinny metal hook will be in the tool kit. Because of the delay from the jammed pebbles, we missed the east wind and had to beat up against the north wind all morning. John and Alf passed us paddling in their 17 foot Tripper canoe. Later, out on the main lake, the “Elvis winds” caught us we were trying in vain to get around Plover Point. We spent a very frustrating hour getting nowhere in a hurry. John later told us they could see us from their camp and marveled at our patience. Tacking back and forth, then again and again, with winds changing to come from a different quarter, then they would change a gain. As the steady afternoon winds blew up from the south, we made quick westerly progress and pulled into the protection of Wolf bay before the gales came on, and we camped for the night. Now this camp was fraught with peril because we didn’t have a camping permit for Wolf bay. Yellowstone park requires all backcountry camping to be in designated areas, by permit only. Our permit for that night was out at Breezy Point, 5 miles along, but we couldn’t make it that far, what with the hurricanes and all, and we were told that the rangers didn’t cotton to folks camping where they aught not to, so we knew we were taking a big chances stopping at Wolf bay. Facing possible jail time or at least maybe a stern talking to, we camped there anyway. We dodged that bullet, as no one else showed up at the camp to claim it, and no rangers came to cite us. Don’t no one tell, OK?<br /><br />The next day our watches must have stopped: the world was all out of kilter. No wind came up at all that morning, from any quarter, fair or foul. After 8 days, we were ready to be finished with it all, so we broke down and for the first time on the trip pulled out the little electric motor and powered our way back to civilization. A light breeze finally came up about 1:00, so we hoisted sail for that last mile and sailed on into the marina, displaying a very masterly approach to the dock under full sail. A perfect landing after a perfect week in a perfect place.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0