New deck paint and dodger windows
Fishing fleet behind us, amusement park out front at Guaymas hardstand
....more photos from Guaymas...
Monday, June 1, 2009
Its a Hard Life
Guaymas is a fishing port of 134,000 people, about half way up the Sea of Cortez on the mainland side. The Lonely Planet advises, “Stopping here for any extended length of time had better be due to a catastrophic vehicle breakdown or massive coronary”. It has been our home for almost 3 months and we have enjoyed this friendly little city, most of the time. Blue Moon has a new coat of paint on the decks, topsides and bottom, a new dodger and lots of ticks on the maintenance list. We started investigating the various haul-out facilities 12 miles further up the coast, at San Carlos. A gringo magnet for yachties, RVs and condo dwellers alike, this beautiful area offers picturesque bays fringed with white beaches, tucked between red volcanic peaks. But one boatyard there would not allow live-aboards, and another dirt bowl in the middle of the desert that would not allow spray painting. So we got on the bus and headed for Guaymas. We pulled the bell when we could see masts, and tumbled out onto the curb as the bus slowed slightly, as one does on Mexico transport. As we were looking around to get our bearings, a fellow rode up on his bicycle and proclaimed, “You look like losers”. His English was ‘almost’ – a word that I would come to use often in the coming weeks. What he was trying to say is that we looked lost, and insisted that a visit his shop was just what we were looking for. That was how we came to eat lunch under a Mona Lisa smoking a big fat joint and acquire a bottle of almond massage oil. After lunch we found the brand new marina with a concrete hard stand. Previously there was no marina here and no real facilities for yachties so they had special deals to attract customers. We estimated about 3 weeks out of the water but the special rate for 3 months was about the same, so here we are, finally floating again after 8 weeks on the hard. Everything at the marina is still shiny and new but it’s all a bit like my grasp of the Spanish language - some days I can ‘almost’ communicate but a lot of the time the point is missed completely. The showers were awesome until they ran out of hot water. The new fuel dock has no license so is unable to dispense fuel. The finer points of electrical systems and drainage seem to be as elusive as Spanish grammar. The swimming pool and Jacuzzi were enticing features, but alas there is no functional heating or filtration system, and in reality it is a giant birdbath. When we hauled out there were only 3 boats in the yard. But as time went by, the yard has filled up and the travel lift operators gained some valuable experience, at the expense of one prop and shaft, one depth sounder transponder, one log paddlewheel, one VHF aerial, and most of the back end on one boat that slid out of the slings. It seems the entire waterfront is being transformed to attract tourism, with a new Malecon (boardwalk), benches in artistic shapes such as dolphins, crabs, and anchors, and a spectacular fountain with a light display set to music. Just outside the gate to the marina is an antiquated amusement park complete with Beebe gun shooting gallery, bumper cars, and rides that look as if they would have been condemned about the time I was born. The whole thing is parked on the construction zone for the partly completed Malecon, with the usual Mexican electrical wiring system snaking through it. If the rides aren’t exciting enough for you, there’s the thrill of avoiding personal injury from these hazards. I really like the marionettes – there is a mechanical bull ride, an accordion player whose foot stomps, and one with a bunch of dancing skeletons. The outlook from the pool deck overlooking the harbor is beautiful, and makes a great spot to do yoga in the mornings, surrounded by the birds. I have particularly enjoyed the Vermillion Flycatchers, who are so tame they will sit on the railing beside me and sing. We have been here so long that I have watched the whole life cycle of these cute little guys from courtship to hatching. One of our neighbors has a nest with 4 eggs in the back of their boom. We had our own wildlife on board - a type of bee put their eggs in the holes in our decks where the fittings were taken off. They are amazing works of art - skillfully wrapped little packages of bright pink bougainvillea leaves. It seemed a shame to destroy them when we put the fittings back on that I fiberglassed a couple and made earrings. Our spot was beside the canal where the fishing fleet is moored, bringing in shrimp and squid each day. It is fascinating to watch them flipping the Humbolt squid bodies up onto the dock. These huge squid grow up to 7 feet long, and have been known to attack divers and fishermen. In fact we were so close that one day a disabled trawler being towed out got hooked up on the rail behind our boat. To help support the mast while the chain plates were off, we had tied our halyard off to this rail, so there was a tense moment when we thought we would lose the rig. It was the first time we have had to fend off from a hard stand. We never did get used to the stench of the fish canning operation right outside our aft cockpit that assaulted us day and night, but we seem to be used to the noise. A popular form of advertising here is cars or trucks driving around with loudspeakers. There is a karaoke bar at the marina, at least 3 other sources of music from the fishing boats, security guards and the malecon, and we have the lights and sounds of the city and the amusement park to complete the cacophony. I remember going to ‘the ex’ in Toronto as a kid, and it pretty much is like living in there. As for the paint job – it’s … almost. We should have stopped our Mexican painter right at the beginning when he began attacking our hull with orbital discs. But we were relying on the recommendations of others, assuming he was a professional. Apparently he is occasionally capable of acceptable work, but not often. Since we have been here, we met another boat owner who is lucky to be alive after the keel repair Francisco did delaminated underway. We watch in horror, as he is butt-joining plywood onto gaping holes in another boat in the yard that was suffering from rot. Insisting he can spray paint without over-spray, no respirators are used, although it is not unusual to see one of the workers holding up a Mexican blanket with a cloud of paint billowing around him. His home-made trailer collapsed on the ramp as he was hauling out a 4-ton catamaran. It seems there is no end to the skills of this man, who happily will tell you he can do anything that involves your dollar bills. Right at the start of our job there was the loss of his glasses - first one lens, the next the other, so that for the duration of our job he turned up wearing just the frames, which he insisted he did not need. The quality of his work would suggest otherwise. Suffice to say that we had someone ask us if our boat is concrete! It would be easy to lose your sense of humor some days. In the words of Jimmy Buffet, “if we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane”. But is there ever a good place to spend 2 months on a hardstand? As this chapter is drawing to a close, we have well and truly left winter behind us with temperatures in the 90’s most days. We had our first rain shower of the year (what great painting weather we have had!). While most of the boats here are hauling out for hurricane season to fly off ‘home’, we are making preparations to sail further north into the Sea of Cortez for summer, hopefully out of the hurricane area. Over the next few months we would like to see one of those giant humbolt squid, a whale shark, and maybe the vaquero dolphin. We have also ticked off one more thing on our list – a train trip up to the Copper Canyon.
New deck paint and dodger windows
New deck paint and dodger windows
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Changing The Sea
We are sailing north into the Sea of Cortez, along the same route that John Steinbeck traveled during the expedition that was the subject of his “Log from the Sea of Cortez”. We did not plan to follow him, and we have made many more stops than he did along the way. We are experiencing winter in ‘The Sea’, with the brisk ‘Northers’ dictating when we can move and which anchorages we can shelter in. These wicked windstorms can pack gusts of up to 50 knots, sending small tornados through the bay and slamming Blue Moon flat on her side. Steinbeck apparently enjoyed milder temperatures and lighter winds during his visit in March 1940. But the weather is not the only thing we have found different from his account. I wonder what he would think of the place now.
Steinbeck wrote about Cabo San Lucas 69 years ago “To a man straight off a yacht, it is a miserable little flea bitten place, poor and smelly.” Rob passed through here on a yacht delivery in the 1970’s and found it not much different. He recalled a port captain, a small store and a tiny cobblestone fishing village. Rounding the Cape at midnight in 2009, with bright lights stretching far along the shore and up the hillsides, he said it felt as if he had been in a time warp. Passing up the opportunity to stay in the most expensive marina in the world, we visited overland from La Paz. Down by the waterfront, the locals hustle tourists to buy trinkets, take tours or go out game fishing. We watched the boats bringing in the marlin, dozens of them. A 6 year old girl adopted me as we walked around the malecon, imploring me to buy her wares with big pleading eyes and well rehearsed lines (‘make my day’ and ‘its almost free’ and finally just ‘please, please please!’) This seems far removed from “the Indians who sat timelessly on the rail, so used to the spiritual transaction that they had difficulty translating material things into money” portrayed by Steinbeck.
In Steinbeck’s time, foreigners were a curiosity, but today we are just another of the many yachts and gringos passing through. Only a couple of fishermen in their fiberglass long boats with big outboards have come to see us, asking for water and gasoline. Gone are the ‘seaworthy and fast’ double-ended canoes described by Steinbeck. “Sometimes a sail is set, but ordinarily they are paddled swiftly by 2 men, one at each end.” I wonder if there is still anyone alive who knows how to make these craft, ‘carved from a single log of light wood, braced inside with struts’. The Indians in the last century carried iron harpoons, wore traditional clothes and went barefoot. Everything we have seen here so far has been very modern and westernized. As prophesized in his book, “ A local 110-volt power unit and a winding dirt road may leave a people for a long time untouched, but high-voltage operating day and night, the network of wires, will draw the people into the civilizing web, and there is no escape from it.”
Steinbeck’s expedition was a scientific one, collecting and cataloguing the multitude of species that live in the inter-tidal zone. His findings seem incredible to us – ‘tide pools ferocious with life’, schools of airborne fish ‘like a silver blanket’, great long lists of the many different species found in each location, some bays containing ‘literally millions’ of specimens. We did not do a thorough investigation, although we heard that there was a similar study done a couple of years ago to determine what species could be found here now. It would be interesting to know the results of this.
Far from being scientific, we have taken a haphazard tally in some of the places we visited, and it seems to us that a pitiful few hardy samples are what remains of the prolific life along the shores of the Sea of Cortez. We wonder if the health of the ecology can be measured by the number of skeletons of fish, sharks and shellfish found on the beaches. For a great many of these remains litter almost all the bays, and seem particularly plentiful in the parks and bays where commercial fishing is supposed to be banned. Perhaps they have been fished elsewhere, and taken there for cleaning. The pile of precisely filleted carcasses leaves no doubt that these creatures did not die of natural causes. One bay contained hundreds of heads of the strange looking Angle Shark. In another we found a pile of Trigger Fish skeletons. There were mountains of Thorny Oyster shells, Pearl Oyster shells and Scallop shells in various locations. Every beach on one small island in Bahia Concepcion was piled with small Manta Ray skeletons. As depicted in Steinbeck’s Log, there were fish of every type in great numbers, but in skeletal form. He was equally shocked by the Japanese shrimp trawlers that he encountered at Guymas. He watched six of these 150-footers dredging in an overlapping pattern, ‘literally scraping the bottom clean’.” Each dredge came up with many tons of animals. The fish were thrown overboard. The sea was littered with dead fish. Only a few recovered. The waste was appalling.” He called it ‘the complete destruction of a valuable food supply’.
Still, it seems the Sea of Cortez is yielding its wonders to the hungry fishermen. And there must be some fish left in ‘The Sea’ – we have seen schools of hundreds of dolphins, so intent on their fishing that only a few playful ones will break away to leap under our bow. The bird life everywhere is prolific, and we have watched for hours as huge squads of Brown Pelicans and Blue Footed Boobies dive bomb the small fish in the bay beside us. At night, both fish and birds perform a primordial underwater ballet in the light of the most amazing phosphorescence.
This has been a remarkable journey. Few boats come here in winter so we have had some of the most beautiful anchorages to ourselves. We have hiked up the arroyos (dry river beds) and to the top of the hillsides. We have seen giant cactus, and played a concert on a colossal pile of rocks that ring like bells. We swam with sea lions. We found petroglyphs, cave paintings, hot springs, cliffs made of fossils, a wide seam of obsidian, and a crystal cave where water has oozed through the cracks for many billion years to form quartz flowstone. The minerals in the rock faces along the shore have produced the most extravagant colors and patterns, and glow red in the low sun of early morning and evening. At that time, the water is oily calm and also takes on a vermilion hue. We have enjoyed the rickety stonework streets of Lapaz, Loretto and Mulege, where time seems to be caught in another era. We love the abundant sunshine, and the food!
Almost 70 years later, the Sea of Cortez has enchanted us, just as it did John Steinbeck.
Steinbeck wrote about Cabo San Lucas 69 years ago “To a man straight off a yacht, it is a miserable little flea bitten place, poor and smelly.” Rob passed through here on a yacht delivery in the 1970’s and found it not much different. He recalled a port captain, a small store and a tiny cobblestone fishing village. Rounding the Cape at midnight in 2009, with bright lights stretching far along the shore and up the hillsides, he said it felt as if he had been in a time warp. Passing up the opportunity to stay in the most expensive marina in the world, we visited overland from La Paz. Down by the waterfront, the locals hustle tourists to buy trinkets, take tours or go out game fishing. We watched the boats bringing in the marlin, dozens of them. A 6 year old girl adopted me as we walked around the malecon, imploring me to buy her wares with big pleading eyes and well rehearsed lines (‘make my day’ and ‘its almost free’ and finally just ‘please, please please!’) This seems far removed from “the Indians who sat timelessly on the rail, so used to the spiritual transaction that they had difficulty translating material things into money” portrayed by Steinbeck.
In Steinbeck’s time, foreigners were a curiosity, but today we are just another of the many yachts and gringos passing through. Only a couple of fishermen in their fiberglass long boats with big outboards have come to see us, asking for water and gasoline. Gone are the ‘seaworthy and fast’ double-ended canoes described by Steinbeck. “Sometimes a sail is set, but ordinarily they are paddled swiftly by 2 men, one at each end.” I wonder if there is still anyone alive who knows how to make these craft, ‘carved from a single log of light wood, braced inside with struts’. The Indians in the last century carried iron harpoons, wore traditional clothes and went barefoot. Everything we have seen here so far has been very modern and westernized. As prophesized in his book, “ A local 110-volt power unit and a winding dirt road may leave a people for a long time untouched, but high-voltage operating day and night, the network of wires, will draw the people into the civilizing web, and there is no escape from it.”
Steinbeck’s expedition was a scientific one, collecting and cataloguing the multitude of species that live in the inter-tidal zone. His findings seem incredible to us – ‘tide pools ferocious with life’, schools of airborne fish ‘like a silver blanket’, great long lists of the many different species found in each location, some bays containing ‘literally millions’ of specimens. We did not do a thorough investigation, although we heard that there was a similar study done a couple of years ago to determine what species could be found here now. It would be interesting to know the results of this.
Far from being scientific, we have taken a haphazard tally in some of the places we visited, and it seems to us that a pitiful few hardy samples are what remains of the prolific life along the shores of the Sea of Cortez. We wonder if the health of the ecology can be measured by the number of skeletons of fish, sharks and shellfish found on the beaches. For a great many of these remains litter almost all the bays, and seem particularly plentiful in the parks and bays where commercial fishing is supposed to be banned. Perhaps they have been fished elsewhere, and taken there for cleaning. The pile of precisely filleted carcasses leaves no doubt that these creatures did not die of natural causes. One bay contained hundreds of heads of the strange looking Angle Shark. In another we found a pile of Trigger Fish skeletons. There were mountains of Thorny Oyster shells, Pearl Oyster shells and Scallop shells in various locations. Every beach on one small island in Bahia Concepcion was piled with small Manta Ray skeletons. As depicted in Steinbeck’s Log, there were fish of every type in great numbers, but in skeletal form. He was equally shocked by the Japanese shrimp trawlers that he encountered at Guymas. He watched six of these 150-footers dredging in an overlapping pattern, ‘literally scraping the bottom clean’.” Each dredge came up with many tons of animals. The fish were thrown overboard. The sea was littered with dead fish. Only a few recovered. The waste was appalling.” He called it ‘the complete destruction of a valuable food supply’.
Still, it seems the Sea of Cortez is yielding its wonders to the hungry fishermen. And there must be some fish left in ‘The Sea’ – we have seen schools of hundreds of dolphins, so intent on their fishing that only a few playful ones will break away to leap under our bow. The bird life everywhere is prolific, and we have watched for hours as huge squads of Brown Pelicans and Blue Footed Boobies dive bomb the small fish in the bay beside us. At night, both fish and birds perform a primordial underwater ballet in the light of the most amazing phosphorescence.
This has been a remarkable journey. Few boats come here in winter so we have had some of the most beautiful anchorages to ourselves. We have hiked up the arroyos (dry river beds) and to the top of the hillsides. We have seen giant cactus, and played a concert on a colossal pile of rocks that ring like bells. We swam with sea lions. We found petroglyphs, cave paintings, hot springs, cliffs made of fossils, a wide seam of obsidian, and a crystal cave where water has oozed through the cracks for many billion years to form quartz flowstone. The minerals in the rock faces along the shore have produced the most extravagant colors and patterns, and glow red in the low sun of early morning and evening. At that time, the water is oily calm and also takes on a vermilion hue. We have enjoyed the rickety stonework streets of Lapaz, Loretto and Mulege, where time seems to be caught in another era. We love the abundant sunshine, and the food!
Almost 70 years later, the Sea of Cortez has enchanted us, just as it did John Steinbeck.
Photos from the Sea of Cortez
A patch of phosphorescent plankton 10 feet wide glowed in the dark behind our boat one night.
Piles of shellfish on the beaches.
Angel Shark carcasses, and a fossil rock – both creatures doomed to extinction?
Sport fishing boat bring in dozens of marlin like this one each day.
Manta Ray skeletons
Rock Art
Dolphins fishing behind Blue Moon
Can you find me in the cactus?
Concert on the Bell Rocks.
Blue Footed Boobies and Pelicans diving for fish.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Mexican New Year
In between storms, we left San Diego for Ensenada, Mexico - just 60 miles away. Our first glimpse was the giant flag, which may be seen from space.
After 6 hours of grueling paperwork we had cleared in, and were on our way again. Next stop was Turtle Bay, 300 miles further down the Pacific coast of the Baja peninsula.
Although it meant spending Christmas Day at sea, we decided not to ride out an approaching storm in the exposed anchorage at Turtle Bay. Dolphins put on a great show for us all day, and a spectacular phosphorescent ballet all night.
Another 250 miles further south we came to Bahia Magdalena. We went hiking in the dunes, and found evidence of a storm with huge areas of shells up in the sand hills. The town of Puerto Magdalena hosted a great New Years Eve dance.
We left Bahia Magdalena for a 250 mile non-stop sail around the bottom of the Baja, past Cabo San Lucas and on up to Bahia de los Muertos,
We are just south of La Paz, our next stop.
After 6 hours of grueling paperwork we had cleared in, and were on our way again. Next stop was Turtle Bay, 300 miles further down the Pacific coast of the Baja peninsula.
Although it meant spending Christmas Day at sea, we decided not to ride out an approaching storm in the exposed anchorage at Turtle Bay. Dolphins put on a great show for us all day, and a spectacular phosphorescent ballet all night.
Another 250 miles further south we came to Bahia Magdalena. We went hiking in the dunes, and found evidence of a storm with huge areas of shells up in the sand hills. The town of Puerto Magdalena hosted a great New Years Eve dance.
We left Bahia Magdalena for a 250 mile non-stop sail around the bottom of the Baja, past Cabo San Lucas and on up to Bahia de los Muertos,
We are just south of La Paz, our next stop.
Although it meant spending Christmas Day at sea, we decided not to ride out an approaching storm in the exposed anchorage at Turtle Bay. Dolphins put on a great show for us all day, and a spectacular phosphorescent ballet all night.
Evidence of a storm– beds of shells 15 meters above sea level and a mile into the dunes…
The town of Puerto Magdalena hosted a great New Years Eve dance. The large building to the far right (painted with a sign) was the venue.
A quiet anchorage can be found inside the barrier islands at Bahia Magdalena.
Our first glimpse of Mexico was the giant flag, which may be seen from space.
Hiking the dunes with ‘Ladybug’…
The colored building on the left of the main street is the Turtle Bay school.
We bought oranges from the back of a truck.
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