24 Feb 2010 Puerto Ballandra, Isla Carmen 26.0200N 111.1652W
Partida to Isla Carmen Picassa Pictures

We’ve had some strange winds keeping us on our toes. On our toes, in this case means getting less sleep, taking fewer shore trips, zig-zag sailing, changing destinations mid passage, and generally keeping a close eye on the weather reports, and a closer eye on the weather at hand. All of this seems to sap motivation for writing. So for the past week our daily task of safe-sailing has taken a chunk of life’s focus; and yet it’s subtasks are made up of lots of little decisions based on vague and impermanent facts making that very focus difficult. Mix in a little fatigue and it leaves me without the extra bandwidth for creative pursuits. Bandwidth! Now there’s a word I have not used in a couple months; that and multitasking. All these computer terms that have slipped into our language, to draw parallels between human behavior and computer behavior. If personification is applying human traits to the nonhuman; what would this new trend be? technoification or computification? Life on a boat, does not usually bring to mind parallels in computing (nor parallelization). The notion of multitasking does not exist here; unless, you call reading while on watch multitasking – but even there, you actually have to stop reading to watch, and stop watching to read. All other activities are singletask in nature. If I’m making bread and there’s a fish-on or a wind shift requiring assistance on deck, all bread-making stops, and deck activity starts – ideally with a brief interval to stow any open containers that may spill in the maneuver and to make my way to the cockpit (with any required tools and without any head or shin bumps). It is possible to bump my head and shin simultaneously while on my way to the cockpit causing me to drop the fishnet, that’s probably the closest I come to multitasking these days, but I think that qualifies more as a multitasking error.

I think I read somewhere that true multitasking like computers do (performing multiple calculations simultaneously), is not actually possible for humans, unless you count breathing and typing as multitasking. Our brains don’t seem to be able to think two things at once, and what many call multitasking in humans, is actually just rapidly switching between tasks, which according to the report I read, is not an efficient use of human brains, although our children are getting better at it than we are, and so human brains may eventually adapt. On Silver Lining, switching rapidly between tasks is risky. We try to perform tasks methodically and without injury. There is no delete button for an accidental jibe, and no retrieve function for an overboard winch-handle (although with luck there may be a backup).

All this is a long excuse for the long silence. I’ll attempt a shortish version of what we’ve been doing since La Partida (2/19/10). This is more of a log version of the past few days, not the blog version. But I’m hoping you’ll find it somewhat interesting with the map right there for you to try to piece together our trajectories (I’m still trying to figure out if I can get multiple points on one map for you).

After harnessing the south winds to bring us North, we sailed straight to the east side of Isla Carmen(2/20/10), passing a number of islands that we hope to visit on our way back. We were unsure how long the winds would last, and debated going further north; but the winds appeared to be shifting counterclockwise around to the southwest, with northwinds in the 24-48 hour forecast. So we chose a good night’s sleep over northward progress. We had picked an ideal protected anchorage on the west side as our destination but by the time we rounded Point Lobos on the northeast end of Carmen, the winds were coming full west, dead on the nose, so we turned 180 degrees, sailed back around into Bahia Salinas, a wide white sandy beach bay with no protection from southwinds, but good protection from winds coming from SW all the way to winds from the NE (but given it’s low terrain, it could still be very windy in northwinds). We stayed there for 2 nights (2/20/10 – 2/21/10), keeping an eye on the weather, which was supposed to be light north winds, but for us felt more like a steady west wind. West is unusual her. Prevailing winds usually running parallel to the sea itself funneled N or S by big hot desert land masses, but the tall mountains and cliffs of the islands do some odd things to the wind around them. “Your results may differ,” should be an assumption added to every weather report. We caught up on sleep and school, and a quick beach trip kept us sane. On 2/21 in very calm weather we headed around the west side of Isla Carmen, thought about stopping in an old favorite anchorage on Danzante, but winds were predicted to increase, and we still thought Puerto Ballandra seemed like a good place to hole up for some windy days.

And so we come to our current position. Ballandra, a quintessential C-shaped cove, protected us nicely in the gale force winds we had yesterday. We started out at the wrong side of the cove, wanting to leave some breathing room for another boat already here. Early yesterday morning, after a rocky sleepless night with increasing refraction waves in the southern half of the bay, we moved to the north side. Here the wave action was a little calmer. But it was still a 24 hour wild ride. At some gusts the water next to the boat produced spindrifts (nice word for the smoking long snakey trails of windwhipped sea that occur around 40 knots). And the view of the waves outside the cove galloping by was impressive. The ham operator weather guy calls the big white caps here buffaloes; these looked more like mammoths to me, but Frank would probably say I should save that term for the South Pacific.

With the rough night and the rocky ride at anchor I called a wind-day on school activities (no school, but no computers), so the free day had Kennan and I lost in a Hilari Bell fantasy trilogy that takes place in a desert (true escapism). Logan was desperately trying to finish Henry Dana so he could move on to funner stuff, but after 3 chapters he shifted to listening to reruns of his favorite radio show, NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell.”*

Our new-to-us anchor seems to be landing and sticking every time, despite some infamy the CQR earned in an anchor test comparison done a few years back. We had a 35# CQR on Bille en Tete, without a dragging incident in it’s 15 years aboard. This 75# version seems to be as promising, holding well through a couple of rounds with a windy La Paz Walz, and now a good solid gale (gale = 34-40 knots or Force 8 on the beaufort). Frank’s theory on anchors is that weight matters more than shape, and having ridden many blows and a few tropical storms out at anchor, his opinion is based on much more than anecdote (if not quite a full survey). But until I’ve amassed a similar critical mass of anecdote, I’ll continue to sleep lighter than he at anchor (or maybe he just sleeps better knowing that I’m sleeping lightly). Thank you Kay for Frank’s sound sleep at anchor since we wed, and thanks Gary for keeping Frank busy now, by letting go of all that you built, so we could tinker, trade, adjust and abuse to suit our own harebrained ideas (if they’d had a 75# Delta at Minnies for trade, we would have gone for it, and those new hi-tech hi-performance German anchors are not showing up yet on Minnie’s used anchor shelf).

xoxomo

*A digression I decided to move out of the body of this message: I would say podcasts, ebooks and iTunes are transformative to the cruising experience. But without internet, any digital rights management limitations are a nightmare! It can be a major pain to move between the variety of devices a family of 4 may have on hand to listen, read or watch. And any requirements to login to a central server with a code or key are impossible, to all the software and media companies who target only a connected market: No, the whole world is not wired (or wireless)! And, offline has it’s advantages (great virus protection, no distraction through websurfing possible, books you bought can’t be confiscated by the company that sold them to you). I’ll work on a longer list of advantages to offline living.

Feb. 24 winds have died down to 15-20 knots, and we slept better last night.

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18 Feb 2010 Ensenada Grande, Isla La Partida 24.5597N 110.4002W and Somewhere North of there 25.1307N 110.8123W
Espiritu Santo and La Partida Picassa Pictures

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16 Feb 2010 Puerto Ballena, Isla del Espiritu Santo 24.4731N 110.3799W
Espiritu Santo and La Partida Picassa Pictures

We left La Paz yesterday after a variety of errands, provisioning (really just a fancy name for shopping), and a few evening strolls down the Malecon. They were pretty vibrant strolls, with all the Carnivale parade activity, we were probably the only ones strolling mostly there was dancing in the streets, scary looking rides, rusty roller-coasters, spinning devices, and a huge tower with a pendulum arm that swung in a 100’ arc (straight towards an adjacent 40’ high rock wall) called “Turbo-Force”. We saw workers bolting it together a couple days ago, I did not see any engineers or inspectors on site, but there was a nice plaster Jesus about 1/2 way up the steel pylon, certainly that’s just as good. If we want that kind of excitement we can climb the mast in a wind storm, instead we settled for bumper cars, and mostly just walked around with eyes wide open taking in all the color and with ears partly covered so-as not to take in ALL the noise. Kennan was loving it all, Logan had had enough after about 15 minutes. Later from the boat the deep base of carnivale festivities and later high pitch of sirens from carnivale excess, carried across the water to keep us floating in that odd half-awake, half-asleep state, where the wild things are dreamed.

We broke down and bought a new outboard. After years of sailing with kayaks for annexes, we’d pretty much managed to avoid an outboard on board, gass-tly beasts, they have a tendency to break down when you’re too far out to paddle back, or like Steinbeck’s Hansen Sea Cow, they work “…in a word, on days when it would have been a pleasure to row.” The good news is, Hansen’s motors never learned to reproduce, and so Steinbeck’s fear that they would, “…wait, plan and organize and one night, in a roar of little exhausts, they will wipe us out,” has not yet come to pass. In areas with strong currents, and areas where you have to anchor far out, an outboard is essential. A couple years ago Betty gave us an outboard she’d had in her garage for thirty years or more.. It ran great for us in the San Juan’s for a couple of summers (strong currents there!), and we figured we’d just bring it along and drive it till it died. Well…after quite a bit of use in the silty waters of Mag Bay, the old brittle plastic on the vintage impellers gave up (these are little paddlewheel-like thingies in the engine that push seawater through to keep the engine cool*), and when we asked the local ship chandlery if he knew where we could find replacements, his reply was “un museo.” Outboard museums being a little on the rare side, our decision was made. Even if we’d found the impellers, what would the next vintage part needed be? We are now the proud owners of a new 9 HP Honda. It’s silver gray matching Silver Lining’s hull. I’m hoping the color will keep it camouflaged so it’s not quite so obvious to potential thieves. With the old Mercury theft was not a concern. Frank and the kids are searching for an appropriate name; one that will please her, and not tempt the gods. Frank is suggesting Santa Valentina (the day she joined our family), I’m not sure how Neptune will feel about a Christian deity, but we’ll have to see. In the interest of covering all the bases, we’ll be holding a proper naming ceremony soon. We’ve learned protective mantras Julie sent us. One of our Latin assignments is memorizing the lord’s prayer, that can’t hurt, but Logan’s upset with me that I did not think to bring some incense along. Diane do you think it would help to pin on the little turkish glass eye you gave us? Kay, I might try to paint the black Egyptian Cat somewhere on her, what was the cat’s name? Anyway whatever your own practice is, we’d appreciate you including Santa Valentina in your prayers, she’ll be an important member of our crew from here on out.

The contrast from our town days to here is marked. Espiritu Santo is beautiful. I feel like I’ll soon be running out of adjectives for naming all the beauty we see daily here, so I’ll try to describe what I see; when we get ashore I’ll upload photos so you can see too, but if you ever get a chance to take a Baja vacation, don’t miss it. Not a town trip though, not that I’m one to knock a beach, beer and margarita vacation, but a short distance away from many of the towns are these amazing pristine spots, with only a few visitors and breathtaking landscapes. Right now we’re anchored in the third northern lobe of Puerto Ballena. A dramatic 75 foot red rock cliff north of us is currently providing protection from some northerly winds. The cliff walls appear to have t vertical tapered columns with varying heights and widths lined up one after the other. Some are angular, some cylindrical, and periodically one is marred with a dark cavernous hole, making them look strangely like the chimineas you may have in your backyard. An odd mix of bright green hanging plants grow from the holes or from the column tops, or even from the perfectly flat vertical faces. The overall affect brings to mind the hanging gardens of Babylon. From some column tops grow tall columnar Cardon cactus, as if in extension of the rock pillars (these are the classic cactus in road runner cartoons). Dark rocks along the shore below the cliff draw a nice black line separating the red rock from emerald green waters. We went snorkeling below the cliffs this morning and there are some neat tropical fish (emperors, damsels, needlefish, parrotfish to name just a few). Looking up from snorkeling the Cardon’s are intimidating. Growing on top of solid rock, they don’t look like they could possibly have a solid foundation. Back at the boat now, I’m reading that some are believed to be 200 years old, and weigh 10 tons. Maybe next time we snorkel near one, we’ll bring the hand-bearing compass and try to measure a safe zone for swimming or kayaking around any possible Cardon-collapse zones. I’d like to avoid “squished by cactus” on my epitaph*.

On that note, wishing you all clear skies overhead!

xoxomo

*And if the engine’s not cool the metal of the pistons expands and they can’t move in the block…and the engine putt putt putters out. I don’t know how much the kids are learning, but I’m learning lots.

**Bonus Math Quiz: What’s the reaction force of the 10 ton cactus (10000 kg) when it reaches the bottom of the 75’ cliff (approx. 25 meters)

So after the whale incident, we learned a number of possibly helpful equations: 1. mass x velocity=momentum, 2. mass x acceleration = force (Newtons) 3. change in velocity/time taken = acceleration 4. distance moved/time taken = speed

And from our science book we know that the force of gravity is 9.8 meters per second squared.

I could use some help with this one, talk about rusty, I got stuck on figuring out how many seconds it would take the cactus to reach the bottom. I know it’s some kind of logarithmic equation, but we’re not there yet in Algebra one. Any tutors willing to offer assistance appreciated.

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13 Feb 2010 La Paz
La Paz Picassa Pictures

So I stretched the truth on the word sound in my last entry. We did have some new excitement, not the good kind. Turns out the tooth trouble was a major abscess, which the stoic captain had hidden from his trusty crew for a few too many days. I’d wondered why Frank had gone all quiet, I usually can’t shut him up, and my own idle chatter normally receives some cursory grunt or nod, if not always full idle chatter back. You’d think I would have noticed the swollen cheek, but a month’s worth of whisker growth served as camouflage. So finally yesterday we got him in to see a dentist. Frank is now officially one tooth closer to dentures. He has to have a shot of Penicillin a day for the next 3 days – I was feeling squeamish, and Logan was feeling game, so Logan got to do administer the shot. Later in the evening:

Frank to Logan: Good night Doc. Logan: Hey, what about my bill? Kennan: You don’t get paid for stabbing your dad in the butt.

Add to that excitement some high winds keeping us mostly boat bound, when we would have liked to be getting stuff done ashore (confirming dentist appointments, buying some fresh food (we only had carrots onions and potatoes, and catch of the day left on the fresh list, and had shifted to mostly canned a few days before arriving in La Paz). Visions of cheeseburgers in paradise were dancing in our heads, but we might as well have been 200 miles offshore (more in the last paragraph after my wide tangent coming in the next paragraph).

Apologies in advance to the sailors in the crowd, but I think for the benefit of those unfamiliar with life at sea, I’d like to do some more detailed translation of the finer points. The experts out there will keep me honest, since despite my many years of sailing, I’ve always been “spotted” by folks with way more knowledge than I. I may get some of the more technical points wrong in attempting to educate my favorite landlovers (landlubber sounds derogatory to my ear). If push came to shove and the captain fell overboard (heh, heh), I could manage the sails, start the engine and retrieve him, provided I was witness to his entry point. If the captain jumped ship for a dockside barmaid, I could, on my own, pull up the anchor, stow it, ram the dock, drag the captain back on board, tie him to the mast and navigate to the nearest island without a dockside bar (there are lots of suitable deserted isles in the South Pacific). But since both of these eventualities are highly unlikely I slip into 1st mate role easily. First mate is similar to passenger seat driving on long road trips: reading books to the kids, pulling together snacks, pointing out every potential danger in our path, questioning Frank’s decisions (I try to do it nicely) , studying the maps, and in a pinch yes I can drive. First mate actually takes more skill than you’d think. Ideally, I would find all the questions that would challenge the captain’s assumptions, thus assisting him in making better decisions. Instead, as I commit the language of sailing to memory, my questions tend towards the repetitive (which is a necessary part of full immersion learning). The questions I ask most have to do with right of way, “Do I have to turn or will he???” It’s always been a tough one for me. It’s similar to not being able to tell my left from my right. The good news is that I have an easy time with Port and Starboard, North and South. Somehow my brain’s point of reference is just not myself. I love on a boat that port is port and starboard is starboard, and they don’t switch places just because I turn around. My hands on the other hand, are never in the same place, one minute they’re on a right side, I turn around and voila, they’re on a left side, but it’s still my right hand, it just makes no sense. The complication with port and starboard comes when another boat enters the picture, then I have to mentally turn myself around, and place myself on that boat to find out if he’s on a starboard tack (generally starboard has right of way). To top it off, when you’re on a “port” tack, the wind is coming across your starboard bow (the experts will say, UNLESS you’re going straight downwind, and your main is pulled to wind ward, and well then it get’s complicated. The boom of the main is really what determines a port or starboard tack, but even that is extra complicated on a staysail schooner like SL where the “main” sail is the staysail (not the back sail with a boom, which is a “spanker” – our staysail is the big sail in the middle of our two masts) So experts, if I am going straight downwind, and the staysail is on the starboard side, but the wind is also coming ever so slightly from the starboard quarter, and all my other sails are to port (including the spanker which has our boom)…am I on a port or starboard tack? So I just asked Frank and he says, that’s why schooners don’t race, and that I’m sounding like Vencini (the guy who masterminded the kidnapping of the Princess Bride). Still, I’m stoked, I came up with a question that challenged the captain (he does not know the answer)! Anyway, the parts of right of way that I do understand are: make your intentions clear, and do everything you can to avoid collision. So our plan is to boldly sail to remote places where other boats are rare – the easiest path I can see to complying with these key points of right of way.

Talk about tangents! What I’d intended to describe for my landlover friends when I started that last paragraph, was the complexity of anchoring in La Paz in big winds, added to it’s already complex tidal currents which switch direction about 4 times every 24 hours. At some point during the day this means the strength of the tide is pitted against the strength of the wind, putting Poseidon at odds with Aeol, and wreaking catty-wompus havoc on an otherwise sensible anchoring job. When the tide turns, and both are working together it doubles the force on your recently twisted tackle. We witnessed such a battle of the gods yesterday when a 45’ sailboat dragged anchor at a good clip heading for two 200 foot mega-yachts at dock. Apparently the owner was not on board (having recently rescued a fellow boater who’s hand got caught in the anchor windlass…OUCH). No less than 4 dinghy hero’s jumped to save the day, pushing the floundering vessel to a safer area, untangling it’s anchor from a mass of old line and fenders that had wrapped around his anchor and chain rendering it useless. After most of the excitement passed, the vessel’s owner raced to the scene, took back the helm and headed for a dock, done with anchoring for the day. I think they call it the La Paz Waltz, on a windy day it looked more like the Boogie Woogie, or the Rock Lobster. SL, ever eager to join the dance, did a number of dizzying pirouettes around our chain when she was supposed to be laying nicely downwind of the anchor (yes turning the helm to windward stopped the spinning). Needless to say the temptation of internet and carnivale in town, did not lure us away from the boat for awhile, (that and the fact that the captain was feeling under the weather – big weather at that). A pair of binoculars, a cold beer, and the VHF play by play provided entertainment enough. My own preference is to be a be a spectator at such events. And later the fireworks looked just fine from the bay.

Sorry Land lovers if I gave too much of the wrong kind of detail, so much for attempting to put it in layman’s terms.

Happy Valentines Day! xoxomo

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11 Feb 2010 La Paz
Mag Bay to La Paz Picassa Pictures
No big stories or news to tell today. We had a slow and uneventful trip around the tip of Baja and up into the Sea of Cortez. Lots of time to read aloud to the kids from Steinbeck and Ricketts’ Log of the Sea of Cortez. I can’t believe he and the Doc didn’t like the mangroves; they only saw them in La Paz; they didn’t stop in Bahia Magdalena, maybe that’s why. Here the mangroves are configured a little differently, they don’t have the same endless winding tendrils. Given the wonderful descriptions of the teaming life in the tidepools, I can’t believe they would not also love the mangroves.

Otherwise we’ve had some cloudy weather, a little rain and winds from the south instead of the prevailing north winds. It would have been perfect weather yesterday to head up deeper into the Sea, but looks like we may have a visit from Frank’s mom, sooner than expected, so we’re waiting here, provisioning, catching up on school and beginning the endless search for a WiFi connection to catch up with email. Frank’s having tooth trouble too, so we’ll be looking for a dentist to take a look. Yes we have everyday days too.

xoxomo

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8 Feb 2010 Los Frailes
Mag Bay to La Paz Picassa Pictures
From Bahia Magdalena, we sailed through the night at a nice clip of 8 knots, made it around the tip of Baja, and sailed past Cabo San Lucas, escorted by breaching humpback whales. We then motored late into Los Frailes, the most eastern point on the Baja peninsula. We did a quick walk down memory lane, recounting for the kids an epic moment 13 years ago when my Dad and Betty wowed those in this anchorage, by sailing in with their spinnaker flying. We had dropped ours a few miles back, and were still surprised by the powerful downdraft off the steep cliffs north of the little bay. We’d radioed, to warn him, but it’s not always easy to hear the radio up on deck (or to take advice from your kids:) So we got out the binoculars to take in the show. Silver Lining under full spinnaker is a sight to behold. It’s amazing what 20 knots of wind with 30 knot gusts can do for the velocity of 20 tons of steel. They must have been doing over 10 knots, as Betty bravely turned into the wind, heading straight for the beach to drop the Spinnaker. SL broached, brazenly mooning us all with her glorious bottom. Gary, on the foredeck attempting to pull the sock over the spinnaker, got launched 6-10 feet off the deck gripping the lines of the sock like a trapeze artist. Three times he did a jack in the box leap into the air as the spinnaker, reticent to be doused in such fine winds, attempted to shed the sock – each attempt sending Gary high into the air . On the third attempt Gary won the upper hand, bagged the beast and tossed the anchor in the water. Here I may be exaggerating, but I swear I remember SL riding the anchor rode like a bungie jumper towards the beach, before she settled back to hanging in her proper spot to leeward of the anchor.

There was a French boat in the anchorage, and when Frank paddled over to greet his compatriots, the French, not easily impressed by other sailors, especially American sailors, said something like “Dit donc! ton Beau Pere, il a des couilles” I leave translating to Google…

This time we arrived in the calm dark of night, not wanting SL to get over eager and give us a repeat performance.

SL misses you dad! xoxomo

P.S. According to SL’s engineer, we are missing some data to complete yesterday’s math quiz.; does anyone know the absorption properties of whale blubber?

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6 Feb 2010 Boca de Bahia Magdalena
Final Mag Bay Picassa Pictures
OK, this was an exciting morning! Leaving Mag Bay we were indeed confronted by a gray whale obstacle course. We were sailing, so our maneuverability through the many blows was limited, not to mention that it’s difficult to predict where next a given whale will surface. We figured if we kept to a more or less straight path, they’d maneuver around us. There must have been 20 or more whales around the mouth of the bay as we made our way out. The grays are definitely arriving and they’re feeling frisky; perhaps in anticipation of the party ahead, meeting old friends, greeting new arrivals into the world. It’s a big old whale pow-wow beginning to happen.

As we we approached the entrance, the whales were surfacing closer and closer to the boat. A number of whale watching pangas were puttering around off the two points, and we were staying to the center. One whale emerged close, directly off our starboard bow. Frank ran to the bow to get a good look at her, watched her dive, and said it looked like she was going under us. He turned to make his way back to see where she’d surface behind, when I saw a second MUCH closer whale directly in front of us. From my perspective in the cockpit, I could see no water between her and the boat. Changing course was not an option. I hollered out to him; he turned (it seemed in slow motion to me) just as the knobs on her back began their roller coaster descent towards our bow, in perfect alignment. From the cockpit her back appeared to tower over him. Frank did not throw up his hands and yell like a good roller coaster rider would have, instead he grabbed the bow pulpit hard, backed his spine against the forestay, clenched his teeth (along with every muscle and pore in his body), and braced to either be hammered, or tossed in the ocean. I think I held my breath or maybe I hollered “Frank” again, I have no memory of me, only of whale and Frank, I was sure that this day, we’d be doing some in situ destructive testing of 3/16″ Corten steel*. Instead, she slid gracefully past our keel with no impact at all, not a bump, not a nudge, not even the sound of barnacles separating from blubber. Frank said her tail came within 12″ of the bow. I think he has, permanently emblazoned in his mind, the exact configuration of barnacles and scratches on that tail. He’d be able to pick it out of a line up; he definitely got that license plate number. Even if you take Frank’s “less than a foot” and double it to accommodate for the fisherman compensation factor and for the fact that our system of measurement is not his native language – that’s still 2′ away; less than the distance between the front of your desk and the back. Add the four feet from the waterline to the deck at the bow, and Frank was standing 6′ over a whale’s tail (better than 6′ under!).

The kids witnessed none of this, having retired into their books and journals, tired after an hour’s worth of exclamations from us, “There’s one!, fluke!, blow! closer!, breach!, wow!, and look at that!” how quickly kids grow to think the amazing is normal; they’re little adaptation machines. “Don’t whales wave their tales at boats all the time?” Frank and I on the other hand, may not fully recover from this one. I can still feel the after-ache of adrenalin in my thighs; it’s hard to run it off on a boat. Still, once we’d unglued Frank’s hands from the bow pulpit – the first thought was “What an awesome animal! Such a big beautiful beast!”

Catching (and nearly loosing) a Dorado later in the day was anticlimactic, but welcome. I think everything else for the next year will be anticlimactic but welcome!

xoxomo

*Math problem of the day: We were going 6 knots and weigh 20 tons. She too was probably going 6 knots, but weighs 2-2.5 tons per meter, (12-14 meters for the average whale…newborns are 4-5 meters, she looked pregnant…) Say between 25 and 40 tons. What would the impact load be, and extra credit for the engineer familiar with the material properties of 3/16″ Corten and the configuration of our hull: How good were our odds of staying afloat?

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5 Feb 2010 Man-o-war Cove
Final Mag Bay Picassa Pictures
Since my last post, we had some rainy days, some project days, some town/shopping days, some more explorations and some school catch-up to do (what with all those explorations). My own journal entries were starting to sound repetitive, thus the silence. We’ve not seen many whales since that one day a week or so back, but according to the locals, they’re just arriving now to birth their babies, so we’re early for that action. Apparently last year there were fewer whales than previous years, but still about 150 whales arrived. Everyone seems anxious to see what this year will bring.

The beach here is littered with large Humboldt squid. We first sited two of these giants swimming in the Estero. It was pretty shocking to see a beast that big in the shallows, they are amazing to watch swim. Frank pulled one up onto the beach just as a Canadian marine biologist walked up from another boat (magical place this is!) He said they are extremely voracious and showed us how they have teeth in each tentacle, and he explained the mechanics of their swimming (Frank says like an Italian tank, 1st gear forward, and 5th gear in reverse). Apparently they often beach themselves and die after spawning. He also said that they’ve been swimming into Canadian waters and can annihilate local fisheries. They used to be uncommon that far north. Evidence of a planet changing faster than we realize? Still amazing animals to watch. Their skin just flashes with color (chromophor cells according to the expert). And we’ll see tonight how they taste with butter and garlic (probably like butter and garlic – can’t go too wrong there).

The few rainy days were unexpected. They made sailors in Puerta Vallarta very unhappy – while we were dancing a jig for the water filling our tanks (less to make means less diesel burnt) – they were dragging anchors in 80 knot winds. Not wanting to join the ranks of the unhappy, we decided to hang out here a little longer to be sure the trough between highs did not drop another low bomb on us. The weather is now looking decent to continue our descent down the coast and around the tip of Baja. So at the crack of dawn we’ll navigate the gray whale obstacle course at the Boca, and continue our adventure south.

xoxomo

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