Wednesday, November 30, 2011

11/29/2011 -- More La Paz

Yesterday (Monday) we had planned on getting underway early and checking out some of the anchorages at Espiritu Santo and Partida for a couple of days...I got up at 0330 to check out the weather and found that the winds were still blowing in the high teens out of the north and I could see white water in the channel as well as beyond the sand bar that protects the channel...I turned on the B&G FFD in my berth and so I could glance at the wind speed and direction while in the rack, then went back to sleep...the wind stayed in the mid to high teens the rest of the night...which meant it was about 5 kts more outside the protection of Pichilingue and nearby hills...WTF!!! will we ever get out of La Paz???...back to sleep again.

I got up and 0530 and headed to the showers...usually it's a great time and I'm totally by myself, but today it was packed with all the people who thought they were going to get underway, but thought better of it...Later, during the morning VHF net one of the cruisers said he'd gotten underway at 0400 but started getting blasted by 4-6 foot seas at 3-5 second intervals once he got out of the channel at Pichilingue, so he turned around and headed back to the anchorage...I think the weather gods have it in for us...

After the net, Danny and I decided that heading out today would be nuts, so headed into town for breakfast (45 pesos complete with juice and coffee at Olympia!) only to find white water in the channel and spray breaking on the malecon...it was the roughest we'd seen although the wind speed was not as high as it was last week...I think this is because the higher wind speeds further north in the sea generated these unusually big waves even though the local winds were not over 20 kts...who knows...

The walk into town is really enjoyable...(In fact, it's one of the things I really like about Marina Palmira) it's about 2.5  to 3 miles each way to the places we go so, if done briskly, provides a small bit of exercise...(we got passed by a woman walker today, so brisk may not accurately describe our walking style...) and I wanted to walk to try to get the pain out of my heel that I bruised jumping onto the dock yesterday...plantar faciitis strikes again.  I had put my Dr. Scholls heavy duty pads into my running shoes and hoped for the best...I could hardly walk to the shower earlier but the walk to town did the trick and I was feeling better after the walk...of course after breakfast I was hobbling, but again, the pain went away with the walk back to the marina...I guess I'm going to have to be more careful and quit acting like a teenager...so far Joe, Danny and I have now all had our serious or minor injury issues...Joe is starting rehab on his broken leg, Danny's swelling has subsided and my heel is healing...all good.

When we got back to the boat the marina guys were working on our dock...which was in the process of disintegrating...(they are cement docks and the surge from the Norther caused part of the wood to fail and in turn, break the cement in the dock) so we had to move to another spot in the marina.  It was interesting with the wind blowing in the teens, but WWV is manageable in reverse once I get the speed up. We backed out of the old slip and putting the peddle to the metal we backed out of our  fairway into the new fairway and into our new slip...most of the boats here either have thrusters or don't back down well so we got a number of approving nods...luck is a good thing.  We are now down with all the mega yachts; somehow WWV with her unpainted aluminum topsides looks a little out of place in this environment...we also lost our view (but are totally protected by these huge yachts).  Beside the loss of view, we are now down by the restaurant and have to deal with the noise...oh well, it could be a lot worse...I could have failed to increase our reservation and not had a slip at all.  The marina is now totally booked with a waiting list!  I'm told our dock will be repaired in a couple of days (not a chance) but in any case, we'll move back to our old quiet slip when it's ready... but the pace of things in Mehico is about the same as HI, so we may be here for a while...

I'm beginning to realize that there is relatively little sailing in the Sea of Cortez unless you're going east or west (to the mainland or back).  That doesn't sit too well with us, but it is what it is.  The winds have finally calmed down today, but I think we'll just hang out and do some more exploring

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