STILL IN LA CRUZ !

Mirador  is still in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle on Monday morning April 21. The NW to NNW winds have been blowing in the 12 to 22 knot range for at least 12 hours a day since I arrived here on April 10.  The heading from here to La Paz is over 375 miles at about 296° degrees magnetic (WNW) and to Mazatlan it is 332° (NW) magnetic for 165 miles.  Either of those routes would be bumpy and wet while bashing into the short steep Sea of Cortez wind waves.  Since I am lazy and La Cruz is a nice place to hang out I have been idling away the days while anchored about 1/2 mile off the beach at La Cruz.

The NW winds are supposed to be dying off for the next four to seven days so I will be heading to Mazatlan tomorrow morning.  I really need to get out of here since I checked out with the La Cruz Capatania de Puerto last Thursday morning.  All official business in Mexico ended last Thursday morning for the Easter weekend celebration and I had thought I would be able to leave sometime over the weekend.  There were 11 boats here in La Cruz this weekend, all of which had checked out but couldn't leave because of the the constant NW winds that were forecast to quit each day but just kept blowing.  This Port Captain is very easy going and probably won't cause a problem since he understands our need to have decent weather.

I was all set to leave this morning but the weather played one last trick that caused yet another delay.  The Saturday weather charts showed a 1007 Mb low centered over Mexico City and a 1016 Mb High ridge off the west coast of the Baja peninsula.  That is a pretty steep pressure gradient and was the cause of the persistent NW winds.  The US National Weather Service (NWS) forecast for Sunday was that the 1007 low would be replaced by a 1014 Mb High pressure ridge extending south from Texas.  That ridge, at almost the same pressure as the one off the Baja coast, would have given light or even SE winds for the La Cruz to Mazatlan route. 

Late Sunday morning the NW winds started up again in La Cruz and by 2 PM they were gusting over 20 knots.  I downloaded a new NWS chart for this area and saw that the Low pressure system over Mexico City had deepened to 1005 Mb rather that being replaced by a 1014 Mb ridge.  How can the NWS be so wrong over a 24 hour period?

Well, now the forecast is again for a High pressure  ridge to build over old Mexico and to be stable for the next week.  I'll wait until tomorrow morning to be sure about the weather and then head off to Mazatlan and then la Paz.

As a brief aside, PV is about 20 miles away, on the other side of Banderas Bay.  We have to walk six blocks from the dinghy landing to catch a bus to PV.  The bus ride lasts a thrilling 30 to 40 minutes and costs $1.00 US.  Some of the buses are plush new air conditioned coaches and a few are school buses that failed their safety inspections in the US, maybe 20 years ago.  During the last 12 days I have made four or five trips to PV.

I took my very dead ICOM M710RT HAM/SSB radio to a highly recommended repair facility in Puerto Vallarta last week.  The technician verified that the unit is tuning to exactly the correct frequency but is transmitting with less than 0.1 watts of power.  The odd thing is that even when he plugged a signal generator directly into the coax antenna connection on the radio the S-meter on the radio registered no incoming signal.  He verified that there is continuity through the coax connection to the first connector on the tuning board in the radio.  He checked all the power transistors and said they were all good.  He checked all the power supplies and fuses and they were all good.  He finally told me that everything tested fine but the radio did not receive or transmit.  He thinks the problem is somewhere in one of the digital chips that ICOM has programmed.

ICOM responded to my e-mail inquiry by saying that I needed to send the unit back to ICOM America for testing and repair.  They have no ICOM repair facility nor even an authorized repair site in Mexico.  What do you think it will cost to send a 25 pound radio from La Paz to ICOM in Bellevue, Washington and how long do you think it will take? 

I think I will fly from Cabo San Lucas back to Seattle in early May and take the radio with me.  The round trip airfare is only $354.

Irwin on Winsome has lent me their Sangean ATS-803A "World Band Receiver" so I can listen to all the HAM and SSB nets to get the local forecasts. 

Life on the hook in La Cruz is, as always, very pleasant and entertaining.  Popositos has excellent small groups playing jazz or Gypsy music several nights a week.  Latch and Andrea, "La Gitana Blanca", wowed the big crown last Friday night with they tremendous guitar playing.  They do "old and new Gypsy music".  They are both German, I think, and spend half the year in Banderas Bay and the summers in Europe.  Last Friday they were really wound up since it was their final performance here until next winter.  The crowd and the players just kept encouraging each other to get more excited and happy.  By 11 PM everyone was standing, clapping, dancing, and screaming. 

Several of my friends have their boats in the Paradise Village Marina in Nuevo Vallarata, about 10 miles from here.  Nuevo Vallarta is an enormous resort and vacation complex with several huge hotels and dozens of condo complexes, all on the western facing beaches of Banderas Bay.  Boats with a slip in either marina are allowed to use all the resort facilities which include tennis courts, volleyball courts, swimming pools, beach cabanas, beach bars and all the other beach stuff needed by tourists.  We meet on the beach several times a week to play volleyball, drink cheap margaritas, and generally have a good time. 

They have a great beach volleyball court with special firm sand, court boundaries, regulation height net, and a full time referee to keep the games under control.  There is a sign up list for teams and we play six person games with the winner staying on the court.  Many of the players are very good and we have some pretty high quality games.

But, now it is time to get moving again so my next WEB posting will be from La Paz in about a week or 10 days.