WINTER IN THE ISLANDS OF LA PAZ

Winter has settled on the South Sea of Cortez. The sky has been overcast, the North wind blowing at 10 to 30 knots, the temperatures seldom get above 73 degrees and, heaven forbid, there has been rain on the decks! Arlene and I have really turned into tropical wheenies. When the air temperature gets below 70 we put on sweaters, socks, and long pants. Just the other night we ran the diesel heater in the boat when the inside temperature dropped to 66 degrees.

It hasn't even been two years since we cruised in the San Juan Islands of Puget Sound and thought 66 degrees was the height of luxury. There were very few summer evenings when the temperature stayed above 65 and we thought it was great. Now and here we are whining and complaining 'cause we can't wear shorts and tee shirts 24 hours a day.

The Sea of Cortez has been suffering from a moderately strong N to NE wind pattern for about five days now. The high pressure system over the Four Corners area just keeps pushing the cooler air down here from the cold intermountain plateau. The somewhat unusual aspect is the cloud cover which is due to the strong subtropical jetstream that is carrying warm moist air from the Pacific ocean southeast of Hawaii directly over Baja California. The result is almost continual overcast and the odd shower.

Last week during the onset of this weather we were surprised by the first heavy shower that began about 3 AM. I kept having a dream about sailing in Puget Sound with the typical wet and cold spray on my face. I finally woke enough to realize that I was sleeping on Mirador in the balmy Sea of Cortez. I eventually figured out that the portlight over my head was allowing spray from the rain on deck to fall, ever so gently, onto my face. Since I am no longer used to rain I did the only reasonable thing my mostly asleep brain could think of. I shoved the portlight closed and rolled over, covering my head with a pillow.

When I woke up at 7:30 AM Arlene was already awake and excersising. Once I stumbled to the coffee pot she asked me why I hadn't closed the hatches. It turns out that she woke up shortly after I closed the portlight and realized that it was raining HARD and ALL the hatches and ports were open. She spent the next five minutes scurrying around closing things and drying off the dribbling water. Well, that's her story, I slept through the whole thing and am not convinced it really happened. But, the decks were washed clear of all the salt and dust that had built up on them since the last rain we had in Chula Vista, three months ago.

We stayed in Bahia San Gabriel (see January 24 2002) until yesterday afternoon, (Saturday February 2), when we decided to make a major and ardous journey north. We motored four miles north (we really are getting lazy), up the west side of Isla Espiritu Santo, to Caleta de la Isla (Cove of the Island). This little cove is about 1/4 mile deep and wide and is situated just east of Isla Ballena, thus the name. The cove is surrounded by tall reddish hills and low, 2000', mountains. We arrived here about 4 PM and anchored in 10' of water with 90' of chain attached to our anchor bridle.

We experienced 20 - 30 knot Northeast winds and 4' seas on the way up here but the cove provides decent protection from the swell. The wind was roaring down from the mountains to our east, hitting Mirador with 35 knot gusts as we anchored . The ever faithful Bruce 44 anchor set nicely on the first try and we haven't moved an inch in the last 20 hours.

Mirador has a nasty tendency to shear badly while anchored in strong winds. (Shearing is the phenomenon where the bow of the boat oscillates, in our case, up to 50 degrees off the wind to either side). That means we present way too much surface area to the wind when we get almost sideways as we shear from side to side. Yesterday I tried dropping a 22 pound Danforth anchor with 6' of chain off the bow. I let out just enough anchor line to allow the anchor and 1/2 the chain to rest on the bottom. I was hoping that the drag of the small anchor would slow the bow from falling off the wind so fast and thus diminish the amount of shearing we experienced. I am not sure if it helped much.

At least yesterday's attempt was not as disastorous as a similar attempt last week in Bahia San Gabriel. The wind had been blowing a steady 25 for about 24 hours and the gusts were in the low 40 knot range. I decided to drop the Danforth off the STERN of Mirador, again just touching bottom, to slow the rate at which the stern swung. Good Idea - terrible results.

Within five minutes the poor little Danforth had caught a fluke under a major piece of Brain coral. The next big gust pushed the bow and the stern sideways and a huge load was imposed on the Danforth. The impact on Mirador was that we didn't swing so far but we did heel 15 degrees, WHILE AT ANCHOR, and stayed that way until the gust diminished.

I had to dive on the Danforth to free it from under the coral. The end result was that one fluke is now bent 15 degrees.

You might remember from the end or our previous update (January 24 2002) that the Mexican Navy patrol boat was anchoring astern of us and we were worried we would be boarded and found to have inadequate papers. They never did board us but they did drive us crazy for another two days. They appeared to be on a training mission with a crew of about 12. Every three hours when the watch would change they had to pull up anchor and move 10 yards and reanchor; in the afternoon, at night, in the morning and so on. Sometimes they anchored 100 yards from us, sometimes they anchored 20 yards from us. AND... they ran their generator 24 hours a day.

Eventually the Navy went back to La Paz and we had the entire bay to ourselves again.

We ate lots of good, and very fresh, seafood while in San Gabriel. Several rusty old commercial shrimpers use the bay as an occasional rest stop. They sold us 2 1/2 pounds of headed shrimp for $11 US. They also gave us 15 pounds of fish for free. They even filleted the four biggest ones for us. The fish was mostly sole, red rockfish, and surfperch. After cleaning we ended up with about seven pounds of very nice fish. We also have been getting a lot of scallops and Pen Shells. The fish and chips, and scallops and pasta, have been excellent.

I decided to hike from the east end of Bahia San Gabriel to the east side of Isla Espiritu Santo, a distance of about 2 1/4 miles. The terrain was quite varied and interesting. The first 1/2 mile behind the low sand dunes is a flood plain that appears to be occasionally inundated by both the Sea during storms and freshwater runoff from the surrounding hills. The crushed sea shells are an 1" deep in places. It cracked me up to find large, perfectly preserved crabs, bleached pure white, 1/2 mile from the closest saltwater.

I was surprised to find a three or four acre lake about 100 yards east of the dunes. It was surrounded by Mangroves and appeared to be brackish water. I waded in but was knee deep in very sticky mud within two steps. I almost lost my thongs to the mud, after I determined that I could get my feet out of the mud.

The land slowly climbed and dried as I walked east, rising to about 100' above the bay. The ground turned to red dirt covered with tiny white daisies and a wide variety of cactus, ranging from a few inches high to barrel cacti that were 40' tall and four feet in diameter. Eventually the brush and cactus got so thick that I had to carefully search for a path thru it. That is where I discovered the painful world of dessert burrs.

Now I have seen lots of burrs in my life of hiking and mountain bike riding. But, these were world class, major league, ever so sharp burrs that could jump from their little plants to my not so little shoes, socks, and legs. They were needle sharp, the lightest touch of a finger would cause the burr to penetrate the skin. Fortunately the burr plants only occured during about a 1/2 mile of the hike, but I had to stop and clean my shoes and socks about every 100 yards.

I finally found the east side of the island and was able to look east across a beautiful white sand beach out into the Sea of Cortez. Then it was back thru the burrs to Mirador.

The HAM radio we have is turning out to be very entertaining and useful. There are six major HAM radio nets here in the Sea of Cortez and two international maritime service nets that we use. A radio net is a formal organization that provides a specified time of day and radio frequency for establishing contact. A "net manager" opens the net at the same time every day, e.g. Chubasco Net, begins at 1530 Zulu (8:30AM MST), everyday on 7.294 MHz. The net manager, and all his relay stations follow a prescribed protocol each day. The protocol varies to some degree from net to net but is basically similar.

The net opens with a preamble, establishing the rules and procedures. The net then listens for "emergency, medical or priority traffic". This listening period allows any station, (a station is a HAM operating a radio), to broadcast a distress call with the certain knowledge that hundreds of other HAMs are listening. Continuing the example of the Chubasco Net, the call for emergency traffic is first broadcast by the net controller who is usually on a boat, somewhere between San Diego and Acapulco (1500 Nautical Miles). The call is then rebroadcast by the designated relay stations who are situated in locations as diverse as Bahia Magedelana (Baha California),Tuscon, Hemet, La Paz, San Carlos (Sonora Mexico), and the Socorro Islands.

If no emergency traffic is heard; the net has a weather forecaster broadcast local weather forecasts for the many different areas covered by the net. This person is usually based in the US and has acess to the Internet and WorldWideWeb where they get all the data. The net then listens for calls from stations that need a relay of the forecast. This process of broadcast and relay is how the net ensures that all participating stations have full acess to all the net information.

There is then a discussion period about the weather. Some of the nets have a special check-in period either just before or just after the weather for "underway vessels". Those boats that are moving then provide onsite reports of their particular weather and are allowed to ask for details of their local areas.

Following the weather is usually a QST (a HAM term dervied from the Morse code abbreviaton for Traffic of General Interest) session. Any station with information of general interst is allowed to broadcast their message. For example, last week there were several QSTs about 1/2 mile long floating fish nets in the Punta de Mita area. The problem was that the net floats were unmarked and the 1" line was below the surface. Punta de Mita is the northern approach for any boat going to Puerto Vallarta and is therefore heavily traveled.

After the QSTs are sessions to allow boats to talk to shore side stations, shore side stations to talk to boats, and boats to talk to boats. The idea is that each party establish contact on the net and then move to another frequency to continue the conversation.

Most nets last between one and two hours each day. Each net has a different character. Chubasco is a very tightly controlled, no nonsense net run by HAMs for HAMs. The Manana net, at 7 PM MST, is open to anyone with a SingleSideBand, (SSB), radio and operates on a frequency that does not require a HAM license. Manana is much less formal and is more open to relaxed chatter between boats.

There is a formal net scheduled for, (all times are MST), 7:15 AM, 8:00AM, 8:30 AM, 9:00 AM, noon, 5 PM, and 7 PM.

There is also a series of international maritime service nets run on 14.300 MHz from 10AM MST until 7 PM MST. These service nets are open only to HAMs and are operated by land based stations in the US and Canada. They are specifically designed to provide an ongoing point of contact for any Maritime Mobil (HAM on a boat) operating from about the equator to the Arctic Circle, from Hawaii to Europe. The shore based stations have enormous antennas and very powerful transmitters. They can pick up the very weak signals transmitted by maritime mobil stations and can relay messages to almost anywhere.

Another maritime service net (Pacific Seafarers) begins at 7:30 PM MST and lasts for three hours on 14.313 MHz. This net has relay stations in Hawaii and the Pacific Northwest and provides coverage to boats as far southwest as Fiji.

The other great thing provided by most nets are phone patches. This allows us to call any phone number in the world from our boat. We just use one of the nets to make radio contact with a landbased ham who has the equipment to connect their radio to the public telephone system. He then calls the phone number we want and we then conduct a regular telephone call. The only difference is that each party on the phone call has to say "over" when they want to allow the other person to talk.

Most of the patch operators provide free telephone calls in their local area and many provide free calls to anywhere in the US.

A wonderful demonstration of how the nets work was given last Thursday. A scuba diver on a sailboat at Soccorro Island, 250 nautical miles South of Cabo San Lucas, suffered the bends after coming up from a 66' dive. She was suffering badly and was experiencing paralysis, loss of consciousness, and difficulty breathing. A HAM on another boat at Socorro Island made contact with the MariTime Mobil Service Net on 14.300. Two HAMs, one in San Diego and one in Ft. Worth, Texas then took over management of the event. They were able to arrange for air evacuation from the Mexican naval airstrip at Socorro and for acess to a Hyperbaric chamber in Cabo.

The Chubasco net was used to find two HAMs in the La Paz area that served as relay stations between Soccorro and Ft. Worth when the 20 meter band (14.300 MHz) couldn't support the direct contact.

The shoreside HAMs also ran phone patches to allow the DAN (the professional diving association) doctors to talk to the RN and MD who happened to be on another boat at Sicorro. The end result was that the onsite doctor had professional acess to medical experts and the injured diver was airlifted by jet to Cabo within 20 hours of the accident. She was placed in the hyperbaric chamber just 25 hours after her first symptoms appeared.

Four days later she is still undergoing hyberbaric therapy and is still suffering some nueral deficit but a full recovery is expected.

The HF HAM radio really makes it easy to stay in touch with the world up north.

We also listen to a lot of US AM radio on the HAM radio. We have crystal clear recption of San Diego, San Franciso, Salt Lake and Dallas AM radio stations for about an hour before and after sunset each day.

We are going to stay here in Caleta de la Isla for several days and they we'll move north once again. We'll have to go back to La Paz within about 10 days 'cause we are running short of propane. Our big propane tank usually lasts at least three weeks and sometimes five weeks. We had a new service fill it the day before we left to come out here. The tank was empty in just 13 days so we think they didn't really fill it.

Or, Arlene thinks all the bread she has baked used up more propane than I realized.

Propane is the one thing we can't do without.

We hope to get back to the warm bright Baja winter within a day or so when the wind is supposed to diminish and the clouds should also dissipate.