LA PAZ IS SO EASY

We are still in La Paz enjoying the wonderful weather and great community. Every day is sunshine, 75 - 80 during the day and about 59 to 62 at night. The wind blows out of the NNE for most of the afternoon in the 5 to 15 knot range. The locals call this the cold season but we think it perfect.

There is a large community of cruisers and ex-patriates here. The three marinas have slips for about 500 boats, of which about 400 are sailboats. I am guessing that about 300 of the boats have full time live aboard occupants. There are also about 100 to 150 boats anchored in the two anchorages in La Paz. Almost every anchored boat is a full time cruiser. Many of the full time cruisers spend November thru May or June on their boat in the La Paz area and the Sea of Cortez and then return to the states for the summer. About 1/2 the boats we have met are from Portland, Oregon, Puget Sound or Vancouver, BC.

People talk about being "captured by La Paz." There are boaters here who came for a week and stayed for years. We are finding it very easy to understand how that happened. La Paz is low-key and laid back. Any service or goods needed by boaters are readily available and the community really likes cruisers. Buses are efficient and pervasive, shoppping is easy and comprehensive. La Paz reminds me a lot of Bellingham, Washington in the early '70s. That was one of my favorite places and times and I can see why someone would stay here forever.

The picture below was taken at the cafe on the sea wall about 100 yards astern of Mirador. Cheap coffee and good breakfasts.

The cruising community is fairly well organized. Each morning there is a local VHF net, Channel 22A, that runs for about 45 minutes beginning at 8 AM. The net controller keeps it sort of under control and solicits calls from boaters.

You are supposed to keep your call related to the current topic. The topics cover things like:

Priority, Medical, Emergency, Health&Welfare

Weather (the only interesting things about the weather forecast is will the northers blow? and will the clouds keep the temp below 75?)

The Mexican Peso/US Dollar exchange rate

The local price of Diesel and Gasoline and who has it

Each Marina announces what is has going today (Lupe is going for propane - have your tanks here by 10AM)

Parts (Each Marine store announces whose special order parts have arrived)

Downwind Parts (Net control trys to find out who has brought parts to La Paz from Downwind Marine in San Diego. Downwind will order parts for any boat via SSB radio, if you've setup an account with them. Then they will find a way to get them to La Paz, or wherever you are, with any other boat or boater headed south. Many Yachties traveling to San Diego via car or plane will check with Downwind before they return here to see if there are any parts they can bring back with them - a wonderful service)

Mail Call (each Marina announces who has received a C/O letter at the marina)

Mail Call (who is going to the States, who just came back from the States? NO ONE mails US bound mail from within Mexico. It is faster and safer to wait a week for someone to carry a letter to a US post office than to mail it here)

FAX Call (there are many land based FAX stations that receive FAXES for boats)

Rides and Crew (who is driving where and can take someone or who needs a ride / which boats are departing and can take crew or who is on land and wants a boat ride somewhere. There are at least two or three announcements a week from a couple who "just bicycled/backpacked/hitch hiked to La Paz and want to crew to anywhere on the Mainland")

Announcements (Writer's Club Lunch meeting at La Pasa or Jam Session at La Angle or "quit sending HAM e-mails on high power" or really important stuff like the "ATM on the Malecon is giving you a receipt but no pesos" and "I used my credit card at xxx store and they made a copy and I now find $10,000 of charges made in Mexico City"- whoops)

Local Assistance (Where can I find 5 micron water filters? who can repair a BMW diesel injection tube? Is CCC open late tonight?)

Swaps and Trades (it is illegal for a non-resident to sell anything in Mexico without a license) This is the fun part of the net - people try to get rid of the strangest things, even more unlikely is that other people will buy those things.

After the NET closes it is a free for all on CH 22A as everyone trys to make contact to resolve the things that came up during the Net.

After the local NET we listen to the CHUBASCO NET on HAM radio. This controlled net provides coverage from San Diego to Acapulco and allows every HAM to have a known time and frequency for requesting assistance or making contact with other HAMs. Landbased Chubasco Net HAMS provide one way (call and leave a message) or two way phone patches to most of Southern California, Arizona, and sometimes Texas and New Mexico. Those patches provide toll free or at least US rate based phone calls home.

The most important part of Chubasco is the weather reports and forecasts. Boaters all over Mexico report current conditions and then the Chubasco weather prognosticator offers his analysis of the National Weather Service charts.

Our days here are spent in a pretty leisurely fashion. We get up in time to listen to the VHF net. Arlene then begins her excercise programs and I read and drink coffee until about 10 AM. I usually work on a boat project until early afternoon, or I spend time with the Mexican Beauracracy trying to get our Temporary Import Permit.

Some of the boat projects during the last week have been:

Clean the barnacles and grass off the waterline

Re-rig the control lines for the Sailomat windvane

Clean all the Spectra pre-filters

Try to find 5 micron and 20 micron filters for the Spectra

Try to get the alternator whine out of the HAM radio

Adjust the Trace C-40 solar panel voltage regulator

Try to figure out if the batteries are dying or just not well cared for

Refill all the gasoline tanks for the outboards - a five mile one way dinghy trip

Reinforce the Portabote seat ends with fiberglass and resin

Fix the leak in the Portabote transom

The afternoons are spent reading, eating a late lunch, and taking a siesta. Every other day we take the dinghy over to the commercial dock and then walk six-blocks up the hill to the community market. We love shopping there. It is so busy and hectic and the sales people are so much fun to talk to. I am getting to speak a fumbling form of Spanish and they speak about the same English. The clerks want to practise their English and I want to practise my Spanish. Everyone laughs.

When we shop at the market we often don't eat on the boat because there are so many neat little outdoor food vendors. Arlene loves the corn on the cob and I have a fish taco at every stand that sells them. So far we've had no problems eating the food.

Arlene has decided she wants to buy the French restaurant that is for sale in Marina Palmaria. She is getting real interested in staying in La Paz on a long term basis.

We have found that food is not much cheaper here than in the states. There is a 15% import tax on everything from the US on top of the local 10% tax on everything. Everything in La Paz is imported, either via truck from San Diego or by boat from Mazatlan. This is essentially an island and the prices of food reflect that status.

Arlene has made friends with Martin, the fresh produce vendor who has the rights to keep his stand at the entrance to Marina La Paz, just 50 yards from our dinghy dock. We get fresh produce from Martin on a daily basis.

We'll be here another week at least. We can't leave until we get our Import Permit, TIP, which is lost somewhere in the paper piles. The TIP is required to leave the boat in a marina or to import duty free parts. No TIP - 100% duty!!

We are trying to figure out if our house batteries are getting old and tired. The solar panels bring them to a full charge by 3 PM each day. That is; they stay at 14.4 volts for an hour while the current they accept declines from 18 amps to about 8 amps. The Trace C-40 solar voltage regulator then floats the batteries at 13.6 volts as they accept only about 2 amps.

The problem is that we run the watermaker for an hour each evening along with lights, stereo, HAM radio, and sometimes computer or TV. The Spectra pulls the voltage down to about 12.4 volts after an hour. The Spectra watermaker output falls off from 15 GPH at 13.5 volts to 11 GPH at 12.5 volts. When we turn off the Spectra the voltage rebounds to 12.7 or so.

Why not run the watermaker when the sun shines and the solar panels are making 20 amps? Excellent question! The locals tell us to only run the watermaker on a good incoming tide, e.g. 2 knots or so. The once a day low tide almost always occurs between 6 PM and 9 PM.

By 10 PM, the sun sets at 6 PM, the voltage has dropped to about 12.4 volts but the Link2000 says we've only pulled 75 amp hours out of the batteries. The two 8Ds have a new capacity of 440 amp hours and can release 20 amps per hour without damage.

We turn off all the current draws, i.e. the DC main circut breaker and the refrigerator circut breaker, when we go to bed at 11:30 PM. At that point the battery voltage bounces back to 12.5 volts. When we get up in the morning the batteries are at only 12.6 or 12.7 volts which indicate that they have been discharged about 40% - 50%. However, the total amp-hours withdrawn is only about 90 which is less than 25% of the batteries capacity.

So we are confused. We'll have to keep watching for a while and decide what to do.

More from La Paz when something interesting happens.