THE LA PAZ WALTZ TURNS TO A DANGEROUS TANGO

It is Sunday, March 17 and we are experiencing the coldest two days we have seen here in La Paz. Yesterday was cloudy all day with a brisk north wind. I actually had to wear a sweatshirt when we took the dinghy ashore at 5 PM for our daily shopping trip. There were even a few sprinkles of rain from the normally clear and dry sky. The 15 to 20 knot north wind blew all afternoon against the three to four knot outgoing tide to create some uncomfortable chop in the anchorage. Today is about the same with a little less wind but heavier clouds. I suppose cold is relative, it is now 11 AM with an outside air temperature of 66 degrees; but the breeze is forcing us to wear sweaters when we sit in the cockpit.

The new moon, March 13, with it's spring tides caused quite a commotion here in the anchorage. The tides were running at over four knots most of the day, reversing twice in each 24 hour period. The situation was complicated by the addition of the Coromuel winds from the South in the evening after having strong NE winds all afternoon.

The Coromuels are the evening and night winds that blow off the land as it cools after sunset. I have written about our problems with these winds in Estero Ballandra (December 18 2001) and out at Isla Espiritu Santo (January 24 2002). Now we are seeing their effect here in La Paz. The winds here are not as strong as out at the island but do get up to 15 to 20 knots. However, they do blow for a longer period, starting before sunset and lasting to well after sunrise.

Every day the wind shifts from southerly Coromuels (dusk thru sunrise) to the afternoon northeasterlies. Twice daily the tide reverses from the flood (coming from the northeast) to the ebb (coming from the west). That means our long suffering 44 pound Bruce anchor must deal with many strange combinations of forces. Sometimes the stern is pointed into a 15 knot wind as the four knot current controls the boat's heading.At other times Mirador is broadside to both the current and wind when those forces just balance. Yet, at other times the bow is pointed into the wind but the anchor chain is stretched tight back UNDERNEATH the boat as the current pushes Mirador, bow first, into the wind.

The Bruce anchor experiences a pull from every point of the compass during each and every day.

Most of the time Mirador finds a balance and sits quietly on its anchor and chain, slowly adjusting her heading as the wind and current shift. However there are times (March 8 2002) when Mirador dances the La Paz Waltz more in the style of a ChaCha, or when things are really difficult, she dances a Tango with the other nearby boats.

Last Wednesday evening was Mirador's most dramatic Tango of the season.

I came back to Mirador shortly after sunset to find Mike, Bob, Rick, and Jeff each in their own dinghy while playing bumper cars with Mirador. She was dragging thru the anchorage at about 30 feet per minute, INTO a 15 knot wind, dragging the Bruce and 90' of chain. In the dark they were four cowboys riding horses in the water, pushing and pulling, using their ropes like lassos on a run away steer. Mirador got to within about five feet of Garbi, Rick's boat which is a Vagabond 47, before we could retrieve the anchor and motor away. The anchor chain was extended back under Mirador's keel and we could not tell where it sat relative to the prop and rudder since Mirador had been doing circles as she drifted thru the anchorage. Therefore, we couldn't engage the prop until we found the anchor. Jeff and Bob got their 10' inflatables between Mirador's stern and Garbi's port bow and served as big, mobile fenders.

I had been on another boat, about 250 yards away, working on their computer problems. Just before sunset we had been commenting on how much Mirador was swinging around her anchor buoy. I mean she was making a 100' diameter circle every couple of minutes. The wind was blowing from the SSW at 15 to 20 and the tidal current was coming from the NNE at 3 to 4 knots. So all the boats where just sawing all over on their anchors, Mirador worse than most.

It was only about 15 minutes later that I got back to Mirador to find her 200 yards from where we had anchored the previous morning. She had set on the anchor thru two tide changes and the same conditions Tuesday night as we had when this dragging episode started. We had the Bruce down in 15' of water with 90' of 3/8" chain. I had set the anchor at 2800 RPM the previous morning. I guess all those circles around the anchor unscrewed it from the bottom.

It was a good thing all those guys were sitting on Jeff's boat when Mirador came by, about 20 yards away. They had seen me go over to Shawnee about an hour earlier so they knew I wasn't aboard Mirador. Arlene was down below cooking. She had checked our position about 10 minutes before I got back and hadn't noticed any change.

Mike told us that they had been watching Mirador while saluting the sunset from the cockpit of Moon Me, Jeff's beautiful 38' trimaran. Mike said that Mirador was spinning in circles one minute, and five minutes later was 100 yards closer to Garbi. Mirador's next stop after Garbi would have been the seawall, about 200 yards astern of Garbi.

No harm - no foul. But I guess I owe them all a couple of beers.

This is real scary because it happened so quickly, after we thought the anchor was so well set.

By 10:30PM the tide had shifted to an outgoing 2 knots. So we had south 15 knots of wind and SW 2 knots of tide. It was a long night trying to figure out if we were OK. There were about eight boats within 100 yards of us in every direction. The tide was an ebb until 3:30AM then another big flood until 9:30 AM. I set the Garmin 128 GPS with an anchor alarm for 180 feet. The problem is that about once every two or three hours the GPS calculates a position that is up to 300 feet from the real position. Then the anchor alarm rings for three seconds until the GPS calculates a new position that is correct. But - it wakes me up with start!

The anchor has held us now for 3 1/2 days and I hope we don't repeat this problem.

Four weeks ago, spring tides again, the same scenario played out with Essence, a Hunter 40, that was anchored about 200 yards from us. At 11 PM her anchor suddenly pulled loose and she started drifting NE into deeper water. Good news, Bad news. There was no danger of Essence hitting other sailboats or going aground BUT she did drift directly into the path of the incoming cement barge, 300' x 50', being pushed by an ocean going tug. Walt and Dee on Essence were asleep but Neil from Active Light happened to see them drift by. He jumped in his dinghy and woke the Essence crew. The barge was only 1/4 mile away by the time they got the anchor up and Essence under control of her diesel. Essence had been sitting on her anchor for over a month with no problem.

Yesterday afternoon it was Garbi's turn to suddenly drag their anchor. Same situation, she had been anchored for six weeks in the same spot. We had 20 knot winds from the NE with a four knot current that was hitting Garbi from abeam. All of a sudden she took off, headed for Amazing Grace, Mike's 38' Prout Catamaran.

When Rick, Garbi's skipper, retrieved his 44 pound Delta anchor he found a pair of binoculars attached to the point of the anchor. Rick said they were old style big and heavy metal glasses. The Delta's point was exactly between the two barrels of the binoculars with the nylon strap wrapped around the shank of the anchor.

This anchoring drama is getting old!

We hauled the boat again on Monday morning, March 11 to repair the damaged paint on our waterline (March 8 2002). We found several other places where the new paint had been scraped off by the travel lift straps. Additionally, the forward lifting strap slipped while lifting us on Monday and scrapped some paint off the front of the keel.

The Abarojoa boatyard painter put two coats of paint on the waterline where it had come off and repaired all the other minor problems. We sat on jackstands for 20 hours after the 2nd coat. When they put us back into the water they again knocked off a 6" by 3" patch of paint just above the waterline. I'm going to give up on getting it fixed.

I played in my first Mexican Train dominoes tournament the other night. This form of dominoes is one of the really big social events amongst cruisers in western Mexico.

I didn't win but did OK. I did win the first game I played but the tournament was decided by the total score over six games. There were three tables with six players at each table. The winner of the weekly tournament gets to fly the Domino burgee for the next week and can demand to be addressed with the honorary "Captain Domino" title. The dominoes occurs every Monday night.

The dominoes starts at 4 PM at the Paradise Found bar. Then at 6 PM there are all you can eat hamburgers, hot dogs, chili, chips, fries, salad for 35 pesoes ($4 US) and 10 peso beer with CD movies on a giant screen TV. The bar is semi-enclosed gringo bar on the Malecon just across the street from the beach and only about 1/4 mile from Mirador, as you can see in the picture taken from our cockpit. That is Paradise Found with the Blue sign, under the Red/White Tecate beer sign.

Arlene is slowly recovering from her cold/flu so I think we'll head out to the islands early in the week. Now the problem is that the Cormuels (the evening wind out of the SE to SW) are starting to blow more often. The Coromuels make most of the Espiritu Santo and Isla Partida anchorages untenable since they open to the SW and have a 20 mile fetch for the waves to build. There are only two or three anchorages that are OK for the Coromuel so they get crowded.

I think we have solved the problem of knowing how much propane we have in our tanks. You might recall that our bigger propane tank ( 5 gallons) went empty after 13 days while we were at Espiritu Santo February 3 2002. Normally the tanks lasts four or more weeks. It appears that the propane guys here don't always fill the tank full. We can't be there to watch since it is eight miles to the only fill station in La Paz. The marina collects all the tanks and takes them to the fill station twice a week.

We purchased ($42 US) a cute little propane tank here in La Paz. It is marked as having a capacity of 4 Kg which, I think, is about 1/2 that of our two bigger bottles. So, we'll use our two big bottles until they are empty. Then we'll have a week or ten days of usage from the small bottle while we try to find a place to refill the bigger bottles. There are only four places in the 400 miles of Sea of Cortez cruising area north of here to fill propane bottles.

I have been spending a lot of time working on laptops and HAM radios on other cruising boats. Airmail/Sailmail software is the standard for sending and receiving HAM/SSB e-mail. It is very well written and documented but many boats have odd little problems that only an experienced PC user can easily resolve. I spent eight hours working on Shawnee's problems this week. The resolution of the problem was thru an undocumented startup parameter supplied by the software's author. Neither he nor I really understand why the parm fixed the problem but I had tried every other option. OH WELL!

Arlene had to make an emergency visit to a dentist last Friday evening. About 4 PM the cap on a right lower molar came off. We buy a lot of our groceries at Frank's little tienda (store) about two blocks from the dinghy dock. Frank is a Mexican who lived in LA for twelve years and speaks english with an Italian accent. Frank and Arlene are sorta buddies. More importantly, his daughter and son-in-law are both dentists and both speak excellent english. Frank made the necessary phone call and we were in their office by 6:15 PM.

Sergio, the son-in-law, spent 30 minutes with Arlene and re-attached the cap. The total bill was $16.

One of our next dilemmas is how to renew our Mexican Visa's. They expire two months from today. We need to leave Mexico and then re-enter on a new visa which will be good for another six months. The border crossing at Tiajuana is 24 hours from here by bus ($180 round trip per person) or two hours by plane ($300 round trip plus $40 taxi fares). We are told that we can go to San Carlos, Sonora, on the Mexican mainland and catch a bus that takes four hours to get from there to the Arizon border, 48 miles south of Tuscon, where we could enter the US.

We'll have to decide soon since San Carlos is 250 miles from here. We'd sail north along the east coast of Baja and then cross the Sea of Cortez from Santa Rosalia to San Carlos (Guyamas, Sonora). We need to visit San Carlos anyway because that is one of the best places to leave the boat during the Mexican hurricane and hot weather season (July thru October).

Now we are off to the CCC to get provisions for the next couple of weeks.