ESCAPE FROM LA PAZ- AT LAST!

Today is May 25 and we are finally going to escape the grasp of La Paz!

We arrived here just before Christmas 2001 with the intention of staying a week or so. Six months later we are still in La Paz but just for another couple of hours. When we rounded Cabo Falso, the southern most tip of Baja California, early last December, we were planning to head Southwest towards Puerto Vallarta and the Mexican Gold Coast. The easiest crossing from Baja to the Mexican mainland is from the Los Frailes anchorage which is 35 miles NE of Cabo San Lucas on the route to La Paz. When we arrived in Los Frailes we decided to keep going north to "visit La Paz for a week or so" and then sail on over to Mazatlan.

We never made it to the Mexican mainland because we liked the La Paz area so much we could find no reason to leave. Now we are at the beginning of the Mexican Hurricane season and the only safe direction to head is north. There is already a Tropical Depression, 1E, forming about 350 SW of Manzanillo on the SE part of the Mexican Gold Coast. TD 1E is forecast to be a lightweight hurricane within 48 hours but will most likely keeping heading WNW and pose no threat to the Sea of Cortez. There should be a Tropical Storm forming somewhere between Acapulco and the west coast of Costa Rica about every five to seven days for the next five months if the East Pacific Hurricane Nursery performs as normal. These storms should not be any problem for us until at least mid-August when we hope to be at least 200 miles north of here.

I checked out with the La Paz Port Captain on Thursday afternoon so we must leave here by Saturday afternoon or check-in again. While cruising here in Mexico we must check-in and then check-out with every Port Captain. Every costal town with more than 5,000 people has a Port Captain who can pretty much run his port in any fashion he wishes. He can collect fees as he deems appropriate and implement any regulations or rules he feels necessary.

A check out in La Paz requires that we visit the following offices in the order listed:

1. API to get a certificate that says we have paid the $0.90 per day "anchoring tax" for every day we have been in port. Our stay here in La Paz cost us $169 in anchoring fees. I thought it interesting that API charges 10% "sales" tax on the "anchoring tax." API must stamp our "crew list" for no known reason. The API office is located on the commerical pier and has a dinghy dock for easy acess.

2. Migraccion to get our crew list stamped by the immigration officer. The crew list must show who was on board Mirador when it left La Paz and where our next destination is. We also have to list all our planned intermediate ports of call. However, Migraccion does not require that the crew present themselves to the immigration officer. In fact they don't even ask to see passports or visas. It is a little hard to understand why we need to present the crew list to Migraccion for travel within Mexico. The office for Migraccion is about seven blocks west of API on the Malecon which is the beachfront road. There is a nice beach right in front of Migraccion where we can land a dinghy for easy acess.

3. Port Captain to fill out a "salida" form. A salida form exactly duplicates a crew list but we must fill it out by hand and sign it. The Port Captain then reviews all our check-in papers, the new crew list, API forms, and Salida form. If he is happy with all those the clerk prints a form that shows the $15 fee we must pay for the priviledge of leaving port. This fee must be paid at the downtown BanaMex bank branch. The Port Captain's office is located in a residential area 2 miles east of town, about five blocks from the water. There is no easy place to land the dinghy near the Port Captains office. The water near the office is only 2' deep for about 1/4 mile off shore. At low tide the dinghy goes aground at least 200 yards from the beach.

4. BanaMex Bank to pay the exit fee. The BanaMex branch is in downtown La Paz, about 1.5 miles from the Port Captains office. The closest place to park a dinghy is at the API dock, about five blocks away.

5. Port Captains office where he verifies the certificate issued by BanaMex. We then receive the final stamped and signed form saying we left La Paz with no debts or other obligations and the crew specified on the crew list which is attached to the exit form. This form must be signed by the Port Captain himself who might be busy for half an hour at a time. I stood in his office for 25 minutes while he sat at a desk in front of me chatting with some fishing buddies. This has nothing to do with me being a gringo or yachtie. There were several local fsherman and "checkout brokers" sitting right beside me waiting for their turn with the Port Captain.

While waiting for the Port Captains signature I counted 12 men in uniform and four women running computers. The Port Captains office is comprised of three buildings covering about 1/2 acre of land. It is a little hard to understand what all these people do. La Paz is not a commercial port. The only traffic that enters the port is a thrice weekly concrete barge and a weekly oil tanker that brings petroleum products to the PeMex tank farm. There is also regularly scheduled passenger and car ferry traffic to the Mexican mainland. Otherwise the only boats enterning and leaving La Paz are cruising boats, sport fisherman, and Mexican fisherman. It is good to know there are 16 officials watching out for us cruisers.

We've loaded enough food and drink to last months and have purchased every conceivable item needed for a summer in the hot and dry North Sea of Cortez. All that is left to do is rig the drifter sail on the bow, raise the anchor from where it has sat for six weeks, and take on 60 gallons of diesel and five gallons of gasoline. We have a small outgoing tide from 10:30 AM until 4:30 PM so we'll leave here about 11 AM, stop in Marina Palmira for fuel, and then motor out to one of the small anchorage about 10 miles NE of Palmira.

Tomorrow we'll make a non-stop trip North to either Ensenada Grande (20 miles) on Isla Partida or the Hook on Isla San Francisco (33 miles). We will then slowly work our way north along the Baja east coast. There are nice anchorages about every five or ten miles so we will really have an easy time for he next several months of cruising.

We'll be sending in more frequent updates to this log as we work our way north in the Sea of Cortez.