FEW PLANS SURVIVE WHILE CRUISING

The way things have transpired during the time I have been on Mirador since returning from Tacoma really demonstrate how seldom a cruising plan actually survives past the first contact with reality.

My intent, when I arrived back on Mirador on Friday evening, August 22, was to check out with the Loreto Port Captain on Monday and then leave Tuesday morning for the 168 mile non-stop trip to Bahia San Francisquito.  Hurricane Ignacio delayed that whole plan for five days.  Then the refrigerator quit so I had to divert to Bahia Concepcion,  55 miles NW from Puerto Escondido, so Dick could work on the compressor.  I had planned to leave Saturday afternoon for a non-stop overnight trip to Burro Bay so that I could attend the "Passing of Ignacio" party at Playa de Burro.

But, even that idea failed.  I did leave as scheduled but once north of Isla Coronados I started worrying about the big T-storms I could see off to the NE.  They were forecast to move west and hit the Baja Peninsula about 45 miles north of where I turn SW to enter Bahia Concepcion.  By 9 PM I was seeing cloud to water lightning strikes, really big bright orange ones, off to the NE and then to my East.  I hate lightning so decided to duck into La Ramada anchorage which was about 30 minutes ahead of me, and more importantly, only 1/4 mile wide with 300' hills on three sides of it.   Early in August the 42' trimiran Seafire from Seattle had been hit by lightning about 35 miles north of La Ramada as they entered Bahia Concepcion after sunset.  They suffered $8,000 damage and I just didn't want to take that chance.

I probably don't have to tell you, but I will whine about it anyway, as soon as the anchor hit the bottom in La Ramada, every trace of lightning ceased.  I did not see another flash in the sky all night.  And, yes, I could see the clouds off to the NE.  

Anchoring in the dark is always an adventure.  I had been into La Ramada many times including once before in the dark.  The high hills around the small semi-circular bay present an excellent radar image and there are no rocks or other hazards so getting in was easy.  I then managed to turn the anchoring process into a fire drill.  I dropped the big 66 pound spade in 18' of water, let out 60' of chain, and secured the chain to one of the bow cleats  with a chain hook on 6' of 5/8" 3-strand nylon line.  I then back down on the anchor which forces it to dig in. 

Or, it would have if I had cleated the line down.  When I put the engine in reverse everything held until 1800 RPM when Mirador suddenly starting making 3 knots in reverse and I could hear chain wildly running across the bow roller.  I soon discovered that I had not properly secured  the anchor hook line to the cleat.  When the chain loaded up it pulled the hook and line through the bow roller and Mirador was off to the beach in reverse.  It is OK for you to wonder "how could he be that stupid?" 'cause I'm still trying to figure out how I did whatever I did. 

I got up the next morning at 5:45 AM so that I could get out of La Ramada at first light and ride the morning shore breeze NW.  I had to get to Burro Bay which was 54 miles away by 4 PM if I wanted my share of steak and chicken.  I had mis-calculated the timing on sunlight and found that, even though the sunrise was 7:07 AM, there was not enough light to work on the anchor until about 6:40 AM.  

I did arrive at Playa de Burro by 4 PM and Dick from Corazon had replaced the broken capillary tube between the compressor and the cold plate by 5 PM.  We had a great party on the beach at several of the Palapas where gringos live part or all of the year.

The party was at the left most palapa which has a nice rock firepit and lots of room for folks to sit.

Geary lives year round in the palapa which is third from the left.  He was the first to build a beach front place about six years ago. 

All the palapas are 18" above high tide and seldom get wet.  There are no services available at Playa de Burro.  Geary has solar panels and batteries for electricity, uses a propane refrigerator, and hauls his drinking water from Mulege which is about 15 miles north on Highway 1.

You can see Geary's waterfront "patio" floating in front of his place.  The patio is a beach umbrella, two or three chairs and a small table which are all anchored in four feet of water, about 10 yards in front of his house.  Such is life at Playa de Burro.

My refrigerator quit working about 10 PM on Sunday so Dick and I spent most of Monday and part of Tuesday fine tuning it.  There were several problems to repair.  The desiccator, which absorbs any moisture in the refrigerant, had clogged so that the compressor would sense too much pressure and would shut down.  Dick says that is a common problem and replaced the desiccator with one of the five spares he carries.  I found six old clogged or leaking desiccators in his tool box so I guess it is common.  Dick has a full array of refrigerator repair tools including a 1/3 HP vacuum pump which can pull 28 pounds of vacuum and a great set of guages for the high low pressure circuits in a refrigerator system.  Most important he really knows the sytems since he build custom refrigerator systems for boats, aquariums, and businesses for many years.

Then I had to replace the sea water cooling pump for the compressor.  The six-year old Shurflow 0.25 GPM pump wasn't putting out any water.  We took it apart and cleaned it but it still wouldn't work.  I did find barnacles inside the pump on both the valves and the wobble plate.  Eventually we put in a new 0.5 GPM Shurflow which moves plenty of water. 

I then decided to replumb the cooling water so that the pump would draw from the fresh water tank.  That would eliminate corrosion and sea life problems in the compressor cooling coils and pipes.   The compressor extracts 1200 BTU/hour from the refrigerator box.  With a flow of 30 gallons per hour that should heat the 60 gallons, average, in the fresh water tank about 2 or 3 degrees Fahrenheit per hour, assuming no heat is dissipated from the tank into the sea.  The compressor normally runs for an hour and then shuts off for several hours so overheating the freshwater wouldn't be a problem.

Except, when you try to cool down an 85 degree refrigerator.  Then the compressor runs non-stop for 12 hours and the freshwater tank heats up to 94 degrees.  The compressor will not run if the incoming cooling water is above 93 degrees.  Therefore, I had to do some more plumbing so that the cooling water pump can draw from either sea water, which was 85 degrees, or the fresh water tank which was still 90 degrees a day after heating it to 94 degrees.

All of this plumbing kept me busy until Wednesday morning.  I had been planning a non-stop 124 mile overnight trip to Bahia San Francisquito but once again the weather did not cooperate.  On Tuesday afternoon there was an unusually large buildup of cumulus clouds with heavy convection and then thunderstorms over the Sierra Madre Mountains on the Mexican Mainland .  That nasty weather found it's way 130 miles westward across  the Sea of Cortez and hit Puerto Escondido and La Ramada on the Baja Peninsula with 50 knot Chubascos and heavy rain late Tuesday afternoon.

Normally those storms blow out within 12 hours and are almost always gone by the next morning.  That was the forecast on Tuesday evening when Don (Summer Passage weather radio WPUX557 from Oxnard, California at 00Zulu on Marine SSB channel 12-C which is 12.359 MHz USB) predicted clearing overnight. But not these clouds and storms.  They kept growing until the clouds with embedded heavy convection were several hundred miles wide.  On Wednesday afternoon the heavy rain and lightning hit Playa de Burro.  Later on Wednesday the local clouds and storms were pulled into and then intensified by the general cyclonic circulation around Tropical Storm Kevin which was about 500 miles SW of us.  Several boats bound to or from Bahia Concepcion, (Playa de Burro is in the center of the 22 mile long bay), encountered 30 knot squalls with very heavy rain and lightning.

I decided to stay another day at Playa de Burro and wait for the squalls to clear the area.  Again Wednesday night it was forecast that Thursday would be nice.  And again Thursday we had very heavy rain and squalls.  TS Kevin was forecast to head west out into the Pacific but he kept heading north along the west coast of the Baja and thus kept the clouds and storms right over us.  The weather finally cleared Friday afternoon.

Dick and Judy from Corazon and I went into Mulege on Tuesday to do some internet business and get a few supplies.  Mulege is about 15 miles north on Mexican Highway 1.  We caught a ride into town on a large stakeside truck, (a one-ton flatbed with a wood cage around the flatbed in back).  Judy rode in the cab where she froze because the air-conditioning was turned up too high.  Dick and I rode in the back, at noon, with no shade and outside air temperature over 100 degrees.  Let me tell you, 75 miles per hour doesn't make hot air any cooler, it just moves more of it around you.

Our primary objective was to get some cash since there are no ATMs north of Santa Rosalia and neither of us wanted to pay the Santa Rosalia Port Captain $32 just to check in for the afternoon to get cash.  The problem was that we forgot there is no ATM in Mulege. Indeed, there is no bank in Mulege.  There are five internet shops, four hotels, two Pemex gas stations, six ferreterias (hardware stores), six grocery stores and 10,000 people, but no bank and no way to get cash.  We walked all over town, shopping and sight seeing.  I have never, ever sweat so much when I was not exercising.  By 4 PM I could wring a 1/4 cup of sweat out of my shirt every 15 minutes.  It was at least 105 and there was little or no wind. 

On Thursday morning when it became obvious that squalls were going to plague us all day we decided to drive 55 miles north to Santa Rosalia where we knew there were two banks and two ATMs.  Now, where to get a car?  Geary, whose palapa is shown above, offered us the use of his Ford pickup.  Dick, Doug from SV Ariel who is another single hander, and I drove to the big city, had lunch, found the ATM, got soaked in a thunderstorm while sitting at an outdoor taco stand, and drove back to Playa de Burro in time to find another squall. 

Friday was spent getting ready to head north in the boats and doing other boat projects. 

Our three day delay at Playa de Burro turned out to be a lucky break for Tina, a mid-20s German woman whose Volkswagen Van quit running in the rain. 

Here is Dick and Tina discussing what parts she had available to rebuild the ignition system.  When it started raining the van just wouldn't start.  Some the locals towed the van with a big pickup trying to jump start it even thought the battery would spin the engine in a fine fashion.   All that did was fill the cylinders with unburnt gas and make Tina wonder what could happen next.

Dick, in a long past life on Long Island, build custom VW engines and tuned  customer VWs.  He quickly noted that the points in Tina's van were badly pitted.  Those were the only ignition parts she did not have a spare for. 

Dick cleaned the points, replaced the distributor, rotor, and condensor, gapped the spark plugs and retimed the engine but it still wouldn't start.  Geary has a dune buggy with a VW engine so Dick borrowed the dune buggy coil and Tina's engine then ran like a champ.

Old VW parts are very easy to find in Mexico since all the old VWs that can no longer make it in the US come to the Baja for a 2nd chance at life.

That purple Bluebird bus in the background belongs to two 30 something Americans who are living and land cruising in Mexico.  Both the VW van and the Purple Bus are faithful reproductions of the hippy vehicles of the '60s.  I suspect that Tina's van is not a reproduction but is rather, an original that is still running. 

Tina is going to have an interesting couple of weeks in Mexico.  She was working on a Masters in Fine Arts, film making, in San Francisco but decided to take a semester off and travel.  On her first night in Mexico, just south of Tijuana, her wallet, passport, and cash were stolen from her room.  That was several weeks ago and she is still trying to get a new VISA card delivered to her.  She has to go to Mexico City so the German embassy can issue a new passport.  But she has no original drivers license.  She also has a Mexican tourist Visa that she never paid for.  Somehow the Mexican authorities in TJ issued it to her and then told her to pay for it at a bank down the road.  The VISA expires this week so she may have a problem. 

She doesn't seem too concerned about any of the problems and may just drive back to San Francisco to get her California drivers license re-issued and a new passport from the German Consulate there.  But, will the US INS folks let her back into the US with just a copy of her passport and drivers license?  I guess we'll never know.

There are far worse places to hang out than Playa de Burro.  The center of activities is Geary's beachfront palapa and Berthas restaurant and bar. 

Bertha cooks great food for lunch and dinner and has ice cold beer and wonderful Limonada served over lots of ice.  A big scallop cocktail is $3.50, a large order of Tacos or Enchiladas is $2.50 and beer is $1.10. 

Geary and several of his beach side friends are avid cribbage players as are Dick, Doug, and I.  Every afternoon we played cribbage, either on the beach or in Berthas, and drank beer.  When we would get too hot or tired we'd retire to Geary's watery patio and just sit in the water for a while.

It's a tough life accommodating all these changes in plans and getting stuck at places like Playa de Burro but that is what cruising on a boat is all about.