Road Trips Rock!

Copala Church--c. 1740

It has been said that sailboat passages are connections between interesting places to visit.  Such has surely been the case recently for us here on the Mexican Pacific coastline.  So far, we have rented cars and toured inland on three occasions.  The first one was a trip to Mascota and to a few mountain villages which we talked about in a previous post.

A few weeks ago we rented a car (for the princely sum of $7 a day) in Mazatlan and preceded one hour east into the mountains to a small mining village called Copala.  We arrived about 10:30 and took in the small town square and the magnificent, 300 year old church. There didn’t seem to be much more to the town.  However, we had been told that this was the place to get banana cream pie.  So, we went to the other end of the town square to the only

Alejandro with the mask we bought

restaurant in town, which was open and serving some really yummy banana cream pie.  Afterward Lynne suggested looking into the yellow building off to the side which seem to be one of the few retail establishments around. It turned out to be was the artist’s studio, where Alejandro Rodriguez made Mardi Gras masks from various animal hides.  After buying a small souvenir mask, he asked if we had seen town museum.  No--we didn’t even know there was a museum.  So, Alejandro led us to the museum located in the old pueblo jail, loaded with artifacts dating back 200-500 years, mostly from the mining days.  He then asked if we had seen the rest of town – why, we didn’t even know there was more to town.  Alejandro then gave us a private tour of his pueblo, showing us the architecture, the flora and the history of Copala.  He was the town artist, the owner of the

Lynne petting her whale

restaurant and his family has lived in the town for three generations. What a treat!  Upon returning we decided we needed a full-size mask and we are so glad that we bought this art work.  In the end, we chanced upon an opportunity to see a slice of Mexico and were rewarded beyond our dreams.

A few weeks later we arrived in La Paz.  One of the goals while in Mexico was to go whale watching in Magdalena Bay—world famous as the location where gray whales mate, give birth, and nurse their young.  So, we quickly put together our own tour with another car rental (this time for $1 a day!), made overnight accommodations at the Whale Tales Inn in Lopez Mateos, and set out.  Mateos is a very small fishing village near the Pacific Ocean which engages in whale watching for December–March. In late March

Our friend, Diana smooching with a whale

the whales leave on an epic migration to Alaska for feeding and an eventual return the following year.  Early the next morning we chartered a panga to see the whales.  And did we!  The mother and baby whales snuggled right up against our panga allowing us to pet them, talk with them and see whales up and really, really close.  Petting a whale might just have been the highlight of our Mexico cruise. Events such as these cannot be planned—they just happen when the opportunity is right.

We have one road trip left to do. We plan to do a day trip around the back country behind Loreto to see the missions built in the 1700s.  We will report back on

Yes, another Mexican sunset!

that goal if we can put that trip together.  Meanwhile we wish all of our friends back home a happy Easter, a happy April Fool’s day and all the best for the Springtime!

Roger, Lynne, and Salty

You can reach us at 206-755-4193 or email rdwerner47@gmail.com

Cruising the Costalegre

Ibis Taking Flight

The portion of the Mexico Coast from Puerto Vallarta,120 miles south to Manzanillo is dubbed the “Costalegre”—the Happy Coast!  South of the Tropic of Cancer, the weather at this time of year is nearly perfect, with a temperature of 70-85°, generally light breezes and plentiful sunshine. In addition there are lots of interesting stops.  At Tentacatita the highlight might be the 2-mile dinghy trip through the estuary mangroves, ending up at the Aquarium for lunch.  A bit further south, the marina at Barra de Navidad is at a resort with a beautiful swimming pool and a nearby town for good dining out.  Further south at Santiago Bay near Manzanillo we found a great beach for Salty and had a marvelous time at the Saturday market.  In addition to these there are half a dozen small anchorages with delightful snorkeling and fine beaches for salty to run on.

Lynne and Paul
Comparing Beverages

While at Barra de Navidad, Lynne connected with Paul Carlson, a cello mate from Thalia Symphony. Paul spends 5-6 weeks here every year at his beach front hotel with swimming pool.  Lynne was thrilled to reconnect with Paul and getting the latest news from Thalia.

We have now turned around at Manzanillo and have begun the trek north.  It has taken us 3000 miles and 5 months to get here from Seattle, including 1500 miles from San Diego.  We will spend a little more time at Puerto Vallarta with Ken Macdonald

Beach Vendor at Santiago

and his family who are flying in next week.  Afterward we will sail north into the Sea of Cortez where we will next post to our blog. Again, we thank all of you who email or phone—you are our connection back home.

Another Mexican Sunset

Roger, Lynne, and Salty

You can reach us at 206-755-4193 or email rdwerner47@gmail.com

Reporting in from Puerto Vallarta

Maluhea on the Beach

A few days ago, I was some looking around for some content to put into this post.  We have been in Puerto Vallarta for about a month doing interesting, but somewhat mundane shore activities.  Then a call came over the radio that Maluhea, a 37’ Pacific Seacraft, had gone on the rocks at Punta Mita.  After a half day delay before the boat’s skipper asked for help, a group of nine of us went from the marina at La Cruz at 5 in the evening to where the boat was situated.  He could hardly have picked a worse place to land!  Punta Mita is a very, very private, secure residential development and they prohibit any access over their property.  As a result, we chartered a local panga to drop us off 1.4 miles from where the boat was ashore.  After clambering for an hour over the rocky beach in the dark, we arrived to find the boat way up on the beach but mostly intact.  We ran lines from the boat to the land to secure the boat against the high tide and removed the fuel aboard

The Lovely Church in Mascota

. 

On the Road to Ron's Ranch

With these tasks done it was now 11 at night and time to return home.  We walked through some very private property to a guard shack where we were informed that we could under no circumstances go further in their development.  We were strongly encouraged to return via the beach ¾ mile the other direction to the town of Punta Mita, which we did.  It was quite a night!  Subsequently the volunteer boat rescue team has removed more material off the boat in preparation for the eventual patching of the hole in the boat’s side and sliding of the boat back to the sea and to a haul out facility. 

Other than this adventure, the rest of our time has been rather benign and pleasant.  One boater who elected to remain in the Puerta Vallarta area bought a “ranch” 50 miles to the east of Puerto Vallarta, in the mountains above Mascota.  He offered to have people come visit, which we did.  Ron and his wife live at 7,300’ and in a decidedly different environment than on the beach. 

Can you Guess who is heading for the
Airplane and who is staying in Puerto Vallarta?

In addition, the local village next to his ranch was having a fiesta, and all of this made seeing the inland side of Mexico most interesting.

The other major event for us was a visit to Puerto Vallarta by our sons Kevin and Andy accompanied with Christian, Lorraine and Clark in the week before Christmas.  They all stayed in the Vallarta Marriott hotel soaking up its resplendent facilities including a vast swimming pool, two tennis courts and a really pretty beach. Thank you all for coming!

We suppose that the other event to report was our 48^th anniversary dinner. Our sailing friends, Steve and Peggy Leonard, are here and joined us for a really nice meal topped off with banana flambé, and serenaded by the restaurant’s local musician.

Lynne and Clark

  

As for the rescue of Maluhea, I will say that it has had a chastening effect on Roger.  In the future when Lynne says to stay a bit further offshore as we round points of land or get near islands, she will have much less resistance.  This week we pick up our permanent residence permits.  We do not plan to move to Mexico, but these permits make it easier to come and go.  From Puerto Vallarta we intend to sail south toward Manzanillo for 4-6 weeks and then do a U turn and head north to the Sea of Cortez for March-May.  We will send future posts to let you know how the adventure continues!

Roger, Lynne, and Salty

You can reach us at 206-755-4193 or email rdwerner47@gmail.com

Bienvenidos A Mexico!

The Cabo San Lucas Arch

We are now tied up at Puerto Vallarta, having gently wandered through our first month of cruising in Mexico. We began with a week at Cabo San Lucas, its mellower neighbor San Jose Del Cabo, and a very user-friendly anchorage at Las Friales (“the Friars”). We stayed several days right in the heart of Cabo San Lucas, with all the buzz of their crazy tourist activity swirling around us. Then we moved on to San Jose where we began to meld into the slow lane of Mexican life. But our favorite for the bottom of the Baja Peninsula came at Las Friales. A great beach, doable beach landings, a perfect spot for Salty to play ball, 80-degree water for swimming—what could be better?

One of the recommended activities at Las Friales is to head on up to Cabo Pulmo for snorkeling. About twenty years ago, the local fishermen at Pulmo saw their fish catches declining and banded

Las Frailes

together to make a change. They restricted fish catches (their own as well as any others) to allow the natural coral reef in front of their village to rebound and become the leading spot around for diving and snorkeling. The Government assisted by declaring the reef a protected national underwater park. But the only issue is making the 9-km trek on the rough, rutted dirt road out there and back. We managed to hitch a ride out with a couple Gringo Girls and that gave us time for lunch before the snorkel tour. On the return, things were not looking so good at first, as there were NO vehicles heading our way. Then along came Jose in his ancient Toyota pickup. For twenty minutes, Roger and Jose (sort of) carried on a fast-moving conversation, finding all about ranching in that dry countryside, Jose’s family, local fishing and all sorts of things. At one point, Jose’s beer

When it's Your Birthday, you get to do it your way!

caught up with him and he needed to stop and take advantage of the facilities. In the end we made it back to the boat just in time to walk Salty before dark, we took in a colorful piece of Mexican life, we saw some awesome snorkeling, and we supported the Pulmo fishermen who are trying to do the right thing.  Todo Bien!

The sign says no swimming--
No Joke!

From Las Friales we crossed over to Mazatlán and then sailed down to Puerto Vallarta. There we took moorage at the same dock as our friends, Steve and Peggy Leonard, who have been cruising Mexico for three years. We needed to stay in PV for there or four weeks in order to allow time for our permanent residency permits to be processed. We also will be here for a joint visit with both Kevin and Andy, (and Christian, Loraine and Clark) who are due in this coming week before Christmas and will be the topic of our next posting. Meanwhile we sailed in the Banderas Bay Blast (a three-day PV version of a Snooze and Cruise), celebrated Peggy’s birthday along with four of their friends visiting from Seattle, attended church at the Cathedral, and did touristy things around town. Of course, we

Sunset at San Blas

also did a number of boat maintenance projects, since as we all know, sailboat cruising is nothing more than doing boat maintenance in exotic locations!

That is about it for our first month in Mexico. From our boat in Puerto Vallarta, we pause and wish all of you a Feliz Navidad, where ever you may be this Holiday Season,

Roger, Lynne, and Salty

You can reach us at 206-755-4193 or email rdwerner47@gmail.com

The Baja Slide

Bahia  Santa Maria--You're not in
the Northwest any more, Toto

Two months, ten days and 2,300 miles has taken us from Elliott Bay Marina to Cabo San Lucas. But it was the last 776 miles from San Diego to Cabo that were the most challenging for us. Back home in northwest cruising, we considered 40 miles to be a good day with many marinas and anchorages to choose between upon arrival. Cruising down the US West Coast, 100 miles became the norm, with one trek of 180 miles, and every night we could tie up at a marina rather than anchoring out. Cruising the west side of the Baja peninsula has been a wholly different experience--stretching it out more—with only one marina and several 175-mile overnight passages.

On top of this you have the ever present Northwest swell. For southbound cruisers, this usually just means a gentle lifting of the boat and a little help on down the course. However, this is where our

Panga and Passenger

little buddy Salty comes into the picture. Being part schnauzer, his Germanic stubbornness refuses to let him piddle on the boat. Instead he insists on getting to the beach 2-3 timers a day, in between 20-30 hour passages, requiring us to do beach landings with our dinghy. We have had considerable difficulty mastering a dinghy landing with the ocean swell, even in a semi-protected anchorage. Even a tiny swell approaching the beach becomes a two-foot breaker as it drives on to the beach, getting us soaked and, on one particularly ill-timed launch, flipped us entirely over. At least the water is warm! We eventually learned the virtue of patience and waiting for a mellower set of waves, but leaving the beach seems to always come with a bit of terror.

Also, due to having Salty aboard, we stopped more often than most Baja cruisers. This was one of the

Sunset at Sea

reasons that we chose to not join in the annual Baja Ha Ha, a flotilla cruise to Cabo in which a few hundred boats make the jump together. The social side of meeting other boaters would have been nice, but the Ha Ha only stops twice, once at Turtle Bay and once at Bahia Santa Maria, with legs up to 330 miles long. We needed more stops, more time, and we wanted to do it our way.

We used the guide books to get us down the Baja coast, but none of them talk about cruising with a pet. Indeed, we saw few other boats with a pooch aboard. We found that this was also true of cruising the East Coast and the Caribbean, in that the guide books made scant or no mention of the extra steps needed when cruising with Fido. However, for us, traveling with Salty does make it interesting and we would have it no other way.

We are now rounding the corner into Cabo San Lucas and are eagerly looking forward to savoring civilized Mexico. The stark passage sliding down the Baja coast is astern, complete with its six overnight passages, and we can now settle into the Mexican life that has been our objective.

Hasta al Proximo Tiempo!

Roger, Lynne, and Salty

You can reach us at 206-755-4193 or email rdwerner47@gmail.com

Golden State Cruising

Monterey by Moon Light

Cruising from Seattle to Mexico seems to consist of a series of varied stages. First is the journey down the inhospitable coast lines of Washington, Oregon and Northern California—a passage often fraught with gales, huge seas, and long gaps between tiny fishing ports. Then comes the Bay Area, with its glittering urbanity. Next comes Southern California, with an array of pleasant yachting communities and welcoming reciprocal yacht clubs. And our next passage appears to be the desolate Pacific coast of the Baja peninsula, a description of which will come with our next posting. The variety has been stimulating and has helped to add interest to passages that otherwise might be rather monotonous.

Lynne and Salty at Morro Beach

It has been a month since we last sent out our last posting from Monterey Bay, as we began a longish 100-mile passage along Big Sur. We ended that passage at Morro Bay, one of our favorite stops. After tying up at the Morro Bay Yacht Club, we found a perfect playground for Salty on the sand spit across the channel. We also hooked up with a like-minded cruising couple, Robert and Sheila aboard their sail boat The Good Rain, from Nanaimo, also headed to Mexico. This also gave us a good spot to plan our way around the last of the four challenging West Coast Capes (the first three being Cape Flattery, Cape Blanco, and Cape Mendocino). Once again, the

Roger's Halloween Costume

weather was benign and we motored past an often tumultuous Cape Conception. Our only excitement came when we split between two on- coming freighters, about one mile to either side of us. Thank goodness for AIS, our collision avoidance electronics!

We spent the next two weeks with our son’s family—Andy, Lorraine, and Clark—in Oxnard. As a Harbor Patrol Officer, Andy was able to get us great moorage very near their home. While there, we had a very hospitable stay with the Pacific Corinthian yacht Club, took a jaunt out to Anacapa Island, and hiked up in the hills behind Ventura. All in all, it was a relaxing vacation within a vacation. From Oxnard, we went the “26 Miles to Santa Catalina” where we found a few secluded anchorages and

Goat Harbor, Catalina Island

 did a town stop at Avalon. In Avalon we did a night out at the Casino, seeing a Tom Cruz movie (2 stars) and taking in the 1929 organ recital (4 stars).  Then it was off to San Diego, stopping in at several lovely beach side towns—Long Beach, Newport, Dana Point and Oceanside. As we write this, we are at Silver Gate Yacht Club in San Diego—perhaps the friendliest yacht club we have been to yet! It is time for a bit of last minute chores and then on Thursday it is time to head south across the border and on to Baja California.

Hasta Luego!

Roger, Lynne, and Salty

Give us a call at 206-755-4193 or email rdwerner47@gmail.com

Under the Golden Gate

Mark's shot of our arrival

And here it is—one of the West Coast Sailor’s signature moments. Everyone remembers and cherishes their passage under the Golden Gate Bridge. It is in many respects similar to passing under other great bridges, such as the Brooklyn and Verrazano in New York or the Mackinac in Michigan, but coming from the ocean, the Golden Gate Bridge is in a class by itself. And it helped that we had our very own photo team on shore. Mark and Mary Haesloop and Joyce McCarthy filmed our approach from 5 miles out, getting this very special shot that you see here.

Spinnaker under the Gate!

The grin says it all.

We spent a week in the Bay Area, resting up and spending time with Roger’s brother and sister in law, Neil and Marianne. This included touring wineries, lunching at San Francisco YC, and just unwinding. We also did a fun lunch at the Yank Sing restaurant in San Francisco with Greg and Ann von Gair, whom Roger had recently sponsored into Seattle YC.

Leaving the Bay, the view of the Golden Gate is nearly as spectacular as the arrival. Did you know

that the currents under the gate regularly exceed 3 knots and are often more? From the Gate it is a left turn for a short hop on down to Half Moon Bay, where we had another gorgeous sunset and another lovely dinner with Joyce, Mark, Mary, and joined this time by time Patty. I write this as we are motor sailing on to Santa Cruz, 6 knots of breeze coming from astern in a slowly building northerly, with the picturesque California coastline just a couple miles off to port. California cruising at its finest!

Roger, Lynne, and Salty

Give us a call at 206-755-4193 or email rdwerner47@gmail.com