Songline, La Paz, Baja California, Mexico. 14 June 2004
Dear friends
Our pre-Christmas newsletter from Alameda, near San Francisco, saw us getting to grips with a multitude of boat projects, increasingly horrible weather and a departure deadline approaching, to ensure that we gave ourselves enough time to be out of California within three months of buying Songline, thereby avoiding the 8.25 percent State sales tax which would otherwise have been payable.
The San Francisco weather was quite a surprise to us - alternating between cold, very cold (ice on the decks on several mornings), wet, windy, foggy and, just to remind us how nice it could be, the occasional bright, sunny day. It also delayed a couple of outside projects by a few days - it’s not much fun being hoisted up the mast in the pouring rain to fit mast steps and track for the whisker pole, so those jobs had to wait till the sun came out!
By mid-January we had completed nearly all the essential jobs and and felt that we and Songline were ready to leave for warmer, sunnier climes. It was then a question of finding the right weather window to head south, making sure that we avoided the storms which plague the mid-California coast during much of the winter. We also had the question of Harvey the RV’s future to settle. We had decided, very reluctantly, that it would not be practical or sensible to keep him, and happily we found a new home for him in the shape of friends of friends who had always wanted a motorhome - provided that it was very inexpensive. So Harvey embarked on a new life, exchanging his Washington licence plates for Californian ones, and we are hoping that his new owners are having as much fun with him as we did.
Our 25 January departure deadline stretched to 27 January, as we watched the progress of the latest bad weather system, but finally it was time to cast off the lines and head south. We set off in the early morning across San Francisco Bay in mist and drizzle, with the Golden Gate Bridge shrouded in fog until it was only half a mile away. The wind was in the wrong direction, and we wondered whether the forecasters might have got it all wrong. However, by the time we were under the bridge, the fog had cleared, the sky was beginning to brighten and the wind was swinging round to give us a good ride all the way to Monterey, 100 miles down the coast. Our failure to take seasickness pills caught up with us soon after departure, so neither of us felt very perky when we arrived. Eighteen months of land-lubberism had not done much for our sea legs!! However, we did much better on the next section of the journey, after a good dose of Stugeron. And just as well, since we found ourselves in near gale-force conditions rounding Point Conception and on down the Santa Barbara Channel towards Los Angeles; it helps to be feeling rather better than half dead when the wind is blowing that hard and the boat is moving that fast!
Southern California was pleasantly sunny most of the time, though still surprisingly cold, and we enjoyed several days visiting friends near LA before continuing south. By the time we reached San Diego, Songline had proved herself in just about every way, and we were even more delighted with her than expected.
We managed to beat the California tax deadline by a few days and at the end of February we found ourselves in Ensenada, sixty miles south of San Diego, expecting to continue south to Mazatlan or Puerto Vallarta on the Mexican mainland, where we planned to leave the boat in April while we went back to the UK. Sadly, our wonderful tenants of the past three years were leaving, and we wanted to get the house ready for new tenants. Our outgoing tenants had already warned us that they might be leaving up to a month sooner than originally planned and sure enough, when we reached Ensenada, we found an e-mail from them saying that they would be off to their new house in the North-West USA in a couple of weeks. With a bit of quick replanning, this proved to be ideal timing for us. We were able to leave the boat in the very secure Cruiseport Marina, and flew home on 1 March.
We had deliberately put several projects on hold until we reached Mexico, since all of them involved stainless steel fabrication which is generally much less expensive there than in the USA. What we did not know until we got there is that Ensenada is home to Alejandro, a stainless steel wizard. We asked him to start work on two projects while we were away - a swim platform to be fitted to the transom (the back end of the boat) and a pole for our new wind generator, hoping that they would be ready to fit when we returned.
We spent most of March in England repainting the inside of our house from top to bottom, and new tenants who we are hoping will stay for at least a year moved in on 15 April.
When we got back to Ensenada, Alejandro was ready with the the swim platform and wind generator pole and we worked together to fit both over the next few days. We were so impressed with the work he had done that we immediately commissioned more - the replacement of the life lines on either side of the cockpit with stainless steel rails; the fitting of mounts for our solar panels; and fitting mounting brackets for our spare anchor. All of which have exceeded our expectations, both in quality and price - a rare thing in the world of boating!
We were in no hurry to leave Ensenada. Apart from anything else, the marina offers a special price for boats staying three months or more, which makes it considerably cheaper to be there for three months than for two! This pricing arrangement is aimed at exploiting another loophole in the California State tax system, which allows owners to avoid paying the tax if they take delivery offshore and keep their boats outside the State for three months. A nice little earner for the marina, which is permanantly full, with more than eighty percent of its occupants being brand new boats with owners who cause no more trouble than making the occasional visit from California to check up on their new pride and joy!
There is also a small cruising community in Ensenada, some based there semi-permanently, others, like us, doing work on their boats before moving on, and we made a number of new friends while we were there. We hope to see most of them again, as we plan to spend the rest of this year in Mexico.
Baja California (despite the name, it is part of Mexico) is a peninsular stretching like a long finger for nearly a thousand miles south of the USA - and to get into the warm, clear waters of the Sea of Cortez (also known as the Gulf of California), we needed to be on the other side of the peninsular. Getting there by boat involves some long passages down the Pacific side of the finger before turning the corner at the bottom. Between Ensenada and Cabo San Lucas (at the southern tip of Baja), there are only two or three good all-weather anchorages, the rest of the coastline being very inhospitable and rocky. The prevailing wind is from the north-west, and at this time of year it generally blows at speeds of 15 to 30 knots, which is very good for boats heading south, though very bad if you happen to be heading in the other direction! We set off from Ensenada nearly three weeks ago, getting to our first anchorage at Turtle Bay, 310 miles south, after a good 48-hour run. Our next stop was at Santa Maria, 250 miles further on, and the final leg to the tip of the peninsular brought us another 200 miles. Cabo itself has a reputation as an expensive, noisy resort town so we had planned to continue beyond it to a quiet anchorage further up the coast. However, a few hours before rounding the corner, we found we had an engine problem which we were not able to diagnose while under way, so we decided to sail into the anchorage to find out what the problem was, knowing that help, if needed, was close - if expensively - at hand. As luck would have it, friends on another Island Packet which had left Ensenada just after us were here already - and suggested that the pump impeller in the cooling water system might be faulty (though we had already checked it and it looked perfectly intact). Good advice, as the impeller was in fact faulty and the installation of one of our spares fixed the problem, leaving us time to enjoy a bonus day or two in Cabo, which, contrary to expectations, we quite enjoyed. Maybe our narrow escape from the wallet draining marinas and repair shops gave us rose tinted spectacles!
Sailing in to Cabo was an experience like no other that we have had. The tip of the peninsular has the effect of accelerating the wind round the cape, and about ten miles before reaching the anchorage, the wind speed picked up from a very sedate 12 knots to over 30 in the space of a few minutes, and stayed like that until we rounded the corner into the bay itself when it suddenly dropped to less than 5 knots! The whole way down the outside of the Baja peninsular, the wind had had a really chilly bite, it was often overcast, and the sea temperature was below 60 deg F. Once inside the bay, we found ourselves in another world - warm and sunny with the sea temperature up by nearly 15 deg F - and golden beach stretching for miles along the shore. We felt very out of place still dressed in our cold-weather fleeces!
Between Cabo San Lucas and La Paz there are several good anchorages and we have spent a leisurely few days sailing up the coast - in fact motoring more than sailing, as the wind has been almost non-existent for much of the time. The transition from the cold, cloudy Pacific coast to the hot, sunny days of the Sea of Cortez has not taken us long to get used to (in fact it took about as long as the change of clothes from thermals to shorts!), and we have already enjoyed plenty of swimming. A curious feature of this part of the world is the wind which springs up at night - rapid cooling of the land generates strong offshore breezes, often reaching near gale-force, which spring up suddenly between 2100 and 2200, then die just as quickly soon after dawn. Great for keeping the batteries well charged, as the wind-powered generator takes over the day-time job of the solar panels, but something it helps to know about in advance to ensure that the idyllic spot chosen for anchoring during the day doesn’t become a dangerous place to be at night once the wind starts blowing.
We are looking forward to a summer of new friends, beautiful anchorages, warm sea, swimming and fishing as we head further north through the Sea of Cortez. We plan to be here for the rest of the summer and hope to start heading south towards Panama some time in late November. Well that’s all for now. Barbara has been working on the website, so if you’d like to see some photographs of Songline log on to www.geocities.com/gayfords. We hope you are all keeping well, and we do hope that you will find time to write and tell us what you are up to - we love to hear from you.
With love and best wishes from
John and Barbara