Rich doing some maintenance 55 feet up.
We have gotten a little behind on our posts, so this one should get us caught up. On Wed. 1/18, we went for a 5 mile hike around La Paz. On the way back to the marina, we stopped to see our friends Bob and Ann on Charisma who sent us an email that they were back in town. They were planning to meet up with some other folks from Marina Palmira and go dancing at a local Italian restaurant called Ciao Milano. On Wednesdays they have an english speaking rock and roll band and some dinner specials.
There were about 12 of us and a lot of Mexican families there dancing and having a great time. The band and the food were all very good. We invited Bob and Ann over to our boat for a paella dinner the next night. We first went to the club here for sunset cocktails, and were treated to another great show. About a mile off shore a humpback whale was continually breaching right as the sun was setting. Absolutely amazing to see!
Couldn't get the shot, but imagine a whale jumping just past the bouy!
Friday morning we set sail to Puerto Balandra to meet up with Charisma, another Tayana 37, and spend a couple of days there before they departed for Mazatlan. We dropped anchor and were the only ones in the bay until someone came and dropped their anchor right on top of ours! We will refer to him as the A-hole. We waited for Charisma to show up before we pulled anchor. We had to wait until the A-hole boat swung out of the way so we could come up to our anchor and get away from him. After re-anchoring on the other side of Charisma, both boats deployed the inflatable kayak shore assualt, and we headed to the closest beach.
The boats are in the background. A long paddle.
There were some spectacular rocks and caves to kayak around.
There were many colorful crabs climbing around the rocks.
About 5 minutes after these photos were taken on our second day of kayaking, we had just paddled out of the cave area when a wake from a passing 150 foot yacht smacked us with three foot breaking waves. We paddled like crazy to keep from being driven into the rocks. We all stayed out of the rocks, but all our kayaks filled with water and we were drenched. One more reason to hate megayachts!
Charisma in Puerto Balandra
Our first night here we rowed the dinghy over to Charisma for a fantastic steak dinner, followed by home made ginger cookies and a night of Mexican train dominoes. Ann won the game, but that was OK with us because she makes a darn good cookie!
After another day of hanging out and kayaking, the weather forcast changed and we started to get some strong south winds at night. The following morning we went for another kayak trip to the cave area, but the the water was a little rougher and not very clear. Rich started hearing the wind wistling through the rocks so we decided to head back to the boat. When we rounded the corner and saw the boat, we were surpised to find 20 plus knot winds from the east, and 3-4 foot swells from the north. The swells were coming directly into the anchorage! We paddled like crazy against the wind to get back to the boat. Exhausted, we secured everything on the boat and got ready to pull anchor and get out of there. Problem was that Bob and Ann had paddled their kayaks to the beach to go hiking of a nearby mountain, and we were concerned that they might have trouble getting back to and on their boat in these conditions. We waited until we saw them starting back to the boat before we pulled up anchor. We hung around to make sure they got back on their boat OK, before we headed back to La Paz. We said our goodbyes over the radio, and wished them a safe trip south and on to the South Pacific where they are headed. The only good thing about the day was that we had a beautiful down wind sail in 15-20 knots of wind all the way back to La Paz. We hit 6.6 knots with just the jib flying! Perfect way to end the day.
No comments:
Post a Comment