We left Mazatlan on March 26th heading across the
Sea of Cortez to La Paz. We estimated
the trip to be about 34 hours long, so we left at 6 am planning an afternoon
arrival on the other side. We were
sailing with a few other boats that are friends of ours. Leaving at the same time were Tortuga,
Seychelles, La Ange, and Wendaway. It was nice to have other boats around on
those lonely night watches. We ended up
having some light winds and a favorable current that pushed us along much
faster than we expected. We arrived in
Baja after 29.5 hours at sea, and were very happy to get the anchor down and
take a nap in Bahia de Los Muertos.
Our travelling companions Tortuga and Seychelles
The
winds blew strong from the wrong direction for two days, so we sat tight in the
anchorage playing bocce ball on the beach and waiting for a good day to cover
the 40 plus miles to La Paz. We were
happy to arrive in La Paz on March 30th in the early afternoon when
we could get a marina slip at our favorite marina, Costa Baja, right after
filling up with fuel. Our friends
anchored closer to the town center where we would meet up with them in a couple
of days. Our first project was to fix
the raw water pump that began leaking both oil and water during our crossing of
the sea. We learned of a couple of small
shops in town that probably carried the parts we needed. It is impossible to get anything shipped to
Mexico in less than a month, and we wanted to get on our way soon. Rich spent one day tearing apart the pump so
that he had the parts out that he needed to replace. Luckily, Rich had stocked his tool box with
all the right special tools we needed. We put everything in a baggie and caught
a cab to the area of town where the auto parts stores are. The bearing and seal shop had the perfect
size oil seal for about 90% less than it would have cost in the states. We then found a sheet of gasket material at a
parts store so we could make our own gaskets.
Next stop was the dive shop, because as we found out, they are the only
place that carries different sizes of O rings.
They actually had the metric size we needed! The next day was spent putting everything
back together and crossing our fingers that nothing else started leaking. Perfecto!
Total cost of the pump rebuild was about $10, not counting the cab
fare. A replacement pump is $900. We could now leave whenever the weather was
ready for us. To celebrate, we went out
to dinner with Rick and Marilynn on Tortuga at a fun outdoor BBQ place. The grill is in the front of an old truck,
and the hamburgers are great. We would
soon be on our way out to the islands and our favorite cruising grounds.
The grill
The final product. A great cheeseburger!
The next day we had lunch at our favorite taco place, Rancho Viejo. You get all this stuff for only one taco.
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