The weather is a little dicey today - cloudy skies, more wind and waves than usual, and a rather ominous weather report showing a low pressure system leading straight up the Sea of Cortez that could open us up to hurricanes, which until now have apparently been blocked by what is referred to as a Pacific High. I was the one who woke up this morning early, and discovered our windvane power generator being quite active. I looked outside, decided to tie down the dinghy and add an extra dockline. Then I got Mike up. We have been keeping our eyes on the weather - so far, so good. I am not looking forward to another chubasco , which is the official name of the storm we went through earlier this week. Hopefully we are not in for more of that.
This is a very interesting town. It is not a tourist town at all, probably because there is no beach. Cruising sailboats stop here on their way to other places. The town was originally a copper mining town, run by a French company. There is a steel church here that was designed by Eiffel in Paris, built there, and then dismantaled and shipped over here and reconstructed. It is really interesting - it almost looks like a toy. It is made of steel. There are also a lot of wooden buildings here, another unusual thing for this part of the world where there are not and never were any trees. The mining concerns shipped them down from the Pacific Northwest. There is a Yaqui Indian population that has never really assimilated. They contracted to work the mines, with the understanding the Church would allow them to practice their own religion and maintain their own culture. Surprizingly, the Church lived up to its part of the bargain. The mines closed down years ago, and the old equipment is lying around all over the place. Recently there has been an attempt to reopen the mines due to the rise in the price of copper. It remains to be seen how that will play out.
I had the chance this morning to accompany our neighbor down to the commercial panga docks to see his brother-in-law who was returning with a big load of sharks. (One note - if you are going to enjoy third world or even second world living, sometimes you have to suspend your own value judgments. People here do what they have to do to get by.) There were about eight or nine dead sharks, all of which were caught in this big net. It was pretty interesting to watch these guys, most of whom live without running water in their homes, unload and cut up these big fish. They leave the guts and heads for the gulls and pelicans, the body goes to the fishing collective, and the fins go to the boat captain, who then dries them and sells them. They get about one hundred and fifty dollars a kilo, which is a tremendous amount of money for these people. I don't think it is legal most places. At least here the whole shark is used, whereas in Asia, they take many more sharks and take only the fins, throwing the rest away. My first stepmother tried sharkfin soup when she was dying of cancer, I am here to
tell you it does not work.
Enough about that. It is very hot and humid today, as per usual, maybe a little more humid because it is cloudy and this storm system is hovering around. We have some shopping to do - this is the last place to reprovision for over 100 miles. There are several small stores here that seem to have pretty much everything we need, if maybe not everything we want. There is plenty of cold beer, an important item. We don't drink when we are actually underway, but a cold beer at the end of a day of sailing after the anchor is dropped is hard to beat. That and a fresh water shower. Plus, I have never been so grateful for a glass of cold water in my life.
Here are a couple pictures of the storm. The first one is at the beginning, when the sky scared us. The second one shows our friends' boat in the middle of it - and later it blew so hard we could not even see their boat. The pictures do not do it justice, but they are the best ones I have.
Unfortunately, I discovered that the other pictures I wanted to post are in some file that Mike uses that I have no idea about. So I will try mightily to get some new stuff downloaded as soon as I can get him to help me.
We plan to be here for about three more days, and then we will head north. The next anchorage is about 80 miles north, which means at least one overnight depending on how fast we can go. As anyone who has read this before is aware, Mike would rather drift along sailing at one knot before he turns on the engine. So it could be a couple of days. I am looking forward to it because we have not done any overnights since Mike, Walt and I came from Mazatlan to the islands off La Paz in late June. Everything we have been doing so far is day sailing, stopping at night. I have missed watching the sun come up at the end of my night watch. After that, I am not sure where we will stop next. Our eventual goal is Bahia De Los Angeles, which will theoretically keep us safe from any hurricanes. This is hurricane season in this part of the world, and September is the most dangerous month, so we really need to get going. Then come early October, we will head south again. My nephew wants to come back, and we are really hoping that will happen.
Well, it is time for me to get going to get my chores done. Here in the marina it is easier to do my chores because we get to use shore power to run our air conditioning. It makes things so much more comfortable, especially at night. We even get to snuggle again, something we really haven't been able to do when it is so hot at night. It is a treat not to wake up with the sheets soaked in sweat. So - here is hoping all my fellow Americans on the east coast are spared the wrath of Irene. For the first time, that sort of fear is more than theoretical to me. Have a great day!
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