Road Trip to Durango - December 2014

Our first road trip of the 2014-2015 cruising season was a very interesting drive to Durango. The trip used to take a full day over narrow mountain roads shared with commercial truck traffic. In 2013, a new road was completed that reduced drive time to just 3 hours. It's an engineering marvel with 63 bridges and 115 tunnels. The Baluarte Bridge is the highest cable-stayed bridge in the world, at a height of 1,322' above the valley floor. Sadly, there was no lookout point where travelers can stop and take time to admire the bridge - we had to shoot our photos as we were driving.

Baluarte Bridge

The longest tunnel is almost 3 kilometers long, with lighted lane markers and huge fans to remove carbon monoxide.

Tunel el Sinaloense

Durango was founded in 1563 for its gold and silver deposits. It's a traditional Mexican town, with architecture influenced by Europeans, not too touristy, with lots to see. The touristy part was outside the town. Durango was home to over 100 western movies - John Wayne made 7 movies here. We passed on the movie tour.

Our Hotel - Hostal de la Monja

After the drive, we treated ourselves to a nice late lunch. We had our choice of several traditional Mexican restaurants. Lunch at El Esquilón was delicious and a great way to ease into Durango.

Restaurant El Esquilón

We visited several museums. The first one had a permanent exhibit of local artist Guillermo Ceniceros and a visiting exhibit of another Mexican artist, Rafael Coronel - "Shrouds and Shadows".

Rafael Coronel exhibit

Raphael Coronel exhibit

Durango is in the mountains at 6,000' elevation, so the nights were cool, but great weather for exploring the town. Here is a night scene near our hotel.

 

Durango

We wanted to try new things this season. We stopped at another traditional restaurant for a Mezcal margarita - different from tequila and also excellent. We returned again the next day for a snack and we discovered one of our new favorite Mexican meals, Pozole soup or stew. It's made with either a spicy red or green sauce with hominy and chicken or pork and a plateful of other tasty ingredients to add.

Mezcal Margarita at Raices

After the Pozole we decided to try the traditional Mexican coffee - Café de Olla. It is brewed all day in a large pot with coffee, cocoa, cinnamon, cloves, orange peel, brown sugar and vanilla. We had no problem staying awake all afternoon.

Sampling Café de Olla

Sleep wasn't an option so we continued our walking tour of Durango at night. One destination for both locals and tourists was a cable car ride to take in the view of the city.

Teleférico (Cable Car)

Selfie from Cerro de los Remedios

We really enjoyed getting to know another Mexico town and look forward to visiting others!

Catedral Basilica de Durango

Back in the Sea of Cortez - October/November 2014

After a long 4 day drive from San Francisco to La Paz, we were anxious to see our home again and visit the Sea of Cortez. Rain from the string of hurricanes that visited the Baja peninsula this year left the desert lush and green.

Sierra de la Giganta Range

Our long time friends from Colorado visited us for an early season cruise in the southern part of the Sea of Cortez. By the way, all the really good photos in this blog update were taken by Jim Geis.

Bev, Karen & Jim

Visiting the Sea early in the cruising season meant there were few other boats in our anchorages. Below is a photo of one of the most popular anchorages in the Sea of Cortez, about 40 miles north of La Paz.

Isla San Francisco

Water clarity changes depending on water temperature and winds and as you can see, the water was crystal clear during this trip.

Agave Azul's water taxi

We are used to backpacking with Jim & Bev & Karen in remote places in California and Colorado, so we looked for some out of the way spots. Isla Coyote is a very small island, 40' high and just a few hundred feet in length. It is only accessible in calm weather and in the fall, that is what we experienced most of the time.

Isla Coyote

View from the top of the rock

One of the few buildings on the island

The people who live on the island make their living from the sea - the men fish and one woman on the island makes jewelry from shells. 

We talked with one of the fishermen and asked where he went during Hurricane Odile. Surprisingly he said everyone stayed on the island during the storm. He did point out that the waves went about half way up the buildings in this photo. They laughed when we asked if they had beer for sale, but they did have some very fresh fish, which we bought for dinner. Next time we visit, we'll bring them some beer.

Cleaning their catch

We asked about the statue on a rock near the water. This is one of the saints that protects the pescadores.

 Jesus del Caracol (Jesus of the Shell) 

One of our favorite anchorages is San Evaristo and we were the only boat in the anchorage. One quiet Sunday morning we heard the church bells ring and about a half hour later a raft of fishing pangas began to slowly circle the bay. At the end of the service they motored by Agave Azul, said a few words and they all began clapping and we responded in kind. We later learned that this was the annual blessing of the fishing fleet. We were definitely in the right place at the right time!

Blessing of the fleet - San Evaristo

Our furthest point north on this trip was Agua Verde. As we were searching for the produce "store", we heard children laughing. They were standing outside their school house watching the unusual sight of gringos walking through their neighborhood. Kathryn brought her bag of goodies and at this stop we gave their teacher a bag of balloons - a  big hit with the girls. Kathryn also gave teacher a Luci Lite, a small solar light.

Agua Verde daycare

A group of 8 or so pangas left the beach just before sunset and returned at dawn with their catch. We went ashore to buy some fish, but when we got there at about 8:00am we were told all the fish had been taken to market - bummer! We asked one of the men what time we needed to be on the beach to get fish and he said to be there as soon as the boats returned. So we got up early and had our pick of just caught Pargo (Red Snapper) and Cabrilla (Grouper).

Pargo

Filleting our Cabrilla for dinner

It was a great to be back in the Sea again and to share the experience with friends. Here's another of Jim's excellent photos after we returned to the marina in La Paz.

Marina Palmira sunset

After a week of boat projects and reprovisioning our second visitors of the season arrived from the Bay Area. We spent a few days in the Sea before an overnight passage to Mazatlan. Kathryn and I would spend the rest of the winter on Mexico's west coast.

Robin, Luanne & Kathryn

John &  Robin

The good weather continued, but the wind was excellent this time and we were able to do some great sailing. I used to race against John at Sequoia Yacht Club and he loves to sail. It's fun to feel Agave Azul go fast and John was happy to take the helm for most of the trip. This was Luanne's first offshore overnight passage.

The fish camp at Caleta Partida

Fish camps are pretty basic shelters where fishermen spend time between trips taking their catch to market. We always buy fresh fish when its available, so we anchored at Caleta Partida to see if fish was available.

Cabrilla & Pargo

After we bought our dinner the fisherman asked us for batteries to play his music. We went back to Agave Azul and he showed up a few minutes after we arrived. We found some AAA batteries for him and gave him a solar Luci Lite, too.

Luz Luci es muy bueno!

Our next to last stop in the Sea was at Los Islotes, a sea lion rookery. It's too deep and rocky to anchor there, so John & Luanne swam with the sea lions while Kathryn and I drifted just off the island. We had our turn when they returned.

Luanne snorkeling at Los Islotes

The sea lions are pretty frisky and the young ones would swim fast toward us and turn away at the last minute. Although it wasn't mating season, we kept our distance from the 800 pound bulls - all of the larger sea lions actually. The good pics from John & Luanne's visit are John's.

Showing off for the tourists

After a fast sail south and an overnight at Bahia de Los Muertos, we departed early for our trip across to Mazatlan, where we spent a few days exploring with John & Luanne.

Cathedral de la Inmaculada Concepción

Whenever we are in Mazatlan we always try to stop at our favorite restaurant in Mexico, Topolos. Really good Mexican food and great Mango Margaritas - yum!

Good bye dinner with John & Luanne at Topolos

Hurricane Odile

Hurricane Odile was the 3^rd major hurricane to head for the Baja Peninsula between August 27th and September 17th. Hurricanes Marie and Norbert were strong Category 5 and 4 hurricanes that passed by close to the west coast of Baja, with menacing clouds, but not much wind and only a few inches of rain in La Paz. Hey, hurricane season isn’t so bad … they’re all near misses, we’re good.

Odile was different. It was headed directly toward Cabo San Lucas, but the forecast was for the eye to veer slightly northwest just missing land. The forecast at 5PM on Sunday is shown below, listing Odile as a major (M) hurricane. We were cautiously optimistic.

National Hurricane Center Forecast - 5PM Sunday

Sunday was much like any other day. We attended a function at Sequoia Yacht Club and acted less worried about the storm than we were willing to admit to ourselves. We spent two weeks preparing Agave Azul for hurricane season, removing and stowing everything that might catch the wind, so we thought we’d be OK. As Odile approached Cabo Sunday evening, reality set in and casual conversation was replaced with frequent searches on the National Hurricane Center website, SailFlow and GRIB Explorer.  As darkness approached we began to see scary YouTube videos showing massive waves cascading over the top of the famous 200' high Arch Rock on the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula.

Cautious optimism was replaced with wishful thinking – Please Turn West!

Arch Rock

It had been a long day so we went to bed at about 11PM. A few hours later I woke up and decided to check the NHC website for the updated forecast. Odile made landfall directly on Cabo San Lucas, a strong Category 3 hurricane with 135mph winds. Major bad news for Cabo.

National Hurricane Center Forecast - 2AM Monday

Worse for our boat, the eye was just 40 miles southwest of our marina. The strongest winds in any northern hemisphere hurricane are in the northeast corner of the storm. Both SailFlow and GRIB Explorer showed the hurricane’s strongest winds were directly over La Paz, the worst possible outcome. I went downstairs to channel switch for a couple hours trying to get info about the storm, but there was no news coming out of Baja. When I went back to bed at 3:30, I wasn’t surprised to find Kathryn surfing the web for the same information. Having seen pictures of damage from other hurricanes neither one of us voiced our fear that Agave Azul might not survive the storm.

When we met with our yacht management team in June, Tom Brown & Jeanne Walker of La Paz Cruiser’s Supply, one of my first questions was what should we do if a hurricane hits? They said there’s really nothing to do … power, phone and internet service will be out, there will be no fresh water, food will be scarce, roads will be impassable and the airports will be closed – we couldn’t get to La Paz even if we wanted to. We could only wait for news.

At 8AM on Monday a few cell towers were still operable and we received a forwarded report from Dennis Ross of Ross Marine Services that "a quick walk around the docks at 8AM found the boats to be still floating and no significant damage that we could see …. at the present time we still have 40-50 knots of wind."

Cell service soon stopped completely and the only word in the next 3 days was from a cruiser who used their Single Side Band radio to send another fairly optimistic email message. But with no phone or internet service we were getting a bit anxious about Agave Azul.

Last night, Friday, we received an email message and photos from Tom & Jeanne. Previous storms approached from further west, creating southerly winds, which apparently would have been “better” for our orientation in the slip. Because Odile was closer to La Paz, the wind blew from the east, heeling Agave Azul about 40º over to port. That’s a lot of heel even when sailing, so 40º tied up at the dock was extreme. The result was that our port side hull and rail rubbed against the dock, resulting in minor damage. 

Port side stripe and rail damage

This should be an easy repair

What is amazing is that the boat was heeled so far over that the rail was rubbing against the dock, shown in the photo below. We were very lucky that the dodger and the arch with our solar panels didn't hit the vertical piling when the boat heeled over.

Considering that the wind was blowing 125mph, we were extremely lucky. We are also very thankful that Tom & Jeanne did such a good job repositioning the boats on either side of us so our masts didn't collide, retying and adding extra lines and chafe gear, removing canvas and frequently checking on the boat until the wind was too strong to walk the docks!

Agave Azul safe and sound in Marina Palmira!

Our next adventure will be driving to La Paz the first week in October.