Zabels At Sea

Yup, we are back in La Paz!  But this time we didn’t get blown out.  We actually had a lovely time as reported earlier.  However, when we were planning to leave yesterday and proceed farther north, Larry got to thinking and decided that he just wasn’t comfortable with getting farther from La Paz without fixing our balky starter motor.  Pretty much every time we go to start the engine, there are several unsuccessful clicks by the starter.  Then he has to beat it into submission.  We just weren’t anxious to deal with that and have it fail on us completely in a remote anchorage.  Why we couldn’t have decided to deal with this last month when we were footloose and fancy free here, before and after the holidays, is anyone’s guess, but I think it is related to some funky aspect of the Mayan calendar (i.e. we are not getting any younger!)

So we had a wonderful visit to our boat yesterday by Roger and Jean Wise who have established a boat mechanical repair business down here in La Paz. (Jean is a friend of  Muggs’s from the Oakland Yacht Club ladies’ book club.  She and Muggs ran into each other (well, not literally, of course!) last summer while Jean was up in Alameda.  Jean immediately offered to help us learn the ropes of cruising and living in Mexico.  We met her husband, Roger, at the club on the night of our get-together.  And now we have met up with them again here in La Paz where they are in the thick of things at the Club Cruceros.)

Anyway, Roger specializes in electrical problems and refrigeration, so he is the first person we called when we got back.  He and Larry spent two or three hours yesterday, kneeling on the floor, rebuilding the starter motor solenoid.  The engine started nicely twice, but then not again for about 5 or 6 more tries.  Very disheartening, but at least he was pretty certain that the problem is a manufacturing defect.  As of now (next day afternoon), the supplier we purchased it from (in Oakland) has been contacted.  He is rebuilding another one for us in Oakland.  Our friend, John Rollins, will go pick it up and bring it to us when he returns to La Paz in a week or two in his car.  John Rollins was a boat neighbor of ours at Grand Marina in Alameda, and he just happens to have returned to the area in order to take his car out of storage and bring it down to La Paz.  This is a REALLY small world.

In the meantime, we are “trapped” again in La Paz but loving every minute of it.  Today, we received this picture from Rod and Elisabeth of Proximity:

This was taken in Puerto Balandra where we had our scary evening at anchor a month ago.  This was taken as the sun was setting behind the photographer.  The gray “slash” below the main boom is our dinghy partially hoisted.  This is probably two hours before all hell broke loose.  I hope you agree with me that this is an amazing and beautiful picture.  Unfortunately, we didn’t take any pictures of Proximity for them.

That’s all for now.  Adios!

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At GPS 24 degrees 25.6’ lat., 110 degrees 21.6’ longitude.

Close

We are in Bahia San Gabriel on the west coast of Isla Ispiritu Santo which forms the east side of Bahia de La Paz.  Last night’s sunset:

Larry took four shots of the sunset, and he got birds in this one.  they are pelicans.  Other daylight pics before the sunset:

Guess who

Next day we went to short by dinghy:

The camera I used here is nearly impossible to use during bright sunlight.  There is no way to preview the image.  I literally pointed and clicked and hoped.  That dot on the horizon is our boat at anchor.  The distance to our boat is about one-half mile.  The boat is anchored in 16’ of water way out there.  These coves are very shoaly – lots of banked up sand and shallow water.

We had the waterproof camera (hence the problem) thinking we would be snorkeling.  It turns out there isn’t a lot of good snorkeling here, but we did go over to a lagoon that was used in the past for oyster/pearl farming.  I think the oysters died out suddenly sometime in the 1940’s.

When I tried to go ashore there, I was chased by a couple of wasps.  We got out of there, sprayed again with bug repellant, went back, and then chickened out.  Like Larry said, I didn’t want to get up on the rocky bank and find myself in the middle of a swarm of wasps!

Tomorrow, we will continue our travels to another cove called Caleta Partida.  For the rest of today, Larry is napping and I am updating the blog.  Please note the “stuff” required to make this happen:

Inverter to run the computer

Various assorted gizmos to take pictures, transfer pictures, gain internet access.  It doesn’t all show up well in this picture, so I will just have to tell you to be impressed!  Adios for now.

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Today, I (Muggs) went to the Club Cruceros meeting place and met with other cruisers who like to sketch and paint.  I have never really done this before, but I have an interest and brought some paints with me.  I had fun and learned a lot, and here is my first effort:

But the real fun started when I returned to the marina.  Larry had already returned a couple of hours before.  During this time, a dolphin wandered into the marina and swam around in the slip next to our boat for a while!

How high tech is this, for just a couple of old f*&ts – Larry used his cell phone to take this picture, then he emailed it to our email account from which I downloaded it to the computer!  I know, I know – not really very high tech, but consider who’s doing this and where! 

When I arrived, I took several pictures as we waited for a boat to arrive that was going to escort (we thought) the dolphin back to open water:

  See the paddle – I wasn’t sure what they had in mind, but it turned out not to be herding:

In the last picture, you can barely see the dolphin’s snout under a wet rag – on the floor, bottom right.  The worker is washing him down with a hose:

That’s all for now.  Tonight, we are going to a place called Bandido’s for hamburgers grilled in the engine compartment of an old Chevy!

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