The Blog

Our time is La Paz is ending.  Our new four year visas are in our hands! We did get one short three-day voyage out to the islands at the start of this new 2022-23 season.  And we did get to experience anchoring in the Mogote.  But now it’s time to start on our new season’sContinue reading “And away we go!”

We enjoyed a couple days of slip rental in Marina de La Paz. We de-salted our boat toys, washed the boat, provisioned and took on water. We are ready to head the 250nm to Mazatlan once we get our visas. Hopefully the visas will be available sooner than later this week, but it’s already TuesdayContinue reading “On the (tiny) move”

We are anchored in a place known as the Mogote anchorage. The official Mogote is actually a sandy spit of land north of La Paz that forms the north shore of the bay. Our boat location is the black boat shape in the channel right of the spit of land. A challenge here is thatContinue reading “Anchored in the Mogote”

We found the setting on our blog to not require logging in to make a comment on our posts. I know it’s inconvenient to have to log in. Hopefully more comments since this setting has been changed. Please still put in a name so we know who commented. We do still get to moderate soContinue reading “Login not required to comment!”

Trip number two to Instituto Nacional de Migracion for photos and fingerprints. It was supposed to be a couple days after filling the original paperwork. It took a bit longer but there was probably some Revolution Day impact on the processing schedule. I guess the resident cards will show up a few days after printsContinue reading “Migracion, II”

Our potentially last ever time in islands of the Sea of Cortez was shared with my brother Ken down from Seattle. Definately sharply dressed for a traveller new to the tropics. Our new crew had arrived! We took in a few activities while wandering around town. Food of course. Introduction to Molcajete. Fine beers veryContinue reading “The old man and the sea”

On rare occasion we have breakfast out. Almost always we’ll rewarded for that decision. Major que mi Madre hizo!

It’s Revolution Day weekend. More amazing stuff going on. We went out for ribs at the best rib joint in La Paz and happened upon yet another event. This was opening night – a folkloric festival – on the steps of a church in el Centro. Who knows what we’ll run into next?

Our adventures and opportunities in Mexico are so varied, and almost always rewarding. The local Rotary has lots of programs to help members of the local rural communities here in BCS. Rotarians here in the boating community run a Christmas gifting program. They have a list of about 100 kids who live in very ruralContinue reading “Santa Claus”

We are working on getting resident visas. There’s a program that if you (1) are in Mexico on an expired visa, (2) visited Mexico at least once before 2020, (3) have money to pay fines for expired visas and fees for the “regularization” program, (4) have more money to prepay four years of temporary residencyContinue reading “Migracion!”

Lets just start this post with condolences to all of our friends and family who are suffering under the first occurrences of winter up north. So sorry to be you! With our de-hurricaning done, we took our boat out of the slip and headed to the islands for a short test sail. Woo hoo boatContinue reading “First Sail of the Season”

I walked up to the PEMEX to get gasoline. We got the dinghy off the foredeck and into the water, then mounted the engine. We loaded up all of our safety gear, and away we went! We think we’ll be leaving Marina de La Paz early Saturday unless the port is closed. Friday looks aContinue reading “Dinghy Test Run”

We read about a party at the city theater so we wandered up to see the event. We only stayed a little while but ran into a few Katrinas. The makeup and the costumes were pretty elaborate. And there was meat on a stick for hungry sailors.

Or mast climbers arrived a couple days before we would have started to worry about getting our main sail hoisted. Turns out we just had some halyard wraps on the furler. About 25 minutes later the guys from Dawn Rigging arrived they not only had us unwrapped but also ran the mainsail up for us!Continue reading “We’re Going Sailing!”

We’ve had trouble with our current dinghy. Tropical heat may be to blame. Or it might be a lemon from the factory – a second round of glue failures needed to be corrected. Too bad because we really liked our Takacat. Just this morning on the radio net, another boat offered up a used HypalonContinue reading “Accessorizing YO-D-YO”

Our mishap with the jib halyard was corrected by a local crew from Dawn Rigging. Mary was ready to go up the mast the next day but the climbers from Dawn Rigging worked through a troublesome repair to save Mary from an opportunity to climb. Mary’s mom should be almost as happy as Mary is.Continue reading “Boat readiness part II”

I’m recovering from rotator cuff surgery. I took an opportunity in Florida to get a couple PT sessions in before going back to Mexico to get recovery started. Now that we are in La Paz it’s PT in Mexico for as many sessions as I can get in during our brief stay at the marina.Continue reading “PT Mexican Style”

There was a long list of chores to get the boat changed over from hurricane-prepared to sail-ready. Most are done. One ‘oops’ moment requires a must climb to correct. A mast climb was planned by Mary but because of the oops, a rigger is needed to fix the problem. Dave can’t climb because of theContinue reading “Boat readiness”

After a 16-hour five-city travel day we made it back to La Paz. We had a very short layover in Mexico City and rushed from one plane to another with a good 20 minutes to spare thanks to good assistance from greeters at the arrival gate and at baggage claim. “Run to your gate! YourContinue reading “Back in La Paz”

One of our last days in Florida we went to the Crooked Tree Lighthouse and then off to Apalachicola. We were able to climb 127 step to the top of the Lighthouse and Tim, one of the volunteers joined us. Tim explained a bit of the history of the light and how it has changed.Continue reading “Lighthouse and Apalachicola”

Sunday was family day. Jay and Ryane brought their four beautiful children to Tom and Terri’s house for food and fun. Of course Shannon and John were there as well. We also explored the neighborhood with the kids and picked beauty berries, and found an escaped Chick-fil-a cow! Great relaxing fun in the pool, too.Continue reading “Florida Family Fun continues”

Our last stop in the USA was Crawfordville, Florida for a visit with Mary’s brother and sister-in-law. This also included their children Jay and Shannon and grand children Allison, Audrey, Lilly and Luke. What a great time. I am hesitant to post the 5 star review and have all of our followers decend on theirContinue reading “Fun with Family”

The first item on our list of things to see in Iceland was the Northern Lights. Solar activity was high. The Aurora Borealis was active! As luck would have it there were hurricanes before our trip, and they were probably a cause of the excessively overcast skies we had each day – and night. GotContinue reading “Iceland – Northern Lights!”

The Blue Lagoon is a large lagoon that is heated by the run off hot water from the neaby Svartsgnai geothermal power plant. It is rich in silica which give it the light blue color. They gave us a handfull of the silica to put on our faces for a mask. We now look evenContinue reading “Iceland – The Blue Lagoon”

Iceland is on the move! It moves about 1 cm left and 1 cm right each year because it’s on the fault between the North American and the Euroasian tectonic plates that cuts through the middle of the island. That also explains the frequent, geologically speaking, volcanos. We like rocks. This has been a greatContinue reading “Iceland – The Rift!”

We enjoyed lots of sights and visited many places the day we got to Iceland. Our first day started with our landing at 6:30 AM at the airport about an hour outside of town. We dropped bags at the hotel and got tickets on the Hop-On-Off bus. The bus is a good way to getContinue reading “Iceland – Reykjavik”

There are thousands of waterfalls on this little island nation.  The Golden Circle tour has one outstanding example. Our stop at Gullfoss, Icelandic for “Golden Waterfall”, is one of the largest and most spectacular waterfalls in Iceland. Pictures from our cell phone cameras can’t do this feature justice. We forgot to pack our barrels orContinue reading “Iceland – Waterfalls”

Icelandic is a very old language – a Norse dialect from 900 AD or so. And it was spoken by vikings so you can bet it was full of connotations rated PG13 or higher. As such they’ve had lots of time to come up with little phrases that don’t translate directly to other languages. OurContinue reading “Iceland – Idioms”

Our second stop on the Circle Tour was a geyser field – Haukadalur Geothermal Area. Their famous “Great Geyser” has gone to sleep after a recent earthquake, however the slightly smaller Strokkur geyser now puts forth a bubble of steam and spray about every five minutes. Not quite Yellowstone, but still a very nice visit.Continue reading “Iceland – Geyser”

The Grand Circle tour in Iceland stops at several interesting locations. The first stop on our tour took us to the largest tomato producing greenhouses in Iceland. It was interesting how they utilized the geothermal resources of the area to heat, water, and electrical power the 19 greenhouses. They import fine Italian bumble bees toContinue reading “Iceland – Fridheimar”