MARK TWAIN WOULD SAY 'GO FOR IT'

Yesterday I started provisioning for a two-day buddy-boating trip up the Mexican coast with friends who also have a Morgan Out-Islander. They'll continue across the Sea of Cortez to Bahia de Los Angeles, while we'll return after two nights. We hope to get to Isla San Pedro or even Las Cocinas (The Kitchens. Hope they're not named for the ambient temperatures!).

But the weather isn't cooperating. Yesterday evening we sat outside and watched a wild lightning show, veiled by a low bank of heavy rainclouds so sometimes it looked like a sudden brightening in the sky, very mysterious, and sometimes we actually saw forks of lightning. No thunder, so we decided it must have been far out over the sea. We expected rain last night, but only saw a few drops this morning. Mark Twain would probably say "Go for it," but there are four of us and we need a consensus.

I've decided to be optimistic and be prepared. For provisioning I pack plenty of TVP (Texturized Vegetable Protein, one of Archer Daniels Midland's better ideas) which doesn't require refrigeration and easy to cook with. Friends we met in Mazatlan in 1998 first told us about TVP; they'd used it for years as their main protein source. It's basically a dried soy protein product, and surprisingly easy to find in Mexico, where it's sold plain and in chicken, beef and pork flavors. (I prefer to flavor my own.) In recipes that call for ground meat, TVP can be substituted easily, and even tofu-haters won't notice the difference. Spaghetti, chunky soups, stews, eggplant casserole, chili, tacos, enchiladas, lasagna, anything layered, are natural choices for TVP. I just reconstitute it for 10 minutes, 1-to-1 with boiling water, adding a broth cube. It's best to add TVP last, just long enough to absorb flavors.

Chilaquiles de TVP
In a measuring cup or small bowl combine:
1/2 C. dry TVP
1/2 C. boiling water
Chicken bouillion cube
While reconsituting TVP, sauté in a frying pan or wok, preferably with a cover:
1 onion
garlic (if desired)
A few strips of mild peppers such as red or green bell, poblano or anaheim
1 small can salsa (red or green)
1/2 dozen stale corn tortillas, broken into quarters (I use tostadas, the ones sold here for ceviche)
Optional: canned or frozen corn, black olives
Add TVP and mix thoroughly
Add 1/2 to 1 cup shredded cheese (cheddar, jack, Chihuahua or any hard melting cheese. If using jack or Chihuahua, be aware that the cheese will start to break down and disappear quickly, so don't let it cook too long)
Cover and simmer until cheese is melted. Let sit for about 5 minutes, so you can slice it like a casserole instead of scooping it like stew. Serve with a slice of avocado, a sprig or two of cilantro and a dab of sour cream on top.

Of course, you could use shredded or chopped chicken or beef (carne asada) if you're carnivorous. But with TVP, it's very easy to make at sea, especially if you've chopped your veggies and shredded your cheese before casting off.

I'm going to try using goat cheese if I can ever find any. It would have to be added just before serving so it doesn't melt away. Funny, you can find cajeta (a caramel sauce) made with goat's milk all over Mexico, but not cheese.

THE PRICE THEY PAY TO GET TO THE OTHER SIDE

Two young women optimistically wait for darkness to cross the Border

SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
April 27, 2006

NOGALES, Mexico – Swaddled in dirt in the inky night, the newborn trembled as a stranger struggled to snip her umbilical cord with nail clippers. A smuggler and other migrants had bolted when the baby's 18-year-old mother screamed with labor pains. But Lilia Ortiz couldn't just leave them in the harsh Arizona desert. Ortiz, 23, had walked two days straight to get this far. But she knew what it was like to struggle as a mother on her own.

The increase in women migrants comes as beefed-up border security has funneled migrants through one of the world's most forbidding deserts, and as smugglers adopt increasingly violent tactics.

Some cross with their children. Others leave them behind with relatives. Pregnant women, like Maria Perez, the 18-year-old who gave birth this week, walk for days through the desert in the hope that their children will have a better life as U.S. citizens.

Rape has become so prevalent that many women take birth control pills or shots before setting out to ensure they won't get pregnant. Some consider rape “the price you pay for crossing the border,” said Teresa Rodriguez, regional director of the U.N. Development Fund for Women.

If caught by the U.S. Border Patrol, women are often deported to Mexico's violent border towns in the middle of the night, despite a 1996 agreement between the two countries that promised women and children would only be returned in daylight hours, according to directors of migrant shelters along the 2,000-mile border.

Worldwide, nearly half of the estimated 180 million migrants are women, according to a report released in February by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

A study released last week by U.S. and Mexican migration experts, partly funded by the Mexican government, found that nearly half of all Mexican migrants living in the United States are women.

The female migrants are getting younger. Of migrants under 18 deported to Mexico, females accounted for only 2 percent in 1994, when the U.S. started cracking down at the border. Since 2002, they have made up nearly a third each year, said Blanca Villasenor, who recently published a book on Mexico's female migrants.

“It's very significant because it shows the country is losing its potential – its youth, its reproductive force,” said Villasenor, who runs a youth shelter in Mexicali on the California border.

Central American women face even more danger because they must first cross Mexico, where gangs and even immigration officials have attacked women, said Jesus Aguilar, a migrant rights activist in El Salvador.

“The normal rule, according to women who migrate, is that before leaving their countries they have to take the pill for at least one to three months to ensure that they will not get pregnant after a rape,” said Aguilar, of the group Carecen Internacional.

Many Central Americans crossing Mexico hop cargo trains, where Aguilar said “there's almost a 99 percent chance that a woman will get raped.”

“The risk of rape is very high, not only by smugglers or by men in their same group, but also by criminals on public buses or on the cargo trains,” he said.

Waiting with a smuggler for darkness in the popular jumping-off point of Sasabe, across the Arizona border, Gisela Anzures fiddled with a purple scrunchie on her wrist Tuesday and said she had heard the horror stories.

“It's very dangerous. The gangs show up and pat you down in a horrible way,” said Anzures, a 28-year-old divorced accountant who left her 5-year-old son with her parents in Cuernavaca. “It's no great pleasure to do this, but I'm fed up with the long hours and low pay in Mexico.”

Twenty-five miles to the north, a U.S. Border Patrol helicopter had spotted Ortiz, her aunt, Perez and her infant. After being abandoned in the desert by their smuggler, they were glad to be rescued.

Ortiz and her aunt were returned by the Border Patrol to Nogales, where they vowed to try again. Perez and her newborn daughter were recovering at a hospital in Tucson, Ariz., according to Ron Bellavia of the Border Patrol. Mother and baby were in good condition. Border Patrol agents in southern Arizona – the busiest crossing area – come across a birth in the desert about once a year. Last fall, a baby was born in a Border Patrol helicopter as it flew the mother to a hospital.

Collapsed on a bunk bed at a Nogales shelter, Ortiz rubbed her legs, which were covered with cactus thorns. She said she left her abusive husband after Hurricane Stan swept away her family's home in Chiapas last fall, and decided to head north. Friends in Florida had promised to help her get work.

“I have a 6-month-old girl, and I'm a single mother,” she said. “I feel sad and desperate. I have no money and haven't been able to get work at home, and now I can't get to the other side.”

Ortiz said she would try the crossing again in hopes of a better life for her daughter – who is now staying another aunt. With a glimmer of envy, she said Perez had been trying to do the same thing. It worked. Perez's baby daughter is now a U.S. citizen.

LIFE IS GOOD

Feral feline family of four

Counting my blessings: We are surrounded by cats, I have music in my room, there’s a new awning for the boat, and coconut ice cream.

We are catsitting for the previous occupants for an undetermined period of time (just long enough to get thoroughly bonded with her, probably). The owners are busy having a baby and so it’s understandable that they might not be back for a while to retrieve Zeva. We couldn’t keep her anyway, since we’ll be sailing this winter and she’s definitely a housecat.

But then early Wednesday morning the Capt. got up to make the coffee and came back to wake me up. Whispering, he beckoned me to the kitchen window, where we discovered a whole family of feral cats for our viewing pleasure.

A children’s playground was set up right behind our house, separated from our little “backyard” by a hurricane fence. Swings, a slide, an old wooden boat, a sandbox... It’s never used, which I always thought was a little sad, but Jim is glad we don’t have the screams of little niños shattering his peace.

Right up against our fence is a little set of bleachers with an awning, meant for mothers to sit and watch the kids. There we saw a mother cat, same coloring as Zeva but even smaller and very thin, stretched out and swinging her tail to entertain three kittens. Two are black and white and the third is almost all white with spots of tabby and black. We’re told that the two black and white ones are probably males, and the white/tabby one is undoubtedly female since only females can have more than two colors. The bleachers, set up on four levels, make a nice safe spot for them to play, nurse and nap after a night of hunting.

They were there again yesterday, and when I was up at 4 this morning for a moment I saw Zeva, in the windowsill, watching the kittens. She’s probably lonely for cat companionship, since until recently she had a big longhaired black and white housemate, who was given away to the inlaws.

Maybe we’re messing with the natural order, but we set out a bowl of Zeva’s kibble on the bleachers yesterday, hoping to fatten up the mother a little. Today it was down by more than half and we saw a kitten digging into it. Next we’ll be naming them...

Our friend in the Ranchitos says his cat eats iguanas, but then he’s a big bruiser of a tom. Hopefully this little mother isn’t going to go after our resident iguana.

I have put together quite a collection of songs on iTunes on my computer, but the laptop speaker is hopelessly wimpy, so in order to hear my music I had to put on earbuds. This meant I had to sit at the computer to hear the music and if I sang along with the “minus one” tunes (which are set up with no vocals so it’s like having my own band) I couldn’t hear myself very well with the earbuds on. This was getting frustrating. But this week the Capt., ever ready to make little improvements, hooked up my computer to my boombox, and now I get my iTunes as loud as I like. At the moment Linda Ronstadt and I are harmonizing to "The Boat from Guaymas."

This time of year it’s too hot to spend much of the day topside on the boat without a substantial awning, and I’ve been working on a new one for what seems like weeks. It’s made of Mexican khaki gabardine with reinforcement in vinyl , shadecloth and webbing. A fellow cruiser who’s also been working on an awning (his looks like a Conestoga wagon) told me I did a "very professional job," which almost made the week I spent working on it seem worthwhile. However, after putting it up for the first time, the Capt. left it up for four days while we went to the States and when we came back it had suffered a lot of damage in a windstorm (or two).

So we cut off the damaged ends and yesterday I did the repairs. As I write this, the Capt. is rigging up the new, improved awning on the boat, and I’m waiting to hear whether it worked out all right. If he brings it back for more work, he’d better bring some ice cream too.

In downtown Guaymas you can visit the Michoacan dairy and find lots of different flavors of ice cream, not to speak of the paletas that are my favorite (they’re like popscicles but made of real fruit). At Michoacan the Capt. actually passed up his usual favorite, vanilla, to try coconut, and was immediately hooked. I prefer coconut paletas, since they don’t leave me so thirsty.

But the ice cream selection at the grocery stores here in San Carlos has been somewhat uninspired. You can have any flavor you want as long as it’s vanilla, chocolate or strawberry. Or sometimes lemon sherbet. Boooorrrrring. .

So you can imagine how pleased we were when we found that Holanda (the Mexican subsidiary of Good Humor), has just come out with coconut! We immediately snapped up two quarts and have been treating ourselves all week. That settles it: I’m going to have to go back to the gym.

I’m adding to my Profile a couple of interests I had left out because they’re so darn domestic. But since they occupy a lot of my time and attention, and in hopes that I might eventually hear from others similarly involved, I will now include cooking (with a Mexican slant) and sewing (not clothing so much as boat enhancements).

So here’s a recipe we came up with. So far everyone who’s tried it says it’s to die for. In a tall glass, put a generous scoop of ice cream (vanilla or coconut is best). Add to the halfway mark your choice of fruit juice. The Capt. loves mango juice, I like piña colada but it’s hard to find. Piña (pineapple) would also be great. Finish filling to the top of the glass with club soda. If you drink alcohol (we don't anymore) you could add a bit of rum. Get out an iced tea spoon and/or a straw if you've got them. Stir, taste, kick back and tell yourself that life is good.

THE BEST-LAID PLANS...

If you want to give God a good laugh, just tell him your plans.

Sunday we set out on a little boat trip, intending to cruise up the coast to San Pedro (about 10 miles north), stay over a couple of nights and come back Tuesday. We loaded up the dinghy with a little food, change of clothes, our pillows and the dog, to putter over to the anchorage where "Bliss" waited. But the outboard wouldn't run. The Capt. decided it needed a new sparkplug and went back to the house (only a couple of blocks away) to get a new one, leaving me to keep watch over our stuff, slowly toasting in the morning sun. Within a few minutes he was back. "Do you have your house keys with you?" he demanded. "Uh, no..." He hadn't yet attached keys to the new house to the ever-growing bunch he carries with him.

Fortunately, he's as clever as he is forgetful. He got into the house anyway and found a sparkplug, returned and got the outboard going, with several false starts.

We loaded our gear on the boat, cast off the mooring and started out of the anchorage. But instead of the four or five knots we should have been traveling, we were doing about a half-knot. He decided it was probably buildup on the propellor, so we made a hard right turn at the corner and dropped the hook in Martini Cove.

This beautiful little cove, well protected by a curve of land and a reef, has water "as clear as gin," thus the name. This time of year, it's also almost as warm as bathwater. We took a swim and the Capt. dived on the stern and had a look at the prop. I was struggling to haul myself back up the swim ladder when he emerged laughing, holding his hands a foot apart, sputtering "It's a barnacle ball, this big!" He bound an old rusty paint scraper to a long handle and took a swipe at the barnacles, but the scraper immediately broke off. He found a second scraper and it held together long enough for him to hack all the barnacles off the prop and circle the hull, removing all the growth that had accumulated over two months on the mooring.

There were four or five small power boats anchored nearby, and I watched as a party of children had their first snorkling lesson. They made it look like a lot of fun, and I reminded myself I have snorkling gear I haven't even tried yet.

I brought a chicken salad (smoked chicken from Pollo Feliz, avocado, walnuts, basil and lettuce) so I didn't have to cook and heat up the galley. After a late lunch we read and napped in the new bed Jim had made from a real mattress and installed in the V-berth (up in the bow). The wind scoop and two fans stirred up a delicious breeze and we dozed until almost dark.

He made tea and just in time for the sunset we went on deck to find that we had the cove to ourselves. So we celebrated the solitude by pulling off our clothes. Even the mosquitoes cooperated; after sampling my blood just once, they left us alone for the evening. A couple of rocks towering over the cove were so square-off in shape, they looked like dark buildings. Eerie lights gleamed in the water, too bright to be reflections of stars, and the Capt. said they were squid, probably six or eight inches long. He brought up a flashlight, shined it on the water, and we watched the lights gather and move toward the boat. They swirled in circular patterns, their tenacles making contrails of light behind them.

We've been lulled to sleep by the sound of air conditioning for a couple of months, and it was strange to be surrounded in silence. I woke a few times wondering where I was. Early Monday morning the winds were already lively and whitecaps were visible from the cove. The batteries hadn't been sufficient to keep the 12-volt cooler cold (we ran the fans all night), and I was worried about the food. We finally decided we'd wait for a weather report on the 8am VHF-radio Cruiser's Net, before heading north.

I reminded the Capt. of the old adage, "A gentleman never sails to weather." I felt like a wimp, but I wasn't eager to go up the coast to an isolated anchorage in uncertain conditions, with uncertain food supplies. Reluctantly, we returned to the anchorage.

This morning we stood on the front porch watching one of the season's biggest electrical storms, and the Capt. said, "We would have been out in this, coming back from San Pedro." The lightning and thunder seemed so close, and the winds so delightfully cool. The rains fell for over an hour, making a small lake out of the lot in front of our house. We enjoyed the respite from the heat and the drama of the storm. But those same elements would have been terrifying, out on the boat miles from shore.

There's a Spanish saying, "Mar tranquilo hace mal marino"... "Calm seas make sorry sailors." No doubt someday we won't have a choice, and we'll be out there dealing with lightning, thunder, 40-knot winds and 12-foot seas (or worse!). The Capt. has been through his share of weather at sea, including a hurricane off the coast of Baja a few years ago. And I learned to sail in San Francisco Bay where the weather can be pretty exciting, but that was over a decade ago, and I'm due to be tested. I just want to be equal to the challenge, when it comes.

KITCHEN SINK MANGOS AND WICKED GUAYABAS

We've temporarily inherited a cat along with our new home, probably until the previous owners' new baby arrives and the young parents settle into their house in Arizona. Zeva (means "beautiful" in Farsi) is a small female with the interesting combination of grey tabby and lots of immaculate white fur. She likes to roll over and show off her white belly, but if you touch it, you get the tooth-and-claw treatment.

Zeva was like a shadow when we first arrived. Sofia obviously has her intimidated. But then one evening, while I was in bed watching "Seven Beauties" (Marcello Mastroianni) she climbed onto my chest and began rubbing me, nudging my hand for petting. She'd step away, circle around and come back for more. This went on until Sofia came into the room and saw that HER HUMAN was being usurped. She wasted no time expressing her outrage, and Zeva flew off the bed and hid.

Now the cat follows me around the house if the dog is otherwise occupied or gone off with the Capt. She'd love to go outside, but since we only have temporary custody I don't want to take the chance. We enjoy her company, though she doesn't like us to pick her up, the way we used to pick up The Pooz and drape him over our shoulders.

Our friends in the Ranchitos have a small fruit orchard in the backyard, including mangos that are now ripening all at once the way fruit tends to do. They're the smaller, smooth-skinned golden ones, which you can't buy in the States. I call them "kitchen sink mangos" because they're so juicy I eat them standing over the kitchen sink. He makes mango pops out of them by peeling them, squeezing the juice and pulp off the seed by hand into a bowl, and then pouring it all into small plastic bags, tying the ends tightly and freezing them.

He also gave us a couple of guayabas, not to eat but to use for their scent. "Just put them out and you'll smell them all over the house," he said. These are about the size of a lemon, light green in color and somewhat lumpy in appearance. Years ago I peeled one, bit into it and swore I'd never do that again. Inside the guayaba are evil little black seeds like iron gravel that cause unbelievable pain when they touch the fillings in your teeth. People eat them out of hand, but I have no idea how they avoid those wicked seeds. Their fragrance is distinctive, a little like mango, a little like peach, but with a strange backnote as the wine lovers say. I've never decided whether or not I like it. After I'd left them in the house for a couple of days the Capt. demanded we toss them. "The whole place smells like guayaba!" he complained. Back to sandalwood incense...

There's a local internet bulletin called Viva San Carlos that we check fairly often, for entertainment value and occasional information. One of the most frequent posters is a fellow who calls himself Mexico Mel. This week Mel announced he has basil in his garden, and anyone who wants it should come and get it. We drove to his house yesterday with scissors and a plastic bag.

Mel's a portly fellow who arrived here back in the late eighties and bought his house in the Bahia overlooking the anchorage, situated on a corner, with a little garden and patio, for $68,000. Recently he was offered $400K for it. The garden alone aroused my envy, with its citrus trees and flowers.

"You shoulda been here a couple of days ago," he said. "I had corn, tomatoes, lotsa stuff growing here. I have no use for that stuff and I had the gardener pull it out." Mel eats out a lot, apparently.

"Well, I'm sure the gardener and his family are making good use of it," I said, a little wistfully. I LOVE fresh garden produce. Mel said we could come back if we want more basil, even though he'll be away for three weeks. Turned out he's going to Santa Rosa, of all places, to see his daughter.

"That's where we're from," the Capt. said, so we reminisced with Mel a little about Petaluma and Sonoma County.

Last night while we watched a movie I snipped basil leaves off the stems and filled a large bowl. There's quite a lot left, so I offered to share it with a friend in the Marina, who I know to be something of a gourmet cook. While the morning's still fairly cool, I'll walk down and give it to her. Then back to the Mac, to Google basil and mango recipes.

MY FAVORITE PART OF MOVING

We're settling into our new home, making all the little changes that make it more comfortable/functional/attractive. New faucet handles you can actually grasp and turn with wet hands. Air conditioning in the living room and the Captain's quarters. Not that we could afford to have all of it on at the same time, but any room we want to be in, now, will be comfortable. We replaced the tiny refrigerator with a nice big one. New curtains will be going up, as soon as we can agree on color and pattern and I can get them made. Now he's making an awning for the little back area (couldn't really be called a backyard, just a little strip of concrete, but it has something I'm thrilled about: a utility room with washer hookup!) I had the casita professionally cleaned by my friend A's regular cleaning lady, so I'm confident we'll get our deposit back.

In one of the big supermarkets in Guaymas this week, I met a woman who confided to me that she visits San Carlos every weekend from October to June, in hopes of meeting and marrying an American. Mexican men, she said, are almost all malo. She works at the prison just outside Guaymas, patting down the visitors and checking their bags, and I reflected that her experience of Mexican men is probably not the best. I got the impression she was hoping for some assistance from us in her quest. I advised her not to marry uno borracho (a drunk), whether Mexican or American, if she was hoping for a better life. Later I thought I might have advised her to learn some English, as very few of the gringos I've met down here are very good at Spanish, and seem to be resentful that the locals aren't bilingual. Restaurants are rated by whether the staff has English, for example. San Carlos is often advertised as a place where English is commonly spoken, and people come here with unrealisic (and rather arrogant) expectations.

"Here we are in a town that is ninety percent American," complained a man I met today, "and the stores are still not hiring people who speak English."

I can see how an ability to speak English would be an advantage for a worker in San Carlos, but I'm put off by the gringo attitude that the people here are obliged to speak our language. Of course, I've spoken in my (laughable) Spanish to a vendor, only to have him smile and proudly answer me in English. But what I enjoy most is to walk into a shop, explain in Spanish what I'm looking for, get an answer in Spanish and understand it. What a feeling of accomplishment! I want to have friends in this community and become part of it, not feel like a guest.

This evening at sunset we walked down to the fruteria, and when we stepped out of the store the sky had turned apricot gold, as though God had slipped in a new filter while we were buying our club soda and onions. The bay was deep purple with red highlights. We came home and the Capt. made floats with club soda, mango juice and ice cream. Fabuloso!

AS THE GLOBE WARMS

It's easier to catch a breeze on the boat. Jim and I are trying out our new roller furler headsail on San Carlos Bay. But Gordito is feeling a little mal de mar

We are now in our new digs, mas o menos. What remains is the cleaning of the casita, and some tasks to make this place more livable. In order to install air conditioning in the main room (living room and kitchen) we have to punch a hole in the front wall. “Piece of cake,” said our contractor friend. But they ended up renting a jackhammer, borrowed a couple of sledgehammers and pounded away at it all afternoon. They’d hit it as hard as they could, and the result would be a puff of dust. The contractor says the wall is the thickest and hardest he's ever had to deal with, "like a bank vault." They had to take a break at midday, and start again around five, so we missed going to Tianguis with our new Canadian friends. But without AC the room is virtually uninhabitable except in early morning.

I’m aware that people lived for centuries without AC. Slaves spent their days cranking fans so the wealthy could get some relief. Women wore layer upon layer of clothing--corsets, petticoats and all, in 100+ degree temps--no wonder there was so much fainting going on. Even now, I see soldiers in heavy uniforms, standing out in the sun, and wonder how they keep from passing out with heat exhaustion. Genetics? Adaptation from birth? I grew up in South Texas, but still the heat has me operating at half-capacity. Especially after living on the northern coast of California where it never got above 70 degrees.

Siestas have become an absolute necessity around here. And when things don’t happen on schedule we just shrug and say, “It’s the heat.” I have new respect for people who work through the day, with only a couple of hours’ break in mid-afternoon. This climate is not for wimps. This explains why it’s taking us five days to move two doors down.

Meanwhile, California swelters and people are dying. Yesterday’s New York Times reported 140 people had died, crowding the mortuaries. Many were living in homes without AC, but others were too frugal to turn it on. “Death also claimed the most marginalized: people who came from Mexico and never made it past the border, felled by heat; and those who lived in tent cities in the desert without running water or electricity,” the article said. This leaves me to wonder how people on this side of the border fared.

I’ll never be too frugal to switch on the AC to “alta frio.” Maybe I’m thermophobic (fear of heat). Yes, there is such a thing, I looked it up on the Phobia List (http://phobialist.com/). This is an astounding list worth a couple hours’ browsing just for the entertainment value. But it doesn’t have my favorite, pogonophobia, which is fear of beards.

At least I don’t suffer from heliophobia (fear of sun) which would be a real challenge for a sailor, or phengophobia (fear of sunlight or daylight) which would condemn me to a vampire-like existence, also not conducive to sailing except for night watches.

When the Capt. and I first discussed moving to the Mexican desert, I made a list of pros and cons in my head, and at the top of the con list was the heat. I’d heard it was not uncommon to have long stretches of 113+ degrees, especially after the monsoon in August and September. Most of our gringo friends head back to Oregon, Washington and Canada. Of course we’d have air conditioning, but I’m not so naive as to believe there won’t be times when the unit fails, the electricity shuts off or it’s necessary to spend hours in a place where there’s no AC. My rational side scorns the idea that I can’t exist in air that hasn’t been conditioned. But the irrational side goes into a panic.

One blessing of life in a hot climate is the pleasure I get from any little breeze that condescends to come my way. I feel my very pores rejoicing when I open the front and back doors of my new place and feel a gentle crossbreeze waft through. It’s necessary to get out of bed before 6am to catch these rare zephyrs, but it’s worth it.

The Capt., meanwhile, tells me that out in the anchorage it’s much more comfortable. We have a wind scoop over the forward hatch that works beautifully. I’ve stretched out in the forward berth and enjoyed a lovely nap, lulled by windscoop breezes and the gentle rocking of the boat.

It’s a colorful three-sided nylon funnel held up by a halyard, that snaps into the hatch opening; you just reposition it for the current wind direction. Why doesn’t someone make them for houses? All you’d need is a house with a skylight that opens, so you could scoop air from any direction.

I have to admit, though, that we also have installed a little air conditioner over the galley hatch on the boat.

The demolition crew is back at work on the wall, pounding away inches at a time. With luck we’ll have the new unit installed by this evening. If not, I’ll continue to hide out in the bedroom.

ANOTHER REASON I LIKE TO TRAVEL BY SAILBOAT

"August 10,2006 -- Security measures in place Thursday at U.S. airports in response to a thwarted terror plot in Britain.

-- Liquids are banned from carry-on luggage and cannot be taken through security checkpoints. That includes drinks, toothpaste, perfume, shampoo, hair gel, suntan lotion and similar items. Drinks purchased in the airport cannot be carried onto flights.
-- Baby formula and medications will be allow but must be presented for inspection at security checkpoints.
-- All shoes must be removed and placed on an X-ray belt for screening.
-- Passengers are also asked to arrive at least two hours early to allow for additional screening.
-- Passengers traveling to the United Kingdom should contact their airline for information about any extra security measures or precautions that might be required. Laptop computers, mobile phones and iPods were among items banned on British flights."
Associated Press

The skies just aren't very friendly anymore. At some point, I'll have to get on an airplane, even though my last trip was miserable -- bumped three times from over-booked flights, left wandering the airport at midnight like a homeless person until a passing employee got me a room, which I paid for. When I wrote American about how I was brushed off at the check-in counter, their response was, in effect, "we're working on it." I guess the good news is next time I'll be traveling lighter, minus my sunblock, hand lotion, toothpaste, shampoo and bottled water.

There are disappointments, delays and stressful times on a boat, too, but there's a galley for making a cup of tea, home cooking that doesn't come chilled in plastic packaging, a berth for snuggling in with my iPod and laptop while we're underway, and a cockpit for fresh breezes and a view of the stars. If only there were a way to sail to Oklahoma...

FAVORITE CAT VIDEOS

In celebration of our temporary acquisition of a cat, I revisited some great cat videos on Google.

• I love the black & white longhair who sings about his dog Long John...


• My all-time favorite TV commercial...

CAPT. GETS A CAT FIX

Zeva is our temporarily-inherited housecat, who watches us suspiciously from her high shelf in the bedroom where she's safe from the dog



Today is not moving day, after all. The previous occupant, in his rush to rejoin his wife in AZ, has left piles of stuff for his mother to pick up today, after which the cleaning lady will do her magic. Maybe tomorrow...

We have temporarily inherited a cat. The Capt. is delighted, having found only in the last few years that he loves cats. We will no doubt bond with this one, whose Farsi name means 'Beautiful'--and then her owner will come back for her. She's aptly named, with tabby markings and white chest, a sweet inquiring voice. At first Hector asked if we could keep her for "a couple of days," and then "ten days" came into the conversation and when I asked him to be more specific he said "two weeks." I'm just hoping Sofia won't make her life miserable.

We gave up our cat Pooz, an amber-eyed golden tiger, over a year ago when we made the decision to move to Mexico. I didn't think he'd like living on a boat, which is where we plan on spending at least four months of the year. He had been confined to an apartment for a couple of years and spent all his time looking out the window, or looking for a way to escape. I gave him to a friend with 600+ acres and now he lives the outdoor life. He probably won't live as long but I know he'll be happy.

Scientific query of the day: why is it only Yaqui brand milk that foams when you're making cappucino? The Capt. insists this is so. Until we discovered Yaqui, we went for months without foam on our caps. My theory is that it has more to do with climactic conditions, and I'm going to test it by trying to foam a little Brand X milk. I've also noticed I can't get my dish soap to make suds, and this is the same brand from Costco that used to make a thick blanket of foam so you couldn't see the dishes in the dishpan, back in California.

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

The Sailing Vessel "Bliss," a 33' Morgan Out Islander, docked at Cabo Blanco Marina in Barra Navidad, where our journey began in January, 2006.

8/8/06: SAN CARLOS SWEET SPOT

Our casita in San Carlos, with Jim and Sofia standing in front of the little barred patio at the front door. We move out of here tomorrow, two doors down.


The summer monsoon season is coming to an end, a local advised us. Early mornings have been cool and breezy enough to confuse the mosquitoes, with that charge in the air that you feel before it rains (even if it doesn't get around to actually raining). At six-thirty we sit on our porch with cappucinos and congratulate ourselves on finding the sweet spot of a San Carlos summer.

I like my Tarot reading today: "The Three of Pentacles card suggests that my power today lies in practice. My life is a work of art in progress and my purpose is worthy of appreciation, attention, and effort. I am validated by doing my best to fulfill my intention and I take pride in my work. I am empowered by a vested interest and my asset is attention to detail. " Hah! if only...

My horoscope is more on the mark: "In order to be productive, you have to be willing to sit down and get to work. It may seem corny at first, but think of affirmations, positive visions and rewards to get you to pay attention to the task at hand." OK, I will start packing today. I will visualize myself unpacking in the new place. I will reward myself by getting a take-out pizza tonight.

8/06/06: STUCK IN SAN CARLOS

I asked myself why I haven’t posted in a while and replied: “Self, you’ve been ashore too long.” Everything we’ve been involved in--business, the heartache of the Nevermore Van (nevermore, it seems, will it run), the problems with AA and AlAnon, the housing situation, the telephone situation--these are all CLOD (cruisers living on dirt) problems. Problems encountered at sea seem more interesting and worthy of recording.

But we do seem to be opening another chapter. This week we move into our new place, just two doors away.

Whine du jour: there’s always something broken down. Presently it’s the outboard, so Jim has to use the kayak to get to and from the boat in the anchorage. Today it was too much of an ordeal because of the winds, so we loaded the kayak onto the trunk of the Nissan and I carefully drove it down the beach to where the boat is anchored only about 100 feet from shore.

My big occupation this week was in the production of a “sock” to cover the new roller furler. It’s 40’ long, made of a heavy, virtually bulletproof and very scratchy green material, with three zippers end-to-end. I referred to it as a 40-foot condom made of sandpaper. I may not yet be done with it, because after we purchased a zipperfoot especially for this project and the Skipper (such a handy fellow!) tweaked it to work on my machine, I sewed so zealously close to the zipper teeth that it tends to jam.

We had breakfast this morning with a Canadian couple, who we heard about from my Chacala friend. They have an apartment in Guaymas on Calle 5 and Avenida 5, which should be easy to remember, and are enjoying life in a real Mexican neighborhood with all its comings and goings. Brenda's blog is GuaymasFolks and her stories have inspired me to try again to keep a blog.

Getting to know them also gave us some insight on Guaymas. Such a different place from San Carlos! More places to walk, at least when the weather cools a bit. I reflected that when the Capt. and I go to Guaymas we’re always in somewhat of a hurry, looking for parts or supplies, never with the idea of exploring. Jim’s idea of exploring is casting off and sailing to new destinations. But I suggested we make a date to go Friday evening with them to the tianguis (open-air market) at 100 Casas in Guaymas, where we should be able to find some good produce.

When we parted in front of Maria’s, I remarked that I had never met any Canadians until we moved to Mexico.

6/26/06: THE DOG LADY AND THE CAT LADY

Sofia was groomed by the vet in Empalme, and came out looking like a chubby poodle


Walking up Paseo de Almejas (Clam Street) one morning, we met a woman walking three dogs and, as dog lovers tend to do, struck up a conversation consisting mostly of admiring each others’ animals. Meanwhile the dogs circled us, wrapping us in leashes.

Tall, fit and blonde, Jean has a British accent and a dazzling smile. The local dentist specializes in caps and there are quite a few dazzling smiles in San Carlos. Her makeup has melted in the early morning sun, to blend with a sheen of sweat. She’s apparently used to dripping and doesn’t habitually wipe it away as I do, but lets it course over her skin like tallow off a candle. In fact, she seems to glow.

Her dogs are typical mutt varieties of all sizes. These, she explains, are only four of fifteen dogs she has at home. “They call me the Dog Lady,” she says, intimating that she needs to dispel a reputation for being somewhat mental. Then she adds that she gets up at 4am in order to walk them all, which does sound a bit mental. But then, 4am is probably pleasant here in steamy San Carlos.

Dogs seem to be the main focus of Jean’s life. Formerly an assistant at a veterinary in Tucson, she has been collecting canines since she’s been in San Carlos and now the word is out, and people leave unwanted animals in her patio in the dark of night. The most recent was a four-week-old, too young to leave her mother, an irresistible velvety golden tan boxer mix that I suspect Jean will have a hard time giving away because she’ll be so attached to her by the time she’s ready to adopt. A clue was the fact that the dog already has a name, Ruby Tuesday (she was abandoned on a Tuesday). Another clue is how Jean holds her like a baby and exchanges kisses. This is love.

Jean’s is a large white casa with two domes, with a big terrace overlooking the beach. One of the domes is the typical round style, reminiscent of a church or a government building, that is popular in Mexican architecture. The other is more like a large white anthill. People install water tanks on their roofs for the inevitable water shortages and line breakages, and it's considered tasteful to cover the tanks with domes. Probably keeps the water cooler, too.

With 15 dogs, you might expect the noise level would be similar to a kennel, but most of her charges seem to be content to let the world go by without comment, and only one honey-colored poodle mix does a manic song and dance routine on the terrace.

Jean is willing to part with her dogs, but she has developed strict standards after a number of disappointments. She prefers not to place them in Mexican homes, she confides apologetically, not because she’s racist but because so many Mexicans seem to have a laissez faire attitude about dogs and don’t confine them, leash them, feed them or take care of their medical needs. Too often, she has had to retrieve an animal she thought had been placed in a good home.

“They love puppies,” she says, “but when the dog’s grown they forget about him.”

When she sees dogs being neglected by Mexican families, she diplomatically offers to take the animals off their hands. It’s a delicate negotiation, sometimes unsuccessful, especially if the dog has security duties or is a size and breed that enhances the masculinity of the men of the house, such as a pit bull. If she is successful she keeps the new dog on her patio for a few days until she’s sure he’ll get along with the others. She gives him shots, worms him and cleans up his coat. And takes him for those 4am walks.

The Cat Lady, who lives on the Caracol (a hill overlooking the Marina, where many of the wealthy have their homes) has a houseful of her own cats and also supports the local feral population. We haven't met her, but her reputation is widely known. She has arranged to have every feral cat in the neighborhood captured and taken to the vet for shots and neutering. Then they’re released to their homes, which are apparently small caves in the Caracol hillside overlooking the marina. She hired a man to deliver their breakfast every morning. He rides up on his bicycle, spreads out the kibble and pours the water into bowls on a terrace next to the marina parking lot. As soon as he’s in sight, a parade of cats begins trailing down the hillside, tails high in the air. Black, calico, grey tabbies, gold tigers, white... They congregate on the terrace, enjoy their al fresco breakfast and wander off. There are reportedly no mice or rats on that end of the marina, thanks to the Cat Lady.

6/9/06: ON THE BEACH

Yesterday we walked down to the beach and had a swim, and my mood improved immensely. The water was warm, the surf gentle. As usual, I was timid about swimming out beyond the point where I could touch bottom, and stayed close to Jim the whole time. I wasn’t so much afraid of drowning as I was of imagined risks, such as sharks, stingrays or jellyfish (wrong time of year, Jim says). I’m always a bit leery about swimming where I can’t see through the water.

Watching us from shore was a Great Blue Heron, standing so erect he looked like a post from the distance. When we walked past him he only moved a little further from the shore, instead of taking off in flight.

For a beach along a shoreline dotted with condos and hotels, San Carlos Beach is remarkably clean, although the approaches are all shamefully littered with used diapers, plastic bags, bottles and snack packaging. No soda cans, since they’re recyclable. I’ve thought of taking along a garbage bag and a plastic glove, and doing my bit to clear away the trash along my way, though I know it would only stay clean for a day. But then it would only be right to take the bag or bags all the way back to my house and depositing it in my can. Maybe I could drive there...

Where we swam there’s a new palapa restaurant that serves Greek food and offers the usual collection of small tables along the beach, perfect for whiling away an evening sipping limonada and watching the sunset. I’m hoping to talk Jim into going there, maybe for his birthday, or the last day before we set sail, whichever comes first. If not Jim, maybe Alma.

Flanking the restaurant on both sides are ruins of former hotels, which Alma tells me were destroyed by violent storms years back. Picked clean of any amenities, they loom stark and lonely along the shore. Once they may have been expensive accommodations, but now only the rats are willing to seek shelter in their barren rooms. They remind me of a hotel near San Blas where my friends and I tried to spend the night when I was a young and more adventurous 24. The floors of the hotel were sand, there was no glass in the windows and the rooms were spooky in the moonlight. When someone saw a huge rat racing along the dark corridor, we decided sleeping out on the beach might be more pleasant anyway.

Abandoned hotels can be found everywhere along the coast, both on the Mainland and Baja side. Sad remnants of someone’s dreams of success, now just slabs of concrete piled on top of each other, their size the only hint of former grandeur, since everything that can be removed has already been carted away. Once wealthy Mexicans and vacationing gringos brought their families and lovers for glamorous days in the sun. They'd make great settings for spooky Mexican movies.

I’m looking forward to early morning and evening kayak trips around the Bahia, learning to snorkel, enjoying the new upholstery in the cabin, swimming and exploring, maybe getting to know Janice better. She’s the woman I met at Bahia de Martes, who’s been living on her boat with her husband for quite some time now and seems to be enjoying it.

At dusk yesterday Jim came in from his labors on the dinghy, peeled off a 20 and a 50-peso note, handed them to me and said Alejandro was here with his vegetable truck, didn’t I want to go see what he had available. Jim remembers Alejandro from his appearances in years past at the Marina.

I ambled over, not wanting to seem too anxious, and inspected the vegetables and fruits in the bed of Alejandro’s red pickup, watching him out of the corner of my eye. He’s short, stocky, somewhat pockmarked about the face, with very good English and a very businesslike way about him. As soon as he noticed me he rattled off his specials of the day: bread, chiles rellenos, fish... I had a couple of purchases in mind, particularly a couple of his fat, shiny red bell peppers and a couple of bananas, but couldn’t resist asking about the bread and rellenos. He didn’t have the whole wheat bread I favor, but the bollilos looked enticing, and the rellenos were a good deal at five for thirty pesos (less than $3), and still hot. Somehow I ended up with a basket of strawberries as well, and my 70 pesos were gone. “In Mexico, no change,” he said briskly, relieving me of both bills.

Alejandro has cleverly arranged to appear in our neighborhood on Thursdays and Sundays, both days that my favorite vegetable purveyor, Tony, is closed. So I will probably do business with him again. Maybe next time I’ll be more subtle about how much cash I’m carrying.

5/16/06: CLODS IN SAN CARLOS

First iguana I've seen this year, perched on a bush right outside our door.

Now we are CLODs. That is, Cruisers Living On Dirt.

That makes this a different sort of log, more about life onshore, in a rental house, trying to fix a vehicle, make boat repairs, struggling with Vonage and come to agreements about the future.

The house is charming. Very old, Spanish style with the obligatory wrought iron bars over the windows, a nonfunctional fireplace, ceramic tile floors, a little patio and the biggest bathroom I’ve ever had (but no tub).

The place is furnished, as most Mexican rentals are. The furniture leaves something to be desired; the sofa and easy chairs are much too big for the living room, and the round dining table is too big for the dining area. The twin beds had atrocious lumpy mattresses, so we hauled them off to our storage room and bought a king-size mattress to lay over the frames. An old, oversize air conditioner cools the living room, but we had to buy a unit to cool the bedroom. Luckily we found one yesterday for $100 and Jim rushed to get it installed last night.

The AC came from a recently built house that the owners never had a chance to occupy. The husband died, apparently, soon after the building was completed, and his widow moved back to Las Vegas.

Between our house and the duplex next door is a paved alleyway, over which Jim has hung shadecloth to make a workshop area. Our friend Charlie came over and built a makeshift worktable, Jim moved in his tools and has been happily involved in projects ever since, such as repainting the outboard and fixing its balky steering.

Our front door faces a large open lot, decorated with cacti, and in the distance a few luxury homes, the mountains and the Sea of Cortez. A brick-paved street runs alongside the house and every morning as we sit on the patio and drink our coffee we’re entertained by a parade of people walking their dogs. As each dog passes, Sophie rushes out, barking, for an ID check. After they’ve sniffed one another, the visitor continues on his way.

When we first arrived in mid-February we concentrated on feathering our nest, possibly to excess. We will probably be moving out of here in three months, but we managed to sink a fair amount of cash into various improvements, some of which were frivolous (plants for the patio) and some necessary (plumbing tools to stop the various leaks that sprang up one after another in both sinks and the toilet). But the biggest expenditure turned out to be the Vanagon, which blew a head gasket 30 miles out of town when we were headed to the border last month to pick up mail and packages. Having already spent twice what we paid for it on previous repairs, we now face the cost of replacing the engine. It would have been far wiser to have put a new engine in when we bought the thing, even at US prices.

Vonage is the other disappointment. Someone calls us on Vonage, the conversation starts out normal, then there's a silence, followed by the other person's voice speaking veeeeeeerrrrrrrryyyyy slooooooowwwwwllllyyyy. We have to call them back on Skype, which works fine but sounds funny, like we're talking in a bucket.

It was cool here, especially mornings, through Feb., March and much of April, so much so that the Capt. is now convinced he doesn’t want to settle in San Carlos. So now we are having discussions about moving much farther south, perhaps even Barra de Navidad or Zihuatanejo. We’re finding, too, that prices for most things other than rent and electricity are comparable to the US. So all we are saving is the cost of health insurance. The plan is to apply for Mexican health insurance, at $260 a year.

I acquired a kayak as an anniversary gift, just in time for our trip to Mazatlan to retrieve the boat. I used it a couple of times in Baja anchorages and would have used it more except that we seemed to be in a rush to get back to San Carlos. It’s the color of a Tiajuana Sunrise and came with sea, paddles and car carrier (really just a rope and two foam blocks but they work fine).

On Mother’s Day Jim towed me in my kayak out past the anchorage to Martini Cove (where the water's so clear it looks like gin), where I explored the beach and found what I suspect was my first manta ray. It looked like a giant piece of paper under the water, but after poking it with my paddle and finding that it moved away on its own, it occurred to me (duh!) that paper would most likely float on the surface. On the way back, he towed me along the cliffline past intriguing shallow caves and I watched a Great Blue Heron take two giant leaps and soar off like an anorexic ballerina when we puttered by.

Life has become somewhat routine other than an occasional foray like the Mother’s Day adventure. A high point for me is going to the library, a volunteer-run once-a-week event held at a local trailer park. I get to wander through two rooms filled to the ceiling with well-organized book selections and check out as many as I like, as long as I take no more than two by the same author. Needless to say, I do a lot of reading these days, sprawled in the bed in the heat of the day with a fan aimed at my face from about three feet away, interspersed between naps.

Then there are provisioning trips to my favorite fruit truck, run by Tony, who parks his vehicles under an awning behind Piccolo’s Restaurant and spreads out a remarkable selection of fruits, vegetables, bread warm from the oven, fresh fish and homemade chiles rellenos and salsa fresca from his wife’s kitchen (or so he says). Tony is imposingly tall (by Mexican standards), with immaculate pointy-toed cowboy boots, pencil-thin mustache and gold-trimmed teeth, who is acknowledged by all the gringos as having the best store in town, though his prices are a little high. But then, he has to support at least three solemn young assistants who bustle about helping customers choose the ripest cantaloupes, open stubborn plastic bags and unpack crates of produce.

Occasionally we drive the 17 minutes to Guaymas and shop in either Ley or Soriana, which are massive supermarkets on the scale of Walmart. We try to avoid making these trips very often as we seem to spend far too much money when we do. Prices in these stores are on a par with US prices, we’ve decided. They may be air conditioned, but after 10-15 minutes inside, I’m feeling a little faint from the heat and lack of air circulation. I miss the bustling, shabby old mercados like the ones in Mazatlan and La Paz, and the Thursday Market in Barra de Navidad. The Capt. says we are too close to the States and there are too many gringos here.

4/20/06 NIGHTWATCH

We sailed all day yesterday, from Puerto Escondido to Ballandra Bay, the last land before crossing the Sea. Ballandra is about 115 miles from San Carlos, so Jim estimates we should be able to complete the crossing in 24 hours and arrive home around dawn. We’re motoring, with very little wind. The main hazards to watch out for will be ferries out of Guaymas, heading for Santa Rosalia, but they shouldn’t cross our course.

Escondido was pretty much as described in John Rains’ book, with a lot of abandoned infrastructure that would have become a residential area, the local Hidden Harbor Yacht Club in a crumbling adobe building that looked like the aftermath of an earthquake, an aduana’s office, water spigot and gas dock where they weren’t going to be selling gas until the weekend due to construction. Jim decided we had enough fuel and water. I had hoped we would flush our water tank and refill with Escondido water, which is said to be actually potable; once this was done, we could just keep refilling from the watermaker and we’d always have good water in our tank. But Jim didn’t want to be bothered with it, and said a full water tank would add too much weight to the boat.

He dived at the Escondido anchorage and found a small crack, which appears to be seeping a little into the bilge, but it’s nothing major, he said. But he only inspected one side of the keel. Last night when I wondered out loud if there was any further damage on the other side and asked if the cracks could get any larger in heavy seas where the hull gets slammed a lot from wave trough to wave trough, and did he have an emergency plan in case of hull failure, he said he’d take me back to Loreto and I could catch a plane home. I was quiet for a while, trying to stay calm. I hadn’t brought all this up with any drama, I was being as reasonable as I know how, given that our survival was the issue.

Finally, I said: “I’m not a guest on this boat. There were two things I wanted us to think about, one being whether the hull is at risk, and two being how we deal with the emergency if the boat goes down. I thought they were reasonable questions.” Then I shut up. There was another long silence. Finally he sat up and started being reasonable. We talked about establishing a ditch bag with emergency supplies, and agreed we’d talk further in the morning about how we’d deploy the dinghy if we had to. Chances of us reaching anyone over the VHF if we’re sinking are slim to none, and we can’t transmit over our ham radio either. All we have is an expired EPIRB.

This morning I made a list for the ditch bag. He feels confident he could cut the lines holding down the dinghy on deck, even if the boat is severely listing, and could get it upright and turned over (it's upside down on the deck, well lashed down). We talked about designing a canopy with side curtains for the dinghy. He said the EPIRB is going to have to be replaced, since they are designed to be disposable, even though they’re some $700-$800 new. He tested the one we’ve got and said it works, but their batteries are built-in and when they’re past their shelf life a new unit is supposed to be purchased. Another irritating and expensive example of planned obsolesence. We’re going to go online and see if anyone has figured out how to recycle their EPIRB.

Of course, all this could be just talk. Next time I bring it up, he could brush it off as unimportant or get angry because he’s feeling overwhelmed again. I wonder how overwhelmed he’s going to feel if we don’t do any of these things and do find ourselves sinking in the Sea or even in the Pacific someday.

So I am going to get together as much of what we need as I can, on my own. I should consider myself the quartermaster as well as first mate, since I do most of the supplying and organizing of supplies aboard. I can certainly take care of the ditch bag.

We are again thinking seriously about the 41, and will contact Denny when we get home to see if it’s been sold. We looked again at the photos I shot when we looked it over at Marina Seca, and we both believe we could live aboard it comfortably.

I had a moment of deja vue last night when I thought about the first time I put everything I had into a boat and it ended in disaster. But the reason for the disaster was because an ex-boyfriend took it upon himself to move the boat without even discussing it with me, without checking on the depth of the new slip at low tide. I’ll never know if he intended to do me harm. I think he just didn’t know much about boats. I have kicked myself all these years over this, and the truth is that it was not my fault. I probably could have sold that houseboat at a profit if Bob hadn’t interfered.

But the truth is that I love boats and love the ocean. Living in the house in San Carlos, I felt my life begin to close in again as it did in Gualala, and before that in Petaluma. And the boredom made me dull and listless. I spent too much time reading, napping and involving myself in petty little things, feathering a nest I knew we would soon abandon. Jim colluded with me in all this, but perhaps mostly to please me. But if he had his choice, I feel sure he’d rather have a good boat than a house, and I’m beginning to see it his way. Granted there is plenty that can go wrong with a boat. We could be making the mistake of our lives. But buying property in Mexico could also be a huge mistake and one we’d have a harder time extricating ourselves from. And buying property in the US anywhere we’d want to live, is, as far as we can see, just not possible.

On a boat I feel more challenged, particularly when we’re traveling. There is always something new to learn, some skill to work at, some project to complete. San Carlos is in some ways just too insulated, too gringo. We spend too much money there and waste too much time. It took a few days of exploring deserted Baja beaches to remind me what life could be like living on a boat. It's not that I love being on the boat as much as I love where it can take me, to be honest.

What I miss about living in a house: I do want to develop friendships, even if they are people I only see once in a while. I need people and get great pleasure from their company. I learn from them and enrich my life when I can spend time with them. Meeting Janice at San Marte reminded me what a pleasure it is to have a long conversation with another woman. I miss Jessica and Alma and others I’ve gotten to know since this adventure began. It would bring me enormous pleasure to find people like Mary and Barney, that I could make music with. I’ll keep that image in my mind and watch for opportunities to bring it to reality.

MIDNIGHT
An airpot of unappetizing lukewarm coffee. Jim has just gone to bed. My watch now, only three hours to stay awake. From topside I can see a halo of light straight ahead and another at about two o’clock. There’s also a flashing light which Jim says comes from Guaymas. He will take over at three and stay at in charge until we land in San Carlos Bay at daybreak.

We will carry a few things with us and walk up the two blocks to the house, since we have no car until we get back down to Maz to get the Nissan. We’re hoping we can ask M&M to help us carry a few more items later. But probably what we’ll want most when we get ashore is to get home, have a shower and a nap. I can’t stop yawning.

This voyage home has been like a train ride, in our own private car, Jim joked. The autohelm, knock on wood, has worked perfectly since he applied a little WD-40 to it. The Sea has been like a lake for the most part, with little chop or wind, just a steady diesel-powered pull at about 5 knots northward to the mainland. At one point we could see outlines of both Baja and the Mainland; in fact, Jim is convinced he spotted the San Carlos Tetas. No whales, dolphins or manta rays to be seen all day. Strangely, this close to the Mainland nothing is showing up on the radar either. We seem to be out here alone. But I’m going to keep an eye on the radar just the same.

I spent most of the day in the berth, reading a Sue Grafton mystery and the April Latitude 38, cover to cover. Several references, all disparaging, in the Latitude about Norm Golding of San Blas. Apparently Capt. Norm has gotten in trouble for possessing antiquities and firearms. But that’s nothing compared to the two damning quotes: Norm calling the Mexicans “all thieves.” He comes off as a very ugly American with statements like that. I can’t help but wonder what will become of him when his attitude becomes public knowledge among his influential friends in San Blas. I wouldn’t want to be Jan right now. I know she has Mexican friends and I wonder how she will face them. I think of all the kindnesses done for me by Mexicans and imagine how they’d feel if they heard his lies. Well, the next Latitude should be interesting, lots of controversy.

It’s true we NorteAmericanos are paranoid of the Mexicans, just as I was fearful two nights ago when the fellow in the panga tried to board our boat uninvited. But I like to think I’d feel that way about any stranger trying to come aboard. Mexico doesn’t have a corner on thievery.

And now, maybe a cup of tea and a cookie.

4/17/06 BAJA COAST

Sofia the Boatdog

Scouts, Schmouts! If they were boy scouts, their parents need to find a new leader for them. Late in the evening while I was cleaning the galley Jim took Sophie topside to do her business and a huge panga pulled up next to us, with one man aboard. I didn’t see him, was wondering if it were some law enforcement type checking on our papers or whatever, and I couldn’t hear their conversation. Sophie was barking nonstop.

When Jim came below, he said the man was the organizer of a camping excursion company, and was bragging about his business. He had good English, but he was very drunk, and looking for cigarettes. Jim suspected he might have been wanting marijuana. He started climbing the swim ladder and Jim made it clear he didn’t want the man to come aboard. The stranger apologized, got back into his panga and went back to his campsite. But my worries kept me awake for hours. I wanted to ask Jim to pull up the ladder but I knew I was already sounding paranoid, and he didn’t seem to want to make a big issue of it so I let it alone.

It brought up all my old anxieties about Mexicans and in particular Mexican men, fueled by prejudices surrounding me as a child in South Texas. In spite of my resolve to put my fears behind me, images of a gringo-hating, alcohol-fueled mob rowing up while we’re asleep and taking the dink, which is also our lifeboat, or clambering aboard like pirates and overtaking us flash through my mind now and then.

Leaving the house in San Carlos, we both imagined Mexicans camped on our front porch during Santa Semana, breaking in and taking their time looting the house. Before we left I read on the Viva San Carlos net that during Spring Break a mob of about 20 kids actually did break into a place on Mangaleras Street and use it for a party pad. But who knows? Maybe that sort of thing happens in Ft Lauderdale or Cancun during Spring Break. Chaos can break out anywhere, anytime. That's why housesitters are getting so popular.

4/16/06 ISLA SAN JOSE, BAJA

We’ve crossed the Sea and it feels as though we’re on a different planet. No tiendas, no traffic, no oompah music or music of any kind unless we turn on our satellite radio. We landed last night at Isla de Spiritu Santu (sacred spirit, I think) just in time for Easter. Coming into the cove where we anchored, we were mesmerized by transparent turquoise waters and pink cliffs that seemed sculpted by ancient artisans, with mysterious caves and figures and shapes. If you squinted your eye at the near wall where we dropped anchor, you could almost see an Indian cliffdwelling village.

I was off in my kayak within five minutes of landing, and had an easy paddle to the sugar sand beach. Three excursion boats, really glorified pangas with canvas pavillions and huge outboards, were pulled up to shore and the passengers were wandering the beach, snacking, smooching and monitoring a gaggle of kids. I pulled the kayak into shore and enjoyed a little excursion of my own, barefoot on almost-too-hot sand, picking up a shell here and there.

My cooking routine, making up a meal sufficient for two days at least every couple of days, is working out well. Yesterday we finished off the spaghetti, today I started a batch of veggie molé. I’ll run out of TVP soon, but at least I’ve had a chance to experiment with it and Jim has yet to raise an objection.

The thought of that Morgan 41 back in San Carlos has been nibbling at the edges of my consciousness. One night at sea I spent an hour looking at pictures I had shot when we inspected the boat at Marina Seca. Imagine having my own head, and a berth where I could go off by myself. A real bed. A dining area with storage under all the seats and a real table. If we had that boat I would be willing to let go of the dream of living in a house. Why do I torture myself like this? We have a good boat.

This morning we couldn’t get much of a weather report, so we headed out early for Isla San Jose in case the wind picked up. One of the high points was sitting in the kayak on the foredeck, very comfortable, with Sophie in my lap, watching the shoreline go by. I saw one whale spout near the beach.

By 5 we had arrived along the lee shore of San Jose, in an area that’s not really a cove but very calm anyway. Along the shore we could see a forest of cactus, more cactus clustered together than I’ve ever see before. A couple of goats wandered along the shore, one black and white, the other brown. Jim said there’s a rancho on the other side of the island and while the goats might be wild, they could easily have come from there. Four or five little pup tents were arranged along the water’s edge about a half mile up the beach, with pangas pulled up on the sand. Jim thought it might be a group of Mexican boy scouts, and later he said he heard them singing.

By the time we dropped anchor dinner was on the table. For once I was determined I wasn’t going to wait until landfall to start cooking, but this time it was all done too early and had cooled by the time we got the table set up. This wouldn’t happen on the 41, I told myself, where there’s always a table set up.

Am I going to be a malcontent, never satisfied with what I have? I remember how disappointed I was when we couldn’t rent the bigger house. As it turns out, our expenses have been so much more than we expected, it’s a good thing we didn’t commit to a $650 rental for the next year. We might actually be living on the boat before the year’s out, if we can figure out how to do it.

After dinner we loaded Sophie into the dinghy, which we had towed from Espiritu Santu so all we had to do was lower and hook up the outboard and head for shore. No sooner than she touched land than she ran four or five steps away from the water and took a joyful poop.The beach seemed magically untouched and wild, as though people had never been there. Feeling a twinge of guilt, I filled both pockets with beautiful shells, hoping the boy scouts up ahead didn’t see me. We’d have walked further, but Sophie insisted on wandering into the brush that fringed the beach, and we were worried about her encountering a scorpion or snake. Out here, we could do nothing for her if she were bitten.

Back on the boat I washed the dishes and had a luxurious cockpit shower, washing my hair and hoping the scouts weren’t peering at me with their little birdwatching binoculars. I got some underwear washed and curled up with the computer. Jim gave me a new Spanish CD, very serious stuff that I hope to learn a lot from. I was pleased with myself for all I already understood when I began reading a story in Spanish about an island in Michoacan where special Day of the Dead rituals are celebrated.

Tomrrow, Monday, we cast off early, in hopes of getting some 33 miles up the coast for another anchorage. Tuesday we go to Puerto Escondido, I think. But I definitely want to come back here, when we have time to spend weeks. And if it could be in the 41, that would be heaven.

4/14/06 SEA OF CORTEZ

A handsome pelican fished off our dock at Barra de Navidad

We should see the lights of Baja tonight, Jim says. He wants to land at Isla Spiritu Santu, above the entrance to La Paz, and says there’s a nice anchorage around the northern tip of the island where I can kayak. We sailed 11 straight hours on this trip, beginning when the southerlies started around 3am, and occasionally exceeded 6 knots, which is fast for this boat.

I was sleeping at around 7 this morning after two three-hour watches last night, when Jim woke me to help him deal with a broken autopilot. I was supposed to steer while he pulled off the unit, fixed it and put it back on. Just stay on a course of 271, he said. Easier said than done. The course kept varying in spite of my most desperate efforts to hold it around 270; one minute it would be correct, next minute it would have dropped to 255 which is where the wind wanted to send us. If I over-corrected, which was easy to do because turning the wheel didn’t show immediate results, I would drift up to 290, where we were likely to jibe. Once Jim had fixed the unit and started re-installing it he sent me, humiliated, to the galley to make oatmeal. One task I don’t seem to screw up. The good news is that the repair was successful, and we have hope it won’t happen again since he replaced the broken pin with a sturdier one.

We napped a lot while the repaired autopilot kept us on course across the Sea, and I read an entire Dave Barry novel (admittedly, light reading). So I didn’t see any wildlife, but on the other hand I didn’t get any sun exposure either. Jim says he saw a 3-foot manta ray yesterday but otherwise there have been no wildlife. No whales, dolphins, sea turtles or anything else. I’m hoping when we’re anchored I’ll finally see something.

Tonight I have the midnight to 3am watch and I’m sitting in the cockpit with the computer; Jim says since the moon is so bright anyway, there’s no sense worrying about night vision so I may as well write on this log.

I have been studying Spanish during the long afternoons in the cabin, stretched out in the bunk trying to memorize vocabulary and understand usage. The reflexive pronouns have me baffled. But I think I could get it figured out if I just do enough of it...read and listen and talk. It even occurred to me to try writing some of this log in Spanish, though it would certainly take me three times as long to express myself and would probably read in a very stilted way.

I invented a dessert today: there were three bananas beginning to attract fruit flies, so I fried them, sliced, in butter. I melted four squares of our favorite chocolate and added a couple of TB of crema, poured this over the bananas, sprinkled on coconut and a dab of pineapple marmelade. It was brilliant. At least I thought so. Was a little annoyed that Jim didn’t seem as enthusiastic as I was. I named it Bliss’s Banana Slug.

Tonight I’ve thought some more about the medical situation, the fact that I need to find out whether the pap test I had in Nov. was correct, that I have abnormal cervical cells. Between that and my obvious need for dental care I feel like a major illness waiting to happen. I even thought about what I’d do if it’s already too late, if this is possibly my last year. I heard a story on This American Life by a man who somehow convinced himself, for no good reason, that he had only a year left to live, and what he did with it. He wasn’t married, of course, and had no input or requirements from anyone else. He did quite a lot of traveling, spent a lot off time with his parents. I think he donated some of his time for a cause of some kind too. Of course, he was still alive at the end of the year and had to re-evauate his life on the basis that he didn’t have a predictable end in sight after all. He actually seemed a little disappointed that it came out that way.

I’ve asked myself what I’d do differently if I were sure I had only the one year left, and haven’t come up with any answers. These past few months have shown me what a deep affection I have for Mexico, and living out my life here is what I want to do. I feel guilty about Jay and Mother, leaving them behind and effectively cutting them out of my life (unless at some point Jay wants to come here, but I don’t think he’d be happy here unless he could live in the style he’s become accustomed to). How much do I owe my family? Jim long ago withdrew from his; other than Jane he doesn’t even keep in touch. He was glad to see his uncle Dave and Annie last month, but I was the one who made sure we were in Mazatlan to meet them.

If I am to pursue medical testing and try to get treatment, Ray says the best place to go is Guadalajara. His daughter visited him last year and told him she had cancer; he says the next day he took her to Guadalajara and she had the best possible treatment there. “They got it all,” he said. One thing for sure is that going back to the US is not an option for me. My Blue Shield is expired, I couldn’t get on again and couldn’t afford it if I could. That’s one of the reasons we’re down here, because our premiums, at $600 a month, were too much for us.

We are heading for a series of little anchorages, without amenities but reportedly beautiful and rich with wildlife, great for swimming and kayaking. They may not be so quiet and peaceful this week, thanks to Semana Santa and the Mexican penchant for swarming the beaches. Jim’s description makes SS sound hellish: drunks madly tearing down the roads, disturbing the peace with jetskis and pangas and leaving mountains of refuse in their wake. He may be exaggerating, but I'm not sure I want to find out.

4/13/06 SEA OF CORTEZ

Twenty miles off the mainland coast in the Sea of Cortez, on a WNW course at 6:50 pm, 47 miles out of Mazatlan and headed for Baja.

Sophie is turning out to be a true salty dog. She trots up on the foredeck to do her business on the Astro-turf though she makes it clear she’d rather do it on terra firma, by raising a major fuss when we’re all in the dinghy headed for shore. When we land, she jumps out of the boat, takes a couple of steps and squats.

Landing at the Maz dock a few days ago, we almost lost her. We arrived nose-in and I was trying to swing the dink sideways to give her an easier access to the dock but she insisted on jumping over the bow and fell into the water. When I saw her go under I let out a scream and scooped her out, setting her on the dock. A couple of Mexicans in a nearby powerboat started toward us in alarm, then saw Sophie was all right and laughed at the hysterical gringa. She shook herself vigorously and started up the dock as though nothing had happened! When we got to the walkway, she headed for the nearest dirt and began rolling; by the time we all got to the car she was a gray dog. We took her back to the boat that way, then gave her a thorough bath at the slip.

Lesson learned: Keep the halter and leash on her, it may be the only way to retrieve her if she falls in. Better still, put her float coat on, but when it’s really hot Jim balks at doing that.

I’ve been trimming her a little at a time, and at present most of her body and forelegs are fairly short, while her hind legs and butt have hair about 3” long. Pretty funny looking dog. She watches me from the bed with a lopsided smile, now that several of her front teeth have been removed. Looks a little like Sylvester Stallone.

For the first two or three hours I had the usual headache and uncertain stomach that I always get the first day out at sea, probably caused by the unaccustomed motion and the merciless light. Chewed on a couple of ginger Altoids and a piece of candied ginger, slept a little and read the last of a novel it turns out I’d read years ago. Made salsa fresca and provided a good lunch, pleased with myself that I’d made up enough back in Maz to have leftovers. I wouldn’t have wanted to come up with a meal from scratch today.

The drifter’s up and in these light winds we’re doing less than three knots. I dug out the DVD camera to capture the drifter's silky lapis blue and magenta swells, but we were pulling it down again within the hour. I often wonder if it’s worth all the effort to pull down the genoa, change the sheets and haul up the drifter for perhaps a knot more speed, especially since Jim has to keep a constant eye on it, even though the autopilot does the steering. We’ll be underway all night, probably motor-sailing. We’re loaded with fuel, more than we’ve ever carried before, so we should be able to motor as much as we need to, although that sounds like famous last words.

I talked to Trudy on “Miranda” this morning as they glided by, doing considerably more speed than us. Also coming out of Maz, they planned to go up the mainland coast too, until conditions look right to head for La Paz. They have plenty of time and will be in the Sea for weeks, hitting the LoretoFest in early May. I was a little envious, particularly of the La Paz part. I wanted to keep Ch. 16 on and check in with them now and then, but that’s the fishermen’s channel and soon Jim was complaining about the Mexicans calling each other. “They’re all idiots,” he claimed. “They’re just talking about who’s going to bring the beer.” I had to wonder how idiots could make a living at sea, going out there every day and risking their lives to support their families.

Southbound Net just came on, led by Sea Angel at the anchorage in Barra de Navidad: Miranda just came on the ham radio announcing their destination as Isla San Francisco. Bob on Air Power is getting 4.5 knots on his way to Muertos. Kelly Marie is 20 miles east of Cabo, heading for Santa Maria Bay. Then Integrity, a powerboat we know from Chacala, checked in, loud and clear, asking for a clearer forecast for Maz to Baja. Much of the broadcast was drowned out by email traffic. Don, our weather guru, was barely audible; I could make out his English accent but nothing he was saying. Finally heard that there are southerlies expected tomorrow that should help push us northwest, but wind direction will be “on the nose” by Sunday. We were unable to check in on the net, since we can receive but can’t transmit on our radio.

Just realized it’s my son Jay’s birthday and I didn’t call yesterday. Obviously can’t call him now. I wish I could send him airfare to San Carlos for a birthday present.

We were in Maz Marina less than a week and didn’t have much contact with the other boats. Our next door neighbor on “No Strings,” Leon, had a sad tale about his boat sinking just as he was arriving to board her last year, which explains her filthy and bedraggled appearance. He’s living aboard, doing nothing that I can see to clean her up, and talking about buying a larger boat, particularly since he has a new girlfriend in Florida and fears she’d balk if he invited her aboard his present craft. “Integrity” was still there, about to leave for Baja. Apparently quite a few boats left the same time we did, avoiding the superstition-based consequences of Friday departures. It was a great day for a trip, although the light winds did little for sailing a clunky, heavy boat like ours. The motor’s on now, at 7:40 and I’m thankful for the sound insulation Jim has installed but it’s still very loud.

Yesterday I finally got ambitious and spent hours scrubbing the galley and head, using a cheap little power toothbrush to get into cracks and crevices. The boat is probably the cleanest it’s been since we’ve owned it. Jim installed the little Braun blender which I might even be able to use if we have the inverter on, and accomplished quite a few other little projects. Still, there seemed to be a lot of clutter when we started off this morning and I held my tongue with difficulty, imagining objects flying about in the V-berth when we get into heavy weather. I pointedly placed a large storage basket there but he has so far ignored it.

There’s a vivid orange full moon hanging low in the sky to the south tonight. Jim says it’s orange because of all the brush burning and smog.

I’m taking the 9-midnight watch so I’m going to get an hour’s nap now.

3/31/06 SAN CARLOS

It’s Library Day in San Carlos and we have a stack of books to drop off, hopefully some new books to select. We’ve both been devouring books at a rate of three or four a week. Have hardly watched TV at all, even though there are plenty of shows and movies in English with Spanish subtitles. And we’re paying the big bucks to the cable company so we can get Internet access and use Vonage and Skype for our phones.

After the library we go to Guaymas to pay the rent. Since the postal system here is so unreliable, bills are paid in person. There’s a machine at Ley Center where we pay the electric bill, very high-tech, although the bill comes to us stuffed in the iron gate on our porch. Same with the water bill, which we pay here at the water company. The cable must be paid on the tenth of the month, and we receive no bill. It’s incumbent on us to remember, and if we don’t pay on time they first turn off our internet access and then that same day the cable guy drives up in his VW bug with the ladder on top and climbs the pole in front of our house to disconnect us. We found this out the hard way, after the local office failed to post our payment.

When Charlie and Alma came over for dinner a couple of weeks ago she told me she really needed an Al-Anon meeting, but doesn’t want to go to the one in Guaymas because she gets off at 2, the meeting doesn’t start until 4, and she just wants to go home. So I made arrangements at JC’s restaurant for the little room behind the counter, where AA meets a couple of times a week. We had our first Tuesday evening meeting this week and it seemed to go very well, despite the fact that I could understand very little that was said. Does it matter? What matters is that it was said. The participants are professional women and business owners who can’t get to the 10am Wednesday meeting, all considerably younger than the Wednesday group, and are much better at English than I am at Spanish. Maureen and I shared in English and I don’t know how much they understood us either, although Terry, who owns a fabulous gallery in town, speaks English without even an accent.

So I will continue to go to the meetings and hope that gradually I begin to understand more. And hope the affection I feel for them will show through my inability to communicate.

3/4/06: TUCSON

Culture shock. Friday morning, sitting in a busy Starbuck’s in Tucson while Jim goes next door to the T-Mobile to buy an Internet card. In Mexico, you go to an Internet cafe and pay for however much time you use the computer, or just buy a cup of coffee and use your own laptop. Here, it's a big production.

A young female cop is sitting at the next table, her hair pulled untidily into a clip, her shades masking her eyes, her gun holstered on her hip. She’s wearing combat-style waffle-stomper boots and looks very formidable. Guess I should feel very safe. Across from her, a man who looks like an actor with white-blonde hair setting off his Tucson tan. Probably a plainclothes cop. This is not a date.

Behind us, a table full of women all talking and laughing at top volume. Jim is now trying to make a Skype call to the Apple store to find out if the two gigs of ram has been added to his new Mini. He should be a happy guy, with his new computer, which is half the size of a cigar box and has Intel so he can run PC programs. Sixteen hundred dollars worth of happy.

We got the Northwest renewals packaged up last night with very little friction, but getting here this morning was fraught with tension. His reaction to traffic is rage tamped down and spilling over at every intersection. I clutch the door handle and hold my breath and pray he won’t get us pulled over or hit because we have no car insurance in the States. I want to jump out of the van, but where would I go?

We have to stamp these envelopes and then mail them and go back to the room and get the California billing out. I hope we’ll be able to leave tomorrow, I miss our little house.

2/19/06 SAN CARLOS

The mattress arrived yesterday and it promises to make sleep much easier. We had waited for the Guaymas department store to deliver it, until the Capt. decided he wasn't going another night with a backache, and he drove the van down to pick it up. The store was having a fiesta for the employees, and nobody wanted to do deliveries, he said.

This morning we attended Rev. Jack’s non-denominational service in the Catholic church. Almost all the hymns were familiar from my old Southern Baptist days, and I didn’t sing very well, thanks to lack of practice and a frog in my throat. The congregation was almost all in their 70s, it seemed, and are here in town only for the season. What happens when they all die off or get too old to travel, I caught myself wondering.

Afterward we went to the restaurant Jack and Evie own and drank coffee and got acquainted. I learned some things about importing household goods, and heard about a possible way to have them brought across the border.

Charlie and Alma showed up, and Charlie turned out to be a lot of laughs. Charlie is hilarious, talks about whatever comes to mind so he's full of surprises. Looks exactly like Robin Williams when he grins. Alma was sitting too far away and Jack was bending my ear too much for me to get acquainted with her. They followed us home so they could see where we live, and invited us for dinner...chili rellenos...at their house next Saturday night. He’s also a carpenter and was suggesting building a pair of desks for us, but we have desks at Gualala and I dread paying for more. She’s a pediatrician working at the IDSSST hospital. She doesn’t have a lot of English, but I’d like to get to know her better so I will work on my Spanish.

Jim and I sat on the porch and trimmed Sophie as best we could though we didn’t finish the job. We’ll have to have another session at some point.

2/17/06: CLODS

Now we are CLODS (Cruisers Living on Dirt)

We’ve been in the San Carlos casita for five days. I like being close to the marina and the internet cafe, and I would probably be pleased enough with the house, but we saw another place, two and two on a hillside with washer/dryer, decks and patio, a gardener, lots of space and storage, for $200 more and it spoiled this one for me.

We also saw a Morgan 41 and it spoiled our present boat for me, too. An aft cabin, two heads, roller furling, all the stuff on our wish list. I have to put it all out of my mind and learn to love what there is, because that boat and that house are beyond our reach. The house, because we have a “moral obligation” in Jim’s words, to stay here for six months, even though a lease was not discussed when we made the deposit. The boat, because we’d have to wipe out our IRAs to buy it, with a huge tax impact next year.

So all we accomplished by these diversions was a feeling of discontent. But we are committed to staying here for at least six months.

The bed is uncomfortable, and we have backaches every morning. There is very little closet space and Jim is having to fix the closet door so it will slide. These things will all be fixed and life will get easier.

Last night we went to an open mike, and found it was loud and rowdy western music, not really our kind of thing at all. Maybe we have to organize our own open mike, with a focus on jazz, somewhere in town. Meanwhile, Jim keeps practicing but never tells me he’s got a song ready for us to work on together. I just keep waiting and try not to be resentful.

I want to go to Amado and get my printer and warm clothes and stuff for the house. A decent mop, rugs and more towels. A reading lamp. Here I am wishing for more stuff. Am I just getting restless, already?

The big question is whether I’m going to bring back my car this trip. I’m intimidated by the idea of driving in Mexico, where stop signs mean only yield, and if you stop when nobody’s coming and get rear-ended it’s your fault. There are one-way streets with no signs. We’ll have to get Mexican car insurance.

But if I have a car I could take Line Dancing and Jazzercise and pottery classes. Go to the gym. Yeah, sure...

2/8/06: MAZATLAN

A most spectacular sunset this evening, just kept becoming more amazing as we watched. I got photos and video of it, but they’ll never do it justice.

Yesterday I walked all the way from Panama bakery in the Zona De Oro back to the marina after Jim dropped me off near the book exchange and took the pulmonia on to the bus station. He's on his way back to Nuevo Vallarta to retrieve the van.

Found three Michael Connelly books, but the exchange wasn’t that great a deal; 20 pesos plus a one-for-one trade.

On the way home I found a pareo with the same flaming hibiscus pattern as my favorite dress and bought it on impulse, thereby wiping out my wallet and forcing myself to walk the rest of the way home. It’ll make a wonderful shawl with the dress or with black, but it was still insane to buy it, even though it was only $12.

2/5/06: MAZATLAN

Mazatlan skyline from the boat

Thrill du jour was my first sighting of manta rays leaping out of the water as we approached Mazatlan. They looked from a distance like birds, maybe black and white boobies, that had somehow become captive to the sea and were trying to fly out of the water. They flapped their wings, achieved about three feet of altitude, and then flopped back into the waves.

This trip was our first overnight passage of the season and it went well, even in the Skipper’s opinion. I had three shifts, 7-9 pm, midnight to 3am and 6 to 9am. Watched the stars and the half-moon, practiced singing songs I didn’t want to forget the lyrics to, and talked to God. It seems I ask for help a lot but often forget to express gratitude, so I took the time to do that, in my glorious solitude. Only fell asleep once, for a few minutes, in the third shift, while watching the sun come up.

We had two emergencies on this run, both of which were potentially disastrous, both dangerously close to land, both preventable, and (thank God) during daylight. Yesterday the engine overheated and stalled while we were only a mile from a desolate shore. I could see a village on the beach, but there likely wouldn’t have been a phone even if we could get safely ashore. There’s a gauge with a warning system that beeps when the engine is in danger of overheating, but the Engineer (aka Capt.) had disconnected it because it had an annoying tendency to “cry wolf.” So we only realized our problem when we began to smell it. We got both sails up and tacked away from the beach, and once the engine had cooled we were able to use it again. He suspected we had gone at top speed for too long a distance.

Today, we were passing very near the enormous rocks that line the Gold Zone of Mazatlan, only a half-hour from our destination at Marina Mazatlan, and the motor began to die. This time we were out of fuel. Fortunately the mainsail was up and we had enough power to turn the boat around and head away from the rocks. He had to haul a heavy five-gallon jerry jug out of the lazarette while we rocked and rolled, add diesel to the tank using a couple of hoses and a funnel, and then we waited for a moment until the fuel reached the engine. A fuel gauge would solve this problem, which has occurred more than once and always in inconvenient spots.

Marina Maz looks like a property developers’ battleground. I could see it coming in 1998 but now it's going full blast. All along the promenade are high-rise buildings in various stages of completion, all made of concrete. One has temporary roof supports made of young treetrunks, which is apparently typical of Mexican construction. A strip mall fronts them all, with only a couple of units actually in business, the rest desolately empty and collecting trash. Across the channel, the new Isla Marina is also bristling with building sites, all stark steel frameworks for high-rise apartment and condo buildings that may or may not ever become occupied. A miniature lighthouse is almost completed, and a restaurant will take up the ground floor.

We were hoping to get a berth at El Cid, but couldn’t raise anyone there, by phone or by radio. The last time we called, they put us on hold and never got back to us. A boat behind us, Shadow Dancer, was also trying to contact El Cid before giving up and trying Marina Maz. Of course, it’s Sunday, and a holiday. Tomorrow’s a holiday too, which means we may not be able to check in or register with the office, and won’t be able to get hooked up with the free internet service. We’ll probably have to find an internet cafe, because we need to do some online banking.

But the Morning Net on Ch. 72 is reliable anyway, we hope. We can get on to the Net at 8am and ask all our questions.

I’m covered with no-see-um bites from the last night we were in San Blas. I don’t know how I got bitten, since we had the boat closed up from 5pm on into the evening. Jim says my leg feels like a cobblestone street. I itch mercilessly and at the moment I couldn’t care less if I ever saw San Blas again.