Voyage of the Sea Bear

I plan on heading out tomorrow, and might be “off the net” till the weekend. Both me and the Sea Bear are prepped and ready to sail. The forcast looks like this:

MONDAY – No wind, generally SE flow 5 – 10 in the middle, sea breezes on the
Mainland side, seas Flat

TUESDAY – No wind, generally SE flow 5 – 10 in the middle, sea breezes on
the Mainland side, seas Flat

WEDNESDAY – No change, no wind, no seas

THURSDAY – SE 10 – 15, seas SE 1 – 2 feet

FRIDAY – SE 15 – 20, seas SE 1 – 3 feet

Looks like a long, slow, quiet trip.  I’ll take pictures if I see anything.

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Whew. It’s about a hundred degrees outside, and it won’t start cooling off for another few hours. I’m sitting here in Santa Rosalia. JC flew back to Michigan on a family matter, and I am wrapping up the  last of my boat chores before taking the Sea Bear north by my self. The electronic toys we purchased in Oregon (fans, computer, new depth sounder, cd player, etc) have all been installed. I’m still not  ready to take a saw to the old cooler so the Engle cooler is sitting here in the main salon. Most of the other tasks have been completed.

I’m finding it hard to keep motivated. I never really enjoyed spending a lot of time by myself. But these next few weeks will give me a chance to test myself, to see if I have the skills and attitude to be 100% self reliant. The heat makes me sluggish, and the pool here is warm, shallow, and a bit, green.

RotKat just pulled in here. Arjan stopped by to say “Hi” and we’ll probably go out for a drink or something later on. That big cat does 7 1/2 knots easy, so it’s only 10 or 11 hours for him to cross to San Carlos / Guaymas. Still, I prefer the Sea bear. My trip will be longer, time and distance-wise.

From here (Santa Rosalia), it’s about 41 NM northward to Punta Trinidad. Trinidad isn’t big enough to have a town or anything, but it does offer a small amount of protection to anchor in.  A second day of sailing will take me into Bahia San Francisquito. This is a REMOTE  resort, catering to the occasional aviator and cruiser who wanders by. Food and supplies are supposed to be expensive, so I’ll stock up before heading up there.

From SF, I can either head north to the Bay of LA, or take 2-3  little 4 hour day trips across to the mainland. Then its 80 miles back south to San Carlos.  I will probably overnight in Bahia Kino, Las Cocinas,  San Pedro, and then San Carlos.  Once JC  is back aboard, we’ll turn around and retrace my steps, or just cross back to Santa Rosalia and do it all again.

I guess I should go see if they have put the Beach Bear (our white chevy van) back together again. Several of the guys want to make a “heavy goods / booze” run, and there is no reason to hire a taxi when I have the Beach Bear here. This morning they had the radiator out, and the “dog house” opened to do the plugs/filters/distributor/ oil change.  I may take it for a spin to see if she runs any better.

I may buddy boat with Simple Pleasures, if they are ready to go Monday. If not, I may head out on my own and let them catch up.  It’s silly for me to keep paying marina slip fees to stay in a comfortable place. I’m down here to adventure, it’s time to untie the Bear and start out.

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Well I killed my first fish using a spear gun today.
We spent the afternoon snorkeling. JC was a bit apprehensive about getting stung by jellies while swimming, but I don’t consider it any worse than dancing with all the Bees on deck (see last post on bees, and the strategies to handle them).

Reef fish

As it was, I have been stung by something in the water once each day I’ve gone into the water. Not a bad price to pay.
It’s often over 95 degrees during the afternoon, and it feels awfully good to take a dip.
Today I cleaned the spear gun, sanded the rust off the spear, disassembled the handle/trigger assembly, lubed it up, and reassembled it.
Once or twice I thought I broke it for good, but each time I had the tools/skills to continue.
Once we were in the water, we headed towards the rocky shore. JC had the camera, photos will be posted with this text. I had my newly serviced spear gun and only needed a target. Several hours later, JC headed back to the boat while I continued to search.
When I finally swam back out to the boat, I passed through a school of silvery “trout-looking” fish. Since they were the only fish around, I shot at them. After 7 to 10 times, I finally got one. It wasn’t big enough to feed both of us (about 13 inches),  so I grabbed my weight belt, and headed back to shore.
  You would think I was plenty heavy already. But blubber floats. With a wet suit, I floated even more. By the time I dived deep enough to get to where the fish were, I was out of air, and all pooped out. By strapping on 18 pounds of lead, it actually made it easier to get down to the fish. It made it HARDER to swim on the surface, but I still float.
  With the weight belt, hunting along the rocks was much easier. I soon spotted a nice rock fish, and had my second kill. I took it back to the boat and gutted both. Then it was JC’s turn to fillet them, and make dinner. The second larger fish was great. The smaller guy wasn’t too bad either, very mild flavor.

None of the fish in these pictures were shot or eaten. But they did witness the violence. And most snacked on the remains that were tossed overboard.

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Bees on the screen

Bees.
In this dry climate, honey bees are always searching for water. The hive depends on it. Since we use water on the boat, we smell like water to the bees. There are four strategies I can think of that are used to deal with bees;
1) Most hostile – Kill all the scouts. Some folks say if you kill all the scouts, then the bees will eventually not
know you are there.
2) Semi-hostile – put on a leather glove and whack the bees, but don’t kill them. I’ve heard folks swear that bees are
intelligent enough to leave you alone if you keep smacking them. They don’t like it,and they pass the word along.
3) Neutral – Our tactic – keep good screens in place, and keep the bees out. Keep no fresh water on deck, and if you spill fresh water (or beer, or whatever) then wash it down right away with seawater. Eventually the bees realize there is no water here. Any motion or disturbance on deck usually generates a few bees to check things out, but overall, it seems to work.
4) Bee friendly- Put out fresh water in a bowl as far from the human-occupied areas as possible. The thought process here is that the bees will stay near the water, and leave the rest of the boat alone. It seems that the boats that do this still have bees all over, but the people are a lot more relaxed about them. Maybe this isn’t a bad idea. I’ve even seen folks make a bog “flower” to go around the water bowl, just so it’s easier to find.

There are down sides to all of these, but the one that hit us this morning was due to a “bee-friendly” boat. This boat departed around 3AM, and come sunup, their swarm of bees came down to the harbor, and when they didn’t find their usual boat, they moved into ours. They seemed quite annoyed that we didn’t have their water bowl out, and we had 4-5 times our normal bee population on deck all day. We’ll depart in the morning instead of resorting to bee-grade violence.

Good thing they go home each night.

I sure wish those “bee friendly” folks had taken their swarm with them when they left.

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Dawn at Sweet Pea cove, San Marcos Island

Ahhhh… It’s good to be out of the marina, and back “on the hook”. We moved the unneeded items into the Beach Bear (the van) but I don’t really notice any “extra space” on board the Sea Bear.

Today I cleaned most of the bottom of the boat, and hope to complete that chore tomorrow. It’s wonderful in the water, the air temperature is around 100, and the water temperature is around 84. There’s this bold silver fish, with a yellow stripe down his side, and a yellow tail, that has been watching me clean the propeller. He’s big enough for lunch, and if he’s still around tomorrow, I may dig out the spear gun and make him the guest of honor.

We flipped the solar panels up. My rough calculation shows that running the new Engel freezer, all 3 rotating fans, lights, radio, music, etc. consumes about 130 amp/hours per day. The panels generate about 90 amp/hours, and the house bank of batteries can store 420 a/h. If we only use half of the house bank capacity, we should be good for 5 or 6 days before we need to start the engine. I like those numbers!

There are half a dozen other boats here at Sweet Pea cove. Brian and Deb paddled over yesterday afternoon for a chat, seems like a friendly neighborhood. Several times a day we also get serenaded by the pelicans, and when the whales cruise by you can hear them blow half a mile away. Down below are a myriad of rays, skates, and little fishies of all kinds.

 We will probably head back to Santa Rosalia later this week to top off the water tank, buy a few bags of ice, and maybe some fresh veggies. Then we will travel northward along the east coast of Baja, stopping first at Punta Trinidad. This Punta (point) has moderate protection and is 40 miles north of Santa Rosalia, a full days travel. The second half to the trip to Bahia San Francisquito is another 40 miles. I believe there is a “Full Moon Party” scheduled for Aug 23 in the Bay of Los Angles, we JC and I are getting back into shipboard rhythm, and we both feel pretty good.

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It was an amazing trip back to Oregon and California. We spent a lot more than we planned to, partially to an unexpected windfall  from Uncle Sam (IRS). But we made it back to the Sea Bear with a van full of parts, and a replacement Porta-Bote as well. I got to meet Kasandra, my newest grand daughter and a vision of pure cuteness. Thanks Shawn & Kelly! Thanks to all of the family who put us up, chauffeured us around, fed us, entertained us, and in general made this vacation-from-a-vacation most pleasurable.

So the past week has been spent hauling things from the van to the boat, and moving things from the boat to the van. It’s nice to have a storage facility again. Eventually we’ll have to participate in a yard sale or swap meet and unload the items we no longer need. Maybe.

A partial list of completed repairs and improvements would include;

•  the galley plumbing (new faucet and drinking water filter), 
•  running rigging (new jib and spinnaker halyards), 
• dingy (boat and motor, used but in pretty good shape),
• anchor rode (added 90ft of zinc plated chain and a rail mounted bracket to hold a spare anchor ),
• music system (new CD/MP3 player, and a pair of BOSS marine speakers for the cockpit)
• laptops (an Acer netbook for JC and a monster HP G71 for me. Thanks Doug for the extra hard drive!)

There were a few disappointments. The Garmin GPS Nuvi charts I bought didn’t include the Sea of Cortez.. Tech support told me, “Mapping card purchases have a ten day return/exchange period.  Outside of the ten days, we have a Bluechart exchange program where you can exchange a g2 card for a different region of g2 mapping for half the cost of a new card. ”  Since I didn’t find the problem until two weeks after ordering the unit, I’m either going to have to pay another $80 or so, ship the old card back , and trust the Mexican postal system , or forget about using it as a backup plotter. Since the main display in Marine (boat) mode does NOT include LAT/LONG, I’m tempted to just leave it in the van. It’s too bad, as the unit  could be a valuable part of our boats navigation equipment.

  I haven’t yet figured out how to make a mount for the Hummingbird Fish Finder/ Depth sounder transducer. I’d like to be able to affix it to a pole, then either bolt the pole to the stern of the Sea Bear,  or move it to the dingy for fishing / scouting new harbors. While I’m at it, I’d like to add video to the transducer, and I have a couple of  USB video cameras to experiment with. ($10 for two at Weird Stuff in Sunnyvale!)

Tomorrow we are going to make a quick trip to La Paz to visit a dear friend (Hi Paula!!) and pick up my older HP laptop. This is the second trip for that laptop to the shop under warranty, and I hope the last. We’ll also hit the big stores for additional supplies for our summer in the remote north end of the Sea of Cortez.

It’s HOT here. The fans run 24/7 below decks. We spend an hour most days in the little marina pool, but it’s getting pretty murky, and warm. I’ll be glad to head out to water where I can snorkel around the boat.

Web updates and email may be a lot less regular once we are up north. I have no experience with the NET connectivity available there, and we’ll just have to wing it. As always your comments (and donations) are most welcome.

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It’s 2AM, and 82 degrees Farenheit. We’ve been back aboard for almost a day and a half. My to-do list is almost a full page long. It’s hard work, and hot.  I love it.

Yesterday I got the new anchor rode (chain) moved from the van to the boat. I’ve also hauled about half of the cans of food, most of the spare parts, and the computers aboard. I hope to get the porta-bote, outboard engine, and the rest of the parts moved today.

The new speakers were a tight fit, but now we have good music up in the cockpit. Or we did, until I killed the old stereo while trying to remove it. It looks like someone jammed 2 or more music CD’s in at the same time, nothing is ejected when I press the button, but something is blocking new CD’s from being inserted.  Good thing I brought a new car stereo down with me.

I love the new laptop. But I worry that this huge display is going to hit the deck and crack. Ah well, time will tell.

The main salon is a mess, parts, books, clothes scattered all over. The V-berth is still full of stuff we pulled off of the main deck before we left. I’ve hauled the old 130% jib to the van until JC gets a chance to do some repairs. The inflatable dingy is back up on deck, I’ve yet to move the dingy wheels or seats.

Here’s the current version of the to-do list, Ver. 3.0, July 6, 2010:

• Repair old outboard motor. we bought this in La Paz, and despite assurances otherwise, its in pretty bad shape.
• Finish scrubbing the deck. We’ve cleaned up the worst of the bird droppings, but I want to go over it all one more time.
• Repair the 130% jib. The marina is expecting an inspection from HQ – Mexico City this week, but said we could take over the cruisers lounge next week to do the sail work. It’s big, flat, and air conditioned.
• Replace the jib and spinnaker halyards with the new spares from Cajun. The new lines are smaller than the old ones, but I don’t expect that to be a problem, We’ll keep the originals if they’re in good enough shape.
• Dig out the never-used 100% jib and raise it on the roller furling.
• Hang the smaller storm anchor on the pulpit rail, using the new bracket [DONE]
• See if we can find someone who can fabricate a SS plate to cover the damage on the stern. Long ago someone let the outboard swing on the davit and hit the stern of the boat. It’s not structural damage, but the gelcoat and underlying fiberglass is starred.
• Move the diesel jugs back on deck. [DONE]
• Add the new anchor chain to our existing rode. In May we dragged anchor,  this will increase our anchor chain from 75  feet to 160 feet. Plus 150 ft of nylon line. I hope it’s enough.
• Move inflatable dingy (Zodiak) back onto deck. [HALF DONE]
• Move unused books, tapes, CD’s clothes into the van for storage.
• Empty the rest of the van stuff, haul it to the boat
• Print another batch of boat cards.
• Update the web page. I need to add a section on the Sea Bear, with better pictures and technical data.
• Install new fishing rod holder on stern rail
• Install new stereo speakers in cockpit [DONE]
• Figure out why the Garmin quit displaying data from the nautical charts. I really hopped this would make a good backup mini-chart plotter, but right now it’s disappointing. The Long/Lat isn’t visible on the main page, where the chart is displayed. I’ve got a support ticket open.
• Install new CD player
• Find a replacement hatch handle. I really thought I had on lined up in Oregon, but it turned out to be a different hatch, with no handle at all. The old one was cast aluminium, and snapped in the middle. I need to measure the deck flange to order a replacement.
• Fix the galley faucet. It leaks now whenever the water is turned on. While I’ve got it pulled out, I purchased a secondary water filter I want to install in-line.
• Install replacement salt water foot pump.
• Get diesel, propane, cash anad water for trip northward to the islands.

I expect to complete 90% of the above in a week. It’s too hot to work much after 1PM, so the earlier I get started the more I’ll get done.  It’s almost 4AM now, so I guess I’ll see if I can grab a few more hours of sleep before I get started. This is the most fun I’ve ever had.

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Well, we drove all day, and found a nice (huge) hotel in Guerra Negra called the Desert Inn (28.00.02N, 114.00.51,  http://desertinnguerronegro.com) The guy in the parking lot turned out to be a manager(?), and he’s showing us around. When we mentioned that we hav a FM3 visa, he commented that if we show it when we check in it’s usually good for a 40% discount. Whoppee!! Less than $50 a night including WiFi.

I was really worried about clearing customs. At 7am in San Diego the inspector didn’t want to discuss the options available to FM3 holders, or what we could take in to the country as repair parts. So he just told us to forget it all, and proceed through. I didn’t need to be told twice. But after preparing all the paperwork, it was anti-climactic.

Visiting family was great. But as JC and I were discussing the visit, we realized that all you folks are over-stimulated. Everybody has so many irons in the fire that it’s HARD to focus on anything that doesn’t immediately effect you.  It will  be good to slow down again, listen to the waves and the wind, and once again relax. Eventually we’ll have to go back and a get a real job. But till then this is our “once in a lifetime” chance to take a true “vacation”.

Need to eat.. Little shrimpies calling my name (don’t know how they discovered that). That was a fine Margarita.

More later, from the boat.

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I had forgotten how much it rains here. JC and I are really looking forward to returning to the warmer Sea of Cortez climate. But the welcome we’ve received from the family has been very warm, and overall we’re having a good time.

  I just purchased a Garmin car/boat GPS navigator thingy (Garmin Nuvi 550, with Blue Charts) and will post a review here after we’ve tried it out. We’ve also purchased an Engle cooler, Acer Netbook for JC, a Chevy 1992 van, and an ever growing pile of other stuff. Getting all this across the Mexican border is one of the last major chores I have left. I’m hoping the FM3 will ease the customs folks some.

Family are all doing well. My daughter gave me a beautiful grand daughter but missed my birthday by 36 minutes. I’ll forgive her this time. <big grin> Son is doing well, as are the rest of the family.  It’s nice to have so little drama going on. <another, really big grin>

Our current plan is as follows:

• Depart Corvallis June 24
• Depart Rogue Valley for SF Bay area June 28
• June 30 – Meet/greet at BBYC (Alameda Yacht Club)
• Visit folks in Sunnyvale July 1/2
• Palm Springs area July 3
• Phoenix AZ July 4
• Take Guaymas Ferry to Santa Rosalia July 5
• Arrive back on the Sea Bear 7/6
• Prepare Sea bear for trip across Sea of Cortez, departing 7/8
• Cruise islands…..

Somewhere near the end of July we’ll have to take a week off to return our youngest crew member to her mother. Then we’ll continue our exploration of the northern end of the Sea.

It’s going to be a great summer…

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Well, it’s still raining here in middle-Oregon. We’re assembling our pile of supplies/parts to take back to the Sea Bear. Later today we’ll look at a couple of possible vehicles to transport this stuff southward. The 12′ Port-a-bote is the defining piece of cargo, anything we chose will have to be capable of transporting it. So, I bought a tape measure, and now I’ll go van shopping.

Having a van available in Mexico gives us several new options.  Inland trips,  taxi-less shopping trips, and jaunts from the boat to other cities all become possible. And when we’re not driving it around, we can store items in it that would otherwise be in the way aboard the Sea Bear. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea.

Next week we’ll head south to the Rogue Valley. There we will visit with more family, check on the rental property, and participate in the National Rooster Crowing contest. Afterwards we’ll pack all our stuff into the van, and head to the SF Bay area for a few days. Then it’s back to the boat, where warmer weather awaits us.

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