Author Archives: Melissa

Temporary Holding Tank Fix

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The dreaded holding tank. Everyone who cruises and has a traditional style head and holding tank will eventually need to ‘deal’ with maintaining this system. Unfortunately for us, our time was this week. We had already given Marina Cortez notice we would be leaving, twice, and so, naturally, we came up against a repair that meant we needed to stay a few more days. They probably think we’re a little nuts up there in the office.

A few days ago Mike and I tackled a job we’ve been putting off: we replaced the hose that goes from the holding tank to the aft head. While we were doing that job I noticed some nasty looking liquid in the storage compartment in front of the tank. Yes, the tank was leaking. From the bottom. The amount of sighing this caused cannot be overstated. In order to reach the leak, we’d have to remove the tank. That meant taking stuff apart. That meant the boat was about to get messy again.

We are really lucky aboard Galapagos because our tank is pretty accessible. It’s under the midship berth. You can lift a heavy wooden cover to access it. Getting the tank out requires a bit more disassembly, but it’s not nearly as hard as it would be in our friend’s Tayana 37.  Theirs is under the engine. Enough said. We’re grateful for small things like this.

The crack is located to the right of Mike’s arm, down underneath.

After the marina’s pumpout service came by, we used this nifty little tool to get the rest of the liquids out of the tank. Mike uses this to change the oil in the engine. Makes getting the oil out, or the black water out, pretty easy. By this time, there wasn’t much in the tank. 

After getting the tank free from it’s home, we saw that, indeed, the tank was actually cracked right by the seam. We were hoping that a seam had given way, but it was a real doozy of a crack. Honestly we can’t figure out how this happened. But whatever, it was leaking like nobody’s business. I whipped out the bleach water mighty fast.

The tank is plastic; believed to be made of polyethylene. This is a substance that resists fixing unless you have exactly the right stuff. We didn’t. We weren’t even exactly sure that the tank is made from this stuff. It could be ‘poly’ anything. But we did know that given the right materials, we should be able to heat weld a fix to the tank. But how to go about getting the right materials here in Mexico? We started with putting out our need on the morning cruiser’s net on the radio. We got nothing there. Moving on, Mike’s research brought up a plastic supply place within walking distance. I put on my Teva’s and we went off into the bright Mexican sun, still feeling confident we could get this fixed. We enjoy the feeling of confidence that comes with ignorance.

The offending crack.

Unfortunately, we speak so little Spanish that we have to use photos and a lot of sign language and Google Translate (which is frequently wrong, by the way) to get by. The young man behind the counter at the plastic supply was having none of it. I pointed to my photo of the tank. He shook his head no and looked straight ahead. Mike brought out the plastic welding rods he did have already (wrong stuff, right shape) and the lad shook his head vigorously ‘no’ again. We showed him more stuff. Frankly, he just wasn’t interested in helping us. We decided to look around the store and see what jumped off the shelf at us. We could smell plastic resin. They make plastic stuff there. Surely…

Mike found some small trays that looked and felt like the exact stuff our tank was made of. We bought two for 85 Pesos, about $4.50. Our hopes soared as we walked back to the marina, still believing in fairies.

I do not understand this face. But these are the trays. Pretty nice trays, too.

Back at Galapagos Mike cut strips of plastic off the trays and set to work. Using the multitool (part of our Ryobi rechargeable tool sets that we cannot live without) he ground out the crack back to clean plastic, then used the sander to sand the surface with heavy grit, then cleaned the surface with acetone.  He got out the butane torch and began laying the plastic into the groove. It looked good. The stuff melted easily and flowed into the crack. We thought we’d hit paydirt.

We were wrong. As the plastic melted some of it began to bubble and when those popped they left pinholes. In the end, the pinholes leaked. Back to the drawing board.

That’s a butane torch.

Well, not exactly that fast. We did a lot of other things like add more material, remelt and try to smooth the existing material, and use the heat gun, which actually worked pretty well. But the weld was not a good one and the tank still leaked. We didn’t know if we had the wrong temperature, or the wrong materials, or what. We’d had to peel a thick layer of rubber off the side of the tank and the plastic underneath was discolored. Mike thought perhaps the plastic was somehow contaminated.  But whatever the problem was, it was wrong. And, by the way, this is why there are professionals who know about this kind of stuff and do it for a living. Most places.

Another cruiser came over and took a look and lent us his wood plane. Mike used that to shave off thin strips of material off the corner of the tank so that we could use the exact same material the tank was made from and try again. I routed out the old material, exposing the area of the crack again. Oddly, some of the stuff we’d just done had welded great. But not good enough to keep those pinholes from leaking.

We laid the small strips of tank material in the groove and commenced with the heat. It melted well, seemed to adhere well, and there was less bubbling. I thought we were onto something. Alas.

Still another cruiser came by and offered us some blue plastic stuff he used to repair his poly…something tank 10 years ago. It was still holding after all that time. He suggested a propane torch, which was what he used. With nothing to lose but our sanity, we sanded and cleaned the surface again with acetone. Because of the wind, the torch had trouble staying lit. But Mike finally got the stuff to melt and the surface of the tank to melt enough to hold it. After letting it firm up he tested it and the strip of blue plastic peeled right off. Things were not looking good. I decided it was time to try to find a professional. At this point I was ready to pay someone else to get frustrated.

We used the propane torch on this stuff. Honestly we thought this would work. Everything went all melty. It peeled right off.

We contacted La Paz Cruiser’s Supply and got a phone number of a guy who welded plastics. It was disconnected. Then I contacted a long time resident of La Paz who has his finger on the pulse of boat works around here and had given us a tour of all the marinas and boat yards. He used to own a yacht management service and is a marine surveyor. He said there were no plastics welders in La Paz. He should know. He said we might have to get a fiberglass tank built to spec or we could probably order a new tank through Lopez Marine for $$$. To me that sounded like a lot of money, but mostly a lot of time, and also our tank should be reparable with the right materials and know-how.  He also suggested a special repair kit for plastic tanks sold by Autozone. Leaving Mike to perseverate over the tank, I Ubered to Autozone, only to read the back of the package where it says, ‘Not to be used on Polyethylene or …’.   Back to square one.

This is the stuff. A different brand than what we used before, but equally good.

I texted Mike and told him it was a ‘no go’ in terms of the plastic repair kit. He decided to try one more thing. This is the ‘one more thing’ that will get us off the dock on Saturday for however long it holds up; the ‘one more thing’ that will buy us time until we can find someone who can do an appropriate repair.  And that one more thing is this wonderful Pro Flex All Weather Water Proof Butyl Roof Repair tape we keep on board. This is the stuff we got to replace the sealing around the little rectangular ports on our hull above the waterline. It has worked so well that we keep it on board for other possible uses. And now we found one.

When I returned to the boat the tank was standing up on the dock, full of water and not leaking. The rubber was holding the leak back. I reinforced Mike’s taping with a couple more strips of this magic tape and now we’re good to go, as long as this holds. We have no idea how long that will be. I mean it could last as long as next week, or as long as 5 years.  But however long it is is better than sitting here on the dock right now. We can easily keep an eye on this since now we know exactly where the leak is.

Now that the tank is back in place we’ll be getting a can of that expanding foam and putting a bead of that under the leading edge of the tank. We believe there is not enough support for the tank in this location and that led to the eventual cracking. There is plenty of room for the foam to expand without causing a problem.

All taped up and ready to rumble again.

One of the good things that came out of this little setback was that we were able to get a good look inside our tank. Remember that fun science experiment we did with the Zaal No Flex Digestor; the one where we demonstrated what a good job it does at dissolving solid waste and toilet paper? Those results held true. What could have been a nasty, stinky job was really not bad at all. When we opened up the hose connections we could see into the tank and there was zero buildup inside. Much to people’s dismay, we actually do put about half of the toilet paper we use into the holding tank. So let me state this again: we had zero buildup in the tank, and the aroma was nothing like you’d expect. No gag reflexes were engaged.  I’m sticking with my Zaal NoFlex Digestor and the toilet paper is going to continue to go into the tank.

And now we are hoping to leave La Paz on Saturday to go to the islands and really begin seeing the Sea of Cortez. Shh. Don’t tell the gods of cruising. We don’t like to tempt them openly. Nothing to look at here….nothing at all.

Before we sign off, someone is bound to bring up getting a composting head. We’re not ready to do that at this point. We’d have to order it and wait around for it. Then that’s another boat project. We’d rather be cruising. In the future, if this tank issue can’t be resolved, then maybe. But it’s been a bulletproof system until now. It’s a good installation that has lasted since the 1980’s. If we can fix what we have, we’ll keep it.

S/V Galapagos, out.

La Paz Ramblings

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We’re in La Paz! The last time we were here was 6 years ago on our 30th wedding anniversary. We came down to check out the place and meet with some cruisers we’d met by following their blog. We had a wild and crazy time what with driving down arroyos to get to the beach and one-legged juggling clowns. We looked with longing upon Isla Espíritu Santo. Now here we are ready to do the islands in our own boat!

One of my favorite statues on the malecon.

When we pulled into La Paz a week ago our intention was to stay 3-4 days. We were finally in the Sea of Cortez and we didn’t want to waste no stinking time in town! We figured a few days would be enough time to provision, get propane, do laundry, do a couple of minor boat maintenance things like change the oil, and rest up before heading out to the islands.  What a joke. Does anyone actually stay only 3-4 days in La Paz?

Escorted by a friendly local dolphin, we found a place to anchor just across the channel from the entrance to Marina De La Paz. Cruisers who are anchored out can pull up to their dinghy dock and leave their dinghy, dump their trash, and take on water in jerry cans for 20 Pesos/day. It’s a great deal. By the way, here’s another update to your cruising guide: There is no fuel dock at Marina de La Paz anymore and there hasn’t been for several years. Likewise there is no guest dock where you can tie up for a few hours. There are three places to get diesel in La Paz and they all tack on a 12% surcharge just because they can. I guess it’s the price you pay to have the convenience of pulling up to a dock rather than lugging jerry cans from the Pemex station. Diesel is round about 4$/gallon here. Plus your surcharge for being on a boat.

Anyhoo,  we were just fine at anchor, even though the winds howled away every afternoon and the currents run ridiculously strong through the anchorage. I think our GPS registered 4 knots running under our keel at one point. Our Mantus anchor, which frankly deserves her own name she’s so great, holds us fast. We were on task to get our chores done and get out of La Paz.

But then… then Mike had wanted to equalize his batteries, so that meant we needed to be hooked up to a dock with electricity. After checking out the tight conditions in Marina de La Paz, we decided on Marina Cortez, right next door. They have nice wide fairways and slips that relieve my stress about getting in and out of the place, especially with the big winds and currents here. Plus, Lynn and Curt Brownlow on S/V Slow Motion were there and we thought it would be nice to know someone to hang with.  We pulled into Marina Cortez and thought we’d stay 3 days. But very quickly that turned into a week because the price was right. (In fact, it was considerably lower than the price the marina office wrote down on a slip of paper the day before when we were checking the place out. Why? I don’t know. ) So we were supposed to leave on March 12, but guess what’s coming on that day? Another good strong norther. Do we want to leave the marina and go anchor out in winds gusting to 25 knots? We do decidedly not. So now we’re staying until Wednesday. I’ll believe we are leaving the marina when we pull out of the slip. We’re kind of enjoying it right now.

WIDE slips and a straight shot into the slip. My favorite kind of marina.

Besides, we have lycra body suits to order. Yes, this is going to be fun. We’d read that there was a woman in La Paz who made ‘skin suits’ for people – basically lycra onesies for grownups- to protect them from sunburn and jelly fish stings during the heat of the summer. They are for swimming in the sea. We don’t like sunburn and would rather not be stung by jellyfish so this sounds like a pretty good deal to me. I’m not sure if I’d be seen in town wearing one of these outfits, but they sound dead comfortable. We’re going to go look at fabric on Monday.  I’m thinking something splashy and colorful that breaks up the field of vision a bit so I don’t look like a round smurf, or maybe a Weeble. Mike was going for basic black, but I think that’s too close to looking like a seal. Maybe grey and black, like a Great White shark? Or he could dress as a crayon, or maybe a tube of toothpaste.  I could talk myself out of this if I go on too long. But…jelly fish…ouch. I’m sure we’ll post the results of our quest, but don’t look for photos.

Can we talk about tipping? The kind that involves money? How does this work in Mexico? Today we found out, much to our chagrin, that the baggers in the grocery stores work only for tips. They don’t get paid any other way. What??? How would we have known that? We told some other cruisers and they didn’t know this either. Now we all feel terrible that we didn’t tip the bagger when we went to the store, and our friend now thinks he knows why the lady at the Chedraui was giving him the old stinkeye. Here’s the question I have though: how do the Mexican people tip? I want to tip like a Mexican. Not like a gringo. There is enough of a ‘gringo tax’ already in place without my adding to that. What about the guys who open the marina gate for me? Do I tip those guys? This seems like a culture that is set up to prevent you from doing your own work whenever possible, or at least make it easier to get someone else to do it for you,  because if you do your own work, then someone else can’t get paid for it. I get that, but I don’t know the boundaries and rules around that kind of way of doing things and I want to do it right. I want to do right by the folks who are giving me a service, and also do right by my fellow cruisers are are following in our wakes. Meanwhile I want to go back to the store and find the woman who bagged my groceries last time and tip her heftily with many apologies for being a stupid gringo.

Speaking of having people do things, I’ve never had our laundry done by anyone else until now. What I’ve been missing! Of course, it’s actually easier to have it done here than to do it yourself. See above paragraph. There are not that many laundromats. The laundromat in Marina de La Paz did not look great and when I went in to check it out there was a woman sitting around, appearing to be waiting to take people’s laundry off their hands. Am I going to go into that laundromat and do my own laundry right in front of her?  No I am not. I bet she has kids to feed.

Just look at that! Perfect.

At Marina Cortez you simply drop your laundry off at the office and a mysterious laundress comes and picks it up and returns it to you the following day,  expertly washed, pressed, and folded, all laid out beautifully in plastic bags to protect it. Honestly, I’ve never seen more beautiful laundry. I would have shaken that woman’s hand and congratulated her; the skill level was that good.  This was the Nordstrom of laundry. All of our daily worn clothing, rugs, sheets and towels were done for $27. If I lived here I would never do laundry again. I admire a job that well done.

We are addicted to the ice cream place down on the Malecon: La Fuente. We’ve been here in the marina for almost a week. In that time we’ve been to the ice cream place 3 times, and it wasn’t even my idea. I will take their Naranjita and Toasted Coconut any day and any time. Big chunks of roasted coconut in a creamy ice cream, and what amounts to a scoop of frozen freshly squeezed orange juice in a chunky cone. I don’t think you can even get stuff that good back home. But if you can, you are certainly going to pay more than 5$ for two cones.

I love how the Malecon is so well used in La Paz. There are always families out walking, young lovers grappling with each other, kids playing, people on roller blades…it’s the equivalent of the town square. Everyone here uses the Malecon with its beautiful statues and magnificent views of the bay. It’s a great place to go for a walk. Like maybe to La Fuente for ice cream.

Pretty nice view in the anchorage here.

La Paz has a thriving ‘cruising’ community, but many of the cruisers who live here have lived in the marinas for years. I don’t know how often they still go cruising, but I can see the draw to just move your boat here and be in the marina. Marina de La Paz has that Club Cruceros, a really nice little clubhouse with its large book and DVD library, coffee time in the mornings, card games, and the like. Marina Palmira has movie night in their gathering place by the pool. The cruiser’s net in the morning is informative and gets people connected with each other.  There’s a tight community waiting to welcome you. We can feel the draw, but we’ll be moving on. We have some cruising to do.

Today we met a young man who has a sailboat down at Foss Harbor Marina, our old stomping grounds. He’s planning to leave the dock next August and bring the boat down here with his girlfriend. They are here in La Paz checking out the place; on their reconnaissance trip like we were on 6 years ago.  Another Tacoma boat pulled in next to us in the marina yesterday. It’s such a small cruising world on this side of the country.

Tomorrow we’ll go to the fabric store and find our lycra for our swim suits. That will be fun. We have final provisioning to do as well. I finally found some La Croix for sale at the local big Chedraui. I wonder if they have restocked since we visited? Hmmm. Maybe another trip to that store. And definitely another couple of meals of delicious fish tacos.  Then it’s the wilds of the beautiful islands and we’ll be heading up to Puerto Escondido and Loreto. My sister and nephew are coming in the middle of April and we’re dead excited.

S/V Galapagos, out.

It’s possible the restaurants have something to do with our love of being in La Paz.

 

 

 

Bahia Ballena: A Whale of a Time

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This is a story about whale sightings that didn’t happen, and then the whale sightings that did. The Universe taketh away with one hand and giveth with the other.  It’s also a cautionary tale for cruisers planning to sail down the west coast of the United States. If you are sailing off our southern coast during the winter, you are smack in the Grey Whale migration route. The further south and the closer to shore you get,  and the closer you are to their calving grounds, the more likely you are to both see and encounter these incredible animals. We were dead excited to see us some whales and live to tell about it.

The beach at Campo Media, one of the best beach walks.

You know those videos on Youtube that show people in pangas viewing baby Grey Whales in their San Ignacio lagoon nursery down here on the Baja peninsula? Those videos have sucked me in. In the Pacific Northwest we are constantly reminded to stay far away from whales (although sometimes I fear the whales have not read the brochure). There are good reasons for this we do follow those rules.  However, in Mexico during calving season you can experience close encounters of the whale kind, initiated by the baby whales and their mamas, under the guidance of licensed guides. WHAT? YOU GET TO ACTUALLY PET BABY WHALES AND SCRATCH THEIR HUGE CHINS??  (If you’re lucky. No guarantee, right?)  I do love me some whales, in spite some recent encounters I’ll tell you about later.  I want to do this baby whale trip so bad.

The Mexican government has done a pretty good job of protecting their whale breeding grounds and at the same time encouraging ecotourism, which helps the local economy. I like to encourage and support those efforts and I also want to see baby whales. I’m sure there are environmentally concerned individuals who take umbrage with that, but in spite of my environmentalist leanings,  I think overall these kinds of activities are good for people and make them more likely to appreciate the animals in our care on the planet. While I wouldn’t go around touching other populations of whales and understand the pressures that whale watching tours put on whale populations, this specific area and population of whales seems to react differently to human interaction than others. This has become a bucket list item for me.

So we planned a stop at the town of Abreojos, across Bahia Ballenas from Laguna San Ignacio, the protected baby whale nursery.  Here’s where guide books will really let you down. We looked in our cruising reference books and according to what we read there, it should have been the work of a moment or two to find a licensed guide to take us into the refuge at Laguna San Ignacio. Word to the wise: Going by the guide book will raise false expectations, even if the book is very recently revised and updated (like 2017).  We encounter this fact over and over.  Sometimes, many times actually, you just can’t go places by boat, even if they are on the water. The infrastructure isn’t there.

Mike discussing options with a panga driver.

One of our guide books specifically mentioned that the anchorage at Campo Medio,  which is across Bahia Ballenas from the lagoon, is the “park and ride” for pangas to take you across to view the whales. That sounds easy, no? Another guide book mentions that a side trip to the lagoon is a ‘must do’. Nowhere do the guidebooks mention that you actually need to go, by land, to the town of San Ignacio, which is about 70 miles from the anchorage in Abreojos, far across the big Bahia Ballenas (Bay of Whales). There are no guides located in Abreojos during the viewing season. They are all at the whale camp in the lagoon. I was able to contact the author of that last guidebook and she explained all that to me.

We spent three days trying to find out how to get out to see those whales. As is usually the case, the locals want to be helpful. We asked the panga fishermen in town and they had no advice except one guy told us to get on Channel 21 and hail the Lagoon Boat. That would be great, if anyone were actually listening on Channel 21. One guy we asked told us we could take our own boat into the lagoon. We know that is not legal. It’s also really risky. Too risky even with our dinghy. Finally we talked to some gringo home owners who live at Campo Medio and were told that the only way to get to the lagoon was to leave our boat there (unattended? Um, no.) and take a bus into the town of San Ignacio. We’d probably have to stay overnight. They had never seen anyone “embark from (their) anchored boat onto (the) park guide’s panga”, and that make sense considering it’s about 18 miles across the bay to the lagoon entrance. These people are locals. They know how to get to see the whales.

After I contacted the author of the second book, we finally gave up. Perhaps when the books were published these things were true, but considering one of them was revised in 2017, I kind of expected it to be fairly current. Maybe we did it wrong and I’m certainly willing to entertain that idea, but we tried pretty hard. I’m putting this out there for any other cruisers who are coming down the coast expecting to be able to charter a panga to go into the San Ignacio Whale Park. I still want to go to the whale park. But I’ll have to go by land like everyone else. If you contact some of the ecotourism places well enough in advance, maybe you can arrange for a panga to come out and get you for a fee. Had we not thought, based on the information we had, that we could secure a panga locally, we would have made advance reservations that way.

Beach walk at Abreojos, Bahia Ballenas

Anyhoo, we gave up and decided to do our own whale watching. We’d seen many, many whales on the down the coast to Bahia Ballenas and we knew they entered the lagoon from the bay. So off we went to do find us some whales to watch. We sailed 12 miles across the bay to a point close to the mouth of the lagoon and anchored for the night with 10 feet of water under the keel. It was dead calm or this would have been untenable as it’s completely exposed in all directions. I had hoped we could splash the dinghy and perhaps land on one of the sandy spits and walk around, but the surf was simply too rough to even consider it. Dead calm. High surf. Got it.

The lagoon entrance is completely surrounded by shoal water and surf. The chart really doesn’t do the dangers justice. There are big waves breaking on shore even on a very calm day. If felt to me like there were breakers everywhere. We stayed well clear. Studying the chart we could see two areas that looked likely to be a ‘whale highway’ into the lagoon. One was behind Point Malcom. It looked like we could anchor there off the point and we were betting that whales would come by there on their way to and from the lagoon. With the shallow water there, we would not be in danger of a whale jumping on our boat, even if they got close to us. (For the Literature majors among our readers, that’s known as ‘foreshadowing’. )

A spy hopper, hopping a safe distance from our boat. Can you see the breaking seas behind this whale? This photo was taken with my 300mm lens. On a moving boat. So it’s a little grainy.

And so it proved. We motor sailed down to Point Malcom, watching whales breaching and spy hopping on the other side of the surf in the protected waters of the lagoon entrance. It was enchanting. We’ve certainly seen our share of whales in our lives up north, but nothing like this show. We anchored off Point Malcolm on a sandy bottom in 16 feet under the keel and sat back to watch. If you go there and decide to anchor, realize it’s a rolly anchorage even in calm weather. It’s the price you pay for the safe front row seat.

After a peaceful, if rolly, night, we pulled anchor at 1100 and began a slow and gentle downwind sail out of the bay. I got out a puzzle and started working on it in the cockpit. Mike got out his fishing gear. He caught two small tuna of different kinds and a magnificent Dorado, as beautiful as if it had been made of pure gold. He threw them all back this time. It was so pleasant, just ghosting along under main and foresail at about 3 knots and not worrying about making time.

And then, the end of a perfect day came in the form of two distracted Grey Whales. We were both in the cockpit and at about 1745, a Grey appeared about 10 feet off the starboard bow and swam under the boat. “Oh my god there’s a whale right there!” shouted Mike. By the time I turned my head it was slipping underneath the boat.  It quickly surfaced just to port and breached all the way out of the water. I swear that whale took wing. We can’t agree on exactly how far this animal was from our port bow, but we both agree it was WAY too close for comfort.

There is no way to adequately express the terror/awe/shock/Come-to-Jesus moment that happens when a creature that large jumps way too close to your boat. So many thoughts happen simultaneously. Unfortunately I had little time to record those because just as we were wondering if we had, indeed, peed our pants, the whale’s friend surfaced on the starboard bow and began a log roll under the boat. We promplyt hit him. Yes, we hit a whale. We’re minding our own business gliding along at about 4 knots and suddenly if feels like we’ve hit the dock a little too hard. I know we wanted to see whales, but COME ON!

In a very lucky break, the breaching whale fell away rather than toward the boat. Otherwise, we would have blubber on our stanchions and whale blood on our bow and I might never actually get over that. I’m pretty sure we didn’t hurt the whale, and I hope he learned his lesson about getting mixed up with boats. Actually, we felt really bad about it, even though we could not have avoided it. These whales didn’t show themselves until they were right up our bilge. Both of us were shaken pretty badly, but of course, me more than Mike. He was like, ‘Cool! We hit a whale!’ and I was more ‘Oh shit! We hit a whale!’. He just doesn’t take these things as hard as I do. I wasn’t sure what to feel worse about: Possibly hurting the animal, or possibly hurting our boat. I can tell you we are both real grateful for our thick fiberglass hull. At the end of the day, no harm done, thanks be to cruising karma, a strong boat, and a blubbery whale body.

Since then seeing whales has been a little less exciting but we’ll get over it.  When we were anchored off San Carlos del Cabo a Humpback whale breached pretty close. Not close enough to be a danger at all, but my first thought was ‘Just stay where you are, buddy. That’s enough of that kind of frivolous and unnecessary jumping’. When we were sailing from San Carlos del Cabo to Los Frailes I saw a Humpback feeding ahead. I changed course 30 degrees, wind be damned. I guess you might say we take even more evasive actions now when we see them, and I am ok with running the engine at night so they can hear us. No harm done except to my sense of excitement to be sharing the ocean with these amazing, but very, very large, creatures. I still hope to someday see both a Blue Whale and a Sperm Whale, but I’d like to keep my distance, thanks. Seeing through our binoculars is fine with me.

Galapagos anchored at Campo Media. Great anchorage.

We are currently in La Paz, having finally made it that far, stocking up, getting fuel and water, and enjoying a few fish tacos. We’ll be here about a week. Then it’s off probably to this side of Isla Espiritu Santo. I’d like to swim with some sea lions. I hear you have to pay to do that, too. We’ll post again when we have good cell service.

Have you ever hit a whale? Has a whale jumped on you? We are ready to hear your stories now.

S/V Galapagos, Out.