So they say you’re not supposed to write about a dreadful experience immediately after it happens, but…
Before I go down that road, let’s catch up. We spent a couple of days in the anchorage at San Carlos and got to know the folks at the San Carlos Yacht Club who gave us a seven day reciprocal pass. Had a couple of lovely evenings there and got to meet the author of two of my favourite sailing books, Julie Bradley, who spends half the year in San Carlos and the other half in Pinetop, Arizona, where much of my family is from. Finally installed our security camera and spent time exploring the small town.
We had to go to Guaymas, about three hours by boat or 20 minutes by car, because it’s the big town around and my grandparents talked about it a lot in their sailing log. Well, “big disappointment” is Theresa‘s understatement. Maybe it was once a happening place but it certainly is not any more. That one night in the anchorage was the single worst night’s sleep we have ever had. More to do with the winds and wildly swinging boat than Guaymas itself, but we couldn’t wait to get out of there the next morning. The downtown area had homeless drug addicts laying around all over the place, much like downtown Los Angeles, a place I never ever intend to return to. Even the cathedral was locked up tight. And to top it off, after we left, we heard that they had had 37 murders in November (pop 140,000).
So back to San Carlos we went. We decided to make a last-minute trip up to Arizona as it’s only 4 1/2 hours by car. The plan was to just cross the border and pick up a bunch of packages at “the UPS store” across the border. Let’s just say that we ended up stopping in Nogales, Greenvalley, and then on to Tucson! But we got almost everything we were after and managed to keep it to a 16 hour day. And again, no import taxes assessed! We were invited to Thanksgiving dinner at the yacht club so we stuck around for that and had a lovely holiday dinner. Very friendly people and we exchanged club burgees as they didn’t have ours.
Due to the constant north winds, we had to wait until yesterday morning to depart. Anticipated a 20 hour trip due south with winds and seas behind us. Planned to leave around noon, but when I went to flush the head in the morning it decided it had had enough and began overflowing copiously out from behind the wooden wall panel. Yes, it was a pretty sh!tty experience. So we evacuated the anchorage immediately in order to dump tanks out at sea and just kept going. Ended up taking 24 hours as the middle of the night was quite slow. As a result, we hadn’t really set up the boat for departure on a long passage (again) and were a bit frazzled in playing catch up. Of course, neither the wind nor seas came out of the north, but from the west, which meant it was beam-on and thus a very rolly trip. About 15 minutes after I fell asleep that night, I was awakened by the dreadful noise of our Code 0 sail coming unfurled! Managed to get it pulled down onto the deck without too much trouble but of course doing anything on the fore deck in the middle of the night in rolly seas when you’re dog tired is no bueno. Oh, and that mess. Did I mention that our water tanks were nearly empty when we left???
Yes, Tess is once again considering leaving me.
So now we are back in Bahia Salinas, on Isla Carmen, 120 miles south of San Carlos. This is that place where she was eaten alive and swore she would never return to. The high temperatures aren’t a lot warmer, but the low temperature is a full 10° warmer than up in San Carlos. The winds should be significantly less the farther south we go. Made water and cleaned up the boat so all is well again in Mumma’s kingdom.
