Sunday, April 20, 2014

Loreto to Guaymas, next destination: Portland

The Captain at rest
Michelle and I kayaking at Ballandra Bay

Just caught my first trigger fish
We enjoyed a week with friends from Vancouver WA, fishing ( successfully!), kayaking, swimming and exploring beaches around Isla Carmen, across from Loreto, BCS, Mexico.
The bar at Loreto - This old boat gets a new life

Enjoying my first michelada with Michelle

Tony's Pacific Porgy
Pura Vida at anchor, Isla Carmen
cloud formations at sunset
Baja CA rock formations and clouds

Our exclusive taquito extravaganza 

Tooling around an abandoned salt mining operation


Bahia Salinas - the church at the old salt mine
Amazing sunset - Ballandra Bay, across from Loreto BCS















Pretty sure nobody missed the amazing full
Our fresh caught fish on the grill!

moon this week – we had the extremely good fortune of experiencing the bright, full moon illuminating the night on our 21 hour passage north from Loreto to Guaymas. We hoped to traverse the 100+ miles during the lunar eclipse, but weather drives our decisions and we left once we reviewed the weather reports. Sunday: winds would be good. Monday: high winds predicted and they were. Gusts in the 40s once we arrived in Guaymas. I’m just saying that I’d rather be at anchor than underway with what I consider big winds.

We’ve been working long hours under the hot sun (no sympathy requested) since Monday, lovingly and carefully preparing Pura Vida for her rest at Guaymas Marina Seca (dry marina) - our dusty boatyard destination. We wait for high tide since we draft 6 ft (our depth under the water), so it's all about coinciding with the tides. For tomorrow at 4PM (high tide), we haul out and do final preps for long storage for the rainy, hot summer. It's Holy Week here (Semana Santa) so everyone is enjoying time off at the beach, relaxing, and life is at a slower pace than usual (read: try to get things done?!)

And so it begins… our journey north and the Goehler Quest starts another chapter, as we drive to Portland seeing friends along the way. In Portland, we look forward to reconnecting with family and friends, and continue our gainful employment.

Friday, April 4, 2014

Baja bound and heading North!

We’ve just completed another series of passages from the Pacific back up into the beautiful Sea of Cortez. First stop after our 310 mile passage from Banderas Bay across to Baja California peninsula: Bahia de Los Muertos (Bay of the Dead). 63 hours total transit time at ave 5 knots(mi)/ hr. Sighted the cape of the Baja peninsula at 7:30 am Friday, 50 ½ hours into our passage from the mainland. Although not a long distance compared to our friends heading to the south Pacific, landfall is a welcome sight.

We watched for fishing lines stretched across large areas along the northern route from Puerto Vallarta through the Tres Marias, 3 islands that include a prison – must stay 20 miles off shore to avoid Navy intervention. Winds were changing to stronger NW earlier than the various weather reports we’d studied.

We had all 4 sails up, then we took down two, and motorsailed with main and mizzen, as our boat isn’t that great sailing to wind (heading directly into it).

We did our 6 hour shifts 7:30pm to 1:30am – and 1:30 to 7:30am. We do long night watches and enjoy constellations passing across the sky and waited for the waning moon crescent arising in the wee hours for a spectacular, but short time. On the 2 nights, we switched schedules so each could experience the sunset to darkness shift and the late night to sunrise. Each offers different sensations! Main sail up at night with a reef in it. That presents the most interesting exhilaration seeing the sail against the night sky and the wind whipping in your face when you peer into the darkness looking for something you don’t want to see.  
The rest of the story fell below the photos from our journeys...

Mexican navy boat in the anchorage

Bird on the sheet as we enter Barra

Sunrises rock!

Jumping giant rays

Time for our 5th flag!
Although I am enjoying night passages more each time, they are unnerving as you can’t really see where you’re headed unless the stars or moon light your way. Whitecaps and waves bash against the boat and you wonder what the noise is.

The water in the sea is so intense in its many shades of blue and green, it’s incredible. The bioluminescence has been incredible these last few days. A fish passing, or a dolphin zipping by in the darkness leaves an undescribable trail of light in the water.

We made the passage with friends on Loomba Loomba so shared communications during our two and a half days northwestbound. We maneuvered 50 degrees to port behind a cargo ship that showed on our radar screen as moving, but apparently wasn’t actually moving. So, best to be safe and pass to stern, giving plenty of distance between us. Rules of the road say to avoid collisions and it’s just plain good thinking!

As the morning progressed, the chop picked up and the winds made us hobbyhorse, fighting current and against the wind. This slows us down to 3-4 knots per hour so our passage was longer. The Japanese temple bell we received from Teresa and Dan tinkles constantly as a reminder that all is well.




We had several days of red tide on the Pacific side, with intense blooms of red and brown that made the water scary and the water temperature dropped by 20 degrees. So no more swimming. Algae blooms and thousands of small white jellyfish floating by near the surface. Good reminders: don’t fall in!