Spring weather in Baja

Happy New Year or Feliz Años Nuevo!!!! I am not feeling really bad, but not too energetic. I did manage to unpack and straighten up the closet, and then it was reading and napping the rest of the time. I sure hope Dave doesn’t get this cold. I haven’t had a cold for a very long time!!! At least it is just a head cold and not one that settles in the chest. What a way to start the New Year, but I have a feeling it will be a good one anyway. We are only going to be home for a few days and then have to head back to Santa Rosalia to get our FM3’s renewed. We are expecting John and Sandy Eltrich on Wednesday. I am feeling a little better but still can’t get my head cleared. Good thing I have Sudafed. We had a wonderful visit with John and Sandy. They arrived Wednesday afternoon and stayed until Friday. They are heading to La Paz where they keep their boat. They have been in the states for 3 months and they are anxious to get home. Sandy and I had a nice shell searching afternoon on the beach. She collects all kinds of shells for her projects and I helped her find some interesting and unique ones as well. At low tide Dave went out and got some small clams to cook for an appetizer. They were really good. After dinner they taught us a new card game called pegs and jokers. It is really a fun game to play with partners. Sandy and I won a game and Dave and John won 2. Oh well. We had fun. My head is slowly clearing and I am starting to feel better with a little more energy. It’s a good thing because we leave on Sunday for Santa Rosalia. The trip to Santa Rosalia was nice. There were hardly any cars or trucks on the road. After getting settled on the boat, Dave went up and checked in with Lily at the office. Tomorrow we will go to the immigration office and see about our FM3’s. The weather is windy and a bit cold. I had a hard time keeping warm. I resorted to wearing a sweatshirt under a fleece jacket and a scarf around my neck when we walked to town for dinner. Yesh!!! We took our FM3’s along with filled out the forms to the immigration office. We didn’t have to have pictures taken because we had some left over from last year. All we needed to do was go to the bank, sign a form, pay and bring a receipt back to the office. We needed a letter written saying we have our boat at the marina, to show residency in Santa Rosalia, and asked if they could do it or if they wanted Lily at the marina to supply it. The lady that was doing our paperwork said she would type one for us but it would cost us $200 pesos. Since she knew exactly what to write, we had her do it. It was worth it to us to pay the extra fee. We also got a copy of the letter which we didn’t the last time so next year we can type our own. After we finished with everything we asked when we could pick up our renewed FM3’s. They told us maybe Monday, which is a week from now. We asked if there was a possibility we could get them by Friday because we were going north in a few days, and they said they would try but no guarantee. We didn’t do much that day on the boat. Just took it easy. Tuesday is here and I am ready to clean. I vacuumed under all the deck plates that we can lift without taking screws out, the floor, dusted, cleaned the inside of the refrigerator, and wiped up the mildew and mold from underneath our head. That was a job both of us said we would do but never really wanted too. No one would see it unless they took the deck plate in front of the head up, but we knew it was there and it needed to be cleaned up. It was a healthy issue as well as an eye sore. These were things I had said I was going to do but never did until today. The boat looks good. I don’t know how the rest of this transpired, but we ended up moving the boat to a different slip. There is a sailboat moored at the beginning of the dock and it hardly has any bird doo on it. So Dave took a look at the slip next to the sailboat and also the one across from it and did a depth check at low tide. It is deep enough to get our boat in and out and not have it touch bottom at real low tides. After Dave was finished doing his thing he asked me to come with him to see which slip I thought was best. I chose the one next to the sailboat as it is less exposed to the panga and wind waves. Plus the finger pier that is between us and the sailboat is in better shape than the one on the other side of the dock. After the decision was made where we were moving the boat to, we went back to the boat to get her ready to move. Alberto, the man that washes our boat twice a month, said he would give us a hand when we came into the new slip. The only thing we had to be concerned about was missing the panga motors as we backed into the slip. They have a few pangas tied up on a small pier across from the new slip and the motors stick out so we wanted to be sure we didn’t snag one going by. Dave did an excellent job backing into the slip and we cleared the pangas by a comfortable distance. Once we got settled in our new slip I washed the dodger windshield and the windshield cover. Then Dave pressure washed the areas that had bird doo spots and surprisingly they came up. Hooray!!! I think we have more water pressure due to us being at the head of the dock. Now if we can keep the birds off our spreaders we will be doing great. I think I am going to like where we are. We get the sun in the morning and in the afternoon. In our old slip we got the sun in the cockpit in the morning and very little in the afternoon. I will have fun sitting in the cockpit now, in the sun, reading. That is until it starts getting too hot for that. Hopefully we won’t have the boat by then. One can only hope and pray. To our amazement, we had no cormorants sitting on our spreaders for 2 days prior to our leaving!!!! I sure hope it stays that way. We were in their flight pattern before but now that we are close to shore; they don’t seem to be interested in us anymore. All I can say is Halleluiah!!!!!! If the birds don’t find us, we may be able to keep the boat clean!!! What a novel concept!!! While we were on the boat we got a visit from a gal we befriended while in La Paz. She has a Hunter 42 and we became good friends. She was on her way to La Paz, as she lives in San Diego, to check on her boat and stopped by to leave us her card. She didn’t expect us to be on the boat. We chatted for a short time, and found out she wants to take her boat to San Carlos to have it hauled out and the bottom painted. San Carlos is on the mainland and if you leave from Santa Rosalia it is a straight shot across the Sea of Cortez. It is an overnighter as opposed to 3 or 4 days to get to La Paz. If we do that we will try and hook up with Marti and travel together. That would be fun. It was good to see her. Wednesday, Dave went to the Immigration Office to see how the FM3’s were progressing and found out they will be ready to pick up on Thursday. So that means we will be heading back to the house on Friday. That worked out great. Larry and Lois, our landlords, are back down here and they brought down some wine, a piece of ¾” plywood and paint for the deck. Larry gets what we need to keep up the house and we do the labor. They also brought down a new blind for us as another one bit the dust. The cords rot out within a year or two, depending on how much sun shines on them. I eventually want to get the honeycomb opaque shades. They will hold up and insulate better. But of course that is a long way down the road. I can’t believe the weather we are having!!! It is like spring. We haven’t had a lot of wind this winter which is unusual. We have had more cloud cover, however, as opposed to last year which means we have to run the generator at the end of those days in order for the batteries to charge. It is part of living off the grid and we like it. It reminds us of living on the boat so we feel right at home. We were invited to Larry’s birthday party on Sunday the 21st. He had just a few people over to celebrate, serving homemade ice cream and cake. Yummmm!!!! I’ve been walking the beach and looking for treasures. Sometimes I find really neat stuff and other times not so much. On one walk I brought my camera with me and took pictures of a bird I hadn’t seen before. When I got back to the house I looked it up and found it was an Oyster Catcher.

I finally got a picture of one of the coyotes that come around often. I would like to get a better picture but for now all I can do is share this one with you. It still has its winter coat and it looks like it has been running.

It took Dave a couple days to pound out the old piece of plywood from the deck and get the new one in place. He had to take a 2x4 and from underneath the deck, pound on the edges of the bad piece of plywood until he was able to loosen it enough to pull it up from the top side. Once it was up we took the nails and screws, yes! Larry used both, and we left the old piece of plywood over the hole until he could get the new one in place. The next day he painted the bottom and sides of the new plywood with white paint to seal it, and then when it was dry put it in place on the deck. It was frustrating for him because he wanted to get it screwed down in one day, but his batteries to his drill were dead so he had to charge them overnight. Once the board was screwed in place, the painting of the deck and railing started. I began painting the railings from the bottom of the stairs to the top while Dave painted the deck. It took us 2 days to paint it all and the wind held off for most of it. We have some touching up to do but will do that when the wind stops blowing so hard. We ended up sleeping in the trailer one night because all the screens on the windows were rattling. This spring I think I will have to stuff something between the screens and frame to keep them from doing that every time the wind blows at a brisk pace. I’m glad we have another place to sleep when the wind decides to howl. Our neighbors, Mary and George, invited us to dinner the other night and they served halibut they caught the day before at a place called San Rafael, which is about 2 hours south of the house. It was really good. We had a nice time. Last night we celebrated Lois’ birthday at a restaurant north of town, called Los Vientos, meaning, The Wind. We had a nice time. Usually Dave wants to leave as soon as the festivities are over, but he was having a good time talking to a couple of the guys. It was good to see him getting to know some of the guys down here. We’ve been invited to a Super Bowl party, so we will probably show up for that but not stay for the whole game. We aren’t big football watchers unless teams we like are playing. I know-----kind of one sided, but that is the way it is! HA!! It will be fun to mingle with the group of people. It will also be good that Dave will mingle with the guys to get to know them better and them him. We have one more day left in this month and it was a gorgeous one. A nice breeze about 73 degrees and lots of sunshine!!! I chose to vacuum, shake rugs, clean my counters and dust. Woohoo!!! Exciting eh?! Well I decided I have been putting it off way too long so better get to it. I’m in the spring cleaning mode now. Tomorrow I clean the bathroom and start on the inside of the windows. They are soooo dirty we can hardly see out of them. When the sun shines through them it makes it worse. Just stuff that needs to be done. I don’t like to clean but I always like having a clean house. One nice thing about this house is it is small so it doesn’t take me long.