Happy April fool’s Day. No pranks played on me or anyone else. Today was the opening day of the Spring Arts and Craft show. We had a lot of people shopping today which was awesome. I did pretty well so I am pleased. Usually the first day is always the best in sales. Here are some pictures of the tables and some of the art we had in the show. The table with the glass covers and rock and shell critters are mine.
We had one Mexican lady and her daughter show up and put up a table to display her art. Unfortunately the Mexican ladies were taking a sewing class offered once in a while for them so they didn’t want to miss the opportunity to learn how to make new things. So the one lady, Perla and her daughter Anna, asked us to watch and help sell her items while they were in class. So we did and she did pretty well. She had mostly necklaces, earrings and key chains.
I worked Thursday, Saturday, and half a day Sunday as that was the end of the show. Friday was my day off and I got laundry done and cooked in prep for the next 2 days. I had fun making announcements every morning and evening for the show. Thursday was a dead day. We had some people come in and look but no one bought. Saturday was better and quite a few people came in but didn’t buy much. It was a sad day for me as I was told that my best friend here in Mexico had her husband die on Friday of a fatal heart attack!! Wow!!! I was stunned and Dave and I still can’t believe Murray is gone. We just saw them a few weeks ago and he seemed fine. He will be missed. Then Sunday we figured it would be dead until we got ready to close and low and behold we had a bunch of people and they bought lots. We couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that one Mexican family bought all that was left of my rock and shell critters!!!!! There must have been about 6 or 8 left. That was my biggest sale of the day!!!!! I was in a daze and so happy that they appreciated my art!!! I did sell a handful of glass covers and some earrings so all in all I did fantastic. You just never know from year to year how you will do. There were a few Canadian tourists trying to buy things so they didn’t have to take pesos back with them. It was a fun and successful show. Just about everyone went to lunch after we broke down the tables; packed up everything and cleaned the Museum Salon, except me. I had to get home so I could pack for the trip to La Paz on Monday.
After getting home and unloading all my stuff, I packed and got things ready to take to the boat like some food items and such. Not much had to be done. Then I had the rest of the afternoon to relax and take a walk on the beach.
We left Monday morning around 7:00am headed for Loreto. Our friends from Brookings, Oregon aren’t going to be at their house in Loreto so we booked a room at a cool little motel called ‘Angre’. It is run by a young woman named Anna and her mom and dad. They are a really nice family. Even the sister helps from time to time. We like it there because they have a gate that locks at 10:00pm so our car is safe. We arrived at the motel 8 hours later. We had trouble with the WiFi but eventually got it working. We had a nice room on the top floor and at the end so we only had one room on one side of us. As it turned out we were the only ones there! I called my friend Penny to see how she was doing. She is the one that her husband died on April 3. She wasn’t doing well at all. I felt so bad that I couldn’t be there to help her through this tough time. I didn’t get to talk to her much as the connection was bad. But I told her I would write her every day just to help her through until I could come see her. After my phone call I was able to get on the WiFi and I sent her a message. Then it was time to seek out a place for dinner. We liked the last place we ate when we were here so we walked down to it only to find it was closed. Bummer! Fortunately the chicken place next door was open so we grabbed a bite there. When we walked back to the motel we stopped at a deli and wandered around and found all kinds of great stuff. They had all kinds of cheeses, liquors wines and more. We said we would stop and get some rum on our way home. So we left and went back to the motel and watched T.V. I did some crocheting on the baby afghan and then before we knew it it was bed time. Tomorrow is a shorter drive. Only 4 hours so we don’t have to leave so early. Plus there is a time change from Baja California to Baja California Sur where Loreto and all the little towns south of there to La Paz is an hour later than where we live. So we had a relaxing drive down. Driving does tire us out. Dave for driving and me for falling asleep in the passenger seat!!!!! Ha!! There isn’t much to see but sand, mountains, cactus, cactus and more sand. I’m surprised Dave doesn’t fall asleep. Well we made it to La Paz safely and early in the afternoon. We went to the boat and saw that most of the windshield for the dodger was in place but one piece was missing. The canvas guy must have that and the cover. Dave went down to check the battery situation and found all house batteries were dead. Just like last time. He doesn’t have a clue what is causing them to go dead. So we had AC just no DC which means no boat lights, no stove, microwave, or flushing of toilets, and no refrigeration. No worries as we have one electrical light in the main salon and we have running water except we couldn’t use the bathroom faucet as that drains into a sump pump and then pumps overboard so that is DC. If we run water in the bathroom sink and the sump pump is not working it will overflow into the bilge. Then there will be standing water in the bilge which isn’t good. No worries as we have been through this before. The next morning Dave unhooked the house batteries and had Kenny, our friend at the boat yard, come and help him cart them off the boat and down to the Quaker State battery place in La Paz. The batteries were left there overnight to be charged and then we would find out if the batteries are bad or not. If they are bad we have the receipt from when we bought them a short time ago and they will replace them free of charge. So tomorrow is the telling day. In the meantime Dave was very perplexed over this battery situation. He had noticed when we were down the last time that there was a draw coming from somewhere on the boat that just didn’t make sense. He even thought that the Link 2000 heart was going bad so he brought a extra one down that was given to us by a friend in Bahia.
The canvas man showed up and replaced the one glass panel that was missing and put the cover on over the windshield to check out the fit. Perfect. There is a little wrinkle at the corners of the windshield and he offered to put a solid piece of material there so the windshield would be tighter. So we said that would be great. So when we leave we will call him and let him know he can work on that while we are gone.
Thursday Dave went back to Quaker State to see what the status is on the batteries. They are good and all charged up. So that was a relief. But now Dave has to solve where the mystery current is being drawn from the batteries when we aren’t there. He brought the batteries back and two Mexican boat boys working on the boat across from our slip helped him carry them down below. Once the batteries were hooked up then it was time to reset the Link 2000 so he could read what the batteries were doing. Something was still not right and there was that annoying draw coming from somewhere. Dave asked me if the bow thruster battery was off and I said it was. But he wanted to check something out so he got under our bed and metered the bow thruster battery and it was metering good. So he decided to take the battery out and test it not hooked up to anything. Well it was dead, dead, dead!!!! It had bulging sides which is an indication of it being bad. Dave did a little more digging under the bed and decided that because the battery was dead it was still trying to get current from the other batteries even with the switch turned to off. That was the little draw he couldn’t figure out. Whaalaa!! The next step was to see if our Link 2000 was going on the frits so he took that out and replaced it with the one our friend gave us only to find that it didn’t work like it was suppose to. It did show that the house batteries were charging like they should and there was no extra draw showing up, but other light indicators weren’t working so there was something wrong with it so we couldn’t use it. Dave had to take it out and put ours back in. At least we know we need to replace it. So Dave is going to look on line to see if he can get another one.
Well at least we found out where the extra draw was coming from and how the boat was wired for the batteries and that our Link 2000 needs replacing. Now the next project is to work on the generator and find out what its problem is. Dave had an idea so he went with it and found that a switch is bad. He did something so it would run and when we return in May we will have the new switch and it will only take a few minutes to change it out. So Dave solved the problems we were having and it is all good. Now that Dave is done with all that, I can do what I need to and that is clean the forward sump pump and get water out of the bilge. When we ran the air conditioner the last time we were on the boat the unit in the back of the boat, doesn’t have a drain set up to it like the forward one does with a hose going to the sump pump. There isn’t a way to fix the problem of salt water over flowing into the bilge. I tried to suck the water out but without constant watch it tends to overflow into the bilge. I poured some fresh water in the bilge the second day of our arrival to let it sit and breakup the salt. Now I needed to suck the water out. I took an old towel and placed it in the bilge and let it soak up the water. It took several towel wring outs but I got all of the water out. Now it just needs to air dry. That is all the jobs we had to do this visit.
We are leaving on Sunday the 5th so I need to get laundry done on Saturday. The marina has rented out the large patio area just up from the marina, for a wedding reception Saturday night. It is suppose to start at 8:00pm. Shades of Mazatlan all over again!!!! When the Mexican people throw weddings and receptions the music is LOUD!!!! I will definitely be using my ear plugs tonight. All day people were setting up tables and decorating and it will be a beautiful sight when they are done. The skies are looking a little dark I hope it doesn’t rain. Of course Dave thinks it would be funny if it poured and everyone went running for cover. Well it kind of would be funny, but I try to think of how I would feel having my wedding reception ruined. The marina café wasn’t going to be open tonight for dinner so we decided to go to our favorite place called Banditos. Dave had a hamburger and I a chicken salad. It was yummy. Then we came back to the boat and the reception was just getting started. People were arriving right and left but we had a parking spot so that was good. As we were walking to our boat, there was a couple on board their boat up the down from us and Dave stopped to talk. I went to our boat to get things ready for in the morning when we leave. When I finished Dave was still talking to the couple so I went to join him. We were invited on board. They were a young couple with 2 children, a boy and a girl. The dad, Kerry reminded me so much of our friend Brent that lives in Anacortes, Washington. He is a red neck big guy. His wife Erika was really nice and we hit it off right way. We drank rum and shared a cigar. Kerry had some big firecrackers (m80’s?) and he was lighting them off and throwing them over the side of the boat. They made a big bang!!!! Well we were having our own party. Unfortunately he threw one that made a hook and hit the edge of the cabin roof and fell down by the table Dave and I were sitting at. Everyone yelled lookout, and I couldn’t get out because Dave was in my way sitting. There was a big explosion and I went deaf in my right ear. Funny thing is I am going deaf in that ear anyway. But it made it worse. We all were lucky no one got hurt. We all survived and the only damage was a hole in the carpet in front of the door going into their salon. My hearing came back but I’m sure it didn’t do me any good as far as hearing loss down the road. After that we visited a little more then called it a night. We said goodbye and maybe someday we will meet them again. They were great people. The reception party was still going on and they were serving dinner. It was a huge dinner as we watched waiters bring one dish, then another, and another. It was a big to-do!!! We waited for it to get really loud but it really didn’t. It was a mellow party and the bride and groom were young! I did use my ear plugs though. Around 2 in the morning the wind came up and I heard drops of water on the deck of the boat. We had all our hatches open so I got up and started closing them. You could hear people getting excited and things were breaking due to the wind blowing things around. It wasn’t a pretty sight. After all the hatches were closed we went to bed. It poured for a while and the band members had to rush around to get their instruments out of the weather. The next morning we went up to see what the damage was and they had lost some of the pretty decorations that were made of glass and the panels of material that had been tied around the poles and such had come loose. It was a mess. There was a lot of cleaning up to do. We packed up our stuff, secured the boat and headed for Loreto. We are stopping at the same motel we did on the way down.
We got into Loreto early afternoon and we were really tired so we took a nap. Then I showered and we walked down the street to see if our favorite place to eat was open and it was!!!! They had just opened so we had to wait a few minutes for them to get set up. Dave and I had a hamburger which was really good. Then we headed back to the motel, thinking we would stop in at the deli and buy the rum but they were closed as it was Sunday. Oh well. We will have to get some next month. Once back in our room we watched T.V. and I worked some more on the baby afghan then went to bed.
In the morning we had coffee and a banana and got gas across the street and a couple pastries for on the way. We were headed back to Bahia.
It is such a long drive from Loreto to Bahia. We got home around 3 and I unloaded our overnight bags and put the groceries I got in town away. Now we are relaxing.
I have been trying to find a ride to see Penny. I sent out an email to everyone whom I thought was traveling north or knew of someone who was. Wednesday the ladies played Mexican Train and I asked them if there was anyone I could ride with that was heading to San Diego. Nancy said there were a couple guys that are visiting her significant other and they were heading back soon so she would ask them tonight as they were coming over to her house for dinner. I will know more tomorrow.
I got confirmation from Nancy that I have a ride on the 20th. Yay!!! They will pick me up at the gas station in town early in the morning and then they will drop me off at the road where Penny lives. So now all I have to do is find a ride back home on the 27th. I have put out another email but most people stop overnight in San Quintin and I am looking for someone who is driving straight through to Bahia from Ensenada. Well if I don’t hitch a ride with anyone I can take the bus. We don’t have a lot of pesos so I am trying to be careful because payday doesn’t come again until the first of May. It will all work out.
I told my friend Penny I was coming for sure and she is all excited!!!! Just three more days to wait. Tomorrow is grocery shopping and getting gas in the truck. The gas is going to be the most expensive!!! Speaking of the truck--------I didn’t turn off the switch to the battery in the truck on the 5th of April and it was on all the time we were gone to La Paz which was 8 days. Well the battery was dead!!! Dave discovered it last night and I was to blame. But he was so good about it. He took the battery out and hooked it up so it would get solar charging and we are hoping it will come back. I had a little talk with it last night when I was locking everything up for the night.
Today is a beautiful day. We have had 2 days of 25 knot winds and for the first day the sand was flying. Today it is calm and the tide is way out so I went for a morning walk on the beach. I got 2 pieces of sea glass and I finally brought Matilda the turtle home to my yard. She is still a little stinky but much lighter now so I was able to carry her all the way home. She was an old one as she had large barnacles on her under shell and a few on top. She now is in my yard. She still has her fins and head attached! After getting back from my walk I rinsed out the clothes I had soaking overnight and took them downstairs to hang them on the line. Then I dumped the 2 buckets of rinse water and pulled some weeks. Then I vacuumed and shook rugs. I still need to clean the bathroom but if I don’t do it today I will tomorrow before our dinner guest arrive. Kerry and Dennis are coming over for dinner tomorrow night. I know they are leaving in May so I wanted to get our invite done so I didn’t miss it with me going to Penny’s and then us going back down to La Paz. They are fun people.
We just had our neighbors on the north side of our house show up. We never know when they are coming so it is always a surprise. Two more neighbors are going to be showing up in the next week or two so we will almost be a full neighborhood.
Dave is putting together another jigsaw puzzle. This one is of a Peacock and has round edges so it is a little more difficult to piece together. Mary Ann tried to put it together but gave up. So she gave it to me for Dave. He loves a challenge.
Dave has had the truck battery charging and it seems to be charged up so he put it back in the truck and low and behold it started!!!!!!! Yay!!!!! Whew!!!! That saved us $150.00!!!!! I got really lucky! So now I can take the truck into town tomorrow and do shopping and come home to cook dinner for our guests.
We had a great time with Dennis and Kerry. I am glad I decided to have them over for dinner now instead of waiting as we found out they are leaving on the 4th of May. So that worked out pretty well.
I was all packed and ready to leave on Monday, the 20th to stay with my friend Penny, but I got an email from her saying she got an email from the skipper of Murrays’ fishing boat arranging a round trip flight from San Diego to Seattle, Washington to meet with him and give him some of Murray’s ashes so when the boat got to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, he and the crew would have a memorial for Murray and spread his ashes on the Bering Sea. This was Murray’s wish and his friend and skipper remembered that. How sweet. Well I didn’t want to get to Penny’s and only have 2 days with her because I know she would be running around trying to get packed to leave so she could get her flight on the 24th. So I thought it would be better if I waited. She is going to stop and visit with her family before returning to Mexico. Actually all this happening was a blessing in disguise. I did get a ride to where Penny lives but there was no one going down to Bahia to take me back so I would have to take the bus and I didn’t know how much that was going to cost and we are very low on pesos right now. We had to pay income tax for the first time since we have been married and it has taken a chunk out of our budget. Things will work out, I have no doubt, but it is just frustrating and unnerving at times. Sooooo when she returns to her house in Mexico, I will see if I can afford to go see her. If not, it will just have to wait.
We found out yesterday that Ernie and Brooke have 2 tickets for us to attend E.J.’s high school graduation, June 10th and we wouldn’t miss that for the world!!!! He is also having a party on the 7th which we are hoping to be there for. So plans have changed a lot in our world. We are leaving around the 5th of May to head back to La Paz so we can get the boat ready for hurricane season and haul-out. She has to be hauled out on the 10th as that is when our moorage contract for the slip we have is up. Then we will come back and start getting things ready here to close up for the summer. Hopefully I will get a chance to spend time with Penny. So we shall see.
Last summer when we headed north we had quite a few friends that invited us to stay overnight as we traveled. Unfortunately most of those people will be here in Bahia still. That will cause us to have to pay for motels. Well it is what it is. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel no matter how dark it seems. Too bad we don’t have camping gear as we could camp our way north. Oh well! Just keep us in your prayers that everything will work out for us. I put the word out on Facebook about us needing a place to stay once we get to Bremerton, a house sitting opportunity. So we will see about that as well. Things have a tendency to happen so fast it makes your head spin but that is o.k. Bring it on!!!!
Today, Monday the 20th I am going to my neighbors to play hand and foot or Ponytail. Dave will be going over to Rincon to see our friend Dennis to help with a computer problem.
The weather has been beautiful and the guys that are fishing have been catching yellow tail close to shore late in the afternoon when the tide has turned. Unfortunately Dave doesn’t have the opportunity to take advantage of that. That is o.k. because we still have yellow tail in the freezer from the last time he went fishing. All of that has to be eaten before we head north so we have plenty!!!
Last night we were invited to dinner at our friends’ house in Rincon. They spend their summers here and winters in Rome, Italy. They are really nice people and so friendly. There were 14 people all together and the hosts, Paolo, and Angela made octopus pasta spaghetti, and then came oven baked chicken with cut up potatoes and vegetables, then ice cream for dessert. Before the meal we started with appetizers!!!! There was a lot of food. This is the way the Europeans eat. It is a 3 course meal. It was all so good. That was my first taste of octopus and it was good. We stayed a while after dinner to visit then headed home around 11:00pm. It was a lot of fun and we are getting to know them better and them us. We want to have them over for a Carbanara dinner. It is rich pasta served with white sauce, eggs, bacon and the grease!!!
One morning Dave and I watched two seagulls fight. One had a hold of the others beak and they squawked a lot and moved around as the one that was having his beak held was trying to get away. This went on for quite a while and I did manage to get some shots but you have to look close to see their beaks. The one that was clamping down on the other was a pretty aggressive bird.
He was shooing all the other seagulls away. You can see here where he had his wings out chasing the other gull away. That same afternoon I went to my neighbors and played Ponytail and my partner and I won!!!!! That’s a first!!!! My lucky day!
Cindy and Tom, our next door neighbors arrived and will be here two weeks. They run a restaurant when they aren’t here and this is their getaway so most of the time they don’t want to be bothered as they are down here to chill. I did manage to talk to both of them for a short time so that was nice.
Dave is almost finished with the peacock jigsaw puzzle. He said it is a challenge! There are no books for him to read (because he has read them all) so the only other thing he can do besides the puzzle is work on the boat that came with the house. Before the hurricane the motor worked and other things did too but now they don’t so he is trying to find out why.
I am making progress on the baby afghan and I should be finished with it by next week. Then I start on another one. I have been creating again; making button and shell pins. I made a couple more necklaces. I think I might take all my jewelry up with me on vacation and see if I can sell a few things or give as thank you gifts.
We found out what Jon and Susannah are naming their boy. Cameron and Ernie and Brooke are naming theirs Conner.
Well scratch that about Jon and Susannah naming their son Cameron. They are undecided. She likes Cameron and Wyatt, so it may not be final until the little guy is born.
My friend Penny is struggling with the loss of her husband but I think she will be better after she sees her family and knows Murray had his ashes spread on the Bering Sea. I have arranged to get a ride north to Penny’s house with my friends Ron and Diane as they want to see her too. Then they will leave me at Penny’s house and continue to go home to the States to spend the summer. I sure hope it works out this time.
Our gate guard’s fiancé’s (found out they aren’t married yet) father died today. It is a sad day for Brienda and her family. Her family lives in Nairit (sp?) on the mainland so she has a long trip ahead of. Tito is staying here to do his job.
We just got an email from our boat insurance company telling us our boat can’t be in Mexican waters unless it is up north by San Felipe. There is no hurricane protection up there at all. And if you take your boat out of the water like we are planning on doing for the summer, the boat has to be on a cradle. Well Mexico doesn’t use cradles. So we are screwed!!! Now we are looking for another insurance company to insure us while on the hard for the summer and pay $2600.00-3,000.00 for insurance. I sure don’t know where THAT money will come from. The only other option is to have someone take the boat to San Diego and hand it over to a dealer which our friend Tori (who is a boat broker in Seattle) can make all the arrangements. Our insurance company changed their policy in January and didn’t bother to put the word out until after our claim was settled. What good is insurance if after you use it the rates go up and they screw you. I don’t get it. I guess auto insurance is the same thing. We took all the precautions to have our boat safe and protected, and our damage was due to our broker not getting to our boat in the amount of time we gave him to prepare it for the hurricane. Well we are still waiting to get a quote from a new insurance company and we have to have a survey done on it as well so we will be doing that when we get to La Paz. We are leaving on the 3rd of May to travel to Loreto then the next day to La Paz. We will know more after we get down there. So stay tuned!!
Our water pump to the house quit working the other day after I took a shower. I just used the hot water side as it was warm enough without having to turn the cold water on. When I got out the pump kept pumping and wouldn’t shut off. Dave took his shower and then turned the pump off until he could get to it in the morning to find out what the problem was. So we had no water. I figured I would wait and wash dishes and such after Dave fixed the pump.
The next morning Dave was taking the pump off and examining it and found it froze up. He didn’t know what caused that so he got the spare pump we had and put that on and there were some problems with that so it took Dave all morning to get water running again. While he was trying to get water flow to the house, he heard water running from outside and couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. He turned the pump off and walked around the trailer on the north side and found water bubbling up from the ground. We had a leak. He dug down and found there was a leak in the copper pipe on the hot water side. Not good. Dave didn’t have anything to fix copper pipe so I went over to the neighbors and asked George if he could help us. He came over to assess the situation and see what we needed then said that the best thing to do was put a piece of hose over the pipe and secure it with a hose clamp and that should hold it until we can do something different. So George went back home and got the hose and hose clamp and put it on the pipe and it stopped the leak. Dave turned the pump back on and we bled down the water system to get the air out and all is well again but the pump sounds terrible. It is giving us more water flow than the other one did but it rattles badly when we use the water. Dave is thinking about putting the other one we had on there before it quit working. He got it to run again and it is quieter but a little less water flow, but we can live with that.
I have started another baby afghan and it should be done soon. I am back working on the dragon cross stitch again. I always have projects lined up so I never get bored. I’ve been creating cork people and making a couple more necklaces. Here are some pictures.
