Two years?! Yup, I know right? It’s hard to believe! In May of 2014, Brian retired after 20 years in the Marine Corps and I quit my job of 17 years. We sold or donated most of our possessions and entered the Baja Ha Ha cruisers rally that October, sailing to Mexico on our 34ft sailboat, Indigo. Before leaving on this stupendous sojourn, the skeptics were in abundance.

“Wow, you sure you want to live on a boat full time?” (No, but we’re going to risk the attempt in order to escape the rat race for a while and see some of the world.)

“What about pirates?” (Haven’t seen or heard any stories of such on the West coast of Mexico.)

“I could never live with my husband in such tight quarters every second of every day.” (I do, and it’s no problem…I have my side of the boat and he has his.)

“How are you going to get food?” “Are you going to have to fish every day?” (We eat better in Mexico then we do in the States. It’s cheaper. Fishing not required.)

“No way, I’ll give you 6 months, tops. You’ll sell the boat and come back.” (…they’re still waiting.)

“You CAN’T do that!” (We CAN and DID.)

So… what’s the verdict?
Two years are gone, but we have no regrats. Not a single letter. Yes, we still enjoy living on a boat. No, we haven’t strangled each other, yet. Yes, we still want to continue the journey... we just don’t know where to, or when, or for how long... you can’t make these decisions lightly.

Stats
I have been asked (hounded, actually… sheesh… alright already) for an overview of our time here in the Sea of Cortez. So here are the stats after two seasons of cruising in Mexico:

Miles traveled:  (2yr totals)
2496 miles

Hours at sea:
575 hours on the water = 225 sailing hours + 350 engine hours since we left San Diego
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Nights / passages at sea: 14 total nights (a night meaning dusk 'til dawn) / 9 total passages
3 nights straight, San Diego to Turtle Bay (Longest…and uber-tiring)
2 nights, Turtle Bay to Bahia Santa Maria (Worst. Big waves = mental breakdown. I don’t know if I can do this!)
1 overnight, Bahia Santa Maria to Cabo San Lucas (Getting warmer. OK, we can do this. Truly felt like we accomplished something!)
1, Cabo San Lucas to Bahia de los Muertos (First tropical anchorage… “Ah, now THIS is cruising!”)
1, Playa Santispac to San Carlos (Brian’s best - sailed all the way, dolphin escort, no motoring!)
1, San Carlos to Playa Santispac (Marya’s cranky crossing, moonless night, no fun steering)
2, La Paz to Mazatlan (Our crossing w/Starfire was great! Finally learned how to sleep while sailing.)
2, Mazatlan to Playa Bonanza (Marya’s best - perfectly calm, skating-rink water, 24hrs straight motoring! Can you tell the difference now between my perfect crossing and Brian’s? Basically: motor vs. no motor.)
1, Punta Mangles to San Carlos (Now we are old hats…no biggie.)

Islands Visited: 6, Coronados, Danzante, Carmen, San Francisco, San Jose, Ispiritu Santos

Anchorages Visited: 44, many of these more than once

Favorite Anchorages:
Marya’s favorite anchorages – Isla San Francisco, Puerto Los Gatos

Brian’s favorite anchorages – Bahia de los Muertos, Caleta Mezteño

Best sunsets – Caleta Lobos

Best snorkeling  – Marya - Bahia Cobre, Brian - Los Gatos

Best week of seclusion – Caleta Mezteño, 2nd  Ensenada Grande

Clearest water – Honeymoon Cove on Isla Danzante

Best beach hotel – Bahia Candeleros

Best kayaking – Can’t decide: San Juanico, Agua Verde, Candeleros, Ensenada Grande, Honeymoon, Los Gatos – all good

Best tide pool strolling – Agua Verde

Coolest rock formations – Puerto Los Gatos

Best wildlife sightings – Isla Coronados (jumping mobula rays all evening), San Marte (more jumping rays and fish) and Bahia Cobre (fish galore and a bighorn sheep)

Most picturesque anchorage – Isla San Francisco (west)

Best cliff hike – Agua Verde; 2nd – Isla San Francisco

Best canyon hike – Steinbeck’s canyon in Puerto Escondido; 2nd – Ensenada Grande

Best rocky beach – Isla San Francisco (east)

Best sand beach – Playa Bonanza

Best shell beach – Punta Chivato

More Bests and Worsts, Firsts and Tidbits:
Most difficulty anchoring – Punta Mangles (due to strong winds)

Trickiest anchorage – San Juanico (multiple shallow reefs, plus someone inevitably has taken the good spot!)

Easiest anchorages – Coronados (south)

Anchorages we’ve entered in the dark – Timbabiche (first), Bonanza

Anchorages we’ve left in the dark – Timbabiche, Caleta Lobos, Ensenada Gallina

Anchorage in which we’ve re-anchored in the dark (not recommended) – San Juanico

Best anchorage for norther’ protection – Playa Santispac

Anchorages we’ve had all to ourselves – Lobos, Mezteno, Ensenada Grande (believe it), La Raza, Gallina, Amortajada (south)(where the biting no-see-um’s hung out, no wonder it was empty), Colorada, Perico, Coronados (south), Honeymoon (south), Mangles, Pulpito, Santispac, Santa Barbara, El Burro

Shared with only one other boat – Timbabiche, Punta Salinas, Cobre, Bonanza, San Francisco (east)
This endearing characteristic of the Baja Peninsula (lack of people) is why we enjoy it so much.

Best night’s sleep anchorage – Puerto Escondido
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Worst night’s sleep – San Juanico (south swell caused us to re-anchor); Partida (idiot power boat dragging anchor)

Worst anchorage of all time (experts agree) – Bahia Amortajada (biting jejene’s)

First tropical anchorage (wow, we can see the anchor!) – Bahia de Los Muertos

Rolliest anchorage  – Los Frailies (so bad we didn’t even set the anchor, kept on going overnight), 2nd – San Juanico (see worst night’s sleep)

Windiest anchorage – San Evaristo (unexpected night blast), Playa Santispac (30kts but we knew it was coming and it wasn’t bad)

Worst beach – Ensenada de la Raza (I wouldn’t call this a “beach”, more like a mud pit)

Anchorage most happiest to arrive at (after sailing 2 nights in uncomfortable seas) – Santa Maria

Worst anchor neighbors encountered – Ensenada Grande & Partida (the two most populous spots)

Unsurpassed fish taco shack – Lupe and Maggie Mae’s in San Evaristo

Best bay if you like bees – Ballandra on Isla Carmen

Cool ghost towns – Bahia Salinas, Punta Salinas


Marinas:
Best Marina Ever – Camp Pendleton Marina

Best Mexico marina overall – Marina Costa Baja in La Paz ties with El Cid in Mazatlan, Palmira a close 2nd

Best pool – Marina Costa Baja

Best internet – Marina El Cid

Worst internet – San Carlos (1st yr, they’ve since stepped up to 2nd best!); Marina Mazatlan (2nd yr)

Best and ONLY Cable TV – El Cid

Best swimming beach – Costa Baja

Best (and hottest) place to do boat projects (like a refrigerator) – Marina San Carlos

Best marina for: canvas work – El Cid; varnish – Marina Mazatlan; engine repair – Palmira

First Mexico marina – Cabo San Lucas

Most expensive – Cabo San Lucas

Loudest – Cabo San Lucas

Cheapest – Puerto Escondido Moorings at $10/day; 2nd Cheapest – Marina San Carlos

Most cruiser-friendly – Marina Palmira

Best wildlife viewing – Puerto Escondido

Most remote – Puerto Escondido

Most resortish – El Cid

Nicest marina admin. – (aside from Camp Pendleton) Marina Palmira ties with Marina Mazatlan

Most surge – El Cid

Least surge/best weather protection – Costa Baja

Cleanest bathrooms – El Cid (hands down)

Best shower facilities – Costa Baja open-air showers at the resort pool ties w/ El Cid, but Palmira now comes in close 2nd with their brand new facilities

Worst bathrooms – Marya - Marina Mazatlan; Brian - San Carlos (the men’s bathroom is just BAD)

Marina restaurant with the most consistently good food & still cheapish – Hammerhead’s at Marina San Carlos

Favorite restaurant (but expensive) – Marina Azul at Marina Costa Baja, La Paz

What's on the agenda this season?
We will be spending the entire winter in La Paz this year (with our friends who are coming down on the Ha Ha) in order to explore the area further. There’s just not enough time to see everything in each anchorage even after two winters. Los Gatos, San Marte and San Francisco are must return-to’s to name a few; we missed several coves on Ispiritu Santos such as Gabriel, Candeleros and El Cardonal; I still haven't visited the baby seals of Los Islotos nor the whales in the Bay of LA.  After that, maybe we’ll have seen enough and want to move on down further south. Who knows? Since the majority of world cruisers we meet declare the Sea of Cortez as the best cruising grounds around, we are not in a rush to go anywhere else just yet... 

Under Pressure
It’s March 2nd and Indigo headed back north again on our way out of the hurricane zone. Already, you say? Well, yes, we didn’t go back to renew visas this year so we need to get out of dodge by the end of April. With the winds the way they’ve been (really windy from the north), we’d been a little (OK a lot) nervous about having enough time… time to be able inch Indigo farther north to San Carlos in between all these week-long northers… and, once we arrive, time to finish Brian’s thousand-item-checklist for putting the boat into dry storage. You wouldn’t think it would be soooo nerve-racking, having to be OUT by a certain date. But it is, and we feel the pressure already. So we cut our time short on the mainland in order to have lots of time to venture north. No one wants to feel rushed when cruising; makes for unhappy campers all the way around.

Leaving Mazatlan
While Mazatlan has a stunning shopping mall, multiple movie theaters, the best Mega(grocery store), a quaint historic district with interesting colonial architecture, and a miles-long Malecon on a beautiful beach… it also has oodles of people, tons of tourists, too many time-share salespeople and walking trinket-vendors up the wazoo.

Despite our initial reaction to the whole touristy feel of Mazatlan and feeling like we’d seen all there was to see within a matter of a couple weeks, we stayed to experience Carnaval. Fortunately for us, our tour guide friends on S/V Cuba Libre showed us around their adopted home and within a couple more weeks they helped us discover some really cool stuff: the artwalk, street hot dog vendors, amazing tacos al pastor, a spectacular bullfight, yummy gorditas, the shrimp ladies, the gringo theater, Cuban food, the carnival fireworks…all things we never would have experienced without their local knowledge.

Soon we got used to riding the crowded buses, going in the claustrophobic market and navigating the hectic downtown sidewalks where I came within 6” of getting clipped by a bus. We began to ignore the steady stream of “salespeople” who inevitably come right up to your dining table, even INSIDE some restaurants, hawking everything from bracelets to banana bread to foot massages (if I only had a dollar for every time I had to say “no gracias”). We learned the trick of fending off timeshare salespeople (tell them you live on a boat - this indicates you have no money) and shooed away the persistent yet terrible street musicians who shouldn’t be allowed to touch an instrument let alone sing.

So for us, it took a bit for Mazatlan to sink in; we like it now. We understand why soooo many Canadians and some Americans move to this city permanently: a myriad of cultural activities, great shopping, awesome food, perfect weather, beautiful beaches, low cost-of-living. Still… Would I fly my mother down here? Probably not. I just don’t think it’s up her alley. Some people absolutely love this place, but it’s not for everyone. Now that we’ve spent enough time here though, we feel comfortable getting around and could certainly play tour guide a thousand times better than when we’d first arrived.

Back to La Paz
While we will miss Mazatlan, we were eager to get back to nature… back to the peace of La Paz, the beautiful anchorages and the stunning waters of the Sea of Cortez. So on Wed, March 2nd we left Marina Mazatlan (we moved there to get the varnish completed) at 7am and headed back to La Paz. This time we had no buddy boat and were on our own for the 2 day passage. But somehow, it wasn’t quite so daunting the second time around.

 “YOU talkin’ to ME?”
A few miles outside the harbor entrance, we noticed a boat trailing behind us, but didn’t pay much attention. Then I heard a call over VHF, a little something like this: “Sailboat just out of Mazatlan Harbor headed to La Paz, this is Salish Sequel.” Normally, hearing a call like that always induces a quandary. Are they really talking to me?  You just never know. Well Watson, we HAD to be the one she was hailing. Why? We were literally the ONLY other sailboat out there!

You see, a person can stand at the Mazatlan harbor entrance and tell exactly where a boat is going to; there are only two choices. If you turn south, you’re going to La Cruz or PV, an overnight passage; if you go northwest you’re headed back to La Paz. There’s just nowhere else to go. (Ok, there is Topolobampo due north, but it’s much farther so most people don’t.) We ended up chatting a couple times over VHF radio with Salish Sequel, loosely buddy-boating by sheer proximity for the first day; we then lost them after dark.

No Wind, Perfect Wind, or Too Much Wind
Brian wants SOME wind for a crossing (a perfect 10kts, on a close reach – good luck with that), so we can sail most of the way and not use up diesel. Sure, tell me something that every sailor doesn’t want. But I’m a realist. For a 2-day crossing, I want NO wind so we can just motor and get it over with and so there is no risk of lumpy, seasickness-inducing-seas. Neither of us wants TOO MUCH wind. At this time of year (well most of the time) the winds come from the northwest. Guess which direction we had to go? Northwest. Bashing into strong winds, to put it crudely, sucks. So we time our crossing via Sailflow and other weather-prediction sites for 3-4 days of super benign weather…and cross fingers.

I WIN!
That first day, we were able to sail for 5 hours (Brian is ecstatic). We then motored for 24 hours straight (Me=Yay!; Brian=frowny face). Then sailed for 2, then motored the rest of the way. Yup. I WIN! Oh, the seas were beautiful - like glass! I overheard this conversation over VHF: “You got any wind over there?” “Nope, it’s like a skating rink out here.” Only a Canadian would use a skating rink analogy, but he was right…it was so smooth you could drop a pin and the water would ripple for miles. Motoring at night, through pitch dark for several hours before the moon rose, was pure peace.

Turtle Migration
The second day, we had our first turtle sighting! I had gotten a bit jealous that everyone else had witnessed turtles in the Sea; we had been here for a season and a half… still no turtles. Lo and behold, we got our fill of them this day. We must have seen 20 or more throughout the day, never more than one at a time, never too close to the boat (they’d duck under if our paths intersected too close). We could spot their dark shells as much as a half mile out, floating at the surface, infringing upon the baby blue monotony of our flat skating rink. Their green/black hard-hat shells stuck above the water several inches, their little feet swimming along back to La Paz. If it took us two days to get there, how long would it take them? Quite the journey. We spotted a seagull standing atop one, catching a free ride. Not sure why the turtle let him; he could have just ducked under and sent him flying away, but he didn’t. Maybe he just needed a friend.

Bonanza!
We landed at Playa Bonanza on Isla Ispiritu Santos 47 hours and 250 miles later. Just before sunrise, we anchored in this expansive bay in the dark. And who should arrive under the rising sun but Salish Sequel. They graciously invited us for delicious sangrias and snacks that evening to celebrate a good crossing.

For two days, we rested in the perfect white sand arms of Bonanza, and then made the final, easy leg to La Paz. We docked at Marina Palmira for one week, just enough time to grocery shop, do taxes (blah), finish my incredibly long bullfight blog (it took 4 hours sitting in the lounge just to upload the video – man, I miss El Cid internet) and do some boatwork (Brian climbed the mast 5 times in one day to polish all the mast steps and clean the rigging – what a feat!).

Heading North Once Again
On March 13th we began our 2nd northern trek to San Carlos. This signifies the beginning of the end of our second season in the Sea…hard to believe!

The crew of Indigo is currently resting our wind-weary bones in La Paz for a couple weeks at Marina Palmira. While I miss the incredible infinity pool, hot tub, spa-shower and pool-side cervezas at Marina Costa Baja, we wanted to see what Palmira had to offer. Here’s what we found…

Advantages:
Bigger slips – Palmira has really big fairways; we could easily perform a last-minute U-turn if needed…and we did, twice. Plus, their slip widths are also wider, making docking less traumatic.

Mini-organic market – Each Wednesday, several vendors from the bigger, organic street market out in town gather at Palmira to hawk their wares: smoked salmon, homemade sausages, honey, ground coffee, fresh pastries, breads, vegetables, etc. We’ve happily purchased delectable cherry turnovers, sticky cinnamon rolls, flaky BBQ meat pies for lunch, fresh sourdough loaves and slices of sweet potato pie with dark chocolate topping. Mmmmm. This convenient little market is a huge plus in my book. We don’t have to make that trek into town!

Mini-mart – Here you can purchase the ever-important cold beer (for that last-minute get-together you were just invited to), Gatorade, chips, bread, etc. They also have minimal boating items and cleaning supplies.

Walk to town – It takes us about 45 minutes to walk the bayside Malecon into downtown. Doable. They do have a shuttle 3 times a day - just sign up for a spot early in the day. Many Palmira full-time cruisers have cars and we have been offered several ride-alongs to town. Their query invokes a canine-like enthusiasm: “You wanna go for a ride?” Our ears perk up...a ride? In the CAR? OOOhhh. Yah, yah, yah. I go, I go! (We refrain from jumping up & down or running in silly circles, but just barely.)

Construction – Marina Palmira is undergoing a significant overhaul. Just before we arrived they finished renovating the floating docks. Currently, the pilings are being restored, one by one. The mini-mart and marina offices are in the midst of moving into newly modernized spaces. Brand new restroom/shower facilities (I’ve heard they are very nice) should open soon, completing the circle.

People – We’ve met some very nice cruisers at Palmira. People who invited us over for margaritas or beers, given us some sage advice, have offered us rides, even told us we could use their truck (we didn’t/couldn’t… I’d feel weird driving around the car of someone we just met…still, very nice to offer).

Other amenities – 2 restaurants, good laundry facilities, friendly & helpful marina admin folks, a bit cheaper monthly rate. Two chandleries are conveniently adjacent to the marina: La Paz Cruiser’s Supply and Cross Marine Works. Run by two sets of very knowledgeable and nice cruisers, these guys are information gurus.

Disadvantages:
The walk to town – Yes, it can also be a disadvantage. Although doable, it’s pretty exhausting to walk the 2.5 miles one-way and back. But then again, we ARE out of practice. Costa Baja has many more shuttle times so it’s easy to schedule your day around them.

Spotty, sometimes non-existent internet – big surprise. No marina has seemed to corner the market on good internet.

Wind waves – The mouth of the marina is open to wind waves traveling right down into our slip. Indigo is constantly moving around in the surge, pulling and pushing and squeaking and squawking against her lines. And it’s been overly windy (still) almost every day since we’ve arrived. (Though, this water circulation does make Palmira’s harbor cleaner.)

It’s not nearly as bad as Marina Cortez, which is so unprotected from waves I once got seasick walking their pitching docks during a big blow. On the flip side, Costa Baja’s inner harbor is completely enclosed, so we rarely stirred an inch.

“A little bit louder now”
At Costa Baja, we had the Fun Baja boats directly behind our slip, constantly taking passengers out on snorkeling excursions, all day every day. At Palmira, once our piling was finally replaced, we lost our snug little 60ft slip to move near a highly active power boat. Nearly every day, several people are busily cleaning, blocking the dock with kayaks and equipment, blaring the same Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift CDs over and over. Yee Hah. If I hear “Call Me Maybe” one more time…

And then there’s the pterodactyl.
While Costa Baja always seemed to maintain a rotation of annoying little yippy dogs on vacation, barking from one condo or another, Marina Palmira apparently has a macaw. The first time we heard this thing we thought it was a recording… someone playing a prank. But it’s real. I cannot even begin to spell out the screeching noise this bird utters when it’s peeved. “Rrrrraaaach.”  See, that doesn’t cut it. Just visualize Jurassic Park III, when the aviary cage breaks, liberating all those pterodactyls to freedom. Yeah, it sounds exactly like that.

“I’ll Be Back”
Overall our first impression of Marina Palmira is a good one; we may stay here again in the future. Except right now, we are just trying to leave. We have started looking for a 3-day weather window to cross to Mazatlan. It’s howling 26kts today and Mr. Wind doesn’t look like he wants to give us a break any time soon. At least I can’t hear Taylor or the pterodactyl over all this wind noise!

We decided to beat it.

Thursday, Dec. 3rd at 1:30pm we left the “relative” security of our mooring in PE and headed south. Enough of this wind. We just want some peace. And I’d like to be able to go to shore already! Tired of waiting for consecutive northers, we were willing to go all night. Yes, you heard that right.

Escaping Veges
But to get to the peace of La Paz we had to roll through some punches. Just outside the harbor, the 4-5ft waves snuck up upon us. I was below cutting vegetables for a couscous salad for dinner when it started. Suddenly the boat heeled over… sharply. Veges started rolling everywhere, dishes and utensils slid towards me attempting their escape. I wedged myself into the tilted galley trying to put my hands and elbows on anything that moved and finished as fast as I could manage. “Cut that out!” I told Brian, like it was his fault.

The 2-Second Cortez Roll
In a 15-18kt healthy breeze we flew down almost-buffaloes at 6kts for about 3 hours. Of course tacking southeast out to sea we were at that perfectly uncomfortable angle… almost beam-on to the large waves. Each second knocked us sideways on a 15 degree angle. I literally could count: “One-ee-and-ah”…whop… the mainsail would shake, rattle and roll, and the jib would luff violently and lose power. ”Two-ee-and-ah”…whop…the mainsail slammed to the other side. It’s a wonder we could still sail so fast. Lashing off a preventer line from the boom to one side of the boat helped control the banging, mostly. Anything we neglected to securely fasten certainly was flying around downstairs - but we weren’t about to go get it.

I Think We're Alone Now
As the sun set beyond the mountains, our wind died. We began motoring in the pitch black along the equally blank coast; not a single light to be seen on shore. It’s a testament to just how far we are from civilization.

Another First: Anchoring in the Black
Our original plan was to travel all night just to put on miles. But after surfing down waves much of the night, we opted to stop in Timbabiche to get a few hours of sleep. Why? Well, no one (guess who) wants me tired and cranky. I wasn’t (yet).

Anchoring in the dark is tricky. Although our chartplotter seems pretty accurate, one reef in San Juanico wasn’t charted. Had we not seen the swell breaking over it at dusk, we may have run it over in the dark. (Our secondary chart system did portray the reef.) It’s also very difficult to judge spacing between boats using just that tiny light at the mast tip. Moving amongst multiple boats in a narrow anchorage would be dreadful. Then there’s sudden shallow water ripe for keel-raking, fishing buoys & homemade mooring balls lurking to snag propellers, unlit pangas out for a midnight troll…all hazards you can’t see ‘til it’s too late.

But we had anchored in Timbabiche once before, so we were sure of our surroundings. Our previous anchor point was already sited on the chartplotter. I knew not to go north towards the rocky point or much inland of that spot to keep us in about 16 ft of water. Farther south was all sand and wide open. It’s the only anchorage along our route that we decided we’d feel comfortable driving around in at night.

So for the first time ever, we anchored at 10:30pm under starlight alone. We only had to avoid two other boats. It figures… they were parked right on top of my old anchor point. Had there been 12 other vessels, we may have waived off. We turned our bright spreader lights on so Brian could work the anchor and I could see his hand signals. Thankfully… no drama. In fact, it went quite swimmingly. Whew! We downed my pre-made couscous salad for dinner and fell into bed, exhausted but happy with our new accomplishment.

On the Road Again
It would be a long, 57 mile day to Isla Ispiritu Santos. Today was destined to be the best weather day of the week at 9-11kts. We needed to arrive before sundown. In order to do so, we had to get on the road before 6am, just before the sun rose. This was the third time we’ve pulled up anchor in the dark; it’s much easier than setting. Mind you, those other 2 boats were far enough away that we weren’t nervous about colliding. Plus it wasn’t windy. So we had the best scenario possible.

Day 2
It took half the day to motor down the benign San Jose Channel in light 4-5kt winds. As we approached Isla San Francisco, its silky serene waters called to me. Darn it, if only we could pull into its alluring cove and stay awhile. But coming out of the lee of both San Jose and San Francisco islands, the 4ft waves from last night popped up once again. Our peaceful evening did little to abate their force through the night and we were hit with the same rocking, rollicking swell. But by this time, we had enough wind to sail…a pleasant 9kts. We took advantage and the boat sailed wonderfully across confused seas to Ispiritu Santos.

We arrived at Ensenada Gallina, dropping anchor just as the sun disappeared. We would NOT have tried going into this place at night; rocks littered the sea floor. We could see them so clearly, even at dusk and where our depth sounder said 12ft…it looked like 4. Yikes! Right full rudder!

Last Day – Dec 5th
Saturday, we again raised anchor in the dark in order to get into our slip at Marina Palmira before the big winds started. Our early departure allowed a spectacular viewing of the sunrise over the San Lorenzo Channel.

Baja Ferry
Suddenly, the Baja Ferry appeared on our hind quarter. On a course through the channel, he was heading for La Paz, yet angled significantly away. Then our AIS alarm went off - he changed course and was headed right for us! It’s not a great feeling to have a big ship bearing down on your rear end at 20 miles per hour. Our AIS told us he would pass us on our right at about a 1/4 mile. Still too close. So I steered towards land to allow more distance. I added a photo of the radar in the slideshow below. We are the tiny dot in the center. Land is represented by all the red blobs angling to the upper left and top of the screen. The ship is that huge red blob just to our bottom left. It’s nice to see exactly where he is relative to our location.

Flipping Slips
Instead of going to Marina Costa Baja, we thought we’d try Marina Palmira. Motoring down the La Paz channel, we called in for our slip number. But as we pulled near, there’s a boat in our slip! And the one next door was occupied with a floating construction derrick in the midst of replacing a piling. Frickin’ eh. Now what?

Turning away, we hurriedly hail the marina - she has us go to a different slip. Good thing there are wide fairways here in which to turn around. Slip numbers are located at the end of the pier and again on the dock box. We see the box number first and head towards it. But just outside the slip, we realize the number on the dock is different from its box; the darn dock boxes are switched! We are heading to the wrong slip! Son of a…  

So we make yet another turn, performing a full figure 8 and make our way to the other side. The Mexican fuel dock workers, along with all the cruiser bystanders, attentively watch us do silly circles. Glad we could be the entertainment highlight of their day.

Comfy Couch
Luckily, the spot we are heading towards is a 60ft slip near the end of the pier. It’s so long you could darn near fit another Indigo in back of us. Docking was a piece of cake. Except we aren’t meant to stay long… once the piling on the other dock is finished, we lose our comfy couch and are relegated to slumming-it with the smaller boats.

The Peace
Ahhh. What a good feeling to finally arrive in La Paz. It felt like coming home. We are happy to be here, if only for a couple weeks. We look forward to the excellent grocery stores (abundant cheeses to choose, plus I can actually find pickle relish and fresh ground coffee), organic market (can’t wait for tasty treats from Lolita’s pie man and bread from Pan de Les), and awesome restaurants (Marina Azul, here I come). I welcome a hot shower, the ability to do laundry in a real washing machine and cleaning my boat from salt build-up. Plus, I can use as much electricity and water as I want! (Brian can’t say I have to wait ‘til tomorrow to charge my dying ipad.) Once again tethered to land after 28 days, our weather worries are, for a change, non-existent. Peace.