Today started out hot and muggy and stayed that way until
early afternoon. During that time, I cut away the wreckage of the old sun covers.
They were too ripped and shredded to be of any value. They now grace the trash dumpster here at
Marina de La Paz.
I intended to do a deck wash down and general on deck
cleanup next but one of the Mexican handymen who wanders the docks looking for
work made an offer of doing the job for 300 pesos. At first, I resisted the
idea – money is short. He lowered his price to 200 pesos and I decided to take
him up on it and use my time to do other things. $200 MX (pesos) is a little less
than $15 US. He will be here tomorrow morning.
It gets confusing sometime looking at prices here. The
Mexicans put a dollar sign in front of
money amounts just as we do in the US. Sometimes it is not at all clear
which currency is being quoted. The service people here in the marina seem to
be happy to deal with either currency.
I turned my meager energy to taking off the old mizzen sail
and put on the new one. It took about half an hour to pull the old one off,
fold it and roll it up into a small bundle. There are a lot of lines to be
disconnected and the stainless steel tack pin was not eager to let go of its
grip on the cast aluminum gooseneck. I was surprised that there would be that
much electrolysis in the six months since the new pin was put in place. It took
another 45 minutes or so to get the new sail in place. The sailcloth is quite
stiff and it hasn’t been trained to lie quietly on the boom while I furl it. I
just realized that after all that effort, I forgot to put the reefing line back
in place. There is always tomorrow.
I didn’t do the main because I could see a huge, black thunderstorm
brewing off to the east. It would be just my luck to get caught in the first
gusts of wind from the storm with the main halfway deployed.
I wanted to work below but it was too miserably sticky
below. The cabin temperature was in the low 90s and the humidity must have been
nearing 100%. For a while, I just sat and watched the storm approach savoring
every little puff of wind.
Eventually, the storm did get here along with a cooling
breeze. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make maximum use of the breeze because I had
to partially close the main hatch. Still, it was good enough that I could get a
brief nap. Following the nap, I finished unpacking and took a look at what is
left on board in the way of food. I have some shopping to do. Even with that,
there will be a lot of rice and beans, rice and Indian food and pasta on the
trip home.
The other really wonderful chore for today was to open up the
refrigerator and get rid of the spoiled food. I was not too happy to find that
I had a dozen eggs swimming in a liquid that produced instant gag reflex. I
emptied the container and scrubbed it but it still had the faint odor of bad,
bad eggs. It is sitting in the cockpit now soaking in dishwater.
Along with the eggs, there was a jar of spaghetti sauce that
sprayed a puff of mold into the cabin as I cracked open the lid. There was a
mostly full jar of peanut butter that did the same thing. Bummer! I expect it
will be hard to find natural peanut butter here – just peanuts and a little
salt.
By the time it was all over, I had an office size trash can
full of food that needed to be carried at arm’s length to the dumpster. Then I
washed dishes.
Before I came back, I set an arbitrary date of July 4th
to leave the marina. I’m beginning to see that I really should leave on the
fourth even if I still see things to be done. There’s a feeling of being stuck
here. It is hard to get myself organized and on task. I know the essentials are
in place for the trip back. I could spend forever doing the rest of it. At some
point, I just have to back away from the dock and get under way. I can make
some stops at anchorages and do some work, if needed, on the trip south to Cabo
San Lucas. I will probably get my zarpe (exit permit) in Cabo, then head out
into the Pacific. It will be a relief to feel the cool breezes again.
Tropical storm Elica has been downgraded to a tropical depression and is no threat to
Baja. Tropical storm Douglas is still churning away but is headed well out to
sea. If I were at Cabo now, I could catch a good southerly wind off the backside of Douglas that would get
me well on my way north. (There's a bad joke in there somewhere.) As it is, I will probably get there just in time for
the normal wind pattern to reestablish itself and I will be headed west or even
south west to get away from Baja and the Mexican mainland.
Enough for now. I will make some dinner and I might even do
a little bit of work before bedtime. Maybe. The rain has stopped and the wind
is gone. Have I mentioned that it is hot and sticky here?
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