A New Cruising Season

As shorter days and cooler nights approached, the warm breezes and sunny days of Mexico began tugging at our sails. So, on October 18th we departed Marina Bay in San Francisco bound for San Diego.

Sailing under the Golden Gate was exciting!

I was surprised to find that the underside of the

Golden Gate is actually RED!!

Looking back at the Golden Gate....
and that little island in the distance....?
That's Alcatraz!!

Over the next three weeks we visited many marinas, 

including Half Moon Bay where we found some

interesting residents in the marina...

A floating beauty salon...!

....and a beautiful catamaran named "Morrigan". 

Can you read its "home port" on the stern

 under the rubber dinghy?

Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin!! 

A five day stay in the marina at Monterey 

gave us the opportunity to spend a few hours 

at the marvelous Monterey Aquarium!

That's a diver feeding the fish 

in one of the major exhibits. 

This tank holds millions of gallons 

of sea water, constantly refreshed 

with the tide. He answered 

questions from the audience 

using a microphone in his mask.

I know...just your average seahorse, right?

But...

How about these two beauties sitting on coral?

Or these....

Do you even believe these two?

Snouts to the left, tails to the right, 

swimming in tandem. 

Some might consider them

to be a tad overdressed...

We sailed on to the charming town of Morro Bay, 

where we hung out for a few days 

with some great folks at Morro Bay Yacht Club. 

This very unique sunset featuring

 a pink cloud hovering over

 Morro Rock was real, not an illusion 

brought on by Two Buck Chuck...!  

I love this photo...delicate color, good composition, 
interesting clouds...

the bird in flight...the masts...

and....
(the best part)
 I ACTUALLY TOOK THIS PHOTO!!

Lucky us...a week in beautiful Santa Barbara
while Jerry recovered from a rib injury 

(no, I didn't do it...!). 

But, what a lovely place to recuperate!!

Then, on to San Diego!!!

Sailing under the Coronado Bridge 

with Navy ships in the background!

Since November 8th we have been happily docked in our slip at Chula Vista Marina at the south end of San Diego Bay. We have great neighbors, fine marina accommodations, and a wonderful restaurant/bar, "The Galley", within crawling distance (literally!) that features fine bands playing four nights a week. 

On December 15th we will fly back home to celebrate Betsy's graduation from UW-Stout (December 18th) and Christmas with family and friends. The entire Huber Family will be together at the farm, a scheduling coup of major proportions. On December 30th Jerry and I will return to San Diego to celebrate New Year's with our Chula Vista friends and prepare for our departure January 3rd for La Paz.

This is my view this evening

 from the bow of "Sea Story".  

Beautiful lights around the marina,

 outlining the docks, 

up and down boat masts, 

around boat decks, 

twisting around palm trees...

a Southern California Christmas. 

It IS possible 

to have Christmas without snow.

However....

....the beauty of winter 

has already descended on 

the Huber Farm....

...and believe it or not, 

I'm looking forward 

to this view out my kitchen window. 

Who can resist a White Christmas??

Best Wishes

 for a 

MERRY CHRISTMAS 

&

A HAPPY, HEALTHY NEW YEAR

from 

Captain Jerry & First Mate Mary Lee

on

s/v SEA STORY

Catching Up.....

We left La Paz on May 1st bound for San Diego.  The trip took 17 days of motoring (with occasional help from the sails) and included a six-day layover in Turtle Bay awaiting good weather. Jerry and I appreciated the companionship and competence of our wonderful crew, Connie and Dennis. They've become my great friends, for sure!  

Navy ships and seals greeted us on our early morning entry into the San Diego Harbor on May 18th.

San Diego Harbor, 7 AM.....Navy ships and Connie's smile!
  Wonderful!!!

Sally & Sid Seal.....

 misty San Diego in the background.

On May 21st we celebrate Jerry's birhday at a lovely restaurant on Shelter Island. Jerry's San Diego cousins, Les, Helen, Chelsea, and Pete joined us, as did our Puerto Vallarta/New Buffalo, Michigan friends, Dana & Gail Crowne.

Gail & Dana, ML & the Birthday Boy.
Captain Jerry looks about 45...don't you agree?

My late-May return to Huber Farms in Wisconsin brought wonderful reunions with family and friends along with some glorious spring days of warmth and sunshine.  It also presented an abundance of lawn and garden work!

Poor neglected vegetable garden

A couple of weeks later....

  

And yet another month......

VOILA!!!!

Meanwhile, while I was getting the garden squared away in Ellsworth, Jerry was sailing a charter with "Sea Story" up the California coast from San Diego to San Francisco.  

There's Jerry, waving from the dock at Morro Bay (CA) marina.
I downloaded this from the webcam located on top 
of the marina office.  Cool, huh?

In July Jerry joined me on the farm, and the weeks that followed brought some great summertime fun, including biking the trails of Minnesota and Wisconsin, a few short trips to visit family and friends, and a four-day canoe trip into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area of northern Minnesota. 

Jerry, in the canoe filling a water container with fresh lake water.
The clouds are foretelling the weather to come....

Luckily, we were well equipped to handle the conditions: four days of big winds and two nights of rain. We never left the campsite, except to walk about 150 yards to a small sheltered spot on the other side of the little peninsula where we sat in the sunshine and read our books. And I must give credit to the wine in the bag (box removed) and the plastic container of Jack Daniels.....

The new tent and large rain tarp ..... 
excellent accommodations!!

Ever notice how absolutely fantastic camp food
 and fresh coffee taste in the great outdoors??

One of our portages...
A good workout!!

We'd paddled six miles in against an east wind on Friday and six miles back against a west wind on late Monday afternoon.  Wheeooo!! So, the return to our friends, Roger and Mary Bebie's lovely home in Grand Mariais, MN with their hot showers and warm hospitality was a most welcome end to our trip. It had been a wonderful time, in spite of the weather, and we're already planning next summer's canoe trip. As of yesterday Jerry is back in San Francisco, working on boat projects and catching up on business there.  I will fly there in mid-October and we will sail to San Diego for a few weeks.  We will return to Ellsworth in mid-December, however, for daughter Betsy's graduation from UW-Stout and for the holidays.  Then back to lovely Sea Story to continue our trip down to Mexico for the winter cruising season.  It's been a really fine summer, filled with biking, canoeing, road trips, gardening, some singing gigs for me, great times with friends and family, and many lovely evenings relaxing in the lawn chairs here on the farm, sipping wine and savoring the beautifully green Wisconsin landscape.   Now, days grow shorter, and the seasonal change begins .... from summer's lush green to autumn's golds, reds, rusts. And turning on the furnace for a few minutes in the morning, just to take off the chill, is a reminder that cold weather is just around the corner. And that's my cue to start packing as I think "sailing and MEXICO"!!! So, that's the recap of the last three months... Life is great! Adios for now.... ML

Sailing, Singing, Side-Trips, & Sea Lions

The winter cruising season is slowly winding down here in La Paz, and everyday more slips open up in the marinas as boats depart for their summer homes.  For some boats it means a storage yard in places like San Carlos or Guaymas (northward on the Mexico mainland side of the Sea of Cortez), and for others it means taking off on the "Baja bash". The "bash" is the long, often arduous trip around the southern tip of Baja, past Cabo San Lucas, then northward up the ouside of Baja to the United States. Since winds generally blow NNW to SSE, the "bash" is predominently a motoring trip, engines running 24/7, 5 knots/hour, for 1200 miles to San Diego. 


And still other boaters choose to transport their boat via Dockwise, a very efficient but expensive freighter service.  With a Dockwise transport boats are motored into the waterfilled hold of the freighter where divers secure each boat with underwater supporting stands.  The hold is then closed, drained of water, and the boats are left standing high and dry for their trip north. For a still-novice boater like me, the notion of many boats being motored into the hold of another, bigger boat is quite amazing...

Bayfest 2010, the annual cruisers' club three-day celebration, was great fun.  Music, seminars, wine-tasting, art shows, volleyball, dinghy races, sailing races, quilting classes, jewelry making, plus a variety of other events made for a most enjoyable time. With my friends Larry Whitney on drums and Stefan West on bass, and me on piano/vocals, our little trio "Helado", performed for two hours for listening and dancing on Saturday night at Bayfest. Larry came up with the name "Helado"....it means (ice cream) smooth & cool. 

With our good friends Larry & Erleen Whitney helping us crew, SEA STORY took 2nd place in our class on Bayfest Sunday's Race from Roca Lobos to the public dock in La Paz.

Bayfest Awards!!!  Yea!

Friends Butch & Cynthia traveled with us last Sunday to El Triunfo, a small community back in the hills about an hour's drive southeast of La Paz.  Like many communities in Baja, El Triunfo is rich with history and culture.  After Calfornia's 1849 gold rush began to thin out, many miners headed south to Baja in search of more gold. El Triunfo grew as silver mining began there, and remnants of that industry remain today.

Jerry & ML walking through the El Triunfo mining site.


Our visit to El Triunfo was on a day of big celebration.  The new plaza was dedicated, the Governor of Baja California Sur was in attendance, and the streets were filled with arts & crafts venders, food stands, bike racers, and families gathered under trees and awnings to laugh, eat, and enjoy a very typical Mexican Sunday.  

Mexican dancers in the El Tiunfo Plaza

A stop at the El Triunfo Cultural Museum.  

This remarkable horse was created entirely from palm trees....
bark, branches, palms, wood, coconuts, 
right down to the frayed eyelashes, mein and tail.  Simply remarkable!

Waitress bringing our pizza from the wood fired oven at
Cafe El Triunfo.  

Cafe El Triunfo...a gem of a place!

We also enjoyed a very special day at Los Islotes, or Seal Rock, where scuba divers and snorkelers can swim with the sea lions.  After a hour and half very fast ride in a panga (Mexican utility boat) from La Paz to Los Islotes, we joined the sea lions in the water.  They are simply playful and seem to really enjoy the company of us curious folk....

Our friend Butch is a scuba diver and wonderful underwater photographer.  
This is one of the hundreds of photos he took that day.  Isn't that face and graceful body amazing??!

One of the seal pups thought it was fun
 to nip at Butch's fin. No fear, only fun....

Our time here in La Paz is quickly drawing to a close, and preparation for our trip north has begun. SEA STORY will begin the bash on Saturday, May 1st....weather permitting....and we should arrive in San Diego approximately 10-14 days later. We will have veteran bashers, Connie and Dennis, with us on our trip...I'm the bash newbie onboard. I'm excited!! There will undoubtedly be lots of time for story-telling and world-problem-solving sessions and book reading, when we're not sleeping in preparation for our 3-hour watches, that is!  In the boating life winds and weather dictate, so we may have to tuck-in and let the wind blow for a day or two (or more?) on the way north.  Luckily we're all retired, so we're free to take our time. We'll be fine...it's all part of the life.  And it is indeed a wonderful life!!

More another day....
ML

Old Routine and New Visitors

La Paz has been called the "bungee" because one visit is never enough...it pulls you back and you want to return. Cruisers definitely feel that pull, and our return felt like "coming home". Our daily routine kicked in quite easily: up by 6:30 AM, Jerry for his morning run and me for my walk...both of us on the Malecon, greeting other folks out for their exercise.

Outside the gate at Marina Palmira where I begin my walk

each day, under the bougainvillea (also spelled 'bugambilia' here).

Since I began my morning walks in December, many faces have become familiar. One of my favorites is Ysidro, the singing street sweeper, and I mean this boy SINGS!....at the top of his lungs, the most romantic, passionate songs, all the while sweeping, picking up trash, trimming palm trees, etc! You simply have to love it! Ysidro and I have become good friends as we sing our morning greeting to each other...."Buenos dias"....

Ysidro sometimes then breaks into his rendition of "Mary My Love".....might be original?....who cares.  He's a charmer, and I'm a sucker for charmers.  See the marina behind me?

My standard walk takes me to a great little "turn around" park on the Malecon about a mile from the marina, marked by a wind mill and benches. Many folks are there every day, stopping during their walks to stretch, some do tai chi, guys do pull-ups on the monkey bars, etc. There's a little fountain that the windmill feeds, and the view out to the sea is lovely at both low and high tide. 

My windmill turn-around point.

We arrived back to La Paz in time for the Club Cruceros St. Patrick's Day dinner. As you can see, my last minute shopping in town for some appropriate attire was successful.  The corned beef and cabbage, and Irish singing enhanced by Ireland's most significant contribution to Mexican culture, the margarita, (I made that up...)) was enjoyed by all. "Danny Boy" never sounded better!

St. Patrick's Day Dinner

The big excitment last week was our first visitors from home!  Betsy, a senior at UW-Stout on Spring Break, and my brother John, the dairy farmer, were here for a week, and we had a great time.  Included in our activities were dining on fresh shrimp which "Miss Food Channel Betsy" helped me prepare on Sea Story, a trip to see the kite boarding and windsurfing at La Ventana, two days of good day-sailing, pool-side chats, trips in town to our favorite haunts, dinner and dancing at Beach Club at Bahia de Los Suenos, and a general introduction to "What the heck do they do down there on that boat in Mexico????"

Out on the town in Bahia de Las Suenos

John looks like a natural-born skipper, don't you agree?

Our final dinner at Marina Hotel next to our slip at Marina Palmira.

And Adios....for a few more weeks...to Betsy.

Enough for this time.  I have a Bayfest 2010 performance coming up in another couple of weeks, so maybe I'll have some photos from that and other parts of wonderful life here in La Paz aboard s/v SEA STORY.


Best Regards to all..
ML

Cruise Re-Cap....

Our month-long cruise up into the islands of the Sea of Cortez ended almost two weeks ago when we pulled into our slip here at Marina Palmira in La Paz.  It had been a great trip, including some fabulous sailing both north and south. 

February 2010

Sunset as viewed from the cockpit of SEA STORY, 

 marking the end of another great day of sailing the Sea of Cortez.

We experienced beautiful anchorages (both familiar and unfamiliar), tried out the new inflatable kayak, hiked islands, toughed out a five-day stretch of "no sailing/stay on the boat/anchor watch" while snugged-in at San Juanico as a "norther" blew through (had to re-set the anchor at 1:30 AM one night, wearing our headlamps on our foreheads, boat rockin' & rollin' in the strong wind, stars twinklin' and a full moon overhead...(if you dared to take the time to look up...!)...sleeping away much of the next day while the wind still blew. It's all part of sailing....being flexible with time and literally letting the wind dictate...

One of the highlights was our visit to the interesting town of Mulege, about 200 miles north of La Paz, to visit my cousin, Dusty. Poor Mulege has endured many hurricanes over the years, the most recent being last September's hurricane "Jimena". The  river that runs through the town rose more than 30 feet, flooding the little town and destroying many homes along the river. Homes on the hillsides survived, including the two houses owned by Dusty and Susie Huber. Their warm hospitality was so appreciated, and we really enjoyed our days with them. Plus, two nights in a REAL bed...and me lovin' two baths in the sunken tub....heaven!

Susie, "Patches", Dusty, ML and Jerry 

The view from this patio was fabulous in every direction....
and they have several patios...!

With the anchor set after another great day at sea and our first "reward Pacifico" in hand, the question is: what to have for dinner?  As with many things in life, timing is everything, and it seems Mexican Fisherman Manuel's son, Miguel, has that part figured out as he approaches our boat at just the right time.  Next year we will bring more D cell batteries to exchange along with pesos for fresh seafood. Life is difficult for these folks as Mexican fish camps and communities have no electricity or access to fresh water, etc. 

Shortly after we anchored at Timbabiche, Miguel approached

SEA STORY with his latest catch.

Jerry and Miguel negotiated the deal: four lobsters for 100 pesos ($8 USD), 

plus one can of Coke and two D cell batteries.

Oh, no....not lobster again......!!!!

Life is good....very, very good....

That's it for now.  More another day...

ML