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