Return to Mexico

After a crazy, unprecedented 9 months back in the USA we are preparing to return to La Paz and Miss Miranda. We have booked the flight on Alaska Airlines for January 3rd, and have arranged a one way rental car from the San Jose Del Cabo airport to Marina CostaBaja. We arranged to to ship a bunch of spare parts to the boat, kindly warehoused in San Diego by Ken and Christy, CUBAR buddies on Varnebank (thank you!) and to be delivered by Kevin and Alison on Red Rover (thank you!). In fact, Kevin and Alison may still be in Cabo by the time we arrive, so we will likely swing by for a parts pickup on the way from the airport.

We will keep the rental car in La Paz for an extra day to do a big provisioning run out to the Soriana. Hopefully we’ll be able to stock up enough there to avoid many other stops as we travel around the Sea of Cortez.

Health Precautions

We thought long and hard about our return to Mexico, out of concern for our health as well as not wanting to impose a health burden on the people of Mexico. We do not want to come across as ugly Americans living it up on our fancy yacht oblivious to the daily suffering of those who are less fortunate.

The United States and Mexico are very similar in how poorly the virus situation has been managed, with rampant spread and full to overflowing hospitals in many areas. Gwen has studied the situation and feels that our biggest area of exposure, and of exposing others, is getting to the boat which we are doing by flying and by car, so we have a plan. We hope that in returning to Mexico and following a strict set of precautions we will cause little additional burden and will bring some much needed spending into the area.

We have and will use N95 masks and face shields for the flight, interactions with the car rental and shopping. We feel that flights are reasonably safe, provided that we wear masks for the entire time. Airports, we think, are less safe, so we will try to minimize time and maximize distance. Provisioning is going to be no more or less safe than going to the grocery store here. For work on the boat, we will provide masks and sanitation equipment and do everything possible to ensure safety for us and the workers.

As we had before, we have medical evacuation insurance. These companies now have clauses specifying how things are handled if one contracts COVID and they do have ability to extract ill people with COVID, but that is something that we need to avoid at all costs. One thing many do not realize is that if you are being taken back to the US by a medical evacuation service, they first have to ensure a hospital agrees to take you. Currently, many US hospitals are at disaster levels and are not even accepting regional transfers, much less international ones, so one cannot count on this being possible. Gwen has also upgraded our medical supplies to be able to cover even more medical issues that could arise, so hopefully we won’t need to seek any other type of medical care.

Finally, we are going to be explicit about monitoring our interactions by keeping a log of any contacts with people and will be strict about distancing and mask wearing. Once we get Miss Miranda ready to go and leave the Marina, we are likely to go weeks without any close contact with people, though we hope to encounter plenty of whale sharks, dolphins, turtles, fish and birds! It will be a very different experience from last year where we explored a lot of communities, dined out in restaurants and socialized with lots of people, but we are very happy to be able to experience the joys of solitude and nature.

Itinerary planning

We have been poring over our third copy (other ones are on the boat) of Anacortes neighbors Shawn Breeding and Heather Bansmer’s guide to the Sea of Cortez. Theirs is by far the most complete guide, including chartlets of the anchorages, which is critically important for an area in which the official charts are notoriously inaccurate. We used their guide to the Pacific Coast of Mexico last season, as well as electronic versions of their charts on an iPad-based chartplotter app called INavX. The charts were much better than the ones we had on our PC based navigation systems. The guidebooks also included a downloadable set of GPS waypoints identifying navigational approaches, hazards and preferred anchorages. Very useful for us, and absolutely required for any cruisers planning to visit Mexico. This year, fellow N50 owners and Pacific-crossing veterans Ron and Nancy recommended another super helpful piece of charting software. This one is called ChartAid and it allows you to grab aerial photos from Google or Bing maps and add them as overlays to Coastal Explorer (our primary PC-based navigation system). Ron and Nancy used this for the poorly-charted Pacific Islands and atolls they visited and are also using it for the Sea of Cortez.

The image on the left above shows a chartlet from Shawn and Heather’s guide (they actually did all the dpth soundings listed on the chart). The image on the top right shows the same area as represented on a C-Map chart (the only charts of the area available via Coastal Explorer), while the bottom right image shows a satellite photo imported into Coastal Explorer. Obviously, we are happy to have both the chartlets and the Sat Photos. By the way, the C-Map charts cost $250, while the ChartAid program was $99 and the charts from Sea of Cortez: A Cruiser’s Guidebook were $29.

So, we’ve been looking through the guidebook, identifying interesting spots and then grabbing nice, hi-res satellite photos. Our plan, at the moment, is to stick to the southern half of the Sea between La Paz and roughly Mulege or possibly as far North as Santa Rosalia, following more-or-less what Shawn and Heather call the “Classics” Itinerary. From that area, it is a pretty short run across the Sea to San Carlos and Guaymas on the mainland side, so we’re thinking about spending a couple of weeks over there. So far our longest run would be about 75 NM from the Mulege area to San Carlos, with most other distances between anchorages less than 30 miles. Sounds like some pretty laid back cruising.

Weather

We have been told that winters in the Sea of Cortez can be challenging. The main weather feature is Northers, which are 2-3 day periods of sustained strong North winds that result when High pressure systems develop in the Great Basin of the US. Because the Sea has so much fetch, large, steep, dangerous waves can form in these conditions. The key with Northers, we’re told, is to be in a secure anchorage that has good northerly protection, which is called out in the guide. We’ve also heard that it can be cold in the Sea in winter, but I guess one’s definition of cold depends on where you are from. Here is what we found comparing January weather for Anacortes and La Paz

Anacortes: Daily high temperatures increase by 2°F, from 45°F to 47°F, rarely falling below 36°F or exceeding 54°F. Daily low temperatures are around 38°F, rarely falling below 27°F or exceeding 46°F. The chance of a wet day over the course of January is gradually decreasing, starting the month at 48% and ending it at 45%.
La Paz: Daily high temperatures are around 75°F, rarely falling below 69°F or exceeding 82°F. Daily low temperatures are around 53°F, rarely falling below 47°F or exceeding 59°F. The chance of a wet day over the course of January is essentially constant, remaining around 5% throughout.

Put another way, January in La Paz is slightly warmer than summer in Anacortes! We’ll take it. Now it is true that the water temperature in the Sea of Cortez goes down significantly in the winter, but at 69deg, still a bit warmer than the frigid waters of the Pacific Northwest.

Boat Projects

There is, of course, a never ending list of projects to look forward to when we return to the boat. The big one is left over from last spring, when we finally got a replacement Racor fuel filter manifold, but left before we could install it. We hope that replacing the filter manifold (listen to me furiously knocking on all the wood I can find) will finally resolve our air in the fuel line problem.

One non-project (knocking on wood again) may be the Subzero drawer freezer. Last spring the freezer died (while nearly full) in Mazatlan, and we didn’t have a chance to diagnose the problem before leaving. As I was compiling a parts list this fall I wondered what might have caused the freezer to fail, and was planning to buy all of the replaceable components, just in case. Our boat watcher had his refrigeration tech check out the freezer and it turns out that it simply lost it’s refrigerant charge. Once filled up it seems to be working fine. A good thing, too, as Gwen is planning to fill it.

A major project that we have decided to take on is replacing the dry stack muffler, which we were told back in 2019 was a rusted hulk in desparate need of replacement. We didn’t have time to get the work done before heading to Mexico, so we took a chance on it. Lately, we’ve heard too many stories on the Nordhavn Owners Group about mufflers disintegrating underway, so it is time to get the job done. The problem is that there is no way to remove the muffler without cutting away a significant amount of fiberglass to gain access. Evidently, the idea of “design for serviceability” was not a thing when Miss Miranda was built. The good news is that 1) Many other N50 owners have taken on the job, and I even have a pictures of the recent work from on N50 sister ship Les Voguer (thanks, James!) 2) The muffler is still available from the manufacturer along with all of the other parts needed, including the insulation blanket. Now I just need to find someone in La Paz competent to do the work, and I have a couple of good leads so far.

I’m sure that other things will come up, as one might expect after leaving the boat for more than six months. I think/hope we will be better prepared for issues that might arise than we were last season.

Return to the Pacific Northwest

While we have note decided on the precise timing, we will definitely bring Miss Miranda back up the Pacific Coast and home to Anacortes by the end of summer 2021. We look forward to exploring the Sea of Cortez, and have thoroughly enjoyed our cruising adventures in Mexico, but realized that there is plenty of cruising to do closer to home.