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Published: August 17th 2010
Santa Rosalia
View of the town from the steps leading to the Mining Museum. The town is in a little valley.Mike and Dave Swallow the Anchor for Awhile.
Friends,
Ever since we left La Paz, traveling North, it has gotten warmer and warmer as the summer advances. By the time we were in Bahia de Conception, it was pushing a hundred. In the bay El Burro, it was mostly windless, which really aggravates your discomfort. Speaking of El Burro, there is a restaurant on the beach there called Bertha’s where I had the best coconut battered shrimp I have ever eaten. The shrimp were fresh and cooked perfectly - tasty and tender - not the usual rubbery overcooked stuff. The dish came with a wonderful orange dipping sauce. Magnificent!
We have been fishing on and off and along the way I caught a fish to big for my gear; my cheap Walmart made in China reel failed when the plastic drum broke. I wanted a new reel and there isn’t anywhere to buy one in Bahia Conception. So one day Brian and I took Ansa about 12 miles up the coast to Mulege, which was the closest town. Mulege has no harbor, so we anchored off the beach and I took my dingy up the river about
Santa Rosalia
View of Santa Rosalia seafront from the Mining Museum. two miles to the center of Mulege. This is a pretty iffy situation; in the dry season the river is very shallow - more like a creek. My poor outboard kicked up out of the water five or six times despite my best efforts to stay in “deep” water. The water was so turbid you couldn’t see your hand four inches below the surface. I wandered around Mulege for awhile sightseeing since it is reputed to be an interesting town, but I couldn’t find anything to take a picture of. Whatever the attraction is - I missed it. I donde esta’d for the Ariticulos de Pesca store and eventually found it. The owner was an Australian expat and he had exactly one reel for sale. It was a nice Penn and exactly what I was looking for - every once and awhile the gods smile upon me. I had been thinking about buying a spear gun so I asked the Aussie about them and he gave me a nice lesson about the different types and their pros and cons. I wanted one because I was enamored of the idea of picking the fish I want, rather than just whatever happens
Santa Rosalia Harbor
The tiny marina is called Marina Santa Rosalia. The Singular marina we were in is off in the distance. to bite my hook. Anyway, I bought the simplest type - a pole with three pointy tips and a big rubber band. Haven’t tried it yet; I need to work up the courage to stab a fish.
Despite our increasing discomfort, we continued on North to Santa Rosalia. This town was established by French colonists in the mid 1800’s because the site had some very rich veins of copper (a site is considered a good candidate for a copper mine if the ore is 0.5% copper - here the ore was 15%!). The architecture of the buildings shows their French heritage. There is a nice little museum here with artifacts from the mining operation. You will see in the pictures how much the mine has influenced the town. Even the harbor owes its existence to the mine. It was built out of huge slabs of slag from the smelter to protect the ships that came here to take away the copper and is still functional more than 100 years later.
We rented slips in the Singular marina here. An interesting thing about Singular marinas is that they are all constructed identically; the same kind of slips and the
Slips
View of the slips at the Singular Marina in Santa Rosalia. same building. Besides the marina office, each marina has a large mostly barren room for cruisers use. The great thing about this room is it is air conditioned. One evening all of us present in the marina - maybe 30 people - had a pot luck dinner in the “cold room”. Another truly wonderful feature is the second floor lap pool. Brian and I spent almost every afternoon in the pool trying to stay alive. The daytime heat is so overwhelming that my brain shuts down. I can’t do anything, I can’t think, Totally miserable. Things are no better at night. You sweat so much you soak your bedding. You toss and turn and move around on your bed trying to find a dry spot. Here is where we start to think that we need a new plan. Our original plan was to continue on North to the Bahia Los Angeles and wait out the hurricane season in a little hurricane hole up there. But the thought of spending another two or three months on the boats in this heat was was starting to fill us with dread.
Brian needed a jib for ECHO (the sail that came with
Street Scene in Santa Rosalia
The architecture shows the French influence in Santa Rosalia. the boat as a jib was really a yankee cut staysail and totally inadequate in light winds) and had received recommendations from other cruisers to contact a Tony Morelli, who was based across the Sea of Cortez in San Carlos. Brian contacted him and after a day of measuring and whatnot ordered a jib for ECHO. We were to pick up the sail in San Carlos. The run from Santa Rosalia to San Carlos is about 75 miles, so we got up at 0400 and headed northeast. We had favorable winds almost the whole way and Ansa close reached at between 5 and 7 knots the whole way. It was a nice sail except for it being dark and there was this island - Isla Tortuga - in the way. I don’t have radar and have learned not to trust my Navionics charts to much unless I have physically seen what they are representing. In way too many places the charts are one to three miles off. I gave the island a lot of offing, but it still made me nervous. Never saw the thing until I was seven or eight miles past it (because it was too dark). We
Eiffel's Church
This church in Santa Rosalia has a steel frame and sheet steel panels for walls. It was designed by Eiffel or perhaps one of his students. arrived in San Carlos about 1500 and got slips in the Marina. In a couple of days the sail arrived and Brian was a really happy camper. The sail is high quality and in talking with Tony Morelli, Brian is convinced he really knows his stuff.
By now the heat is ungodly and we decide to totally abandon our original plan. For two reasons: the heat and the discussion Brian had with another cruiser about hurricane avoidance strategy. This cruiser’s opinion and recommendations hit us like a ton of bricks. His ideas made so much sense. It goes like this: if you are unlucky enough to be in the path of a hurricane, it makes no sense to have your boat in the water, and even less to be on it. If you are in a marina, boats can get thrown around against the docks, the docks can break loose, your boat ( and you!) can be damaged and what is worse, possibly sunk. There goes all your expensive electronics and most of your boats wiring, also probably expensive repair to your auxiliary. If you’re at anchor in a hurricane hole, even if your ground tackle holds, there is
no guarantee your neighbors will. The result is again crashing boats and possible sinking. In fact the hurricane hole anchorage is the worst of all possible worlds because you are more than likely a long way (over 150 miles in the case of Bahia Los Angeles) from any help, equipment, tools or spare parts. Better to park the boat in the dirt close to civilization. The hurricane may knock the boat over and damage it, but at least it isn’t under water and you are close to what you need to effect repairs. So that’s what we did. The boats are in dry storage in Marina Seca Guaymas.
Once out of the water, we spent a couple of days shutting the boats down. We could have lived aboard for a nominal fee, but that wouldn’t solve the heat problem, so we moved into the Hotel Ana in Guaymas for a week or so while we sought out a more permanent domicile. I can’t tell you what a relief it was in those first few days to live in air conditioned comfort and get a good nights sleep. Guaymas is a gritty little town with a working seaport. Very non
Smelter Furnace
Copper furnace in the Smelter. There were three of these things. touristy. In a week of wandering around, we saw exactly zero foreigners.
In order to find an apartment or house to rent, I first tried responding to ads in the local newspaper. This was a bust for two reasons; there were very few listings and my inadequate Spanish. I sat down with my dictionary and made myself a little script of questions and phrases I thought I would need, then would call up the phone number for the listing. It was a disaster. As an example, I would ask a simple question like: “Is the apartment available?” What would come back down the phone was a torrent of Spanish. Paragraphs of Spanish. No matter what I asked I couldn’t get a simple Si or No. Hopeless. Well, the Internet came to the rescue. I found a rental management company in San Carlos with an English speaker (an American, actually) and he offered us a nice little two bedroom house. We took it.
We’ve been in this house for five days now and plan to stay here until the end of October. The house had a few little problems, but the management has been good about fixing anything we
Copper Crucible
A crucible used to transport molten copper from the furnace to the ingot molds. can’t easily do. We both like it here. I am so glad to be off the boat and have all this space. We have two bedrooms, three baths, kitchen, laundry room (with working appliances!), dining room, living room, Direct TV, and a really nice smoking lounge (the patio) complete with overhead fan. Even a fountain in the yard.
Ahhh, the comforts of civilization.
Be happy.
David and Brian
aka Daveed y Miguel
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Char Fraser
non-member comment
New emai
Really enjoy your blogs.......BUT who is Brian?????I know who Mike is?????? it is really hot ip here also........but then we have an air conditioner in the house. now I know I want a/c on our boat. when do the hurricanes normally come??? Take care. when we left The Loretto fest, we headed up to Conception Bay, the water and the air was a lot warmer there than when were out in he open. had supper at Berthas, good food and really nice people. they got us diesel for boat and brought it back in the morning. Char