Second Trip to Santa Rosalia, Day 3

When we woke up on Sunday, October 2, it was very windy. The wind was pleasantly cool and refreshing! Christi needed a jacket when she went out to watch the sunrise. Once the sun was up, the wind died and it warmed up fast.

Does anyone know what kind of bird this is?

Eric started changing the engine oil and filter first thing in the morning, as planned. Unfortunately, he’d failed to notice that a valve was set wrong, and accidentally drained out the transmission oil simultaneously with the engine oil. And then, unbeknownst to him, while filling the engine with oil, he was also simultaneously filling the transmission with engine oil. It didn’t take Eric long to figure out that the engine wasn’t filling up with oil proportional to the amount that he was putting in. That’s when he noticed the valve.

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Second Trip to Santa Rosalia, Day 2

Saturday, October 1

In 2009, when we were in Dominica, our smoke stack fell over. The stack had bent a little bit at an outdoor connection of the smoke stack causing a small exhaust leak. Unfortunately, none of the repairs that Eric has made have held long-term; all of them have failed sooner or later. The trouble is the sealant eventually goes bad. We forgot to mention this, but a few days ago, when we were in Don Juan, he’d noticed that the leak was back. He was frustrated; he’d been sure that the last repair he’d done would last longer.

This morning, Eric repaired exhaust leak first thing. He tried a new sealant, and hopefully this fix will last a good amount of time. After that, he got everything out that he’d need to do an engine oil change so that he could do the change first thing tomorrow the morning, before it got hot. It actually takes longer to get everything out and ready than it does to actually change the oil. 

In the afternoon, we decided to get lunch at Los Compadres. From the roundabout, we took the other road inland, passing many more piles of mud.

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La Village de Bahia Los Angeles to Puerto Don Juan to Santa Rosalia

Sunrise on Tuesday, September 27

We made two trips to shore. In the morning, we went to the grocery store run for perishables. In the afternoon, we had lunch at the motel restaurant. We haven’t been writing about the food lately because we generally only write about new foods to us. Living in San Diego, Mexican food is the staple of our diet, so we haven’t run across many foods that are new to us. But this time, there was something on the menu that we didn’t recognize: arrachera. Eric ordered it and found out that it was a marinated steak. The other items on his plate are a chili relleno (poblano chili stuffed with cheese, dipped in an egg batter and deep fried), rice and refried beans.

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Bahia de Las Rocas to La Village de Bahia de Los Angeles

Sunday September 25 continued… As we were nearing an island called Isla Coronado (AKA Isla Smith), we saw on AIS that one of our friends was in one of the anchorages on that island called Bahia Las Rocas. We quickly checked the cruising guide and saw that the anchorage would be suitable both for the current winds and for the forecasted winds. We called our friends and asked about the flying bug situation and if there was enough space for us. Our friends reported no bugs and enough space. We were sold!

When we turned the corner and the anchorage came into view, we saw there was a second boat in the anchorage that didn’t have AIS on. They were anchored exactly where we’d wanted to go. We pulled in and dropped anchor in a spot that made us a little nervous. We were only a few hundred feet from the rock in front of us (picture 1), the shore behind us (picture 2), and the boat next to us (picture 3). 

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