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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Puerto Refugio Days 3 – 5

On Thursday morning (September 22), Eric took a dinghy ride to scope out the general area.

In the afternoon, we went snorkeling with the dad and kids from Auryn at the western edge of the middle anchorage. The tide was low at that point, so many of the rocks were exposed and we couldn’t get all that close to the shoreline. While there were quite a few fish, there weren’t many varieties of fish or many colorful fish. The topography was interesting, though.

The dad caught a couple of grouper and offered us one of them. Christi offered to make dinner for everyone if they’d fillet the fish. They took us up on the offer, ad In the evening, they came over to Kosmos for dinner. The boys even dressed up! The fish was so good; the secret to fish is the freshness. 

Friday sunrise, looking at the sea lion island

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Puerto Refugio Day 2

Blog Q: Do you worry about boat thieves?

A: It is difficult to steal a larger boat, like ours. We’d report it to the authorities and it’d be found pretty quickly. 

That said, dinghy theft is a little more of a concern. Dinghies that are fast with big motors have appeal to thieves, but even that kind of theft is rare. We have a slow dinghy with an electric motor, so no one wants our dinghy/motor. 

The biggest concern is people stealing things off of the boats. As far as we know, all the places that we’ve stopped are safe. It was explained that because this part of Baja is off the trafficking routes, there is nothing to attract criminals. There are reports of theft being an issue in some other areas, such as Guayamas, but we don’t plan to go to those places. 

On Wednesday morning (September 21), it was a bit rolly when we woke up. Eric put out the paravanes, which helped. While Eric was working on the paravanes, the family, on s/v Auryn, called on the radio and invited us to go for a hike onshore with them. Here was the view from the shore.

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