Sierras Baja adventure 2020

Dana just had a meeting with Javier the harbor master about a possible future c-brat group coming down here, he was very excited about the prospect and willing to accommodate us and give us all a group rate. There are a lot of great, beautiful anchorages north and south within 50 miles and on down 120 miles to the large city of La Paz. Loreto nearby is a great town and used to a lot of gringo ex-pats, no promises but we are definitely thinking about a group trip if anyone is actually interested. This is a gated marina with a 24 7 gate guard plenty of room for trucks and trailer storage. The docks also have a 24-7 guard/helper on duty. Daily temps are running mid to high 70s high 50s at night, this is the coldest month. This is a full service marina with every modern convenience.

Adios Amigos
 
localboy":6gjf3em2 said:
1 year, 11 months, 0 days, 13 hours, 18 minutes, 49 seconds until retirement...














...not that I'm counting. :lol:
Click to expand...

Mark, Keep breathing, that time will go by pretty fast. I know that sound impossible, but it will. Prayers for a safe and rapid result.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon
 
This sounds like an awesome trip. We are thinking seriously about joining you next year, if you return. Unfortunately it would likely be for only a week or so as we have kids in school.
I have read that the sea of cortez harbors a lot of whales this time of the year, have you seen many? The wife and kids really like the wildlife (and myself, of course). This could be a selling point I could exploit...
 
From the border it is about 3 days drive at 6-7 hours a day, that is 6 just up and back. Speeds between 40 and 60, as some sections of the roads are very narrow. Once you are here you may have to wait for a calm day which are usually 2 out of 3, whales are around but unpredictable lots of cool birds and dolphins almost always. I think for any C-brats that want to come down, they by no means need to do our trip going on down to La Paz, there are many beautiful anchorages with empty beaches within an hour of Puerto Escondido for overnights or day trips, in fact there is a huge 5 star resort and golf course in the bay 10 miles south. Loreto is a beautiful town on the water just north with fun shopping stalls and restaurants, back up in the mountains behind us one of the very first Spanish missions, (San Javier) part of the chain that extended up into northern California. It is still a fully functioning church and is built from native stone and is a sight to behold. So there is lots to see and do here on and off the water, in order to have a relaxed enjoyable trip I think it would take a month.....
 
Alain, we are heading out tomorrow morning, we hope too at least Everisto and hope to be at Marina De La Paz by Monday or Tuesday, as that looks to be our weather window according to Pasage Weather, Sail Flow and Predict Wind. We have a confirmed deposit on a slip, so hopefully it will work out. We haven't gotten a reply in the last couple days from them, if possible, could you do us a favor if you are near the office and ask them to expect Sierra? Thanks. Dana and I are really looking forward to meeting you and seeing your boat.
I hope this is not off topic for the group, this time of year the weather is variable and a good 2 1/2 day window to cover about 120 miles is not to be missed.

Adios amigo
 
Just ran thru the photos in your album--great photos, capturing the feel all along the way. Wow, that new marina--nothing like what I had seen up there.
I didn't realize the Westward came to Baja--we had seen her a number of times in the PNW and in AK...Absolutely amazing is that Westward is going to be 100 years old in 2024, and the original engine, like a watch, is still running strong!

Have a great passage S. To La Paz.
 
Well we've arrived in La Paz, there was about 40 miles of left over wind slop but not to bad held 20 knots most of the way, 125 miles in a little under 6 hours, 68 gallons of fuel. We decided to do it in 1 day as the forecast was for a bit more head wind the next couple of days (plus we walked into the the bar at Marina de La Paz in time for the super bowl kickoff, crazy timing) it was a grey and drizzly day here as a weather system is going through all the way to So Cal. We had to navigate with the I pad as the Simrad chartplotter dicided not to talk to my Suzuki network and in fact blanked out all data on the Suzuki's computer guage screen, after I did a total reset I got the Suzuki's data back but it only has basic info gph and gallons used and remaining the chartplotter calculates the range and efficiency, we had to keep it off. Any ideas why the chartplotter might not work in the Suzuki's network all of a sudden? Anyway not a bad run otherwise and looking forward to the end of PNW drizzle!
 
It sounds like a great run. What did you do for the "check in" at La Paz--were the papers stamped at the border in lieu of a Zarpe? Or was there a check in when you launched at Puerto Escondido, and then a check out? We used to sail all of the way straight to Cabo or even straight to La Paz, but some of the more recent postings suggested that one had to stop at the first available port of entry, Ensenada on the Pacific side. I had wondered how that worked with a trailerable boat...?

What RPM were you running? I realize that the boat is very heavy, but it seems as if you are getting slightly less than 2 miles per gallon... Have a Margarita for us! Enjoy, thanks for the great thread!
 
Bob, we did use a bit more gas than normal, didn"t top up here (mistake 1) and we might have used more than we thought fiddling around in Monterey so we might have used a bit less on our run today. We are extra heavy as we brought some extra gas and just in general, we should have had a diver give the bottom a polish as the boat is always in the water, the anti fouling was working well but there could have been a little fuzz (mistake 2). But the reason we decided to do it in a day was tomorrow we were looking at a 10 Knot headwind and downhill from there for the next few days. There was a 1-2 foot sloppy chop left over from 20 knots north yesterday with an occasional small Whitecap after about 25 miles out. It was really annoying to have the new chartplotter die this morning, it has a really good efficiency/range computer but we did our best with a calculator. ( missing fuel logged data, depth and all the handy stuff we take for granted nowadays). We were cruising at 20-21 knots (nautical mph) most of the way and down a bit to 19 as it got a bit rougher at around 4,900-5,000 RPM. We have another prop with a small amount more pitch that I am going to try on the 25 mile trip up to Isla Partida next weekend if the forecast holds.
We showed all of our boat import paperwork and registration at the border but did have to do the real check in with the harbor master at Escondido, we checked out yesterday and will check in at the Marina here tomorrow, very easy if you have all your paperwork perfect. (Thank you nurse Dana, I am useless at that). All in all the boat did well in the slop the weight kept the pounding tolerable and we ended up with approximately 20 gallons+ left in reserve.
 
We also enter full into our Suzuki's fuel computer at 95 gallons instead of 100 as we have no clue how far down it will actually pull gas out. Unfortunately I didn't look at the fuel used before I shut down at the gas dock so we are kind of guessing on the fuel used since we didn't top up the tank that we had filled at the gas dock in Monterey. All my references to miles are to Nautical miles which of course are longer and based on dividing the minutes of north, south, on a chart. I will try to be more careful keeping track of all the numbers!
 
Thanks Micah.
I am sort of comparing your boat to Tom and Joyce's Sea Otter, with the same engine, and also well equipped. But it appears that your boat is definitely heavier. I guess I consider a "golden" goal is a 200 mile range. I had to cut to displacement speed for part of that when we were in AK, but had the 130 Honda, a far inferior motor....

It would be interesting to see what the numbers will be with the more aggressive prop.
 
Bob, we could have easily left the extra 12 gallons of fuel and 10 of water off the boat, too cautious on our first long trip, the 55 liter icechest in the cockpit is getting way downsized. We did have some Whitecaps on the last half which didn't help, we will work on a diet for Sierra and better efficiency calculations if we ever get the Simrad chartplotter fixed, and the prop change to our spare with more pitch may help. I need to gain about 20% more range to meet the 200 statuate mile goal as we only work with the longer nautical miles. Before I asked you here what the most efficient speed was I think we calculated a choppy trip across Monterey bay was better at 16-17 knots. I doubt we will ever travel at this speed unless we are in a short weather window again, it was fun once.
Adios.
 
I got my Simrad working with the Suzuki network disconnected.

I'm afraid my Balmar Smartgauge experiment is a failure the high charge voltage of the Suzuki set off the hi voltage alarm notice and over time I think it decided that the system was a 24 volt and is reading 25 volts no matter how many times I try to reset it to proper values. (Yes I checked the batteries are at normal voltage) The volts are auto selected so nothing in the set menu to set battery voltage.
 
We just finished a long walk down the La Paz's waterfront malecon which is now all redone with new concrete walkways and a 2 way bike path beside the roadway. All the families were out walking and in the large shoreside plaza. They even have a new combo family and skate park across the street from the water. A lot of nice yachts are on moorings just offshore making the whole scene very picturesque. Today was a national holiday, there Constitution signing day and why it was so family festive.
There is something special about warm evenings listening to the breeze in the palm trees while having dinner outside by the harbor full of boats, Dana keeps pinching herself to see if it is all real and that we are back. It did take a lot of work to change our boating MO around so we could be here again.
This marina has a lot of huge motor yachts waiting for absent owners, our C-dory is a tiny speck next to them. Many of the restaurants feature locally caught fish and shrimp that is amazingly delicious, and reasonable unlike central California. La Paz was founded to serve the pearl diving industry in the 1800s and is still very sea oriented with diving and boat tours out to see the wildlife, including the large whale sharks.

Buenas noches amigos!
 
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