Back to the waiting game

La Paz, BCS, Mexico

What a difference a day makes.

In San Jose del Cabo, we awoke to find a wonderful, sunny day; just some remnants of wispy clouds hanging around.  The storm is all but forgotten.

We made an early start (got everything into the car by 9 AM) and took off for La Paz.  We took the west coast route on highway 19 via Cabo San Lucas and Todos Santos - it is slightly shorter than using highway 1, the way we came on the shuttle from La Paz three months ago.  It is quite scenic until you come to Todos Santos, where the road turns inland to cross the peninsula - that part of the highway appears to have been laid out by snapping a chalk like from La Paz to the west coast; it could not be any straighter, or more boring.

Travelling north along the west coast meant that we got closer to the areas harder hit by the passing of hurricane Paul.  The only evidence we could see was the frequent little mud(sand)slides that sometimes meant we had to change lanes or use the shoulder to avoid them.  In a couple of places there is some construction of new bridges, where the traffic is currently detoured down into a normally dry wash - one of these was more or less a river crossing.  Fortunately the construction crew was there to point out the best way to cross, and we had no problems.  It did make us very happy with our decision to stay another night in San Jose, since these spots would probably have been impassible during the storm itself.  Otherwise, the highway was a pleasant surprise, being a full 4-lane divided road for almost the entire length.  It took us a little less than 3 hours to get to the marina in La Paz.

Upon arrival in La Paz, we found the marina, and most of the town, untouched by Paul.  There were a few large holes in the road and some dirt piles in places, but I think this not that unusual here.

The boat appears to have weathered the time very well.  In fact, I have rarely seen the outside looking so clean - the result of the unusually large amount of rainfall they have had here while we have been gone.  We had some concerns about moisture since we had not experienced any rain on the boat in about 2 years, but the inside was nice and dry.

Of course, you cannot leave a boat for any length of time without something going wrong.  Our horribly expensive Magnum Inverter/Charger is totally hooped.  Nothing I do can make it do anything at all and no way to tell how long it has been this way.  Fortunately for us, we still had a few solar panels exposed on the dodger and the solar charger took over the job of keeping the batteries alive while we were away.

This is the 2nd time I have had to replace this unit.  The first time was after our rough ride around Cape Mendocino two years ago.  That time I was willing to concede that my splashing water on it probably contributed to its demise.  This time however, there is no excuse.  I left it in a dry, well-ventilated compartment with virtually no load on it - all it had to do was keep a trickle charge on the batteries.  To tell the truth, this unit has always been very touchy - it seems to overheat at every opportunity and has never been a friend to our SSB radio.

I have ordered a new Magnum unit (it is still the only Inverter/Charger that will fit in the space I have) and it will arrive around the end of the month.  Meanwhile, I have mounted all of our rail-mounted solar panels and they are perfectly capable of keeping up with our daily demand for 12V power, including keeping our refrigerator and freezer going.  Of course, with the inverter not working, all of our AC requirements are being provided by the shore power connection,

While we still had the car, we spent the first afternoon shopping at Walmart, where we picked up several more heavy provisioning items including a new, inexpensive home theatre system.  The last few days have been spent trying to figure out where to put all of the new stuff, considering we still have all of our sails and sail-covers stored inside.  We have decided to wait to see if the storm season if truly over before we bother putting the sails back on.  We did take the incredibly long stainless steel poles for the mainsail cover and the battens for same and stowed them on deck for now - with them inside, they extend from one end of the boat to the other and make access to everything a hassle.

For now, we are back to our usual waiting game.  We have lots of items on order, the new dinghy, a new chartplotter and radome, a new inverter/charger and a new Kindle reader.  We don't expect to see a lot of this stuff until the end of the month.  The marina has kindly booked us an extra month, until the end of November, if we need it.  Hopefully we will be long gone before then.

One note about the weather.  It is still pretty hot here.  The highs every day are around 33 degrees and the lows around 24.  With the current high humidity, we are finding it a bit hard to get used to.  Not that we are complaining - we could be freezing back in Edmonton right now.

{GMST}24|9.3066|N|110|19.6068|W|La Paz, BCS, Mexico|La Paz, BCS, Mexico{GEND}