La Paz

La Paz 4/15/2019-5/18/2019

Stephen and I arrived in La Paz after visiting the three islands, Isa San Francisco, Isla Partida, and Espiritu Santo. Our La Paz visit was fairly short despite our overall time there because we were away in the US for a good portion. It consisted of cleaning up the boat before we left so we could return to a nice space and one last dinner with Mel and Tris from SV Zissou. They made us a lovely dal bhat for dinner on their Morgan 38, which is a very cool boat. The interior is beamy and cozy and the V berth has lots of overhead room. I know I did not discuss specs or technicalities and just aesthetics because the admiration for space on a boat can just be enough. 

Before we left that night, we were invited to pose with props for their photo collection is composed of other guests posing with props as well. They will be heading up to Puerto Penasco and put their boat away for the season and returning to southern California for work. Their boat is named after the movie, Zissou, a spoof on Jacques Cousteau. See pic of us below. 

Stephen returned from the US after a week of visiting with my family and started immediately on projects to include more woodwork, with the application of cetol to some wood in the cockpit, drying out our bilge and painting it, installing a new water pump (AGAIN!) due to a diaphragm insufficiency, finding a leak in a 3 way valve we used to fresh water flush our water maker, and hunting down why our fresh water pump engine overheats and troubleshooting a fix. WoW! Yep, he did all this in a week.  I stayed another week which allowed me to have some good quality time with family and friends. When he is in project mode like that my absence is a good thing:)

I was fortunate enough to re-connect with one of my best friends since middle school, Karen Mussard. She had Stephen and me over for a delicious dinner at her home in Parkville, MD. She bought her house a few years ago and has done a fantastic job decorating it and cultivating a gorgeous garden in the back. She is always looking to travel, so we discussed future travel plans. She and I have done a fair bit of international travel together to include Europe when we were in high school, as well as Africa and Australia later on in life. I value our friendship and was happy to get a visit with her. We used to talk about all the places we would travel to as early as 12 years old and I am proud to say we have kept to our dreams!

Additionally, I got to see my Aunt Kas and my 2 first cousins, Val and Ryan. Val and Ryan lived so close to me growing up we went to the same secondary schools. It was great to catch up on their busy lives and hear what they are doing. This was left out of my home blog entry but wanted to mention this briefly. 

When I returned to La Paz it was late at night and included a flight, a three-hour bus ride, and a taxi. When I woke up the next morning it was back to work. Stephen and I had two days of pulling the tape off wood, cleaning the boat again, provisioning, laundry, and a few more purchases of stuff necessary for the boat. We both had lugged back from home Amazon purchases of things we wanted for the boat. My sister was gracious enough to be the home base for receiving multiple packages. We had to find a place for all these items on our boat with what we call “Boat Tetras”. Food provisioning calls for the same game. We had 2 FULL grocery carts as we plan to stay out several weeks before heading to Mazatlan for boat de-commissioning for hurricane season. 

The town of La Paz has nice long Malecon to enjoy a walk into town or a run in the morning as it is much cooler. They have some cool restaurants and we did gulp down some great beer at Harkin! I like their slogan “Have a Brewtiful Day!” see below. The night before we left the marina, we had a great dinner with SV Blue Heron,  SV Madrone, and another boat with 2 kids at a local BBQ joint. Declan from Blue Heron was really enjoying La Paz as this was apparently even better than La Cruz for “kid boats” as we call them. These are families who cruise and other parents definitely admit to more enjoyment when they have other “kid” families to interact with. We were happy to be along since we were kidless ( maybe this is a reflection of our behavior and how we got invited - ha). 

La Paz was a great stop and has a ton of resources for cruisers. They have their own cruisers directory to include everything from boat needs to medical needs. We now know why this has been a cruiser’s favorite destination. It is a good gateway to the islands and the Sea of Cortez, where resources are slim to none and self-sufficiency is a requirement. 

Cabo San Lucas airport with bus ride back to La Paz

View from Restaurant Harkin

See " Life is Brewtiful" in the upper left of the pic. Now those of are the kind of percentages we look for in a beer :)

We went provisioning!

This is a favorite of Stephens. We rarely eat "fast food" but he would LOVE of these in the US. 

Heading back out - bye La Paz! 

Some pics of the boat trashed while Stephen was doing projects- Phew! I 

Bilge cleaning - see our pretty Yanmar 4JH2E under the companionway steps. The winches on the table as he is greasing/lubing them. 

His proud clean bilge

He painted this - yep may not look pretty but definitely looked Yuck before that!