SVSoulsticeAdventures

HOLA to ALOHA

If it is going to Happen, It is going to Happen OUT There - Captain Ron

I have never watched Captain Ron to everyone’s surprise so this was included on the LIST TO DO before we made passage!

Well, on the last blog we talked about getting to La Paz to meet up with Matt and Amahra from Alaska. They made it on the 15th as scheduled and we were in the slip by the evening of the 14th. Amahra took advantage of the Mexican medical system getting a few MRIs on 4/16 at 250$ each with film included, CD, and printed radiology reading! So amazing as an MRI in the US costs at least 3000$ outpatient and ER 5-7,000$. Her deductible in the US is quite high, so this was definitely worth it.

In the meantime, we continued with accomplishing a few errands to include more provisioning, boat cleaning, and visiting with friends. We met up with Milou again, Larry, Nicole, and Ellie ( our buddy boat from last year) and Blue Wind once again, Alex and Chris. There were also many other boats in the La Paz area that we connected with as well. We had some street taco dinner meet-ups and waited for some wind to leave for San Jose del Cabo. By the way, if you do go to La Paz, the bakery Dulce Romero has delicious pastries!!! So buttery & flaky! Great coffee too.

On 4/19, we left La Paz and Milou helped with dock lines but really just to wave us off. We sailed and motored again, the wind was not as strong as forecast. We arrived Tuesday early afternoon. We were in this same marina 3 years ago when we sailed down from Seattle so it was familiar to us. The Drunken Sailor across the street was well known to us for tacos and drinks so we celebrated with a nice lunch on arrival only to see Blue Wind in the parking lot. They had rented a car for a road trip and decided to see if we were around. ha! I teased they were stalking us and we would see them in Hilo:)

After several trips to the Port Captain (it was closed in San Jose del Cabo for the 1st 3 days we there and Cabo San Lucas Port Captain said we had to check out in San Jose del Cabo because the boat was in the marina there) and 2 trips to Immigration (they filled out our paperwork wrong) WE FINALLY GOT OUR ZARPE.

Once you get your Zarpe, you have 48 hours to exit the country. Our departure is planned for today.

We looked at weather and it will be a nice start with a beam reach and winds in the teens but then we will get becalmed. The hard part about this is that the swell can make it uncomfortable. We also decided to buy an a la carte forecast from the Weather Routing Institute. They too agreed with our forecast and suggested we wait 4 more days. The difficult part about this is weather a week out is not reliable and we could either get into trouble with too much wind on the cape as well as another ridge of low wind at some point in time. All four of us made the decision that we getting around the cape safely was very important and we had wind now. We recognize we will get becalmed, maybe hurl up some food and need some scopolamine patches and Zofran which we have plenty but waiting with no guarantees seemed not favorable either.

IF IT GOING TO HAPPEN, IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN OUT THERE!!

The tracker allows me to add post-it notes now thanks to Predict Wind. So I have added that feature. Somehow when I did this it erased all our old tracks ( Seattle down and even as far South as Zihuatenejo) which I was sad about but PW is trying to resurrect these. In the meantime, enjoy the notes and hopefully include “ Large yellowtail on the line!” or “ Large dorado for dinner today”, “Broad reach with 20 knots and making >100 miles a day”

The passage is 2558 miles so we will have some time together!! Podcasts downloaded - check

Music downloaded- check

Kindle books and audiobooks downloaded - check

Fuel, water, FOOD - SO MUCH FOOD for 4 hungry people! check

Follow along for the ride @

https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/SVSoulstice

“Life was meant for great adventures and close friends”

Wapiti