To San Carlos!

As we were working our way up the coast, we were keeping our eyes peeled for a weather window that would make for a relatively painless crossing.  We eventually found one and planned our sailing to be able to hit it.

We spent one more day sailing north and it was a slow, easy day so we took the liberty of launching the superhighway mid-way through and capturing some pictures of the Rascal under sail.  These are the first pictures I've ever taken of her sailing along, so it was pretty exciting for me!

The jumping-off point was decided to be Punta Pulpita (also known as little octopus point) which was a big black rock outcropping that created a couple of protective bays.  There was a day of downtime before our weather window, so we got to do some exploring around in that area.

A gorgeous sunset / moonrise combo started the night out right, and after a good night's sleep, we awoke ready to climb the behemoth that was towering above us.

It was a bit of a long climb, with lots of loose sand, frustrating false summits, and lots of arachnids, but the views from the top were spectacular!

We spent the rest of the day's energy wrapping up a few more boat chores and preparing things for the crossing.  True to our weather report, we got a little taste of 'sailor's delight' just before dinner (which consisted of cheese burger dumplings and a bottle of red wine).

The crossing ended up being pretty casual.  We left early one morning, sailed all day and all night, and arrived the following day at around 10am in San Carlos.  We were close hauled for almost all of it, but the wind and the waves were fairly casual and consistent.  We managed to catch a bunch of dorado and we also saw sea turtles and several dolphins way off shore during the crossing.

Before the voyage, Autumn became involved with an organization called Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation.  They're an organization that "collects and disseminates environmental data to catalyze conservation initiatives worldwide" and Autumn decided to help contribute to their study of microplastics in the world's oceans.  This involved us taking 1 liter water samples at a number of places along our journey, as well as data about when we took them, where we were, what the water temperature was, etc.  Then we send the samples in for them to analyze the number of tiny plastic particles that are present.  

As you can imagine, as the world continues to use more and more plastic products, bits of the packaging, bits of fibers from clothes, and actual small chunks of plastic products end up in the ocean.  Many of these get eat/absorbed somewhere in the food chain and its affecting oceans in a massive way.  Even in a place as underpopulated as the Sea of Cortez, we see tons of floating plastic bottles, discarded bags, and old fishing floats both in the sea and on the beach.

We had a gorgeous sunrise as we approached San Carlos, and we knew we were in the right zone when we spotted the infamous Tetas De Cabra (Goat Tits) Mountains lit up in the morning light.  Tough to imagine anything more majestic than that!  Traffic got pretty thick as we pulled into the harbor, and we saw several shrimpers steaming up and down the 

The "Tetas de Cabra" really living up to their name!

After being in tiny Mexican towns and out in the sea for such a long time, the opulence of San Carlos got our attention really quick.  San Carlos has lots of tourism from the states, and as a result there are lots of fancy homes, condos, and luxurresorts around.  

We checked into the marina without incident and promptly located a few cold beers.  After a few weeks without showers, we decided a little bit of luxury wouldn't hurt us and Autumn decided to spring for a night at the hotel that overlooked the marina.  She must've given the guy at the front counter a wink, because he offered her the half-off deal for first time customers and before we knew it, we had taken real showers and were luxuriating in the first air conditioning we'd encountered in weeks.  It felt like a million bucks.

We had been doing all of our cooking on the boat and realized that we both had an incredible hunger for a good old fashioned roadside roast chicken.  We ambled back down to the lobby and Autumn inquired if such a place existed in San Carlos.  The front desk man calmly smiled, looked at his partner who also smiled, looked back at Autumn who was smiling, and said, without hesitation, "Pollo Lopez!"  It was immediately clear that this place was something special, so we went to the bus stop and caught a ride into town.  We were borderline giddy when we arrived and we smelled the glorious aromas from the window of the bus before we even spotted it.  It was along the main drag through town and there was a big, sturdy brick oven set up in front of a small concrete building.  No dining room, no tables, no bullshit.  Just delicious, juicy roast chicken.

In addition to the whole roast chicken, each order comes with potatos, chiles, and onions that have been roasting in delicious chicken drippings for hours.  Everything gets roasted with locally harvested mesquite logs and it comes with salsa and a bunch of corn tortillas to serve it on.  We immediately brought it back to our air conditioned room, gorged ourselves for a half an hour and feel into a deep food coma that lasted for the rest of the day.

The sunset view from our frosted window with the marina and the Tetas in the background

 We spent the next day running errands, doing laundry and getting superhighway recomissioned.  During the passage her outboard got tilted the wrong way and she wouldn't start.  After lots of poking, prodding, and about a thousand pulls on the starter cord, I finally realized I needed to clean out the carb and replace the spark plug.  It was Sunday, so stores weren't open and we also couldn't inquire about the possibility of a haul out. 

On Monday morning, we scheduled the haul out for that afternoon at 3pm.  They use a huge hydraulic trailer to lift boats in and out and then drive them a 1/4 mile down the road to the boat yard.  However, there were two boats with engine trouble blocking the ramp, so true to Mexican form, they said, "Manana manana," and we got rescheduled for the next morning, with assurances that we would get a "good deal" for our trouble.  The following morning came along and out the Rascal came, without any difficulties.  

She was in the blocks by 830 and we got to work examining her.  There were the obvious areas where the sand had rubbed bottom paint off when she was beached during hurricane Odile.  In addition to these areas, some paint had chipped off down on the bottom of the keel and there was lead showing through.  Rascal's keel is full length with a cutaway forefoot and the lead portion sits along that leading edge.  We started chipping away around that zone and found that whatever fairing compound they used over the lead portion wasn't adhering very well.  We chipped until we couldn't get it to chip any more and talked for a while with the yard manager about the best course of action.  

He advocated for an epoxy layer to fill and provide a waterproof barrier, followed by an epoxy primer (in the zones that got sanded off during the storm), and finally a fresh coat of bottom paint.  That made sense to us, and we weren't entirely excited to sand toxic paint (and I only have a 4 1/2 inch orbital sander), so we decided to let the yard workers tackle everything but the final coat of bottom paint.  That afternoon, my good buddy Joe arrived from Colorado, laden down with all sorts of goodies that I asked him to carry down as well as a big, awesome, LOUD speaker system that he designed from scratch.  Gone is the era of tunelessness on the Rascal.  Joe was kind enough to usher in an era of dance parties, John Mellencamp, and reggae tunes.

The yard workers were slow to start, but they did a great job and while they were working, we lent a hand where we could.  We also installed the speaker system much to everyone's delight.  Last, but not least, we drank enough tecate to choke a horse.

We selected a lovely shade of blue for the Rascal's bottom and managed to get two thin coats of it.  I'm of the opinion that it looks much better than the original rusty red, and she is definitely faster in dark blue.  Autumn and Joe were kind enough to pitch in with the painting and it all went pretty quick.

We celebrated such a monumental achievement by poaching the hotel swimming pool and going out for fish tacos at JJ's.  We were slow to get up the following morning, but a big bacon-and-egg breakfast fortified us, and we rallied shortly thereafter to reprovision at the local grocery store.  They plopped us back in the drink at 11 o'clock, with my wallet a touch lighter than it had been, and we were off to dive back into the cruising life!

We didn't know it at the time, but the next week would involve the catching of a blue footed booby, a show-down in Martini Cove, and another THREE chickens from Pollo Lopez.