Isla San Francisco – Anchorage at Sunset (and somebody else’s boat)

We were fortunate enough to spend November and a good chunk of December 2017 in La Paz. We were even more fortunate enough to spend two weeks “in the islands”, enjoying some new anchorages and some terrific sailing. The sailing was book ended by repairs and preparations for “the puddle jump” which is tentatively scheduled for “mid-March” from La Paz.

We were joined for 3 weeks of this time by long time adventure friends Vic and Linda Jensen. They are keen sailors and always up for a challenge in the great outdoors. Vic will join us for the jump as the third crew member and Linda will become the fourth crew member somewhere in French Polynesia.

We abandoned the puddle jump plan in March 2017 because of a nagging concern that we and the boat were not ready (enough). This provided additional time for repairs, installations and sailing, all of which was good. At this juncture the boat is that much closer to being ready enough with only a few things left to be done. These include new bottom paint, the installation of an additional automatic bilge pump, a new counterpoise for the SSB/HF radio and possibly a new anchor roller.

Current plans are to park the boat in Tahiti in July for a yet to be determined amount of time. We will come back later to further explore French Polynesia, Fiji, Tonga etc and eventually make our way to New Zealand.

Last year we installed a watermaker (Spectra Ventura 150), new portlights, a new life raft, an IridiumGo, a Vesper XB8000 AIS, new house batteries (2 x Lifeline AGM 4D) and an Engel freezer. We also replaced the foam in the V-Berth with some really comfy memory stuff (after an initial failure of “tortilla” foam) and had some cabinetry built and installed in the salon to replace plastic bins. Of course all kinds of broken and breaking things were also replaced.

For example, the first attempt to install the new Campbell Sailor prop led to all kinds of grief with the diesel injection pump and injectors – it took about 4 months to sort the problem out but it is now sorted! The Campbell Sailor will be reinstalled while Marathon is out for bottom paint.

Fixing the nearly 15 year old Southern Pacific RIB also failed so we now have an AB Hypalon Rib, the acquisition of which is a major story.

We will be back in La Paz at the end of January with a long list of things to do but importantly as well, a list of anchorages and ports that we still want to visit before we leave Mexico.