We had 10 days in Marina Cortez before our reserved month was up, so we spent it cleaning. In addition to a thorough outside wash of Neos, I cleaned blankets, pillows, and rugs. We hired a local called “Pollo” to give the outside a wax job. Pollo’s actual name is Jesus, but he said that there were too many Jesuses around, so he adopted the nickname. Not a lot of “Pollos” out there. He suggested a different product to us; a sealant/conditioner put out by Big White. We are pretty impressed with the results. He works on another boat during the day and then comes to NEOS at about 5pm and works for a couple of hours until it gets dark. Mexico celebrates Mother’s Day on the Friday before our Sunday celebration. Pollo made mention that he should go see his Mother in Magdalena Bay but he didn’t want to let us down. We convinced him that he should make the trip, thinking that he still had plenty of time to finish the job if he worked all day Sunday. Well, he ended up having car trouble and didn’t get back until Monday. So he hired a helper, Ulysses, aka “Gordo”. The two of them did quite a good job finishing up the hulls. They weren’t able to get under the salon between the hulls, so that will be my job once the water warms up a bit.
Meanwhile, the chain showed up. The delivery man tried to have us pay again, but Rosie in the office helped me show that we had paid for the round trip. He finally understood the paperwork I had and let us have the chain. They must have parked the truck about 10 blocks away, but finally I saw his young helper pushing a dolly down the sidewalk to our marina. The poor kid was really struggling but there’s not much help you can provide with a dolly. The chain looked fabulous and Rog spent a day marking the 50 foot lengths and preparing it for reattachment to the chain locker. The day we were going to get the chain from the dock to the chain locker via dinghy, the dinghy motor refused to start. We still were able to use the dinghy to move the chain, but we had to give Sea Otter Jim a shout to help us with the outboard. He came by a few hours later and assessed the situation. The diagnosis was a probable salt-locked drive shaft which required some dismantling of the lower part of the outboard. Jim was leaving for San Carlos and would be gone for a week, so we arranged for him to pick it up that afternoon before he left and then send us an email when it was ready to be picked up. This way, we could still leave for Caleta Lobos and spend a week or so. We did another grocery run, had a final ice cream, and pulled out of the marina during the tide change in flat calm waters. Finally, after almost six months of being anchored in La Paz, we were back at home in Caleta Lobos.
We jumped in the water and took a quick swim as soon as we arrived in Lobos. The water was pretty refreshing and felt great. May and June are the months of the coromuels in the La Paz area. These are winds that kick up overnight and usually only blow about 15 knots but can pipe up to 20 or 25 knots sometimes. The winds have a cool tang to them, so it makes the evenings cool and pleasant and the energy banks full. During the day, the temps get up to the high 90’s for a few hours before the winds start. All in all, gorgeous, gorgeous weather. The bobos love it as well. These are very small pesky winged insects that are absolutely obnoxious. They go for your eyes, nose, ears, mouth….and they don’t easily give up. They don’t bite though, so other than being annoying, it is bearable. I wear a hat that has a net sewn into it when I work outside. Once the winds pick up, the bugs leave.
Less than a week after we arrived in Caleta, I got an email from Shawna, a gal I had communicated with months ago. She has a home in British Columbia she was offering to trade for Neos. She was in La Paz with her partner for a few days and wondered if we could connect. I suggested that they come to Balandra Bay to meet us. Without a dinghy, Rog would pick them up in the kayak so I recommended that they be prepared to get wet.
The next day, we arranged to meet them at 3pm on the beach. After lunch, we left Caleta and anchored in Balandra. By 3:30, Shawna and Fernando were aboard. Rog had figured it would take 4 full round trips in the kayak to get them to Neos and then back to the beach to go home. Fernando did his best to help out and swam almost halfway to NEOS on the trip to us, then tried to swim back when they left. All in all, Rog still made about 3 round trips. He got his exercise for the day. Shawna and Fernando were absolutely delightful and spent almost 3 hours aboard. They have wonderful plans for Neos and they both seemed to fall in love with her. If anyone can pull the project together, I think Shawna can. We will see! We don’t like to stay overnight in Balandra so we headed back to Caleta and were settled by 7pm.
After the next weekend, we headed back to La Paz to pick up our outboard. Jim brought it out to NEOS and helped Rog get it on the dinghy. Rog pulled the starter rope and almost fell off the dinghy. It was so much easier to pull and it engaged on the first pull. Success!
Working around some high winds, we spent the next few days doing our errands, reprovisioning, and having the requisite ice creams. With the cooler mornings, I convinced Rog to clean out the storage locker we have. It was actually pretty easy to do and we got things organized in less than an hour. We made a trip to Sears, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, the pharmacy, the grocery store and tried to pick up my prescription at the hospital. This is a prescription that I got in mid April but the hospital pharmacy did not have it in stock. Well they still don’t have it in stock. Good thing it is not something I can’t live without. Oh well…it is free, provided by the Mexican health insurance that we have. So I can’t complain.
The end of May arrived and we looked forward to returning to Caleta Lobos.
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