We're still here in La Paz, enjoying the cruising life. We have been here now since 28 December, New Years weekend was quite eventful with a combination of strong winds (30+ knot gusts) and high tides (which meant strong currents). We spent most of the weekend in the cockpit watching the boats "sail" at anchor as they were pushed around by the wind and currents which half the time are going in opposite directions. With that much sustained wind, the harbor was very wavy and the boat rocked and rolled all day and night. Fortunately all the boats around us were well-anchored and there were no boat kisses.
We are here in La Paz waiting for our new mainsail, battens, and sail tracks to arrive. Getting stuff ordered and delivered here is much much more involved. Our mainsail shipped from Sri Lanka to San Diego to a freight company who arranged the customs formalities and delivered right to the marina. A bit of a faff, but pretty seamless given the potential for problems. It is frustrating to our lingering land-based sense of how things are supposed to work, so we are using it as an exercise in empathy and patience.
We got our watermaker installed earlier this week. A watermaker is basically a reverse osmosis filter like many people have in their homes. On the boat, it takes in sea water and output pure freshwater. It's quite complicated and involves 5 different plumbing connections, a very powerful and noisy pump, and the actual filters are over a meter long. We did a bunch of carpentry to install them under the floor in the galley. Having a water maker along with our 125+ gallon water tanks means that we should never have a fresh water shortage no matter where we are and for how long.
The other highlight of the week is learning celestial navigation. We have Shelby's dad's sextant onboard and a local expert volunteer does classes twice a week at the local cruisers' club's facility. As she told us, this is a great skill to learn because the first thing the authorities will do in times of extreme trouble will be to shut down the internet and GPS. We'll be able to jump on our boat and sail away with our sextant and our mechanical watches.
Calla Lily now has fans, literally. Boats who travel the tropics need fans to keep air moving in their interiors. We mounted 3 of them this week so we are almost all set for hot weather.
Heading to shore with trash, laundry, recycling, and laptops
You just can't capture how rough the seas are. It was worse than it looks here.
Water maker membranes under the galley floor.
Every project seems to mean taking our house apart.