We’ve spent the last month cleaning and fixing things those little things on the boat that have bothered us over the last year. When you’re cruising, on the move constantly, it makes it very hard to fix those small details that crop up, especially when you’re in remote places at anchor and have limited access to shore. Typically, cruisers leave the non-essential things when they are waiting out hurricane season where access to supplies is easier. One of the things I love about Mexico is that people will always find a way of fixing something before throwing it away and buying something new.

This is very unlike our society, the ultimate throw away culture. Cell phones and clothing are an example of this. I think back on how many pairs of shoes I housed, and it wasn’t as many as some people I know, but I’ll admit to owning at least 15 pairs (and that’s pretty modest for your average modern urban female). That’s ridiculous. Who needs 15 pairs of shoes? I don’t think I ever took a pair into a cobbler for repair. I can’t even think of a cobbler in downtown Toronto (doesn’t mean there isn’t one, but it just wouldn’t have occurred to me).

So anyway I was talking about boats.

We’ve had this white vinyl helm seat that we always thought was a bit scruffy. When we bought the boat, the seat was worn, but at the time it didn’t bother us too much, so when we had our canvas replaced in expensive Florida, we didn’t include the seat replacement. We had the lofty ideal of buying a new helm seat. But we never needed to do that. What we needed was to get the cushions recovered, and this is exactly what we did here in Mexico. Instead of buying new, at a cost of $250.00, we recovered it for $25.00 and now it looks like a brand new seat, at least to us it does. Very satisfying.

I suppose it would be even better if I had my own sewing machine, and sewed it myself, but the people here are so skilled and so fast, there’s no way I could match what they did and for so cheap.

Having buffed and polished and fixed all of those little things on the boat, we will be moving her to San Diego this week that is if the fog ever lifts. At the moment, we are socked in under a cloud of mist. You can hear the sound of foghorns calling out in the distance.

Fogged In at Marina Coral.

New helm seat cushions and freshly cleaned, leather-covered helm.

I’ve spent the last few weeks refinishing and oiling all of the teak on the boat.

When you think of Mexico, wine country is probably not one of the first things that comes to mind. Unbeknownst to most, Mexico has the oldest wineries in North America. In 1599, the conquistadors, having depleted their own wine supplies brought vines over from Europe and began producing their own wine. Those early vineyards were so successful that Spanish exports of wine to the New World began to plummet. So in 1699 Charles II prohibited the making of wine in the New World, especially in Mexico, except for use in the church. This law remained in effect all the way up to Mexican Independence.

The Valle de Guadalupe, which is where 90% of Mexican wines are produced, is home to 200 boutique wineries. The wine industry is not as commercial as their Napa Vally neighbour to the North, but the climate is similar and some of the wines are fantastic. Many have been winning international wine competitions.

The wines in the region have also been given a boost due to the ‘artisanal wine movement’, which is popular with the foodies as of late. An artisanal wine means that it is produced in low quantities using sustainable farming methods. Most of the wineries in the Baja are family-run operations.

Ensenada has been slowly increasing its infrastructure around its wine industry by setting up ‘La Escuelita’, where wine guru Hugo D’Acosta’s provides aspiring vintners with hands-on experience and support. There are also several courses on offer at the local university that specialize in the wine industry.

For the last three weeks the region has been celebrating the annual “La Vendimia” or the harvest in Spanish. The days have been filled with events: dinners with live music, paella competitions, street fiestas and of course wine tasting.

What a jewel of an area, and completely unexpected. I bet most people back home think we are dodging bullets and honestly, it couldn’t be further from the truth.

We set out to the Valle de Guadalupe with Lola and Manny, who thankfully have a car. You definitely need one to find some of these places, but driving around in the beautiful countryside is half the fun anyway.

As you drive through the desert past the dramatic boulder strewn cliffs, sycamore trees, the scenery gradually gives way to groves of olive trees, and rows and rows of grape vines. Finding the little fincas around the area can be a challenge, as there are no large signs and to find a place, you typically make sure you’re on the right road and then watch your kilometer mark.

Manny and Lola have done this before, and the first winery they took us to was called Bibayoff. Russian immigrants, who settled in Baja California in 1906, using the vine clippings that they brought with them from Europe, established the winery. We tried four different wines here: a Chenin Blanc, a Muscatel, and a Cabernet-Zinfandel (80/20 blend). The Muscatel was an interesting wine. Normally Muscat grapes are quite sweet, but this one wasn’t sweet at all; it was as if the sweetness was stripped out, leaving the characteristic musty taste of the grape. I immediately thought of food pairings with this wine, particularly a fruit desert of some sort.

I wasn’t too keen on both of the zinfandel blends. They seemed very dry for my tastes, after a sip, my tongue felt as though it were covered in fur (I’m sure the wine snobs have a term for this) and they also had a rather strong bitter aftertaste which Chris and I find lingering in the background of most of the Cabernet Sauvignon’s in the region. The aftertaste is not necessarily unpleasant, but is something that we noticed amoungst the Baja reds.

An article I read about Baja California wines suggests that the water table in the region is somewhat salty and that this is what leaves this distinctive aftertaste. But at Vina de Liceaga, another winery we visited, we discussed this issue with vintner; Alexandro who explained to us that almost all of the Cabernets in the region are aged in oak barrels for a very long time, most for 20 months, sometimes more. He explained to us that the tannins from the oak barrels are responsible for that characteristic aftertaste. Alexandro also showed us what he meant by providing four different reds to taste, each aged at different times. My favorite was the ‘Melvin’, a pure Cabernet Sauvignon aged for only six months. Beautifully balanced, fruity and light, which makes for a great sipping wine. This one stood out for me on this tour.

Another great wine we tasted was at the JC Bravo winery. This is a true boutique, family-run, small-scale operation. Juan Carlos still works as a teacher by day. He started out in the wine business by providing grapes to other wineries, but he later decided to try his hand at producing his own wine. He studied under Hugo D’Acosta and soon thereafter started producing his own bottles.

The four of us arrived at the Bravo family finca. A horse was tied up to an olive tree, the ranch style house looked locked up tight. Thinking they were closed, we began walking back to the car. Juan Carlos though, came running out and opened up his tasting salon just for us. You have to love Mexican hospitality!

J.C. Bravo makes two wines: a white using the varietal Palomino and a red using pure Carignon grapes. The Carignon is known as a blending grape, but Juan Carlos has produced a pure version using only this grape. And what a wine. Both Chris and I loved this one. It’s a pretty rich, full bodied wine, one you’d have with a good sirloin dinner, instead of sipping. But wow, what an explosion of flavours.

Juan Carlos only makes 750 cases of this wine and all of them are spoken for by high-end resorts around Mexico and the U.S.

We are keen to try out a few more wineries. Tonight, Santo Tomas is having a fiesta in the centre of town.

Just last night Chris and I were remarking on how all of the marine animals, from the sea gulls to the dolphins seem to be extra-large in the Pacific.  Chris and I are heading to San Diego to pick up a few boat parts and I noticed that the beaches in San Diego or all of Southern California have shark warnings in effect. They are not telling you to avoid the water, no, nothing like that, but to “exercise caution and use your own judgment when engaging in water-based activities”.   A 20-inch dorsal fin was spotted just 50 yards from a popular beach and a kayaker reported a 15-foot white shark. That’s a big shark.

Great white sharks in these waters are nothing new, as the female great whites migrate along the Baja and Southern California coast to rear their young at this time of year.

Here’s a HD video taken by surfer, Chuck Patterson, just off the beach at San Onofre of two great whites circling his board. Beautiful animals. I’d really like to see a huge shark like that — from the comfort of a boat of course.

Me My Shark and I

What lurks below. From Chuck Patterson’s website . Check it out, he has some awesome footage of surfing and sharks.

We missed this museum while we were in Managua. It had just opened for the 30th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution. According to this article, the museum show cases Daniel Ortega as the sole revolutionary, nixing out everyone else who may have been involved in the Revolution.

At museum, Nicaragua president’s favorite masterpiece is himself

The cult of personality surrounding Daniel Ortega is on full display at the Museum of the Sandinista Victory. Critics accuse him of sidelining what was a collective movement.

A man walks past a mural of Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega in Managua, Nicaragua. The president has built a national homage to himself in the capital. (Oswaldo Rivas, Reuters / August 9, 2010)

By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times

August 9, 2010

Reporting from Managua, Nicaragua —

Go to the Museum of the Sandinista Victory, and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is everywhere. There he is on the northern front of the revolutionary war — and the southern front, and the western front.

Ortega has Forrest Gumped himself onto all the major battle lines of the struggle that dethroned dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979, carried the Sandinista movement to power and radically changed Nicaraguan history.

Read the full story here >>

It’s always sad to see a boat up on the rocks.  We witnessed this boat a ground and taking on water just behind the marina where we are staying.  The boat looks like a total loss, unfortunately.  I have no idea how he ended up on the rocks, and according to the marina manager he was actually on his way into the marina.  Sailing a little too close to the rocks? Or perhaps a mechanical failure?

The Port Captain was guarding his boat, so that it didn’t get looted.

UPDATE: I heard on the Cruiser’s Net this morning that the skipper attempted to enter the harbour at 2:00 am, and made a navigation error by misreading the buoy lights.  The hull is now completely submerged with only the mast still above water.

PS We finally make it to California (albeit Baja California) and it’s freezing here!  La Nina is creating havoc with the world wide weather.   Every day has been fog and mostly overcast skies.  I’m sure you all feel real sorry for me.

The Polynesians cross vast oceans without instruments, using only star maps that are committed to memory at an early age and which are reinforced through song, oral myth and conversing with the sea spirits.  This article is an obituary of a Polynesian navigator who was commissioned by the Polynesian Voyaging society to see if it was possible to navigate the open water from Hawaii to Tahiti without instruments. After proving that the migration of Polynesians to Hawaii was no accident, Mau Piailug then went on to teach Polynesian Celestial Navigation to Hawaiians.

You can read the obituary here >>>

(thanks Kevin!)

Addendum: Poking around on the net, I found this diagram of a Star compass which was used by the Polynesians as a teaching aid. Not to be carried on board but to commit to memory. It depicts the rising and setting of the major constellations.  (from the Polynesian Voyaging Society ) I don’t know what I’d do without my instruments to be honest. I know how to take a noon sight, but that’s about it! And for the coastal voyaging that we’ve done, a noon sight is not that useful. Generally one has to watch where the rocks and sometimes uncharted islands are (those still exist in Mexico believe it or not). I am in total awe of the early explorers, who with no map came up these coasts and entered unknown harbours, pillaging and slaughtering, but that’s another story.

Even though I’ve been away from Canada for coming up to three years this fall, actually longer if you count my two years in India as well, I still turn to news in my home country first. I’ve been away, but Toronto is my home. I was mortified to see the G20 protests unfold and the police state that resulted. I read about massive random arrests and also a few middle of the night arrests while people were sleeping (turned out to be mistaken identity in that one, even though the police busted down the door and pulled the husband out of his bed). I couldn’t believe that this was happening in my sleepy, home town, which usually boasts a murder rate of between 60 and 100 people a year, this rate, in a city of close to 5 million (give or take).

I had always been a resident of downtown Toronto, and loved the fact that Central Toronto was very much a small town in a big city. If you lived downtown, you stayed downtown. We used to joke to one another that you would never go north of Bloor, as it was as good as going to the boonies; no one ever needed to go ‘up there’ (an attitude that makes me flinch now when I think about it). But as I sat behind my computer screen reading the news and watching the footage of the summit as it played out, I could barely recognize my city and just couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like during the security build-up and the ensuing rioting that took place. I’m sure you all are aware of what went down in Toronto better than I.

Perhaps I too might have been arrested walking back home from work?

Even more distressing, I turned to Google news a few days ago and discovered that Kelly Pflug-Back, the 21-year-old daughter of a good friend of mine had been arrested and charged with serious crimes related to the G20 summit protests. She was singled out on the G20 most wanted list as a facilitator of the damage that took place in the downtown core.

I have known Kelly for the better part of her twenty-one years, and I know for a fact that she is an intensely passionate and intelligent young woman who does not just sit around expecting the world to come to her. Kelly’s a voracious reader and I remember one poignant visit from her and her mother at my place in Kensington Market. The topic always turned to books and when I asked her what she was reading, she replied, “Oh, I’ve been going through the existentialists lately.” Kelly had just turned 13.

Her early reading habits have certainly paid off because at the age of 14 she won third place in the “This Magazine Great Literary Hunt”, a very well respected contest that attracts poets from across the country (usually adults). That she won this contest at such a young age says something about the sort of depth and feeling of which she is capable. After winning this contest, she has since published her work in many more literary magazines and anthologies – publishing venues that some poets work for years to get published in. In 2007 at the ripe age of 18, she won second place in another prestigious contest, this time with the Canadian League of Poets in their Poetic Licence Contest for Canadian Youth. And this month she’s won first place in yet another: the Will Albrecht Literary Prize for young writers (in California). In short, this young woman is a gifted writer and as it turns out, an equally talented visual artist as well. She is currently enrolled in the Fine Arts Program at Guelph University.

Not only does she spend a great deal of time working on her poetry and her fine arts degree, but she also manages to find the time to work with street youth and the homeless, by providing counseling, nutrition advice, and also organizing and serving hot meals to the homeless every Sunday in the town square in Guelph. On top of all this, she’s been heavily involved in the Hanlon Creek development as an environmental activist. If anything Kelly has impressive time management skills.

The public having learned where to project their outrage are shocked, and the comments on both of the CBC articles and on every other report since then reflect a kind of public lynching that one would have expected in another era. She hasn’t even been tried in the court of law, yet in most people’s minds, she’s already guilty, and is labeled as such through comments in the media.

The Internet has truly evolved into the small global village that McLuhan predicted years ago. It’s gone beyond that and has become the global creepy small town, where vigilantism, usually anonymous is both acceptable and a viable form of entertainment. Recently, an 11 year old girl was attacked by a group of such vigilantes to the point where all of her parent’s confidential information was displayed, resulting in the girl having to be put in a safe house, under police protection. The moral majority, so called ‘white hat hackers’ on 4ch@n thought her parents should have been monitoring her Internet activities more closely. A New York Times article, “China’s Cyberposse” goes into some depth on how Internet vigilantism has reached a near frenzy in some parts of China. Called ‘Human Flesh Search Engines’, ‘netizens’ out adulterers and anybody else they deem undesirable, by publicly humiliating them, forcing people out of their jobs and sometimes worse.

I find myself cringing when I read the comments in the Canadian news. They are never that interesting, and tend to be very reactionary. I hate to admit this, but I find myself turning to other news outlets like the New York Times or even Huffington Post, more and more, where there is an actual discussion going on in the comments. Compare those discussions with comments made about Kelly’s arrest. Well, no, don’t, or you might become as disillusioned as I am.

Here is a link to some of Kelly’s poetry published online in Ditch Magazine | Poetry That Matters.

Yeah, Vancouver! Hope the right decision is arrived at.  Whales don’t belong in captivity. There must be better ways to get to know them (besides our crazy sailing trip that is)! So cool this issue is even being debated. Lead the way Canada.

Should the Vancouver Aquarium keep Whales and Dolphins?

Time for beer or wine or both

Hundreds of friends (coming from all sides) came to visit us along the way. I will never tire of this. They seem excited to see you, rushing over to get a look at you, as curious and excited to see us as we are of them.  We also saw at least a dozen whales (Sei whales? and Fins), some curious, swimming close to the boat, much to my chagrin, and checking us out.

I’m going to sound new age, but I have no other way to explain it: when a whale decides to pursue you, despite your change of direction, there is this feeling of presence, a sentience that I have not felt with any other other animal before, including monkeys, whom I’m also very fond of. It’s not just their size, which is formidable, but rather an energy that overtakes you (ok, that’s pretty new age) and this reminder of  how we know so little about these ancient creatures who roam the sea.   Even though whales coming so close was unnerving at first, I have to say that after a while I sensed that they just wanted to see us, see what we were, all around, a very profound experience.

Two nights ago the weather moderated enough for us to make another hop up the coast.  For this leg our main concern was getting past the island of Cedros.  There’s some controversy amoungst the sailing community on how to traverse this island. Some sailors take the inside route, enjoying the lee of the island from the northwest winds for 40 miles or so, and then round the point, while others, take the western side or the outside route, giving you six miles distance from the funnelling accelerated winds that blow off the cape and also gives you a better sailing upwind sailing angle.  Given our luck with capes, we decided to take the outside route and I’m glad we did. We didn’t feel any of those cape effects, whereas others who opted to take the inside route at the same time as us, endured 30 knots of wind and steep, churned up seas.

Once you round the island, it’s about 70 miles of open ocean, across the Baja’s largest bight (Bahia de Vizcaino) back to the peninsula. For us, the crossing was mercifully light with winds less than 20 knots, but we never get off that easy, the waves and the accompanying wind chop were pretty substantial, which made for a bouncy crossing. I’ve forgotten how pleasant and peaceful it is to sail downwind.

We made it in one piece, but there is a gale expected tomorrow (sustained 35 knots out of the NW), and so we are anchored in San Quitin at the moment, about 110 miles from Ensenada. Although we didn’t make it all the way to Ensenada, we are relieved that we’ve passed all of the major Baja milestones and that from here it should be a relatively easy beat.

I mentioned this guide book in passing, but I want to cite it properly. This book has been invaluable! Not only is it informative, but it’s also pretty funny. * Jim brings a little ray of sunshine to an otherwise god awful passage.

Capt. Jim Elfers, Baja Bash II

You can order it here: Baja Bash II

*I’d quote some classics from the book, but you really have to experience this to get it, I think.