Crowded parking lot!



After a great sail down the coast we returned to the branch (by vehicles and trailers) and took everyone out for a sail on Confetti. The weather is finally starting to warm up and the days are getting longer!

Dan sailed Confetti 60nm down the coast to meet our course on day 6, in a beautiful bay called San Basilio. He spent 2 nights with us at anchor and then took 2 days to make the trek back upwind in a "norte."

Liz Hammond was on the trip to finish becoming a NOLS instructor, which she successfully did!




Getting ready to sail off the anchor, reefed down in some strong wind.



Our good friend "Dooglaz" Knapp.

The 10-day sail clinic was for NOLS instructors from other skill areas wanting to get into the sailing program. We had a nice small group of 7 people.

Our sail clinic departing from Coyote Bay in the Drascombe Longboats to head down the coast for 10 days.

Self-portrait by Dan of him squeezing into a very small space and contorting his body to fix our bilge pumps. Success!!

The blogmaster started work today on a 10-day instructor sail training trip. She will return on Feb. 19th. In the meantime, Dan will be doing projects on the boat (fixing bilge pumps, continuing work on the engine, and a million other things). We do make sure to have some fun, though, in between working on the boat and working for NOLS!

Dan returning the new branch dog, "Chelsea," to shore after she tried to swim after us in the dinghy all the way out to our boat.

Thankfully she befriended some folks heading out for a Drascombe sail.

Rich and Sheri Crowe, who built Confetti in 1989, launched a sistership, their new Farr 44 last month! We are hoping to get the two boats together sometime next month when they sail, "Tabu" down here. You can see pics at:
http://www.latitude38.com/LectronicLat/2007/0107/Jan19/Jan19.html#anchor463502

Our friends, Colin and Pablo, on their way back from a spearfishing trip in a Drascombe.

It's been rainy and cold here in Baja.

But the full moon last night was so beautiful as seen from a little boat ride we took.

And the clouds are clearing out, as the north wind begins to blow again today. Dan has been in the field teaching an alumni NOLS course this week. He comes back Sunday and we'll have a few days together before I head out on a course.

We'll be heading out in the field on a short NOLS alumni course at the end of this week. Here is a shot of the Drascombe Longboats, the 22-foot yawls that we expedition down the Baja coast in, and the NOLS group we taught in November.

The view from our mooring in Coyote Bay, looking at the NOLS Branch and across the Bay of Conception.

Our friend Liz Hammond (incoming director of the NOLS Mexico Branch) and Trini and Concha, sisters who have worked for NOLS Mexico for more than 30 years!

We've been working on the boat all week doing projects. Dan has had the engine almost completely apart and has had ennormous success in solving our overheating problem. We continue to chip away at the "LIST," which is difficult in that usually when you cross one item off two more get added. But we are feeling good about the boat and plan to have her ready for the Pacific "puddle jump" by the end of March. And when not working we've been having some fun visitors aboard!

A little Texas Hold'Em aboard Confetti:


YES or NO? Should Dan wear white socks with his Keens?

All is well aboard Confetti! We had to make a quick whirlwind trip back to San Francisco to close on our house sale, but we're back in Coyote Bay now ready to attack a bunch of boat projects. The most pressing one is the engine, which has been overheating on us. So we are slowly troubleshooting and trying to figure out if we'll need to go south to LaPaz to hire a marine diesel mechanic.

We go to work again in a couple weeks for NOLS - a week-long alumni course. If you're somewhere freezing now, thinking how toasty we must be in sunny Baja, think again! It's overcast and freezing here, and we're wearing hoodies and down jackets. But the clouds are actually a stunning backdrop to the desert mountains, and the break from the sun is nice on the skin!

Jim and Carol were such adventurers!

Finally at the hotel!

A Zuiches Christmas

Well it was a windy Christmas in Baja!! Jim and Carol were troopers to come sailing with us in 30+knots of wind! They maintained a great attitude on the boat, although must have seriously wondered if we are crazy as water sprayed everywhere and we buried the rail with only a double-reefed main.

Hoping to take a hike in the desert on the first day of the Zuiches family Christmas trip, we sailed across the Bay of Conception to a protected anchorage. Unfortunately all we could do was sit on the boat and look up at the beautiful peaks and the deep cut arroyos with the rarely-visited cave paintings. No hiking would happen, as it was so windy we feared the dinghy would never make it to shore against the breeze.

We tried again on Christmas Eve and sailed to another anchorage to “hang on the hook” for the night. But it was so rough at anchor that it was difficult to enjoy the voice of Nat King Cole with the sound of wind shrieking through the rigging, and dinner rocking in the gimbaled oven. So we opted for a night sail back to the mooring before eating. Despite our comings and goings Santa still found the boat, and the merriment never stopped.

Christmas morning - fingers crossed - we shoved off early and sailed the 22 nm’s north to Punta Chivato, where Jim and Carol had a reservation at the gorgeous hotel Posada de las Flores, and D&D planned to stay on the boat anchored just in the lee of the hotel. After many hours of hard, soaking-wet, upwind sailing in 25-knots and steep seas, we came to within a few hundred yards of the hotel. So close to margaritas and tapas, but, sadly, engine problems meant that we couldn’t anchor safely. We ran back south putting up more and more sail area and making over 8 knots. Then we sailed onto our mooring sans engine (wishing we had practiced that particular maneuver when the engine was working!). Eleven hours and 45 nm’s of heavy weather sailing later we were back where we started. Not giving up though (!) we rowed ashore, hopped in the rental car and drove 1-1/2 hrs. down dark dusty unmarked roads to the hotel, and arrived just in time for Christmas dinner. Despite missing Joe, and putting up with the “Norte,” we all had a great time.

Happy New Year (Felize Ano Nuevo) from the Confetti!!

Jim and Carol pose to show the enormous size of the cardon cactus. Jim got this shot of Punta Chivato from the plane home.

We're back after a fabulous NOLS course. On our last day, after sailing Drascombe Longboats for a month, we took our entire course out sailing on Confetti. Talk about great crew!

Jim and Carol flew into Loreto yesterday (unfortunately Joe wasn't able to get out of Denver airport) and we are about to take them out sailing for a few days in a "Norte," which are the strong winter winds that blow in Baja. It won't be a white Christmas, per se, but there will be a lot of whitecaps (!) on the water, and maybe we'll even find a cardon cactus to decorate.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Confetti!

Danielle has a feature story in the Nov/Dec issue of WoodenBat Magazine on the "PT-15," a hot new sailing dinghy out of Port Townsend.

Now that we've made it to Mexico it's time to go to work. Confetti will be staying in Coyote Bay while we teach the sailing instructor's course for NOLS. After 35 days in the field, we'll be back on December 18th and ready for the Zuiches family to join us on board for Christmas. Many thanks for all the support!

After making such a long passage it was fun to go out last night for a casual sail in the bay with some NOLS friends. The last month on board has taught us so much about the boat!

Coyote Bay

Confetti is now safely moored in Coyote Bay, in the Bay of Conception, in front of the NOLS Branch. After some exciting upwind sailing in the Sea of Cortez with double-reefed main and storm jib we sailed down Conception Bay with the spinnaker flying and grins all around, knowing that we had completed the first leg of the journey. Going forward on the deck to reef (reduce sail area) is always an exciting adventure.

We stopped for one night in beautiful San Basilio, where some friends of ours were anchored with a NOLS course. They brought the little Drascombe Longboat out for a visit, which made Confetti look huge!

Systems

Even though Confetti is a "sailboat,"there are about a million other systems on board always requiring attention. The Volvo 3cyl. 43hp diesel inboard engine is one of those. We carry 100 gallons of fuel with us, which we consume at a rate of about 1-1/4 gallons/hour. Generally we can motor at 7-knots (nautical miles per hour), so we have the capability to motor roughly 560-nm's (the trip from San Francisco was about 1600).
Depending on how long the passage is we will motor when the wind is light or non-existent, but the engine is also really important for charging the batteries (we have 5 car size) when the solar panels can't keep up.

The batteries run all the navigation instruments and electronic equipment, the cabin and running lights (so other vessels can see us at night), the pressure water, refrigerator, watermaker (yes we can turn salt water into FRESH!!!!! at a rate of 12 gallons/hour), fans (it is hot here!), radar, VHF radio, HF radio and of course the stereo that we have our ipod plugged into. Managing our power consumption, keeping the batteries charged and making sure all systems are working properly is a big part of each day at sea.

Putting up the storm jib in a Sea of Cortez "norte" on our way to the Bay of Conception.