People in La Paz take their Christmas celebrations very seriously. City streets downtown have been closed all week to make room for stalls selling Christmas gifts and decorations and in the supermarket entire aisles are dedicated to Christmas chocolates and shiny toys.


We've been having a great time out at anchor, generally working in the mornings on our graduate applications and in the afternoons heading into town or working on boat projects. Our biggest project at the moment is our dodger. It's still in the works, but once we get it finalized we'll post more info and photos.

This afternoon I'm going to attempt to roast a 5lb prime rib in our boat-sized stove, this will be the first time I've ever cooked prime rib, let alone on a boat, so I'm going to open the wine early and hope for the best!

Merry Christmas!

After a quick stop in Escondido to see how Noah is living (think lots of fiberglass and hot dogs and sleeping in the back of a pickup truck with Virgil his dog and his new engine) we had a great sail down to La Paz. Conditions were pretty ideal, with between 5-15 knots behind us the whole way, and a clear night with some of the most amazing meteors (apparently the Geminids) we have ever seen.

We are currently anchored in La Paz, where we plan on staying through the next little bit as we work on graduate school applications.


Lat 24 09' N, Long 110 20' W

It's a bit hard for us to believe that it's already been over three weeks since we arrived back to Pisces. At that point she was covered in about a centimeter of yard dust & dirt, had no sails or halyards on, and was missing a rudder. We were fortunate that Pisces had weathered the summer well and we did not find any unexpected problems.

For the past several days there has been a constant barometric contour running down the middle of the Sea of Cortez, bringing steady wind from the North & Northwest. Yesterday, after a last minute filling of our water tanks, we said goodbye to San Carlos, and we headed back out to do some sailing!

It didn't take long to find the wind, and fairly quickly Pisces was flying downwind under jib alone making an easy 6-7 knots. The seastate was a bit confused, with 3-6 ft chop at about a 4 second period. It wasn't always the most comfortable sailing we've done, but it was incredible to have Pisces back underway, Brutus (the windvane) steering, and everything back to how it should be. Even better was that the wind held steady between 15-20 from the NW all night, allowing us to reel off an easy 135 mile or so day. At about 3AM we decided that by beam reaching a bit West towards Baja we could tuck in to Salinas on Isla Carmen, and then go visit with Noah & Chris in Escondido. So, at about 10AM this morning (mainland time, we're still pretty confused on the time zones down here) we anchored under sail, the only boat in this huge anchorage.

Our current plan (weather permitting) is to spend tonight here on Isla Carmen, tomorrow in Escondido (Noah promises he's going to take us to the best hot dog stand in the world -- or at least Loreto), and then leave Sunday morning for the sail to La Paz.

Lat 26 00' N, Long 111 07' W

We've been happily at anchor for a few days and punching through our list of projects to accomplish on Pisces. Some of our projects are routine maintenance such as servicing the winches, tuning the rig and removing rust from our propane tanks but my favorite projects are the ones where we are actively improving on systems that were in place last season to make things better and more convenient this season. I think of this latter group as giving Pisces some loving attention.

These loving projects include things such as: re-designing the dinghy lifting process and hoist, rebuilding the galley pumps so both salt and freshwater pumps are fully functional, creating chafe protection between the mast and boom gallows and making changes to our cupboard latching system so they positively latch (this last project has been "in the works" for a couple of years now and I'm optimistic that we've finally found a lasting solution).

I've also started provisioning for this season and spent a super fun morning re-discovering the joys of shopping in the massive super-mercado in Guaymas.