We are currently 19 miles away from our waypoint at Isla Isabela. It's been a fantastic run with some great sailing and a full moon to light the way. I had a bird who decided to keep me company during my watch from 3am until dawn, he perched on the radar and chirped throughout the night. This morning while we were both on deck having coffee and listening to the nets for weather we saw two whales breaching not far from the boat, and we've been able to see land since the sun rose this morning.

Lat 22 03' N, Long 106 08' W

We are currently about halfway between Muertos and Isla Isabella, a trip of about 260 nautical miles. We've had mixed conditions, with some great sailing, and also some motoring. Currently we are completely surrounded by water, no land or other boats in sight. However, Renova is only a few miles ahead of us, so we get to have the occasional VHF chat when we are bored.

We're excited about Isla Isabella, a breeding ground for Frigates and Boobies. If this pace holds we will be there before sunset tomorrow, if not we will heave to a bit offshore and make it into the anchorage Sunday morning.

So far, all our 'comfort' items (including autopilot while motoring, dodger, new lee cloth, and laptop tie-down) are all paying big dividends, as we are quite comfortable and decently well rested.

I also think that this is as far South as Pisces has ever been, as we've now cleared Cabo San Lucas.

Lat 22 58' N, Long 107 51' W

Apparently the escape velocity from La Paz is right about 6kts. Thanks to a nice current bump through the Cerralvo channel we actually managed to exceed this speed for a good long while and make a quick, uneventful motorboat trip to Muertos.

We are here today hanging out with Renova, relaxing, and planning on trying our aim on some spearfishing. Tomorrow all systems look like a go for a crossing, currently aiming for Isla Isabela, about 70 miles outside of Banderas Bay.

Lat 23 59' N, Long 109 50' W

This year has been quite unusual with a quick succession of lows coming down the Pacific coast. Unfortunately for us these lows started just as we found ourselves mentally and physically ready to make our next push over to mainland and South. We are practicing our patience (along with pretty much every sailor within 500 miles), but I would characterize our success as only mixed (as evidenced by our finding it possible to get in arguments over the concept of 'implication' and the role of 'intent' in communication and culpability).

We had a great few nights out at Isla Partida and Espiritu Santo, with frigate birds, boobies, sea turtles, and one morning the carcasses of about a thousand bugs that had clustered around our portholes in droves...and died. We also re-learned the piece of wisdom that it doesn't pay to be a small fish...chased from below by bigger fish, but also hunted from above by birds, not the greatest odds.

Unfortunately we are having an administrative problem with the minutes on our satellite phone (I know, serves me right for posting about how much we like this thing) and we need internet access to resolve this...so, we are back in La Paz for a day or two. We're not too upset about this, as it gives us the opportunity to eat some more arrachera and wait out the hopefully final bit of the current weather systems.


On a random side note, we returned to La Paz, scoped out a good place to anchor, dropped and set the hook, and fired up the GPS to set a waypoint, only to find that we are literally 7 feet from where we anchored last year.

Lat 24 09' N, Long 110 20' W

Yesterday we had a fantastic sail with Raven and the crew of China Girl up to Isla Espiritu Santo.

On the way Jacob set both our fishing rod and our handline with the two new lures we picked up in La Paz. Before we knew it the rod was whizzing and just when we were sitting down to take a breather after the first fish I looked back and our handline was jumping! Two beautiful large dorado, our first dorado catch. There is so much fish that after dinner for 6 people there is still half of the catch left!

Our plan is to explore the islands and wait out the series of storm systems that are barreling down the West coast. This is a great way to wait for a weather window for the crossing, as soon as we got anchored yesterday we jumped in the water and today we're off for a hike.

To see a satellite photo of our current location just type in our lat and long into google maps or google earth:

Lat 24 32 N Long 110 24 W

Round 1.5: Elote (What were we thinking?)
Location: Towards the Malecon from Radio Shack
Highlights: Buttery corn with crema and queso
Cost: 12 pesos









Round 2: The downtown dog
Location: 1 Block N of the Municipal Market
Pisces' Rank: 5
Highlights: First bacon wrapped dog of the night.
Cost: 12 pesos.













Enjoying round 2 (as a disclaimer, we shared dogs for rounds 2-5, we didn't eat 5 dogs each...).












Round 3: The Tres Amigos
Location: Sidestreet
Pisces' Rank: 4
Highlights: Also bacon wrapped, this dog was miniature, and somehow these guys had made the hot dog cart experience even more shady.
Cost: 12 pesos.





















Round 4: The Waterfront
Location: On the Malecon near La Fuente
Pisces' Rank: 2
Highlights: Most popular stand, a bit expensive, but I guess you pay for the waterfront location?
Cost: 15 pesos.






























Round 5: The Wildcard
Location: North on the Malecon, across from the giant shell statue, next to an empty lot.
Pisces' Rank: 1
Highlights: The Hot Dog Especial. Bacon wrapped hot dog, sliced down the center, with ham and melted cheese, onion, tomato, carnitas, salsa picante, avocado, mustard, crema, ketchup. Far and away winner of the night.
Cost: 20 pesos.

A recent post on another cruisers blog stuck with me, and left me feeling the need to present an alternate viewpoint on the Ham/SSB vs. sat phone debate.

We use an Iridium satellite phone with a third-party email service, and we also have a stand-alone Sony HF Radio Receiver.

1) Cost
A lot of times the reasons given for preferring HF radio over sat phone is the cost: "Aren't minutes like super expensive?!" Yes, the minutes are very expensive, but it's not so simple. Looking quickly at Landfall navigation I see a complete Icom M-802 HF radio/email setup for ~$4800. Now, I don't know much about radios, but to give the benefit of the doubt, I'll go with other people's numbers and assume that it would cost more like $3500 to get a complete radio & email package assuming you do the installation.
Buying a brand new Iridium phone (again at Landfall), plus the data package (to connect to your computer) and 500 minutes would cost you right around $2500.

We use UUPlus.com for our sat phone email service and data compression. This costs us $350/year, but saves air-time. They also provide some peripheral weather services that are handy. We check email almost every day (using wifi when in port, and sat phone when not) and seem to be averaging <500 minutes per year. This includes the occasional phone conversation.

For two years of sat phone:
Purchase + 1000 minutes of airtime: ~$3200
Two years of UUPlus: $700
Total: $3900

For two years of HF radio/email:
Purchase: $3500
Email service for two years (if you don't have a Ham license): $500
Total: $4000 (SSB) or $3500 (Ham)

So essentially, even if you use sat phone minutes at a very good clip, for the first two years the costs are very similar. I would characterize the radio approach as more economical in the long term, but certainly not wildly different than a sat phone. For many of us, with time horizons on our cruising plans, the sat phone will not prove to be significantly more expensive than the SSB.

2) Installation
HF radio...a bunch. Sat phone...none. For us, this was a major factor as we had a long list of 'must do' items, and time was precious.

3) Safety
The radio gives you the advantage of being able to get in touch with other cruisers. So, if you go aground and need some help getting off, or lose your engine, you can count on at least being able to talk with fellow cruisers. On the other hand, we have the onboard email addresses of plenty of other cruisers. If we felt we needed assistance in one of these non-critical emergencies we could email them and ask them to coordinate assistance via a net.

In a true emergency we feel the sat phone would be far and away superior to the HF radio, primarily because you can keep it in your ditch bag. We also keep the Coast Guard's search and rescue center number programmed in.

4) Voice
I don't really know all that much about getting a radio patch to a landline, but with the sat phone you can always just dial the number. We've used this feature several times, and never had any issues with signal quality or connection. The sound can be a bit 'tinny' but hey, you're sending your voice to a satellite and back!

5) Weather
The radio nets are a very important source of weather information. You can receive some of the transcriptions of the weather nets via email using saildocs, and you can get a stand-alone all-band receiver ($150) that lets you listen in to the nets. We have been playing around with clipping our antenna to the backstay, and we've been getting great reception.

6) Doomsday scenario
Uh really? Are you serious? If the satellites go out the last thing I want to be doing between taking celestial fixes is talking to someone in a bunker in Montana on Ham radio.


All in all I really don't think that either of the approaches is far and away superior to the other. They both have their strengths and weaknesses, and how you weight those will depend on what equipment is already on the boat, and your own communication needs.

For us using the Iridium phone for email and the occasional phone conversation, combined with a cheap HF radio receiver for weather, has been ideal, and we wouldn't do it differently if we were outfitting again.

When we purchased Pisces she had a dodger, that while functional, did questionable things to the aesthetics of the beautiful Jason 35 design. After some negotiations, Julia agreed to the removal of the dodger in return for keeping the deck box.

One of the design issues for a dodger on a boat such as the Jason, where the companionway entrance has a high bridgedeck (a great offshore design feature), is that you need a tall dodger to allow clearance to the companionway. As seen above this doesn't always look so nice.

We sailed Pisces sans-dodger for over 2500 miles, and while this was fine, we recognized the effect that wind and sun exposure had on our energy and comfort levels while on watch. This season we are all about increasing comfort and convenience onboard, so a dodger was high on our list. So high on our list that when we arrived in La Paz we contacted Doug from Snug Harbor Sails to have him make a dodger. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for our pocketbook) he was extremely busy, and couldn't make a dodger for us in the timeframe we needed.

So, project background aside, here's how we built our own removable, foldable, spray dodger while at anchor for under $250.

Step 1: Design and experiment
The major problem for a do-it-yourself dodger is the need for a frame to support the fabric. You could get this frame made out of stainless, but then you're going to spend so much money that you might think twice about making the rest of it yourself. We have sailed on a friends boat in New Zealand that has a wood frame, which works.

We were very interested in a creative framemaking method from Yves Gelinas, inventor of the Cape Horn windvane. Yves sailed an Alberg 30, Jean de Sud, around the world via the capes and made an amazing movie of his experience. One of the many improvements he made to his boat was building a dodger with a frame made by inserting bicycle inner tubes inside of fire hose. When inflated, the inner tubes causes the fire hose to be quite rigid, and they can be used instead of stainless.

Well, putting aside how hard it is to explain to the guy in the bike store in a foreign language what exactly you are trying to do and why you don't know what size bike tube you want...we had mixed success. Our finding was that if you make an arch out of a single inner tube (cut the inner tube, and hose clamp in PVC caps to seal the ends) it makes a decently strong arch that will rebound to its original shape. However, if your boat is large enough that you need multiple sections connected, it doesn't work so well. We couldn't get enough pressure to keep an arch across two sections of inner tube. And that includes exploding a few inner tubes and inadvertently shooting a PVC end cap halfway across the anchorage.

Step 2: Path of least resistance.
So the inner tube and fire hose was a bit of a bust....who would have thought?
Luckily for us our boom gallows are situated right at the end of the cabintop, and provide a natural attachment point for a spray dodger. If you aren't so lucky to have something there, I would seriously consider the possibility of adding a boom gallows in this location and building a dodger similar to ours. All in all the cost would still probably be equivalent to paying someone to make a dodger, and it has the advantage of adding boom gallows which are very nice to have.

We did quite a bit of looking at other peoples' dodgers in this time, trying to figure out how they are put together, and what made them look ok. What was most surprising is how crappy the majority of dodgers look, this gave us hope that we would be able to pull off something that would not stand out as particularly crazy.

Step 3: Build.
We were able to purchase gray sunbrella which we like as light colors stand out less and help keep heat down.

We started with the front panel, and did some mock ups trying to get the height right so we could get in and out of the companionway, and still easily see over it when standing, etc. We did a lot of measuring and careful re-measuring. Once we had this piece roughly cut (extra fabric on the deck side) we measured and cut the triangular side panels. We then hemmed the top of the front piece and the side panels together, using nylon webbing in the hems to increase strength when we tension the dodger.


At that point we were able to put the grommets in the upper corners of the front piece. This was a big step, as it allowed us to get real tension on this piece for the first time. It is important to have this tension prior to doing some of the further cutting/measurements.

Next we finished the hemming for the side panels. The goal of the side panels is to create a little cocoon of wind protection if you are sitting in the front corner of the cockpit, but at the same time you have to be sure not to interfere with the winch handle and getting in and out of the cockpit. Lots of measuring again, and then hemming. At this point the dodger is getting a bit heavier and hard to maneuver through the sewing machine.

Once the side panels are done, the next thing to do is to work on the bottom of the front panel. This will probably be the most complex hem, as it has to follow the curve of the deck and make allowances for things like the companionway hatch, lines, etc. We worked from the outside inwards, and just did each little piece individually. On the longer flat runs we did an extra-wide hem of several inches creating a hollow tube. Our original plan was to put short lengths of chain or some other weight in these pockets to hold it firm to the deck, but so far we haven't really needed to do this, we might add them later. We also leathered anywhere that seemed like it would be prone to chafe.

At this point you pretty much have a dodger, and the difference it makes in the comfort in your cockpit is huge. We found ourselves spending more time outside hanging out, and we notice that the protection from the dodger actually extends a few feet aft of the dodger itself, as it deflects wind away. The temptation at this point will also be to not put windows in, as it is hard to imagine cutting away most of the fabric you just put together.

For window material we used cheap vinyl because it was on hand and cheap. We also wanted something that can be rolled and stored without worry. The technique we used to put the windows in was to measure and cut the shape you want, and then baste and sew the window material to the inside of the dodger fabric. You then measure in an inch from the stitch line you just made, and cut the fabric at this new line. The fabric then gets hemmed over to a half-inch hem, and sewn down again. In the end the window material is then held by two rows of stitches.

This technique has the advantage of letting you get the window in the exact shape and position you want. The disadvantage is that when you go to create window covers, you have the pieces of sunbrella you just cut out, but they are 1" too small in all dimensions. You can add material to them, but it's a pain and at this point in the project you don't want to do any more sewing.

As a cover for our windows we used a big piece of raw linen. It was very inexpensive, lets in some light to the cockpit, and is a very lightweight material that is not prone to flogging in the wind.


Our goal was to create a spray dodger that would keep us a bit more protected from the elements, and also to have it pass the 'two boat length test'. That is, to have it not look crazy from two boat lengths away. So far so good. We think it looks a lot better than many professional dodgers, and the wind protection it offers is substantial. In order to take it down you simply untie a few lines and roll it up on the cabintop or take it below.




I would estimate we spent 60 hours total, including our experiments with bicycle inner tubes, and hiking around La Paz for materials. Total cost was probably about $250, most of that because Sunbrella is quite expensive here. If we did it in the US I would have expected to spend maybe 40 hours and spend half that amount.

Apologies for the blog silencio over the past several weeks. We've been heads down working on our grad school applications, which are now done and submitted.

We've also had time to do some great boat projects that we anticipate will make our passages much more comfortable. Top of the list is the dodger (full on how-to-build-your-own-only-slightly-crazy-dodger post to come soon), followed by the resurrection of our Raytheon autopilot, and finished off by some shade canopies for the cockpit.

In between boat work and applications we have also met some interesting new people, and we highly recommend you check out their blogs (added to our sailing blogs sidebar). One of the great things about cruising is the diversity of the people you meet, and we've had some interesting dinners with people from a wide-range of backgrounds such as: former sociology professor (who also worked at Reed College where we both went to school!), ocean engineer, software developer, carpenter, project manager, baker, and environmental consultants.

Currently we are in Marina Palmira, where we plan to spend about a week doing some further boat projects, and watching the weather. After that we head South!