FIRST MATE'S LOG

Hi, I'm Sheri. I am first mate on the S/V TIGGER. My husband and I own a custom built Granger design 36 foot catamaran. We are currently preparing to begin our cruising life in the spring of 2007. It has been an exciting few years as I have been learning all about sailing and living aboard and preparing for what I feel will be a great adventure. I have spent many hours both reading about and practicing sailing. I am a novice, having only been involved with sailing for the last 7 years and having lived aboard the last 2 1/2 years. I have only sailed two or three times on a monohull so my experience is basically on multihulls and is limited at best. I look forward to broadening my knowledge of sailing in the years to come and will share those experiences here for family and friends to follow. I would ask family and friends for their prayers as Rick and I start out on this wonderful and exciting experience!

Note: I have created a archive page. I have moved a lot of my log to that page as this page was getting to long. If you have never read my log you will want to start there, otherwise the latest update is at the bottom as usual and dated.

August 1, 2009 - back in Santa Rosalia - Well, we are back in Santa Rosalia. We had left here July 13 and headed up to Bahia de los Angeles. We had intended to spend the entire summer in that area. A couple weeks ago we got an email from Rick's sister telling us that their mom had an MRI done on her head and that they had found a growth. So, assuming the worst, we came back to Santa Rosalia so we would be in a position to head back to San Diego. She had an appointment with the neurosurgeon on the 31st of July. We called and the tumor is small, not on the brain it's self and benign.  No treatment is needed, they will just watch it and do another MRI in 6 months. Praise the Lord!!!! So, we don't have to go back to San Diego after all. Now we will re-provision and head back north again.

They couple of weeks that we had up there were great. We went from here to Punt Trinidad and spent the night there. I absolutely love being under way! Most of the time I can't read or do anything like tatting etc. and yet I am so content to just sit in the cockpit and watch the world go by. It is such a beautiful world!! This trip we saw a lot of whales. Mostly far off but enough were close enough to be really exciting without being terrifying! It was an easy trip and a nice anchorage but got a little windy at night. The land is very flat from the east side of the peninsula where we were anchored over to the Pacific side which allows the winds to really howl. There were also several large fishing boats spending the night.  The next morning we headed out for the next anchorage, Bahia San Francisquito. Both of these were new to us. We had another wonderful easy day of sailing/motor sailing and arrived late in the afternoon. We had intended to stay several days there but the weather that night predicted northerlies in a couple days and that would trap us there so we headed out the next morning. We will be hitting it again on the way up this time and probably stay longer. We also found a few other small anchorages that we hadn't planned on stopping at but now that we have seen them, and stayed in one, we will spend more time going back up and stop at more places.

It has been very very hot! At least 100 every day and the humidity is pretty high too. So far we seem to be taking it pretty well. I wasn't sure that I would do ok with the heat but so far so good! I will tell you that we go days and days at a time where we are never totally dry 24 hours a day. Even at night you sweat! They only time we don't sweat is when we are in the water! So we are still wet but at least we are cool. We have a great advantage in that being a catamaran we can jump in the water and float around under the boat so we are in the shade and in the water staying cool. We also do a lot of snorkeling. We have the kayaks but haven't done as much of that as I thought as it is just to hot to sit out in the sun like that.

People ask us at times what we do all the time. It's hard to explain how we spend our days. We read a lot of course and swim, snorkel, kayak (when it's not to hot) and walk around the various place we stay. We meet other cruisers and visit but the main thing is that daily living activities just take a lot longer to accomplish. Partly because of the heat but also because it's like being on a farm if that makes since. For example, a "quick trip" to the grocery store will take a minimum of two hours. You can't just walk out your door and jump in your car and run up to the corner market. You have to put the dinghy in the water, get your bags and stuff together, dinghy to shore, walk to the market - actually several different markets as no one has all you need - walk back, dinghy back, put the stuff away! It's just different but we love it so. Everything is also much slower, life in general is just done at a more leisure pace. We have adapted!!! We love it!

Well, gotta go for now. I don't know if I will update again before we leave here or not, there won't be much to update. I will update again in BLA, maybe a month from now?  Hope everyone is doing well.  Later!!!!

November 26, 2009 - I don't know if this is going to work, but I have changed my web page manager so I can use the little computer. If this works I will be able to update the website more often. The old (big) computer started having problems and I was unable to get online with it. So, for starters I am going to try this. If it works I will update more soon. Stand by!!

December 2, 2009 - Wow! I am amazed it worked. There is no difference in what you see but it will be easier for me to do the updates and hopefully that means I will do it more oftern. That's the plan sam! We'll see. For now here is the latest.

Saturday Nov. 28, 2009 – 

Ok, my last update was in August. We were in Santa Rosalia and getting ready to head back north to Bahia De Los Angeles. We got back to BLA August 31, just in time to hear about hurricane Jimena. We went over to Puerto Don Juan, just 5 miles from BLA village. It is a “hurricane hole”. There were 16-17 boats there already but there was still plenty of room. By the time Jimena was over we had a total of 22 boats and there was no crowding. We all worked together and kept in touch about details concerning the hurricane and our preparedness. Several of the guys, Rick included, got together and dove on all the anchors to make sure they were set well. We all took down jib sails, wrapped line around the mainsail, removed everything from the deck that was removable, and just in general got ready for a really big blow. It was a great time! (only because the hurricane never actually made it up that far!! ) Jimena did not hit us but we were really prepared had she come along. Jimena was a really big and powerful storm, at one point she hit category 5. She had winds over 200 miles an hour and was 200 miles across. We were really glad she missed us. She did not miss Santa Rosalia though, and San Carlos/Guaymas area. Some friends of ours were in Santa Rosalia when Jimena hit and it was not fun. Several of them spent 2-3 days in the ladies bathroom as the ceiling started falling down in the other room they were staying in. They all had a lot of fenders and lines on there boats and everyone was helping everyone else but most did not actually stay on their boats. The town it's self was severely damaged and one police officer lost his life trying to help a man whose car had been washed into the bay with him in it. The mad made it out but the police officer did not. The town of Santa Rosalia sits basically in a gully between two hills so when all that rain hit there was a huge flash flood and many homes were washed away. It was amazing that only that one police officer was killed. The military were also amazing in their fast, organized and efficient help once the storm was past. The cruisers told us it was awesome how fast and efficient they were. The town was without water and electricity for many days. I guess, overall, I am really glad we were not there!! That is why we go so far north for the summer.

For the next month we bummed around the general BLA area, hitting a few new anchorages and meeting a lot of new cruisers. I even went fishing for the first time in years. Pat on Pacific Voyager took me fishing in their little 10 foot dinghy and she and I caught a 34 inch Dorado!! Wow, what a feast. Pat had eight of us over to their boat for dinner that night and we still had left over fish! I am “hooked”. I now own a fishing pole and a few lures but will be buying several more and my fishing license soon! Rick even has a pole and he doesn't even like to fish. I will use his sometimes as it is stronger then mine. I fully intend to eat a lot of fish! We had some of the best fish I have every eaten this summer. Lots of cruisers love to fish so when their freezers get full they give us some so they can fish some more! And those that don't have freezers give us some as they catch more then they can eat. We had a great summer. We had a couple of full moon parties which involved a lot of swimming and potlucks and we did some hiking and a lot of snorkeling.

We had one more hurricane scare to go through, hurricane Rick! I knew they would figure out Rick sooner or later, what a troublemaker! Anyway, back to Don Juan. We didn't have as many boats but went through the same preparations as before, and again the hurricane didn't come anywhere near us. This time it hit Mazatlan and one of our friends lost his boat. Ken's boat Mermaid went on the rocks and was totally destroyed. We were so incredibly sad for him. I don't know what I would do if we lost Tigger like that!

So, the summer was great, and yes it was HOT! but we had so much fun we didn't even mind the heat. (most of the time)

We finally left the BLA area on Oct. 22 and headed for San Fransicquito. Greg and Nancy from Festima Lente were there (avoiding Rick after going through Jimena) and we spent 2-3 days with them. We hiked around and spent a lot of time on their boat catching up. San Fransicquito doesn't have much there, mostly a few shacks that Americans rent for the season to go fishing. They must be die hard fisherman as they have to go a long way on a dirt road to get to the main road, then 90 miles to a town.

After that we headed for Guaymas. We left for Guaymas on Oct. 26 and arrived there the 27th. Charlie and Sharon from Coos Bay were coming back to their boat and some other friends were in Guaymas/San Carlos area so we decided to go visiting.

While we were there some of the cruisers put on a pizza party for the local orphanage. After pizza, ice cream and cake they went for a ride on the local pirate ship. The kids had a great time. And so did the adult that went with them.

We spent 2 weeks in Guaymas and had a great time, but we were really ready to get out of the marina. We like being anchored out much better. We left Guaymas on Wed. Nov. 11 and went back across to the Baja and stayed a couple days in Isla Coronado then headed down to Calita Partida. We were only going to stay one day there but the northers came up and we got stuck there a couple days. We really enjoy that anchorage and wished we could have gone ashore but the winds were to strong, it wouldn't have been any fun. We left Calita Partida on Tues. Nov. 17 and headed for Mazatlan.