Ocean Echo 1: May 2011

Dear Friends

Crossing from Mazatlan to La Paz (250 n.miles) was fairly uneventful with engine running most of the time. Several boats were waiting for a week until Northerly winds died off. Sailing into the N. wind in Sea of Cortez is not too efficient. Waves are short, steep and ebb current makes it even worst. One evening dolphins started jumping around the boat 3 M-10 feet high.
La Paz is a nice clean city with large anchorage near downtown. Anchorage is famous for "La Paz Waltz", which occurs mainly with Southerly winds and Flood current. Anchor chain gets slacked and the boat drifts all over. Sea water is fairly clear because the dry desert mountains and no river run offs.
La Paz is well-known as cruiser friendly port with lot of boating facilities and activities. It is also gateway for Sea of Cortez - Gulf of California. Most of cruisers leave their boats in a boatyards or marinas for the summer and go back home. Summer in La Paz and the Sea of C. is supposedly quite hot, well over 40 C - 105 F.
La Paz has very good boating areas within 20-40 km (10 - 20 n.miles) from the city. Some of the bays are quite spectacular. Espiritu Santo Island and Partida Island are very nice with beautiful bays, beaches and clear water. Balandra bay is a spectrum of green/blue sea color and off-white sandy beaches. Coral heads with a few colorful reef fish are in most of these bays near La Paz.
Club Cruceros is a Cruiser's Club in La Paz. Their website has a lot of good information about city and local services. VHF morning net is quite informative as well.
Dos Mares off-road desert race (571 km) is happening first weekend of May and it is very interesting to see some of well-engineered off-road vehicles. I have watched some videos from last year race and it is amassing, what they can do with these machines in the desert.
Most of bigger cities in Mexico have a few well know stores like Walmart, Costco, Sam's Club, Home Depot, Office Depot, Soriana, Chedraui, Sears etc., they are usually not located near the shore.
I have been staying in La Paz area for a few weeks now. I am waiting for some shipments and trying to sort out a few things. I will be heading North to Sea of Cortez for next 5 months (trying to avoid hurricanes).
It has been quite enjoyable to hang around La Paz and many cruisers would agree with me.

Maintaining this blog could by complicated time to time, because Internet signal/connection for uploading pictures, will not be as good/fast as it is in large cities/communities. Please, excuse my poor writing skills and grammar. Google translate does good job converting text to other languages.
I hope, that you will find something interesting in this blog – enjoy.

Jara (JJ) Holcman sv. Ocean Echo 1