First Afternoon at Ensenada de Los Muertos

I checked my Sailmail as soon as we were anchored and was delighted to see a message from fellow members of the Fremantle Sailing Club who were neighbors of Pachuca for 6 years and knew her two previous sets of owners. They are in La Paz and I am looking forward to meeting them.

Arnold and I had swims followed by fresh water rinses in preparation for a late afternoon visit to the shore. Before I went in I tried some fishing with a bit of leftover fish from lunch and within 5 minutes I had pulled in a fish about 1 ft long. It may have been my first fish since leaving Australia but it wasn't much of one. To me it was a larger version of the inedible West Australian "blowies" that puff themselves up like a balloon. The fish did a good job of convincing me that he was not worth eating and I took the hook out of his mouth and threw him back in.

When I went diving I asked Arnold for a long screw driver and to open the thru hull valves of the toilet. Yes, the toilet had given trouble again. Arnold had almost completed a flushing effort when the system jammed up. Arnold had seen the toilet mechanism in pieces and the refurbishment kit that I put into it and he agreed that the toilet is in as new condition. So what was the problem? The next day I had a go at pumping and found that I could get a lot of water through, but there was still some back pressure building up. So from the water I pushed a long screw driver into the outlet opening and found myself digging out material. When I cleared that I asked Arnold to start pumping and more of what looked like wadded up toilet paper started coming out. To him the toilet seemed to be working fine again. If there is a problem it must be in the hose - perhaps it is furred up inside with scale deposit. Regardless, our next step is to stop putting toilet paper through the system. Too bad, but it is better than regularly breaking apart a jammed up toilet.

The water was clear so I followed the 30 meters of anchor chain, most of which lay on the bottom, until I saw the anchor nicely dug into the sand 7 meters below. The sight gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Before we left for shore athird sail boat showed up, also from Bahia Los Frailes. It looks like the three of us are headed the same way.

We visited the restaurant and bar. It is modern, well appointed, and yes they have free WiFi. But their drinks were weak, small, and expensive. Nevertheless I expected to spend hours having meals and beers at the place while I do my internet work. While we were there we met Jim, from California, who is visiting in his RV. He offered to drive us to the town 8 miles away for some shopping. We'll see.

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