!!!LA PAZ!!!

OK OK it's been too long since I wrote but it has been a long gruling trip, 3 over nighters back to back. We would leave at 6AM run all day and all night and pull into an anchorage in the afternoon have a meal on the beach and leave at 6AM again for another overnighter.
Baja Mexico is desolate no more than a village here and there and no internet, we did have internet at Puerto Las Cabos near San Jose Del Cabo but we had 1 afternoon to go to town and then a dinner each night so not much time to write.
The trip from Puerto Las Cabos to Muertos Bay and then to La Paz was great, we saw whales, marlin jumping, dolphins, had a nice dinner at La Casa de los Suenos resort at Muertos Bay in the Train Room, Ted Safranko eat your heart out they had hundreds of model trains set up and running.
The over night runs were intresting we ran on chartplotters red lighting and radar, some people had AIS (automatic identifican system) that list the boat name length course speed and destination of the other boats that have the system. All comercial ships are required to have that so we knew when the Saphire Princess cruise ship was heading for the fleet of 40 + boats, he was warned by radio that this was a dangerous situation and ask if he would change course seaward a few degrees so as to pass safely,WELL he changed course directly toward the fleet and on a collision course with one of our boats, when warned of this and ask again to alter course to seaward because he had now created a very dangerous situation he replyed that we did not know what we were doing and we were under the influnce of alchol and then he would no longer respond to radio calls and the one boat had to run at top speed to avoid being run over.
That was the excitement, most of the overnighters were just long long long nights, you could hear dolphins splashing next to the boat sometimes they would come far enough out of the water to see them, if you looked over the side of the boat at the wake you could see photoplankton glowing blue and green in the water like the orange sparks from a welder, sunrises while on the ocean were beautiful as well as the sunsets. Running under red lighting for night vision as well as trying to make snacks under red light is a strange phenomonon as well as adjusting to 4 hours on and 4 hours off for 30 + hours a day for 3 days in a row does not help the disposition. It' called sleep deprovation!!! We did learn to drink watered down oatmeal out of a cup for breakfast.
We arrived at La Paz on Thanksgiving day and they had a thanksgiving feast with turkey mashed potatoes and cranberrys. The official FUBAR trip is over and people are spliting up to each go their own way or stay here for a while, we will be staying here for a month taking 3 or 4 day cruises out of La Paz since there are 5 or 6 nice bays to go anchor in within 20 miles of La Paz.
I did have an alternator quit when we left Ensanada and we had to run the generator to keep the batteries up and when we got to La Paz I am getting the alternator fixed, it only needs brushes, and found I have 2 bad batteries and 2 weak batteries, prices here are about the same as I paid in Calif. for the batteries so no big deal I knew the batteries were getting old.
We are staying at the Costa Baja Resort which is a 5 star resort with shops and restraunts, 2 pools, hot tubs, weight room, shuttles to town, wireless internet, and cable TV in the marina at each slip. They have an airport shuttle that Chris and Craig can take when they leave 12/2/09 then we will be on our own for the next 5 months, except for a quick trip home in Feb. for a couple of weeks.
Hope to have some great pictures on the blog in the next day or two.

Irv & LaVon