Pellucidar Floats!

November 2020

We arrived in San Carlos with the Explorer full of parts to find Pellucidar much like we left her. She was boasting her new cover and Linda did a great job of preparing the inside so we had no bugs or odd smells. The boat was in great shape. We removed the pluthura of tin foil from around anything plastic, bent the forward sails to the furlers and started cleaning up all the dust from the last few months on the hard. Pellucidar’s new cover really made our job much easier than it could have been.

Pellucidar got a new coat of bottom paint, hull washed and waxed and soon she was ready for the nerve wracking trip down the road.

Pellucidar gets loaded on a hydraulic trailer in the yard, driven down the road and launched in water almost deep enough for her keel….. Yup, you heard right, “almost deep enough”

Our launch got delayed an hour at the yard as they forgot to put the trailer on the battery charger the night before. In that hour do you think the tide came in or went out? Yup, you guessed it. It went out. They uncoupled the trailer and added a long steel cable to put it deeper in the water but Pellucidar requires 7′ under her keel so she got stuck on the trailer. Finally after a series of back and forth and a little extra help from the old Yanmar we got her backed off the trailer while only removing a small amount of the new bottom paint from the keel. We moved quickly to the dock before the tide could go out any further and arrived without further incident. We spent the next few days topping up the water and getting her ready for our trip across the sea to Puerto Escondido. As you can see by the pictures it was not “all work and no play!”

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We left the docks at San Carlos around noon on November 15th. We had good pressure coming out of the North and Pellucidar took every advantage of that wind cutting through the water like a swan creating a beautifully curled bow wave we could hear clear back in the cockpit. Pellucidar chewed up the distance as the last rays of sunshine settled over the baja in the West.

Around 0500 the next morning the stars are beginning to dim as the sun makes is was back around the globe and enters from the East. Looking back at the cloud bank behind us we talk about missing the sunrise due to the overcast sky to our stern. We could not have been more wrong. The sun crept up through the crests of the waves and put on a show welcoming us back to the Baja in all its splendor.

We arrived in Bahia Balandra on the North end of Isla Carmen. The sun had lost its red glow but after the show he put on we were not the least bit disappointed. As we entered the bay it was a bit tough to see as the sun was at that magical angle where it shone right under the bill of your hat! There were only a couple of other cruisers in the anchorage so not much for us to run into.

We weren’t due into Puerto Escondido for a few days so we decided to drop the hook and relax a bit. The bay is absolutely stunning and the water temperature in the bay was very inviting….. but…..

However, water had been scarce on the islands this year so any scent of freshwater drew the bees from everywhere! I’m sure they were very friendly bees but I just prefered to keep my distance. This caused us to be sequestered on the boat for a few days but after the effort to get Pellucidar floating and the overnight run across the sea, a few days of lazing around was not a bad thing. We had a nice cool breeze coming through the hatches and our screens kept our little buzzing friends on the outside where they belong.

After sleeping and eating our way through the next 48 hours we made our way down the east side of isla Carmen the 15 miles to Puerto Escondido. The water was like glass so we gave the old Yanmar a good workout. We normally grab a mooring ball in Escondido as the dock rates are a bit spendy for two retired cruisers but we had family flying into Loreto the next day so we needed to have good access on and off the boat. The mooring balls and lines had all been updated since last year but it is a pretty good dingy ride to and from the boat. Although it is beautiful at night it can be a bit damp.

We have to meet a plane so we will pick this up with the friends and family plan covering the rest of November and all of December when we return.

Until then fair winds and following seas.

Walt, Linda and G2!

Note: Sorry for the delay in these posts but we are having way too much fun! Sitting in the marina office on our laptops trying to get decent wifi is way too close to the old job. We’ll do the best we can but don’t expect too much! Currently we are in La Cruz marina in Banderas Bay (Near Puerto Vallarta) We will head back up into the Sea of Cortez next week and probably have Pellucidar in her summer home by the first of May.