Another Sunday in Guaymas

Oyster Bar by the Sea

It's been a busy week here in Guaymas.
Five days ago we took on crew, Léo Lestant, of France has joined us.  He is a young man traveling the world.  He crewed on a boat being delivered from Tonga to Berkeley (22 days) and road his bicycle from San Francisco to Guaymas.  We are heading South and so is he and we had space available. We moved a few things around and he has bunk space for his pack, bike and a place to sleep.

He cooks and he is very good at it!  He has been with us for 5 days and so far made 4 loaves of bread, crepes, curried fish, coconut rice, ham rolled in goat cheese.  Other cruisers are getting jealous as they sit eating their same old rations.

Our "Buddy Boats" SV Peregrine and SV Blue Dolphin are both just about ready to set sail.  Blue Dolphin is awaiting the arrival of their crew from Venezuela.  They are some young German kids who rode their bikes from Alaska to Venezuela.  We are just about all provisioned up for the trip South to Mazatlan.  Our other "buddy boat" SV Ubuntu is still up on the hard in San Carlos, waiting for its Captain to come back from Hawaii.  They will bring up the rear.

Muggs and Larry on Peregrine cleaned out their sail locker while they where in the yard getting bottom paint and discovered they were carting around two jib sails that did not fit their boat.  With space being at a premium they where chucked over the side.  Landing on the tar mack of the yard.  Splat!  We tried with no luck to find new homes for these brand new jibs and in the end decided they where actually just material for other useful items such as tote bags, bike covers, etc., so without too much heavy sighing Kathy from Blue Dolphin and I have started cutting up the jibs and making useful things out of them.  Michael, our power boat friend on MV FNFUN is looking forward to us making a cover for his FNMOTORCYCLE. 
 
We have pretty much finished all our projects that kept us at the dock so we are now anchored out in the bay with Peregrine.  Blue Dolphin is still in Marina Real.

Since we have spent a lot of time here in Guaymas we were able to get their $800 alternator repaired and picked up a spare one for $600 pesos.  We also found a seamstress who resewed Peregrines dodger with new thread for $500 pesos.  It was reinstalled this morning good as new!   It is nice having a car here, errands that would normally take all day are done in just under a few minutes allowing for lots of time to actually get the work done on the boat.  I know all the back streets now, I can even avoid a protest if I need to :)

For the last 3 nights there has been a big stage set up on the Malecon.  We are anchored pretty much in front row seats for the show.  The music has been wonderful.  When the show has intrigued us we have gone over to watch in the free seats provided.  It appears to be put on by the Sonoran Culture folks and I think it has something to do with the Holiday on Monday November 15th, another revolution.  I watched a show the other night that lasted at least 2 hours.  It was a walk through 200 years of history with a mix of modern music and modern dance.  It was really good even though I didn't understand much of what they were saying or singing.  There have also been many, many dancers in very elaborate costumes dancing in very traditional ways.  These shows are not in any way geared towards a tourist scene, there are only a handful of gingos in crowd.  And what would any production be without the strange, scary clown!  He was ranting on about something the other night with his little red nose, fake cactus made out of 7 up bottles and tattered Mexican flag.  Everyone in the crowd seem genuinely interested but after about 10 minutes I did the good old exit stage right and went back to the boat.  I could hear him from my bunk and he was still ranting at 11:15 pm!  The best show I saw by far was a Mexican version of a Chip and Dale dancer.  I was sitting in the cockpit with the binoculars hooting and hollering!  He was dancing around the stage with his boots, levi's, SIX PACK and a white cowboy hat.  Oh, he had a white shirt on but at some point it came off!  I couldn't believe what I was seeing, and wished I had been closer to the stage.  I tried to get Doug and Leo to come up and have a look, but they just said let them know when the girls started taking off their clothes. 

This afternoon we had a visitor, Rudolfo and his Papa who lives in Guaymas came down to the Marina to see if we were still here.  Rudolfo is an air-traffic controller from Hermosillo.  I took them out to our boat via dinghy along with 3 jugs of water, 1 jug of gas and a cooler full of beer!  I try to make every trip count.  They came out to ask us if we wanted to go out and eat oysters.  Heck yeah!  Two trips back to the dock, I really couldn't put 5 people, beer cooler and the dog in the dink.  We all piled into the Simmburban for a road trip.  We drove South on Mex 15D past Empalme and turned right at red and white antennae (no sign) onto a washboard sand road.  We went past cactus, broken fences, dried fords.  Still no signs, made a left turn through a gate, right at the fork in the road.  We drove past a shrimp farm in the desert out towards the Sea until we came to a little palaypa on the beach of an estuary.  The oysters are farmed just for this little restaurant and they were excellent.  I had 6 each and everyone else had a dozen.  We ordered a plate of fried shrimp and a plate of fried fish to share.  All where wonderful.  There was not another gringo in site and I'm pretty sure Leo was probably the first Frenchman to eat there.  The place was actually pretty busy, even though it is way, way off the beaten path.  You could not give someone directions to this place.

We are hoping to head South this next week.