Home at Last!

As you may guess by the title, we finally made it home. We were in Topolobampo for about a week for engine repairs--a long hot and humid week! We took several trips on the bus to Los Mochis and spent a fair amount of time in stores like this one searching for the right parts.

Los Mochis was a fortunate place to be fixing our engine because as it turned out to be a Mecca for diesel engines, parts, and farm equipment in general. In our travels throughout Mexico we have always found the people to be extremely friendly and helpful, but here it was brought to a higher level. There were customers in line at the parts store trying to help us find where we could get the parts we needed, and one even went so far as to get on his phone and call some contacts he knew to see if they could help. We suspected an air leak in the fuel system, so Jim basically rebuilt all the connections going into and out of the fuel filters. After several trial runs the engine seemed to be functioning perfectly, so we started waiting for a weather window to make our final run to Guaymas.

Did I mentioned it was HOT 🔥? We enjoy warmer temperatures, but this was an interesting experience for us. While daytime temps inside the boat soared above 95°, if we were lucky, it would cool down to 85° by the wee hours in the morning. This was exacerbated by the high humidity making is difficult to work during the day and nearly impossible to sleep at night. On one trip to Los Mochis we stopped at a Home Depot to purchase a couple of fans to plug in (since we had 110 power available at the marina), which made the heat more bearable. Here is our last sunset at the marina before moving out to the anchorage.

We took our last swim of the season from the anchorage at sunset--it was delightful!

We lifted anchor as the sun began to rise in hopes of a calm and uneventful sail/motor sail north for the calculated 35 to 48 hours to Guaymas. Things went along very well for the first day ending in a beautiful last sunset at sea.

To the east there was a rainstorm brewing over the land.

Things were going along smoothly, and I enjoyed quite a lightening show on my midnight watch. Then the winds starting picking up, so I woke up Jim. For once we made a good decision to take down some sail before things got out of hand--it was the right decision. Unfortunately, the winds from the storm died out quickly leaving behind an agitated sea state making the second half of our trip a bit uncomfortable. As we neared Guaymas in the early afternoon, the seas had flattened out. We saw a whale in the distance which was odd for this time of year. Then we crossed paths with a bunch of jumping Manta Rays--that is always a fun show!

LAND HO!!!

We pulled into the Fonatur Marina in Guaymas to unload and prepare the boat for storage. We could have anchored, but we were in desperate need of that 110 volt electricity to run those fans we bought in Topolobampo. We do have 12 volt fans on the boat, but they are quite anemic in comparison and not at all sufficient in this kind of heat! Also, we noticed that the heat was also negatively affecting our solar input and battery life--not to mention the refrigerator running overtime. After three days of hard work in the summer heat we hauled the boat out of the water.

We hauled the boat out of the water first thing in the morning (already hot) and decided to complete all of the chores for preparing Bailarina for storage in one day (a crazy decision). I'm sure we forgot something, but hey, even when we take our time with it we still always seem to forget something! By the end of the day we were all hot, tired, dirty, and grumpy--except for Lily who got to stay in the car which we left running with the air on for her. We spent the night in a gloriously clean and air conditioned hotel room and started for home the next morning well rested. We were so anxious to get home that we decided to drive straight through instead of stopping before the border to cross over early in the morning as we usually do. We did, however, make a stop before the border to switch Jim into the driver's seat as I always seem to have problems. Apparently it was the right thing to do because we crossed seamlessly back into the US.

We were greeted with rain in the distance as we drove towards home. We arrived to our cabin before midnight. It feels so good to be home...

We still have a few more stories from Mexico to share, but we wanted to send out a quick note to let everyone know we made it home.