The Great Escape............

The roads heading north from San Carlos to the US border were eerily quiet. 

We have made it to our son’s house in Arizona. Loomba-Loomba is in storage in San Carlos and ready for hurricane season. We are so thankful that things fell into place for us to get across the border so quickly.

We are, however, worried about our friends and fellow cruisers who are still in Mexico and wanting to head home to the USA and Canada. Many of the cruisers who were heading to Central America or French Polynesia did not go because of port closures so there are more boats needing marina slips or haul outs and storage spots for hurricane season.

So our journey home began on March 14 when we left La Paz.

Because Loomba-Loomba was for sale we hung around at Marina Palmira most of the winter. We had a great time, but marina life isn’t normally what we like. Because of the Covid19 spread we figured there wouldn’t be too many people boat shopping so we decided to head further north, spend some time at the islands around Loreto and Puerto Escondido and then head over to San Carlos in May. That was the plan.

 

San Evaristo Sunset

Day 1-3:

In reality we quickly made our way to Agua Verde (one night Isla Espiritu Santo, one night San Evaristo, and then Puerto Los Gatos).  When we left Espiritu Santo Jim was not feeling well. When we arrived in Evaristo he had a low grade fever, felt achy, and had sharp pains behind his eyes. He seemed to feel better in the mornings , but the fever (100.4) would return in the afternoon. These were not Covid19 symptoms, but probably a very mild case of dengue fever, but we decided we needed to self isolate anyway. The next morning we pushed on to Puerto Los Gatos.

When we arrived in Puerto Los Gatos there were no other cruising boats, but the Safari Endeavor (an “Uncruise” Ship)

was there. They had happy hour on the beach and it looked like there were only about ten guests and they were all sitting about six feet apart.  They left that evening.  We left the next day and headed for Agua Verde to wait out the next northerly and get some wifi. Jim was feeling better, but still had a low grade fever.

Loomba-Loomba got a nice bath while we were in Agua Verde

Followed by a rainbow

 and a sunny day!

Looking toward the Agua Verde village from the north anchorage

Day 4-11

We spent a week in Agua Verde. Jim improved and I was still feeling fine. We still did the social distancing, with one hike into the store to sit outside and use their satellite wifi (30P/hour). We also were listening to the morning SSB and HAM radio nets and getting info that way. Things were starting to shut down in La Paz, the roads to the beaches (including Agua Verde) were closed by the Federales and the campers on the beach in AV were asked to leave. We decided we better leave and get to Puerto Escondito where we could get wifi and cell service to wait out the next northerly.

 

The Puerto Escondido mooring field

Day 12-19

We grabbed a mooring buoy. Although we were feeling fine we felt like we should self isolate (just in case) so we didn’t interact with any of our friends there, except by radio or dinghy drive-bys. 

The news we were getting from the radio nets was disconcerting. Restaurants and hotels were closing, road blocks were put up, beaches were closing. We assumed that it was mainly because of the approaching Semana Santa which draws thousands of people to the beaches – the perfect storm for Covid19. 

We decided to try to get to San Carlos ASAP and try to get an earlier haul out date if someone canceled. We were waiting for the current northerly to settle down before we crossed the Sea of Cortez for San Carlos.  However, the early morning (6:15am) of March 30^th a friend of ours raced over in his dinghy to tell us that all the ports in Mexico were being closed later that day. If we were a vessel in transit we could enter a port, but if we were already in port we could not leave.  We immediately dropped the mooring line and headed out of the bay towards Isla Coronados and then San Carlos. We did not want to get stuck or sick in Mexico. We wanted to cross the border!

 

Dolphins coming to say hello at Isla Coronados

It turned out that they revised the order so that privately owned cruising boats were exempt. They were really targeting the tourist trade vessels. We ended up having a great sail across, buddy boating with that friend!

Day 20-26

We arrived in Bahia San Carlos on April 2^nd and immediately contacted the Marina.  They had an opening for 9am on April 7^th! We didn’t want to go into the marina – too hard to social distance and many people were not even trying. We did most of the decommissioning at anchor, only going ashore once to get our van (we got a ride from the owner of the place we stored it and all three of us were wearing masks).

 

Sunset in Bahia San Carlos

The whole scene in San Carlos was eerie. The parking lot at the marina was empty. All of the tourist boats were at the docks with no one on board. The marina restaurants were closed and there was no one around except the guards.

Things kept getting worse while we were working furiously to get the boat ready for haul out and the summer hurricane season. 

-On 4/3 an 8pm to 6am curfew was imposed and beer production and sales were stopped.

-On 4/4 there were reports of gasoline sales being stopped for two weeks in San Carlos so Jim and Rick went ashore, hopped in the van and went to the Pemex station to get a gerry jug of gas for Rick and a full tank of diesel for the van.

-Every day Helicopters were overhead making sure no one went to the beaches.

-A roadblock was set up entering San Carlos so only residents could enter.

Waiting for the trailer to haul out L-L. Notice the empty parking lot and lack of people
 - very eerie!

Our goal was to get everything done and be on the road to the border before the official Semana Holiday started on April 9^th.

We did it! We were on the road at 10:30am on April 8^th not sure of what would happen at the border crossing. We were sure they would let us cross, but worried about potential quarantine, etc. It was actually the shortest line we have seen at the border (all U.S license plates), but it took us an hour because they were being so thorough. The border crossing was our only stop the whole way (there is a head and galley on the van). We arrived at our son’s house in Apache Junction, AZ around 6:30 pm – relieved and exhausted.

So here we will be for awhile before heading home. We are staying in the van (plugged in), it’s sunny (but not too hot), his property is 1 ¼  acre so there is lots of space, we can order groceries on line and go pick them up outside the store, and we  have good cell and wifi! We feel VERY lucky that things have turned out the way they have so far.