We are making our way slowly northward, enjoying all the Sea of Cortez has to offer. We had a lovely spinnaker sail the day before yesterday. It was only 10 miles, but all we put up was the big blue and white sail and just floated down the channel. At one point we had to beam reach and then things got a bit exciting and the boat perked up and went for about 15 minutes, that was great. There were several boat we knew in the anchorage so the night we arrived we ended up having a 5 boat pot luck aboard this 40 foot cat. It was great of them to offer their boat, there was so much room, we all took our plates, cups and utensils as well as our food so when we all left so did the mess. It was great.
Yesterday we went out hunting amethyst with another couple. We hiked over a hill on a road and then went up a dry ravine. It was wide and filled with sand and boulders. You could see where other people had broken open rocks and left them for others to collect if they wished. Barry found the best amethyst and I managed to find one that was faintly purple. I am going to keep it though because my finds are few and far between. We were gone over 5 hours, from 9 in the morning until almost 3 in the afternoon, by the end I felt like all the moisture had been sucked out of my body. It was hot and windy and if I licked my lips I immediately had to put some sun block on them or they felt totally dried up.
There was a small store in the village so we stocked up on fresh fruit and veggies, as they were, apples, oranges, tomatoes, jicima, fairly basic fair. They had a water purification plant in the village so we were going to fill up our water tanks, but "Antonio", the water guy, had gone to La Paz and although we tried to find his "hermano" (brother) we didn't quite figure out where he was supposed to be and our water jugs came back to the boat empty. Barry had the water maker working for about an hour, (about 4 gallons worth) and then it quit again. He talked to one of our buddies and hopefully has figured out a method to fix that thing otherwise we are going to have to very careful with our water for awhile.
Today we sailed 25 miles into the wind all day. The waves weren't too big so they did not slow us down too much although it took us 11 hours to sail the distance so if you figure out the miles per hour, it is not great!! We are both pretty tired, we will have to spend a couple of days at this anchorage as there are bigger winds forecast for the next couple of days. We get our weather from a cruiser's net on the ham radio. We have two weeks left before we have to cross the Sea to get to the spot we have decided to leave the boat for the summer. There should be some great places to see between now and then.