Monday, November 7, 2011

Turtle Bay Oct 27 to Oct 29..

The arrival of the Baja Ha Ha fleet in Turtle Bay is a big event for the villagers of this isolated town. Long before the feet arrived, cantina owners stocked up on cerveza and food for the sailors who would soon crowd into their small cantinas; fisherman scrubbed their pongas and prepared them for use as taxis to shuttle the sailors from their boats to the village and back again; the bait and tackle shop ordered extra lures and plugs for sailors intent on catching their next meal; children watched for the first signs of the fleet to arrive over the horizon. The villagers were in a festive mood.


We arrived at 3:00AM and decided to wait until daybreak to motor into the bay and anchor. While we drifted in the darkness we could see the mast lights of the sailboats that arrived earlier that day. Our plan was to first get a few hours of sleep, as we had just sailed three days and nights to get to Turtle Bay and then explore the village.  It didn’t take long for the first pongas to approach our boat inquiring “taxi?” taxi?”  We paid $2 each for the ride that left us off at the end of a tall dock with a really scary, patched together stairway that looked like it would fall apart in a minute.


The decking of the dock had the occasional man-size hole that would jettison you into the water below if you weren’t paying attention. At night it was really scary if you forgot to bring a flashlight as there was no lighting or railings on the dock. What the village lacked in infrastructure it more than made up in friendly faces and people that were eager to help you in any way they could.

It’s a mystery what drives the economy in Turtle Bay, other than fishing there doesn’t appear to be much industry. Mercados (grocery stores) and novelity stores (clothing stores) have few items for sale and lots of empty shelf space: what they have for sale is very basic. Everything in town is covered with a fine gray dust…houses, cars, fences even the dogs that you see everywhere are covered in dust.  Houses are very simple, and in need of general repair, many new buildings were started but never finished. Some houses have construction materials piled outside but work doesn’t appear to be in progress. My guess is that money that fuels the building is coming from Mexican’s working in the U.S., and it’s likely that the recession has slowed building in Turtle Bay.
The streets are all unpaved, and street lights are very rare. All us Baja Ha Ha sailors wonder through town night and day: shopping, exploring, “stretching our legs” after 3-days at sea. We see trucks carrying half a dozen teenagers in the bed drive by; groups of young people hanging out on the street corner or at the beach; Mexican Marines with M-16 pass by in opened pickup trucks too but we don’t feel uneasy or frightened.  To the best of my knowledge nobody in our fleet has had anything but good things to say about the villagers. One evening I stop to talk to a tall thin man that was making salsa at a taco and cervza (beer) stand on the beach. He looked out at all of the anchor lights in the bay and told me, “it looks so beautiful…it’s just like Christmas!” I thought, yes the boost to the economy made by our 160 sailboats was big enough to qualify as Christmas for many of the enterprising village people.
After the last sailboats of the fleet arrived at the anchorage and their crew rested we had three very special activities planned: a ball game ; a dinner at a very casual cantina; and a beach party.
The baseball game pitted us sailors against the Turtle Bay Little League. The little league team we played had won first place in their division for the entire Baja Peninsula. Of course the children defeated us quickly and with much laughter from the stands as well as the field. Much good will was generated by our defeat and the game helped the sailors and villagers get to know each other. We missed the game but heard all about it later.
After the ball game most of the sailors headed uphill toward the “large inflatable can of Pacifico Cerveza” for dinner and drinks. Yes that was essentially the directions the organizers of the event gave us, and we found it!  We scrambled up hill behind the cantina walking past fish heads that were discarded from the kitchen a few days earlier. This was the first time we met the other sailors in a setting where they all “let their hair down”, and the first time we had eaten the local food. The conversation was interesting but the food was rather plain.
The next day was the beach party and everyone was looking forward to it.  Local merchants set up a bar, and awnings. We setup chairs and volley ball nets. Everyone brought a dish for a huge pot-luck dinner. There was every kind of pasta dish that you could imagine, supplemented with fresh fish (tuna, mahi mahi, and wahoo). I’m sure we consumed more cerveze in one afternoon than the village drank in a month! A good time was had by all and then it was time to go, much sooner than we wanted to.

A few sailboats had to remain behind in Turtle Bay to fix mechanical problems that developed on the sail from San Diego. I reported earlier that our autopilot was repaired in San Diego. Unfortunately, the autopilot still did not work after installing it a day before we left San Diego, so we had to continue hand steering our boat all the way down the Baja Peninsular.


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