Waiting for a Window

We arrived at Puerto Los Cabos Marina a couple of hours before sunset on June 12th and were assigned to our old berth at the end of gangway L. The daytime temperatures here have been hovering in the high eighties, with light southerly winds and intense tropical sunshine every day. The humidity index has also been in the eighty percent range which makes life aboard a bit sticky and sweaty. So I broke out the air conditioner which brought the temperature and humidity inside the boat down to 78 degrees and 50% humidity. The air conditioner is a little 5,000 BTU window unit that fits neatly in the companionway, and stores in the starboard cockpit locker when not in use. It has made life bearable here while we wait.

The only problem with the air conditioner is that it makes you want to stay inside the boat from about noon to dusk.

San Jose is rapidly turning from a town to a city. In 2010 the town had a population of approximately 70,000. Combined with the tourist mecca of Cabo San Lucas a few miles down the road, this area hosted over 900,000 hotel guests in 2011. I remember visiting here in the 1970's when San Jose was a little town that no one went to and Cabo was just becoming popular as a sportfishing destination.

Marina Puerto Los Cabos. 

Here's something for the history buffs out there. Back in 1847, during the Mexican American War, a force of 24 American marines and sailors landed with a 9 pounder carronade and took up a position in the old mission San Jose. There, with a reinforcement of twelve men from California, they fought off an assault by a Mexican force under the orders of one Capitan Pineda Munoz. A couple of months later a larger Mexican force returned and laid siege to the American outpost. The seige lasted about a month and was finally lifted when a strong American naval force arrived. Nowadays we don't remember much about our 19th century conflicts, except for the Civil War, and a bit about the War of 1812. At least I've never seen anyone doing a Mexican American War reenactment.

9 Pounder Carronade. It fired a 4" diameter cannonball. As far as I can determine, this is a British gun dating form the early 1800's, but it's probably fairly similar to the one used at San Jose.  Photo courtesy of Gunstar.co.uk

As you can tell, we've had some time on our hands while we wait for that weather window to open, but it's been fun meeting new and interesting fellow cruisers. A couple of days after we arrived the pretty little Eastward Ho 24, named Molly, with Eric and Christine aboard tied up on our gangway. They sailed Molly down from Portland, Oregon and spent the season cruising in the Sea of Cortez. They left San Jose on Tuesday, June 16th, bound for Mag Bay, where we hope to catch up with them in a few days.

The Eastward Ho was designed by the venerable Walter McInnis and is a pretty salty seagoing vessel.

The weather forecast is for light southerly breezes for the next few days, so we will head out early tomorrow morning for Mag Bay.