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| Dry Mambo......three days later. |
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| Broke-back Taxi @ the Mambo |
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| A bit on the warm side.... |
Anyway, late September I split from SoCal and headed down to Baja. I had left Godzilla in La Paz for the summer. I had hired a local captain to do some work on my boat, and almost none of it got done. In addition, some of my expensive tackle had be stolen. Of course nobody knew anything, and I was very happy I have theft insurance. I called the police, but to no avail. I finally had to bribe them (300 pesos) to come and make a report. I suspect the marina security and the captain I had hired knew more than they were telling.
When I arrived in La Paz I made contact with my friend Captain Jack, who I had met in Mazatlan the previous year. He had just sold his boat and was living ashore. Every morning a few XPats would meet as his house for coffee and conversation. News was comming in of an approaching tropical storm (Norman). On the day it was due to arrive, I had been at Jack's till late afternoon avoiding boat chores.
On the way back to the boat it started to rain a bit. I stopped at a little tienda (market) and when I got back in car to leave it would'nt start. I tried for a bit with no luck and sat there for an hour as the rain slowly increased. After the hour the car started I took off for the boat post haste!!...After almost exactly 5 minutes the car stalled . It did this in a busy intersection, and out I came to push it around a corner, out of traffic. This same scene repeated itself 3 more times as I tried to get back to the boat before the streets became flooded.
The final time the car died I was on the main road to the marina and as I pushed her around yet another corner, in calf deep, fast running water, I was accross the street from a little mini mart called the Mambo!!!! By then it was about 10P.M. and the main highway was totally underwater. I knew if I sat there for another hour the car would run long enough to get to the boat. But what if it died while on the highway???...The water might get so high I would get flooded!!!!......
I sat there for a bit then waded over to the Mambo (I should have had my dingy by then) and asked the two young kids working there to call me a taxi. They tried and tried but could find none who were working with all the flooding. One of the young girls working there even went outside with me in the rain to try and flag down a taxi who might be up and running. Around midnight we finally reached a taxi who agreed to come out. Sometime later he pulled into the parking lot and promptly stalled out.
I waded back to my car , resolved to spend the night there. 30 minutes later I got a tap on my window. It was the security guard from the VW dealer next to the Mambo who had been watching our plight. He had flagged down a passing taxi. This one ran fine and after some hydro-planning we made it to the marina around 1a.m.........WHEW!!!!!.....I was never so happy to see my boat. By then it was raining so hard that water was streaming out of the freeing ports. Wind was howling!!!
It rained for another day and then I got back to work, getting Godzilla ready to cross back to Mazatlan. Mid-October Wally arrived in La Paz to crew with me for the crossing (225 miles). Shortly after he got there we received warnings for Hurricane Paul. By then Jack had taken my car (now repaired) back to Mazatlan on the ferry. So I was without transportation. Lucky for us, Paul passed north of us and slammed into Puerto Escondido, so all we got was more rain and some wind. Not as bad as Norman, though. One thing that DID happen was a power spike on the dock that blew out my inverter and battery charger.
So, Wally and I were marina-bound for a few day while it poured. Watched movies and thanked our stars for air conditioning.
The trip to Mazatlan was a nice milk-run and we arrived 31 hours later, well rested and well fed......
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| Jack's back yard |
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| Jack says W.T.F....over!!! |
