Well, it’s the beginning of August and we ended up staying in La Cruz after all. Despite all of our plans, we were unable to head up to the Sea of Cortez and reach our summer destination of San Carlos.

While we did successfully fix the engine, install the new bilge pump, filter the water out of our fuel (twice!), and readied ourselves to sail out of La Cruz, we reached a point on the calendar where it didn’t make sense to brave tropical weather to sail up north.

Instead, we readied Juniper to spend her summer in La Cruz: we washed and put away our sails, took down and stowed our lines, put on two coats of varnish, cleaned the boat inside and out, put up a tarp to help block UV, and completed a dozen more small decommissioning tasks to keep Juniper safe, dry, and clean. For the rest of the summer we’ll be back in the states spending time with family.

We’ll be back in Mexico at the end of the year and are looking forward to a proper cruising season!

Typical summer afternoon weather in La Cruz.

Typical summer afternoon weather in La Cruz.

Lots of water made it into our secondary filter. Turns out we had a leak in our deck fill.

Our exhaust riser was practically crumbling.

Drying the main after a good scrub.

Folding our main for storage. Thank goodness for the lounge at Marina La Cruz!

Viv put on two more coats of varnish to protect the wood over the summer.