Author Archives: Michael

You probably were wondering just what we would do with the Milagro chapter now behind us. No? Not at all? I can’t say I’m surprised or that I blame you but I’m going to pretend you wondered anyway. Sorry.

In June we exchanged our beloved Safari Serengeti motorhome Gilda for a slightly newer motorhome. The new girl is Graycie. Graycie is painted in several shades of gray and Gray is my mother’s maiden name so she became “Graycie”. Although the two coaches are almost exactly the same length, Graycie has 4 slide out sections where Gilda had only 2 making Graycie more spacious and roomy. Since we will be spending much more time in a motorhome than we ever did before, the extra room was definitely appealing. There are many other differences as well, some we appreciate, others leave us missing our old coach though, on the whole, it was definitely a move up.

I intend to put together a specification page soon that will describe Graycie in boring detail. In the meantime, however, let me introduce her. She’s is a 2006 Tiffin Allegro Bus 40’ long that spent her early years in Wisconsin. Since that time she has passed through several owners and shows signs of not having been loved in recent years. We think she might appreciate a little TLC and that’s where we come in.

We’ve now lived aboard her for nearly 2 months and in that time have taken two shakedown cruises. We have finally found places to put most things and are much more comfortable with her now as we prepare for the big journey ahead of us.

In the coming weeks you will hear mostly boring details of our travels and probably see many photos of food. Some people eat to live but we’re not those people. We’re the other kind. Our route will take us to see family and friends, spend time at a large RV rally, visit civil war battlefields and, most importantly (for Judy, at least), spend time at Disney World in Orlando, FL.

At 0912 MDT Judy locked Milagro for her very last time.

After living aboard Milagro for 17 years, nearly a full 10 of those in the waters of Mexico, we left with the last of our personal belongings this morning for the last time. Add “sailors” to the growing list of things we used to be.

Yes, there were waterworks.

That makes today the first day of the next chapter in our rather mediocre lives. While we don’t yet have a clear plan, should this one turn out to be half as good as our last several then we should definitely be OK.

For now then, it’s adios amigos.

Today is Thursday, 5/12/22 and all is well here. As advertised, Milagro and her crew migrated this morning into Marina de La Paz, the very last leg of our Farewell Tour.

The E wind petered out just after sunset last night and we enjoyed a very peaceful last night at anchor. Riding the last of the flood tide into La Paz we slid uneventfully to our last landing with Milagro. My last “last landing” involved fire trucks and crossed streams of salute from their water cannons but not this one. No hoopla. No ceremony. Just a quiet, smooth landing without any drama. I’ll take it.

We will take a little time now to relax some and to work a bit as we prepare Milagro to weather any nasty periods that the coming hurricane season might conjure up. We will visit some of our favorite restaurants as well as say our adioses to the few friends who have not already left for the summer season. Not sure how long that’ll all take but we aren’t approaching this phase with our hair on fire. If I had to guess I’d probably say 10 days, maybe a bit more.

You should notice that I have finally added a few photos to the blog (scroll down), mostly from these last couple of weeks. We hope they help you to feel just a little of how special we feel our time here  has been.

So that’s it. The Farewell Tour has been completed and just like that, we are no longer cruisers. Marina queens for another week, or so, sure.  But cruisers is just one more thing that we used to was. 

Once Milagro is put to bed, our immediate next concern is planning and then executing a cross country tour with Gilda all the way to east coast. Yes, our motor home is named Gilda. The journey will include popping in on family and friends, visits to Civil War sites and other points of interest and (Judy’s crowning achievement) a whole month in the RV park at Disney World in Florida. Yay.

I’m not sure what to do with this blog going forward. For one, the URL will no longer be right as anything we do will no longer relate to or include the SV Milagro. Then, I’m not sure that any MH wandering we might do would be of sufficient interest to anyone to warrant trying to document it. We will have to give that some thought. 

i am sooo far behind with regards to adding photos on this blog. In my defense, I am often posting via a pactor modem and ham radio and its just not possible. Other times, when we do find internet or cell coverage, the bandwidth is inadequate. Or, i just forget. 🙄 So, here are a few random photos we have taken recently.

I edited this photo by cropping out the unneeded edges and adding arrows and text pointing out the whale visible just below the surface. As I look closely at it, possibly, two whales. This goofball WordPress app just will not see it in the library and therefore I cannot upload it. <sigh> What we have instead is the raw photo and I guess I should just be grateful for that as WP refused to upload IT yesterday. So, finally, you can see just how close the whales came to us. Like, wow, yes!?

Today is Wednesday, 5/11/22, the last sea day for this crew and the Good Ship Milagro. We left San Evaristo in following winds less than 5kts on mirror smooth, flat seas. A light fog (or moisture haze) combined to create a sensation of “floating in space” for nearly the entire passage. 30 mins out from our destination, crossing the San Lorenzo Channel, an E wind of 15kts developed and stayed with us right into the anchorage. At 1435MDT our anchor is set in Bahia Falsa at 24 15′.452N, 110 19′.135W in 29′ over sand. OAT is 85F, the pool 75F and that E wind is blowing 15kts. After several weeks of the last this or last that, this is our last night “at sea”. Early tomorrow morning we will proceed into nearby Marina De La Paz where we will begin the final phase of prepping Milagro for new management. As many of you may also have done over the years, we have completely changed directions in our lives before. Each time all those “last times” were followed by many “firsts”. While, after 17 years of Milagro being our only home and nearly 10 of those years plying Mexico’s waters, it is hard to imagine us not doing this, onward we go. Expectantly and hopefully, looking forward to more great “firsts”. Thank you all so much for being part of this journey with us.

It is Tuesday, 5/10/22 and all is well with Milagro and crew. After several days enjoying one of our favorite anchorages and saying our good-byes to boating friends met there as well as local friends ashore, we continued south today. The morning began with heavy, wet dew and low hanging clouds on all of the surrounding mountains – very beautiful. If it weren’t so warm and muggy you could imagine yourself in the PNW. That cleared to winds L&V over flat water until just a couple of miles from our destination where the winds pinched between the Baja and Isla San Jose and gradually increased to about 10 kts on our tail. At 1722MDT our anchor was set in the north lobe at San Evaristo, 76nm from where we started our day. We’re at 24 54′.812N, 110 42′.158W in 25′ over sand. OAT is 83F, the pool 75F and a N wind is running at 9kts.
San Evaristo is a tiny fishing village where we have friends living ashore. We also have a story from here involving goats that you should ask us about one day. Lots of goats. Manana we make our move into the Bay of La Paz with Bahia Falsa our target. It’s near the approach to the LP channel and a place we usually spend our last night out in order to prep Milagro for the marina. We will respect that tradition this one last time on this, our second to last leg of the Farewell Tour.

It is now Saturday, 5/7/22 and all is well here. This leg of our Farewell Tour saw us motoring in winds <3kts(zephyrs?) over flat, glassy seas to Point Nopolo a few miles south of Loreto. A stock tank or mill pond could not have been any flatter. So, no sailing for us. At 1140MDt our anchor was set in front of Hotel Loreto Bay at 25 55′.497N, 111 20′.870W in 12′ over sand. OAT is 84F, the pool is 76F and there’s a 10kt breeze running from the SE. We intend to hang here for a couple of days while we interact with friends and monitor the weather. Exactly when we continue south or where we end up landing next will be driven by weather conditions so we will just have to see how it plays out. Stay tuned. Until then…..

It is Friday, 5/6/22 and all is good here. We enjoyed the time with our friends at El Burro, celebrating my birthday at Bertha’s on the beach there and Bret’s at JC’s out at the highway. One was more quiet than the other but both were fun. Played some cards and even made some new cruising acquaintances. Today we began the march south toward La Paz and the end of our journey. On flat, flat water in a SE breeze of 5kts, we motored our way to La Ramada. A beautiful little anchorage on the N side of Punto Basilio and around that corner from the even more beautiful (and extremely popular) anchorage at San Juanico. At 1550MDT our anchor was set at 26 22′.907, 111 25′.878 in 16′ over sand. OAT is 83F, the pool 77F and the SE breeze continues at 4kts, and…we are the only boat here. Nice. In the morning we resume our southing to land in the Loreto area. Pending a look at the latest forecast (once we are in range of the Loreto cell tower) we hope to park in front of the resort at Loreto Bay, S of Loreto at Point Nopolo. The last forecast we saw indicated conditions favorable for that roadstead anchorage which has long been one of our favorites. We expect to rendezvous there with more friends that we know are currently in the area. Bueno, hasta manana, amigos.

Today is Wednesday, 5/4/22 – “May The Forth Be With You!” And things here are good. We motored 10nm deeper into Concepcion and joined friends Bret/Marne (SV Liahona) and Gary/Angie (SV Nivasi) at Playa El Burro. This is also the Liahona’s Farewell Tour as she is sold and on her way to be delivered at San Carlos. Also, today is my birthday and tomorrow is Bret’s. We happen to have celebrated our birthdays together for each of the last several years so it seemed only right that we make it happen one last time. For another bit of trivia, we were last here in 2013, our first full year of cruising these waters, and now in our last. THAT was an exiting event with a crowded anchorage, a big T-storm and winds gusting to 50kts. But, that’s a story another time. Enough of the drivel, on with the show. We are set at 26 43′.765N, 111 54′.274W in 16′ over sand. OAT is 84F, the pool 77F and we have a NE breeze of 4kts. Current thinking is that we will hang out here through tomorrow and continue our Farewell Tour on Friday by moving further south. Veremos Uds entonces.

Today is Tuesday, 5/3/2022 and all is well here. As advertised, we spent the weekend in Marina Real where, with a great deal of help from Chip and Amy, we removed most of the personal stuff we had accumulated over the past 16 years. Pretty shocking just how much “stuff” there was. At dawn Monday they headed back to PHX driving our car and theirs while we moved out into Algodones Bay. From there we left this morning at 0300 for Bahia Concepcion to join up with several friends already there and begin Milagro’s Farewell Tour back to La Paz. It was the usual mixed bag of conditions but a pretty good passage all in all. Winds along the rumb line were too close hauled most of the way but motorsailing just above idle still netted us 6kts. Near the end, the wind clocked around enough to allow pure sailing under main and Code 0 and here we made 7-7.5kts. Entering Concepcion we were surrounded by a pod of hundreds of dolphins escorting us in. THAT is how you start a farewell tour! Now we are anchored at 26 51′.895N, 111 50′.936W in 23′ over sand at Bahia Santo Domingo. OAT is 83F, pool is 77F and wind is 11kts from the E. In the morning we move deeper into Concepcion to join our friends.