Since arriving to the pacific coast of Mexico in the new year we’ve met dozens of new boats and their crews. Some have come down from North America this season, some have been here for several seasons, and a few intrepid crews have made their way here from Central America or the Pacific.
As always it’s been an absolute pleasure to meet boaters of all types and from all walks of life, whose motivations for living at sea vary but who all share a clear love of the boating life.
We’ve had some great opportunities to engage the Mexico sailing community with the Citizen Science Directory, and demonstrate projects that we are taking part in.
On our way south from the US, we took part in the Baja Ha-ha sailing rally with nearly 100 other sailboats, and were able to share information with the fleet via radio and email, as well as directly in our stops down the Baja peninsular.
We continue to run into and spend time with many of the boats that took part in this fun event, especially the kid boats!
One of the main ways that boaters communicate and share information here in Mexico is through daily radio ‘nets’, check-ins that generally happen in the morning on VHF.
These are very local in nature, and you jump from net to net as you move down the coast.
They are absolutely invaluable as an information source on everything in that particular location, from where to find a mechanic to where you can get the best street tacos, and also serve as an important safety network.
We’ve had a great time engaging with these radio nets up and down the coast, sharing information the Directory and projects, and what projects we might be doing that day that others can join. The last part of a daily net invariably opens the floor for trivia and jokes, and sharing a short Free Range Ocean trivia on ocean subjects large and small has become a staple of our mornings.
Local cruisers clubs also provide an excellent chance to meet and engage with other boaters, and we have been so grateful for the warm welcome, the invite to do short talks, and the opportunity to leave communications materials for future visitors.
Club Cruceros de La Paz in particular was wonderful to visit, and we highly recommend visiting this excellent local cruising club and its morning coffee sessions to all boats who go into La Paz in Mexico.
We've also been hosting some educational outreach events aboard Freeranger inviting our boat neighbours aboard to learn about projects we - and they! - can participate in during their cruising.
Over the past weeks we’ve hosted on board daily sessions of the Secchi Disk Study, a citizen science project established to help researchers understand the impact of climate change on phytoplankton.
To check the levels of phytoplankton in our ocean, the project has developed a simple piece of equipment that you can order or make yourself and a free smart phone app for sailors and fishermen to use wherever they are in the world.
We have been inviting cruisers daily to come aboard and take part in the readings, and learn more about phytoplankton.
These sessions have just happened to coincide with a large bloom of plankton in our bay. At first this was met with grumbles from the fleet (about 30 boats), as it was clogging up everyone’s water maker filters!
However over time we have seen the power of experiential education in action and real engagement and positive change in attitude to the conditions, as we all learned more about plankton, and had some spectacular nighttime swims in the bioluminescence.
The daily Secchi reading became a key part of the morning net, as people both want to know for the science, and whether to run their water makers!
It also explained why a humpback whale kept coming into the bay and cruising around the boats at anchor!
As we enter our last few weeks in Mexico we’ll spend some time in Bahia Banderas, getting ready for the Pacific crossing in May. There’s both a very active net and a boat kids club here, and we’ll be working with both share and demonstrate various citizen science projects that boaters can do.
It’s a pretty spectacular setting, with the bay currently full of very active humpback whales – each sighting of which can be reported by boaters of course!
Comments