We decided to stay in Santa Rosalia for a couple of extra days. We ran into Adios, another boat that we met earlier in Bahia Agua Verde. They were staying in Santa Rosalia for the week and working on some boat projects, including a lot of sewing. Lana is a wiz at all things sewing, and the marina had given them use of a large empty room at the marina which was air conditioned.
The sun is so intense down here that things can degrade on a boat pretty quickly. So, one trick is to cover things in canvas. We had brought quite a bit of extra sunbrella canvas with us to work on some other covers, but we just haven’t had the time to do too much of that while we are down here. It is also difficult to work on a large sewing project in a little boat!
Before we left California we got a Sailrite sewing machine to be able to do some sewing, including being able to make any necessary repairs to sails along the way, which is pretty crucial. Neither Mike nor I had a lot of previous sewing experience. So, Mike’s mom and aunt gave us some tutorials before we left and helped make us some covers for our grill and propane tanks.
We decided to take advantage of Adios’ generous offer to help us with our sewing projects and stick around for a couple of days. So, in two days we were able to make covers for our larger outboard, a gas can, and the reel for the stern anchor line. I’m pretty proud of the results. They may not as perfect as a professional job, but I think they turned out pretty good. Lana was such a huge help and taught me how to sew zippers, which I had never done before. Whew!
We also took a tour with Adios of the mining museum. As I mentioned in my last post, Santa Rosalia was founded as a mining town, and there is still mining going on. The museum isn’t that big, but it does have a lot of old pictures and artifacts from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s when the copper mining was at its peak. Unfortunately, part of the museum (as well as part of the harbor) was destroyed in hurricane Odile, and they haven’t had the resources to repair it.
As our tour guide gave the tour in Spanish only, I was pretty happy that I was able to understand most of it. It is getting a little easier to understand Spanish here, but sometimes it is just way too fast for me. I guess I need to keep practicing!
Around the museum and Santa Rosalia there are quite a few other monuments of the original mining days. There is an old train as well as the cars that they used to haul the copper in. As the French originally began the mining, there are French influences that remain as well. We were able to tour the Hotel Frances, which has kept a lot of the original decor. The main church in town is Isla Santa Barbara, which was designed by the architect of the Eiffel tower. It was originally in Brussels before being dismantled and reassembled in Santa Rosalia. Pretty interesting.
Anyway, we are having a lovely time in this little town, but we are working on wrapping things up to head out to Isla San Marcos.
~katie
Zippers? I’m impressed.