Welcome to Vagari’s 7th winter of sailing. We have put 8,000 miles under Vagari’s keel during those cruises but this year like last year won’t be a high mileage year. We just don’t have the lust for the long cruises that we did when we started cruising but we still enjoy living on board and sailing near our homeport. Welcome aboard! We hope you enjoy our blog. Your comments, questions and suggestions are appreciated and encouraged.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

We Started Our Cruise With A Road Trip To Alamos, MX

Wednesday March 9 was departure date from our home in SaddleBrooke. We are having work done in the marina yard so we didn’t expect her to be ready to launch. We are having the rudder rebuilt, new bottom paint, a little fiberglass work and the gray/blue strip along the sides repainted plus the normal spit and polish work to the topsides, deck and stainless steel. We have already replaced the masthead navigation and anchor light lenses and the lamps with LED’s as well as replacing the cabin lights with LED’s. The LED’s draw a little more than 10% of what they replace. This makes a huge difference in the load on the batteries when anchored. And we now turn on enough cabin lights so we can read at night without wearing “headlights”.

Sure enough the work was not completed so we spent a day or so checking out the progress and making sure everything was being done to our liking. We then took a “vacation from our vacation” and went to Alamos, Mexico, a 3 or 4-hour drive further south.

The Spanish Conquistadors first went to what is now Alamos in 1545. In 1683 extremely rich silver ore was discovered. A town that peaked out at about 30,000 inhabitants was built to support the mines. The mines lasted until the very early 1900’s. Some of the homes built by the rich mine owners survive even after two major revolutions and are lived in today. Rhea and I toured three of these home this year and three two years ago. All except one was a very old “originals” that had been restored.

The photos that follow don’t do justice to the beauty of Alamos. There is an American community of over 300 but only about 50 “summer” in Alamos. One told us that if she died in the summer and went to hell at least the temperature wouldn’t change.

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