This is a picture of the entrance to the Cathedral, that we took later. The Cathedral was built in 1939 and has had few alterations. It is beautiful inside.
11-09-09
After a week in Mazatlan, I thought I would tell everyone what we had been doing. We went into town on Monday. They have a "tourist" bus; it's air-conditioned and costs 9 pesos ($0.75) for any length of ride. The "regular" buses are only 6 pesos ($0.50). The ride into town takes about ½ hour. We went to the "Central Market" (Mercado). It's similar to any central market in the world, but maybe not as sanitary as others. The throw a half side of beef on a table and begin cutting it up. They throw the pieces into a bin and the patrons start sifting thru to get the cut they want. As Judy says "I wouldn't buy my meat in this place". The veggie stands are much nicer and we did buy some veggies there.
Across the street is a Cathedral. Judy had brought both of her cameras, but they were both dead, so no pictures today. We walked around town for a little while, after having lunch and then decided to go to the Gran Plaza.
We got on one of the "cheap" buses and held on for dear life as the driver took us out of town. The familiar phase "Tijuana Taxi Driver" was on our minds. The only problem, this was a bus. We arrived safely at the Gran Plaza, it's really just a mall and wandered around it for a while.
We then took off walking for the Mega Store. It's a huge "market". I think that you could buy anything there but a car (I'm not even really sure about that). This store is like the one we went into in Ensenada. We stocked up on some bread, veggies, meat, drinks and a hose (the boat is filthy and needs cleaning). When we left the market we took what I called a glorified golf cart back to the boat. I say that because it's not much bigger and the exhaust was really bad.

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This is a portion of the bay outside of old town Mazatlan.
11-05-09
We left San Jose del Cabo at about 6:30 AM. Judy took the first watch, while I tried to get some sleep. We are doing 6 hour watches during the day and 4 hours at night. I came up for my watch at noon and thought that we might be able to sail instead of motoring, we always get the main sail up to motor. We set the jib and had a great sail until about midnight when the wind died down. We had sailed along at about 7 knots for the majority of the time with the wind at about 70° off our port bow. The wind was about 10 to 15 knots, perfect for our point of sail.
We arrived in Mazatlan at about 10 AM, a full 2 hours ahead of our estimated time. We had e-mailed the Marina Mazatlan, the night before we left, but hadn't received conformation for a slip. I got on the internet (about 2 miles off-shore - this 3G card is great) and got the confirming e-mail from them (but no slip number). While I was on the internet, I saw that Wally Nevin (a dock mate from Ventura) had sent me an e-mail asking us where we were. They were in Cabo and not leaving until the next day (Saturday). I told him that we approaching the harbor and would see them when they got here.
After clearing with the office, we went to our assigned slip, lo and behold, Wally and Linda's boat was directly in front of us. They got in on Sunday about 8 AM.

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This is a shot taken between Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo. The entire coastline between the 2 is very similiar to this, with some very large hotels along the way.
11-02-09
We left Santa Maria at 6 AM to head for Cabo San Lucas. We have a good motor down to Cabo. We saw no one else until we were about 2 hrs away from Cabo. Then the sport fishermen were out in droves and a cruise ship passed us and went into Cabo. We bypassed Cabo and went into this new marina (being built) at San Jose del Cabo. (23°03.5'N X 109°40.4'W) We arrived about noon (again). We fueled up and then got a slip for 2 nights.

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The only buildings within the Northerly portion of Santa Maria.
10-31-01
The next morning, we continued on toward Mag Bay. We had a wonderful trip along the way. We stayed fairly close to the shoreline (about 5-10 miles offshore). We went toward Punta Pequena (26°14.2'N X 112°29.3'W) and then turned toward Mag Bay. We had discussed going into Mag, but decided to go into Santa Maria Cove. (24°44.4'N X 112°15'W) It's a pretty good-sized cove and really empty. There were only 2 boats in the entire bay, one sail and one big power (like a floating hotel for sport fishermen (the Pacific Provider)). Got the anchor set about noon and got things settled down. Rob went over the side to inspect to damage and told us about it. During the day and into the evening, boats from the Ha-Ha started to arrive. First a few and then a few more and then a lot more. By sundown there were approximately 40 boats in the bay. In the morning there were a bunch more, so we decided to leave.

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This is a shot of the church (looks like they are building a new one) in Punta Abreojos.
10-29-09
Left Turtle Bay after having to wait out some weather (again). The weather sites I follow, called for some fairly high winds and rough seas further South (15 to 20 knots and 5 to 6 ft seas). Besides the weather calming down (supposedly) the Ha-Ha boats were coming into Turtle. On the way out I had forgotten about the rock area in the NW corner of the entrance, we hit one and it stopped the boat immediately. I got thrown into the wheel and Judy got thrown into the counter. We both have ended up with a good bruise. The boat survived the hit with only some small dings and scraped paint.
After straightening everything out, we continued on toward Mag Bay. The first few hours were good, moderate winds (10-15) and fairly flat seas. We set the sails (I put a single reef in the main) and were doing really well. We were moving at 6-7 knots and surfing up to about 8 knots. Then things changed, the wind picked up and the seas increased. We took down the jib and were still moving at 7+ knots (downwind). As night was getting here, we decided to put another reef in the main and we were still moving at 7+ knots. After a very rough night, confused seas and high winds, we decided to head in for the coastline. We were about 30 miles offshore and it took a while to get into the bay at Punta Abreojos. (26°42'N X 113°34'W) We got there about 4:30 and got the anchor set in a pretty little area just off the shore. Then we all just crashed into bed, after a light dinner.

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The picture is the "pier" at Turtle Bay. Not much of a pier, but you can get a ride (or dinghy) and walk into town.
10-23 to 25-09
Left Marina Coral at about 10:45 after getting fuel, filled tank and jerry cans. We took on 59 gals of fuel and 5 gals of gas.
The trip down was fairly uneventful. About 4 hours out we came upon some floating fish storage nets and 4 vessels. When I first saw them it looked like one of the boats was towing a barge. It turned out that they were all around the nets and that they had long lines out. One of the boats sent out a skiff and they guided us thru the area (sort of, broken English and pointing). We made it thru and were on our way again.
About 6 hours out of Turtle Bay, I needed to adjust our course (had reached a waypoint).
I foolishly turned off the autopilot and tried to steer the boat (in the dark, with no visual point of reference). We ended up doing a 360 and by the time I was back on course, lots of things had moved all over the boat. Things went flying inside the boat, including Robert, he ended up rolling all over his bunk.
Once we were back on course, things settled down and the rest of the ride was calm. We haven't done any sailing so far, just motoring. Light winds and 5 - 6 foot waves. Clear skies mostly and cool in the evenings.
Reached Turtle Bay around 9:30 in the morning and found a place to anchor. Two boats near us had been in Ensenada the same time we were. We settled down for a peaceful day and evening. There s a pretty good breeze blowing thru and the skies were clear and it is warm (probably high 70's to low 80's). I have been calling Turtle Bay as the Bay of Birds, lots of pelicans, seagulls and cormorants (and some seals), saw a couple of dolphins this morning.
10-26-09
Got a full load of fuel from one of the fuel pangas and then hitched a ride into town. Turtle Bay is a small community and hardly anyone about, except cars driving down the dirt streets and raising up dust clouds. Had brunch at a little café and then got back on the boat (same fuel panga). We'll leave here about noon tomorrow for Magdalena Bay, it should take us about 40 hours (240 miles). We are going to try and sail some of it, probably only during the day.
Will let you know more after reaching Mag Bay (about 155 miles NW of Los Cabos).

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