Muertos and Mazatlan approach
19 December 2010
Fred
Left La Paz at 0630 and motored all the way to Muertos. Flat calm seas and no wind but made it in 7.5 hours. Anchored and took a swim and checked the repair on the prop and it looked good. Cleaned the impeller on the speedo and took a shower. Beautiful afternoon and nice and warm.
Joe from Sea42 came roaring up in his dinghy just at sundown and he and his friend Dave came aboard and regaled us with their stories of going ashore and having dinner at Los Suenos Resort. They were the only ones there for dinner but had a fantastic meal served by chefs, waiters, and barmen. The help out numbers the guests as there appeared to be no guests. They met Steve Games and heard his story and vision for Bahia De Los Suenos. Penny and I are going in tomorrow for lunch and to look around and hopefully talk to Steve.
Joe showed me some tricks on the Ipad with the new Navionics charts that I downloaded in La Paz. They are incredible and will be helpful especially in planning trips.
We are hoping to see the meteor shower tonight and did see one huge one go down.
Well it is the next day and we put the dinghy in the water and the engine started and worked well so the fix in La Paz was help ful. We went over to a dinghy dock that was added to the landing that was cut out of the shore and built with rocks in 1535. That is roughly when the Spaniards landed and killed all the locals, thus the name, Bahia de los Muertos (Bay of the Dead). We hiked down the beach to Gran Sueno, a new hotel built by Steve Games of San Diego of Prudential California Realty fame. He was not there but we had a so so lunch in the Train Restaurant where he has his collection of model trains set up. It is very impressive and all came from Frank the Train Man who was on El Cajon Blvd. in SD from the 40's to the 80's. Apparently Steve bought the collection when the store closed. He is also trying to get the government to change the name to Bahia de los Suenos (Bay of Dreams). Sounds like a real estate deal to me.
The next morning at 10AM we weighed anchor and set off for the 190 mile crossing of the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlan. The weather report was for light winds and small seas and that is exactly what we had. No more than 4 knots of true wind from the southeast and southwest. We did see a line of buoys that was marking a long line but were able to avoid it. We made it through the night without incident of snagging a line and in the morning as we approached Mazatlan, I spotted a line of shrimp boats and counted 15 of them. They were all following the leader with their trawls out and I had to dodge one but no problem. There should be fresh shrimp in Mazatlan in a few days!
We arrived just outside of the channel after 25 hours at sea and came to the entrance at the same time as Turtue and he radioed us that the dredge was in the channel and they might lower the cable and let us in. Since Mike has done this a hundred times I told him I would follow. As we got in it was low tide and quite narrow, especially with the dredge in place. We made it with a few feet to spare on both sides and only about 2 feet under the keel. It was pucker time! Check out the photos Penny managed to get between hail marys.