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Thursday 4, April 2013

We have enjoyed our sojourn in La Paz, where we have been for the last month. Overall the weather has been nice, mainly sunny and warm during the day but cooling off nicely at night. We reacquainted ourselves with the joys of the town, the ice cream parlors, restaurants and outdoor bars where you can sit and watch the world go by. We also enjoyed the pools at the Marina.

We made new friends here as well as met old friends from last year who somehow never left La Paz. We think we will be underway next week and have already provisioned for our next leg to Puerto Escondido. This will take us along the same route we took in March 2012 but we hope to send time in anchorages that we missed when dodging 'Northerners' as we did last year. However, at this time of the year, the days begin to get warm and it is time for the Coromuel winds to fire up. These are westerly winds, usually starting in the late afternoon and often lasting until morning. They can be gentle and they can be fierce and are quite unpredictable. It means the west facing anchorages on the islands are good during the early part of the day but you need to get tucked into a sheltered cove on the east side of the Baja for overnight anchoring.

We expect to miss out on Isla Espirtu Santo as all of the best anchoring spots face west, right into the face of the Coromuel. However Isla San Francisco has some protection on its eastern side and San Evaristo which is close by, offers good Coromuel protection. San Evaristo is close enough to make forays during the early part of the day to other interesting nearby places.

Of course, the weather was nice last week, but now we are leaving it wants to make our lives a little more difficult, however the winds may give us some decent sailing. We did some maintenance chores while in La Paz including changing out the raw water pump which was starting to fail. The outboard needed some help to get going as we had not used it in almost a full year and we will use it heavily over the next 30 days. There were also a few hoses that looked suspect, and these were replaced.

We expect to arrive in San Carlos on mainland Mexico at the end of this month and plan to make the crossing back across the Sea of Cortez from San Juanico which is north of Puerto Escondido.

Monday 4, March 2013
After watching and listening to the forecasts, we finally got a good weather window for a crossing over to the Baja. Earlier this morning, we had the bottom of the boat cleaned and finally left Marina Mazatlan at 10:10 am heading for La Paz. We had waited a couple of days for the sea to settle and we had fine sailing after clearing the harbor entrance for most of the day with our bow pointed just north of Isla Cerralvo. During the late afternoon we spotted a thick fog bank to the west of us which finally descended upon us just before nightfall.

We had the RADAR on, using a three mile range when suddenly in the fog and dark we heard voices and then strong beams of light. With visibility of about 250 yards, we had run right into the middle of a group of Pangas that were actively fishing about 17 miles offshore. We had earlier noticed the waves were somewhat confused which appeared to be the demarcation point for the Sea of Cortez hitting the Pacific. The group of Pangas was spread out over more than a square mile and even on very short range RADAR, they were not showing up too well. We finally managed to extricate ourselves and avoided entangling their fishing lines. I think they were as surprised as us but they were in good humor and appeared grateful for our care in avoiding their lines.

We pressed on during the night under the engine as the wind had died. By 11:00 pm, the fog had lifted to a hazy night but with much better visibility. Early on Tuesday morning, we picked up some nice wind which was on the bow so we altered course to take advantage of it. It gave us a nice sail for most of the afternoon and evening until it petered out about 11:00 pm shortly after we had tacked to the north. We turned the engine on to a loud squeal so we either had a loose drive belt or needed to replace one. It took an hour or so to fix this issue; head down in an engine compartment in the middle of the night in a wallowing boat is not my favorite pastime but you do what you have to. After all, cursing and cruising is all about being self-sufficient!

After fixing everything, we went back to the engine as the waves had settled down and set our course for Los Muertos where we arrived at 10:30 am and had the anchor down at 10:45 am. The bay was quiet with a number of other sailboats at anchor. We decided to spend two nights and catch up on some much needed rest. The weather was friendly and we had a calm anchorage during the entire stay.

Friday morning at 6:00 am we left Los Muertos for La Paz, passing through the Cerralvo channel during the morning before turning to head through the San Lorenzo Channel into the Bay of La Paz at about 1:00 pm. The weather had warmed up during the day and while we had to motor all the way to La Paz, it was a really beautiful day and a nice trip. Certainly better than last year when we had to fight our way from Los Muertos to La Paz in heavy wind in the middle of the night.

We tied off at the fuel dock of Marina Costa Baja at 4:15 pm to check in with our paperwork having covered 293 nautical miles since leaving Mazatlan. The entire trip had taken about 58 hours. In front of us on the fuel dock was ‘Venus,’ the boat Steve Jobs was still building when he died. At about 250 feet, its design draws interesting comments. It is lightweight aluminum, with lots of windows and highly polished stainless steel.

Saturday, March 2, 2013
Mazatlan is a nice place to hang out but like many places in Mexico, it is hard to leave, not because you want to but because these places sometimes won't let you go. They seem to connive with the elements and other opportunities to lock you in place. Last year it was La Paz and this year it seems Mazatlan wants to hang on to us. Our hearts were set on going further south but fate played a hand and in early February; in fact the very day we had planned to leave, a head cold stopped us dead in our tracks. Of course these must be shared so one turned into two which just extended our stay.

With time running short we ended up deciding to cross the Sea of Cortez to La Paz. Up until we made that decision, the weather for a crossing had been wonderful, but once we made that decision, it immediately turned ugly and blew hard on and off for a couple of weeks. More time in Mazatlan. After watching and listening to the forecasts for what seems like weeks, we finally have a weather window for a crossing.

Local wisdom and experience says wait a couple of days for the seas to get settled. Of course this is the southern part of the sea which gets a nice long fetch from up there where the Colorado comes in until it bumps into the Pacific swells that like to round the point of Cabo San Lucas and push up into the sea. This by itself can cause a nice confusion of waves; add to that the waves caused by the windstorms and you have a wonderful washing machine effect with steep seas and nasty short durations.

Who are we to dispute the local wisdom, so wait two days and point the bow at the northern end of Isla Cerralvo and in two days we should be looking to pass through the San Lorenzo channel into the Bay of La Paz. This assumes the wind is favorable otherwise we could be arriving in Los Frailes or Los Muertos and then going north to La Paz; who knows and who really cares?

All this just reminds us that cruising requires patience. Time, schedules and plans mean nothing you just have to go with the opportunities when they arise. Now let's see if La Paz will let us escape to Isla Espiritu Santo, Isla San Francisco and the other great places to the north during April.

(The picture is from a concert given by the Salvation Army Orphanage here in Marina Mazatlan.)

Cerritos Mazatlan
Monday, 25 February 2013
We took the bus over to Cerritos and Playa Brujas named for the female Witch Doctors who used to perform their rituals here. It has some nice seafood restaurants and a small strip of shops with a nice coffee bar where you can buy freshly roasted and ground coffee. A few weeks back, we had come over here with a group of friends to have a Sunday Brunch as the restaurant offers a special deal for cruisers. Sitting in the restaurant, we dined while watching the surfers having fun in the waves off the point. A fine view with a filling meal cost under $10 for the two of us.
The area still has some Oyster beds and it is a great spot to find fresh Oysters. It is still has something of a fishing camp feel about it with Pangas drawn up on the beach. On the headland, tucked away behind the stores is a RV park full of vehicles with US and Canadian license plates. The park has something of permanence about it as people have built walls with windows to provide wind protection while still enjoying the view. The RV's sit on concrete slabs; some even have extra rooms alongside the campers. In Mexico it is not uncommon to find these hideaway places where Gringos have found an inexpensive spot in the sun to winter over from the colder climates.
The sandy beach leads to offshore rocks where there are fine salt water pools when the tide retreats. As you walk around the headland from the Cerritos Bay, you can look down on the Brujas beach and the sand dunes with the surfers working the waves below you.
Back at the Marina, we have discovered the Palapa restaurant on the Island where on Tuesdays you can come and grill your own food and share in a cruisers potluck. It is the haunt of some British ex-pats some of whom hail from the part of England where I was brought up. One even went to the same school as me! We have had a fine time reminiscing about places we knew long ago.
Our weather is slowly improving for crossing over to La Paz and if it continues, we expect to be underway on Sunday. The marina has turned out to be in a convenient location and easy to get around with lots of local services with good local transportation for getting to stores or downtown. However, after spending six weeks in Mazatlan, we are ready for a change of scenery even though we have found this a pleasant place to hang out, relax, enjoy life and make new friends.

Thursday, 14 February 2013
Some places seem to want to hang on to you and never let you go. Last year it was La Paz and this year it seems that it is Mazatlan. We were all checked out and ready to sail the 90 miles south down the coast to Isla Isabella on Monday, 4th February. We were all provisioned and ready when John came down with a bad cold overnight. He probably caught it on the 12 hour bus ride back from San Carlos the previous Friday where he had taken the car for storage. After a few days Anita caught it so we have spent a couple of weeks recovering.

The port has been closed this week because of the weather so we could not leave anyway. Our time has been spent on the Internet, reading, cooking or sleeping. With taking antibiotics, our afternoon Margaritas were off limits. All of those provisions we had stocked up on had to go somewhere before they went bad. A pressure cooker is a wonderful thing; we made lots of Pot roasts, Meat stews, Veggie stews, Fried Rice dishes and in between a few gourmet meals of Shrimp for some variation.

We did manage to head to the Malecon for Fat Tuesday and saw a good portion of the Mazatlan Carnival procession. The floats were very professional with lots of wonderful costumes. We quite enjoyed the break from hanging out on the boat. The whole of the Malecon was blocked off from the Fisherman's memorial to the Aquarium. The big parade with fireworks over the bay was on Sunday however Tuesday's parade was still significant and lasted many hours, even if the weather was a little cool for those people with small costumes. Everyone was having a great time. It was quite a different atmosphere from the Carnival in La Paz, which has a more down-home family feel to it; the Mazatlan one is quite glitzy.

Our ships cat, Pasha has settled in and is always looking for tidbits of food. He has finally become a little more adventuresome and loves to prowl the deck in the cool of the evening. We have become quite used to the busses here in Mazatlan, they pass the Marina frequently so it is easy to get to the grocery stores or even downtown for seven or ten peso a head depending upon which bus you take.