Sailing the Karina C

11/12
Another beautiful morning in La Paz. Yesterday we cleaned the carpets and Anita cleaned the stainless steel. We now have over 30 litres of pop. Anita is fixing to make it more. I did some thinking on the bicycles and they are going to go into the sail locker. The sails will go into the bicycle bag and be stored in front of the dodger. That way the sails are easier to get at if needed. The bikes will stay dry in the sail locker.
Today we are making several trips to the grocery store. Hopefully our dive tank will be ready this evening.
Later…..
We stopped by the dive shop and learned the tank will be ready at 1630 this afternoon. Hooray! That will make our departure that much easier as picking up the tank at Pichilingue invoves a dinghy ride.
This morning we decided to move the sails in the sail locker to the deck and store the bikes in the sail locker. This looks a much better arrangement. We both feel better about that.
We rode our bikes extensively today. Went to Chedraui for lots of groceries this morning. After lunch we went to Ley for 2 gallons of Guyaba (Anita’s favourite drink) and 3 half sacks of low octane beer.
The weather looks good for the crossing to Mazatlan on Monday. We will likely go to Los Muertos on Monday. Tuesday we will head to Mazatlan and arrive Thursday morning. We have a booking at El Cid for Friday. We might just lay at anchor and rest for Thursday.
11/17
We left La Paz on Monday morning and motored into the wind as we headed towards San Lorenzo Channel. Once into the channel the wind died and we motored for 24 hours until Tuesday evening. As we were motoring S there was very light wind from behind us, Not enough to sail and just a little too much to motor. We motorsailed with the reefed main all the way until 65 miles short of Mazatlan. As we were going S we had the pleasure of company with Stray Cat. We would chat back and forth as we travelled together and discuss the weather from various reporting systems we each had.
During Monday night the La Paz-Mazatlan ferry took a run at us. I called him up on the VHF and we discussed the necessary course changes. Oddly, the next night he was out there again (on the return run from Mazatlan- La Paz), Fortunately, he wasn’t disposed to playing chicken with us that night.
As it was apparent we were going to make Mazatlan in the middle of the night, we decided to sail a bit. We made better time than expected at that as well. Again Wayne (the vane) did excellent service and did an excellent job of steering us in to the Mazatlan yacht harbour.
We arrived at 0530. The night watchman helped us tie to the fuel dock and we had a few extra minutes of shut-eye waiting for the harbourmaster to come on (0600) We discovered that we were not as diligent as we should have been about the hole for the chain locker and the locker overflowed on the bedding (this often happens when we don’t plug the hole carefully). The salt water overflowed onto the cushions in the V berth. We were so tired, we didn’t care. We slept in the wet bed anyhow. At 0615 we went over to the harbourmaster and got a slip assignment. We motored over to the spot and a nice young dock attendant took our lines, We had trouble getting Karina to stay still at the dock. Eventually Anita got out the big bungee cords that we use for such occasions and Karina kept still for the time being.
We were wiped out from the second night sleep interruptions, so we stayed pretty close to Karina yesterday morning dozing and catching up on our rest. In the afternoon we biked over to a nearby Mega store and picked up some groceries. We made an early night of things and went to bed right after supper.
This morning we were up early. After Don Anderson and the local net we got on our bikes and “did” the town. Took a lot of good pictures and some cool video. We made it all the way to the top of the old lighthouse (picture). We got back to El Cid just in time for a swim and shower. Supper tonight is stir fry. We will watch a movie and then off to bed.