When in doubt HEAD OUT
06 May 2010 | Mazatlan, Mexio to Topolobampo Mexico
Jodee
May 4th. We woke up to the call of "Wandering Puffin". It is their anniversary today and they were inviting the fleet to join them for a celebration lunch at a place that is suppose to have fantastic coconut shrimp. I'll report back after lunch.
The restaurant was a little hole in the wall on a strip mall on the malecon. It was called La Cueva Del Leon Restaurant & Bar. The food was excellent. We had the coconut shrimp which are the largest shrimp I have ever seen. The coconut is real coconut. It came with rice, steamed vegetables and mango sauce. To die for!! Everyone loved their meal. All for 85 pesos.
Since we were leaving Mazatlan tonight we headed for the market for fresh vegetables. We caught the bus that had "ferry" written in white shoe polish on it and again it dropped us off right in front of Club Nautica.
We then stowed the dingy by raising it up and turning it upside down on the bow and cargo strapping it to the deck. I raised the anchor and Russ motored over to say our goodbyes to Wave Dancer, Mystic and Wandering Puffin. Out the Mazatlan Old Harbor at 5:15 pm and the next stop is Altada. The watch system starts at 7:00 pm I have the first five hour watch. Five hour watches are a little hard but when it is my turn to be off watch the five hour sleep is good rest. So the watches go like this.
Jodee 7:00 pm to 12:00 am
Russ 12:00 am to 5:00 am
Jodee 5:00 am to 10:00 am
Then I go down and sleep until I wake up and the rest of the day is who ever needs rest takes it. Then the next night we start it all over again. When traveling non-stop you have to maintain a 24 hour watch, what you are looking for is traffic, ie... tankers, cruise ships, shrimp vessels, fishing boats and sailboats. You have to check your course to make sure you are headed in the right direction, and in our case make sure Taco has a blanket on him. He gets cold at night in the cockpit.
May5th we arrive at the first waypoint for Altada. As we get closer and closer my nervous meter is starting to peg, as I see breaking white surf all over the place. My instinct tells me that something is not right about the waypoint. The breaking 12 -15 foot waves made it look like Hawaii. We searched and searched for the opening for about a half hour and when the waypoint took us too close to the breakers and in too shallow of water we abandoned the Altada stop and continued on to Topolobampo. This will take another eighteen hours which is another set of watches. This night watch was real nice. It was basically no wind and flat seas, had to motor most of the way. Russ got to sail most of his watch from midnight to 5:00 am.
At about 7:00 pm when Russ went down below to get Don Anderson's weather, we picked up two hitch hikers. One decided to ride on top of the furuno radar and the other chose the port solar panel. Yes, they were birds, Brown Boobie birds to be exact. They did not mind if you moved around the boat from center cockpit to aft cockpit they just sat, watched and pampered them selves. I was still amazed that they were still around until about 7:00 am or so. We never have had wild guest that have stayed that long before.
May 6th at about noon the GPS says that we are arriving at the Topoloblampo waypoint. Where is the Sea Buoy? Again my nervous meter is going off. Russ is questioning the channel markers, they don't look correct. Nothing but breakers in front of us and the depth sounder says that the magical depth is 7 feet under the keel. WE DO NOT LIKE THIS. We question, with that depth why are there no breakers in 15 1/2 feet of water? We turn around and head to deeper water. We get into 23 feet of water and the ground swell is hugh, about 8 foot. Now let's re-think this. We don't think we have enough fuel to make it another 100 miles to Guaymas, so this is a mandatory stop. Russ and I had the same idea, re-check the waypoint. I got the chart and looked for what he had marked S.B. for sea buoy. I read it out and he checked it on the GPS. Yep, it was wrong. Both North and West were off by one mile. Russ made the correction and we had out to sea in a Northwest direction for two miles. This new way point put the breakers to our port (left) side and now the channel markers look correct and the water depth is good and deep. Moral of the story is to double check or have someone else check the waypoints to make sure they are entered correctly. Do not put them in when you are tired.
Once in side the entrance you still have about two hours of motoring to get to the marina. This is real protected. Since we were taking on fuel we decided to check the price for a slip. Yippy, $13.00 USD per night for our 40 foot boat. Now that is without electricity. Just a block away is a small palapa that serves breakfast, lunch and dinner. We had the fried fish. It had an egg batter and pan fried, served with refried beans and salad all for 40 pesos, which is about $3.50 USD. The food was good and we enjoyed our walk back to the boat and vegetated.
Photo will be posted next week when I have a better connection.