Sailing on Starshine

San Carlos to Mazatlan Part II.

We left Isla Carmen at 5:00 pm and started toward Mazatlan. Melodie had prepared some beef stew before we left San Carlos and I warmed it up for dinner. Nothing is better than a warm meal underway. We continued on our way southwest toward Mazatlan.

When we are at sea there is a rhythm of the watches. You get up and make coffee usually. We boil water during the day and fill a thermos. We have a bunch of Starbucks instant, but we've used regular coffee too. When you come up on watch you get a report on what happened over the last few hours. What other boats are in the area, what the wind is doing, any radio traffic on the VHF.

Melodie and I listen in on two HF radio nets regularly. When boats are underway they get priority when checking into the radio net. We listen to the Amigo Net, a SSB frequency that many cruisers listen to. You don't need any kind of special license to talk on the Amigo net. Basically, if you bought the radio and completed the form with the FCC you are good. The other net we listen to is the Sonrisa Net, which is a ham radio net. That net is more restrictive and requires a ham license. Both Melodie and I are licensed Hams, but I'm a General and Melodie is a Technician. The advantages are many, but mostly it's good to talk to other people and let them know where you are. The other big advantage is the weather. The Amigo Net reads Stan's weather from www.solmatesantiago.com, an automated forecast. The Sonrisa Net uses Geary, an American transmitting from El Burro Cove in Bahia Conception on the Baja. Geary isn't a professional; he adds his own flavor/opinion to the forecast. His forecasts are pretty accurate.

We continued to burn diesel and make progress toward Mazatlan. As is often the case in sailing, what wind there is, comes from the wrong direction. We were motoring at 7.5 knots and the wind was about 8 knots from dead astern. That made the apparent wind less than one knot. With the engine running it got a little hot inside the boat.

We didn't see much other ship traffic until Wednesday morning. We came across about 15 Mexican fishing boats, probably fishing for shrimp. If we had taken our original course straight from San Carlos, we'd have gone right through the middle of them. Not fun.

We enjoyed the company of a few birds and were pestered by some others. The little brown sparrows were cute and harmless and stopped to rest on the boat for a few hours. One stayed up by our mast for several hours. The photo is this bird landing on our mainsail. One was very active and hopped all over the boat looking for bugs (we think). The others were Magnificent Frigate Birds that tried to land on the top of our mast, a VERY bad thing. They are very big birds. The top of the mast holds our VHF antenna and our wind instrument. Both are fragile and would not support such a large bird. Melodie and I used our spotlight to shoo them away. It seemed to work.
We arrived in Mazatlan at 10:00 am. The fuel dock at Marina El Cid was open so we chose to fill up. We used 91 gallons to go 430 NM. Too bad Mexican fuel is run by the government, diesel isn't $2.10/gallon like it is in the US now. After refueling we found our slip at Marina Mazatlan. We are about 75 feet from the Travel Lift (big crane) where we will haul out on Monday.

Today we met with the shop doing our work and paid for the crane services. Now we'll get a few other chores done before Monday.