La Paz and Mazatlan

We have spent the past few days in La Paz, Baja California Sur. This is a very nice city on the Sea of Cortez that features a 3.5 mile malecon (walkway, 30 foot wide tiled sidewalk) along the beach. Many cruisers make it just this far and settle in for months because the city is so friendly and pleasant. Last night we had burgers gilled on the engine of a ’56 Chevy (propane grill installed) and listened to oldies while dining in a pretty outdoor patio setting. Very nice. Today lunch was fish tacos and cokes for $2. The Coca Cola is “Hecho en Mexico” (made in Mexico) and is the stuff that was in the bottles in the US when we were kids. Original recipe before the sugar substitutes took over. And don’t tell me about your Classic Coke. Not the same.

We were fortunate enough to be in La Paz for the celebration of “Revolution Day” November 20. Do not confuse this with Cinco de Mayo which is the anniversary of the 1862 victory over the French or September 16 which is Independence Day and celebrates the beginning of the 1821 War of Independence from Spain. This is “Revolution Day” and celebrates the anniversary of the 1910 Mexican Revolution of Pancho Villa and Emilio Zapata, and it involves a very large parade. At the beginning of the parade I called it the Parade of 10,000 Students because one after another we saw legions of Jr High and Sr High School marching cheerleading squads. Schools from all over Baja Sur were on hand all dressed in Red, White and Green. Hundreds of cheerleaders, gymnasts, soccer players (with balls), basketball players (in uniform), boxing teams, etc. The best part was that each school was preceded by a pickup truck with a very large generator and a speaker system that would have made the Rolling Stones envious. Big speakers filling the entire truck bed. Loud Mexican music was the theme. My thought was that we had finally found the source of all those boom box, low riders in the US. Following the schools were the youth league sports teams, wrestlers, boxers, tae kwon do kids, and even military wannabes. Then we got the full military treatment. Army, Navy, Marines (walking navy actually), and, finally, the caballeros who looked like the groups from the Rose Parade. Parade took over two hours to pass the reviewing stands. Very impressive and lots of fun. Make you proud to be Mexican.

  

 

Tomorrow we’re off to Espirtu Santo for several days of anchoring out, snorkeling, relaxing, and sun. No more internet for at least a week as we wander around the Sea of Cortez and get ready for out trip across the Sea to mainland Mexico. After a few days in a marina to clean up and re-provision we are happy to move along to some of the picturesque anchorages we had heard about in the Sea of Cortez. We will not actually venture very far from La Paz (60 miles) on this trip because our plans call for us to return here next spring to explore much further north in the Sea. Right now the weather is cooling and the winter winds are picking up daily.

 

We spent Thanksgiving week in three different, peaceful bays on the islands of Espiritu Santo and Isla Partida that had acres of turquoise blue water, white sand beaches and few other boats. Very much like the Virgin Islands except we had to supply our own rum bar. We did. Thanksgiving day was kielbasa and beans but the setting made it worthwhile. Rough seas from the wrong direction forced us out of that bay the next morning and required a 30 mile sail in heavy winds to a safer spot, Punta Evarista. We dropped anchor again in a much more protected bay. Evarista is listed as a town in the Cortez side of Baja, but when we went ashore for a walk we found only one dog and no people. There were a number of shacks and homes along the dirt streets but the absence of people made it feel a lot like a Clint Eastwood movie.

 

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Weather reports were beginning to show some strong winds ahead so we decided to jump quickly towards Mazatlan. Mazatlan is on the Mexican mainland so we would be leaving behind the desert landscape of the Baja (picture attached, a little like sailing in the Grand Canyon) for the more tropical and humid landscape to the east. The crossing was a 48 hour sail, and our foresight in moving out quickly was rewarded. We got a terrific sail (although a little tiring) while boats just two days behind us were pretty well battered by high winds and large, short, mixed swells for their crossing. We arrived off the beaches of Mazatlan at about 7 AM in very calm seas.  As the sun rose over the city we were surprised by a humpback whale that surfaced and then sounded, tail in the air, within 100 feet of the boat.

Mazatlan is a lovely stopover and much nicer than we had been led to expect. We have really enjoyed exploring this city (pop. 380,000) for the past 4 days. Goofy advertising seems to be the rule so we got a quick picture of Andrea with Senor Frog. The marketplace is huge (butchers, vegetables, bakeries, clothing, souvenirs), the beach walk (malecon) is beautiful and the city has some historic buildings and squares to explore. We have hiked to the top of the second tallest lighthouse in the world (#1 is Gibraltar), participated in the release of 1500 turtles on the beach (the eggs were collected and incubated at the aquarium to protect the species), watched the fireworks that signal the beginning of the Christmas Season, and dined in one of the prettiest outdoor café areas you can imagine (sort of a smaller, rural version of dinner in St Mark’s Square). The square was well lit for Christmas and the 70 degree temperatures at 10PM were ideal. Today we even got to watch the Mazatlan marathon (for which Andrea got me up at 6 AM). We are enjoying Mazatlan very much.

 

 

 

 
I have attached a picture of Andrea in the monument to the “pulmonia”. These are the golf cart like taxicabs that run all around Mazatlan. They are the signature item of the tourist business and were invented by an enterprising Mazatlan businessman almost 40 years ago.

Next stops: San Blas (anchorage), Chacala (anchorage) and Puerto Vallarta

Hasta mañana

No Whining

Yes, this is fun. I realize that the last e-mail might have been a little too much whining. Yes, we broke some boat, had some mishaps and learned some things we might not have wanted, but the trip has been a great experience overall.   We were less than 45 minutes into the voyage when the first pod of dolphins found us and entertained us for 30 minutes or so. Another school of dolphins found us on a calm evening about 500 miles later, 50 miles off shore, and we estimated there were well over 1000 dolphins around us. Lots of leaping and diving.

   
We fished off the back of the boat and ate what we caught. We have only a short drag line for trolling, but we managed to catch Wahoo, Bonita and Yellowtail.  I filleted the tuna, and we had a sushi lunch that was still swimming 30 minutes before we ate him. That’s fresh. The picture below is a Dorado we caught on this trip.

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The stars on this voyage were so bright and distinct that we marveled at the constellations we could identify. With absolutely no ambient light from shore we were able to see the Milky Way almost every night. I hadn’t seen the Milky Way in many years. Glad to know it’s still there. I’ve attached a picture of sunrise approaching Bahia Santa Maria. Spectacular. But the moonrise the night before was even more dramatic. We got a bright orange crescent, low in the sky that exactly resembled the grin on Alice’s Cheshire Cat (not pictured).

Light? I should have mentioned the cruise ship that passed less than ½ mile behind us at 2 AM. This small city looked like the Las Vegas Strip come to meet us in the middle of the ocean. We saw her coming from 15 miles back (a glow on the horizon) and we could have read a book by her lights when she passed.

And finally, Cabo. Everyone warned us that this tourist/cruise ship city would be best left in the rearview mirror. On the contrary, we thoroughly enjoyed the bars, restaurants and night life and while it is supposed to be very expensive for Mexico we thought $2 beers were perfectly reasonable. The cruise ships loaded up and headed off each evening at 5PM so they were not much of a problem. We spent 4 nights in Cabo much to our delight. We took a night in a marina and shared a slip with Nicholas Cage on his yacht Weston (Lisa Marie once threw a $65,000 engagement ring off of Weston).

I’m putting this e-mail together as we sail on calm seas under sunny skies. The crew has headed home, and our next two anchorages promise to be small, remote, warm and peaceful. We just had to get past the excitement to get here.

Life is good.

Puerto Salina to Cabo

Buenas dias de Los Cabos. We arrived safely in Cabo San Lucas on Thursday afternoon after an exciting 10 day trip from Puerto Salinas, Mexico.

Some details: We (Tom, Andrea, Steve, Connie) left Puerto Salinas mid afternoon on Monday the 29th. We were joining the Baja Ha Ha group for the sail to Cabo, but we were some 40 miles down course from the rest of the boats so we spent the afternoon sailing slowly, getting used to the boat, cruising around the Island of Todos Santos off Ensenada, and generally relaxing. We headed west around 6 PM and eventually reached a point about 70 nautical miles off shore on this leg of the trip. Day 2 brought high winds (18 - 25 kts) and following seas and we quickly found out about old/damaged equipment on the boat that had not become apparent during our summer sailing in light winds. On this first leg of the trip to Turtle Bay (360 miles south of San Diego) we managed to explode a block, break two shackles, and shred two reefing lines (lines used to shorten sail in large winds). We were never in trouble, but we spent a lot of time running around the decks in the middle of the night. Turtle Bay was a very welcome sight when we motored into the anchorage on Wednesday evening some 12 hours ahead of schedule thanks to the strong, favorable winds.

Turtle Bay is a dusty little town that boasts two beach side bars, narrow dirt streets, and lots of concrete block construction. We later discovered that this is indeed a "typical Mexican village". Our visit began inauspiciously when our premier crew member slipped on the forward deck while anchoring and separated his shoulder. Fortunately we were able to take advantage of one of the great assets of the Ha Ha rally.. the presence of multiple retired doctors, nurses and physical trainers. Steve had both immediate attention and strong pharmaceuticals to ease the pain. We soon discovered that an arm sling is probably one of the best ways to meet people on this trip. Everyone wanted to know how Steve was doing. Drugs, alcohol, sympathy? He was doing fine.

 

We were in the Bay for three nights (one bonus night because of the early arrival) and the third night was a huge pot luck beach party for about 150 boats with about 600 people. Access to Turtle Bay by road involves more than 70 miles of unpaved Mexican desert. The town has a population of about 1000 for whom the arrival of 600 visitors at La Dia de Los Muertes (Halloween) is a really big deal.

We left Turtle Bay at 7 AM on Sunday for a 240 mile second leg to Bahia Santa Maria. On this leg the winds were lighter, we sailed downwind, and the passage was much more benign (although we did arrive in a 20 knot breeze). Night sailing downwind is difficult and we experienced a few accidental jibes which did not break, but did stress several more equipment items. If Turtle Bay was remote, Bahia Santa Maria was way, way in the middle of nowhere. No, not even in the middle. Way out. The huge bay has no town, but it did have a few crude fish huts on a bluff that the fishermen use for a few months each year. The Ha Ha had arranged for another beach party with a band and food. The band came from La Paz (150 miles?) and the food came from the town of San Carlos. To get the food, beer and music to the beach the caterer? had trucked everything 20 miles out of San Carlos, barged across a river, and then driven 30 miles along the beach on the back side of the sand spit to reach Bahia Santa Maria.

The surf was pretty large on this bay and we got to experience the rolling swells of the Pacific throughout the night and into the next morning. Because of the large surf between us and the beach the fisherman had brought 4 pangas (20 foot boats with large, 150 hp motors) to get everyone ashore. The surf was a just little too big for the dinghys although several people managed to get ashore in the larger dinghys (and several people also dumped their inflatable dinghys trying).
Adventure Moment: As the party was winding down about 4 PM people started heading back to the boats. Our whole crew got back safely with a flying jump in a panga as we crossed the surf from a small lagoon. Unfortunately about 70 people were still on shore when darkness fell and the pangas could no longer operate because the drivers could not see the surf to time the waves for the crossing. All of those people ended staying ashore for the night. They had plenty of beer, but sleeping in wet bathing suits and tee shirts on the ground was not the highlight of their trip.

All of the stragglers got off the beach the following morning and the fleet left for Cabo San Lucas around 8 AM. This was a great sail with the spinnaker flying, and we were making great time when the winds began to fall in the early evening. That was when Tom really screwed up. I elected to fly our light air spinnaker in what was not quite light air. We wrapped the spinnaker and then shredded it completely (all while listening to Andrea tell me repeatedly "I told you so!".). In the process of shredding a perfectly good sail we had to resort to starting the engines to control the boat and that was when we hit something submerged in the water. Since we were almost 100 miles off shore in about 4000 feet of water we are pretty sure it wasn't the bottom, but that's all we are sure of. Ripped up a new propeller (just installed, 15 days of use) and ripped the lock down mount out of the boat. Think hole. Think panic. Think oh-oh. And remember this all started with an "I told you so!"

Winds were down, we were not taking on water and we managed to sail through the night until the winds died completely the following AM. So we motored. We put about 6 hours on the one remaining engine as the temperatures climbed radically. 95 degrees for the first time on this trip. We had no wind approaching Cabo on Thursday afternoon when we blew out our last (up 'til now) piece of equipment. We had either purchased a boat with a defective traveler or we had stressed it a little too much, but the traveler on our mainsail exploded. A real attention getter, and a part that will prevent us from sailing very much until we can fix it or jury rig a substitute

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Cabo has been fun. Very much a loud, tourist oriented, cruise ship port of call type of town. We land partied at the infamous Squid Roe, beach partied on the sands, snorkled the nearby reefs and finally, after 2 nights on anchor and 13 days from our last marina, we put the lines ashore in the Cabo Marina to wash the boat, drop off crew, fix things as best we could and get a little internet time. I'm sitting in a beautiful little bar, with satellite TV getting ready for NFL Sunday (unless Andrea finds me).

  

Next stops: Anchorages at Los Frailes and Los Muertes on the southern tip of Baja and then upwind to the cruiser friendly town of La Paz (as opposed to the fishing boat friendly town of Cabo).
P.S. I see where our California gas dollars went. There are two boats here named Mr Terrible. Huge boats. Mr Terrible (the little one) is 110 feet. Mr Terrible (the big one) is 150 feet. Monster boats both owned by Terrible Herbst. This could be you, David.