We will begin including our latitude and longitude position on each blog in response to one of our readers, Mike Federwisch, who would like to follow our progress on Google Earth. Maybe others of you would be interested as well.
Just another sunset in MazatlanLast Saturday we continued our mission to get down to the tip of the Baja Peninsula and jump across the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlan. Doing it in daylight hours was a priority, which put Puerto Balandra as our next stop. We accomplished this easily in about six hours, with a fairly strong wind pushing us the last couple of hours. At Balandra we had to turn into this strong wind to lower our mainsail, and then turn back around to motor into the anchorage. In this case there were several sailboats already anchored, so we had to tip-toe around them to find a spot that wouldn’t be too close to anyone. Naturally the folks on the other boats are keeping a close eye on the process to insure we don’t anchor too close to them, which makes it important to look sharp and stay well clear.
Sheilagh and I donned our walkie-talkie headsets to communicate during the process, and we brought it off very smoothly, as we have dozens of times before. The headsets keep us from having to shout at each other to be heard as Sheilagh runs the windlass that drops the anchor at the bow of the boat, while I steer the boat at the other end. It is not cool to be shouting at one another, even if the reason is just to be heard over the sound of the engine and the windlass. Occasionally we have heard couples who have gone beyond shouting-to-be-heard to shouting-to-show-exasperation with the other – which is a very good reason to use headsets.
Because the weather report that night didn’t sound too good for the next day, we decided it might be a good day to sit tight and wait for better weather. The next morning we received a new weather report that predicted light winds for the next leg of the trip, so we shoved off. The day turned out to have very light winds and we ended up in Puerto Los Muertos, which is the jumping off point for Mazatlan. It’s always a good sign when the actual weather corresponds with the predicted weather. Los Muertos was really crowded, this time with a number of rookies who had come down to Mexico on this year’s Baja Ha Ha, as we had done the year before. They carry pennants announcing themselves as participants, much as freshmen used to wear beanies in college to identify them as rookies. Now that we are the proverbial “sophomores,” we know not to give ourselves away as rookies, although we certainly did last year.
Los Muertos has a good restaurant, known as the Giggling Marlin, but our outboard engine was still on the fritz and we were not eager to row over and back. We settled down to a delicious home-cooked meal of fried chicken with potatoes and country gravy. This woman really knows how to cook. I ate as much as possible because I knew she wouldn’t be cooking the next evening when we would be plowing our way across the Sea of Cortez all night. Sheilagh does not like cooking when the boat is heeled over on its side, even though the stove stays level by swinging with the boat on a pivot. She has some sort of objection to being thrown around the galley. I even agreed to create a harness for her and tie her to a couple of fixed eye-bolts in the galley for just that purpose. Alas, she was not impressed with my idea and suggested I tie myself to the galley with my head over the gas, if I got hungry.
The weather report for Monday predicted a tail wind and fairly low swells all through the Sea of Cortez at our crossing point, so we were off to the races again at about 7:30 in the morning. The first half of the day was very pleasant, but then higher winds and swells kicked in to give us a bit of a herky-jerky ride. We made good time and kept the engine on to make sure we maintained a rate of speed that would get us to Mazatlan by at least 2PM the following day. Both Sheilagh and I got out our IPods and listened to books for several hours as we relaxed in the cockpit or down below in the cabin. I say “relaxed,” but it is difficult to truly relax when the varying winds and waves set up a kind of repeating pattern for awhile and then suddenly throw in a larger wave every now and then. The larger wave causes the boat to twist into the wind and then plunge down the side of the swell, heeling over a bit more than usual. The boat always corrects herself, but in the meantime the changed pattern threatens the braces we have established with our feet and hands, and causes us to grab onto something else to keep from sliding off the seat.
I usually sit on one of the seats we had installed on the back rail, where I can hold onto the radar arch and keep an eye on the wave patterns from fairly high up. That perch also avoids the occasional spray that is cast up into the cockpit by an overly exuberant wave. Sheilagh ensconces herself under the dodger on the lee side of the cockpit (the protected side) and stays well clear of any spray. The real challenge is the occasional trip to the head, where it requires both elbows and knees to help keep one centered on the main appliance.
As night came on we heaved-to for some dinner. That’s a maneuver that pits the jib against the rudder, causing the boat to sit on the swells in a fairly consistent manner as the boat is blown downwind at a very slow pace. Even with the benefit of settling the boat down, Sheilagh’s cooking consisted of warming up some hot dogs, cutting them up into pieces, and throwing them into a can of baked beans. She handed me the cooking pot to eat from and said she wasn’t hungry. I thought it tasted great! That night the moon came up at about 10:30PM, at which time Sheilagh took the watch for about three hours while I got some rest.
I was back on duty from 2AM on, making use of a timer to wake me up every 15 minutes if I happened to doze off – which I did. The theory is that we should be able to see the lights of an approaching boat on the horizon from about 10-12 miles away. If we are doing 5 knots and a tanker is doing 15 knots, then we could close in a half hour or less – thus the use of a 15-minute interval to check for lights bearing down. It’s frustrating to keep getting up every 15 minutes to see if there are any other boats, and finding nothing on the horizon in any direction. A UFO would at least be an interesting change from nothing but night. That got me wondering if a UFO could suck up a complete sailboat with a 58’ mast, or whether they would just transport me from the cockpit, leaving Sheilagh sleeping below. Yeah, those thoughts do occur in the middle-of-the-night watch.
The next morning dawned bright and clear and within a couple of hours the sea state diminished and we turned the engine up higher to make the same speed we had been making with the wind helping us. At one point we were surrounded by dozens of smaller dolphins showing off their jumping skills and playing in our bow wave. One particular dolphin jumped several times and did about 3-4 twists in the air before entering the water again. These were not somersaults, but twists, and we wondered if he might be a refugee from a water park. We both were feeling pretty muggy and dirty; so we both took showers (separately, in case you were wondering) and cleaned up before getting to Mazatlan. The reduced sea state allowed us to do that without being thrown out of the shower in the process.
We got into the fuel dock at about 2PM just as the fishing boats were arriving with their catches for the day. As we waited for our turn for fuel, the first fishing boat, showing one red flag with a sailfish design on it, brought out a 5’ sailfish and hoisted it on a rope gallows to allow the fisherman to have his picture taken with the fish. Counting the cost of the trip down, the stay in the local hotel, the cost of the boat and crew for a day, and the requirement to bring the wife along, each picture was probably worth a couple of thousand dollars. Two more fishing boats unloaded larger sailfish and hoisted them up for the same picture-taking rite as the first one. It was about then that I grabbed the camera, positioned Sheilagh with her back to the fish, and snapped the attached picture. This picture didn’t cost us anything, although we really don’t have any bragging rights.The fuel dock was having mechanical problems with the pumps; so we pulled away and found our slip in the marina. We had been here before, which means we knew the ropes for checking in and getting on with our preparations for heading further south. We first washed off the dried salt and bird poop on the deck – apparently a couple of birds had perched on the top of the mast during the night and showered the deck underneath with the same material that has produced a number of “White Rock” guideposts in the Sea of Cortez.
In the course of the next couple of days we got the laundry done, got the outboard engine fixed, did a grocery resupply, met several friends for drinks and gab, and did our best to get mail sent down from the states. This year we are buying our prescription medications in three-month increments over the internet and having them shipped to our mail stop, where we had planned to have them forwarded on. We arrived in Mazatlan to find that the mail delivery service won’t send them on without a document from the Mexican government that allows them to be brought in. We hadn’t known anything about this, so we indicated the problem on the cruisers’ net and found that one cruiser had run into the same problem. Doing further research we learned that we needed to take a bus ride to the other side of town, find a hospital there, and get a doctor to sign off on our need to transport our medications from San Diego to Mexico.
We set out on Thursday to get this done, but found that our bus had to detour around a parade that was celebrating the Revolución of 1910. This turned out to be a four-hour parade (from 10AM to 2PM) that delayed us going and coming, but it was a chance to see the cream of Mexico’s youth attired in band costumes, Tae Kwon Do outfits, drill team uniforms, and military camouflage clothing. It also included pauses for full-on demonstrations of putting out fires in the middle of the street by the kids in the civil defense force and a multi-unit gymnastics team made up of young men in training for the Mexican Navy. Although we were somewhat inconvenienced by the celebration, it was another case of treating the experience as an “adventure” rather than an “ordeal.”
What was interesting was trying to find someone in the hospital who knew what we wanted. We had to wait in line for a doctor who seemed to think we wanted him to prescribe the medications we had listed for the form. He couldn’t understand what we needed so he went looking for a translator. Luckily we had a copy of someone else’s document and we were finally able to convey to the translator what we wanted. We were then moved to an administrative office, where a harried secretary typed up the documents we needed in between dozens of phone calls and a number of visitors, including some family members who had arrived to have lunch with her.
When we finally got back that afternoon from a slow bus crawl (air-conditioned, thankfully) through the heart of the area where the parade had finished, we went right to happy hour, where an 80-year-old cruiser gave us a better solution. He told us it was easier to have a family member stuff cotton in the prescription bottles to keep the pills from rattling, and then send them in a priority packet with Federal Express. Apparently that bypasses the usual hassle. In his words, “If you want to survive in Mexico, you need to learn how to bypass the Mexican laws in the same way the Mexicans do.” After 20+ years in Mexico he was convinced that it was impossible to do business in the same way we would do it in the United States. We bought him a beer for his advice.
Today we spent five hours on the boat in front of our laptops as a 14-year-old boy, named Casey, cleaned up our computers, added security features, and eliminated a lot of the problems we had been having. He is the son of a cruising couple and a whiz at computers. We hadn’t planned on this task, but the raves we heard about him from other cruisers resulted in our signing him up for a few hours of consulting work. We thoroughly enjoyed working with him and “donated” toward his college fund (since he is not allowed to make money in Mexico without a license).
Tonight we ended our stay in Mazatlan over dinner with Barry and Pat of “Pacific Voyager” and Chuck and Joan of “Tender Spirit.” Both of those couples will be staying here longer to get some more extensive work done on their boats before proceeding south. Barry and Pat are from Hawaii, and Chuck and Joan are from Alaska, so the conversation was very wide-ranging. Barry had just caught a 7’ sailfish off the back of his sailboat as he was coming across from La Paz (about 10 hours ahead of us), and had already passed around about 90% of it to other cruisers since our iceboxes can only hold so much. It was a very enjoyable way to end our stay. Tomorrow we head south for San Blas; another overnight sail will get us there at about noon we think. More later . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment