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Monday, March 28, 2005

Underway to La Paz

March 28, 2005
At Sea

We left Mazatlan this morning at the oppressive hour of 0300. This in an attempt to get out away from the coast before the land breezes kick in. We expect to be in La Paz by night fall Wednesday.

We've all ready had some neat experiences on this passage, first there have been rays jumping clear out of the water all around us since we left. Probably one every couple of minutes. Some quite close to the boat. Second I caught a Sierra Mackerel, which I thought the book said 'excellent' under edibility but it turns out they're just 'good'. We'll see tonight.

We walked around Mazetlan yesterday, even though it was Easter Sunday the Mercado was open as were most of the downtown department stores. We had lunch, bought a few provisions for the trip and generally watched the all the Mexican families enjoying their vacation on the coast.

John and Linda

Friday, March 25, 2005

The Beach is Alive!

July 4th, 2005
Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, Santa Cruz CA (36o 57' N 122o 00' W)

OK, just fooling. We're not really in Santa Cruz and it's not really the 4th of July. But you'd never know it to look at the beach in Mazatlan. There must be 1,000 people packed into the 1 mile stretch of beach we're currently anchored in front of. It's Easter week in case you haven't noticed and in Mexico this is probably the biggest beach weekend of the year. Surprisingly, we have the anchorage all to ourselves, probably because most boats choose to tie up at one of the two marinas in Mazatlan and because we're not really anchored in the harbor, just a little place that looked on the chart like it might be a snug spot to spend a day or two. We haven't done much of this kind of 'gunk holing' here in MX, mostly because the charts art too small scale (meaning they don't have much detail) to go poking NAKIA into places where there might be rocks.

I'm sure you're all wondering what happened to the blog. Truthfully I've simply been too lazy to update it. Sorry. Here's a quick re-cap of where we've been since the last entry:

Tenacatita:
After we left Barra de Navidad we went to Tenacatita to find that the place had changed dramatically. Not only were there 40 boats there (there were only 15 on our way down) there was also a Mayor. The Mayor thing didn't really set well with me, so we only stuck around for a week and then headed on up the road.

Chamela:
We stopped at the Island anchorage of Chamela for a week or so and it was as nice as it was on the way down, with one exception. The water temperature had dropped enough to make swimming cold, ok well cool, ok well it wasn't that bad. The water had dropped to about 76 degrees which was a lot cooler than 83 on the way down. We moved to the town anchorage for a few more days where I did some spear fishing with a buddy. No lobster but a few nice sea bass.

Cabo Corrientes:
We went around this major headland in the early morning hours and entered Banderas Bay (Puerto Vallarta) on March 1st. It was windy until about 1 am when it finally died. Not a fun trip but we got the job done.

La Cruz:
We spent a week and a half at this cruiser's hang out in Banderas Bay and got caught up on laundery, shopping and internet. By the way, it's not called La Cruz because of all the cruisers that hang out there, there's a cross on the hill above the town ('cruz' is Spanish for 'cross').

Paradise Marina:
We spent a week in the marina at Paradise Village so we'd be able to do the Banderas Bay Regatta on a friend's boat. Good news: we won our class with two firsts and a DNF (Did Not Finish). Only three boats finished the third race; there was basically no wind.

La Cruz:
After the Regatta we found we needed a rest, we'd hoped to get a lot of jobs done while we were in Paradise Marina but as it turned out racing kept us too busy and too tired to do anything else so we spent a week or so in La Cruz taking care of all the things we couldn't do while we were tied to the dock!

San Blas:
We made the run from Banderas Bay to San Blas two days ago. Readers of Latitude 38 will recognize San Blas as the place where Norm Goldie lives. He used to be quite a Samaritan to cruisers and the rest of the community, but now is a little pushy about his services. We managed to fly in under the radar and leave early enough so we didn't get harased by Norm's well meaning pushy-ness but we did hear him on the radio 'welcoming' all cruisers to San Blas. Thanks Norm.

Mazatlan:
We arrived early this morning to find Semana Santa (Holy Week) rolling along nicely. We're going to hang out where it's free for a few days and then move into the marina. The highlight of the trip from San Blas was a Booby which landed on the outboard and rode with us for about three hours. He didn't mind that we were on the boat too and only left when I tried to give him a shower with the garden sprayer. He tolerated the fresh water wash down for awhile but then jumped off the outboard into the bay to take a proper bath.

More later, John and Linda.