Rough Passage

La Paz, Baja California Sur (B.C.S.), Mexico

Not one of our best passages...

It started off well enough.  We left Marina Mazatlan at around 9 AM and motored out of the narrow entrance channel without incident.  Perfectly calm in the harbour and just a gentle SW swell on the ocean.  We said a final farewell to hazy Mazatlan as we crept away from the shore.  On this passage to La Paz our course is NW and it seems that you parallel the coast for a fair way before actually leaving it behind.

We raised our double-reefed main as soon as we were out of the harbour, but with little wind we just motor-sailed for the first few hours.  As the winds came up a bit in the afternoon, we unfurled the genoa and sailed close-hauled in a NW breeze from about 1:30PM till 7:30PM, going mostly north, making little progress towards our actual destination.  The seas were very smooth for the first few hours and it was very relaxing just sitting in the cockpit and letting the autopilot do all the work.  Sue was sick of course, but not one of her worst bouts.  As the day wore on the seas became much rougher and remained that way for the rest of the 51 hour passage.

With about 24 hours to go, somewhere in the middle of the Sea of Cortez, the autopilot quit,  It still steered the boat for a few hours but got progressively less and less enthusiastic about its job.  From what little I know about hydraulics, it appears to me that the hydraulic pump has bit the dust.  I immediately hooked up our backup autopilot, the trusty old CPT wheel pilot.  As luck would have it, it was no longer trusty; just old.  I could not even get it to turn on, let alone steer the boat.  So, for the remainder of the trip we were reduced to hand-steering - never any fun, especially at night.

For most of the time we motored into light winds (less than 8 knots).  We were able to sail, close-hauled again, for about another 6 hours on the second afternoon.  And again we made little progress in the direction we wanted to go, as the winds were always directly from the NW.  The only good thing about the sailing was that it did make the motion in the increasingly rough seas a little better and I was able to balance the sails to the point that I could lash the wheel into a single position and let the boat steer itself for a few hours, giving the crew a much needed rest.  The sunset on the 2nd night was really impressive.

Strangely, in spite of the increasingly warm days, the last night was quite cool.  Because we were hand-steering, we elected to sleep in the cockpit and found that we needed some warm clothing - the first time we have worn long pants and fleece cozies since we got back to Mexico.  Here you can see Susanne in her cocoon.

The last morning of the passage brought the most excitement.  After rounding the north end of Cerralvo island, making our approach to the San Lorenzo Channel, conditions seemed to be perfect.  For the first time in days the seas were dead calm and there was only a 3 knot breeze to contend with.  I should note that as soon as you make this turn to the west, the wind also veers so that it comes from the west as well - some kind of Murphy's Law thing going on there.

As we approached the narrowest part of the channel, in about 50 feet of water, the wind started to come up and was soon blowing at around 17 to 18 knots, gusting to 25, from the SW now.  As we were still motoring with only our double-reefed mainsail up, this was not really a problem - just slowed us down a bit.  With the boat heeled over and the seas starting to build (lots of wind over relatively shallow water), this is the moment that the mainsheet (the line that controls to boom) decided to let go.  The boom immediately shot over to the starboard side of the boat and commenced to swing the remains of the mainsheet and its blocks about, in an effort to decapitate the crew.  As we were now in the narrowest part of the channel and had some large shipping traffic passing us, we had little room to maneuver, so we just had to keep motoring on until we got through to some calmer, deeper water before we could turn into the wind a bit more and take in some of the remaining  mainsheet and get some control over the flailing blocks.  Once we got the boom close to the cockpit, I managed to lasso the end of the boom and get it tied down to a cleat at the rear of the boat.  Then it was relatively easy to lower the mainsail and get the boom into the gallows and tied down - crisis over.  Needless to say, it would have been nice to have had the autopilot to do some steering throughout this affair, but we managed OK.

First sighting of La Paz

After that, we motored into the strong winds and waves for about another hour before it started to let up and we had a relatively uneventful approach to La Paz.  We were able to snag the last available berth at Marina de La Paz, right in the middle of town and were tied up safely by noon.

The post mortem on the mainsheet shows that what went wrong was just a simple little cotter ring.  It somehow worked its way out of the pin that holds the mainsheet to the traveller.  Once the pin eased its way out of the traveller, there was nothing to hold the mainsheet any more.  Fortunately, all of the parts just fell into the boat and nothing was lost.  When putting the pin back in today, I replaced the cotter ring with a new one, although the old one really didn't look that bad.  Just one more thing to keep an eye on in the future.

Our initial impression of La Paz?  Hot!  Daily highs are around 36C right now - not sure we are quite ready for that.

{GMST}24|9.3066|N|110|19.6068|W|La Paz, BCS, Mexico|La Paz, BCS, Mexico{GEND}

Countdown Resumed

Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico

3 2 1 Go!
Tomorrow we take off.

Gitte, David, Susanne, Richard, Mike and Mike

Yes, the stars are finally aligned and all systems are go.  Susanne is finally feeling better (the month-long coughing spree is over).  The boat is as ready as it ever will be - the bottom is clean and the engine seems to be running great, the course to La Paz is plotted and the tides are minimal.  The only bad thing is that the wind still seem to be predominantly from the NW; we will just have to deal with it - we really need a change of scenery.

For better or worse, our life seems to have been reduced to a series of lazy days, lying around getting a tan, doing a lot of reading, get-togethers with friends for coffee or drinks or meals, etc.,  with only the odd small boat jobs thrown in to keep us honest.

After a while, I think I start to get a little loopy, doing stupid things that I probably would not do if I was in my right mind - a prime example is my experiment to see just what would happen if I sat on my Amazon Kindle reader - the results are predictable and not pretty!  Now I get to find out just how hard it will be to order one of these from Mexico - Really, how hard could it be?

What we really crave is some high seas adventure to shake things up.  OK, maybe not, but at least a different venue for a while.  La Paz promises to be an interesting place with the possibility of seeing some friends that have already made the journey over.  The passage should take about 2 days or possibly a bit longer at the slow speeds we travel - even more if we insist on trying to sail close-hauled all the way against the prevailing winds.

Here are some parting shots of dock 6, our semi-permanent home here in Marina Mazatlan.  Will we ever see it again? - only time will tell.

Interesting note:  When we left Nanaimo, I was concerned that I may have overdone the solar panel thing - there were really not that many boats with large solar arrays up there.  Just a glance at the boats next door to us will give you some idea of just how popular they are down here - there is no such thing as too much solar power, especially when you plan to spend the summer in the Sea of Cortez.  For my part, I wish I had done more!  That boat furthest away in this picture has my favorite array - that arch holds five 130Watt panels for a total of 650Watts - they never bother to even plug into shore power at the marina in spite of the fact thay the run some pretty big appliances such as a huge freezer and a microwave oven.  It's funny the different things you start dreaming about when you live on a boat.

{GMST}23|16.25|N|106|27.2833|W|Marina Mazatlan|Marina Mazatlan{GEND}

Countdown on hold

Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico

The usual delays.

While the weather here has been getting warmer, reminding us that it is probably time to be moving on, the prevailing winds are still from the northwest - the direction into which we will be heading.  Local knowledge says that if we wait a while, they will shift favorably in the near future.  Just the excuse we need to stay put a while longer.

The main reason we are still hanging around however, is that Sue has still got a nasty cough and we are reluctant to take off on a 2 or 3 day passage unless we are both feeling our best.  And there is actually no rush - the deadline (hurricane season) for getting into the northern part of the Sea of Cortez is mid-August.  So, for now, we are finding a few more boat projects to do and generally just taking it easy.  With the mid-day temperatures getting up into the low 30s, it is pretty hard not to take it easy.

One project that we had put off till now is re-marking the anchor chain.  For the edification of the non-boaters our there, we like to mark our chain so we can easily tell how much we are letting out when we are anchoring.  Some people use little tell-tale flags and such, but we like to use paint - just seems to hold up longer going through the windlass.  Still, the paint does not last forever, so occasionally we have to refresh the marks.  With this in mind, we hauled out about 300 feet of chain onto the dock and did our artistic best (we put a mark every 25 feet using a system that makes sense to us, even though it probably doesn't make sense to anyone else).  This should hold us for a couple of years.

Before putting the chain back in the locker, I took the opportunity to borrow a grinder (complete with its helpful owner - thanks Mike) to remove a few rusty links from the end of the chain.  This, combined with the new "anchor swivel" that we replaced in San Diego, make for a nice clean, non-rusty connection for our primary CQR anchor.

One other simple chore I tackled was cleaning out the raw-water strainer (a crude filter for the cooling water for the engine heat exchanger).  For a rough idea of how bad the growth is in these semi-topical waters, look at the before and after pictures.  That accumulation of crap was  from just one passage from Cabo San Lucas to Mazatlan.

Our plans?  If the conditions are just right, we could be out of here as early as next week. No promises though!

{GMST}23|16.25|N|106|27.2833|W|Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico|Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico{GEND}

Countdown started

Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico

The trip from Edmonton to Mazatlan went extremely smooth, in spite of all our worries over our excess  baggage.

Our very good friend Val took pity on us and gave us a ride to the Edmonton airport - otherwise this would be an $80 taxi ride.  We arrived in plenty of time for our departure, encountered no line at security, and were able to have a leisurely lunch before boarding our direct flight to Mazatlan.  We left on time and arrived on time, a 4-1/2 hour trip arriving at 6:30 PM.  Customs in Mexico were extremely friendly and our luck held as we pushed the magic button and received a green (go) light.  No one was interested in our huge collection of bags except for an industrious porter who transported them to the taxi line.  We managed to squeeze everything into a car and were whisked away through the nightmare of road construction that is Mazatlan, arriving at the marina around 7:40 PM.  Here we were immediately met by one of the marina security guards who piled all our bags onto his golf cart and took them to our dock.  In all, we almost never handled our own luggage until we were at the boat - pretty sweet!  After stowing our bags on board, we even had time to indulge in a pizza at one of the local restaurants before crashing for the night.  It really makes it easier when the entire flight is in a single time zone.

Now, we are faced with the daunting task of preparing to leave Mazatlan.  After more than 3 months since we have left a dock, we have pretty well forgotten everything we knew about sailing this boat.  Also, as you can see from this picture, you never know what goes on on your boat when you are away - this is the boat next door to us, whose owners left for the summer no more than 3 weeks ago - the birds have already made a home in a rolled up bimini cover.  I saw no evidence of similar activity on our boat.

Some of the preparations on our list include buying some new fishing gear (a new rod, line and lures, etc.), making sure the dinghy is sufficiently lashed down on the deck, filling our fresh water tanks, and doing some provisioning.  We hired Ruben, our friendly neighborhood diver, to scrape the barnacles and crap from the prop and bottom of the boat and replace the non-existent zincs.  I finally got around to wiring up our old spare 40-watt solar panel as a "roving" panel which we can throw on top of the new bimini.  In practice this does not seem to be adding any more than a single amp, but every little bit will help I'm sure, when we are in the Sea of Cortez this summer.

The weather here is noticeably warmer and more humid than when we left.  Temperatures are around 30C during the day and fall to the low 20s at night.  In order to get re-acclimatized, we have returned to our old habits of taking it easy, including coffee and bagels at the Calypso cafe each morning.  Most of the people we had been hanging around with when we left for Edmonton are gone now, but there is a fresh new crop on the docks, most just passing through on their way to La Paz and the Sea of Cortez.  That is where we will be going too, as soon as we feel ready (the countdown to departure has started).  Right now, both Sue and I still have the remnants of the colds we picked up in Edmonton and I would like to see these cleared up before we start on the 2 or 3 day passage to La Paz.  So, life is good and likely to just get better.

{GMST}23|16.25|N|106|27.2833|W|Marina Mazatlan|Marina Mazatlan{GEND}