Mazatlán in style

Mazatlán, Sinaloa, Mexico

As planned, we left La Cruz last Tuesday morning.  The passage to Mazatlán was an awkward one for us; the total distance is just over 170 miles, too far for us to do in one day and too short for two days - we usually plan on an average speed of 5 knots, which works out to about 125 miles per day.  Ideally we would have liked to leave the marina in the evening but the local thermal winds blow from about 11AM onward every day, making early morning the easiest time of day for maneuvering our uncooperative boat.  Thus, we left at 10 AM, with the plan to just go very slow.

To get out of Bandaras Bay, we needed to go directly west.  Since we had a lot of time in hand and an entire afternoon of moderate west winds in the bay, we elected to sail close-hauled, tacking back and forth with our usual disappointing upwind performance.  We sailed about 20 miles in about 5 hours, gaining only 5 miles towards our destination.  We motored for the last few miles before turning north, when the winds disappeared for the day.

We motored slowly through the night and well into the next day.  The seas were quite calm and we were treated to a stream of turtles sleeping on the surface.  Around 1 PM a west wind came up, building throughout the afternoon to around 10 knots, then dying off around 8 PM.  We were able to sail for about 6 hours on a single port tack, close hauled as always, drastically reducing sail to keep our speed to less than 4 knots to avoid arriving at Mazatlán in the middle of the night.

For the rest of Wednesday night, we motored at very low RPM to time our arrival at the Sabalo estuary breakwater at high slack tide, at 7:30 AM on Thursday morning.  This meant passing by the busy Mazatlán shipping port in the dark, but this was no big deal with both our AIS and radar systems now working.  The sun was just rising as we approached the estuary.

As expected, the winds were calm and there was no current to contend with within the breakwater.  The only hazard was the pipe for the dredging machinery that is parked in the channel, but there was sufficient room to squeeze by.

We tied up the El Cid fuel dock, where we waited for the marina to open at 8:30 AM.  We topped up our tank, then decided on where to put the boat.  In the past, when we stayed in Mazatlán, we took a slip at Marina Mazatlán, which is what we anticipated doing this time as well.

We had met a nice couple back in La Cruz, who arrived here in Mazatlán a few days before us. They had emailed us that the El Cid  marina was not as outrageously expensive as we had imagined, and the facilities were wonderful.  They were right and here we are!

Note: We had no significant equipment failures on this passage - things are looking up.

This is a small marina, part of the very upscale El Cid resort.  These are the best maintained docks we have ever seen and the washrooms and showers are excellent.  We get to use all of the hotel amenities including two large pools, one heated and one not, plus a hot pool, a private beach and many different areas with lounge chairs scattered about.  They have a laundry service and small supermarket on the premises.  There are a couple of reasonably priced restaurants at which we get a 20% discount.  They provide a free shuttle bus to their other property in the gold zone, which we have utilized to get into the busier, touristy part of town, making it easy to go out for meals or nightlife if we so desire.  Even at the full-price daily moorage rate of .75 per foot per day, this is a bargain!  It gets cheaper the longer we stay.

Yesterday, we made the journey to the El Faro lighthouse at the other end of town.  Somehow, in spite of all the time we spent here 7 years ago, we never got around to it.  It is a fairly steep 30 minute hike up the hill, but worth it for the great views over the town and harbour.

Most of our time here has been taken up with hiking, swimming, eating and general lounging around.  Looking at the weather forecasts, it appears the next potential window for heading to San Carlos won’t be until next Sunday or later.  For this passage, we would really like a good 3 day window, maybe even with some south winds for a change, as it is about 375 miles without a lot of good anchoring possibilities along the way.

{GMST}23|16.124|N|106|27.846|W|Mazatlan, Mexico|Mazatlan , Mexico{GEND}

Forced relaxation in La Cruz

Marina Riviera Nayarit, La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Nayarit, Mexico

Nothing ever happens in a hurry when you are talking about boats.  Oddly enough, it was not the radar that held us up - Peter (the electronic fixit guy) had it solved in no time at all, even coming into his office on a Saturday to work on it.  Not only did he find the problem but he actually had the part (an errant circuit board) in stock - working like new now!

The headsail, on the other hand, proved more troublesome.   It was not only the webbing on the head of the sail that needed repair, but also the same situation on the clew, and the UV strip needed restitching as well.  Still not really a big job but Mike (the sail guru) is not one of the best time managers around, tending to react to everybody’s requests simultaneously, achieving very little on any given project.  Our sail was promised for “tomorrow” pretty much every day for the last two weeks.  But staying a couple of weeks here is not exactly a hardship.

We have had the time to explore some more of La Cruz, Bucerias and Puerto Vallarta, as well as a surprisingly enjoyable evening in the nearby town of Punta de Mita.  Great food at lots of great eateries, and some entertainment thrown in for good measure.  All in all, a place you could get sucked into staying for an extended amount of time.

Puerto Vallarta

La Cruz

The sail loft

Punta de Mita

Of course, we still have a long way to go to get to San Carlos and we need to get moving again.  We got our sail back today and I should have it back on it’s furler tomorrow morning (the wind here in the afternoon makes it awkward for dealing with sails).  Tentatively we are scheduled to leave here next Tuesday - my weather app tells me there will be a reasonable break in the NW winds for the couple of days it will take us to get to Mazatlán.

{GMST}20|44.876|N|105|22.825|W|La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Mexico|La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Mexico{GEND}

Don’t Panic

Marina Riviera Nayarit, La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Nayarit, Mexico

Last Thursday, April 5th, in the middle of a period of never-ending north winds, a perfect weather window opened up for a passage around Cabo Corrientes (Cape Current).  This was too good to pass up, so we paid our marina bill and got an early start on a perfect calm morning.  We were feeling pretty confident and organized this time, looking forward to a fast, uneventful passage to Bandaras Bay.

For some reason, for the first time in 8 years spent on this boat, I did not check to see if the raw water intake valve was open and, once the engine was going, I did not look to see if there was water coming out of the exhaust.  The day before we left, I had turned the valve off so I could clean out the raw water filter and forgot to reopen it.  The results were predictable.

As we were slowly motoring through the narrow entrance channel, I realized the exhaust didn’t sound right and quickly confirmed that there was no water flowing.  I shut the engine off and hurriedly opened the valve, then restarted the engine - but it was too late!  Still no water flowing!

Before the engine had a chance to overheat, I turned around in the channel and headed for shallow water - I didn’t want to block traffic by anchoring in the deep channel.  The boat came to a gentle stop, aground on a shallow sand bar.  While Susanne put an anchor out (just in case) and kept an eye on the boat, I pulled the impeller out of the red-hot raw water pump and put in a new one - a bit of a struggle with screws that did not want to come out.  Fortunately, this seemed to solve the problem and we had water flowing through our cooling system again, and as the engine had just barely gotten up to its normal running temperature when we caught the problem, no real harm was done.

We spent another 15 minutes or so getting the boat off the sandbar, using the engine to drive it off whenever a helpful wake from a passing panga got the boat rocking a bit.  From start to finish, we did not lose much more than a half-hour on our departure time. Thank goodness we have a full-keeled boat and can get away with stunts like this.

The actual passage was as advertised.  We had a light southerly breeze for most of the way - never enough to sail with.  During the night, the winds died completely and conveniently stayed away as we rounded the cape in the early morning.  By 10:30 AM we were safely tied to a dock at Marina Riviera Nayarit.  We had a surprising following current for most of the way, resulting in a fast (for us) passage, 140 miles in about 24 hours, using low RPMs on the engine.  A nice change from some of our struggles on passages last month.

Note: In spite of the light to non-existent winds, the seas were somewhat lumpy with some odd short-period waves that had my crew sick for a lot of the passage.  Still, for rounding Cabo Corrientes, it doesn’t get much better than this.

Now that we are in Bandaras Bay, a busy cruising destination, we are hoping to get a few issues taken care of.  Of course, we had to wait until after the weekend to get started.

Our foresail is now at PV Sailing, a sail-loft that will re-stitch the halyard connection at the head of the sail, and anything else that looks like a potential problem.  Our ailing Raymarine radome is at a local dealer where they will see if they can fix it - I am not too confident that they are going to be successful as they did not sound very positive.  Raymarine’s normal solution for every problem is to send the equipment to their repair facilities in the USA - not very convenient!  We will see...

Meanwhile it is back to life in paradise once again.  And for us, it really is.  Compared to Central America where we have spent so much time lately, it is much cooler here.  During the day it is still warm, close to 30 degrees.  At night though, it cools off to 17 to 19 degrees, making it perfect for sleeping on an un-air conditioned boat.

{GMST}20|44.876|N|105|22.825|W|La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Mexico|La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Mexico{GEND}

The Lap of Luxury

Barra de Navidad, Mexico

We got underway from Zihuatanejo right on schedule on Wednesday morning around 10:30.  As expected, the first day and night were the worst, beating into some moderate NW winds and the associated rough seas.  We actually did attempt to sail for a couple of hours when the going got too nasty - this time it worked OK, close hauled and headed in the wrong direction though it was.  The rest of time was just motoring along, bashing into the waves, trying to avoid the big cargo ships coming and going from the busy port of Lazaro Cardenas.

The moon rising at sunset

The second day and night was much more comfortable, no wind to speak of but with a bit of a lumpy swell.  For some reason, this made my crew much sicker than the rougher seas of the day before - go figure!  We were treated to a full moon for this passage but saw little in the way of marine life.

We arrived at Marina Puerto de la Navidad around 10:30 on Friday morning, making it almost exactly 48 hours for the passage - we could have done it quicker but there was no point in burning extra diesel to arrive in the dark.

This is a very modern and well-maintained marina, with a connection to the very upscale Grand Bay Resort, where we have the use of the Wifi and the pools.  Unfortunately, for the last few days, the resort has been extraordinarily busy, it being Easter.  We will probably hang around here for a few more days before tackling the challenge of Cabo Corrientes, the gateway to Bandaras Bay.

While here, we were able to reconnect wth our friends, the former owners of Sine Timore, Joanna and Iwo (actually Iwo is in Canada right now so it was just Joanna) at their new home, walking distance from the resort.  These people really know how to live.

{GMST}19|11.733|N|104|40.921|W|Barra de Navidad, Mexico|Barra de Navidad, Mexico{GEND}