Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada
When we left the boat, back in May of 2018, we had every intention of continuing this adventure.
The boat needed a lot of work, largely a result of much neglect over the last few years. The first, and probably the most urgent need was to repair the severe blistering issue with the hull. To this end, we contracted the local boatyard in San Carlos to carry out this repair. We understood that the required drying out period would most likely take a year or more. We made the decision to hold off on any other work until this vital repair was completed, thus we expected that the down time could be closer to two years by the time we were ready to sail again. What we did not expect was a couple of additional setbacks
First, it turned out that the boatyard was unable or unwilling to proceed with the hull repairs without our constant supervision, which was difficult when we live so far away from the action and they don't respond to emails or phone calls. In spite of making two trips to the boat, once in May of 2019 and again in February of 2020, little was being accomplished. However, after the last visit, we believed that we now has them re-focused on the work and looked forward to completion by the summer of 2020.
Second, as we were returning to Canada from our trip to Mazatlan and San Carlos, in March of 2020, we were shocked to find ourselves in quarantine as a result of the recent outbreak of Covid-19. Needless to say, this pandemic brought everything to a halt, both here and in Mexico.
At the time of writing this update, the boatyard appears to be under some new management and if they can be believed, the bulk of the work on the hull has been completed and the boat is back in the storage yard awaiting our return. It has now been 3-1/2 years since we left the boat in San Carlos. We know there is still a lot of work left to be done to the boat that we knew about when we left it there, and sitting in the alternating hot desert sun and winter rain has probably not helped the situation. Add in the fact that we are now 3-1/2 years older as well and we find ourselves wondering if spending the time and money on an old boat is the best use of our resources.
Needless to say, if and when we are actually allowed to travel again, and we feel it is prudent to do so, we have some tough decisions to make. This may indeed be the end of our sailing adventure.
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.
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.
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.
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.
