It feels like home

Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico

After a good night's sleep at Playa La Bonanza, we were ready for our crossing of the Sea of Cortez.  The anchorage overnight was perfectly calm and we awoke to a beautiful sunrise on the long, deserted beach.  We left at around 8:30AM, bound for Mazatlan.

We made the decision to do this crossing in two days, hoping to arrive at around 8:30AM on Thursday in order to take advantage of the high slack tide to get into the harbour at Mazatlan.  The shortest route from Bonanza to Mazatlan is 223 nautical miles (not the 180 I had thought earlier) which meant we needed to average better than 4.5 knots for the trip - this meant we would likely not be able to sail the entire way in the forecast light winds.

We motored in a very light breeze for all of the first day.  The couple of times we tried to sail resulted in speeds of around 1.5 knots, crawling along in the calm seas.  At one point we passed a turtle sleeping on the surface.  We were going so slow and quiet that he never woke up, even as we passed within about 3 feet of him.

The winds piped up around 11PM and we were able to sail the rest of the night and into the morning.  We motorsailed for some of the 2nd day, mostly to maintain our preferred course, not because there was no wind.  The winds for this entire trip came from the NW and we were going SE, directly downwind - not the best point of sail for this boat.  By late afternoon, we were sailing again, and were able to keep this up until we were within about 15 miles from Mazatlan.  The seas were pretty lumpy for most of the time.  The winds at night were consistently between about 12 and 20 knots, kicking up some nasty short-period wind-waves from the north - we rocked and rolled our way across the sea.

As we approached the breakwater entrance to Estero Sabalo, at 8:45AM, the wind died and we had completely slack tide conditions, as predicted.

We made a non-dramatic docking at Marina Mazatlan where we are currently moored on dock 3 - nice and quiet but a long way from the washrooms.  Our first order of business was to find breakfast, then take a long nap.

Total mileage logged for the crossing was 237 so you can see that we made a pretty straight line across.   Life is good on Sine Timore!

Take a look at the home port of the boat in front of us.  What are the odds?

{GMST}23|16.19|N|106|27.30|W|Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico|Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico{GEND}