Mazatlan

Mazatlán
Our time in La Cruz was coming to an end. Hurricane season was rapidly approaching, and we had to begin our journey north to get to safer waters. The Sea of Cortez has several hurricane holes and its weather patterns are typically strong enough to deflect most hurricanes or at the very least suck some of the power out of them. From La Cruz, most cruisers head up the coast of the mainland to Mazatlán first and then cross the Sea of Cortez to La Paz which some consider the gateway to the Sea. Our first attempt to get to La Paz ended badly and we ultimately were never able to get there. Hopefully this attempt will end better. We felt like we had a reasonable plan and we did have a need to go to Mazatlán to the consulate there to begin the process of renewing our passports which will expire this year. Mazatlán in not really considered a favorite hangout for cruisers unless you like the marina life. They have built a conglomerate of marinas on the north end of the city that offer a number of services and amenities to cruisers with a checkbook plumper than ours but there are very few places to anchor out and the anchorages offer minimal services to cruisers.

As we were leaving La Cruz, I began to ponder how much I have learned about sailing in a relatively short period of time. When we first left the PNW, I thought I at least had the basics down. After all we had spent 5 years living aboard, sailing and learning the systems of our boat. I realize now that I didn’t know enough to understand how much I didn’t know. It is a little scary now but there definitely is something to the saying that ignorance is bliss. I could keep wind in a sail to keep it from lufting but didn’t know how to trim sail to maintain a course. It drove Dave crazy because I sailed to keep air in the sails. I could follow a track on our Garmin (as long as the sails didn’t luft, I do not like the sound of a lufting sail) but I couldn’t follow a compass heading. I could tack the boat in light winds and flop the sails and tighten the lines…. light winds are the operative condition here. I could reef our genoa or let more out depending on the wind. I could handle the lines when docking understanding how to use the lines to slow or stop the boat or how to use the lines to spring it off when leaving the dock. I knew how to anchor because I was so neurotic about it Dave assigned that job to me. The first couple times Dave anchored, I spent the nights in the cockpit being a human drag alarm making sure the boat didn’t drag or swing badly on its scope. I just couldn’t understand how a little bitty anchor could hold a 12-ton boat in place and then with a simple pull come loose when you wanted to leave. Dave took me to a boat show and in one of the water tanks there he showed me with miniature anchors the physics behind anchoring. I then went to multiple seminars on anchoring and read countless explanations of it. I get it now. And he is a saint because he doesn’t complain if after I set the anchor I shake my head because I am not happy with the set. He calmly pulls the anchor (manual windlass which means he uses a lever to draw the anchor chain up 3 links at a time with typically 75’ of chain out or more…. sigh) and I reset it. The record to date is 4. He pulled the anchor 3x before I was finally happy with the 4th set. Having spent time sailing in the Puget sound, I was well versed in tides and currents and the effect on a boat. I thought that was an impressive start considering my baseline was herding sheep and goats and later working in the healthcare jungle. Neither of which are remotely close to sailing.
Here is what I can do now. I can sail to a compass heading. I am no longer dependent on our Garmin for headings and direction and only use it when we are near land or in shallow water. I can now trim my own sails so that when I am on that course heading I can comfortably steer the boat rather than wrestling with the wheel to maintain the course. If your sails are well balanced then it requires minimal effort on the wheel, a poorly balanced sail combination means you will have to wrestle and man handle the wheel for the entire shift. I can tack or jibe our boat around to change course and I understand the difference and then I am able to get the sails trimmed after the maneuver. I can complete these maneuvers in moderate to challenging conditions. I can move the traveler to change the position of the boom and understand what that means and how it will affect sailing. I know how to capture more wind in a close hauled light wind situation and how to adjust the boom to spill wind if there is more wind than what I am comfortable with. I know that our boat tends to be very forgiving in all things except for big weather. She loves to weather helm and take on all the wind she can find and go like a bat out of hell. If you are not diligent, she will take the helm from you and make you pay dearly to wrestle the helm back into your control while she gleefully races up and down waves heeled over as far as she can go. I remain the primary line handler when docking and have learned that sometimes well- meaning people on the docks don’t know the first thing about handling lines on a boat without bow thrusters. I have more faith in Dave and I bringing our boat in safely than taking help offered. We have had people stop to watch us bring our boat in to challenging dock situations. Sailors are a tough crowd, they are quick to admire competent management of a boat, but they are just as quick to use your misfortune for cheap entertainment. They will gather near the docks to watch and applaud or laugh as people come and go from the docks. So far, we have been applauded especially one time when Dave brought the boat in and essentially parallel parked her between 2 boats. It was impressive. I continue to do the anchoring and I sleep very well. I can plot a course on paper maps and track it. I can look at our conditions and current course heading and predict generally what our heading will be on the tack. I can read some signs in the water like where shelfs are, where there is more wind and depth changes. I still can’t read the sky right. I am getting there, slowly becoming a sailor. We are getting more comfortable with a lack of schedule and being OK with not moving far in light wind and not reaching for the engine every time the wind dies. We don’t quite understand what “a good weather window” means to most cruisers. Every time we have gone out in a good weather window, there has been no wind. It seems like good weather window means good for motoring, but we still have lots to learn about weather forecasting.
Our sail to Mazatlán was largely uneventful however, one night stands out in my mind and will probably remain with me for the rest of my life. We were travelling about 30 miles offshore so there was no ambient light. Puerta Vallarta was far to the south of us and Mazatlán was far to the north of us. The night sky was unlike anything I have ever seen. The stars blanketed the sky from horizon to horizon. There were bright bold stars and pale distant stars, twinkly stars, bright white stars, gold stars, and red stars. The boldest stars were so bright that they were laying down beams across the surface of the water. The Milky Way looked like it was airbrushed in soft purples, blues and gold. The Southern Cross was breathtaking just like the song says, pointing the way south while Ursa Major and Polaris provided a bearing for north. In the water there were 2 different types of phosphorescence. The one that we usually see that gives a gentle glow to the waves as they pearl past the boat was present doing its best to outshine the stars. But then there was also a new kind of phosphorescence that I hadn’t seen before. These were much larger about the size of a ping pong ball and they would blink on and off as we went by. It looked like someone had laid strand after strand of twinkle lights just under the surface of the water. The stars were twinkling and shining and the phosphorescent critters who were not to be outdone were glowing and flashing, there were bits and fragments of light in every direction. The icing on this cake though was the moon. It was a crescent moon and we were travelling on a heading of 270 degrees, due west. The moon laid down a beam across the water and we were sailing right down the middle of that beam. As the moon began to set, the color gradually changed from a pale white to a light yellow to a bold orange to the most brilliant blood red just as it slipped below the horizon. It was absolutely magical, like a painting or special effect in a movie. It was meant to be experienced because my words certainly don’t do justice to those moments.
We arrived in Mazatlán and I radioed in to the Harbor Master to request entrance to the harbor as is required. I studied my Spanish book ahead of time and wrote out the phrases that I would need. I called in to the Harbor Master on the VHF and made my request to enter but realized too late that I had failed to study potential responses that I might hear back from them. I radioed in and they responded. I paused and sputtered because I had no idea what they said to me. I am beginning to think that the fortune teller in New Orleans that I went to years ago was right when he said that I was not capable of learning a foreign language. So, I radioed in the same request in English hoping that someone would take pity on me and give me an English response. I got the same response as previously…. damn. I got out my book and crafted a new statement. This was not a request, I simply stated that we were entering the harbor in 45 minutes. That was met with silence which I hoped was consent. The entrance to the harbor is just wide enough to admit a freighter or a cruise ship with no room to spare. Makes sense why they require you to contact the Harbor Master when coming and going from that harbor. We glided in with no other traffic and anchored in the designated area careful to avoid the derelict boats. The anchorage area is quite small and sits downwind of the sewer treatment plant so every afternoon around 1500 that is all you can smell. It is nauseating but usually only lasts a couple hours. It sits right below El Faro which is the highest lighthouse in the Americas and the second highest (not tallest or largest) in the world. The anchorage is very calm with no wake or swell even with the big container ships and fishing boats going by. We were safely anchored but the smell and the garbage in the water made it not terribly appealing. I wouldn’t be doing any paddle boarding and we certainly wouldn’t be doing any swimming or snorkeling unfortunately.
Mazatlán means land of the deer and we saw numerous graffiti murals that depicted this. Our first excursion ashore let us know just how far off the beaten path we were. We had to walk nearly 2 miles to get out of the industrial zone. There was a lot of construction going on and if we happened to be walking through the area around lunch time we got to see the siesta in full swing. The temperature was 95-100 degrees with 60-70% humidity. These men were tearing up asphalt, hauling it away and then repaving the street with concrete paving stones. The stones were laid in place by hand and the concrete that held them in place was hand mixed as well. There were barrels of water and piles of sand placed on one end of the work zone. The crews seemed to be divided into 2 groups. One group would eat and then they would find places in the shade along the boulevard and sleep for an hour or so and then they would take over the work and the next group would eat and take a nap. It was very interesting to see something that we had heard about and read about play out before our eyes. The shops in this area were few and far between and those that were open for business were badly run down. There would be no provisioning without significant effort on our part. Once we got away from the harbor we were able to make our way to Old Town or the Historic district which was quite charming and beautiful. Every building was painted with bright colors and there were a number of laborers who worked the streets picking up garbage and sweeping the streets and sidewalks.

Once we got out away from the harbor, it was quite clean. It was so hot and humid but there were a few parks with trees and good shade with lots of park benches to rest in. Over the next several days we thoroughly explored Old Town. We got to see a cliff diver

and stumbled across an art gallery which was housed in a completely renovated traditional Mexican Casa.

I understand why there aren’t more public parks because each house (casa) is typically built around a courtyard. These courtyards seem to be the center of the home and they have trees, vines, flowers and shrubs and some even have a water feature. The courtyards do not have roofs, so each house comes with its own private oasis amid the concrete jungle of the city. We hiked to the top of El Faro which provided us with stunning views in every direction.

We walked to the Basilica which was breath taking and then we learned that Toni, our Gramma Angel, had participated in a pilgrimage there. It was humbling to know that we were sharing some of the same sights that she had all those years before.

Mother’s Day was our most epic adventure. We walked along the water rather than cutting through town to the Malecon and had breakfast at Looney Beans, a cute little coffee shop and eatery. Then we decided to walk down streets that we hadn’t wandered yet which gradually took us out of Old Town and into areas we hadn’t been to. Our phones ended up dying so we didn’t have GPS, but we could see a radio tower on a hill near the Historic District when we stood in some intersections. We gradually made our way towards the tower ultimately stumbled across Old Town and plodded our way back to the boat. I think we walked close to 15 miles that day.
We gradually made our way to the Golden Zone or New Mazatlán a couple days before our passport appointment was scheduled. We wanted to do a dry run to the consulate so we could time the trip. They required that you present 15 minutes before your appointed time. You cannot arrive earlier or later than 15 minutes prior to your appointment or you risk losing the appointment and would be reschedule. We couldn’t afford to mess up our appointment to get our passports renewed. The Golden Zone was quite disappointing. It looked like every other seaside tourist trap with Marriott and Quality Inn high rises, Starbucks, Burger King, McDonalds and every other American hotel and food chain. The consulate was little bigger than a carport and I am glad we went there a couple days early because I expected something so much more. Renewing our passport was quite the experience. We wanted to start the process in Mazatlán and then have the passports shipped to us because we couldn’t stay much longer on the mainland because of the threat of hurricanes. We explained this to the people at the consulate and it was a situation they had never encountered before. When you apply for a new passport they must cancel your old one. Typically, they don’t have to cancel the old one until you pick up the new one but, in our case, we were not going to be staying in Mazatlán, so we had to give consent to cancel our passports. What that meant is that our old passports were no longer effective and although we were free to travel within Mexico, we could not leave Mexico until we had our new ones. They asked us numerous times if that was how we wanted to proceed. It was a very uncomfortable situation to be in but ultimately had no choice and left the consulate with cancelled passports.
Our tasks were accomplished. We grabbed some groceries and made plans to leave. We would leave the anchorage and head into the marina district to pick up water and fuel and then begin our crossing of the Sea of Cortez. While I am glad that we stopped to explore Mazatlán, I have no great desire to go back to stay and will probably only use it as stop off now and then and not a destination. We seem to be taking in a lot of the highpoints of Mexico this season and I think we will spend at least one more season here to take in some of the more off the beaten path destinations. Next stop….La Paz