Cruising in Mexico - Blog

Its spring and time for a update, it has been a while since our last letter. We are in Mazatlan, have rented a house near the beach and Phoebe's school. The neighborhood is called Sabalo Country. It is at the north end of the city and also close to the marina where we keep Paxil. And yes we did say Phoebe's school. She began in January. The name of her school is Instituto Britanico and is a by-lingual program.

She is in a class of 21 students with two instructors, 8am to 2pm then basketball after school at 4pm M-Th. We have met some of our new neighbors on the street one is from Redwood City but a Mexican citizen. Next door there is a little girl a year younger than Phoebe and they play often and both work on each others language skills.

Mexican Easter lasts two weeks and the school took an extra day the following Monday so we had almost three weeks off and made good use of them. We took the boat to the south for a look see at the golden coast of Mexico. The stretch of coast south of Banderas Bay is accessed by a windy sixty to one hundred miles of following seas. It is a geographical wind tunnel which makes for a fun sail down, but a rough slug back upwind. We went as far as Chamela a small town 65 miles south of B.B.with a bay good for anchoring and beach landings. As it was a national holiday the beach was packed and so were all the hotels. It seems the whole country flocks to the beach for this particular holiday. People camped on the beach and the huts housing some restaurants blared Polka styled Mexican music late into the night. It was a spectacle repeated at all mainland anchorages we visited for the whole trip.

We logged our fastest passage on the leg to Chamela from a town called Ipala. 52 miles in 5hrs. 50min. with only a mane sail. We had gusts up to 43 knots and a steady 27 to 30 knots of wind. The swells were 9 to 11 feet with wind waves of three to five feet. We were surfing up to 12 knots on the down side of the swells. We arrived safe and sound but what a rush. Oh yea, one accidental jibe that blew a preventer rope rated at 4000 lbs and traveler sheet broke loose at the attachment loop. The boom and sail came across with such force that when the sail hit the top spreader it riped a hole about a foot long in the sail.  The sound was like a gunshot followed by a screech then crash.

With no traveler we had to keep our sail set on this tack for the rest of the day. The good news is a boat from our home port of Brick Yard Cove was in the anchorage of La Cruz. The boat is Zephera skippered by Russ and his wife Debbie. Russ is also a rigger and sail maker with all his tools and sewing machine aboard. I removed my sail and took it to him a hour later good as new. A one day repair job on a mane sail is next to impossible in Mexico but we just got lucky.

After leaving with a usable mane sail we went north to Isabella Island. It is about twenty five miles off shore from mainland Mexico 85 miles south of Mazatlan. It is a rookery for many sea birds most of which were nesting at the time we visited. There were Frigate, Bobbies both blue footed and yellow footed and sea gulls. Also there were hundreds of Iguanas. The blues had fuzzy whit babies in their nests. Also the Frigate had fuzzy babies. The gulls were still on eggs and the yellow footed birds were starting to fly. Each breed was on a different time table. This by far was the most interesting place we had seen for the three weeks we were out. A side note do not look up at any time on this island.

Thats it for now more to come

PPandJ