Happy New Year all !!!
Well it is winter in Mazatlan, which for a northerner is a contradiction in terms but, after a day at 25c the nights cool-down to a chilly 11c which for us now is cold(please don’t hate us that much). The tourists are starting to arrive in droves which makes for a busy Mazatlan but, as for the marina most of the boats have headed for warmer waters we will be some of the last to leave.
Update we will be heading to La Crux in Banderas Bay at the end of the month(Jan). This is a town just north of Peurto Vallartia
Diana and Belle are well and for the most part enjoying Mazatlan. I think our cat is going crazy, after years of being afraid of everything she has now decided to go explore what ever she can, including other boats, we now have to lock her in when we are away from the boat and at night, our neighbor is not amused. I think it is another cat that walks allover his boat at night leaving cat prints on his very clean boat, but our cat is fast and sometimes does escape to the dock.
Still no snow here and during the day it is really nice.
   
 Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas
We made it to Mazatlan! It has been a long time since I updated the blog so here goes. We are now tyed up at the Marina Mazatlan in Mazatlan Sinaloa MX. It is nice here the weather is warmer and the sun hotter, it only took two days more to get here from Cabo. The passage from Cabo was not as easy as expected, at first for about eight hours we fought both tide and current against us, no wind and under power, then we got a nice breeze and sailed for the next twelve hours until sunrise, then motor sailed to Mazatlan, arriving after dark. The Mazatlan marina is very nice , quite a few other boaters. Now that Diana is back from the lake we can go exploring in and around Mazatlan.
We made it to Cabo on Saturday, sometime in the late morning, early afternoon. The first stop was the marina office and then the showers. Mike and I were both extremely tired from the 7 days straight but managed to go out for something to eat. After getting back to the boat, we almost immediately went to bed and slept until about 3:30 in the morning. I woke up thinking I was late for my shift and ran into the galley before realizing that we were tied up at the dock. This happened the next night too…
The trip down was very exciting for the most part. We had a little of everything, NO wind, light wind, heavy wind and then even heavier wind. We also had some pretty big swells to deal with for most of the trip – well maybe only 4 days but it sure seemed like it was the whole trip. We sustained a few bruises as well but nothing major. I won’t go into how I was banged in the side of the head with the boom, I will just say it hurt and leave you guessing…
The morning we had no wind was actually quite pleasant. I was able to have a shower of sorts, Mike was able to refuel without having to hold on to everything and making something to eat was actually easy.
Mike and I started out doing 4-hour shifts – this lasted a couple of days – and then we changed to 3-hour shifts. By the last day we were doing 2-hour shifts. Don’t really recommend 2-hour shifts but we were both so tired that it was the best we could do.
We did see quite a few dolphins, a few seals – they like to lay by the kelp beds and they appear to wave at you as you go by. We spotted a couple of sharks but the most exciting sightings were the humpback whales! We got an excellent look at one while it dove under the water bringing its tail flukes completely out of the water. Very cool!
It started warming up past Turtle Bay and got really nice and hot after Mag Bay. We finally found the warmth – YAY! It is currently 30C out and I am sitting in front of my computer in my swimsuit. I could definitely get used to this! It is about 31C in Mazatlan so that should be good too!
We will be heading to Mazatlan on Thursday at around 2am. Not thrilled about leaving at that time but it is about a 36 hour trip so we want to get there Friday afternoon. Everyone knock on wood for me now because I don’t want to jinx the trip.
We did have a log of the trip going but Mike spilled coffee all over it during one of the rougher mornings so I can’t really read it…
For those of you wondering about internet access, there wasn’t any… Mike and I came inland twice to see if we could connect and no luck. Once at San Quitan and then again at Turtle Bay. No connection with the 3G TelCel and our ampliphier. We did connect using TelCel about an hour outside of Cabo and Mike even did a Skype call with his brother. Now unfortunately, TelCel keeps dropping but the WiFi here is excellent.
That is all I can think of for now. I am sure more will come to me later and I will be sure to post more details.
🙂
We are leaving Ensenada in about an hour for Mazatlan. It will likely be a non-stop trip, unless we decide to stop in Cabo. I have heard it is extremely expensive in Cabo, however if we are tired we will need to stop. Mike and I plan on doing 3 hour shifts at the wheel so hopefully that will work just fine.
I have to go and wipe our plastic wind screen down now so we can see.
I will keep you posted on our progress if I am able to.
Diana
Hi everyone,
We have had two days of nice weather in a row! They advertise nice weather year round for both California and Mexico but both Mike and I can attest that that is definitely not the case! For the most part, the weather in the BC Interior has been nicer than it has been here for most of the summer! Oh well, hopefully we will find hot weather when we head down to Mazatlan in mid-October. I guess I shouldn’t complain too much though, I am typing this in my swimsuit in our cockpit….
The weather has been so nice that Mike and I cleaned the boat yesterday, the dingy today and our flags (Mexican and Canadian) today. We do wash and polish the boat on a regular basis but with the work they have doing on the breakwater in the Marina, there hasn’t been much point lately (too much dirt and dust). It had only been about 3 weeks since we washed the boat but it was filthy! We hadn’t cleaned the bumpers in a while though, one of them had an entire eco system growing on it – very gross! We could have had mussels for dinner from what came off the bumper! Ugh! i should have taken a picture before we scraped it off!
I don’t have much to report – just that we will be heading down to Mazatlan in mid-October, depending on the weather of course. If it looks clear and nice, off we go – if it doesn’t we won’t. I do have to be in Vancouver on Nov. 8th though so if we don’t get down to MAZ before then, I will either have to fly from TJ to MAZ or cancel the flight and book another from San Diego to Vancouver. Oh that will be nice – crossing into the States again! The last time went well but I don’t want to get my hopes up and think they will all be like that from now on!
For everyone who is wondering how Belle is doing living on the boat, she has taken to napping (and playing) on top or the biminy. 🙂 See pictures below. She still doesn’t like when we are out at sea but she is getting better. As long as the sails are up and the engine isn’t running, she will relax on the settee.
I also have some pictures of a boat that got too close to the gnarly bits on the edge of the coast. Rumour has it that he was trying to come into the Marina at 2am and got confused at to where the entrance was. I can see that happening – it is not that well lit at night and even in the daytime it is hard to tell. Once you know where it is, it is a breeze though. Shows you need current charts and a depth sounder. I felt really bad for the owners though – who wouldn’t?? Made me think that we definitely do not want to enter a Marina at night – even though we have done it a couple of times.
Okay, I might have gotten a little a carried away with the pics of Belle… Here are a couple of the unfortunate boat…
This was the rescue attempt – it went on for a long time but I think one pic of it will do…
I think that is all for now. I will post more later.
Bye for now!
Diana
Mike and I have been REALLY, REALLY bad about posting to the site and keeping everyone updated. I guess it is because we really haven’t been up to much… There was the Baja 500 race a couple of months ago and a mushroom festival that we went to a couple of months ago as well. Other than that, we haven’t done too much. I work at the nav station in front of my computer all day and Mike works on the boat. He has done a really good job at securing things on the boat for when we are out on the water. We have been trying to take the boat out every three weeks or so to enjoy the fact that we own a sailboat. Last week was one of the best days we have had on the water; the wind was good enough that we made on average about 6 knots. Unfortunately, we could only stay out for about 3 hours because I had to get back to work… Oh well, haven’t won the lottery so I guess we have to make do with the 3 hours we got. Oh, and in case you didn’t know, Mike and I have our FM3 Visas so we are allowed to stay in Mexico for a year without having to leave.
This is pretty much the down time in the cruising world because of hurricane season. It is one of the best times to sail but you might get caught in a hurricane. The insurance for this season is outrageous – it is basically a catastrophic loss policy. Makes you think doesn’t it? We will be waiting here for the end of October before heading down to Mazatlan where I will catch a flight back to Canada for the regular 6-month check–up.
The weather has finally come around this month! We had to survive major amounts of rain and cold weather before this month! Everyone who lives here says that the weather this year was the worst they have seen in decades! We spent most the time hibernating on the boat. It was funny, when the rain would stop, we were all like a bunch of gophers popping our heads up and chatting with the neighbours. As soon as the rain started, down went the heads.
They are working on the breakwater in the marina so everything is pretty filthy. Mike is busy washing the lines and it takes about 2 washings to get them clean, then he has to do it again a couple of weeks later. We are washing the boat every week and a half or so because it is do dirty right now.
Oh, and we just had dolphins swim right by the boat this afternoon. A small group of 5 came into the marina to feed on the fishies and swam right beside the boat for a couple of passes – very cool! There are also quite a few jellyfish in the area right now. We have to be careful when we are swimming in the ocean. I didn’t know this but apparently urine is not a good thing to use on a jellyfish sting, you are supposed to use vinegar. My question is who carries around vinegar with them all the time? At least you usually have access to urine… 😉 Although, I guess if you are going to swim with jellyfish, it would be a good idea to bring vinegar with you to the beach…
I will post some pics later, but I wanted to get an update on here.
Love to everyone!
Diana, Mike and Belle
Mike has now been on his own in the boat since April 14th. My doctors appointment went very well and I am just waiting for the next one on Monday before heading back to Mike.
There was the Newport to Ensenada race last weekend that I missed but it sounded very exciting. Mike will post pictures later. Here is the link to the race site: http://www.nosa.org/. Mike said he had a good time helping all the boats dock and most offered a beer/booze as a tip. He did accept a few tips but not too many (so he says). 😉
Amazingly, the weather here has been either the same or nicer than Ensenada! Right now, Mike is experiencing a storm with gale force winds – those are not fun – and we have a little sun at 18C. That just seems wrong somehow… 🙂 Mexico is supposed to be nicer – that is what they advertise anyway… Oh well.
That is about it for now. I know we haven’t posted much lately, but we will try to do better! 🙂
The Carnival was here from Feb. 11 to the 16th so we decided to go to the parade on Saturday. The pics are below. You can click on each picture to view a larger size if you like. We didn’t stay for the whole parade because it was supposed to start at 2pm and didn’t get going until 3:15. We did watch for about an hour though.
We also went to the opening night of the carnival. It was a very long walk to get there but it was worth it! We had a lot of fun. The carnival had 7 stages set up and performers on most of them. It also had the regular rides that looked like fun. We didn’t go on any of them though.
For Mike’s birthday, we went into town and found a bar that would put the Nascar race on for us. We had margarita’s to go with our breaky. When the race came to a standstill due to the raceway, we walked down to another bar where Lola and Manny joined us. They wanted to get something to eat so we went back to the first bar and continued to watch the race from there. We had a very good day!
That’s about it, enjoy the pics!
Follow this link for the current weather in Ensenada.
Ensenada Weather
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