Yes, today will be our last day here, if all goes as according to plan. We are heading for Mazatlan, about 180 miles across the Sea of Cortez to the Mexican mainland. I have never crossed a sea before, even a skinny one like the Sea of Cortez. So it will be another "first" for me. It will likely seem no different than my coastal passages were because we always go so far offshore we can't always see land anyway.
We have had a lot of fun here but I would not want to live here. It is too frenetic with all the hustling of toursits - you really have to run a gauntlet of timeshare sellers who will go to great lengths to get you in. I have a high tolerance for stuff like that, because everyone has to make a living and there aren't that many ways to do it here. But I still find it annoying. And the salespeople are more aggressive than in Ensenada. But again, they need to make a living here in tourist land. The place is pretty expensive, but if you look around, you can find reasonably priced restaurant food. It will not be on the main drag or right at waterfront, but only a few blocks away.
Cabo is not a sailing mecca and I can see why. The marinas are full of fancy fishing boats and megayachts, and the anchorage is narrow and does not hold real well. Plus, it can get a lot more rolly than I thought possible. Three nights ago it was so bad I hardly slept at all and a few times thought I was going to be thrown out of bed. The result of being on a rolly boat is that you are always doing a balancing act and as a result, my muscles ache as though I went to the gym or climbed a mountain. The up side of that is I can now wear some clothes I could not get into when I left San Diego!
The only bummer is that we lost our electric anchor windlass and now have to pull the anchor up manually. It is not the end of the world (easy for me to say since Mike does the actual pulling) but it is a hassle and will be an expense I for one did not want to have. Here is what happened. We decided to take up the anchor and move to a different spot in the anchorage. (By the way, the anchor windlass is the mechanism that hauls the anchor up and down.) Our windlass is probably circa 1982, like the boat. Anyway, while we were taking the anchor up, a part of the windlass that keeps the chain going neatly around and down into the chain locker literally broke off (on further examination we discovered it had corroded) and caused the chain to tangle around, and then the engine in the windlass apparetnly could not take the strain of the tangled chain and simply stopped working. And it will not be cheap to get a new one. Damn, it is always something!
We have met some interesting people along the way. There are two boats that were with us in Turtle Bay, and we met up with them again here. One boat (a Cal 25 just like we used to have except teh boys stuck a homemade pilot house on top of it) has two boys in their twenties who are off on a sailiong adventure. They have little money, and have been picking up extra change playing their guitar and accordian on the street. There is another young guy who is alone on his 30 foot boat, again with no money. He got a job hustling tourists for glass bottom boat rides. I like that they are doing this stuff and wish I had had the courage at that age to do something interesting. We also found our friend Joel again, who we had to leave at Bahia Santa Maria because the weather was too rough for him to single hand through to Cabo with no autopilot, no crew, and a boat in marginal condition. I was worried about him, and was delighted to see him here today.
I am pretty excited to get underway myself. I am of course hoping we don't get that crazy scary weather, but to be truthful, just sitting there waiting for the wind to come up and debating whether to cheat and motor for a while is not much fun either. At least in the high winds and seas we made good time! We have a reservation for a marina slip in Mazatlan - at a luxery hotel no less. There were two marinas to choose from, with this one being about $250 per month more expensive. However, this one has several advantages. First, there is fresh drinking water at each slip. Most marinas down here have fresh water at the slips, but it is not drinking quality and you have to buy bottled water to fill the tanks. Another advantage is that marina guests get to use all the hotel stuff like the pools and the private beach. Private beaches are nice because there are palapas to sit under, no vendors are allowed to hawk their stuff, and waiters bring drinks. The city bus stops right out front of the hotel. The water issue alone makes it worthwhile. I think we will stay there for about a month, and will do some exploring in the area. I have never been to this part of Mexico. That is one of the great things about cruising - we can just follow our own schedule, controlled only by the weather.
Well, it is time for me to start getting things in order for us to leave tomorrow. The next post will likely be from Mazatlan, and I am closer than ever to being able to post pictures. However, none of them will really do justice to their subjects - the beauty here is overwhelming.
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