Or is it barnicles? Either way, I hate those awful little critters. We left the dinghy in the water for about 10 days, and when we pulled it up it was covered with them. It took the power washer and a lot of scrubbing to get them off. I was covered with them by the time I finished and Mike had to power wash me. But the one good thing is it is a chore that invloves water, so you get wet, and therefore get cool. Very important in this sort of climate!
We are leaving today for Mazatlan. We were supposed to leave at 9 am, but I knew that would not happen and I was right - it is now 9:30 and Mike is still in bed. I will get him up at ten, so we can still leave by noon. This is a 48 hour sail, so if you leave by noon, you have six hours on either side to arrive in daylight. As I have said before, it is not fun to enter a port or harbor at night. Even when we were still in San Diego, when we were in and out of that harbor plenty of times (for Mike literally hundreds as his Navy ship was home ported there) it was still confusing to come in at night. Your vision is flattened out in the dark, and the city lights from shore can really throw you off. We have been to Mazatlan before, and know exactly where to go, but the entrance to the marina harbor is very narrow and can be tricky if the seas are at all high. So we are determined to arrive in daylight. When we came here to Topolobampo, we had to force ourselves to sail slowly in order to arrive properly, as we had sailed so fast from San Carlos we would have arrived at something like 2 am. Plus the marina office would have been closed and we would have had to anchor somewhere until morning.
Guess what? Mike just called to me and decided he wants to leave tomorrow instead. Ha Ha Ha - I can't say I am surprised. Too much celebrating last night with Sundancer. I suspected this might happen when he broke out the tequila. They are leaving on Monday for Mazatlan and I would not be at all surprised if Mike decides to wait til Monday as well. I will need to contact the marina there and let them know we will be a couple days later than planned.
Since we had planned to leave today, and now we aren't, I have some time on my hands. I am reading an account of this guy's single handed transnavigation and as always I am astounded by how these people do that. I have fantasies of being able to sail this boat by myself, but I don't think I will ever single hand at this stage of my life. I think I needed to get an earlier start on sailing if that was what I was going to do.
I want to start using our spinnaker, but I have no idea how to deploy it. I need to figure that out. There are many different kinds of these sails, all of them are deployed differently, and I don't know what kind ours is. Some use a big pole (which we have) and some do not. I am hoping ours is the kind that does not use a pole, but since the pole is on board, I am not optimistic. For those who don't know, the spinnaker is the brightly colored huge sail you see on the very front of boats. On cruising (as opposed to racing) sailboats, it is used in light air. Since we have often found ourselves flopping around in really light winds, it would be nice to know how to use it. But I have a feeling that, especially if the pole is needed, that it is a huge hassle to get it up. And I once ran into a guy who had his up, and then the wind came up and his halyard (the rope that pulls a sail up and down) got stuck and it wouldn't come down and he had a horrible time being over canvassed (too much sail up for the conditions) and eventually the thing shredded. I don't want that to happen to us!
Anyway - that is it for today. I feel a sort of letdown, as I really wanted to get underway. Maybe I can talk him into it when he wakes up, but I will not hold my breath.
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