Mazatlan Parte Dos (Feb 8-12)

I had thought (and Floyd thought, too) that Dirk would be in for the whole trip to Florida, where Floyd had estimated we would arrive by the end of May. It’s not really clear what Dirk was thinking, because he bought a plane ticket from Miami to Amsterdam for March 15. We clearly were not going to make it to Miami in the next month. Apparently he has to be back in Holland by March 15. Floyd thought he and I would probably be able to the rest of the trip ourselves after Dirk left. After seeing how the boat is set up, I disagreed. Also, given the rate we were going, Dirk was going to have to leave while we still had a few areas to pass through where, even on a better rigged boat, it would be better to have three people. Floyd decided to change his plans in light of this. While we were in the marina in Mazatlan, he decided to ship the boat to Florida instead.

So instead of sailing to Florida, we’d be sailing a couple hundred miles down the coast that I had sailed just a couple of months earlier to the port where the transport ship would pick up his boat. This should be quick and easy, and would give me a little time to look for another boat.

While I was in town, I had a little time to catch up with the friends I had made the last time I was in Mazatlan. Don was doing well and in good spirits, and had a crew of guys getting Force Nothing fixed up. Judy had moved on to another boat on the East Coast, and Larry and Sherry were up in Arizona. Don said that another girl who had crewed for a few boats and recently opened a hostel in town had been killed by a bus. She was riding a bike through town and was run over. Yikes.


Mazatlan was getting ready for Carnival, apparently the second biggest after Rio (assuming that New Orleans is going to be a bit lacking this year). Folks were putting up big colorful, high-heeled statues along the malecon (seaside walkway stretching 20 km through town). During lunch at a café on the Plazuela we watched the acrobats practice their act hanging from the gazebo.

The day before we had planned to leave, Floyd discovered diesel in the engine oil. Hmm… So he spent the next couple of days in the position that Dirk and I saw him in most often… with just his ankles peeking out of the engine room.




While Floyd was hovered over the engine, Dirk and I checked out the local market here. You can buy any kind of fresh food, including pig face and half-cow. Wow.


Later that afternoon I walked to the top of the lighthouse, at 471 feet it is supposedly the second tallest “natural” lighthouse after Gibralter. “Natural” apparently means they build a short building with a light on top of a tall hill instead of building a tall tower with a light on a piece of land with less elevation. Dirk didn't want to go to the top, but took a picture of me setting off on the journey. The light is just above my head.

The view down to the water from the trail was nice, as was the view of the city and coastline from the top.

After a couple of days and the services of a couple of mechanics, Malulani was up and running again. We motorsailed out to Isla Isabella, following the same path Dan and I had taken on Che Bella a few months earlier, and stayed a night anchored there. Floyd and Dirk rowed the dinghy (there’s no outboard motor) to shore to look at the birds. I stayed on anchor watch (read: I didn‘t want to do a long row ashore).

Dirk was the best rower on Malulani.One of the blue footed boobies of Isla Isabella.

The day we went to leave, we saw dolphins not far from where the boat was anchored. A bit later large, tasty looking fish were swimming around the boat… maybe avoiding becoming dolphin snax. I went for a little swim, and when I got back to the boat, some fishermen pulled up in a small boat and asked if we wanted to buy lobsters. Well, yeah, sure! They made a very tasty lunch before we set out for an overnight trip to Banderas Bay.

Hasta La Vista, La Paz (Feb 6)

I had some reservations about staying with Malulani. The situation was starting to seem way to familiar to the one I walked into in Mazatlan with Rita (see: False Start in Mazatlan). Floyd complained that Dirk didn’t do much other than steer and trim the sails… though I don’t think Floyd asked him to do anything else. For everything that was broken or wrong with the boat, Floyd seemed to have a reason that involved blaming someone else. To my thinking, responsibility for anything associated with the boat rests on the owner. No one else. And owners that need to spread some blame around are trouble. Maybe they’re blind to how much of the problem they themselves are. I don’t know. Another scene that reminded me of Mazatlan was unsettling evens while trying to rig lazy jacks. Rita really didn't seem like she knew what she was doing, and was relying on Jim and I to provide the brain power for the project. In this case, Floyd was doing it all himself and lost a line up the mast because he wasn't holding on to it. This infuriated him, and he was cursing the wind and lamenting the fact that he'd have to go up the mast to retrieve it. Ok... but really its your own fault (and not the fault of the light but steady breeze that had been present all day) if you fail to secure a line like that... Sure its annoying and I'd probably utter a phrase to which my mother would object if I lost a line up the mast... but I like to think I wouldn't bitch about it all day (and the next) and try pinning the blame elsewhere. Also similar to Mazatlan was the friendly reassurance from the owner of a Hans Christian brand of boat. In this case it was Sam instead of Larry and Sherry. Funny how that worked out.

There were two significant differences between Malulani and the dreaded schooner Valkyrie. First, Floyd wants to be a nice guy, whereas Rita had no interest in winning any popularity contests. Dirk-the -Dutch-crew member said that although he had some objections to the rig, that Floyd was ultimately a nice guy and for that reason he was staying with the boat. The second difference was that I have made a lot of other boating contacts in La Paz and along the mainland and had many plan B’s if I decided to leave, so I didn’t feel nearly as dependent on the questionable skipper. Ultimately, I decided the boat would make it to Mazatlan, and I’d at least give it a chance and see how it went. I let Floyd know that I was not pleased with the delays, maintenance problems, and his constant complaining, but that I’d sail to Mazatlan before making up my mind about what I was going to do.

Monday Feb 6 we finally got the sail back (for the second time) and started moving. As we were pulling up to the fuel dock, a couple of the fuel dock attendants pointed at the water near our boat and said some very urgent sounding words in Spanish that I couldn’t understand. I looked over the side and saw a dark shape almost right under the boat. My first thought was “ROCK!“, but that didn’t make sense… there wouldn’t be a hull-crunching rock was right in the middle of the marina. When I took a closer look, I realized it was a big fish… no, wait… that’s a SHARK! Sure enough, the fuel guys were saying “Tiburon.” It looked at least 15 feet long as it swam under the boat. We felt it bump the keel as it slipped by. I was more determined than usual to NOT fall in the water when jumping onto the dock. As it turns out, the shark wouldn’t have bothered me if I had fallen in -- it was a whale shark, a filter feeder that eats krill not fish or people. In fact, Marty at SCWA, who is a big fan of Baja CA, had told me people swim with these animals and enjoy the experience. We decided to take this as a good omen, though none of the three of us were aware of any sea lore dealing specifically with contact with whale sharks prior to departure.

Once we got underway, more oddities in the rig were apparent. In order to tack, Floyd insisted that the 140% genoa has to be rolled up so it won’t get caught on the radar unit mounted on the mast. And care must be taken not to snag the genoa sheets on the chain plates on the side of the hull. Dirk had trouble with that on the way down, and the port jib sheet is a bit frayed. There is not a singe self tailing winch on the boat. The first time we tried to tack under conditions that could not have been more ideal, it took 5 tries and about a half hour to get the bow through the wind. Not so good. There is a wind vane autopilot which will sometimes, given enough fiddling, hold a course to within 30 degrees. No push-botton auto-pilot like Che Bella had. The gear shift lever and throttle are located at the base of the lazarette near the floor, just asking to be stepped on. The transmission cable will break if pushed just a little to hard, and so can‘t be shifted by foot, but only by hand. Floyd had a couple colorful stories of choice times that that cable chose to break -- always in marinas, usually with full throttle engaged in either forward or reverse. You would think that after ramming the bow of his boat up onto a concrete dock that he would have fixed that imminent problem, but no. But, wait -- that’s not all! The throttle will not stay above idle without something to prop it up. We used a wood block for cruising speed, added a towel under it for when we wanted to pick up the pace a bit, and for going slowly, the helmsperson would have to use their left foot to prop it up. The bimini (canvas roof over the cockpit) obscures all view of the sail and masthead, and I am too short to look around the back of it to see the masthead while still holding the wheel. So, I’ve been driving with my feet a lot. Fortunately, I don’t need to look at the masthead while we’re motoring at speeds where I’ve got my foot under the throttle lever. The throttle assembly was one that was near the top of the list of things Dirk and I had recommended for replacement, vieing for top spot with a new main sail. When we asked Floyd if he intended to fix that, he said “Oh no. Then you’d have to replace the whole binacle. It would get too involved.” Ok, dude. How many more times do you need to ram your boat into the dock to figure this one out?

The gear shift and throttle with the compass cover throttle regulator.

And Floyd likes calling people, including me, dude. Dude, please don't call me, "dude."

All and all, it was a disappointing first day. To top it off, something else broke -- the rope we used to attach the sail to the outhall (the rope that hold the back end of the mainsail to the boom) broke. Whoops! How’d that happen? The sail sure flaps around a lot when nothing is securing it!

"Malulani" is Hawaiian for something like “goddess of protection” (Jenny Ryan may be able to correct me on this). I guess that goddess was smiling on us, or that the whale shark really was good luck, because we had easy winds and seas for that crossing of the Sea of Cortez. It blew enough to sail for a few hours, but we were mostly motoring, sometimes with flat seas for as far as the eye could see. A couple of night watches later we reached Mazatlan and pulled into the marina where I had first met Dan and Che Bella.

The Hotel and Marina El Cid swimming pool and spa. So nice.

Malulani Finally Arrives (Jan 30 - Feb 6)

Malulani, with Skipper Floyd and Dirk-the-Dutch crew, finally arrived in La Paz on Monday January 30. Floyd had planned to stay a couple of nights at the marina, and then we’d take off for Mazatlan 240 miles across the Sea of Cortez. But there were delays… they’d torn the mainsail in a couple of places and had to have that sent away to the local sail guy, the cooling pump blew a gasket, the fresh water pressure pump was leaking, and one of the four 40 gallon bags that holds freshwater sprung leak. Huh. Ok.

And the rig is funny. Not funny “ha ha.” The boom sits too low on the mast. The mainsail, when raised, will not lift the boom off the boom crutch. The topping lift has to be used to hold the boom up a bit, which makes for a really baggy sail. Huh. The mainsail is the oddest I've seen, with a flap of a few inches of extra canvas near the mast on either side of the sail, to which a zipper is attached. Apparently it used to zip to some kind of cover... Floyd had bought it second hand, and it doesn't quite fit the mast and boom.

It’s Floyd’s first boat, which he bought in a derelict state, and has been fixing for the last 4 years. He said what prompted him to buy it are the same feelings that prompted Charlie Brown to buy a scraggly stick for a Christmas tree. Huh. I’ve heard better reasons. If you want a little lost puppy go to the pound, don’t buy 46 feet of blistered fiberglass. Anyway… what he’s been able to do is remarkable, but its still has not morphed into the nautical equivalent of a tall, green, well decorated Christmas tree. Anyway... apparently I did not ask enough questions before agreeing to crew for this trip.

Floyd at the Nav station.

Dirk, who has a fair amount of experience sailing in the difficult coniditions off of Holland, said that Malulani won't point (sail to the wind) closer than 45 degrees. A typical sloop will sail within 35 degrees or better. Floyd insisted that he had it sailing closer than that on the way down. I figured there's really only one way to find out...

Dirk at the helm -- wearing Floyd's Navy hat.

I had dinner the first night with Floyd, his friend Sam from the boat Pegasus, and Axel who also has a boat down here. Sam is waiting for his beautiful Hans Christian 33 to be picked up by a freighter that will deliver it to Florida for him. It turns out that I had heard of him though Vicky in Puerto Vallarta. He was the boat she was towing up to La Paz when she got dismasted. Read all about it on Latitude 38’s website. Axel was also recently featured in Latitude 38 for running his last boat, See Ya, aground coming into La Paz. Read all about it. There were some good stories to be shared over burgers and Negra Modelo (the best beer in Mexico). Sam is a really nice guy, and drove us around town almost every day we were here to search for parts for the stuff that keeps breaking and to buy provisions.

Mexican supermarkets are different. They have a booth set up in the meat/deli department, from which a DJ-butcher guy makes announcements, plays music (I heard the Scorpions and some kind of Latin rave music), and slices cold cuts.

The picture to the right is Dirk inquiring about salami from the DJ-butcher guy. Note the amp/speaker to the right.

Interestingly, this large supermarket will sell you coffee, but you’ll have to go elsewhere if you want coffee filters. Contact lens solution is another item they deemed unworthy of carrying. But chicken was cheap: something like a dollar a pound. Of course, if you BBQ the chicken with the fatty skin on (which is the best part), the dripping fat will make a little fireball of your BBQ, no matter how low the heat is. Actually, when Floyd shut off the flame and it kept on burning, we thought for a minute there we may have stumbled on some kind of self-cooking food. Surprisingly, it was not blackened, was moist but thoroughly cooked, and tasted very good. We had a few good dinners on board at the dock, followed by "movie night" screened in the salon on the flat screen, with the film selected from Floyd's large DVD collection. That was nice. We've institued the "if you cook, you don't clean" rule, of which I'm a big fan. So some things are going well.

The departure date was pushed back several times while parts of the boat were getting fixed. Floyd, who is described by his friends as a nice guy, was getting annoyed and dealt with it by complaining to anyone that would listed about how things shouldn’t be breaking and how much the broken parts had originally cost and how much their rebuild had cost and how much the repair was costing. After a week on the boat in La Paz with the complaining, I was frustrated and ready to go -- either with or without Malulani. Sam’s sense of humor and good attitude were a welcome relief from the increasingly grating atmosphere on Malulani, and he assured me that Floyd will be a much nicer guy once things get fixed and we get moving again. I’m hoping so.

On the lighter side... this is Lucy the Goose (Goosey Lucy). She was blown into the marina in a hurricane a few years ago, and has been fed so well she decided to stay. She’s about the friendliest goose I’ve even seen: she’ll actually let you pet her and doesn’t bite. But if you feed her once, she’ll swim up to your boat, honking, begging for a handout.

Baja Blues (Jan 21-Feb 1)

I flew into La Paz on Saturday, Jan 21. The arid landscape dotted with cacti in southern Baja California reminds me of southwest US and parts of souther California. I felt a bit like I was arriving somewhere a little more familiar, a little closer to home than the place I left. It was a nice feeling.

Then I got to the Pension California, my hotel, and the warm fuzzies left me. It is the cheapest La Paz hotel in the Lonely Plant book, and was described as having “quirky charm.” I almost screamed and ran. The room locks with a padlock on the outside, the beds are mattresses on a raised concrete rectangle, the bathroom is separated by the room by a short concrete wall and a shower curtain door, instead of a window there is some louvered venting next to the door, the concrete walls are crumbling in many places, the nonmatching bedspreads are full of holes and the pillows... -shudder- eeeughh -- I brought my own, thanks. And its dirty -- an accumulation of thick dust along every concrete bed and wall, dirty markings on the walls, and I don’t even want to think about when the counter and sink were last cleaned. The best part is you can hear and smell the toilet flushing from the shower drain in the middle of the bathroom. Mexican plumbers don’t share my appreciation of the drain trap. But its cheap and I´m going to be in La Paz a week or so because Floyd got delayed in Ensenada. I left immediately after putting my bags down and locking the padlock behind me, and went in search of the second cheapest hotel in the guide book.

The next day I moved to the Hotel Lorimar (the second cheapest), which was very nice. I met Mike and Linda, a friendly Canadian couple, at the coffee maker the next morning. After talking a while we decided to meet for dinner that night. They had recently retired and sold their house in the city (Edmonton) to downsize into their cabin on the lake, and then decided to go backpacking through Mexico for a few months. They’re fellow veterans of the Mexican long-distance bus system, and we swapped some stories over very tasty chile rellenos stuffed with shrimp.

The clean sheets and better plumbing of the Hotel Lorimar was pushing my budget further into the red, so I moved to a cheaper place not mentioned by Lonely Planet that rents rooms for $70/week. I checked it out, and it seemed fine. I opted for slightly more expensive $95/week (that’s only $13.50/night!) room which included a fridge, TV with four channels of Spanish language programming, and a GREAT view of the bay and sunset. After checking into the new hotel, the morning got even better as I bought a liter of freshly squeezed orange juice for $1.80 from a guy selling them from a truck. So good. Then I stopped at an electrical supply store, hoping that I’d be able to communicate with my limited vocabulary and a few hand gestures that I want an adapter plug so that my three pronged computer could use a two-pronged outlet. Miraculously they understood, and I walked away with an eighty-cent solution to my computer power problem! Then I got a $5 haircut, and was very glad to get rid of the last couple sun-damaged inches of hair. The lady was very nice and cut enough, but not more than I wanted (which was quite a feat given the language barrier), and blew it dry and gave it some style at the end. Such a deal. Next, on to a free trip to the history museum. All in Spanish, but very understandable.

Nice view from my cheap hotel room

Brief note on North American history: I hadn’t really given much thought to the Mexican-American War before… The event that really caught my eye was that when the war was over in 1848, Mexico ceded Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and Alta and Baja California to the US. The Baja Californians put up a big ruckus about this, and the US relented and let Mexico keep it. Or maybe there was another smaller war over that, I couldn’t quite tell. Anyway… this wasn’t mentioned in the museum, but the discovery that launched the gold rush happened within the next year. A huge find, in the territory that was just acquired as the result of what was (to my recollection) a war we probably didn’t need to have. Ouch for them. Anyway… I’m looking for a clarification of this form an English-language book. End of historical observation.

The orange juice wasn’t enough to fight off a bug that was going around town, and I was moping around with a cold for a few days not doing much but drinking plenty of fluids and peeing often. It could be worse. I was glad to have a nice room to hole up in for a day. I listened to the cruiser morning net, and started making friends at the marina. I joined the group that plays dominos at the nearby bar on Mondays and Thursdays. They’re a fun bunch and I had a great time talking trash with them whether I was winning or losing.

I met Ayn, who had just sailed to La Paz from San Diego. What a neat lady -- her work as a radiologist allows her a lot of flexibility and she can get a job just about anywhere. Apparently there’s a worldwide shortage of radiologists. When I asked how long she planned to cruise in Mexico, she said for as long as its fun. Great answer. She’s got a ton of experience and has done the Pacific Cup race from SF to Hawaii six times. Her calm doctor-voice and precise selection of words reminds me of Martha Stewart. We went to dinner, and after a while she asked what the name of boat I was waiting for was. When I told her it was Malulani, she said she had been parked next to him at Ensenada for a couple of days. Small world. I volunteered to help her on a maintenance project, as she didn’t have an extra set of hands since her crew had to fly back home. I’m not sure how much I helped, but she was grateful and said she’d be happy to have me crew for her if things with Floyd didn’t work out. Always nice to have a backup plan. Actually… by the time I left La Paz, I’d been offered 2 more crew positions on other boats. Cool.

By Saturday Jan 29th, I’d been in town for a week, and was starting to get antsy to get out. Still no Floyd. I took the bus up to Balandra Bay, a few km up the road from La Paz. It was gorgeous. The water was so clear and the desert landscape untouched by development. The tide was really low due to the new moon, and I was able to walk across the bar of the inner bay to the other side. That was cool, though when I was about half way across I really wanted to get out of the water. Of course the only way out was to slosh back the way I came 10 minutes or press on another 10 minutes, where the water was hopefully as shallow as it looked. Walking long distances up to your knees in water with no immediate exit is a bit disconcerting after a while. It gave me a new appreciation of how much it would suck to be the victim of a flood, traipsing about in murky water for extended periods of time (see picture of bar below). I saw the famous mushroom rock, a precarious-looking naturally occuring rock formation. Well, quasi-natural... it apparently gets knocked down by drunken locals occasionally, and has been reset and reinforced by rebar.

Looking back across the bar that I walked across. The water was so clear at the shore, turning darker shades of blue as the depth increased.

On a walk one day I stumbled upon the Moorings office, a company that rents out boats. One of the mechanics let me take a look inside of their 38’ catamaran. Very nice. With three cabins, two bathrooms, a large salon and galley, this would be a very fun boat to sail around the Sea of Cortez. I started planning the vacation already… 6-8 people (including myself), one week of exploring desert-meets-clear-blue-sea water anchorages, snorkeling, kayaking, eating much guacamole and drinking beer with lime and salt. Mid-April to May would be the best time, and I think it could be done for as around $600 per person. Let me know if you’re intrigued.

Sunday Jan 30th, Ayn and joined 10 other people for a trip to Magdalena Bay to do some whale watching. From early Feb to March, the grey whales come to Mag Bay to have their babies. It's a pretty big deal. In fact, the day we went was during the "Festival de la Ballena Gris," and in addition to many people going out to see the whales in little boats, there was music, and a carnival going on. Fortunately, the whales didn't seem to mind all the commotion. The open panga boats got within 10 yards of a mama and baby. It was really amazing to see these enormous creatures swimming along, surfacing for air now and then. The mothers were probably 60 feet long and the baby’s were about 25 feet long -- about the same length as the boats we were in. And there were plenty of whales. I think we saw about 7 pairs of mamas and babies, and a few loners that were showing off how high they could breach.

I'm the one with the red life jacket and black sleeves, looking very incognito in my sailing hat and sunglasses.

Whale spouting, about 10 yards from the boat.
Whale tail!Whale breaching


Mama and baby swimming together

Ixtapa and Z-what? (January 14-20)

You may remember Zihuatenejo (zee-what-tan-AY-ho) as the little fishing village that Tim Robbins moves to after escaping from prison in the movie The Shawshank Redemption. He had good taste in Mexican towns. It’s a little bigger than a fishing village now, though most of the really big resorts are next door in Ixtapa.

We stopped for a night at Isla Grande just of Ixtapa for a night. It was packed with tourists and I didn’t much care for it. Dan liked it because the sand was so clean. I think the coco loco may have improved his mood. There’s some good snorkeling on the reef right of the beach, but it was so jammed with people that it was really unappealing -- especially after being spoiled by having whole bays to ourselves.

We moved the next day around the corner to Z-town., which I liked better. We passed a few days here, going into town most every day for a meal or to meet friends for beers and the game. We anchored off Playa Ropa, and I could see the hotel where Mom, Dad, Kathy and I had vacationed about 20 years ago. Wow, that sounds like a long time. The one thing that dominated the feel of the town was how hot it felt. It‘s true what they say: it really isn’t the heat, it’s the humidity. Dan and I walked about a half hour to the bus station during the middle of the day to buy a ticket north for me. By the time we got there, we were both ready for a cherry Icee (which always seems like a better idea than it actually is), and I was really glad when Dan said he was catching a cab to get back. And this is JANUARY. Mid-winter. This is as cold as this place ever gets. That really blows my mind.

Had a nice week here, unspoiled by the fact that Rita was lurking somewhere nearby. While hanging out in the Rick’s Bar, a cruisers’ hangout, I saw Rita (crazy Rita from Mazatlan) had posted a notice that she was looking for crew. Guess whoever she’d convinced to sail with her this far had bailed. Big surprise. The water was warm and relatively clear, making swimming and diving nice passtimes.


Anyway… tourists try to kill themselves in creative ways here… the parasail was busy so they harnessed themselves to the sheets of a spinnaker, and WHOOOHOOO!

The market place was really cool, and I wish I’d taken a picture of it. They sell everything in different little stalls from T-shirts to frying pans to whole fish to large pieces of cow. Bought a couple of pirated DVDs for a few pesos at the market. Dan and I watched “The 40 Year Old Virgin” on a laptop in the cockpit under the stars one warm night. That was nice.

I was sad to leave, but needed to get going up to La Manzanilla to take care of some paperwork, and then on to La Paz to catch the next boat (bound for Florida!). Dan emailed me that after I left, the dinghy made another escape. He found it on the beach the morning after I left. He said some locals saw it in the surf and dragged it onto the beach -- leaving all the dive gear he’d had in there, which was a real bonus. There are some really honest people down here.