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Mazatlan to La Paz
3/16/06-3/18/06 |
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Malecon, Mazatlan |
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Marina El Cid, Mazatlan |
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With the anchor windlass fixed, and the forecast favorable, we departed Mazatlan early Thursday morning, part of a parade of eight boats all leaving the very narrow marina channel at the same time; everyone had been waiting on weather.
Although we were all heading to one of three destinations on the Baja Peninsula, within 100 miles of one another, as we left the channel and headed out to sea we scattered like a herd of cats, and within a couple of hours most of us were out of site of one another.
We were in the middle of the group, undecided as to our destination; Los Frailes to the south if conditions were right for sailing, La Paz to the north if we had to motor. The morning's forecast indicated the latter, so, off we went on lumpy, windless seas, headed for La Paz. |
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Early in the evening, the winds picked up and shifted slightly abeam, and we decided to sail, though it would mean altering our course from La Paz to Los Muertos, a bit further south. We sailed for two hours, then the winds shifted and died and we were back to the drone of the motor. I had left Mazatlan with a sore throat and feeling run-down, so we decided to maintain the course to Muertos and spare ourselves a second night out on the passage. |
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Passages are rough!
Mike hard at work |
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Neither one of us sleeps much with the motor running, but Mike stood an extra long watch anyway, so I could at least rest. At 2:30 a.m. I stepped bleary-eyed into the cockpit and greeted a full moon so bright it looked as if it were lit from within, and the man in it reclined lazily as if propped up on a pillow. Slumped in the cockpit I regarded him jealously, and then noticed he had a bruise over his left eye. Getting out the binoculars for a closer look, I discovered the man was gone, and that the moon wasn't made of cheese, it was in fact, a big chocolate candy dipped in powdered sugar, and where someone might have held it, some of the sugar had rubbed off.
I regarded the moon throughout the night, watching it bounce with the motion of the boat, in and out of the field of view of my binoculars, like the bouncing ball that tells you which word to sing at the right time.
As the sun brightened the sky to the east, and my watch ended, the moon lingered high in the western sky, reluctant to call it a night. I, on the other hand, couldn't wait to get some sleep. |
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Click for page two |
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