We joined a parade of 3 boats entering the channel and were met at the marina by Joel, Chris and about 4 other helpers. Good thing, as the slip turned out to be about 32 feet wide and it was a tight squeeze. Every one of those 6 helpers were needed to keep us off the docks and get tied up. Whew! Always a scary experience. But once we were snug and safe, we headed into the office to check in and get the lay of the land. Then we stopped by Forty Love and made arrangements to meet at 3pm. Back to Neos for lunch and siesta! At 3, Joel drove us into old Mazatlan and we took the Art Walk they have the first Friday of every month. We visited about 7 or 8 studios / art shops and had a ball. One of them was a combination bed and breakfast with a gift shop attached. I talked to her about our family reunion and it looks like a possibility. Also met an artist who had lived in San Jose and knew my brother and his wife and had been to their house for dinner. Small world.
Joel and Chris spent the next day helping us do errands. It took many hours and hitting about 20 different electronic shops, but we successfully found the wiring harness we needed to get our radio up and running. Without Joel’s persistence, I think Rog and I would have given up and gone home empty handed. We also found some needed items at Home Depot and filled a cart with groceries at Mega. We treated them to lunch with local shrimp tacos. A productive and fun day. The rest of the week with Forty Love was interspersed with dinners (at La Bruja and Cave of the Lion), jazz (an evening of great improv at a local bar), and card playing (we taught them “64” and “Pigs” and they taught us “Spite and Malice” and “Reds”). They are such a great couple, the week flew and all of a sudden they had packed up their van and were on their way back to Arizona. On our own again, Rog and I had a pair of skin suits made by Lycra Laura so now we are set to snorkel with the jellyfish. We also did a major cleaning since we had dock water. I not only cleaned bedspreads, blankets and rugs, but the outside of the boat got a thorough scrubbing.
One day as we were walking to the office, Laura from the condos at Paradise Village stopped us and said hi. She was in Mazatlan for training; seems she is now working for PV Yachts. She introduced us to Ray and Jeannette of Mazatlan Yachts and they were really helpful; came aboard and made suggestions on how to improve our chances of selling. They said they will keep an eye out for potential buyers and encouraged us to meet the brokers in La Paz that they work with. All in all, our stay in Marina Mazatlan was not only fun, but productive. On our last day in the marina, we still wanted to relax a bit but didn’t want to chance getting out of our slip in the afternoon wind, so we got permission to move the boat down and tie to the end and leave later in the day. I put out a call for assistance on the net and we had 10 guys show up to help get NEOS out of the slip. With absolutely no wind, Rog actually did a great job and didn’t need the help…but it is always nice to have help if you need it.
That afternoon, we left the channel and hit nasty waves and wind at the opening. It was quite a rush getting out and it was a rocky and rolly trip to the anchorage. We tried to anchor at the islands outside the marina but the holding was pretty poor, so we spent an hour motoring up to Stone Island where we waited for a window to cross to Los Cabos.
We only had to wait for about 3 days for the winds to get more southerly and for the sea to calm down. With ¾ of a moon to guide us, we did the 2 night crossing easily. We even got some sailing in. On one of my night watches, I actually shut down the motors and put up the jib all by myself, letting the captain sleep. I got in about 2 hours of sailing before I had to bring it back in and start the engines again.
We arrived at Cabo San Lucas just after sunrise along with a couple of cruiseships. We spent the day relaxing aboard NEOS, watching the tourist activity. In addition to the 3 cruiseships in the bay, we were surrounded by parasailers, jet skis, swimmers, hobie cats, and a constant flow of tour boats. At one point, we were visited by the local tourist administrators who collected 133 pesos from us for our day at anchor. They said they would be back every day but we never saw them again. The next day we left in the dinghy after breakfast and filled the gerry cans and gas cans. After dropping the diesel and gas off on the boat, we returned to the marina and paid our $3US for the use of the dinghy dock. Then we headed into town. We started with a stop at the marina office where we got maps and advice. The next stop was the local chandlery where we got almost everything on our list. It was the best chandlery we had seen in Mexico so far! A hole in the wall, but it had a little bit of everything. Then it was off to find the port captain. We were used to Puerto Vallarta where cruisers have to bring paperwork into the port captain when they arrive and when they leave. We later found out that all you need to do in Baja is call in on the VHF, but at this point, we were doing what we thought needed to be done. After an hour of searching, we finally located the office and then spent another 45 minutes waiting for them to do the required paperwork. Once we were legal, we did some sightseeing of the area.
Cabo San Lucas is definitely a tourist town. From the Hard Rock Café to the huge shopping malls, we could have been in Miami. After about 2 hours, we had seen it all and hopped on a bus to head out to Costco. Luckily, Rog saw the Costco sign and we were able to get off the bus in time and cross the 4 lane highway. We grabbed lunch outside of Costco, then filled a cart with more provisions for our 3 months in the Sea of Cortez. We paid for the taxi ride back to the marina and he let us off 50 feet from the dinghy dock. One of our easier provision runs!
From Cabo, we did three 45-50 mile legs up the coast towards La Paz. Our first stop was Bahia Los Frailes where we encountered about 10 other cruising boats. Los Frailes is the typical destination from Mazatlan for cruisers heading up into the Sea. It was a rolly night with a fairly good swell hitting us broadside. We spent a day relaxing and then made the next leg to Ensenada de los Muertos. This bay is gorgeous and we were beginning to experience the clean clear waters that the Baja is known for. The land around the edge of the bay is being developed and is valiantly trying to rename itself “Bay of Dreams”. There is a beautiful resort with a golf course and an upscale restaurant. We enjoyed a dinghy ride around the edge and walked along the beach.
Our last leg was to Playa La Bonanza on Espiritu Santo. This beach is miles long and we spent 2 full days relaxing and enjoying it, usually all by ourselves. The beach is littered with thousands of seashells and shell fragments. Tour boats hit the beach every day from La Paz and we were visited by the park rangers who asked us to purchase a pass to the islands when we got to La Paz.
We made a stop at Puerto Balandra before going into La Paz and were introduced to the coromuel winds. The coromuels are night winds that come from the SW as the air from the Pacific crosses the Baja and hits the warmer Sea of Cortez temperatures. Thank goodness the anchorages are sandy bottom and we hold well. Winds gust up into the 30’s and pretty much go all night long.
During the day, the winds stopped and we enjoyed hot sunny days. Balandra is home to the famous La Paz Mushroom Rock which has been reconstructed since breaking off years ago. We shared Balandra with campers and tourists on the beaches. It is still Easter vacation for the Mexicans and they were out if full force. Balandra’s beaches reach out into huge shoal areas and you can walk for almost 1/2 mile from shore without getting more than 3 feet of water depth. A perfect beach for small kids.
We finally made it into the La Paz channel on April 26 and anchored off of the municipal pier along with about 20-30 other boats. We spent the next few days exploring La Paz, meeting Mike and Shelly of La Paz Yachts (who also toured the boat), hitting the local produce markets, and visiting all of the local marinas. We are looking for a spot to put NEOS when we fly home in August so wanted to personally visit each of the 4 marinas in La Paz. We even hit the local WalMart and continued to supplement our supplies. We found out that Jim Nordstrum, “Toothpick” plans to come to La Paz as crew on a delivery from Puerto Vallarta. We arranged for our kids to get some engine parts to him before he left Auburn and he will be bringing those to us here in La Paz. He is due to arrive May 12-ish so we will stay in the area until then.
On April 30, we headed out to spend some weeks in the islands and had a glorious downwind sail to Ensenada Grande at Isla Partida.
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