While in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, we attended the festivities for Dia de los Banderas (Flag Day) at the zocalo (town square).  Featured were lots of Folkloric dancing, comedy skits (hard to follow in our meager Spanish), and an old-fashioned beauty contest (the Mexicans do not share the North American obsession for thinness).  We especially enjoyed the colourful costumes and delicious dulces (Mexican sweets).  The only un-quaint thing about La Cruz is that they pipe their untreated sewage directly into the bay – right beside the dinghy landing beach!!

 We took advantage of being in Banderas Bay to get a few errands and electronic boat chores attended to, and sailed to Punta de Mita – the northernmost tip of the bay – in 25 kn of wind on February 25.  After some shut-eye, we departed at 4:30 am, heading north.  There were some fishermen with a long fishing net curving around the point. It was quite well lit (unusual for Mexican fishermen) but as it was difficult to figure out the way through in the pitch dark, we headed for one of the bright lights on the pangas. As we got close one panga broke out of the group and the pangeros directed us to a clear track around their nets. 

Mid-day saw us arrive at the lovely little bay of Chacala, 34 miles north of Punta de Mita.  Our cruising guides indicated that the Port Captain only wanted to look at our papers, but that had changed.  Cruisers now have to pay the check-in/check-out fees, but we could pay directly to the PC, as there is no bank anywhere nearby.  Chacala is a weekend playground for Mexicans living in the inland city of Tepic, which meant we saw noisy seadoos buzzing around on the weekend.  Our friends from Indra and Indigo caught up with us here, and we all enjoyed a hike through mango and guayabana plantations and a goat ranch towards the next bay.  Rosie especially enjoyed the opportunity to chase sticks in the tall grass.  Unfortunately, she is a tick magnet, and we spent the next three days pulling ticks out of her coat, so she became boat-bound again.

There is a tribe of native Mexicans, the Huichol, who live in the mountains surrounding Banderas Bay.  They continue to live in pretty primitive conditions, and follow a very rigorous spiritual life.  They use peyote and other hallucinogens to achieve a dream state, and produce fantastic artwork depicting their dreams.  They use tiny beads to produce three-dimensional mosaics, usually of animals, as well as fantastic embroidery, and colored yarn “paintings”.  We had been admiring this work at various locations around Puerto Vallarta – but at gallery prices, not in our cruising budget.  While in Chacala, we met Miguel, a Huichol artist, and watched him work.  We purchased a small beaded tortuga (turtle), which will hang on our cabin wall.

We left Chacala on Sunday, March 3, and arrived at Matanchen Bay just after noon after a pleasant sail of 20 miles.  After a quiet night, we departed at 4:30 am – a great time for traveling, as the winds are usually out of the north in spring (right on our nose) so this is when they are lightest.  We arrived at Isla Isabela just after noon.  This volcanic island is a national park and bird sanctuary.  It is just 2 square miles, and 20 miles off shore, so it feels quite isolated.  Biology students from Guadalajara University do their work studies here.  There are 92 bird species on the island, and it is a nesting site for frigate birds and blue-footed boobies.  It is so biologically diverse that Jacques Cousteau featured the island on one of his television specials.  We spent several enjoyable days here, hiking around the trails.  Boobies nest on the ground, often right in the middle of the trail!  Diving and snorkeling are also fantastic, with lots of interesting marine life.  We certainly noticed that we were moving north, however, as the water was considerably cooler, and we wore our wetsuits whenever we went in the water.

 We departed Isla Isabela at 7:00 am and sailed 13 hours for Mazatlan, arriving at 1:00 am March 8.  En route, we saw sea turtles swimming gently along the surface, and more whales.  Unfortunately, a surprisingly intelligent and agile species of fish beat us out of two of our best lures, hooks, lines and all. 

The Mazatlan entrance is notoriously difficult, so we anchored off for the night, behind Venado Island, where 16^th century pirates hunted deer and hid to ambush the Spanish ships.  We entered at 9:00 when the channel dredging operation was taking a break.  This was to be our first Marina stay since New Years in PV, and what a place it is!  The marina district is 6 miles north of town, and features three marinas.  One, Marina Mazatlan, is in receivership, which in Mexico means they do not accept new business.  The second, El Cid Marina, is an expensive marina with a four star hotel attached – not the first choice of most cruisers.  We stayed in Isla Marina, which is the most cruiser-friendly.  This huge development, similar to many we saw throughout Mexico, stands with everything three-quarters complete.  It could have been spectacular – beautiful homes and townhouses, surrounded by lush landscaping, set amongst rows and rows of yacht moorage.  Alas, the sad story varies slightly – usually the devaluation of the peso is involved at some level – but the result is the same.  Nearly completed buildings are left to fall apart.  Partially completed docks are rented to cruisers at discounted rates (no power or water).  You have to watch where you walk, as rebar sticks out everywhere, and utility gratings are left off, or have fallen through.  We have heard that if someone comes along who wants to buy the property, they must assume all the debt, plus all interest accrued.  No wonder these near-built projects never get any further along.

We took a slip on a dock that floats but has no shore access without the dinghy. Every one including the marina staff call it “Gilligans Estates”.  With no power and water, the rate is US $6 per day, a bargain compared to our usual $22 to $65 per day at all other Mexican marinas – another reason why we are not marina rats!!  Isla Marina is highly organized for cruisers.  We dropped off 4 huge bags of laundry at the office, and it was washed, dried, folded and returned the next day for 12 pesos per kilo.  You couldn’t go to a laundromat for less, and besides, there aren’t any, but lavanderias are everywhere.  Tuesdays and Fridays, cruisers gather at the large palapa and have a jam session.  Every morning, the marina provides coffee and cookies at 7 am, and cruisers meet to gossip, listen to the local radio net, and swap lies.  There are tables so you can work on large projects, and a book exchange.  We haven’t even gotten to talk about the interesting things to see and do in Mazatlan proper.  This explains the many boats that look like they haven’t moved in years. 

Mazatlan is a city of 500,000.  The downtown historical district has many buildings from the days of the Spanish, with a central Mercado (market), cathedral, large main square and many smaller plazas in the surrounding neighbourhoods.  There is always something going on at just about anytime of the day. Between the marina and downtown is what is called the Zona Dorada, or “gold zone”. This 5 mile strip of hotels and restaurants is where most of the tourists hangout. It’s a bit kitschy and apart from the fact that competition keeps the prices in restaurants down, it has little to offer cruisers. It obviously has lots to offer tourists in particular “spring breakers”. We started to see the droves of students arrive, all white and looking for the cheapest beer in town. At one end of the zona dorada is a little restaurant called “The Place” where every night they have all you can eat ribs with veggies etc and all you can drink margaritas for 95 pesos, about $10:50. They were great ribs and the margaritas were drinkable, someone else in the group had 3 lobsters all the veggies and margaritas for $13. A great deal and they didn’t try to sell you up!!

The downtown area of Mazatlan is very nice - quite colonial in many places, some of the buildings date back to the times of the Spanish invasion of this coast. There is a sense of pride in the locals and whenever they are refurbishing a building, it’s done with style and a view to the way it looked originally. That’s not to say the whole city is like that. On the contrary, there are many concrete bunker style buildings built in the last 50 years that are just plain ugly, come to Mexico if you want to see what not having planning authorities can do to a street. Mazatlan has a very European feel in the old downtown. The small squares (zocalos) often have entertainment going on, art displays and cultural events. It is easy to see why cruisers come to Mazatlan and stay for years.

Mazatlan is about the same latitude as Hawaii, but its amazing how much cooler it is. It must be the effect of the huge landmass behind the coast and the cold winds from the north. The temperature is at least 15 deg cooler than down the coast, the water is about 10 deg cooler. All this makes for good sleeping and cooler days for exploring, but we had fun trying to remember where we stowed warm clothes.

One of the things that mariners miss most down here is the lack of weather reporting. It is possible to get what you need to make valued decisions on when to make passages, but it takes time. In the US and Canada you just turn on the VHF and switch to the weather channels, there is a continuous commentary from NOAA or Environment Canada. Here the Port Captains of each region come on the radio, normally around 10 am (too late in the day for planning) with a weather report in Spanish. Generally it comes at you very quickly and you have to really listen to get what you need from it. We listened for days and had weather reports totally different from the weather we actually saw. It was not our poor translation either. So you often do not know when you set out what you will find out there. It’s not so bad when you are just hopping from bay to bay, but when you want to cross from Baja to the Mainland or vice versa its important to know what you can expect – especially at this time of year. Most of the winds in the Baja are from the Northern quadrants in March, later in spring they shift to the south a little more. When you travel from Manzanillo to Mazatlan you are traveling pretty much NW and accordingly the wind is on your nose, so planning is very important.

Other ways to get weather reporting are from the Ham Nets (organized times when boaters contact each other by HF Radio). There are land based hams who download weather reports from the internet and precise them for the use of mariners. Their accuracy is pretty good. We have made decisions based on their reports and found them to be close enough to make no difference. Another way is to download via the HF radio, weather maps produced by NOAA - the computer software then lets you print out these maps - and if you can interpret them you can almost figure it out yourself.

Where was I going with all this? Oh yes, we had been trying to figure the best time to make the 200 mile trip across from the mainland to Baja. We needed to get to La Paz around March 15th as Catharine’s Mom and Dad where going to be there for a week in a timeshare condo and then join us for 10 days on the boat. The weather had been very unsettled the past 2 weeks with lots of high winds forecast each day, some materialized some didn’t. We listened to the nets, watched what the clouds did each day and decided to leave on the 12^th. That previous night we got a forecast for severe winds and cancelled, but the wind never came, so we rescheduled for the 13^th and onto a new leg of the journey.

Footnote:

Previously we had mentioned the perceived problem people have with the Mexican checking in and out procedure for all boaters, not just the “gringo” cruisers. Up until this part of the trip we had not really thought it was too much of a problem. Getting back into Banderas Bay (PV) and out up to Mazatlan, convinced us that the system is totally screwed up and needs overhauling. There is a big lobby by Latitude 38, the Californian magazine for sailors and other groups to get the Mexican Government to rewrite this fairly new legislation and make it possible for all boaters not just cruisers to pay and annual fee, not unlike the cruising permits you get in other parts of the world.  So why did we change our minds?? Arriving in La Cruz (Nayarit State) you have to check in and out $33 total. To go over to Puerto Vallarta in Jalisco State, for fuel or a visit to the other marina you are supposed to check in and out, to go between the two to Marina Nuevo Vallarta - also in Nayarit State - you need to check in and out. Then go to Chacala (Nayarit) sign in and out, go to the next town San Blas (Nayarit) sign in and out. Total distance traveled is about 100 miles. Total costs for check ins $165. That’s more than the cost of fuel if we had to motor the distance, its also about 15 hrs of traipsing around dusty streets to the various banks and offices. We believe this is the worst of the situations you could experience in the check-in shuffle, but it’s creating problems with many cruisers who for years have traveled up and down the coast staying in lots of places that now require check in. The effect on the economy of these places will be felt in the end.

 Photo Album for Leg 7 Part II

       Part I