The streets of Old Mazatlan, what a beautiful place. This is the town square where there are lots of restaurants and benches, people sit in the cool shade and enjoy the day. Ahhhh Mexico..
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Off we go ! All provisioned up and the weather window has opened. Our friends John, Deb & Pep Eh are buddy boating and we stayed within 2 miles of each other all the way across. Love those sunrises on the morning watch. When we are on a crossing we usually do 4 hour watches and if the person on watch is still wide awake, sometimes they're longer and the off watch gets more rest. During the days we just have little cat naps but generally we are both awake. The wind mostly cooperated and we sailed almost the whole way. The crossing was 46 hrs and 20 minutes. and we only started the engine twice for a total of 15 hrs. So all in all it was a great 31 hours of sailing. Here is our track from the Islands to La Paz to provision and then across to Mazatlan.
A fire in the sky sunset on one of the four nights we spent at anchor in El Cardoncito Bay. These sea caves were so cool to explore. These are the amazing Blue Footed Boobies that we finally got to see. They do this neat mating dance but we did not get to see it this time, maybe another day.
We have finished up our time here in the Islands and it is time to move on. We will provision in La Paz and head out tomorrow and cross over the sea to Mazatlan. After a few days there we will work our way down to Puerto Vallarta and hang out there for about 3 weeks before returning to La Paz. It's hard to tell in the picture but these seas are 8 to 10 feet. We had a great sail south with 15 to 20 knt winds and a boat speed of between 8 and 9 knts. We pulled in and anchored every night but this is the conditions we had every day while sailing.
Most days were 28 to 36 mph winds, and that was in our protected anchorage. The produce truck came twice a week so our trip to the grocery store consisted of getting to the beach when the truck pulled in. We had time to perfect our BBQ chicken pizza and we finally got to take some friends sailing in the bay. When the weather finally settled down to about 20 mph winds we started our trek south, 19 days since our arrival in Santispac.
There is nothing more soothing than to be out on the water sailing as the sun comes up. So we fixed the essential things and headed out for our thirteen hour crossing over to Santispac. We got off the dock at 2:30 a.m. and 4 hours later this was our view. After our landing rums and a great dinner we sat and had a glass of wine with this view. With beautiful sunrises, sunsets and full moons we are getting back into cruiser mode. Life is good.
OMG where has the time gone. Here is a quick update of what's been happening. First we finally got down to San Carlos and got back in the water, then the crossing over to Santispec where we waited out 3 weeks of weather before making our trek south. We are now sitting in La Paz and will be leaving tomorrow to do our crossing over to Mazatlan. Here are a few pics of our winter so far.
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