Fishing Fleet

Between Mazatlan and San Blas is where the fishing fleet sets up shop.  During the day you have to watch for the pangas and their long trail of nets only visible by the plastic coke bottle floats and maybe a few bleach bottles.  What you have to do is look for the panga and head toward it, the fisherman will then direct you to a spot at which they want you to cross the net.  Our practice is to get up a head of steam and just before we are going to cross over the net we slide into neutral and glide over the nets. We figure that this way our prop is not turning so if we do catch a net we won't foul to bad.  We then watch to see if any of the bottles quickly start following us, if not we are cleared and back into gear we go and start watching for the next group of fishermen.

As the sun starts setting we start looking for the line of the larger fishing boats.  They are all lined up as far as the eye can see.  What we do here is find the line and wait for a gap and cross to the outside of the fleet and head out to give us a good 5 mile distance.  We then set our new course and keep an eye on the radar for any stray fishing vessels.  It has always been very interesting on this leg of our journey.