Off to Hawaii

OK soooo...Week 4 has started with us running!
We never heard back from the boats in the old port about wind vanes (a way to automatically steer the boat) and eventually we took the bus down to find that everyone (along with their wind vanes) had left! Shock! Horror!

Ray at Mazatlan Yachts showed us a wind vane on a boat that has been abandoned for 15 years and we started negotiating with the authorities to buy it, but they backed out of the deal after a few days.

So we started the checkout process on Thursday morning. We were checked for animals and bugs and given a clean inspection by the authorities. We now have all our paperwork in order, all our food stowed and we are ready to go.

We leave tomorrow (Friday May 1) for Hilo bay, Hawaii. It is 2700 nautical miles. Averaging 4 knots gets us there in 28 days. Averaging 5 knots (ha!) would get us there in 22 days. We have enough food and water to last more than 60 days. So we are planning for about 30 days. If it takes more than 40 days, it may be time to begin worrying.

The weather looks beautiful all the way to hawaii with 15-20 knots of wind from the East and NorthEast along our general course. Check out passageweather.com for a pretty view of the wind on the way to Hawaii.

We'll update you all when we get to Hawaii!

Bellow is a picture of a diver at the Mazatlan Aquarium and all I could think is that he looks like he is being beamed up to the Star Ship Enterprise. yes?no?

Mazatlan, Week 3!

Ok.....so we are still here but we are making progress with getting the boat ready. We moved back to Marina Mazatlan last week to have our engine looked over. The engine is in good condition so we are getting some maintenance done to keep it that way. For this to be done we have moved over to Singilar Marina which charges us in Pesos (Marina Mazatlan charges us in U.S $) and as such we are able to save 12$ a night.

On Saturday Dalia climbed up to the mazatlan lighthouse which is the second highest naturally elevated lighthouse in the world. Our friends Pam and Joe on Sea Escape joined the climb up. It was a really cool view of Mazatlan! In other news we got a sim card for our phone (because calling cards are so difficult to find) and Justin gave Dalia a hair cut.


the view from the top of the lighthouse.

Week 3 is just starting so we will write more as the week develops!

All righty...more has happened. We got our injectors removed and they are being serviced, tested the holding tank, fixed the sink in the head and a couple of odd little jobs. Our hand held GPS died, a couple of days of research and announcements on the Morning cruisers Net provided us with a cheap replacement. The crew on Ocean Blue II provided us with a free SSB receiver which unfortunately broke down :( but we recovered quickly when Justin went out and bought one (for double the cost in Canada). Still in search of a hank on storm jib and now a self steering wind vane. We have a lead on 2 possible candidates in the old harbour however cost and time for instillation will be deciding factors..stay tuned for more on the self steering wind vane!

Last Friday, Steady Beat organised the Friday Night Raft up where we met Pamela on Precious Metal, the crew on Rutea, Sole Mate and old friends on Aquarius, Sea Escape and Escapade. It was a fun evening that ended with a 4 dinghy raft motoring back to the marina (lots of water pouring into our Ghetto Duck!).

Pamela came to visit Steady Beat on Sunday evening to have a look at the boat and give us advice on the crossing to Hawaii. 20 years ago, Pamela did a crossing with her husband and children from Victoria to Hawaii and onto New Zealand. Since then she was running a charter service from her home town Port Hardy on Vancouver Islands north tip and she had much advice and recommendations for us about sailing to Hawaii and in and around BC. We feel inspired and really excited about getting up north and doing some cruising up there. But first lets get there;)

We hung out a lot during our week with Jim and his friend Marty aboard Escapade going to the pool, out for dinner and some boat projects. The biggest was when Justin decided to finally change our almost useless Engine Kill switch. Jim and Marty came to help with the project and then we all raced over to Precious Metal for cocktails...it was a fun and late night!


We were sad to find out one morning that Bob from "Bobs Marine Mart" had passed away. Before we left Mazatlan he had helped us find many things for our boat, offered us lots of advice, took care of all the cats and was a pleasure to talk to. We will miss him.

Currently "Total Yacht Works" is on board adjusting the cylinder valves, they brought us our injectors yesterday and apparently our alternator is not far behind. Justin feels that all the projects on the boat are done and I am just organising the meal plane and the provision list. Tomorrow its off to the Aquarium and next week is week 4! and hopefully by Week 5 we will be underway for HAWAII!



All Dalias hair after her hair cut

raft of sea lions on our way from the old harbour to Marina Mazatlan

Mazatlan Week 2

Mazatlan is turning out to be a longer stop than anticipated. We spent 10 days in the Marina where Justin worked on getting the boat ready to take to Hawaii and I spent 120$ on Chiropractic care for my back! I am happy to say that I no longer have back pain so it was worth it! Justin, poor guy, is feeling 10 days of hard work in the hot sun. We managed to seal all the leaks in our portholes (there were a few), build storm covers, stoppers for the dory vents, get our alternator looked at, etc....all in all it was very productive! The boat is near ready to sail off to Hawaii.

We moved to Stone Island for Easter weekend, which is one of the biggest holidays in Mexico. Children get two weeks off from school and most families head to the beach for two weeks. 400,000 people came to Mazatlan last week and Stone Island was full of partying Mexicans. There were a dozen banana boats around us (I thought of you Jade) and many kayakers came to inspect the boat. On Sunday arvo we moved to the old harbour, which is located right in the old town of Mazatlan. We are currently looking for a 3d crew mate, a storm sail, a single side ban radio (to receive radio info) and a couple of other small boat stuff.

We talked to many people during our time in the Marina about crossing over to Hawaii. Opinions and experience vary but we have decided that it will probably be our number 1 choice to get the boat back north. It looks like May-June is the best time to cross to Hawaii and August to get back to the continent.

More news to come in the next few days.......and I promise I will get organised with photos!!!

Photos are of: Sealing the ports, Slacker Kitty on Dock 6 and Justin getting a hair cut by Louis the barber.

La Cruz and north to Mazatlan

So we spent a week in La Cruz enjoying the cheap marina fees, the movies (I had to see Confessions of a shopaholic), Domino's pizza and the company of our friends on Follow You, Follow Me who were waiting for the arrival of their last crew member before sailing off to the South Pacific Ocean.


Allan, Rena, Dalia and Justin

We sailed up to Dalia's favorite beach town,Chacala, on Tuesday morning where we met up with Lovely Reta and Meerkat for a hike up the hill to see some goats and lots of boogie boarding at the beach. After 4 days at Chacala we left at sunset to do an overnight passage to Isla Isabel.




Heather, Debby, John and Justin overlooking Bahia Chacala

We arrived at Isla Isabel at 9 in the morning on Dalia's champagne birthday (she turned 28 on March 28th), finally found an spot to anchor and made english muffins for breakfast. We napped and enjoyed the sunset. Justin did the dishes (as a gift to Dalia on her special day), made a wonderful chocolate cake and yummy pizza for dinner. This was the most low key Birthday Dalia has had since her 18th.....but on the other hand it was the most exotic birthday since her sweet 16th in Budapest and Prague. Not many people can say that they celebrated their champagne birthday on their honeymoon with whales and blue footed boobies off a island in Mexico....it was memorable.

Champagne Birthday!

We left Isla Isabel in the morning of the 31st of March and arrived at Marina Mazatlan in time for the morning cruisers net on April fools day. Right now we are researching the crossing to Hawaii and preparing the boat for such a crossing. Not a lot to be done, a few minor fix up things to be done before we sail for Baja and on to the Sea of Cortez and eventually for Hawaii. We have discussed the crossing with a couple of other cruisers and we are getting psyched for such an adventure. More to come in the next few days.....



Spotted Seagull eggs

Spotted Seagull chick (lower right corner)

Blue footed Booby checking out Steady Beat at Isla Isabella.

Cabo Corrientes

It is necessary to set the stage properly. Corrientes is notorious. It is even rumoured that a few boats have been lost while trying to round the point. If conditions deteriorate quickly and get bad, the current, waves and wind could put you onshore with more power than any boat can cope with. The best days to round this point is when the weather calls for calm winds and calm seas. The best time to round Corrientes is early morning and the worst time mid-afternoon. The best direction to round Corrientes (as if you had a choice) is South. With huge swells from the South for the last few days, and North winds of 20-25 knots while we waited in Chamela, we were not looking forward to our trip. We pounced on a weather window that called for no winds overnight and the next morning and hoped the predictions were accurate.

The best time to leave would be when there was no wind and when there was still light. Sunset, at 1900 is the best fit to those criteria. We needed to Corrientes before 1200 the next day or the currents and wind and waves would force us to spend the day at Ipala and head out again the next night to round Corrientes. What that meant was that we needed to average 4 knots for the first 65 miles to Corrientes and then average 5 knots to cover the 35 miles to La Cruz to arrive before dark. If we could not arrive before dark in La Cruz, it means we would have to anchor out instead of going into the marina for some rest.

Of course, when we left at 1740, there was still 15-20 knots of wind from the North. We would be making 3 knots into a 15 knot headwind the whole evening and into the early morning. Morale was low as we realised that unless we could average 5 knots for the rest of the journey, there was no way we would make it around the point that morning. By 0200 in the morning, however, the wind had died and the waves had calmed enough that we could take the sails down and begin motoring. Slowly over the next hour our speed under power increased from 3 knots to our normal cruising speed under power of 5 knots. Things were looking better.

Until 0900, when the waves started building again. The worst possible scenario. No wind to tack with, but the same choppy waves that would slow us down. Luckily, there is a normal 2 knot current setting North around Corrientes. With 15 miles to go to reach the point, we were making 3.5 knots. The mystery of the no-wind chop was resolved when the wind picked up 5 miles further North to 15 knots right on the nose. Putting our main up at 1100, we motor-sailed to point better into the wind and were making 4.2 knots good. We were somewhere between 2 and 3 hours behind schedule when we rounded Corrientes at 1300 just as conditions were deteriorating, but both of us would prefer to anchor in the dark at La Cruz than be rounding Corrientes again if we turned around to go to Ipala for the day.

After rounding the point, we could fall off the wind onto an upwind port tack. We were motorsailing with only the reefed main up and making 4 knots until the wind died down to 15 knots, when I felt we could put up more sail around 1400. So we shook out the reef, put up the drifter (light wind headsail) and suddenly we were motorsailing close-hauled at 5.5 knots. At that speed, we might actually make it. From there, it just got better as the wind moved further West, allowing us to be on a more down-wind tack. By 1600, we were making 6 knots under full sail with no engine heading straight for La Cruz, and arrived after two hours of our best sail of the trip.

We had made 100 miles in 24 hours around the infamous Corrientes and were rewarded with a delicious and expensive dinner of Italian food in La Cruz, and a wonderfully calm night's sleep tied to a dock in the cheapest marina in the world at $15 a night for puddle jumpers.

North to Chamela

After a few days in Las Hadas, we were ready to head back up North. We are both anxious to get up to the Sea before it gets too hot (and crowded). So directly from Las Hadas we went to Tenacatita skipping Barra. That trip taught us a lot about our boat as it was the first upwind journey we have had to make so far.

We were motoring up and things were going well until we hit Bahia De Navidad, which always has a wind pick up in the afternoon. Around 1500, we were less than 10 miles from our destination, rounding the Southern point of the bay. We rounded the point straight into 15 knots of wind. Our 26 horsepower engine managed to push our 12 tonne boat at a pitiful 2 knots against the wind and chop. The wind kept building to 20-25 knots, and it became clear if we wanted to make any way we would have to put up sails. We reduced our sail area by putting up the working jib and a double-reefed main. We then proceeded to motorsail while tacking upwind and we were still only making 2 knots or so in the direction we wanted to go (in retrospect, we probably had too little sail area out).

Finally arriving in Tenacatita at 2000 by moonlight and feeling confident because we had been there before, we promptly dropped our anchor next to the only hazard in the bay: a reef submerged due to the high tide. Waking at 0200 in the morning, we saw how close we were to the reef and re-anchored by moonlight once again. In the morning, we went over our GPS history and found that while we were never in danger of hitting the reef, we were certainly a little close for comfort. After so exhausting a day (11 hour sail and sleepless night) we spent two days recovering in the bay. Of course, the water was still murky.

After cleaning the bottom for the next upwind leg, going up the river for ridiculously slow lunch and generally having a ho-hum time, we left for Chamela on March 13th. This time luck gave us a wind such that we were on a single tack upwind for most of the day. Experience gave us the wisdom to know to start tacking early and keep our speed up even at the price of pointing further upwind (trigonometry does not lie). After a relatively easy sail, we arrived in Chamela after 8 hours of sailing.

The swell in Chamela was at least 6 feet from the South, which translates into a very uncomfortable anchorage. Isla Colorado, our favored little deserted island was simply out of the question as an anchorage for waves were sweeping the island from both sides. In the main anchorage, it was swelly, but that is better than wavy every day of the week, especially if the waves are breaking as they were at the island. The swells were so large, in fact, that it was more comfortable in 30 feet of water than in 20 feet. In 20 feet, the swells had already started piling up and becoming steep. The entertainment was watching the pangas (20 foot fiberglass fishing dories) deal with 8-10 foot breakers on the beach. We vowed to leave as soon as the waves died down in two days to round the infamous Cabo Corrientes in the upwind direction.

Stuck on our boats due to the waves, the boats in the anchorage (Sirius, Aurora, Samantha, G-Rated) passed the time by psyching ourselves about the horrors we would experience when we tried to round Corrientes. We decided to leave with Aurora around sunset on the 15th of March, hopefully rounding Corrientes around mid-morning to arrive in La Cruz that afternoon. The backup plan was to head into Ipala (a bay just South of the point) for the day if things got nasty or we could not make the point by noon.

Bahia de Santiago

On the way to Santiago Bay we encountered a red tide,a jelly fish bloom and my favourite, a pod of dolphins. There were probably 100-150 Dolphins jumping out of the water headed north. We were aimed at a smaller pod and they caught our bow wave for a free ride. By the time Justin came up with the camera they had already returned to their pod headed north.



Our attitude for these sightings is to enjoy the moment because its usually short lived and we are not professional photographers and any pictures we take will probably not turn out anyways.

All along our cruise south along the coast we are trying to better understand the boat. The number 1 concern is energy consumption. For the past week Justin has using his maths skills to work out how many Amps our solar panels, wind vane and alternator put into our batteries. He took it on himself the otherday to clean the battery connections and to measure voltage acrosss different connection in the boat with the multimeter. Its been at least 6 years for Justin and close to 8 years for me since we both used Ohms Law and calculated resistance or voltage across a circuit. Its the first time I have had to usethese skills since finishing physics in CEGEP. At the time I remember telling my physics teacher that since I wanted to go into biology these skills would never serve me again. Well I have been proven wrong....if you own a boat then you will need to use them again.



After 2 days we left Santiago for a short motor to Bahia de Manzanillo and anchored directly outside the Las Hadas Hotel. On our way out of Bahia de Santiago we saw the red tied. It seems the red tied will arrive and depart without much notice and doesnt ever really last long. This part of the bay looks as though we are in Greece with its white buildings stacked up. We dinghied into the marina and had lunch by the pool. Today we do a little provisioning and maybe we will leave tomorrow back north.....but who knows. As everyone says here "plans are written in the sand at low tide".