12/27/2010 – La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Mexico

Greetings from La Cruz. We finished getting the bottom painted in Mazatlan, did a quick provisioning then motor sailed down to La Cruz. If you recall, la Cruz is where we got “stuck” for about four months last year waiting on our new mainsail (nice place to be stuck though), and was as far south as we made it. We definitely have plans to get further but more on that towards the bottom of this entry. Here are a few of the things we’ve been doing in Mazatlan and La Cruz:

Part of the bottom job was fixing “blisters” in the paint. Blisters are points where the water gets into the paint and causes swelling of the paint. Bad ones can get into the fiberglass and might cause damage or delamination, also unless fixed the water seeping out can cause the new paint to not adhere well. When Sunny was first pulled, Bob the owner of Total yacht works didn’t think there were too many blisters but when they started sanding, many small ones kept popping out! They had to grind out each of these until they hit dry material. By the time they were done, Sunny looked like she had measles!

After 10 days of grinding, filling and painting, sunny’s bottom looked great. We even had the hull polished so she shines, at least from the toe rail down. We were very happy with the quality and speed that Total Yacht Works did the bottom and definitely would recommend them.

The topsides are another matter and this made it obvious to us we have to put in a little elbow grease polishing and waxing the rest of the boat, no rest :-)

We had bought 2 new 130 watt solar panels in La Paz and while we were in the yard, had stainless steel rails welded to the stern to mount the new panels on. Hopefully we will be a little less reliant on running our engine or generator when hanging out in anchorages without power.
It wasn’t all work and no play; one day we went to the Pacifico brewery tour with a bunch of other cruisers from the marina. It was a fun tour though the places within the brewery we could go were pretty limited and we couldn’t take any pictures. At the end of the tour we went up to the top of the brewery where there was a museum, a great view, and all the free Pacifico beer we wanted :-) Unfortunately the weather has been foggy so the views were not as good as they could be but it was still very nice:

Here’s Dan telling about the one that got away :-)

We also took a dingy ride up the estuary to annoy the iguanas:

We then did a quick provision and headed south to La Cruz. It was a quick two day, one overnight passage with a quick stop in Matenchen bay about half way down. We got into La Cruz a couple of days before Christmas and have just been catching up on a few friends we haven’t seen for a while. Had a fun Christmas eve party with couples we knew up in the Sea of Cortez. On Christmas we went to Philo’s; a local pub run by a musician. There was a big buffet dinner, lots of good music, and at the end of the dinner, gift bags were given out to over 500 local kids!

Check out Leon on the washboard, and the little kid playing the guitar in the back:

Santa handing out presents, some of the kids were pretty suspicious of the big guy in the red outfit:

That’s about all for now. We have friends from Tom’s old work visiting next week, then we’ll take a quick trip back to the states to visit family. By the end of January we hope to be moving further south. Long term we're hoping to be in El Salvador around mid March!

Cheers,
Carolynn & Tom

12/9/2010 - Mazatlan, Mexico

Greetings from Mazatlan. When I last updated our blog we were still in La Paz and it was just after Thanksgiving. A couple of days later Tom passed both the technician and the general ham radio tests, so now he too is officially a “hamster” (I took the same tests last year). For those interested, his new ham sign is KJ4ZLI, or phonetically “Kilo Juliet Four Zulu Lima India”. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue so he’ll practice a bit before getting on the radio, in the mean time we’ll continue to use mine (KI6RJU). Right after the ham tests we took off for a short jump out to the islands just outside of La Paz. We wanted to cross the Sea of Cortez from Muertos, like we’ve done before, so we figured we would get a head start. The forecast was calling for light north-west winds all night so we pulled into San Gabriel, which should be well protected. Unfortunately just as the sun was going down, the winds shifted to the south-west and started building, and building! By 2am the gusts were probably 25 knots (about 30 mph) and a large swell was rolling into the anchorage. We kept checking our position throughout the night but our anchor seemed to be holding. At 5am though a set of big rollers came through and our anchor must have popped out, because next thing we know; bang! crunch! lurch! We were hitting the bottom!!! Hard!!! We made record time getting the anchor up and powering out of there, with 6 foot swells, the boat flying up and down, and the keel crunching at the bottom of each swell. By the time we finally made it out we were both shaking and exhausted! We proceeded to Muertos, very shaken and subdued; we could have seriously hurt Sunny! All systems seemed to be ok, but we would know for sure when we got to Mazatlan and had the boat hauled.

We spent four nights in Muertos sitting out a strong north wind. The anchorage was well protected, which we were very thankful for after our near catastrophe! After the wind started dying down, we took off for Mazatlan. We had a fantastic crossing! Though the forecast was for no wind, we had a perfect 12 – 15 knots on our quarter. Sailed and/or fast motor sailed the whole way across :-) No issues and we made the crossing in about 27 hours (good time for this crossing).

We spent a few days in the marina then hauled the boat to get the bottom paint redone. It was pretty scary for us but everything went without a hitch.

First we have to back into a concrete channel then the travel lift drives down and raises big slings around the belly of the boat and slowly lifts her:

Once full raised, the lift backs out. The bottom will be washed to get most of the marine critters off:

At this point we thoroughly inspected for damage caused by our “touching bottom” in San Gabriel a week ago. Luckily, there were only superficial scratches. These will be cleaned up when the bottom is repainted.

I’m amazed at how little damage we have since it sure felt like we were slamming into the ground pretty hard. We’re so glad we have a tough boat.

The lift then drives the boat over to our “dry slip” where they put a few jack stands around the hull:

The lift then backs away. The flimsy jack stands do not seem enough to support our 50,000 pound boat! I will be moving very carefully around the boat while she’s propped up (the yard manager laughs at me and says that there’s no way I can tip her over but subconsciously I don’t buy it).

While we’re in the yard the only way on or off the boat is a flimsy ladder, hopefully we’ll not be here too long!

The weather here has been great, cool nights and warm days. Well that’s all for now, after the bottom paint is done, we’ll head back down to La Cruz for January.

Cheers,
Carolynn & Tom