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