Cabo San Lucas to Mazatlan

To simply say the 30 hour, 190 mile trip from Cabo to Mazatlan was boring doesn't quite do the trip justice. At least 24 hours before we left Cabo, we had numerous discussions with other boats; about the weather for a crossing, how the weather in So Cal might affect our weather, historical crossings by others and where to hold up before the crossing when it gets bad. We could have stayed in Cabo forever wondering about our future weather. As it was, I had downloaded every wind model on the net and none of them predicted bad weather. Would I believe my own weather forecast, of course not. So we set off for the infamous Frailes anchorage about 50 miles to the east (and about 20 out of our way) to wait out the imagined bad weather everyone gets on this crossing. About 20 miles east of Cabo we were in a bathtub, with the only wind what we had created from our boat moving forward.

This is our first view of Mazatlan from about 7 miles off. It should have taken us about an hour more to get in. All of the sudden Mike yells, "Stop the boat"! Full reverse and we stopped just short of a mile long fishing jig. It seems the flag we saw about 100 yards to our right was connected to the Panga fishermen about a mile off to our left. So we dodged to the right to clear that one and we were soon dodging 4 more, adding about a hour to our trip into the harbor. Thank God we did this during the day, in calm weather, as we would still be out there untangling lines and hooks if it was at night.

Our arrival in Marina Mazatlan was a bit anti-climatic after that. Edie and I had flown down 4 weeks earlier to view the harbor and pick a marina, so getting in was easy. The problem was the marina office was on siesta, so in about 1/2 hour three employees came down, showed us to our slip, took our lines and welcomed us to Mazatlan.

What a great place to put your boat. The first thing the owners of the boat next to us did was invite us to the Gangway 6 dock party at 4:00. It is really not a party, but more of a great discussion by 30 or so boaters on what they did today, problems getting things done, directions on how to get them done and what everyone had planned to do tomorrow.

I can't imagine a better way to welcome new people to Gangway 6 in Marina Mazatlan.