New Years Eve in Mazatlan

New Year’s Eve in Mazatlan is just one big party! We were invited to join a large group of cruisers from the Marina to celebrate at a restaurant right on the beach called Chilli’s Pepper (not like Chili Pepper at home). The fun started at 8:30pm with the choice of either shrimp or steak, which included a salad and dessert. We didn’t know it until we ordered our first round of Pacificos, that all you can drink was also INCLUDED!! At first we thought it was just beer and wine, but as is so Mexico, mixed drinks were also on the menu with no extra charge. The waiters kept coming by wanting to know why we weren’t drinking more…..but visions of our first few days here kept flashing in our minds. We just kept saying “we’re fine for now” and they would just walk away shaking their heads.  By the end of the evening, which we thought would end shortly after midnight for us, turned into 1:30am. We were watching fireworks displays all up and down the beach and even some at the next bonfire over from where we were. The whole evening (including entertainment) came to less than $37 US$.  We ended up driving two gals (Donna & Judy) back to the marina with us. …..they could barely walk let alone hail a taxi. We’re not sure if they’ll even remember the last part of the evening, but we felt better knowing we got them home safely.

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The end of the bonfire and a wonderful evening making new friends in Mazatlan.

Steve's Birthday To Remember!

You know, when it’s your birthday, you want the WHOLE day to be about you.  But when you’re trying to leave to head south out of the Velcro harbor called Marina Mazatlan, you’re motivated to do just about anything on any day.  That was the story with Steve’s birthday on Dec. 30th.  He was able to fix the steering cable the night before, but didn’t want to try installing it while he was tired and now dark.  So, after most of the day was spent installing his newly fixed cable that everyone around town said couldn’t be done without a new cable from the states, he felt really good about his accomplishment.  So, to celebrate, I had planned on taking him down into the old historical district to eat at a restaurant that everyone in the marina was raving about called “Il Mosto”.  It was magical by the time we got there with all the trees & plaza gazebo lit up to celebrate the holidays.  Families were sitting on the benches enjoying the music, eating and drinking at the many bars & restaurants along the perimeter.

The waiter made our Caesar salads tableside and the main course is a dish called the “black burro”. It is a filet mignon rolled and sautéed in brown butter served with handmade pasta and vegetables. If that wasn’t enough, and of course it wasn’t since it was such a special night, we had the mango flambé dessert that was a work of art just watching it being made for our complete enjoyment.

It was by far one of Steve's (and my) best birthday celebrations and I’m glad I could come along for the experience!!

It's FIXED!

As the new cruising season gets into gear, more and more people ask you the question, ‘when are you leaving to go south?’. Lets face it, if you are still north of Mazatlan in January, you either aren’t leaving or you are having problems. This is also a leading question because, if you are asking it, it’s because you haven’t left yourself and you have a great story to tell as to why.

Our case in point: As the boys and I were delivering Andalucia to Mazatlan across from Cabo after the Baja HA-HA, I noticed a lot of play in the steering. Most cruisers use their autopilot 99.9% of the time and hand steer only as you leave or enter a port. But, when we were 10 miles off Mazatlan, Mike yelled “STOP THE BOAT”! Off came the autopilot and I hand steered, hard left, hard right, hard left, hard right….7 or 8 times to steer clear of long line fishermens gear that would have surly fouled our prop. It was then I noticed a bit of play (1/8 – ¼ turn) in the wheel. There is an adjustment screw way in the back of boat, under the master bed & air conditioner that is very hard to get at, so I put off fixing it until Edie & I returned from the states.

Thus started our week of discovery. While searching the route of the steering cables (very similar to a bike brake cable but a lot bigger) I found what is shown in the picture below. Not good, as this cable is as old as the boat. That’s 32 years old and it’s life was obviously up. It took almost 3 hours to get it out of the boat and into the car (dirty and oily doesn’t describe how it was). Then our real search for a repair or replacment began.

As we keep saying to ourselves “we are sure glad we came by car” as we searched for 2 days to find help. We were told by cruisers that you would have to order it from the states and it would take 2-3 weeks (there goes our cruising season), and by boat repair shops that the old one couldn’t be fixed and we had to order a new one (same result). Finally, someone on the morning radio net said we should try to find a store called FerraMar somewhere in the old industrial park, Parque Bonfil, near the old port and fishing fleet as they may have the parts needed to repair it. So the search continued, but we did find the fishing fleet and asked a few captains if they knew a place that could fix it. Well, as is so Mexico, they scratched their heads and told us where FerraMar was, but it was closed. So we drove around and asked a few machine shops what we could do. Everyone just kept saying we needed to go to FerraMar. The good news was they were not closed for the holidays, only for siesta and would be back at 3pm, whew! Progress.

Sure enough they opened at 3pm and the owner spent a lot of time in broken English, my broken Spanish and help from a customer, to tell me they had the wire, clamps and thimbles but no sheath (the part that was rusted through). So I bought the SS clamps and thimbles and went looking for some recommended machine shops to ask for help putting it back together.  A great thing about most people of the world is if you have a problem and they can’t help you, they will give you ways to fix it yourself. Soooo, it was off to Home Depot (yes even in Mexico) for some copper tubing and back to the boat.

The next day (my birthday) brought hope and progress. I cut off the end loop of the inner cable, cut out the bad section of the outer shield, slid on the copper tubing as a splice, reinserted the inner cable, made a new loop with the clamps, installed the whole thing, stretched out the cable 4 times and we are FIXED! Of course, in all the excitement, I forgot to get a picture of the fixed cable. So now we are ready to head south sometime early Monday/Tuesday.

Back to Mazatlan at last

Yes, we finally made it back to Mazatlan, Sunday Dec. 20th around 5pm, just before sunset. As usual, this Christmas getaway has had its highs and lows.

First, was the three days it took us to get us here; 90% of the scenery is similar to the area around Tucson (boring, but we had a John Grisham book to listen to in the CD player, thanks to Larry Scott) and the last 5-10% was more tropical. So we decided to celebrate our arrival at the Gus&Gus Restaurant/Bar in the marina. Edie & I proceeded to devour 5 schooner sized margaritas and the next two days were a fog....the boat was full of bags that weren't unpacked until Wednesday and we never made it to the marina office until Christmas Eve.

If cruising is "fixing your boat in exotic places" we must be cruising. We haven't stopped fixing since we got here. The boat was a mess with 6 wks of rain, wind, dust and a dock cat that quickly became Edie's nemesis for wanting to use our boat for its sleeping place. The main water pump on the boat needs to be fixed and the DirecTV satellite dish doesn't work ( Mucho $$$). The steering cable is worn through (requiring the removal of our bed and air conditioner to reach) and needs to be replaced or repaired before we can head south, so we’re not sure how long that will take. We might be here through New Years.

Christmas Eve was our first opportunity to enjoy the sites of Mazatlan outside of the marina with trips to stores for parts and provisioning. We were invited to dinner at a restaurant called Heather's on the main drag that is run by a Canadian named Heather (pretty simple). We saw a Tina Turner impersonator (from Canada) that was pretty good. Here’s Edie’s blackmail picture to prove it!

Christmas day Heathers was having a buffet, so we went back with a group of cruisers for turkey and all the fixings. Heather had some great chorale singers from the opera house (one tenor and 2 sopranos) that sang Christmas songs along with some Puccini thrown in (well, his music) as well.  It really made our day and we met some new friends as well.






We hope all the repairs will be completed by the first week in Jan. so we can start our trek south. Tentative plans are Mazatlan to Isla Isabella to San Blas to La Cruz (Google them). After that, we shall see.... You know, all the cruisers say you should never have a "schedule" so as of now that's all the plans. You can always follow us on this blog which we hope to keep more up to date.

Having our car here has made our seeing the sights soooo much easier, here are a few pictures we took of Mazatlan during the holidays.  Our Lady of Guadalupe Cathedral is located and as you can see in the close up, it’s made entirely of clear colored water bottles.

Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Local taxis called Pulmonias

The central Market in downtown Mazatlan has everything you need in one square city block.

This small square with little places to eat and drink around the edges was perfect.

We truly hope all of your holidays were with family and friends.

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.