Mazatlan to Puerto Vallarta (La Cruz)
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| On March 31, Steve crosses the border into Tijuana, bound for Tijuana Airport, accompanied by his son, Jay, and Jay's friends Mike Holman and Judd Lyon. It's the first day of their spring break and, like so many high school and college kids, they're on their way to Mazatlan. Unlike most kids, though, they have a constructive week ahead of them: sailing Dakota Rose from Mazatlan to Puerto Vallarta. At that point, Jay and his friends fly back to Tijuana and return home, while Steve is joined by Russ and Steve Dobkins for a second week. Destination ... Ixtapa. Alert readers will remember Steve Dobkins as one of the crew who helped Steve sail Dakota Rose from the Tuks and Caicos to the British Virgin Islands during the 2005 voyage. |
| We arrived in Mazatlan Saturday evening after an uneventful flight from Tijuana, settled into the boat, and took one of the open-air taxis, a pulminario, into the tourist strip for dinner. Our plans were to spend Sunday getting Dakota Rose ready for the trip, then have a free day on Monday before leaving Monday evening for an overnight sail to our first stop. We gave the boat a good scrubbing, inside and out. Judd and Jay took turns ascending the mast to change our deck light and anchor light bulbs, the boys made two trips to the fuel dock with 5-gallon jerry jugs to load fuel and we filled our water tanks from the spigot on the dock. We all taxied into the Gigante for a week's worth of provisions, enough so that we needed two cabs for the ride back to the boat. The boys, and Mike in particular, got into the spirit of things by stocking the boat with samples of the various exotic fruits that we don't generally see in our local Albertson's. |
| How many Coronado teenagers does it take to change a light bulb? Three ... two to take turns climbing the mast, and the third to stand on the dock and yell encouragement. |
| Soaking up the local culture and color at the Marina El Cid |
| We left Mazatlan a few hours before sunset on Monday for the 90-mile sail to our first stop, Isla Isabela. Averaging between 5 and 6 knots, this leg would take us 15 to 18 hours. By making this an overnight crossing we'd be sure to have good daylight for both leaving the tricky marina entrance and arriving at an unfamiliar anchorage. We started a formal, 3-hours on/3-hours off watch schedule after dinner, shortly before sunset, with Jay and Mike sharing a watch and Judd being the lucky one to stand watch with Steve. Isla Isabela, about one mile north-south and 1/2 mile wide, is a volcanic spar located about 20 miles from the mainland. It is a preserve for nesting frigate birds and blue-footed boobies and also hosts a small camp for commercial fisherman from San Blas who spend about a week there at a time, fishing the local waters from their pangas. |
| Sunset on the way to Isla Isabela |
| Shortly after leaving Mazatlan, we took on an uninvited but not unwelcome passenger. A blue-footed booby (we think) landed on our bow pulpit and rode with us the entire way to Isla Isabela. We think it must have been on spring break in Mazatlan and too tired to make the trip home on its own. The bird was completely unafraid of us, even standing its ground as the boys petted, poked and shouted at it. The only time it got ruffled was when we'd trim the jib, tacking or furling, at which point it would take off in a huff, fly a few circles around us, then settle back in its perch. We arrived a little after 0900, joining three other boats at the small anchorage on the eastern side of the island, just south of a pair of rocky pinnacles called Las Monas, which translates as "the dressmakers' mannequins." The island turned out to be about 2 miles south of where it was shown on both our electronic and paper charts. We had encountered discrepancies like this two years ago, in the Bahamas, and it reinforced the importance of not relying exclusively on charts and the GPS, but rather to leave lots of sea room when sailing in unfamiliar waters and, in particular, when nearing new anchorages or other obstructions. Anchoring presented a challenge, finding a patch of sand to set the anchor amidst an otherwise rocky bottom. Even with the anchor set, the chain dragged across rocks as the wind swung us back and forth, making an unnerving grinding noise that was transmitted to the hull. After breakfast the boys were assigned to clean up after our overnight guest. We spent several hours snorkeling in clear water around Las Monas, then went ashore, pulling the dinghy up on the beach by the fish camp. We strolled ("hiked" seems too ambitious a word for such a small island) through thickets of scrub trees hosting thousands of frigate bird nests, stopping at a rugged, volcanic beach on the western shore. Judd and Mike learned the advisability of wearing shoes, or at least flipflops, on a volcanic island that's home to thousands of birds and the attendant guano. We turned in early after dinner. Steve awoke at midnight to weigh anchor and get us underway to our next destination, Bahia Chacala, about 60 miles southeast on the mainland. |
| Our passenger |
| Isla Isabela, with Las Monas in the foreground The fish camp ashore |
| In an amazing demonstration of navigational skills rivalling those of Columbus in finding the New World, Steve actually missed our destination, Bahia Chacala, by almost 5 miles to the south. He blamed this on the aforementioned chart inaccuracies and a strong southward-flowing current, coupled with the fact that one barren point of land looks pretty much like another when viewed from 10 miles out. In his defense, he did get us to a bay, it just wasn't the one we were headed for. After quick crew parley, in true pirate fashion we democratically decided not to backtrack up the coast but rather to continue another 25 miles southward to Banderas Bay, our destination for this leg. (It turns out that this was probably not Steve's fault at all, but rather a fortunate case of karmic intervention. We found out later from other cruisers that Bahia Chacala, normally deserted, was packed with campers on Semana Santa vacation, with crowded beaches, parties and loud music going on all night long. In fact, one cruiser couple who had anchored there for a night had their boat boarded at 4 am by a group of happy-but-inebriated partyers who thought it would be fun to swim out from the beach.) We rounded Punta Mita into Banderas Bay at about 1600. This is a very tricky entrance, with breaking surf close in, submerged rocks extending several hundred yards south of the point, three poorly-charted pinnacles of rock rising from the ocean floor and a shallow, unmarked shoal right in the middle of what otherwise looks like a deepwater channel between the point and a group of rocky islands a few miles south. The only indication of where the shoal was located were the steep and occasional breaking waves as the ocean swell passed over it. The charts were useless, being off by at least 4 miles; in fact, the track on our chartplotter very clearly showed that we sailed right over the dry land of the point, even though we were at least 2-3 miles south. Jay and Mike stationed themselves at the bow to watch for submerged rocks and the dangerous shoal, and we gingerly sailed in. |
| We anchored off of La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, a small fishing village on the north shore of Banderas Bay, rather than sail the 20 miles into the marinas and tourist zone of Puerto Vallarta. As we pulled in, we slowed to allow another boat to anchor first, which turned out to be friends from the Coronado Yacht Club, Ken and Debby McGlashan aboard Shamwari. Also anchored nearby were Chris and Jill Guild, aboard Starfire. These two couples had been cruising the Mexican coast for several months, and were on their way back north to spend a few months in the Sea of Cortez before heading home. In addition to a small fishing fleet, La Cruz hosts a marina under [very slow] construction, a port captain, some very nice vacation houses overlooking the beach, and has long been a popular spot for gringo surfer expats. One of these expats, the owner of Casa Dori Catering (a mobile carne asada grill) hooked us up with Jesus, a local panga-man. Jesus picked up our jerry jugs and returned them full of fuel to Dakota Rose a few hours later. We spent two days here, the boys dinghying over to a nearby beach to skimboard, enjoying the small, local seafood restaurants, and just walking around the colorful town ... quite a difference from the resort atmosphere of Mazatlan. On Saturday at 0800, Steve and the boys dinghied to the beach with their luggage and all piled into a pre-arranged taxi for the ride to the Puerto Vallarta Airport, about 25 miles, across the state line and one time zone away from La Cruz. The boys caught a flight to Mexico City and connected there for Tijuana, where they arranged for a taxi to take them all the way home to Coronado (stopping at the border to walk across, then meeting the taxi on the U.S. side). In another demonstration of our undeniably good karma, the boys flew both legs in first class, even though Steve swears he bought coach tickets. That same afternoon, Russ landed in Puerto Vallarta. |
| Approaching the mainland we spotted a pair of whales |
| The boys helping launch a panga at the dinghy beach in La Cruz |
The local tortilleria
| Returning from skimboarding |