Sailing from Cabo San Lucas to Mazatlán, Mexico - passage - 2012

AT the fuel dock in  Cabo San Lucas,topping off.

We did the rest. At the fuel dock in Cabo San Lucas, filer up!

 

Fuel dock.

 

By Cabo San Lucas marina!?😮

Mixed emotions.

 

Leaving Cabo San Lucas..

 

Cabo San Lucas - Lands End behind us.

 

First night of Cabo San Lucas to Mazatlán passage - sunset.

  The first afternoon and then into the night out from Cabo San Lucas the seas were nice and there was no wind. We motored. The first night out was the first time Debbie and I took turns on watch and alone. No crew to help. We did not do scheduled times, we just took turns dozing, and whoever was the most sleepy - that was usually me.

 The next day the seas picked up and so did the wind. We were getting 15 knots so raised the main at first light and also the 130 genoa. When we let the genoa out of the furler the line all fell out. We did not see why this happened as the seas were rough and being up on the bow was a bit dangerous. We were traveling at 7 knots under sail. The winds died down to 10-12 knots and we slowed to about 5 knots and this was good as the seas calmed some also. This went on all day. We had a nice sail.

Debbie trying to catch a nap.

 

Nice day of sailing.

 We thought of what to do about the genoa but had no solutions for getting it furled. We were hopping the wind would die but towards sunset it was getting stronger. It was up at 18-19 knots and the seas were building. We decided we needed to bring in the genoa and tuck a reef in the main for the night. We put the boat into the wind and put the autopilot back on. The boat was pitching wildly in the seas. Debbie and I were, of course, tethered on and climbed forward. We wrestled with the genoa but it started to fall into the sea (shrimping it is called) and it was hell getting it back in and dangerous. It did cross my mind to cut it free but we were able to get it on board. It was dark by that time and we were pooped out. A dangerous situation but we did gain lots of experience working together and in extremely adverse conditions. We got the genoa tied off up on the starboard side and Debbie reefed the main. Now the engine had to be the head sail so we started out at about 1800 rpm but this proved too fast as the wind was now up at 22-26 knots. We were doing 7 knots with the reefed main and 1800 rpms. Way to fast in this punishing sea. We were also taking the sea broad side as this was our route to Mazatlán, Mexico. The forecasts were for 3-4 foot seas and 10-15 knots. Sill we forgot you needed to times them by two!!

So we throttled down to 1000 rpms and were doing 5 knots easy. Good enough. All night the seas stayed up there and the wind stayed up also.  By about 4 am they started to calm down some. It was a bit eerie to see braking waves coming at the cockpit that were way higher than the cockpit. Or scary could be the word. Most of the times the boat just rolled up and over the wave and from gunnel to gunnel but sometimes the wave would partially break on the boat and splash in the cockpit. After a change of clothes we spent most of the night huddled together under the bimini trying to stay dry. We would take turns trying to get some sleep on the settee. All in all a very uncomfortable night with the Sea of Cortez on our port side and the Pacific Ocean on our starboard side a hundred miles from any land and nothing in sight as it also was a sliver of a moon.

We decided we would stay the course as the alternative was to head south with the waves and then bash back up. This would take longer and we would still feel the pain. We decided to take the punishment and stay the course. We talked to some other cruisers after arriving in Mazatlan and one who did change course and it was no better and took longer and they ran into fish nets and it took a 5 mile detour just for the nets so we made the right decision for us.

The videos do not show our dire moments as we were too busy hanging on to shoot video :).

OK so we are sitting in the salon and making a route to Mazatlán from Cobo on our new Acer laptop with the nice 15” screen and I realize I made the route about 17 nm’s up from El Cid in Mazatlán. I made another route and named it Mazatlán 1 to the El Cid Marina.

A man named Nick from Aleutian Light came over to our boat who heard us on the morning net saying we were leaving for Mazatlan in a couple days. He wanted to buddy boat over. He sat down and we measure some distances using the Garmin Home Port software we had made the routs on. When he left I uploaded the route to the Garmin 740 chart plotter.
 You are ahead of me guessing I uploaded the wrong one and you are right. At sunrise we are approaching what we think should be the channel to  El Cid Marina and what it is is some estuary 17 nm north. After we realized my mistake we take the three or so hour trip down the coast of mainland Mexico to the  El Cid Marina channel. It worked out OK as the tide was at ebb. We went into the El Cid marina to the fuel dock. Debbie had contacted them by VHF to get instructions. Then we walked up to the dock masters office and got a slip number. Getting to the slip was not a problem at ebb tide but we would have had to wait some hours if the tide was running because it makes a nasty current with the surge.

At out  El Cid Marina slip looking at the pool.