Leg 1, part 2—Isla Isabel to Mazatlan

March 18-March 31

We did it! We'd visited Isla Isabel just after the new year when all the booby birds were still mating. Then, a month or so later, we went back during nesting season. Now, on our way back north to Mazatlan, we took the detour back out to the island to see if we could arrive in time to see some of the babies. 

It was a little bit out of the way but, as I told Bryan, if this trip was about efficiency, we wouldn't be doing it aboard a sailboat!

Apron on, pencil in the hair, hands on the tiller...baker, writer, sailor: that's me!

We had a great run over from Chacala and were even able to sail quite a bit of the 14 hour run. 
We left around 4:30 am and made good use of the morning offshore breeze as well as the afternoon onshore flow. We arrived just before sunset with enough time to dive in and check the anchor. 

In the morning, we hung out on the boat and kept an eye out for our friends from CrazyLove who were following us up to the island. Their shorter waterline meant a little longer trip, but they made it in just fine. 

We enjoyed a couple of delightful days in the waters surrounding the island, snorkeling, reading, cooking, and spending precious time with our dear friends, the last days we would have together for quite some time. 

We had dinner together their first evening there and stayed up late our last evening together, sharing drinks and reminiscing. We are so grateful for the vagaries of tide and time that brought them into our life and for the chance to form a lasting friendship in the recent months. They're stuck with us now!

I can just see the CrazyLove snorkelers!

One day, we got a call on the radio from a boat in the southern anchorage asking if we'd heard the announcement about the tropical storm. I hadn't been paying much attention to the radio chatter, so I hadn't heard the official announcement or switched channels for more details. I listened more closely during the afternoon, trying to pick out any information about this unlikely happening; we were nowhere near hurricane season. We watched the barometer carefully to see if a low pressure system was moving in. Nothing seemed amiss, but it took me a few hours to stop worrying.

(We heard later that there was a severe wind event in the Sea of Cortez with gusts up to 60 knots or so. Some friends of ours were in the area and waited out the storm at anchor. They told a harrowing, only-funny-in-hindsight story about looking out their hatch at 3am to see their dinghy fly off their cabin top and go sailing away toward sea. They performed a high-adrenaline rescue and managed to re-anchor in the horrible conditions. I'm glad we missed it!)

Bryan sketches out our map of the trip home

The day we left for Mazatlan, we finally went ashore for a baby booby hunt. 

We spotted several babies in the nests on the beaches and hiked inland for a few minutes, past a noisy colony of what I think were ground-nesting terns. 

Meira pointed out baby frigates 

and Hannah hunted for lizards, as usual. 

But for some reason on this visit, my eyes were drawn to the evidence of death. 

Half-eaten fish sat rotting in the path. 

Lobster tails and crab claws cluttered the tide line. Fully-grown birds and ill-fated babies lay sprawled over stones, all the grace of life lost in the twisted pose of death. 

We didn't stay long enough to see the complete process, to watch the carcasses provide food for other creatures or dissolve into the ground to fertilize the soil. 

And I don't have anything new to say about the “circle of life.” Simply that the contrast was striking, new life hatching out all over, 

side-by-side with death. Every individual fighting “tooth and claw” to keep from joining the ranks of those who lost the battle for survival.

In the afternoon, we rowed over to meet some new neighbors who were getting ready to head out for Mazatlan too. And then, with a last wave goodbye to CrazyLove, we pulled up the anchor and headed north.

So far, our conditions for going north had been great. Today, we motorsailed in light winds and calm seas. We laughed ourselves silly over the antics of a group of jumping manta rays and watched as they flipped and spun through the air, their wings rippling, and then sat out in the warm evening as the sun set in the blue, blue sky. When I woke up in the morning, the blue was gone and we were motoring over perfectly calm seas through an unexpected bit of thick fog. 

We picked up a hitchhiker, this brown booby up on the spreaders. A closer look revealed why he had stopped. His right foot hung dangling, useless.

After a few minutes on the spreaders, he took off, only to land awkwardly on our sidedeck. Bryan put on his heavy and gloves and went forward to extricate him from the docklines. 

The bird settled in for a few more minutes of rest on the dinghy and we were just planning how to get help when we got to Mazatlan when he flew off, trailing his broken leg behind. We've seen other birds on this trip make do with just one good leg, so we can imagine that he'll find a way to cope. But the images from Isabel linger and I choose to face the hard truths that color the darker side of nature's beauty.

Bryan stayed up past the end of his watch to see us through it safely. I listened on the VHF for any word of traffic exiting the commercial harbor (all vessels are required to obtain permission before entering or exiting.) We took the long way around the islands near the city, safely out of the way of harbor traffic or off-lying rocks. And just before we needed to make the turn toward the small boat harbor at the north end of the city, the fog lifted and we were able to see our way clearly into the marina.

We pulled into the same marina where we'd spent Christmas. We motored straight to the fuel dock and, while Bryan filled up our tanks, I went up to the office to see if they had any availability for us. They were pretty full, but we're small and they found us a slip. We gave high fives all around for a safe completion of Leg 1, then silly, off-balance “foot-fives” because, as one of the girls reminded us, it was the end of the leg. It's a good thing puns don't weigh anything; I think this family would sink the boat.

Leg 1, Intermission—Chacala

March 14-March 17

Our first afternoon in Chacala, the girls spotted Sandollar a kid-boat we'd met in La Cruz. They called over on the radio only to find out that Sandollar planned to leave the next morning. The kids quickly wangled a movie evening together and we made a big batch of popcorn and washed out a dishpan to transport it to the other boat. 

The girls rowed Bryan and me to shore so we could catch up on the internets and then rowed themselves over to Sandollar for the evening. We headed straight for Chac Mool and greeted our old friends, Jorge and Israel. In our transient life, it's nice to settle into a few old routines. (One day in La Cruz, Bryan's phone suggested unprompted that Chac Mool was “only an hour and 12 minutes away.” Apparently it thought we were neglecting our important Chac Mool coffee-drinking duties!) We sat with Ron and Liz, some cruisers we'd met in La Cruz. When we were ready to head back, we called the girls on the VHF and then walked down to the dinghy landing, watching the bay as they rowed across, one at the oars, the other manning the 2000 lumens spotlight.

As we arrived back at our boat, we could see another small sailboat pulling in to the other side of the bay. We knew CrazyLove was following us up at some point, and figured there wasn't anyone else out there with a mast that short. So we rowed over close enough to holler some anchoring tips about who was anchored bow and stern and who would swing around when the tide changed and then got out of their way while they expertly dropped their own anchors.

They'd had an easy trip up, so were still up for a short visit. We took over some of our precious chocolate stash and they reciprocated by sharing the last of their unique vanilla tequila.

The next morning, I improvised bread pudding out of stale hot dog buns, apples, and shelf-stable cream (one of my favorite Mexican products!) I read aloud while the girls tidied and Meira took the opportunity to pack away a bunch of things she didn't think she'd need on the trip north. When we're out in big seas, the less stuff there is falling around the cabin, the better. Bryan worked on some boat projects and I cooked up the beans I'd soaked on the way to Chacala, turning them into bean dip for lunch and a delicious curry dinner we shared with CrazyLove. 

In the evening, all the adults rowed into shore for Chac Mool's weekly salsa night. We sat, feet in the sand, listening to the great live music and plotting a hike for the next day.

The girls and I stayed on the boat while Bryan went for the hike with CrazyLove and Ron and Liz from Oleana. It was a bit of an adventure, with 2 or 3 wrong turns, a goat farm and some wild dogs.

 Bryan showed up on the boat with reports of Chac Mool's terminal brownie shortage. Liz had tried unsuccessfully twice now to order a brownie sundae. “Maybe,” he suggested slyly, “someone could make some brownies.” I whipped some together and tossed them in the oven. That evening, before we went to town, Bryan and I rowed across the anchorage to say hi to Princess del Mar. We'd met Werner and his crew-member, Kai, early into our time in Mexico, but hadn't seen the boat since. Werner's daughter, Carina, had joined him in La Paz and they'd spent the intervening months in the Sea of Cortez. They were heading out the next day for Bahia Banderas in preparation for the Puddle Jump to the South Pacific. We were glad we'd caught up with them first!

Ron and Liz, David and Carolyn, and all the LiLo crew went across the street to Tres Mar, home of Chacla's best burgers and posole. While we were there, Werner and Carina came in and we pulled up an extra table so they could join us. We laughed and told sailing stories and eventually moved across the street to Chac Mool for DIY brownie sundaes. Of course, now, they said, they had brownies. But they didn't mind at all that we'd brought out own and they provided plenty of ice cream all around.

March 17 was our last day in Chacala. After the unpleasant discovery of a corrupt hard drive on our computer, we spent most of the day aboard trying to get it working again. 

We finally gave up and rowed in for a last-minute necessities—apples, tortillas, and TP. 

There's no mistaking what this sign prohibits

The power in town had been out all day. Some stores and restaurants had generators, but others were dark. When we stopped for tacos at our favorite taco stand, the cook hadn't been able to use her blender to make the traditional pureed salsas and she apologized for the lack with a shrug at the darkened bulbs. “Who knows why?” she said. At the tienda across the street, we shopped by candlelight, poking into dark corners to find what we needed. As we were paying our bill, the power came back on. We headed over to Chac Mool for old time's sake and ordered drinks while we checked the weather and our bank accounts. We discovered a several thousand dollar fraud on one of our accounts. Thankfully, we'd just finished the six-week-long process of resolving a fraud on our other account and could once again access the cash in that one. We sent a note to the bank to shut this one down and start the investigation and then said goodbye to Jorge and Israel, servers who had become our friends. One last time, we walked back in the dark to the dinghy beach. One last time, rowed around the familiar rocks to our boat for a few hours of rest before the passage to Isla Isabel.

Leg 1, part 1—Yelapa to Chacala

I have so many stories to tell about our time in La Cruz and so many memories of people we met and places we went during our month in Banderas Bay. But I was too busy having fun and working on other writing projects to do much blogging while we were there and just as I was getting back to it, our computer died. It took several days to get my notes off the failing hard drive, and weeks to get a system up and running again. So instead of playing catch-up all the way up the coast and feeling a month behind the whole time, I'm going to write about La Cruz as I get around to it and intersperse some flashbacks into my current events. I'll be sure to make it obvious what's what. Here's a post about the first few days of our journey north.

March 11-March 14

We started the journey back home by heading south. No, I'm not a terrible navigator. We wanted to cross Banderas Bay to the town of Yelapa before we turned around for the homeward journey. Friends took pictures of us by our boat before we left La Cruz, in a pose quite reminiscent of one from our first Bon Voyage party. 

We motored around to the fuel dock, waving at friends on every dock along the way and, as we finally pulled out through the breakwater, we glanced back to see more friends up on the high rock wall, waving and taking pictures.

We had a nice sail in the afternoon breeze most of the way across to Yelapa, and picked up a mooring in the deep bay just after sunset. We'd heard it was possible to anchor there, but that the best anchoring space had been taken over by mooring buoys run by the local restaurants.

The next morning, a panga came racing over to us. The paint on the side identified the driver as being from “Domingo's Restaurant—London, Paris, Yelapa.” He called across, “I have a reservation for someone who is coming in to use this mooring, but you can move to another one, over here!” We obediently loosed our lines and followed him to the indicated mooring. He tied us up and said to call him on the radio when we were ready for a ride to shore. We never found out if he really owned both moorings or if he had just poached us from another restaurant's buoy. The “reservation” never arrived. I think they might be as real as the Domingo's in London or Paris.

We'd heard there were two waterfalls in the area, one a little closer and the other a little farther away. We set off to shore in search of the farther away one. Everyone we asked for directions seemed to be in cahoots with the horse-rental place. There is no road access for cars to get to Yelapa so all tranportation there is on ATV or horseback. We were told it was much to far away to walk. We set off anyway, determined. 

It took a couple of tries to find the right set of stairs to get from the beach up to the main road. By the time we did, my legs had started shaking, as if I'd just climbed down a skyscraper. I sat to rest and get some water in case I was dealing with dehydration, and then we went on, a little less determinedly. (I've since wondered if we run short on electrolytes, especially during the times we drink desalinated water. Who knows?) We wandered through the small streets of the town and into the local church. 

The cupola over the dais was only half there, the upper half, a gaping round opening to the sky. As we stood, gaping a bit ourselves, a local man came over and filled us in. The town was rebuilding the dome but, as all the the supplies have to be brought by boat or on horseback, it was taking a long time. When asked, he too suggested taking a horse to the far away waterfall. We followed his directions though to the nearer one, around the back of the church and down the path along the riverbank. 

Homes and other structures clung to the hillside and the evidence of creativity stood out in the mosaic retaining walls.

The refreshing mist of the waterfall drifted around a bend in the path to meet us. We walked through an arch, past shelves of chintzy souvenirs, and emerged into a sunlit clearing. The girls climbed up on a good pondering rock and enjoyed a snack in the sun. 

I sat on the edge of the pool, dipping a tentative toe in now and again. 

Bryan took an exploratory meander up the path past the waterfall. By the time he came back, we'd been joined by other visitors. We left them to enjoy the waterfall alone and walked back through town and up a different river to find some lunch. 

Here the girls are planning a coded encouragement system for the trip home

We'd seen flyers for Manguito's Restaurant and sings pointing us 15 minutes up river. We walked the slender dirt path, several times shifting over to let a horse pass by. The signs pointed us across a pedestrian overpass to the other side of the river. As we crossed, I looked back through the metal supports at 2 boys playing video games on laptops. Near their open patio stood a patient donkey tied to a tree. The wide riverbed gave proof of the power of the rainy season to change the landscape. But today, the river was a trickle, a stream winding down the path of least resistance to the sea. Local kids made good use of the dry portion of the riverbed and jumped enthusiastically on a rusty trampoline set on the flat dirt.

Our family's natural eating schedule doesn't follow the locals' typical routine. We've stopped trying to follow the traveler's adage about only eating at places with lots of locals. Often, and today this was the case, we are the only diners in a restaurant. 

The food was good and the service attentive. Bryan found a map of the area on the wall and took a photo for later reference. 

As we pushed back from the table to go, Bryan stopped us. “This is the farthest south you will be in Mexico on this trip.” My thoughts and emotions swirled. Pride, reluctance, eagerness, gratefulness. Gratefulness won.

We walked back on the east bank of the river stopping to chat with an acquaintance we'd met in La Cruz. Should I stop to tell the story here? Why not?!

One of our first evenings in La Cruz, we went with a bunch of friends to listen to some jazz at a local restaurant. The evening was utterly pleasant and the music understated and excellent. I especially appreciated the pianist, Jerome. Apparently Hannah did too, because she went up to him afterward and chatted a bit, a fact I didn't find out until later.

Perhaps a week or so after that evening, the girls decided to take Rover out for a row in the anchorage. Bryan and I thought it was a great plan and we made sure they had their life jackets and the handheld VHF and sent them off for a little adventure. We hadn't considered how much the afternoon wind affects the anchorage. As they left the breakwater, there was a mild beam wind and they decided it was safe to row on out. Unfortunately, while they were out, the wind shifted and freshened and started blowing them away from the marina, out to open water. They turned to head back in, but couldn't make way toward the breakwater. Meira grabbed the handheld and called some friends in the anchorage until one of them answered. Jerome, anchored out in his beautiful Kind of Blue spotted them struggling and invited them alongside, then aboard to use his more powerful radio to call us. By the time we heard from them, they'd already arranged a tow back to LiLo and were starting to come down from the rush of the mini-crisis. They'd felt a little overwhelmed, but Jerome reported back later how impressed he was at their calm competence in the face of adversity. Once again, we were thankful for the community of cruisers.

I wish we had video of one of the moments from the walk back from Manguito's. A couple of young boys, maybe 4 and 7, came walking along from a side path. The younger one held out his hand like a miniature traffic cop. “Alto!” he said. “Stop! The cow is coming.” Sure enough, an older man was stepping across from the same side-path, leading an angular bull with a frayed rope. Our protector stood between us and the bull until the Yelapa traffic jam had cleared and then he ran off with his friend, done with his work, back at play.

We found our way back to the beach and waited a few minutes for the water taxi.We'd been warned that they stop running when the restaurants shut down, but we caught them just in time.

The next day, Bryan headed back in for one more try at the faraway waterfall. 

He made it all the way there (yes, even without a horse:-) 

and back to the boat in time for us to leave for Las Tres Marietas, bringing with him some amazing grilled chicken for a CrazyLove-inspired meal. (David and Carolyn always try to pick up an easy dinner for their first evening out on passage. We think that's a fabulous tradition and have decided to adopt it ourselves!) We came in just before sunset and I was happy to see one of my theories about our trip back prove correct. The winds and the currents will be against us on the way back, yes. But I think many other things will be less stressful, especially for me. Besides provisioning, cooking, homeschooling, and writing, (Bryan would like to add “eye candy” to my list of assigned roles) my main jobs aboard are navigating, weather forecasting, passage planning, and communications. Since we left Astoria on the way down, we've been sailing in completely unfamiliar waters. And since we left San Diego, weather reports have been hard to come by, charts re unreliable, and communications in a foreign language. On the way back, we will ease our way back to accurate charts, more predictable weather, and easier communications. And we will be returning to many familiar ports along the way. Our first day at Las Tres Marietas, I worried about running aground or hitting a rock. Our guide books warned of rocks and reefs around the islands and detailed the safe approach, but our charts showed rocks in that exact part of the bay. I made the (correct, as it turns out) educated guess to trust the guide books rather than our chart. The guide books all agreed with each other and the chart had proven unreliable in this area in the past. But it was still a tense approach. This time, I sat without a worry as Bryan steered us in a dropped the anchor,

The next morning, I looked to him for our plans for the day. He'd considered staying at the island for a day of snorkeling. But the visibility was poor and the tour boats had already started to arrive. We hauled up the anchor and headed off for Chacala. The weather was perfect and the seas quite calm. We spotted a sea turtle and caught 2 skipjack tuna, one right after the other. 

I did the dishes, soaked some beans and experimented with cold-brewed coffee, finally getting the hang of relaxing while at sea. The girls are pitching in on watches more and I'm less concerned about doing my “fair share.” Especially on shorter day hops, Bryan doesn't mind taking more of the actual sailing duties and it leaves me free to rest, write, or get stuff done like dishes or cooking that improve morale all around. Around mid-afternoon, we dropped anchor in “our” corner of Chacala's little bay. Several friends' boats were in the bay already and we were looking forward to a few last days here in one of our favorite Mexican destinations.