What to expect

Rants, missives and occcasional updates about where Masquerade is located and what we are up to.

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Over on the mainland for carnaval!

Masquerade is now on the mainland of Mexico. We are in Mazatlan and are at a marina for the first time in over two months. We sailed from Cabo San Lucas to Los Frailes, it was incredibly quiet and calm after the noise and bouncy anchorage at Cabo. We had planned on spending a few days here but when we had a good weather window for crossing to the mainland, we pulled anchor and left. We had a good sail across the Sea of Cortez, we had 15kn +-5 most of the time and made the passage in about 29 hours (some of the fastest sailing we have done).

Cabo San Lucas is strictly a tourist town, nothing but bars and hotels/timeshares. We spent a few days but the anchorage is very rough and noisy due to the boat traffic, jet skis, and cruiseships. We went into town a few times but tried not to spend too much money. We got suckered into doing a timeshare talk (they offered $225!). Started out okay, but they got pushy, then rude when we said no and we wanted to leave. We later heard that this timeshare was known as a “buy or cry” operation. We did get a free trip over to San Jose Del Cabo for sightseeing out of the deal. San Jose is the real town in the area and has a historical center and an old church. In Cabo we did get to sit on the beach on lounge chairs under an umbrella while they brought us 2 for 1 drinks, not too bad. We hit the Costco for provisions, and learned that you can sample tequila along with the normal food items!

Mazatlan is an interesting town, it was an old and established city long before the tourist industry turned up. The historic district has many older buildings and the Plaza Machado, with lots of restaurants with open air seating, music and such is very interesting. There is a cruising community here, some boats passing though and others spend the hurricane season here. We ran into “Restless” here at the Marina, we met Mark and Brandy in Craig Alaska and see them about every 700 miles (Craig AK, Coos Bay OR, Newport Beach CA, and Mazatlan). We also ran into Brian (downtown in the plaza) he used to work for Port Townsend Rigging, but is now off cruising.

We decided to come to Mazatlan to see the Carnaval. This is supposed to be the 3rd largest Carnaval in the world. It started yesterday but we did not see much but they were setting up for the large street party and parade that are later in the week. We are planning on seeing at least one parade and one firework show. Should be lots of fun. We will try and get pictures for the site.

We are also getting some work done on the boat here. Having some of the old varnished stripped and sanding the decks. Can’t stop anywhere for a few days without trying to get some boat jobs done.

The weather is nice and the people friendly, this is good cruising.