Carnaval and Mazatlan

Carnaval was a blast. It took a day or two to realize that nothing gets started till 10 o’clock at night or later. The marina here organized a trip to do dinner and see the fireworks, so we joined in. The dinner was mediocre (I think they tried to do American food), but the fireworks were good. Unfortunately the balcony that we watched from was designed to provide shade from the sun, this meant it blocked some of the view as well. The fireworks commemorate a battle with the French, so part of the fireworks are launched from shore and some from onboard a boat off the shore.

On the same night is also the “Burning of Bad Humors”, where an effigy of some person or issue is burnt. This year the issue was the high price of tortillas, in the past it has been Osama bin Laden, and a Taxi strike. (See videos here) After the show we went walking on the main Carnaval street, Olas Altas. There were many stages set up each with a live band (competing with each other to be heard), wandering Mariachi bands (competing to be heard), many beer booths, and a huge crowd of people. We quickly learned that you needed to hold on to each other and get in with the flow going your desired direction (sort of a huge conga line). It was crowded and loud, but everyone was having fun. After getting another beer we started heading back but made a mistake of getting too close to the bandstand. The crowd here was very thick and we soon lost any control over our speed or direction. We were being swept along and were only concerned with keeping on our feet, tripping or falling would be bad news. Once past the stage things eased up, but that was not fun.

A few days later we went to the Carnaval Parade . This took place on the malecon, the road that was right on the ocean. Cindy and I went down early to get a good spot along the fence on the seawall. The street rapidly filled up with families coming to watch. The parade started with the sponsor’s (beer, bakery, and automakers mostly) floats which consisted of dancers throwing items and load music. The real parade consisted of some marching groups and lots of floats. The floats all had dancers (male and female), and more loud music usually live. No beads here but lots of confetti, thrown by the dancers or shot from cannons. After the parade we headed to the old town area for some food. It was nearly midnight but the Plazuela Machado and the restaurants were quite busy. When dinner was over we grabbed a pulmonia to take us back to the marina. The pulmonia (literally pneumonia) is an open air taxi unique to Mazatlan.

While in Mazatlan we have been doing work on the boat. We had some help from Rueben and his sons on getting some brightwork done. We stripped off the old varnish and put on some new Cetol. Not all the boat is done, but it looks a lot better. Various other jobs are getting done (decks, cabinetry, wiring) and the boat is clean again.

Some friends (Clarence and Sharon from Lotus) are staying at the other marina, El Cid, it has a hotel and timeshares, which also means a pool and hottub! We have spent a few afternoons as their guests hanging out at the pool, and hitting the Friday happy Hour. There are advantages to being at a marina!

Marina Mazatlan, where we are docked is a nice place to stay. They do quite a bit to support the cruisers community. They facilitate many services like laundry, bottled water, propane, a veggie truck comes several times a week. The cruisers also organize events, DVD swap, swap meet, HAM radio exams, Spanish lessons, yoga, etc… There is quite a bit going on to keep people busy.

Long update, check out the new pictures (Cabo, Mazatlan) and the video(some are quite large).

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 3^rd 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.

Getting settled in Ensenada

We have now been in Ensenada for nearly a week. We have met quite a few other cruisers and are feel we are starting to get into the swing of things. On arrival we were immediately greeted and invited to a Cruiser’s Christmas Potluck and white elephant gift exchange. The potluck turned out to be a lot of fun, but it broke up quickly once the sun went down and the temperature dropped. There is a Cruiser’s net every morning at 8 o’clock on the VHF radio. This is way for everyone to know who is coming or going, share news, weather, ask advice and buy/sell gear. These nets are common in the popular cruising grounds throughout Mexico. Important information like the location of a good happy hour is disseminated (2-1 drinks and free pasta dinner!).

We have since completed all the paperwork for clearing customs for ourselves and getting a temporary import permit for the boat. There is a streamlined process with all the offices you need to visit now in a single building. Now it only takes 3 hours, instead of all day with multiple trips across town.

Exploring the town has been fun, things change pretty quickly once you get out of the tourist area. Everyone has been friendly and we are trying to speak some Spanish. We have some language tapes and some books to help us, but wish we had started this earlier in the year. I am hoping that some of my high school Spanish is locked away somewhere in my brain and can be coaxed out. Several friends have taken Spanish immersion classes (for a week or more) and we may look into that as well.

The boats out on anchor are apparently a bit of a tourist attraction. There are multiple boats that load up with Mexican tourists and motor around and out of the harbor (whale watching/sea lions/seals, who knows what). These boats tend to pass very close to the anchored boats (passengers taking pictures and videos) while leaving a large wake. This behavior usually gets ignored or a brief wave from the cruiser. What is funny is that a boat doing this in the pacific northwest would have elicited some rude epithets and a completely different hand gesture. It is a different world.

Last stop in Caifornia

We have made it as far as San Diego. This will be our last stop in California and the USA. We wanted to get here to sit out the first winter storm of the season. They have made all sorts of dire predictions including waterspouts, but we have not seen much but a few squalls. We are at the public dock (the police dock), this is a nice protected spot (not like Newport where the dock sucked).

We hoped to get out of here quickly, with perhaps a short visit to the Mexican consulate. However we had yet another failure of our Navman instruments. The depth sounder that we just had repaired has failed. We lost out depth readings on our way to San Diego, nothing is more fun than entering a strange harbor without a working depth sounder. We now need to get this taken care of before we head out. We may also want to set up a backup system in case this one fails again.

We are hoping to get out of here and into Mexico soon.

Still in Newport Harbor

We have been here for quite a while, getting the boat ready for Mexico. We have been doing a bunch of shopping/provisioning and working on boat jobs. We have access to a truck thanks to my parents (thanks Mom & Dad!), which makes doing all this much much easier. The downside is that we feel we need to shop for exactly the right part, for the cheapest possible price, and need to get everything on the list. Without the car we would probably make do with less and save a bit of time and money. However, I am sure that we will be happy that we bought everything later in Mexico,

We had a great party at the dock for friends and family! There was a nice sandy beach with picnic tables, which worked out well as we could not possibly fit everyone on the boat at once. We had a nice warm sunny day, and about 25 people showed up. I know we enjoyed it, I hope everyone else did as well.

Our mooring ball is right next to Balboa Island, this is a neighborhood of multi million dollar houses (some only summer homes). This is not a normal area. Cindy and I walked into a shop on the island while I was wearing a Village Marine t-shirt. I was given the t-shirt when we bought our watermaker from the company. The salesman in the shop asked if I owned the company! Back in the normal boat world he would have asked how I liked the watermaker. I guess being around this kind of money skews your view of the world. Apparently on Balboa Island you only wear a shirt with a logo if you own it.

Still in Santa Barbara...

We are still in the Santa Barbara marina, we had planned to be here for 3 or 4 days but now hope to be out before they start charging us double. They encourage the transient boats to move on by increasing the rates after two weeks.

We had hoped to be down to Long Beach or Newport but had to change our plans. We had started to smell some diesel fuel back in Monterey, but could not find a fuel leak. While warming up the engine so I could do an oil change I once again looked for the leak. This time with the engine running I found that the injection pump was dripping profusely. Unfortunately the pump is buried by various engine parts, so that the exhaust manifold/heat exchanger needed to come off first. We shipped the pump off to be rebuilt and waited over the weekend for it to come back. We put it back on Wednesday, replacing all the parts that had to be taken off earlier. No joy with the rebuilt pump. The fuel cutoff was installed backwards so the engine would only run if the kill switch was pressed in. Not only that but the throttle control was bad as well, and would only run at full open. So we had to dismantle the exhaust and heat exchanger again and remove the pump to be send back.

Hopefully this can be corrected quickly and we can get the engine running again soon. The dock is going to get expensive starting Friday.

The good news is that we found the issue before we left the US. This would be a much more difficult problem to fix in Mexico. Shipping parts internationally can be complicated and expensive. Once again I am being taught the need to find problems as soon as we notice that something feels wrong. Of course, I once again waited a few more days than I should have.