Mazatlan to La Cruz

We left Mazatlan Jan 25 at about 9:30 am. By 10:30 I was really really really sea sick. I took bonine, that didn’t work. I put on the scopalomine patch and that didn’t work either. (So much for my bag of drugs). So Burt manned the helm for almost 29 hours with very little relief.. I was able to help him a few times, but there are only two ways to get rid of sea sickness (at least for me). One: get on land – not an option. Two: sleep it off. So I slept on and off for the whole 29 hours. By morning on the second day I was beginning to love life again, but I was pretty weak. I could man the helm and give Burt some relief.
Meanwhile, Burt saw whales, sea turtles, dolphins, sting rays. I got to see one turtle. I was happy about that. Also a huge whale jumped out of the water pretty close to our boat. It sounds like they do a giant belly flop, but evidently it doesn’t hurt because they do it over and over. We had intended to go all the way to Chacala, but Burt was pretty tired, so we stopped off at Isla Isabela for a rest. We sure are we glad we did. What a beautiful place. This place was in National Geographic. I can see why. There are birds everywhere. One (a frigate) hitched a ride home on our mast. When we got close to the island, he figured he’d get there faster on the wing. While he was on the mast, I was manning the helm and Burt was taking a snooze in the cockpit. All of a sudden – SPLAT!!! Bird poop on Burt!!! We tried to get him off of the mast but no way. We tried throwing some old limes at him, but nothing scared him. I think maybe we will have to get a sling shot or something. They sit on your wind vane or antenna and bend or break them. And the guano (bird poop) isn’t too pleasant either!

We went ashore at Isla Isabela and hiked up to the top of one of the peaks. We got quite a few photos of the baby boobies. Just take a look at the Isla Isabel gallery. Pretty unique place. After sight seeing, Burt and I went back over loaded (or so we thought) with 20 magazines, a brochure, and a book. Well we got only halfway through the village and ran out of literature! Next time we’ll bring more. I t was Sunday and they were all resting, fixing nets, and just waiting for the right time to go out in the pangas. They were very thankful for something beneficial to read.

It’s Monday, January 28, and we are waiting until about noon to leave. We are going to do another overnighter to get to La Cruz by Tuesday in daylight. We are a bit concerned because the anchorage here is known to be an anchor-eater. I guess we’ll find out soon enough if ours is all hung up. There are sand and lava rocks and sometimes the chain gets caught.

Well, didn’t need to worry about the anchor. It came up with no problem. We left Isla Isabela yesterday at 12 noon and got to La Cruz this morning at 9:30 am. We motor sailed a lot because there was very little wind. We saw a lot of sea turtles and whales. Later in the night, we were ahead of schedule and didn’t want to arrive in port before daylight, so we took the sails down and shut down everything and just drifted and rested for about an hour and a half. When we stopped, a bunch of dolphins started swimming around the boat. Because of the bioluminessence, you could see them swim through the water. They looked like torpedoes of light. It was really amazing because you could see where they were going to come out of the water and there was a bright splash of light when they came out. They hung around for quite a while just entertaining us. What a gift! We are continually impressed by the diversity of life that Jehovah has created for our enjoyment. The stars and the moon were light enough for us to see pretty well all around us.

We arrived in La Cruz at 9:37 am on Jan 29. When we got in among all the other boats we got a bit of a surprise. Just as we were getting in position to put down the anchor, Burt told me to go into reverse. Bummer! No reverse! Well, he dropped the anchor and we weren’t quite where we wanted to be but we stayed there for 8 days. He fixed it the last day we were there. We went to the meetings with Ardiels and Nygarts in the La Cruz congregation. A very encouraging stay. We discovered the need for dinghy wheels there. The La Cruz marina wanted $10 a day just to use the dinghy dock. La Paz was $1.50. So a lot of the cruisers just pull their boat up on the beach. Nobody seemed to bother them except to move them out of the way for a soccer game. Anyways, Warren had bought some dinghy wheels but they didn’t plan on going anywhere that they would need them this year, so they let us buy them from them--we couldn’t find any at the chandlery in Puerto Vallarta. Tim and Warren made an arrangement with the La Cruz marina before the marina decided to charge $10 a day for cruisers to use the dinghy dock. So they picked us up for the meetings and service. It’s quite a challenge to drag that dinghy up on the beach and not get all wet and sandy. In fact, we found it rather impossible. The La Cruz congregation was really encouraging. We met a sister from one of the Carribean Islands. She was telling me that the brothers are always looking for someone to work the Bahamian Islands and other islands. There were a couple more brothers on a sailboat. Brother Stan Thompson is from Modesto, CA. He was so encouraging about what we are doing. He’s going back up to La Paz to work the coast that is assigned to La Paz that they can’t get to. The brother with him, Nacho, will help him. Nacho learned Spanish from helping out in the Spanish congregation at home. We got pretty comfortable in La Cruz. Learned a few things. Make sure your dirty laundry is dry because they charge you by the kilo, not the load. We spent a bit more than usual getting our laundry done. We got nice solid ice at one of the tiendas. There were water trucks everywhere like in Guaymas so we got plenty of drinking water. There is a restaurant called Philo’s that has pretty good internet, so I spent some time there getting some work done and fixing the webtiller.com website. We were able to get water at the marina. We paid a whopping $2 to fill all the tanks. Go figure. Never can understand the rates in Mexico! Anways, we couldn’t get fuel in La Cruz, but Tim and Warren went over to Puerto Vallarta and filled their boat. We figured we had enough to get to Barra Navidad, but Tim and Warren got us about 5 gallons just for whatever. Whatever does seem to happen to us quite a bit.