We have left Mazatlan and are headed for La Paz. We said that we wanted to cross the Sea of Cortez by the end of March and we have managed it by the skin of our teeth. La Paz is on the southeast side of the Baja Peninsula. The water is supposed to be very clear and there are lots of lovely anchorages in the Sea of Cortez so we are looking forward to the next month. We left Mazatlan about noon today, Sat. and it will take us about 48 hours to cross to the other side. I will send in position reports so anyone who is interested can follow our progress.
Mazatlan was a lot of fun. We took in a classical guitar concert at the arts school downtown and we heard the student jazz band play the other night. At the guitar concert there were 6 students and the professor who performed as well as a singer and a percussionist. The girl who sang had a lovely voice and was quite accomplished, the percussionist added a lot to the guitar performance, we really enjoyed him. The jazz band was a little tentative at first but got into things as the performance progressed and by the end they were all enjoying themselves and playing wonderfully together. We had social engagements almost every night, Mungo our buddy boat was there and it was great to get together with them. Steve had gone back to Canada to attend to some business so it was too bad we missed him. We met up with Ian and Ness a couple that were in our Vancouver Island fleet group, so we have now met everyone from the group that is in Mexico except for Jabula.
We got a lot of shopping done and figured out what supplies we needed to have on hand for putting the boat on the hard and managed to find most of them. We noticed as we were coming into Mazatlan that our genoa needed more repair in the area that we had fixed it. There were a couple aboard a sailboat that run a sail repair business and we were able to get them to put a more professional patch on. They picked our sail up on Thur. and were able to get it back to us by Friday night, great service.
Barry also went through a big rigmarole with our fuel. He had just topped up the tanks and was talking to people on the dock about this sludge that we had been getting in the inspection drainage bowl that is by our filters. Someone suggested that he open the tanks up and have a look inside, there was something looking back at him!!! There was algae growing in the fuel and the edges on the tank were covered with it. We called someone and they came by and pumped all the fuel out, remember the tanks were full. Then they wiped the tank down and Barry filtered all the fuel as he put it back in the tank. The fellow had suggested that we get rid of all the fuel but it was about $150.00 worth of fuel so Barry opted to filter it. He left about 8 inches in the bottom of the containers the fuel was in and it had sat there for about 3 hours so the sludge had settled to the bottom. We were very lucky to be able to get both of these repairs done in a timely manner so that we could still leave when we planned. We got lots of advice about what kind of biocide we should be putting in our tanks to prevent algae growth, and of course there is the camp that says that you shouldn't put any in at all, who knows.