La Paz to Mazatlan

23.36.02N

108.45.54W

On the 3rd of March I was joined by my old friend Chris that I had met several years ago in Colorado.  He was a welcome addition for the next leg of the journey.  I was gearing up for another long leg on the crossing over to the mainland and having someone to share the watches with would be a huge help.  I was quite excited to be able to get some sleep for once while traveling offshore! 

We set off on Sunday into the tail end of the latest North wind.  I was getting pretty sick of all these “North Winds”.  I’ll admit it’s not quite as bad as driving in a snowstorm but it still sucks.  (I had imagined Mexico to be quite warm (even hot) over the winter but Baja has proved to be quite chilly).

Anyway the first bit of sailing that Chris gets to experience is motoring dead upwind into 4 ft swell.  Sucker.

Thankfully that was only for a few hours.

Unfortunately it was followed by another few hours going east with the wind and swell at our side.  This makes for some really uncomfortable twisting and rolling on the boat.  By now Chris was starting to look a little “green”.  I have to admit that conditions were pretty ripe for getting someone seasick and Chris was holding on to his “lunch” with the best of them J.    

Once we were through the channel we finally got to start heading downwind.  Pretty soon we settled into a groove while riding the 15 knot winds and 6 to 8 foot swell down the coast.  This improved the motion of the boat and everyone started having a better time. 

Naturally the wind starts to die well before the swell does and without the steadying effect of the wind on the sails we started the uncomfortable twisting rolling all over again.  By now I think Chris was starting to reconsider his decision to come on this nice sailing trip…  The icing on the cake was that it also managed to get really cold over night.  Here we are off the southern tip of Baja in March and I am wearing a T-Shirt, fleece and gore-tex jacket and I still need a blanket to keep warm!! 

Well Day 2 of the crossing went much better than the first.  The swell died down and we manage to keep enough wind to maintain about 4 knots average speed.  By night number two everything was better.  The boat was sailing comfortably and Chris was now his normal cheery self.

 Things kept improving with whale sightings, dolphin visits and a big increase on the thermometer.  One strange thing was that in the morning we found a bunch of small squid on the deck of the boat.  They must have been attracted to the light on the boat or something….  Anyway, we settled into our groove and made it to Mazatlan on the early part of night number 3.