March 27, 2013, Wednesday, Mazatlan to Isla Isabel

We are finally battened down and ready to go by noon.  It is about 100 miles out to Isla Isabel.  With a good wind we should make it it 24 hours. Finally goodbye to Mazatlan, after all this time.  We certainly never expected to stay here this long and it is good to be on the road, the sea road that is,  again.  After the island we will work our way down the coast to Puerto Vallarto where Alan has a reservation to fly home on 4/25.  We had expected to be out of Mexico by the time his visa expired in May but the way things are going we are not going to make it so he will fly home for a week or so while I stay with the boat.

Just as we are about to raise the main sail, a pelican alights on it.   It rides along with us for about 10 minutes before taking off.  Apparently it had it’s eye on a fishing boat we had passed and rather than hover with it’s buddies, decided to rest until the nets were pulled in.  As the catch came aboard, it was off.  So all the sails were finally raised.  It is a beautiful day with a south east wind of about 10 knots, temperature in the low 80s.  Alan sets the wind vane and we can relax and settle in for the watch on, watch off routine.  I throw the fishing line out and forget about it.  I haven’t caught anything for ages.  I think it must be “broken”.  In the late afternoon I notice little fins in the water beside the boat.  It is manta rays floating with the tips of their wings up.  Suddenly they start jumping, straight up in the air, landing with a loud splash.  The wind drops at sunset and we ghost along with about one knot of wind.  It is calm and beautiful with an almost full moon, cool but not cold, mellow music playing.  About 2 am Alan finally gives up and starts the engine, otherwise, we will end up trying to anchor at the island in the dark.  The wind comes up again at dawn and we can turn the engine off finally.  And so we sail on through another lovely day.  The only sea life is a turtle swimming by.

4 pm and there is the island, just where it should be!  We are finally figuring out this navigation business.  We have been using both a handheld GPS and the Navionics program on the iPad and also plotting our position on a paper chart.  The person coming on watch collects the log book and plots the last 3 positions on the chart.  That way he knows where we are and what happened while he was asleep.  Sometime during the night-with-no-wind, I discovered that I was getting very different reading on the 2 devices.  Thank heavens for redundancy and lucky it happened when there was such light wind or I would have had us somewhere off in the middle of nowhere.   Turned out I had misunderstood the iPad instructions. I think I have it now, but I still prefer the GPS. 

I finally caught a fish just as we came up to the island.  A beautiful mackerel, I think, about 20” long.  It was hauled aboard and quickly sedated with a splash of Southern Comfort.  Head cut off and hung by the tail to drain. gutted and put into the sink full of salt water to wait for dinner

According to both of our cruising guides, this is a difficult anchorage with a lot of underwater rocks and not much sand to hold the anchor.  Alan has added an extra trip line and float to the anchor chain which is supposed to make it easier to get it back up if it get wrapped around the rocks.  There is still a fairly brisk wind, although it drops a little in the lea of the island.  There are 2 other boats already anchored here so we en up further off shore than we planned.  When Alan set up the new trip line he put on 7 fathoms of line.  That is 42 feet and most of the time we anchor in about 4 fathoms.  This time we are in 10 fathoms and the new float immediately disappears.  But the anchor finally grabs and we are set.  Time to eat that fish.  Tomorrow we go ashore to see the blue footed boobies.

Unfortunately during the night Alan get stomach flu so I spend the next day on the boat reading Collleen McCullough’s Morgan’s Run, a wonderful book about the settling of Australia while Alan sleeps.  The following day, Good Friday, Alan is feeling better and we finally launch the dingy and go ashore.  A narrow trail leads behind the fishing shacks and through the trees up to the cliffs.  There are iguanas everywhere.  As we reach the top we spot our first boobies just standing along the edge of the cliff.  Turns out there are 3 kinds, blue footed, yellow footed and also red footed.  All 3 kinds are there along the cliff along with larger frigate birds.  There are so tame we get to within a few feet of them.  There are babies, so soft and fuzzy white, and a couple nesting in depressions on the ground.  We are on the very edge of the cliff and birds are constantly coming and going around us, launching straight down to be caught by and updraft and soar out over the ocean.  For the first time I understand the lure of hang gliding. 

LOTS OF PHOTOS OF BIRDS ON FACE BOOK

Back down, we head in the other direction along the beach and come to a large cement structure that should be a visitors center.   Like so many projects in Mexico, it seems to have been started with a grand vision and plenty of money.  There is a large roofed pavilion, a kitchen area and dining room, an AV room, offices and bathrooms.  Once there were mosaics and tile counters.  But apparently the money ran out and the rebar is rusting, the concrete falling off and the rooms full of debris.  Now it is just a cool shady place to sit and watch the frigate birds.  The trees are covered with them, males, females, nests and babies.  Male frigate birds are known for red sack on their throat which can be inflated.  Eventually we spot the bright red  among the leaves and then see several more.  The sacks are huge when inflated.  They cover the entire front of the bird from beak to toes.  After about an hour of watching and taking photos we head back to the beach again.  Although it is interesting, I find Isla Isabel a sad place.  So many of the trees are leafless and seem to be dying and there are also an awful lot of dead birds, including babies. Birds fly in the skies by the hundreds but we can’t tell what is anything they are eating.  Only occasionally does one dive towards the water for a fish.  One more night here.  Tomorrow we will go snorkling and then take off.

Since the other 2 boats anchored here have left, we decide to move in closer to shore where the water is not quite so deep.  The wind is still fairly strong but we get the anchor up successfully and anchor again, still in rocks but this time in 30 feet of water.  Now that it is not submerged, our anchor float works just fine.  Unfortunately this is my night to be sick.  Nonetheless, we take the dingy ashore to go snorkling the next morning.  We had been told that it was wonderful diving but we found the water cloudy and the fish uninteresting.  We have been spoiled by Southern California diving, and Catalina and Hawaii.  So we head back to the boat after about and hour and I go back to bed. 

Suddenly Alan announces that the wind is strengthening and coming from the south.   Captain Holly’s cruising guide, aka. Charlie’s Charts, says to get the heck out of there if there is a south wind.  This is a nasty lee shore with all the rocks.  In half an hour we have folded the dingy, stowed the solar panels, put away the dive stuff and cleaned up the galley and are ready to raise the anchor.  It comes up smoothly, even though Alan tells me later that it was wrapped around lots of rocks.  Off we go to the mainland.  Next stop San Blas.