The Adventures of PK: Sailing to La Paz for a Burger

3-10-13 – La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico

Morning of Departure in Mazatlan

We made it to La Paz a few days ago, but my busy schedule of socializing and random boat projects has kept me from getting a post up, except for that last one we won’t talk about any more. That was actually work.

French toast, egg and cream
cheese (thanks s/v Ojo Rojo)
breakfast thingy, smells good and
helps the time go by quickly

The passage from Mazatlan to La Paz, approximately 251 miles but who’s counting, was thankfully relatively uneventful. No oil in the engine compartment this time after replacing the oil filter and we actually planned some tasty meals this time, so that was an added bonus.

It took us 56 hours, so for everyone slow at math, that was three days and two nights out. I believe our longest passage without crew. I guess that’s a thing. That fact didn’t really occur to us until we had made it to La Paz. The reality is, barring any unforeseen things that would have probably happened on a day sail or any unforeseen weather, one day is the same as two as three.

B checking the weather on our SSB receiver (actually it's Elizabeth's
favorite toy on the boat)

E taking a nap after a long night shift

We fall into a rhythm and by the third day we could have gone for another day or two. I guess we are getting more comfortable with this cruising thing. The weather was as predicted, always a miracle in itself. Unfortunately, that meant we had wind on the nose for the entire trip. We had a bearing of 282deg from Mazatlan to La Paz and in two days the wind never strayed from 310 to 280 deg. That made sailing a challenge. I guess what I should say is it made making forward progress a challenge. The sailing was pretty good for at least a few hours a day. Ultimately, to steal some clichés from some friends, we spent a lot of time with the D sail and the Dacron stabilizer up. We saw no one except for one tanker in the distance on the second day. AIS told me there were some people out there, but never close enough to see. This was a nice change from the last passage up the coast where we dodged shrimpers all night. The highlight would be the phosphorescence on night one. The moon didn’t come up until 2A so it was fairly dark as the sun set and the phosphorescence was crazy. I will allow the more literary folks out there do the poetic describing of it as I wouldn’t do it justice. It was awesome. We watched as, what we assume were dolphins, came streaking towards the boat, leaving trails of blue phosphorescence underwater wherever they went. There were huge pods of blue glowing water. Maybe millions of little fish jumping around? We weren’t sure, but they blue pods would migrate as we approached and then disappear. So the passage was a success, we made it and now are in La Paz waiting out a Norther before heading out to the islands in the area. Maybe in the future I will give a profound description of what happens while at sea. That should take about two lines. Sleep, eat, watch the ocean. Don’t hit stuff.

Sunset on day two

Back in Monterey, CA we were tied up to the transient dock at the marina. It was a long dock that had two or three transients tied to it at any given time. We were there for a few days and somewhere in the middle of that time a boat tied up that looked like it had, I’ll say, been well used. We talked to the single hander onboard and learned that he was returning from Mexico after a few years down there to replenish the bank account. He said he had gone South 12 times and done the bash 8 times and offered us some different advice on places to go in Mexico and how to bring the boat back north. At this time we had not really fully fathomed that we would actually make it to Mexico and all these places with names like San This and Punta That seemed very distant and, while interesting, we were still a long way from any of them. Besides leaving us a lengthy two page letter in our cockpit, explaining how he could help us on our way south as a mentoring captain, he also told us to visit a place called The Shack in La Paz. At this time we didn’t know if we would make it to San Diego let alone Mexico, and then this place called La Paz. We filed the info away for future use you could say.

The Shack

So two days ago we find ourselves in a place called La Paz in Mexico, all the way from San Francisco. I guess we did make it after all. We decided that we had to pay a visit to this place called The Shack. Apparently it is a little bit of a cruiser hangout, has good burgers and is sort of a unique place. All of this is true. I would say that The Shack is a place you will either love or hate. We loved it, but then we are cruisers who haven’t taken a shower without walking outside to get to it while carrying our toiletries and towels in about 7 months. So this may not be the place for everyone. They were exceedingly nice, food was great, and Rosie shared some dinner she made for her kids with us, which was also great. So I will propagate the rumor that The Shack is a great place to visit. Thanks captain, I guess, Marc from Monterey. I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.