MAZATLAN, Mexico SEPTEMBER 10, 1997

   We spent 9 days in the crystal clear green water of Agua Verde. We were anchored in a private lagoon with our friends Mike, Beth and their 8 year old son Josh aboard Zugvogel, and Dick and Saucy aboard Emerald Star. We had a private white sand beach to play on and a small reef for snorkeling. It was hilarious to take the kids snorkeling on the reef and listen to them yelling through their snorkels about everything they saw. The town is a small fishing village accessible from the main highway by 4 wheel drive over 15 miles of "road." The residents live either in lean-tos on the beach or one room shacks made from corregated steel. The entire village is completely overrun by goats and pigs. Several years ago a Mexican government giveaway program provided each resident with a solar panel panel for electricity. Incredibly, several of these structures now have TV’s and satellite dishes in addition to their single 60-watt light bulb!

   Before we left La Paz, Cyndee managed to talk our friend Dale Torres aboard Last Hurrah out of a frozen 12lb turkey he’d been carrying around in his freezer since last Thanksgiving. Cyndee’s birthday came around just at the time that the turkey was no longer keeping our beers cold, so we cooked up turkey dinner for our private little neighborhood. (When Dale caught up with us in Puerto Escondido he told us that removing that 12lb block of ice turkey caused his freezer to work so much harder he had to buy another frozen turkey to fill the space.)

   The crew aboard Impossible taught Zugvogel how to find and catch clams. They in turn taught us. Well, they really taught Cyndee, because I’ve never been able to catch more than one clam every 3 hours, which makes it difficult to provide dinner. Cyndee caught on and pretty soon Mike and Cyndee had about 30 clams. Emerald Star had left and two other boats had entered our anchorage: John and Judy aboard Blu Holm, and Jerry and Astrid aboard Detatchment. We all met aboard Zugvogel for a massive clam bake. Everyone (except me) has become so addicted to clam hunting that the only way we can find any is if we get into a harbor ahead of Impossible and Zugvogel. The crew aboard Impossible is actually so sick of clams that they only hunt them for their cat! For some reason our Mexican fishing licenses say it’s illegal us to catch clams in Mexico. Must be a mistake…

   June 1 ^st, we weighed anchor in the morning to set sail for Puerto Escondido by way of Bahia Candeleros. We hoisted the sail as we weighed anchor, and enjoyed a beautiful sail all day. In the afternoon we caught our first Dorado (Mahi Mahi), and lost our first Dorado. Upon inspection it became obvious that the loss of dinner (not to mention the $8 lure) was due to a poorly tied knot. I had tied the knot.

   We entered Candeleros and anchored under sail without ever starting the engine. The famous windless Sea of Cortez indeed! While we were busy congratulating each other on our great seamanship, a strong wind picked up and swung us so that our stern was only two boat lengths from the steep cliffs of the shore. The wind continued to build until at about 25 knots, we grudgingly fired up the diesel, hauled up the anchor and moved away from shore to reanchor. I knew all the great sailors of years past were looking down and shaking their heads in disappointment. The next morning we waited until the breeze built and sailed for Puerto Escondido just 6 miles north. By noon we had traversed the narrow, shallow straight entering this large, almost entirely landlocked "hurricane safe" harbor and anchored close to Emerald Star.

   Puerto Escondido is a large harbor bordered by 6000 foot high mountains to the West and smaller hills to the North, South and East. These walls are supposed to diminish the winds of a hurricane and prevent large seas from building. They also served to prevent any breeze when there was no hurricane, so it was hot as hell. Several times a development had been started ashore, complete with streets, streetlights, sidewalks, pads for expensive homes and even a small marina. When the developers went broke, the marina was torn out and the streets left to return to dirt. About ½ mile up the dirt road was a trailer park, complete with a swimming pool, restaurant and a small general store with some fresh produce, ice and plenty of cold beer. They sold a lot of beer.

   We were required to check in with the Port Captain 15 miles up the road, but the cruising books made it sound as if we would suffer dire consequences if we tried to anchor off the beach there. We took a taxi into town to check in but discovered that the anchorage had several boats resting easily. It was an unprotected anchorage, but with a little prudence it would be safe. (we subsequently anchored there to check out and again for ice with no problem) On the way back we stopped to visit with Victor, our Federali friend. The taxi driver seemed terrified the whole time and couldn’t wait to get out of there.

   We made arrangements to have our mail sent to the trailer park office and hung around for a couple of weeks waiting. Zugvogel and Blu Holm arrived a couple of days after we did. Cyndee finally caught a fish we could eat and Mike came over to identify it for us. It was a Golden Croaker, a fish illegal to sell in the U.S., but listed in the book as excellent edibility. It was delicious. They are called croaker because that’s the sound they make in the water. At night we could hear them all around the boat. After our fish dinner, they seemed especially loud and getting louder. I raised the boarding ladder, closed the lifeline gate and told Cyndee they knew what we did. We were doomed.

   Mike and I were low on cash and had expected to hit the ATM in Loreto, but discovered that there was no ATM. Mike needed to do some business in La Paz, and I really wanted to get some 12volt fans for the boat before we went much further, so Mike and I decided to take the bus to La Paz for cash, etc. Only about 5 hours each way. We stood on the main road for two mornings watching the bus just scream by us. Finally we caught a ride to the Loreto bus station to find out what was up. The buses were full and would be until "manana." In Mexico, "manana" doesn’t mean tomorrow, it just means "not today" so we rented a brand new Volkswagen Beetle. It was great. They still make VW bugs in Mexico and I don’t think they’ve retooled since 1975. They’re frozen in time. We got to La Paz, got money and stayed in a fleabag motel. We did our shopping in the morning and rushed back. Cash is getting expensive.

   The heat in Escondido was just too much, so we sailed out to the islands just outside. About 10 degrees cooler and plenty of breeze. In Ballandra Bay, our friends aboard Priority brought us two big squid fillets. Calimari that night was delicious, but once the sun was down Cyndee noticed that the uncooked fillet was glowing. Really. Bright blue. The light was so bright I could read by it. We didn’t eat any more Calimari, but it made good bait.

   Our mail still had not arrived in Escondido, but we got a message via ham radio that Lachesa was waiting for us up north in Santa Rosalia before heading across the Sea of Cortez to San Carlos on the mainland. We could always pick up the mail on the way back, so off we went. We stopped in San Juanico for the night, but the water was full of jellyfish and the swell had the boat rolling terribly. As soon as the sun was up, we were out of there. Since we are determined to sail, we naturally had to head AWAY from our destination. Our plan was to head out into the Sea of Cortez and tack back in toward Santa Rosalia later that night. At about 3:00am we made our tack. It turned out that had we not tacked and just held our course, we would have made San Carlos 3 HOURS SOONER than we did Santa Rosalia! Well, we were going to visit Lachesa anyway. At about 5:00am we spotted a commercial fishing boat 10 miles off our port bow. It altered course and headed straight for us. Incredibly, he crossed so close to our bow that I had to change course to avoid a collision. We’d heard about these boats playing chicken with the yachties, but it really pissed me off. We arrived in Santa Rosalia harbor that evening and anchored just as the sun set. We were asleep early so we could begin exploring early the next day.

   Santa Rosalia harbor is a small, crowded working harbor that serves as home to over 500 pongas, a handful of large shrimpers, the trans-Cortez car ferry, a Navy pier, a fuel wharf for the national oil company and a small 12 boat marina. The water inside the harbor was the worst we’ve seen and obviously contained some sewage. Anchoring yachts are expected to find a space somewhere in the triangle described by the marina, the navy pier and the fuel wharf. The marina was full (Lachesa in one of the slips) and the several yachts already at anchor were too close to each other with too little anchor chain deployed. We elected to anchor a little farther out where there was a little more room. Depending upon the wind direction, we were either too close to the Navy pier for the occasional patrol boat to get in, or too far out into the channel for the weekly fuel barge and tug to get by. If either happened, we would move. For the moment, we wanted to get checked in with the Port Captain and Immigration, and see Richard and Janice from Lachesa.

   Santa Rosalia was a French copper mining town from 1868-1885. Many of the houses are French Colonial. The town church is a prefabricated iron building designed by Eiffel in 1884, built in 1887 and exhibited in Paris with the Eiffel tower in 1889. It was shipped to Santa Rosalia in 1897. Not surprisingly, it consists of large iron plates all bolted together to form the walls and roof. The interior is rather Spartan compared to some of the churches we’ve seen in Mexico. The church itself is not terribly spectacular, but at 7:00pm each evening a huge crowd gathers in front. There is no special service, but at the curb there is a form of worship. At 7:00pm each evening the hot dog stand at the curb of the street in front of this famous church opens for business. For less than a dollar, you get a hot dog wrapped in bacon, deep fried in oil, smothered in onions, tomatoes, catsup, mustard, cheese, peppers and lots of mayo all served on a Mexican style roll. The place was always mobbed. There were no tables, there were no chairs. You bought your hot dog and soda, sat on the curb to eat, then went back for another. It was great!

   Santa Rosalia is now a fishing town. The ponga fishermen head out in the early evening, fish all night and begin returning at about 2:00 or 3:00am. Squid was the catch of the season, and the volume of squid these guys caught was unbelievable. Each evening two or three hundred pongas would head out to sea with a crew of two and return with about 500lbs of cleaned squid ready to be shipped. They were met at the dock by a crew with scales and a fleet of refrigerated 18 wheelers ready to haul the evenings catch away. It was hard to believe that this part of the ocean could support the quantity of squid being taken from it. After a night of fishing, the crews slept in their makeshift huts at the waters edge or under the pier in rooms they had tried to construct from scrap lumber nailed to the wooden pier supports. The whole town was geared toward this industry and kept the appropriate hours. At breakfast time, roadside stands were packed with tired fishermen, but most places were closed by lunch. If the weather was bad, the pongas would begin returning to the marina early, and without a catch. It got to the point that we could predict bad weather approaching by how early the fishermen returned. Unfortunately we had not learned this forecasting technique by the second night at anchor.

   The storm hit at about 4:30am. By 5:00am the winds were holding stead at 30 knots and gusting as high as 47. We were protected from the building seas by the sea wall of the harbor, but there was no protection from the wind. Or from the anchoring conditions. Three boats dragged their anchors. Stone Soup started dragging toward the sea wall and about 30 pongas. John couldn’t get his engine started until he was already crashed into the pongas. Fortunately, the pongas acted like ping pong balls absorbing the shock of the collision. Unfortunately, when John got his engine started and in gear, he was in the mooring lines for all these pongas and promptly wound them up in his prop. This caused enough stress on the shaft coupling that it broke and the whole prop shaft slit out of the boat. It hit the rudder and stopped, but he was in trouble. Two pongas roared over in all of this and tied onto Stone Soup’s bow. They pulled John off the pongas at full throttle and hauled him across the marina to a shrimper wharf and tied him up. John was safe, but during all of this Wingstar let go and was headed for the boats tied up in the marina.

   Wingstar is a steel sailboat about 55 feet long and weighing in at about 30 tons! He got his engine running and put the boat in gear at full throttle. He started dragging the anchor through the bottom of the harbor just to keep control of the boat. He didn’t even see Pamda Bear, a 28 foot wooden sailboat anchored directly in front of him as he charged straight for it. Only the shouts of the crews aboard the boats in the marina caused him to alter course and saved the little sailboat. He spent the rest of the storm dragging his anchor through the bottom of the harbor. Once he had control of his boat, he did an excellent job, although he explained the next morning that he and his crew had learned a lot about the boat and themselves. The boat came though fine, but he wasn’t sure about he and his crew.

   Margarita, a Westsail 42 was tied to the end of the marina docks. All of a sudden there was a loud crash (which we couldn’t hear over the wind) and she was moving. One of the dock cleats she was tied to ripped out of the dock and she began to swing around toward the rocks. Several of the people in the marina got a hold of her and pulled her around to the other side and secured her. No damage to Margarita. The dock cleat had only been held on the dock with a couple of small wood screws.

   Two other boats and we were anchored a little further out in the channel. Departure was anchored next to us and Cricket was on the other side of Departure. We knew both of these boats and crews from our cruising so far. We had all moved to our cockpits to maintain an anchor watch. I had our engine running and in gear just idling forward to take the strain off the anchor. When serious gusts blew up, I could give it a little throttle and keep the bow into the wind. I and the captain of Departure were looking at each other when all of a sudden he was slipping past me. We both looked a little confused for a moment as he was moving past. "You’re dragging!" I announced. He had come to the same conclusion and jumped to his wheel. He already had the engine running, so he put it in gear and gave it a lot of throttle. He began to move forward, dragging his anchor through the bottom like Wingstar. Instead of heading straight, he turned to cross about a boatlength in front of our bow! This is not a terribly good technique since as he drags his anchor across the bottom, he will hook our anchor chain and pull it along with him. Then we will be tangled up together with no control and nothing holding us to the bottom and we will both end up on the rocks. I began to get nervous.

   "Don’t cross my bow!" I yelled over and over.

   "I don’t know what else to do?" He finally yelled back.

   "TURN YOUR WHEEL!"

   He did and began to move away from me. I didn’t wait for him to swing back. I put throttle all the way forward and dragged my own anchor off to starboard to get away. I hauled it way out into the middle of the harbor where I was all alone and let it set. Safe again. Departure kept dragging, then motoring forward and then dragging back again. Finally he hauled up his anchor (no small task in this wind) and headed out to reset it. He could head out to an unoccupied part of the harbor and be all alone. At this point it didn’t matter if we were in the way of a barge entering sometime next week. We could all reanchor after the storm. But wait! He’s headed toward us! Unbelievably, he anchored directly in front of us and ended up only a boat length away from our bow! This means that if he drags again, he will almost certainly hit us. I couldn’t believe it. By now the storm was letting up. In another 30 minutes it was all over. The strong part of the storm had lasted less then an hour. When we were sure it was all over and we were safe, Cyndee and I headed below for a little sleep. The kids hadn’t even woken once. That afternoon we moved back out of the channel. Seven days later we were able to get a slip in the marina. Instead of tying to the dock cleats, we tied directly to the pilings.

   August 2 ^nd was Christina’s 8^th birthday. On the first we had a pot luck dinner party to celebrate. Our friend Irene aboard Argo turned 47 the day before, so we surprised her with a combined party. The next day she took Christina out shopping and bought her a new dress, ice cream and gum. Christie had a great time.

   We’d been in the marina for about 5 days working on the boat when the next storm came though. This happened in the afternoon and was easy to see coming. We doubled up on dock lines and helped everyone else get secure. There were only a couple of boats in the anchorage. Margarita was one of them. Bob had sailed across to San Carlos to get the bottom painted and then returned. He was in town, and since he was a single hander there was nobody aboard his boat. When the wind hit, Margarita started to drag toward the rocks. Cyndee saw her moving and yelled. Kelly aboard Refuge was already in his dinghy when I jumped in and told him I was going with him. Jim from Argonaut jumped in behind me and so did the captain from Malaga (whose name I can’t remember). We headed off for Bob’s boat. Margarita’s anchor had briefly reset and she had stopped moving. When we got there, Kelly stayed in the dinghy while the rest of us jumped on board. Jim and the captain from Malaga went to the bow to let more chain out and I went to the cockpit to see if we could start the engine. The boat was locked up so we decided to haul out the second anchor. I climbed back into the dinghy with Kelly while he maneuvered under the bow of the heaving boat. Jim lowered the second anchor to us and we took it out several boatlengths with the dinghy. The wind was coming straight in the mouth of the harbor, so the seas were really building. Kelly and I took several big waves of this cesspool water over the bow of his dinghy and our heads. I was just glad I didn’t have any cuts or scratches. When we got out far enough, we heaved the anchor over while Jim tightened up the line. About this time Bob showed up and got a ponga fisherman to bring him out to his boat. He started the engine and took over while we headed back to the dock for a shower and a real good scrubbing. An hour later the storm passed and all was well. We were getting a little tired of the Sea of Cortez. Despite the season, it was time to start heading south again. While the Sea is very pretty, is was very crowded, very hot and seemed to be home to the kind of weather everybody was there to escape. Cyndee and I agreed to start heading south again. We would stop in some of the anchorages we had missed on the way up. Despite the protestations that this was the dangerous time to attempt a crossing of the southern Sea of Cortez, we intended to be in Mazatlan by September 1 ^st.

Jim, Cyndee, Christina and Chaz Crosby

s/v TOUCAN

END OF TRAVELS OF TOUCAN PART 5