Nov. 18-24th Cabo to Los Frailes to Mazatlan
November 18th – 24th – Cabo to Los Frailes - Mazatlan
Cabo San Lucas – a great place to go if you’re into lots of energetic goings on. We anchored in the middle of the bay in front of a strip of resort hotels. So in one direction we looked at long sandy beaches with umbrellas, pyjama wearing Mexicans selling t-shirts to the people under the umbrellas. Tony was pleased to see them because he was wondering where all of the pyjama wearing Mexicans were.
Behind us was an incredible rock formation sculpted by the constant ocean surge. An incredible hole drilled right through one of the rocks through which resounded thousands of pounds of green water. I saw some young boys tempting the dreaded surge, then running back screaming as it threatened to smash them back into the rocks.
In between and all around us was the constant buzzing of jet skis, motor boats whizzing around at high speed, parasailors coming and going, water taxis playing chicken with the jet skis, and then on the second day add to that mix 4 huge world class cruise ships and all of their tenders coming and going in between. (No I didn’t like it there)
So, we left – heading for Cabo Los Frailes, which we heard from other cruisers and Charlies Charts was a simple 45 miles around the corner and offered a quiet anchorage with great snorkeling. We left early in the morning 05.45, expecting to reach Los Frailes in the late afternoon. ON THE SAME DAY.
We were having such a pleasant trip, motoring along at our usual 5 knots at 2000 revs until we were presented with the perfect sailing conditions – quite suddenly, but we were up for it. We set the sails with single reefed main and full genoa with about 15 – 20 knots of southeasterly and flat seas – we quickly reached 6.5 knots, reefed the main down again to 2 reefs and continued to fly along for about another half hour – and then – nada – gone. Oh well the motoring was fairly pleasant, so we just put everything away and continued to motor along to the ‘corner’ Punta Arroya de Villorama. As we approached we saw what must have been some kind of tide line – to be a little more specific, what we saw was a white wall. Well we’ve seen such things before and they usually mean a tide line because at this corner there’s likely to be something like that. Fifteen minutes later we are pounding into 6 – 8 foot waves coming around the corner from the north west. At this point we thought we were dealing with Punta stuff. These puntas (points, capes) often deal out nasty waves. Another hour of getting nowhere fast and we decided to turn around and try another day.
We had to go quite a long way back until we found a brand new marina, Marina at Puerto Los Cabos, which we found thanks to Angus and Rolande on Periclees. We met Angus and Rolande very briefly back in San Diego, and then again on the radio as we were heading for Punta Arroya de bloody Villorama. They also turned around and led us into the new marina. When its finished it will be absolutely beautiful and will cater to the sport fishers who leave their boats in Mexico and come in for the fishing seasons.
Up the ramp from the visitors dock to which we were tied (the only boat there) were a few houses in disrepair – (we see a lot of that disrepair here) and a few restaurants claiming to serve international menus to ----- nobody. I’m sure all of those owners are looking forward to the pending coupe when the rich gringos come in droves to the new marina.
Next day we headed for Punta Arroya again – determined this time to keep going. We did and the zig zag pattern we left on our chart plotter proves that we did about 25 miles of tacking to make 10 miles headway.
It was worth it. We really liked Los Frailes – very quiet though windy, very good snorkeling – lots of different types of fish that we usually only see in tropical aquariums; parrot fish, puffer fish, long transparent needle fish and many multi-colored beautifully shaped elegant fish.
A big turtle paid us a visit, our boat was constantly surrounded by fish – no matter what time of day or night. We would shine our big flashlight out onto the water at night and thousands of large fish eyes shone back at us.
We enjoyed a couple of evenings with new friends – Rolande and Angus hosted a lovely lobster dinner on Periclees. Bonnie and Jim from Murray Grey joined us and we were pleased to listen to the experience that Jim and Rolande and Angus were willing to pass on to us newbies. This is their second cruising venture.
The next night we had Rolande and Angus together with Pam and Tom from Kewao over for happy hour. All ex-cruisers say that what they loved so much about their cruising experience was the people that they met. I understand what they mean. Even though we meet these wonderful people for such short times, the times we have together are very good. We seem to see each other very clearly very quickly.
Jim and Bonnie took us for a one mile walk through a couple of fences and away from the beach to a bar – which to anyone who didn’t know would have thought it derelict. Jim was sure that all was well, went to the fridge and took out the beer and told us that the owner or his daughter would show up pretty soon. The place hadn’t seen a broom or mop or even a washer up for a long time, but we found a couple of plastic garden chairs and sat, drank our beer. Eventually the owner’s daughter arrived – a lovely young comely woman who offered us ceviche to go with our beer. Tony and I looked at each other skeptically wondering if we dared eat anything in this very dirty place. Oh what the hell - It was very good. It was a fairly hot homemade salsa with small chunks of lobster cut up into it raw. The salsa marinates the fish and kinda cooks it. It was delicious and as long as we could keep the flies from sharing it with us, it was very appetizing. Eventually of course the flies won, but we’d had enough by then.
We left Los Frailes at about 0100 on the 22nd heading over to Mazatlan. We like to time our departures so that we arrive at our destination in the daytime. Most of the time it works. We had a pretty unevently crossing with no wind most of the time. Unfortunately our autohelm quit working – in fact it fell apart on one of my watches and I managed to put it back together. It fell apart again on Tony’s next watch but this time it was busted proper. So we hand steered for about 80 miles. I hate hand steering on legs, especially at night. I find that I can’t look around as well as I can when the boat is self steering.
Most of the people we know coming over to Mazatlan come to the El Cid marina or the Mazatlan marina.
We decided to come a bit further along to the Mazatlan harbour and anchor out. This is our second night here. We’re anchored outside an old Club Nautico which was probably a pretty grand place back in the 60’s. This is on the edge of Old Town, Mazatlan. All along the waterfront is evidence of much better times. Its sad to see this. The focus of the visitors is now New Town – where the new marinas and hotels are, and as there is not enough money coming here it is all falling into disrepair.
Once again we are in a new community, the manager of Club Nautico is Miguel, he keeps a fridge stocked with beer, the water still runs in the showers and toilets – but that’s all you can say for them, he employs his daughter and son in law. There are a few resident live-aboards, Jack from Chicago who looks a lot like Hulk Hogan and lives very close to shore on a Catalina 34. Jack came into the anchorage 3 years ago from Los Angeles cruising and expecting to keep going. His dinghy was stolen one night, and though he recovered it, he did not get his outboard motor back. So without an outboard or the funds to replace it – he stayed. The batteries in his boat are now flat and he doesn’t think he can replace them so the boat’s not going anywhere. His natural friendliness and charm has brought him a new Mexican girlfriend and he now has no desire to leave anyway. He has excellent Spanish and gets on great with everyone.
Last night in the ‘club bar’ – a few plastic tables and chairs outside the fridge we met Miguel’s family, Larry and Lena from Alaska who are cruising south on Nomad with their dog Morgan, Jacque, a 60 something musician who comes here to play an engagement every year at this time at a hotel nearby. He lives in a mobile home parked across the road and keeps a 47’ boat on Saltspring Island. We also met an American who is currently traveling with a Cook and a Cabin Boy. The Cook is the 14 year old Cabin Boy’s mother and they are traveling south to Nicaragua where they are going back packing. I’m so impressed with the creative way people have of doing things.
So today we got on the local ‘suicide’ bus and headed into town. Jack told us there was a real market in town and an internet café. Both of these things were exactly where Jack said they would be and the bus ride was very exciting. Sometimes it was a very good idea to close my eyes. I think that the bus had shape-shifting abilities.
The market was everything I hoped it would be. It was a city block Municipal Market similar to those I’ve seen in Europe and the Caribbean. It was packed full of every type of fruit and vegetable stall, meat and fish. Breads, cheeses, teas – everything. I loved it and now have a very impressive hanging hammock full of fruit and veggies.
We also found an internet store where we could plug in our own computer for a dollar an hour.
There is a beautiful cathedral in the center of town with a park like plaza in front of it. Mass was being said in the cathedral with a pretty healthy congregation in attendance at about noon on a Monday. The town is a buzzing, healthy wonderful place full of Mexicans going about their lives and not caring very much about the gringo.
Perhaps the market stalls selling souvenirs were a little pushy, but I’ve experienced far worse in resort towns. We were pretty heavily laden when we left the market so we took advantage of a cab which saw that we needed him. Quanta es - $40 pesos - $4 bucks. We jumped in and thanked our lucky stars. He did stop about half a block from Club Nautico – maybe that was all we got for $4. We laughed and waved goodbye and thanked him.
We’ve been warned by experienced cruisers to check all fresh fruits and veggies before bringing them aboard for unwanted visitors – la cucarachas/cockroaches. I really hope I checked them well enough. I didn’t want to wash everything because that speeds up the decomposition which doesn’t need much help in this heat.Oh, did I mention that its hot – God I must sweat out about 10 pounds of water every day – just as well beer’s cheap otherwise I’d look like beef jerky by now.
Cabo San Lucas – a great place to go if you’re into lots of energetic goings on. We anchored in the middle of the bay in front of a strip of resort hotels. So in one direction we looked at long sandy beaches with umbrellas, pyjama wearing Mexicans selling t-shirts to the people under the umbrellas. Tony was pleased to see them because he was wondering where all of the pyjama wearing Mexicans were.
Behind us was an incredible rock formation sculpted by the constant ocean surge. An incredible hole drilled right through one of the rocks through which resounded thousands of pounds of green water. I saw some young boys tempting the dreaded surge, then running back screaming as it threatened to smash them back into the rocks.
In between and all around us was the constant buzzing of jet skis, motor boats whizzing around at high speed, parasailors coming and going, water taxis playing chicken with the jet skis, and then on the second day add to that mix 4 huge world class cruise ships and all of their tenders coming and going in between. (No I didn’t like it there)
So, we left – heading for Cabo Los Frailes, which we heard from other cruisers and Charlies Charts was a simple 45 miles around the corner and offered a quiet anchorage with great snorkeling. We left early in the morning 05.45, expecting to reach Los Frailes in the late afternoon. ON THE SAME DAY.
We were having such a pleasant trip, motoring along at our usual 5 knots at 2000 revs until we were presented with the perfect sailing conditions – quite suddenly, but we were up for it. We set the sails with single reefed main and full genoa with about 15 – 20 knots of southeasterly and flat seas – we quickly reached 6.5 knots, reefed the main down again to 2 reefs and continued to fly along for about another half hour – and then – nada – gone. Oh well the motoring was fairly pleasant, so we just put everything away and continued to motor along to the ‘corner’ Punta Arroya de Villorama. As we approached we saw what must have been some kind of tide line – to be a little more specific, what we saw was a white wall. Well we’ve seen such things before and they usually mean a tide line because at this corner there’s likely to be something like that. Fifteen minutes later we are pounding into 6 – 8 foot waves coming around the corner from the north west. At this point we thought we were dealing with Punta stuff. These puntas (points, capes) often deal out nasty waves. Another hour of getting nowhere fast and we decided to turn around and try another day.
We had to go quite a long way back until we found a brand new marina, Marina at Puerto Los Cabos, which we found thanks to Angus and Rolande on Periclees. We met Angus and Rolande very briefly back in San Diego, and then again on the radio as we were heading for Punta Arroya de bloody Villorama. They also turned around and led us into the new marina. When its finished it will be absolutely beautiful and will cater to the sport fishers who leave their boats in Mexico and come in for the fishing seasons.
Up the ramp from the visitors dock to which we were tied (the only boat there) were a few houses in disrepair – (we see a lot of that disrepair here) and a few restaurants claiming to serve international menus to ----- nobody. I’m sure all of those owners are looking forward to the pending coupe when the rich gringos come in droves to the new marina.
Next day we headed for Punta Arroya again – determined this time to keep going. We did and the zig zag pattern we left on our chart plotter proves that we did about 25 miles of tacking to make 10 miles headway.
It was worth it. We really liked Los Frailes – very quiet though windy, very good snorkeling – lots of different types of fish that we usually only see in tropical aquariums; parrot fish, puffer fish, long transparent needle fish and many multi-colored beautifully shaped elegant fish.
A big turtle paid us a visit, our boat was constantly surrounded by fish – no matter what time of day or night. We would shine our big flashlight out onto the water at night and thousands of large fish eyes shone back at us.
We enjoyed a couple of evenings with new friends – Rolande and Angus hosted a lovely lobster dinner on Periclees. Bonnie and Jim from Murray Grey joined us and we were pleased to listen to the experience that Jim and Rolande and Angus were willing to pass on to us newbies. This is their second cruising venture.
The next night we had Rolande and Angus together with Pam and Tom from Kewao over for happy hour. All ex-cruisers say that what they loved so much about their cruising experience was the people that they met. I understand what they mean. Even though we meet these wonderful people for such short times, the times we have together are very good. We seem to see each other very clearly very quickly.
Jim and Bonnie took us for a one mile walk through a couple of fences and away from the beach to a bar – which to anyone who didn’t know would have thought it derelict. Jim was sure that all was well, went to the fridge and took out the beer and told us that the owner or his daughter would show up pretty soon. The place hadn’t seen a broom or mop or even a washer up for a long time, but we found a couple of plastic garden chairs and sat, drank our beer. Eventually the owner’s daughter arrived – a lovely young comely woman who offered us ceviche to go with our beer. Tony and I looked at each other skeptically wondering if we dared eat anything in this very dirty place. Oh what the hell - It was very good. It was a fairly hot homemade salsa with small chunks of lobster cut up into it raw. The salsa marinates the fish and kinda cooks it. It was delicious and as long as we could keep the flies from sharing it with us, it was very appetizing. Eventually of course the flies won, but we’d had enough by then.
We left Los Frailes at about 0100 on the 22nd heading over to Mazatlan. We like to time our departures so that we arrive at our destination in the daytime. Most of the time it works. We had a pretty unevently crossing with no wind most of the time. Unfortunately our autohelm quit working – in fact it fell apart on one of my watches and I managed to put it back together. It fell apart again on Tony’s next watch but this time it was busted proper. So we hand steered for about 80 miles. I hate hand steering on legs, especially at night. I find that I can’t look around as well as I can when the boat is self steering.
Most of the people we know coming over to Mazatlan come to the El Cid marina or the Mazatlan marina.
We decided to come a bit further along to the Mazatlan harbour and anchor out. This is our second night here. We’re anchored outside an old Club Nautico which was probably a pretty grand place back in the 60’s. This is on the edge of Old Town, Mazatlan. All along the waterfront is evidence of much better times. Its sad to see this. The focus of the visitors is now New Town – where the new marinas and hotels are, and as there is not enough money coming here it is all falling into disrepair.
Once again we are in a new community, the manager of Club Nautico is Miguel, he keeps a fridge stocked with beer, the water still runs in the showers and toilets – but that’s all you can say for them, he employs his daughter and son in law. There are a few resident live-aboards, Jack from Chicago who looks a lot like Hulk Hogan and lives very close to shore on a Catalina 34. Jack came into the anchorage 3 years ago from Los Angeles cruising and expecting to keep going. His dinghy was stolen one night, and though he recovered it, he did not get his outboard motor back. So without an outboard or the funds to replace it – he stayed. The batteries in his boat are now flat and he doesn’t think he can replace them so the boat’s not going anywhere. His natural friendliness and charm has brought him a new Mexican girlfriend and he now has no desire to leave anyway. He has excellent Spanish and gets on great with everyone.
Last night in the ‘club bar’ – a few plastic tables and chairs outside the fridge we met Miguel’s family, Larry and Lena from Alaska who are cruising south on Nomad with their dog Morgan, Jacque, a 60 something musician who comes here to play an engagement every year at this time at a hotel nearby. He lives in a mobile home parked across the road and keeps a 47’ boat on Saltspring Island. We also met an American who is currently traveling with a Cook and a Cabin Boy. The Cook is the 14 year old Cabin Boy’s mother and they are traveling south to Nicaragua where they are going back packing. I’m so impressed with the creative way people have of doing things.
So today we got on the local ‘suicide’ bus and headed into town. Jack told us there was a real market in town and an internet café. Both of these things were exactly where Jack said they would be and the bus ride was very exciting. Sometimes it was a very good idea to close my eyes. I think that the bus had shape-shifting abilities.
The market was everything I hoped it would be. It was a city block Municipal Market similar to those I’ve seen in Europe and the Caribbean. It was packed full of every type of fruit and vegetable stall, meat and fish. Breads, cheeses, teas – everything. I loved it and now have a very impressive hanging hammock full of fruit and veggies.
We also found an internet store where we could plug in our own computer for a dollar an hour.
There is a beautiful cathedral in the center of town with a park like plaza in front of it. Mass was being said in the cathedral with a pretty healthy congregation in attendance at about noon on a Monday. The town is a buzzing, healthy wonderful place full of Mexicans going about their lives and not caring very much about the gringo.
Perhaps the market stalls selling souvenirs were a little pushy, but I’ve experienced far worse in resort towns. We were pretty heavily laden when we left the market so we took advantage of a cab which saw that we needed him. Quanta es - $40 pesos - $4 bucks. We jumped in and thanked our lucky stars. He did stop about half a block from Club Nautico – maybe that was all we got for $4. We laughed and waved goodbye and thanked him.
We’ve been warned by experienced cruisers to check all fresh fruits and veggies before bringing them aboard for unwanted visitors – la cucarachas/cockroaches. I really hope I checked them well enough. I didn’t want to wash everything because that speeds up the decomposition which doesn’t need much help in this heat.Oh, did I mention that its hot – God I must sweat out about 10 pounds of water every day – just as well beer’s cheap otherwise I’d look like beef jerky by now.
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