December 18, 2004 - Departure from La Paz, Mexico
Day One
5:00 am - "beep, beep, beep"!!! We have replaced the last alarm clock (Fred's idea, not mine) with what is marketed as the "SONY Dream Machine", which I find to be a complete oxymoron since the damn thing interrupts dreams rather than instilling them as the name implies. Marketing...what a scam.
The weather reports call for 5-10 kt winds so we are expecting a fairly smooth ride. Unfortunately, we haven't even gotten out of the channel from La Paz and are already seeing 20 kt winds...so much for the weather report. Another scam job.
We arrive a Bahia de Muertos without incident, declare cocktail hour, make some grub, catch some snooze and get ready to head out in the morning for the 25 hour trip across the Sea of Cortez. This will be our first true open water crossing.
Day Two
6:30 am - No need to rise early as we can't arrive at the marina in Mazatlan before the office opens as we need our slip assignment. We head off and are met with some resistance in the form of six foot seas...bummer. No fishing AGAIN for Fred and out go the paravanes. The chart plotter is showing 25:27 hours til arrival. Not so bad. After five hours of trudging through wind and waves, the chart plotter STILL says 24:12 to arrival. What???? What happened to the five hours we've already been moving? It's like jogging on a treadmill. We've slowed to under 6 kts between the waves and the stabilizers. This is going to be a much longer trip than expected. Thor doesn't take the news too well.
The rest of the trip goes without incident or interest other than we have squid which have landed on the front deck. These must be Superman Squid as they are able to make giant leaps in a single bound. I'm just beginning my watch at 1:00 am, all is quiet, it's dark and I've just started watching "Star Trek, the Undiscovered Country", when the engine suddenly lurches up. Odd??? I immediately go and cut the throttle back only to have "something" jump on my hand. As the screaming begins and I start dancing around like some tribal fertility ritual, "something" jumps on my shirt. Now I'm screaming like Norman Bates just showed up. Fred finally makes an appearance to find out "what the hell is the matter" and "have we hit something???" The passageway between the salon and the pilothouse is fairly narrow and I pretty much plow Fred over trying to get out of the pilothouse as the "something" is still up there. After finding the lights, we discover that the "something" is a small bird which, obviously attracted to the pilothouse lights, decided to fly on in for a visit and accidentally landed on the throttle which set the sequence of terror into effect. Fred scoops him up, sends him packing out the window and all is well. Nothing like a little adrenaline rush to get you up and ready for watch.
We a
rrive at Marina El Cid, Mazatlan around
3:00 p.m., slightly over schedule from our original 7:00 am arrival
calculation. Oh well...the dogs are happy and this place has two pools,
one with a swim up bar. Alright!!! The boys get a quick walk around
the place, we grab our suits and head to the pool. It's Margaritaville.
We plan to stay here until 1/2/05 when we will depart for Puerto Vallarta,
Paradise Village.