Back in The Land of Oz Maz!

The more time we spend in Mazatlan, the more we LIKE it!
After a couple of nights anchored at Stone Island we headed up the whopping eight miles of coast to Mazatlan's pleasure boat harbor.
This time we parked at the Singlar Marina ~ a sister marina of the one we stayed at in San Blas.We are surrounded by friends.
The social life is insane.
We need a calendar just for activities.
A mid-afternoon beer break with "Lovely Reta" and "Eyes of The World".
Chatting with Bill and Diane of "Wirewalker".


A really long walk into town to do a little geocaching.
With one being at "my place"!
Then walking even further and further in attempts to find the no-longer open microbrewery...
Miles.
Feet hurt.

Then joining Bill and Mary Jane of "Great Max" "Grey Max" (who are sort of condo sitting) for hora feliz.
Cool view from the condo!


"Meerkat" is pointed out for you.




Cool view of the pool.


Then Don and Lenna of "The Grand Wazoo" (formerly of "Windward Luv" in our old cruising days) joined the impromptu hora feliz.And then...
We were joined by Deb and Joe of "Pathetic Jade "Pacific Jade" and then by Tom of "Tis Magic".
Deb, MJ and I went for a little dip, complete with plastic to go hora feliz cups.Back to the condo where the hora feliz turned into an all evening feliz.
Well until 11 pm anyway.

Boat Comparisons

We do it all the time.
How much fuel do you hold?
How much water does your watermaker make an hour?
How many amps do your solar panels make?
How fast do you motor?
What kind of bottom paint did you use?
Blah, blah, blah.
But can you imagine the fuel consumption and trash generation that thing has?

Stone Island!

We left Isla Isabel at 5 am one day.
I think it was a Sunday.
Could be.
We had smooth, calm seas and little wind in the morning.

And this tired little visitor.
He stayed on the lifeline until Jim had to go up on the cabintop to retrieve the loose mainsail halyard...
Hmmmmm... wonder how long that had been hanging loose?

As we got closer to Mazatlan, the wind picked up.
And picked up some more.
Awesome Jim had put a 2nd reef in the main when we first pulled it up "just in case".
Well, helps to listen to the weather forecast!
I was happy to have that 2nd reef in as we ended up with 20-25 knots of wind on our port bow.
We were still making good time even with the wind chop and seas and dropped anchor at Stone Island twelve hours later.
All in all a good quick trip!

"Lovely Reta" had overnighted up the night before, and "Eyes of The World" was in the process of doing an overnighter and arrived the next morning.
So off to the beach to explore!



Debby had a fresh OJ cocktail with a cool monkey straw.
And now the straw resides with the rest of my party supplies!


Nice calm anchorage!And since the water was a chilly 66-72 degrees we weren't sad to see no boogie board waves...

Lots of locals out having fun, as it was the beginning of Semana Santa ~ the party time around Easter.


Lots of local police too...



We were in search of beer for John and ice cream for me.At the third tienda we found both.
John was happy.
I was happy.
Debby was not.
She picked out a pink fruit bar.
I was smart and picked out a white one, knowing it was coconut.
Pink could be anything.
Well, it was really, really icky.
The guy in the store thought it was chermoya chili.
Or maybe chayote chili.
Whatever.
I tried to feed it to a street dog and the street dog wouldn't even eat it.

The area around Stone Island was a lot bigger than I had thought.


I thought it was just palapas on the beach, but there were beautiful vegetable gardens, houses, tractors, horses, chickens and even a pig sleeping under a tree.

Mas Disneyland Isla Isabel!

But wait, there’s more!

We enjoyed some of our San Blas shrimp (quite the oxymoron for this size of shrimp!)!











I know I mentioned the water clarity…Incredible snorkeling!
We saw moray eels ~ one right under the boat when we were cleaning the bottom!
We saw clown fish, blue fish with bright iridescent blue spots, turquoise and pink parrot fish, blue damsels, blue and orange damsels, striped tang and my favorite ~ spotted rays!

And how cool the pinnacles are.






Looks like the Matterhorn at Disneyland, doesn’t it?




We watched the black frigates torment what looked like an albino frigate.We enjoyed our time with John and Debby!Possibly enjoyed this particular evening a tad too much?
What fun this place is!

Disneyland! Isla Isabella Again!

The true Mexican name for this incredible island is “Isla Isabel“.
I was told by Raul that it has been Americanized to “Isla Isabella“.

I sort of thought it was like Disneyland.
The water was so clear, it was like being on that dopey submarine ride.

Only more fish here.
Amazing fish!
All colors.
Turquoise, bright blue, orange, pink, iridescent, amazing.
(So sad to not have an under-water camera anymore…)
Awesome snorkeling ~ especially with the 80 degree water!

And the bird life is not so bad either!
Along with the daily whale sightings…

This time we anchored out at the pinnacles.
And had to re-anchor due to having our chain wrapped around rocks.
But with the visibility and clarity of the water, no problem!


We did a hike with John and Debby and also Jeff and Linda of “Curari”.
We were amazed at how brown the vegetation is now.
It was so green in January!



But the birds are still in force.
Babies, adults, juveniles and even un-hatched eggs.













Frigates, gulls, pelicans and boobies with all colors of feet!



We hiked past the crater lake and out to the cliffs and beach overlooking the anchorage.Where the boobies nest.
This one showed us her egg.We were amazed to see yellow feet, green feet and several different shades of blue.















We saw a baby being fed.A baby the size of it’s mommy…

We saw researchers tagging, measuring and weighing the babies.




Incredible, amazing, beautiful, awesome.
I am running out of adjectives to describe this experience…


We saw male frigates in their full glory.












And don’t forget the ever entertaining iguanas!

















What a I can’t think of any new adjectives! wonderful place!

Leaving San Blas

Well you can’t just leave San Blas without having eaten tacos…

So we, Monty of “Heavenly Star”, Gordon and Miriam of “Anwagomi”, John and Debby of “Lovely Reta” and us, Jim and Heather of “Meerkat” all went into town our last night for said tacos.

But first a few parts were needed, a few buildings were visited and a few streets were walked.








And a puppy was not rescued…
As much as we were all quite enamored of it…




And tacos!
Yum.

The next morning at first light we motored out of the estuary on our way further north, along with “Lovely Reta”.Beautiful morning with wonderful cloud cover.
Calm seas.
Little wind.
Later we were able to have full sail up and motorsail along nicely between 8 and 10 knots.
Adios San Blas!