In the fast lane...another passage under our belt

Mexicans love their music loud! After a 44 hrs passage, where the only sound you hear is coming from birds, winds, and our iron lady if we use it, we have arrived in the touristy part of Mazatlan. We are treating ourselves to the El Cid resort with 2 pools, cause it’s hot and humid, amigos, we are no longer in the dessert with dry heat but in the humid tropics. For $35/night  for our slip we get to use the resort with all its organized stuff, and I can stand all the buzy ness for about 2 days. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not above any luxuries, for sure not after a somewhat rough passage. We sailed 50% of the time, but the wind came directly from behind, and that assures you a rocky passage, where sleep does not seem to come. But we spotted our first whale, migrating north.

Tessa is observing that Mexican streets have a lot of trash, and that’s true, and for sure not very appealing. In resorts like this though, you don’t see it, as they have a gazillion Mexicans catering to mostly Americans and Canadians. Another observation is the general condition of sidewalks. Big portholes are common, and in our last town I almost bumped my head into barbed wire along the side walk.  I’m just to tall for this country, which lacks the annoying lawsuit culture, so just walk at your own risk.

Today we visited old town Mazatlan again, which we like a lot. Tomorrow, we will plan to set sail to Isla Isabella, the "mini Galapagos of Mexico". We loved it 2 years ago, and want to share it with Tessa again. The tricky part will be weather, but so far it looks good for a overnight stay there. In case we don't make it, and want to get a feel for it, you can read about our last visit here.

For now, I’m just parting with some pics of our last harbor Topolabambo, the dusty working town, and the world second largest deep water harbor. Really it’s hard to believe as it seems so sleepy. And some pics of colorful, old Mazatlan.

bus ride to Los Mochis, large town 30 min away

cocina economica, your choice for very simple meals

more money is spent around marinas

ah, the joy of pastries after an overnighter

Tessa trying to hail the shrimp boats on channel 16

 

Feeding the pigeons near the Basilica in Old Mazatlan

Hola, some perspective from Mexico!

In case you are wondering if we have been lazy on the beach, eating helados and street taco’s and drinking mageritas since we arrived a week ago….let me put that vacation  idea to rest !

The Bliss crew has been working non stop to get the boat launched in the water, getting all her boat systems ready to go, taking daily bus rides to provision, finding stuff that is hard to get in Guaymas,  spending a morning to get our Mexican phone working etc etc etc.

No complaints though: I feel alive, and we are all pretty happy to be back here. Mexican people are always very friendly, and adore kids. Tessa is getting used to being patted on her head wherever she goes.  She is also reconnecting with her boat life again, and was happy to find some of her old toys and plenty of books (even some Dutch ones from my childhood, thanks to my sister!). She is having a blast keeping a school journal and is just being her social self, inviting herself over to other boats. And here’s the joy of the sailing community: it doesn’t matter if you don’t speak each other language (our dock neighbors in Guaymas were from Brazil), or if you haven’t seen each other for a while, or just meet for the first time, the connections come easily.

We just finished our first overnight, 180 nautical miles and 34 hrs passage (yes, we are going at a walking pace) from Guaymas to Topolabambo, another coastal, non tourist working town.  Long hours, not enough sleep for the 2 captains aboard, but beautiful sunset, star gazing, seeing dolphins playing around our boat makes it all worth it. The “road” is less sailed here, and our chart of the port entrance was off, so we even run aground twice on our first passage (which we have only done once before here in Mexico)! Fortunately just mud. And the saying "cruising is fixing boats in exotic locations" proves to be true for us too…..we have a fresh water leak, and it’s on the to do list for our short stint here.

Bliss being launched on Tuesday evening

Tessa and I ended up watching an Independence Holiday parade during one of
groceries run in downtown Guaymas

Marina Fonatur in Guaymas where we did our prep in the water

street taco's for thanksgiving dinner

Bliss in the front, with Tod installing the radar on the mast

Leaving Guaymas at sunrise, many panga's and shrimp boats out

Raising the Mexican courtesy flag

everyone doing their own work during passage

Our route for the 1st passage, starting at the boat sign to the red marker
on the left. The chart orientation is North, but we are sailing South

calm seas makes for motor sailing and hanging out, still tethered in though
Dinghy is tied down on the foredeck

The yellow bag is our ditch bag for when we need to abandon ship.
As with our life raft, we never hope to use both items

stretching our legs in Topo, another coastal working town

Shoes, Summer trip pictures, and Mexico see you soon!

When we left the SF Bay Area in October 2014, we emptied and sorted though our small storage locker and sent it off to Tod's parents in Ohio. Mostly we sent papers, pictures, and sentimental stuff.  We both do not own much shoes, basically you see us wearing sandals as long as the weather permits it. If we go hiking here, we will wear our hiking shoes. It seems that when you are back to land life, a bit more variety in shoes is "required" (really self imposed). So all of our sudden, the shoe rack that came with the house is filling up. But soon, those sandals will come out again, as we will be flying to our beloved Bliss next month to do a "short" somewhat intense stint in the Sea or Cortez and hopefully Banderas Bay. We want to make sure that Tessa isn't forgetting her boat life, it's been 1.5 yrs since we sailed!

our Betsy travels during the last years, the blue Northern route is from this summer 2017
I don't really get it why Ohio is called Mid West....

Both Tod and I remark how fast land life goes. It has been almost 1 year since we left Italy and landed in Ohio for Thanksgiving. We bought our 1st house during the last year, enrolled Tessa in  school, and then it was summer! Time to fly back to the SF Bay Area to pick up our RV Betsy, connect again with friends, and drive her cross country to our current home town Shaker Heights, OH.

Instead of approximately 2400 miles direct route, we took the long tour, wondering up North into Washington State and BC, Canada to see our dear family, relatives and friends. Seven weeks and 5200 miles later (yep, that's a lot of miles!), we came home. Lots of mostly fun memories (only just one quick RV breakdown) of beautiful places and great encounters with familiar and new people. One comes to mind where we got invited to a birthday party in a city park in tiny Chester (population less than 800) in East Montana. We were treated as long time friends, having fun sliding and gliding, getting soaking wet. along with our kids in the hot summer. With stops in Wisconsin and Illinois we got the chance to reconnect with more of our family and relatives, good times!

Don't get me wrong about land life. We do love living in our old home in Shaker Heights,exploring
the area and making new friends in this community. But for me, variety is the spice of life, and mixing things up, no matter how much work that sometimes requires, feels good.

enjoying my sister's home town Port Townsend, WA  

visiting dear friends in very cute La Conner, WA

 Cascades state park

we love the Okanagan, BC area and our family there!

Pristine, ice cold Christina Lake, BC

library stop in Whitefish, Montana

Canola crops in Montana

Glacier NP

oath to Junior Ranger

one of the many Minnesota lakes

Betsy after 5200 miles in front of our home