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Day 10:

2475 miles to go…

We’re just starting Day 10 at sea and have surpassed our previous longest passage. We have about 2 more weeks to go, we estimate. So far we have been extremely lucky with the wind and weather and hope it continues.

Our strategy to head south paid off as we got south of 6 degrees south latitude. The wind picked up to a steady 18-22 knots from the south-southeast and we found the favorable equatorial current. We’ve been oscillating between a beam reach sail with double-reefed main, double-reefed jib and staysail and a more downwind run sailing wing and wing with the jib poled out to port. We’ve switched back and forth as the wind shifts to make as much westerly progress as possible. We’re pretty consistently seeing the boat make 6.5-7.5 knots. We keep saying this is a marathon not a sprint. We are sailing conservatively to keep the boat and crew happy.

There is quite a bit of swell running out of the south which as put it on our beam and creating some roll on the boat. It is manageable and not too uncomfortable except for the occasional large wave that hits us just right sending the boat over to starboard. If you are standing, you better have a wide stance with your knees slightly bent to keep from being thrown about the boat. This especially takes a bit of gymnastics when working in the galley, and I can feel the effects in my quads. No need to go to the gym here!

As I mentioned last time, our friend Dan on Kini Popo is out in front of us. He is sailing about a knot faster than us and making about 25 miles on us each day. So, he should arrive in the Marquesas a few days ahead of us. We are checking in with him several times a day via sat phone and all is good.

Each day has brought us blue skies with just some wispy clouds and nothing but blue ocean around us. Because the scenery is the same each day, it’s hard to fathom that we’ve already traveled over 1000 miles. There is still the occasional seabird which surprises me. I guess I need to brush up on my ornithology. Every night we get a couple of flying fish that make it onto the boat, and we have to evict the stinky buggers.

We haven’t seen a boat in several days since a container ship from Chile en route to Asia passed us a couple of miles in the distance one night. The officer on watch called us on the radio out of curiosity after we popped up on AIS. He was from Barcelona and chatted with Mike for about 10 minutes. He said he liked sailing when he was back home in Spain and was quite interested in where we had been and where we were going. He also relayed a current weather forecast to us, which was really nice. An ocean crossing in that large ship would be a whole different experience.

Mike & I have gotten in a pretty decent routine for our watches. After dinner, Mike is on from 8-midnight. I take over until 4am. Mike is back on from 4-8, and then I’m 8-noon. From noon to 8pm we’re both up together, which lets us do lunch and dinner together. It’s still hard to interrupt sleep after 4 hrs, but we are managing with a good amount of rest. On watch at night I like to listen to audiobooks or podcasts. As much as I like reading and have a ton of books on my tablet, I can’t stare at a screen for very long on the moving boat or I get a headache. Listening on the iPod in my pocket also lets me look and move around the boat easily.

We also downloaded an app with French lessons that Mike & I have both been listening to. I was finally feeling comfortable having conversations in Spanish, and now we have to learn a new language. My previous knowledge of French was to count to ten and a few words and phrases I picked up in books and movies. Although the islands have their own Polynesian language, the islands are French. We want to at least have some basic words and phrases and be able to deal with the officials in the islands. As I have traveled, I have always tried to learn a little of whatever language it is to be polite if nothing else. I’m finding French a bit easier than when I first started Spanish, as there are a lot of similar words and sentence structure between Spanish and French. The biggest challenge for me with French is the pronunciation. Mike is much better at getting it to sound right, just as he was with Spanish.

I was going to write more about our water maker and Hydrovane, but I think I will save it for next time. I’m going a bit cross eyed staring at the tiny screen and typing on my iPad while trying to keep myself from getting thrown around by the swell in the cockpit.

-Katie

Day 6:

Today at noon marks the beginning of our sixth day at sea. We have approximately 3000 miles before we make landfall in Nuku Hiva. When thinking about writing these blog posts, I tried to think about what might be interesting to read about. After all, we are just sitting on the boat day after day ticking off the miles. I could tell you about wind speed, sea conditions, sail configurations and the like. But, if I were reading that, frankly I would think it was a bit boring!

So, I’ll sum up our current state briefly and try to get to the more interesting parts of our journey. We’re currently sailing along at about 6.5 kts with the wind just forward if our beam. Right now we are sailing with a double reef in the main, full staysail and part of the jib. There is a bit of swell rolling us but manageable. We’ve seen pretty steady winds of 12-17 kts, so we haven’t turned the engine on at all, which is great. We’re still headed a bit south with the hopes of the winds clocking around more to the east, so we can turn west and run with the wind from behind all the way to the Marquesas.

We left Puerto Lucia in tandem with our friend Dan on Kini Popo. He has a very different boat than ours. We have an older, heavier boat made for offshore sailing. It can handle some pretty rough conditions relatively comfortably. Most of the newer boats (unless you have unlimited funds) aren’t designed for it. That is why you see so many 70’s and 80’s boats out there cruising. Dan’s boat is a newer production boat usually used more for coastal sailing and racing, not that some people don’t make offshore passages with them. It sails very differently than our boat. As it is much lighter, it is also much faster. We knew we would eventually end up out of VHF range with Dan, which happened after the third day. We’re still checking in with him twice a day via sat phone and all is well.

Dan did have a little excitement the third morning when he radioed us to tell us he had snagged a fishing line. We hadn’t seen any fishing or boat traffic all night, so it was likely some ghost fishing gear that had gotten away from a commercial fishing boat. Luckily, the conditions were quite calm that morning. As Mike & I stood by on the radio, Dan had to tie a line around himself and jump overboard with a knife to free the fishing gear from his sail drive. A scary proposition knowing there is no one else on the boat! But, in a manner of minutes Dan radioed us back to let us know that the line was free and he had a refreshing dip in the water. Whew!

Earlier that same day, Mike had decided to put his own fishing line in the water to see if we could catch something. He has been talking about catching a yellowfin tuna for almost two years now, as that was the last time we caught one coming down the Baja on our way to Cabo. Well, that afternoon Mike was rewarded for his patience when we picked up the perfect size yellowfin tuna for the two of us for dinner. I made some delicious tuna poke with fresh avocado.

We’ve hardly seen any boat traffic since our first night leaving Ecuador. It certainly makes the night watches easy when a quick scan of the horizon every twenty minutes or so confirms that there is nothing but ocean around us. Surprisingly, even 400+ miles from land, we are still seeing seabirds. I had a trio of three large, white birds fly parallel to the boat for several hours one night. There was no moon and not enough light to identify them but it was quite interesting. And, last night Mike had a brown seabird of some sort with orange rings around its eyes and orange webbed feet land on our surfboards to take a bit of a rest.

Other than the birds and the occasional flying fish that lands on deck, we hadn’t had any visitors. That’s why what happened yesterday was so surprising. I was on watch in the morning with my headphones on when I heard what sounded like an engine. I ripped off the headphones and spun around half expecting to see some boat that had somehow snuck up on me, and was shocked to see a helicopter coming right up behind the boat. He came along our starboard side, waved at me, circled around the bow and stopped pretty low next to our port side. He waved at me again, which I returned, and then quickly took off heading south. Again, we are over 400 miles from the nearest land. I have no idea where he came from or what the range is on those things. I was even more surprised when it happened again this morning. The same helicopter came up to us again, circling around, waving and taking off. It did not look like military or coast guard, and today I noticed the Panamanian flag painted on the side. We are a long way from Panama! It’s possible the helicopter is on a ship, but who knows. We’ll see if they show up again tomorrow.

Well, those are all my sea tales for now. I’ll check in again in a few days with more from our Pacific crossing.

-Katie

Day 1:

We left Puerto Lucia at noon on Friday. Forget the old sailor’s superstition that it is bad luck to leave port on a Friday. The weather forecast looked perfect and we were ready to be on our way. Amy, Marisol and Rikka greeted us on the dock to say goodbye and blow horns and whistles at us as we pulled away from the dock and headed out of the Marina. We met Rikka, her husband and three kids from Finland a couple of weeks ago on s/v Panacea when they pulled into the Marina. They are also headed to the Marquesas and we look forward to reuniting with them when they arrive a few weeks after us.

Our friend Dan on Kini Popo is single handing his boat on the crossing and has decided to buddy boat with us to stay within VHF range. So, he pulled out of the Marina just after we did. We know what a challenge an ocean crossing is going to be for Mike & I, even though we have double hand sailed Adagio over 10,000 miles these last two years. So, the enormity of the challenge of sailing alone for 3,500 miles is almost indescribable. I certainly admire his tenacity and determination to sail this passage even after the various crew he had lined up to sail with him all fell through.

We headed out of port on a clear blue and sunny day, which was quite a relief after all the rain we’ve had the last two weeks. The weather models during the last couple of weeks showed light winds for the first 600 miles or so, and we can’t afford to motor that much. But, in the last few days it was starting to show more organized winds starting on Friday, which proved to be the case.

We started out motoring to get out of the harbor and around the peninsula before turning more southward. We put on the electric auto pilot, which has been very reliable the last two years, and immediately noticed that it was not holding our course. Mike thought we may need to recalibrate the auto pilot compass and sent me looking for the manual. We keep all of out equipment information/manuals in a file folder box. Because we rarely have to dig into the files, I had stored the box in the bottom of the hanging locker in the v-berth.

Our v-berth is unlike a lot of boats that have a large cabin up front. Our v-berth is small. You access it through a door after you climb through the round salon seat. It is barely large enough for me to stand in. It is also our storage area that I refer to as the garage and packed with stuff. In order to get in the hanging locker, you have to climb in the v-berth and shut the door behind you, because the hanging locker sits behind the open door. I got into the hanging locker, pulled everything out, piling it around me to access the filing box.

Once I found what I was looking for, I tried to open the door to the v-berth to get out. It wouldn’t budge. I tried again and again, but I was trapped. I knew Mike was in the cockpit and was unsure if he could hear me over the sound of the engine and the wind. I yelled “MIKE” as loud as I could and heard him yell “WHAT” back at me. After explaining that I was trapped, he tried to get me out but we discovered that the latch in the door wasn’t releasing when you turned the door handle. I was not getting out that way.

Mike told me to hang on as he went up on deck, raised up our dinghy which sits on the foredeck, and opened the hatch above the v-berth. I had to move a lot of gear out of the way and take down the screen, but I was able to climb out the hatch and get free. Whew. What a way to start our passage! Only 3,500 miles to go!

We tried recalibrating the auto pilot compass but we unable to do it because there was too much swell and waves. Luckily, we only use the electric auto pilot when we motor, and we have no intention of motoring to the Marquesas! We are a sailboat!

We got around the peninsula, raised the sails and cut the engine. We set the Hydrovane, which steers us under sail and finally got to relax. There was plenty of wind, but as we suspected, we are going to have to sail close to the wind for the first few days. We are sailing Southwest, but as much South as we can go tight into the wind. We started at 2 degrees South and need to get to at least 6 degrees South to pick up the trade winds, which should clock around to the Southeast, allowing us to sail with the wind on the beam or aft of the beam, which is a much more pleasant point of sail than beating into it. We should also pick up the Equatorial current which will be favorable and help take us West.

After dinner, Mike and I settled into our shifts of night watches. The wind kept things cool and necessitated pants and a light jacket. But, the stars and moon were out, and I was able to find the Southern Cross in the night sky for the first time.

As we were still relatively close to land, our main concern were small fishing boats. I don’t worry about the big cargo ships. They show up on AIS twenty miles away and are lit up like Christmas trees. As long as you are paying attention, you can get out of their way. Fishing pangas are a different story. If there is a lot of swell, sometimes you don’t see their lights until you are pretty close to them, since they are so low to the water. And, they often have out nets or long lines that can trail a long way off their boat. We still haven’t figured out if the lines trail windward or leeward. We’ve also noticed here in Ecuador, that lines or nets are dropped and left with a strobe light on it. You also can’t see the strobes until you are almost on top of it. The last thing we want to do is snag a fishing line.

Mike & I always have someone awake on watch. Because Dan is by himself, he obviously can’t do that. He has to get some rest. So, as the lead boat, we made calls to him throughout the night about boat traffic. I was actually expecting more than we saw. For the most part, we had a quiet night with just the sound of the wind and waves and the excitement of finally being on this journey that we have talked about for 10 years.

-Katie

After leaving Bahia Ballena, we arrived at Islas Tortugas, which are a pair of islands not far off shore in the Gulf of Nicoya.  The islands were absolutely beautiful, and we were excited to be at such an awesome spot.  We had read that there was good diving and snorkeling around the pinnacle islands, but we were a bit concerned about the water visibility.  The water looked pretty green, and we were only two days since the big storm that washed all the silt and debris into the water.

Dan and Susan on Kini Popo decided to do some reconnaissance snorkeling, while Mike and I had to do some work on the boat.  After sitting in the brown bay of Bahia Ballena with the runoff from the storm, we had two issues to deal with.  First, the waterline of the boat looked horrible.  We had to jump in and do some serious scrubbing to get the dirt and growth off the paint.  And, second, somehow our salt water intake was clogged up, probably from the debris after the rainstorm.  Unless we unclogged the saltwater intake, we were not going to be able to use the watermaker.

After scrubbing the waterline, Mike jumped in with a long drill bit and dove under the water to the thru-hole for the salt water intake.  I was monitoring the hoses on the inside to see if he could shove the drill bit up high enough to dislodge whatever was clogging the intake. Sure enough, a bunch of wood chips got dislodged and made their way up to the filter.  After several cleanings of the filter, we were good to go with the salt water and could run the watermaker again.

Dan and Susan returned with the bad news that the water visibility was horrible.  There were lots of fish, but you couldn’t see them unless they were right in front of your face.  We decided to make a Plan B.  The Curu Reserve Park was on the bay just around the corner from Islas Tortugas.  We decided to dinghy over to the park the next morning to go exploring.

The Curu Reserve Park used to be a family farm and was slowly converted to a park and received protective status in the 1980’s.  It is a natural tropical forest and wildlife reserve.  So, we were definitely on the lookout for the wildlife.

After paying the small fee, we received a map of the trails and set off to wander into the forest.  Although we saw signs warning us of crocodiles near the estuary and lagoon, we didn’t see any crocodiles.

We did see all sorts of birds (well, mainly heard them in the trees) and lots of different lizards and iguanas.  We even saw some small deer.  But, the highlight was definitely the monkeys!

We were about half way through the hike when the sounds of the howler monkeys started getting louder and closer.  We knew we were on the right trail.  As we craned our necks to look into the tree tops, the howler monkeys were jumping from tree to tree coming toward us. The larger and vocal males were clearly first.  Then the rest of the troop of females, juveniles and even some babies started following.  There must have been at least 40 monkeys in the pack.  We stood there for about 30 minutes just watching them. It was awesome!

After making our way a little farther down the trail, we started seeing a bunch of capuchin monkeys.  These are the little, white-faced monkeys you’ve probably seen on tv or in the zoo. They don’t growl like the howlers but make some small squeaking noises when trying to communicate.  These capuchins did not seem to be traveling in a pack like the howlers. Each of them we saw looked pretty solitary.

One of the capuchins was sitting on a branch not that high up off the ground eating a mango.  He was clearly watching us below him but didn’t seem too bothered by us.  There were a ton of mango trees, and the monkeys were making meals of the mangos as we saw numerous half-eaten mangos all around the trail.  The mangos were also huge – much larger than what we find in the grocery stores.  Mike and Dan started to walk under the tree to check out all the mangos that were littering the ground.  The capuchin seemed quite interested in what they were doing and started following above them in the tree.  Then, the monkey started picking the mangos and dropping them down on Mike and Dan!  It was hilarious. Luckily, none of the mangos hit the boys.  I’m not sure if the monkey was trying to be nice and give them some mangos or was being naughty and trying to hit them with the mangos.  Either way, we got a good laugh.

We kept on the trail and saw some more capuchins, one little guy looked so sleepy just relaxing on a branch.  We snapped his picture before he shut is eyes to get a nap in.

Toward the end of the trail, we came upon a lagoon (again, no crocodiles in sight) that was quite beautiful.  There were water lilies floating on the water, some interesting ducks lingering around, and so many beautiful flowering plants surrounded by butterflies.  Fantastic!

After a full day hiking in the rainforest, we headed back to the boats for a quiet evening with plans to depart the next day for Bahia Herrradura across the Gulf of Nicoya.

~katie

The title of this post comes from an episode of Hidden Brain that we recently listened to (a great NPR podcast you should check out). The premise was that people tend to only post the good or exciting things in their lives on social media, so readers get a false sense of what others’ lives are really like. It’s definitely easier and more fun to write about the fun times we are having on our adventure, but I want to make sure that I adequately capture what life is really like for us on this blog. So, given all that, I thought I would give you a post about some, well, interesting things that we’ve had to deal with recently.

(1) Fixing the toilet

When we first arrived in Costa Rica, we were elated at the beautiful scenery, friendly people and possibilities for exploration. After our friends on Anjuli left us to head south, we started looking into the snorkeling, diving and fishing opportunities around the bay. But, before we even began to have some fun, we had a bit of an issue come up. We only have one head (bathroom/toilet) on board, and one morning it just stopped working.

Adagio has a Lavac manual vacuum pump toilet. The way it works is that when you are done using it, you close the lid which has a rubber seal around it and hand pump it. The seal on the lid creates a vacuum which flushes the toilet clean and then pumps new water in it. The pump is basically a bilge pump with various rubber gaskets in it that can go bad over time. After a couple of years of use, you may have to rebuild the pump and replace the gaskets.

So, that it where we were one morning without a working toilet. We carry spare parts of just about everything, so we had an extra pump that Mike had previously rebuilt as well as a new set of gaskets in case we had to do another rebuild. Mike began to undertake the not-so-fun process of removing the pump and gaskets. If you can imagine that everything has to pass through the pump upon flushing, you can probably get an idea of what builds up and hardens inside the pump over time that has to be scraped out and cleaned. Just one word – gross!

As with just about all boat projects, a project we thought would take about an hour ended up taking about five. And, poor Mike had to redo it three times before the pump finally worked – again, typical of boat projects. Let’s just say that Mike & I each scrubbed our hands multiple times after handling that pump.

This reminded me of the time that I had to call a plumber out to my house to deal with some sort of clog in the pipes where he had to remove the toilet to snake the drain. I could not imagine that job, but the plumber had a really good sense of humor about it. He kept telling me stories about things that people had flushed down the toilet, including a pair of women’s panties. When he removed them and showed them to the homeowners, the wife went off on her husband because they weren’t hers! Too funny.

(2) Finding the smell

So, the next thing that happened was that we pulled into a new anchorage and our friends on Kini Popo rowed over for a cocktail. But, we noticed that right after we dropped anchor we started to get a ton of flies in the cockpit. These were just your basic, annoying house flies. They seemed to be concentrated around one of our fishing rods and rod holders on the stern of the boat. I had noticed a while ago that this particular fishing rod smelled pretty bad. I thought it was just from the fish, salt water, etc. and had been bugging Mike to get some soap and wash it off.
Once Dan and Susan left, I grabbed the soap to try and clean off the fishing rod to get rid of the flies and Mike got some bleach and water to pour into the rod holder. However, when Mike poured the water in the rod holder, he noticed it wasn’t draining properly and something was clogging the bottom of the rod holder.

Mike unscrewed the rod holder from the rail and stepped down our ladder into the water to try and wash out whatever was stuck down there. What was it? A dead bird! Again, gross! We have no idea how it got in there or how long it had been there, but it was pretty disgusting.

(3) Work, work, work

For those of you who just think we play all of the time, we do actually have to do a lot of work to keep the boat maintained and running. I have really laughed at comments I’ve gotten from some friends who say what we do looks “relaxing.” Hmph! Mike’s favorite saying is, “we still work, we just don’t get paid anymore.”

We really had quite a bit of maintenance to do, so we pulled into Marina Papagallo for a few days where it would be easier to work at the dock and with shore-side water available. I also had about four loads of laundry to do. The marina had coin laundry which was much easier and cheaper than taking it into town. Our friends spent over $60 having a couple of bags of laundry done in town.

So, about five days of work included: washing the boat, cleaning and treating all of the exterior teak, waxing the hull, cleaning the bottom, polishing the stainless and changing the oil. All of this was done in about 95 degree heat and working around the daily rainstorms that blow through almost every afternoon.

I love our life here on the boat, but in between the fun adventures we’ve got some hard work and sometimes crazy stuff we have to deal with. I’m definitely not complaining, but “relaxing” isn’t really part of the daily routine. But, today is Dan’s birthday, so we’re going to head into Tamarindo tonight to celebrate with some margaritas!

~katie

p.s. Remember that post from about a year ago when Mike got a crab in his ear cleaning the bottom of the boat? Well, it’s happened two more times here in Costa Rica! I’m not sure why he doesn’t just wear ear plugs

We finally finished all of our projects in La Cruz and stocked up on provisions. We were ready to head south but decided to make a detour to Punta Mita. Mike really wanted a surfboard as we are going to hit lots of surf spots south and in Central America this year. After talking to our friend Merle on Kenta Anae, Mike decided he wanted a stand up paddle surfboard. We have two SUP boards on the boat, but they are inflatable and not exactly what you can surf.

Banderas Bay was probably the last chance we were going to have for quite a while to find a surfboard to buy in Mexico. So, we headed up to Punta Mita, where there is some surf and lots of surf shops. Now, these surfboards can be pretty expensive, so we were really in the market for a used one. We found some surf shops with some used ones for sale that Mike tried out, but none were really what he was looking for.

Then, we found an American couple living in a condo just off the beach that had one for sale! It is a bit less “floaty” than Mike would probably have liked, but it really is perfect for him to surf. It’s just going to take lots of practice. As Mike has quite a few pounds on me, the board has no problem floating me. It is a bit more challenging to paddle than our big inflatables, but a challenge is a good thing! So, we ended up with this awesome board at a totally reasonable cost. It was definitely worth our stop in Punta Mita.

Part of what we wanted to do by setting sail was to push ourselves and be adventurous. It wasn’t just about sailing for us, which is why a good part of our investment in this project was in non-boat related gear. Or, as I sometimes call themtoys.

When I met Mike, he had more “toys” than anyone I had ever met. Two cars, two boats, snowboards, wakeboards, a mountain bike. You get the picture. What else did I expect from a very active 40 yr old bachelor!
In loading up Adagio, we had to trade in some of our old toys for new ones that would work on our adventure. So, here’s what we ended up with on the boat:

Fishing – Mike had lots of fishing gear that he acquired over the years. (He used to take charter fishing boats out of San Diego every year and bring back enough tuna and yellowtail to fill my freezer for a year!) Rods, reels, lines, lures Mike adds some new little things here and there. But, his birthday/Christmas present this year was a new speargun! After our adventures with friends in the Sea of Cortez this last year, Mike REALLY wanted one, and we found a great deal on Ebay for a Riffe speargun when we were back in the States over the holidays.

Snorkeling/Scuba – We have lots of masks, snorkels, fins, etc. for snorkeling, but our real investment was in the scuba gear. You might recall that before we left California we got our scuba certifications. But, we wanted to be able to dive wherever we were, even in a remote place without a dive shop. So, we picked up the BCDs, dive computers, regulators, etc. And, we put four steel Fabor tanks on the boat. Getting tanks filled can also be a challenge in remote places, so we added a gas powered dive compressor to fill our tanks. It really is cool and totally worth the cost, which wasn’t really all that bad.

Bicycles – Mike and I both liked cycling. I had a road bike, and Mike had a mountain bike. We liked the idea of having bikes on board for both exercise and transportation. After some research, we found the Dahon Mariner folding bikes. They fold up pretty compact. The tires are the size of a kid’s bike, but the frame is larger for an adult size person. The seat and handlebars are adjustable. You can go back and read about our adventures on the bikes in San Jose last year.

Canoe – I know this one sounds funny. We had two rigid kayaks that we used for years back in California. But, they take up a lot of room and created a lot of windage strapped to the rails. So, we sold them and started looking for inflatable kayaks that could fold and store easily. Then we found the 14 ft inflatable canoe from Sea Eagle and decided we had to have that instead. It is pretty big, but it is lots of fun and gives us good exercise rowing when we don’t want to throw the dinghy in the water.

SUP/Surfboards – So, that brings us to the stand-up surfboard we just acquired. We also have two inflatable SUP boards from Tower. They are lots of fun and easy to paddle. They are very “floaty” and wide, so not very hard to keep from falling off even in rough waves and surf. But, I’m really excited to paddle our new Starboard surf/paddleboard.
I think that is about it for the toys. Mike has talked about getting a kiteboard, but I think I’ve convinced him he needs to master the surfing before taking on another toy to learn.

It’s all part of what makes this our adventure!

~katie

Hi all.  Here is the third installment of our Sea of Cortez video.  I hope you enjoy!

Hi all.  Here is the second installment of our video from the Sea of Cortez this past summer.  I hope you enjoy it!

After leaving Mazatlan, we had a nice overnight sail to Isla Isabel.  Isla Isabel is a small island off the Pacific coast of Mexico between Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta.  It is also known as the “Galapagos of Mexico” because of the enormous number of birds that roost on the island and all of the iguanas.

We pulled into the anchorage on the south side of the island, which we read was known to swallow anchors because of its rocky bottom.  So, Mike & I got in the water and dove on the anchor to make sure we were dug in pretty well and our chain wasn’t snagged on any rocks.  The water was clear and blue and felt awesome after a long sail.

The anchorage isn’t very protected, so there was quite a bit of swell coming through and waves breaking on the rocks not far from the boat.  But, we were determined to see this amazing island!

Once our buddies on Kya and Adios arrived, we went to shore to do some hiking and check out all the birds!  If Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds creeped you out, you would not have liked Isla Isabel.  Seriously, I have never seen so many birds (large birds) in one place in my life.  But, they were amazing.

The male frigate birds have a red chest that they puff out and make a drumming type sound.  All of the sounds of the island were incredible.  I commented that I thought we were at Jurassic Park.  That is seriously what it felt like hiking around the island.  The tree cover was so thick that we got a bit lost at one point but eventually found our way back to the beach.

Dale (Adios), Katie (Kya) and Mike (Adagio)

Here are some photos of the frigates and boobies, including a fuzzy hatchling and one guarding an egg.  Pretty cool!

There were so many kinds of birds and they let you get so close to them.  This island must seriously be a bird lovers’ dream.  I was just happy to get a few cool photos!

We also did some snorkeling around the reefs and appreciated the warm, clear waters.  But, after a few days, we were off again to San Blas!

~katie

After our great trip to Copper Canyon, we were off again to Mazatlan.  Mazatlan is about 220 miles south of Topolobampo, so the passage took us 2 days.  We had light winds, but enough to let us sail most of the way.  It was a relaxing sail and we did quite well getting enough rest when each of us was off watch.  I have to say that discovering new podcasts to listen to has made long 3-4 hour night watches go by a lot quicker!

We arrived in Mazatlan at first light and made our way through the narrow channel to  Marina Mazatlan.  We were most excited to be in Mazatlan to experience Dia de Muertos (the Day of the Dead).  This is actually a multi-day holiday celebrated throughout Mexico.  It originated with the indigenous people in Mexico to celebrate their deceased relatives.  When the Spanish “conquerers” took over Mexico and imposed Catholicism on the native people, the holiday remained and was moved to coincide with All Saints Day and All Souls Day on November 1st and 2nd.

Although Day of the Dead sounds morbid, it is actually a joyful holiday where families  celebrate friends and relatives who have passed on.  Many families gather at cemeteries and hold picnics.  In Mazatlan, on the night of November 1st, there is a parade and everyone gets in on the festivities.

So, we headed to Old Mazatlan to the central plaza where hundreds of people had gathered.  Some were in costume and many had their faces painted.  It was a mix of locals and tourists, but everyone seemed to have a good time.

With our friends on Adios…

The parade was not really what you think of as a parade in the States with lots of floats.  There were some people dressed in fantastic costumes, a few bands that marched through, people with fire hoola hoops, and the beer carts!  Everyone is encouraged to join the parade. So, as the parade moved on, more and more of the crowd just jumped in, everyone dancing and having a great time.  There were several beer carts where guys on the back of the trucks had kegs of beer and cups passing out free beer.  You can imagine the rush of people trying to get to the front of the trucks for the beer!

After watching the parade for a few minutes, of course we decided to jump in!  We followed the parade for a while.  Mike and Richard (from Adios) decided they just had to make their way up to one of the beer trucks to get some beer, which was pretty hilarious to watch. Ultimately they got their free beer and felt pretty accomplished.  Ha!

As we were walking back to the plaza after our parade run, we stopped to take a picture.  On the wall was a plaque with a quote from Herman Melville while he was in Mazatlan…. “As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.”  Fitting.

We’ll be leaving Mazatlan soon and headed toward Banderas Bay!

~katie