Crossing the Sea of Cortez

It's about 230 miles across the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlan.  At 5 knots, the speed we use for planning our passages, it would take just shy of 48 hours.  Not wanting to arrive at night, we planned our departure from Ensenada Grande at about 8:30 AM.  We would have two full days and nights of sailing and if all worked out, we would arrive in Mazatlan in the morning.

It was a fairly uneventful crossing, with winds on our beam at about 10 - 15 knots and seas less than 1 - 2 feet. We sailed most of the way across, with the exception of a few times when the wind dropped off.  Air temperatures were in the low 80's during the day and low 70's at night, so shorts and t-shirts were the uniform of the day and night.  There were a few whale sightings early on, but other than a small squid that we found on deck on our second morning and a few boobies that tried to land on the mast, it was just us and the sea.

The biggest problem we had, was that we were going way to fast and if we didn't slow down, we would arrive at our destination in the middle of the night.  The solution was to furl in the head sail and reef the main.  That slowed us to about 4.5 knots and averaged with our speed on day one, would put us there about on schedule.

The only other issue was just before arriving in Mazatlan we over ran a fishing line.  Janet was at the helm and immediately reduced power and went to neutral.  No harm was done and the fix was to cut the line, walk it back to the stern, re-tie it and toss it back in.  We talked to another boat who said they got a line wrapped around their prop shaft and they had to dive in to cut it off.  I think we were pretty lucky.

We arrived at Marina El Cid in Mazatlan at about 9 AM.  A quick call to the marina of VHF 16 scored a slip were we will stay for a yet undecided length of time.  Life is good.