San Blas...here we come!

We have had a great last few days here in Mazatlan.  A couple of nights ago Rich and Lori on SV Third Day invited us and a few other boat over for a potluck.  We had a great time, there we 16 people on board, and four of them being teenagers, but with Third Day being a Hudson Force 50 we had plenty of room. 

Kitty Cortez...she was a sweety!

Yesterday we went into town and had lunch with Paul and Karen from SV Gigi, who were our neighbors in San Carlos, at La Cuava del Leon, which is probably our favorite little place to eat in Mazatlan.  They have shrimp and cheese stuffed poblano peppers that are awesome comes with rice and bean and blue corn tortilla and for only 60 pesos you can't beat it.  We walked up to the market and past to the seafood area showing them all the things that we have been enjoying here in Mazatlan, since they will be here another week or so. 

La Cueva Del Leon and our favorite coffee place Loony Bean

a few statues on the Malacon





A slide at a childrens daycare center

You think a few kids bumped their head?  I can see a lawsuit if this were in the states!

Well it is about 7:30 am on the 4th and we are getting ready to pull up anchor around 9am to head south 128 miles to San Blas.  We have loved being in Mazatlan but can not wait to see another place and meet new people.  This should take us about 26 hours, and hopefully good seas, we are unable to get a good signal on the SSB for the weather report this morning so we are going on what we heard yesterday.

Feliz Ano Nuevo!!

Hope everyone had a very happy new years. After I finally went and tracked down the captain on the tour boat that had our dingy anchor and finagled with him stating I was not going to give him any more money, we started a few little boat projects.  We finally got the old 12 volt batteries off the boat and gave them to the workers on a navy surplus landing craft.  Since they still work, just 10 years old, they were happy to receive them.  We also took a pulmia to get two jugs of dingy fuel and three 5 gallons jugs of purified water, after getting them on the boat we decided we were ready to start celebrating the upcoming new year.  Enjoyed a few cocktails on the boat while playing a couple of game of cribbage then got ready to dingy back over to stone island anchorage to enjoy new year festivities with other cruisers at Benji's Pizza.  We had a great time eating yummy pizza and drinking tasty margaritas.  They had music, party favors, and a nice bonfire, it was a great time!

Dawn and Evan on SV Java

Dan and Jerry

Tony on SV Day Ja Vu...What are you making?

We left around 10 pm, which was good because we had to dingy back over to the old harbor and get the dingy mounted up on the transom while we were still able to, if you know what I mean.  We made some phone calls to family and friends and finished the night drinking Becky's famous pain killer cocktails and watch the fireworks from the boat at midnight and went to bed. 

Today has been a day of doing absolutely noting, a couple of sailboats were going to leave and start heading south, but do to the wind and swells out on the sea they decided to head back in.  We are thinking of leaving on Monday of Tuesday for San Blas which is about 120 miles south of Mazatlan.  Jerry and I have been thinking of going to El Salvador this season instead of heading right back up to San Carlos.  Below is a website about the cruisers rally, we will keep you posted.



http://elsalvadorrally.blogspot.com/


The birst were having a feast on all the bait fish around the boat





Oh no the dingy

Well we had some excitement in the harbor yesterday.  First of all I need to state that dingy theft is prevalent here in the Old Harbor Mazatlan, but mostly at night.  Most of the boat haul up their dingy with either dingy davits on the back of the boat, or by way of their halyard or by the boom on the side of the boat. 

SV Akupara's dingy raised by their halyard

Unfortunately our dingy is so freaking heavy we are unable to lift it up by any means mentioned above.  We have to first take of the motor and haul it up with our block and tackle on our missen boom and place it on the motor mount, just like we would if we were taking off for sea.  Then we swing the dingy around and place on the davits on the swim platform and then raised it up on the transom.  We have got it down now doing it night after night here in the anchorage, but with rolly water or to many margaritas it can be challenging.

Looking down at our dingy on the transom

Well anyway yesterday when we were inside the cabin after hauling water back and forth from the dock to the boat we left the dingy tied to the cleat by a rope.  Somehow the rope broke and the dingy got free, the kids on SV Hotspur spotted it and sent to retrieve it, but they were too late.  One of the tour boats got it first, thankfully they did bring it back, but as expected they wanted money for it.  Plus they untied the anchor and took it onto their boat, we still have not been able to retrieve that.  Well we paid, and now we will definitely lock our dingy to the boat even during the day. 

After we went to try to get our anchor back, we have to go in the morning the captain was not there, we decided to go into the Golden Zone to walk on the malecon and have some dinner at "Fat Fish" which is known for their two for one rib, shirmp, or steak meal.  We ended up having to walk about 3 or 4 miles, because we were not sure how far down it was after the malecon, it ended up being far.  But well worth it,  Jerry got the ribs, as did most everyone that was in there, but I orderd the breaded shimp.  The shrimp were good, but not as good as the ribs, they were awesome!! 

sunset walking on the Malecon in the Golden Zone, Mazatlan

Both meal came with salad, baked potato, coleslaw all for 160 pesos (less than 15 US Dollars)

Lighthouse!

Jerry, Skeeter, and I made a brisk walk up to "EL Faro" the lighthouse towering over the Old Harbor.  This lighthouse is the second highest manned lighthouse in the world at 477 feet above water, so yes it was a hike.  The first part was not bad, with the winding trail, but then half way up they started stairs, but we made it.

It was well worth the 30 minutes each way for the awesome view at the top!

view of Old Harbor anchorage

view of Mazatlan

Later that afternoon we dingy over to Stone Island anchorage for pizza and margaritas at Benji's restaurant, one of the most popular is their mojo de ajo pizza ( garlic shrimp pizza).  The anchorage is formed by Isla de los Chivos, named after the goats that live on the island, but unfortunately we did not get to walk around, due to many margaritas.

Pacifico Brewery!

Jerry and I went to take a FREE tour of the Pacifico Brewery in Mazatlan, I emphasize the free because it was a great tour, and I don't know of many free tours that give you all the beer you want in the museum at the end of the tour.  In 1900 three German investors of Mazatlan signed documents officially giving birth to the new brewery, but did not actually open for business until March 15th the following year.  In 1954 Mazatlan's brewery became part of Grupo Medelo, and is the smallest brewery in Mexico.  The Mazatlan brewery has 500 employees working 24 hours a day, bottling over 1 hundred thousand bottles a day. This brewery only produces Pacifico beer and it is only destributed in Mexico with a 4.5 percent alchol, the pacificos in the States are only 3.7 percent alchol.  The brewery has 2 and a half acres of land, and the largest brewery in Mexico has 269 acres of land by Mexico City.

The Brewery from the outside

The first investors

In the brew house "the Kitchen" where the first stop in the brewing process, we got to try the "Wort" where the rice, corn, barley and water is cooked.  It does not have any alcole and taste really sweet.  Then the hops is added and is sent the fermenting process where  it is cooled at 40 degree Fahrenheit.  In this building they hold 38 tanks and each one ferments in 12 day with 21 days being the full process from start to finish.  Then sent to the bottling building with there being 2 lines that change out 4 times a day with the three different sizes of bottles.  The Medelo Group uses recycled bottles, some of the larger brewery's have their own bottle making plants, where the old bottles are completely broken down and remade.  Mazatlan get their bottles from the brewery in Obregon, Sonora.

Storage towers going into fermentation process

miniture replica of the fermentation tanks

older lables

Different sizes of bottles: small "cuartito", medio, and large " ballenas"



I have to say the beers tasted great, they were fresh and free!!

the different modelo beers



Merry Christmas from Mazatlan!

I know Christmas was a couple of days ago, but I just wanted to say that I hope all of our friends and family had a very Merry Christmas!  We have been still just hanging around Mazatlan, not really doing any boat maintenance due to the holidays.  We had a great time with SV Akupara for Christmas Eve, we walked up to a Chinese food restaurant to get take out to bring back to SOMF for some fun holiday cheer. 

Christmas day Jerry and I watched "Christmas Story", my all time Christmas movie, opened a few gifts that were sent down from my parents for us and the boys, and I made green bean casserole for the cruisers potluck.  The potluck was a blast, it was up at marina Mazatlan, so Jerry and I had to take the 45 minute bus, but my food was still warm when we got there.  There was about 50 people, so much smaller than the Thanksgiving Day one in La Paz, but we had a great time.  They had Christmas trivia that we all played, participated in the 12 days of Christmas song, that was of coarse sailing themed, and had a gift exchange. 

When we got back to the old harbor we noticed another boat in the anchorage!!  By far the biggest one in here! 

Finishing up some projects!



Yes they were old June 2001 and yes they were heavy

Well Jerry and I had a busy afternoon of shopping at Sam's Club the other day.  We decided to buy some new 12 volt deep cycle batteries for our 24 volt system.  We had to then take out the old 12 volt 4D batteries, and WOW were they heavy! 










We also have been replacing the old salon lights with new LED lights that draw half the power, so now with the solar panels we are able to go about 24 hours without having to run the generator. 

old lights

new LED lights

We are still enjoying Mazatlan, but starting to get ready to head on south again!

there was an abundant amount of Jellyfish around our boat one morning

another beautiful sunset walking to dinner with SV Akupara