SV Gallant Fox

More Things You Might Not Expect To Deal With While Cruising

You might expect a boat that never moves from its slip or mooring to have critters make their homes on, under or in it.  Mussels and barnacles like the hull - especially the nooks and crannies where no scraper can break them free.  Depending on the boat's location, sea lions, otters, muskrats, mice, rats and/or cockroaches prefer the deck and belowdecks.  Birds go for the folds of the sails and the rigging.

I'm surprised at how fast critters can infiltrate.  In our case, we'd sailed in to Mazatlan on May 27 and had actually been using our sails, so we knew no birds were living on board before then.  GB flaked and covered the sails as per usual when we arrived in Mazatlan and we noticed nothing out of the ordinary afterwards.  But, a mere 18 days later we removed the main sail for hurricane season...and out from one of the folds fell a heap of dried grass, strips of palm fronds, cigarette butts and cotton batting - seems a couple of mangrove swallows (like those little guys in the pic over there on the right, perched on the lifelines of the boat next to us) had wanted to start a family and liked the looks of The Fox so much, they flew up under the sail cover and into the folds of the sail to build a nest.  That's motivation.

I enjoy all birds, and mangrove swallows sure are cute little buggers - but they're small enough that they can compete with flying insects to colonize other small spaces above deck - like the voids in our boom.  I couldn't risk the birds rebuilding their nest even without the main sail in place; plus, nesting material can introduce insects to the boat, so following the example on a neighboring sailboat I used scrap Sunbrella to cover both ends of the boom.  Some boats, like the one pictured above with the green fabric, use webbing and buckles to keep the boom covers tight and windproof against the mast and backstay, but I just used drawstrings and Velcro.  Took 2 or 3 hours, start to finish.  Heck, these covers also help protect some of the shackles and rope ends still up there.  We'll see in a few months how well the boom is actually protected from critter invasion - heh. 

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Why Seashells Are So Cool

They’re all perfect.

Your average univalve seashell, like Mexico's Eastern Pacific fighting conches, augers, turbans, murex, spindles, moon shells and cones pictured here, forms a geometrically-proportioned, logarithmic spiral. Just like spiral galaxies, typhoons, and even cauliflowers are formed: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

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The Air Up There

The tropics are hot and humid.  Many cruisers who live aboard their boats during hurricane season or other long periods tied up in marinas, make life a bit more comfortable by judicious use of good old American air conditioning.  Here's how it's done in Mazatlan, where most all the liveaboards run AC at least part of each summer day:

1.  Buy a small air conditioning unit (8000 BTU for a 40-foot boat, for example), in the dead of winter.  We got ours at Home Depot in Mazatlan at their December 31 end-of year sale.  Screamin' deal, man.

2.  Find a place aboard to store the AC unit you just bought, until you need it next June.

3.  Now that it's June & you're in a marina for hurricane season, pull out the AC unit & find a good hatch to hold it.  We used the overhead hatch in the saloon.

4.  Go back to Home Depot to get some 2x4 pieces to support the unit, some hose to drain the condensation off the side of your boat, and some insulation in which to encase the AC unit for maximum efficiency in sunlight and heat.

5.  Use lots of duct tape to hold everything together.

6.  Get a crew member to sew a Sunbrella cozy for the AC unit, the better to hold it all together and protect it from the elements.

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Guaymas to Mazatlan - a Sailing Tale

It's about 450 miles on a southeasterly track along the Mexican mainland from Guaymas to Mazatlan.  We'd planned to stop at Topolobampo for 5 days after traveling the first 230 miles, to check out at least three anchorages there, plus explore Topo's Ohuira Bay where it was rumored friendly dolphins roamed amongst coves and islets.  The plan was to then travel another 100 miles further south to spend 5 more days at Altata, which we'd heard was an attractive town off the beaten cruisers' path - and across a sand bar and 12 miles up an estuary, which can make for a stimulating boating challenge.

We left Guaymas on.a rising tide with a light south/southwest breeze of less than 10 knots.  Fun.  The wind increased during the afternoon (still fun) and shifted (less fun, gosh darn it) until we had east-southeast winds on the nose at 15 to 23 knots and a 3-foot chop we had to pound through (zero fun).  None of the usual weather sources forecast this wind shift, but that's the Sea of Cortez for you.  The force of the wind and water don't sound that bad, but it was uncomfortable.  We didn't want to alter course to increase our comfort because we didn't want to either backtrack to Guaymas or fall off to head across the Sea to La Paz.  So we stuck it out, taking enough of a close-hauled pounding that neither of us could sleep anywhere except in the cockpit - and then, only for about an hour and a half at a time.  We took so much green water over the bow, that the whole deck was awash.  For, oh, 12 hours or so.  We actually almost lost the staysail we had stowed in the staysail burrito on the starboard foredeck.  As is the way of the sea, the staysail started going overboard at 0400 (4am to you landlubbers), instead of during daylight hours where we could see what was going on.  GB spotted the problem anyway and went forward to the bouncing foredeck (properly clipped in to the jacklines, of course) to haul in the staysail and make it secure once again.  Took a thorough soaking, in the dark, but he got the job done.  Oddly, the staysail burrito was still in place through this ordeal but it was too dark to analyze what the failure had been.  (Later we saw that the burrito's seams had held, but the surrounding fabric and some of the webbing ties had ripped away, freeing the staysail to wash slowly overboard.  A new, more secure staysail bag shall be designed and constructed in due course.  The only other damage we sustained - to the horror of us both - was a properly stowed stainless steel martini glass that had broken.)  However, we soldiered on.

Back to the sailing details already.  Luckily for our sleep schedule the wind and chop tapered off.  Next morning we were 30 miles offshore when we ghosted through several pairs of sperm whales floating on the surface - if I'm not mistaken we had blundered into a nursery of mama whales feeding their new babies - must have been 16 of them.  Whew.  Of course I took no pictures of the whales, but here's GB doing some foredeck work in calm conditions, plus how our Mexican courtesy flag looked after the breezes of the night before.   The rest of the day and the second night passed uneventfully in mostly-light air, with the Fox alternately sailing when possible and motoring when necessary.  A brief increase of wind to the mid-20s on the second morning, dropped to nothing as we entered the well-buoyed Topolobampo channel.  The entrance is thrilling, with shoals and breakers close to either side of the red and green entrance buoys.  We used John Rains's guide to turn left at green buoy #11 and aim for Rains's GPS waypoint for an anchorage inside Topolobampo's sand hook at 25deg.34.75N, 109deg.09.747W.  I've used Rain's guide for 8 months and am almost always disappointed with its inaccuracies -- but his route into the Topo sand hook was impeccable.  And the Topo sand hook is an excellent anchorage - right inside the entrance channel so you can get a good look at conditions out there; the hook's sandy beaches and mangroves are ripe for exploring; the holding is good and the anchorage is comfortable in breezes up to the low 20s.  Too bad the wind picked up to the 30s and we had to move the Fox before we could have a good look around.  So, no pictures of the white sand beaches.

We re-entered the buoyed channel and in 35 knots of wind and spray, drove the 8 miles into Topolobampo proper.  We chose to anchor near the shrimpers' darsena and the fuel dock on the northerly side of Topo - but had a spot of bother picking our way around the sand shoals.  Seems they shift.  The shrimpers draw about 8 feet but darned if we could find whatever channel they were using.  We groped our way into a spot that was out of the way of the shrimpers and other through-traffic, anchored in all of 10 feet, and called it good.  We waited for a couple days in hopes the wind would die down for some exploring, but it just didn't happen:  easterly wind and chop - the worst direction in this area - continued.  So much for Topo.  Maybe we'll explore here another time.  I'd like to - especially Ohuira Bay tucked in to the east of Topo.

As soon as conditions allowed, we raised anchor and headed further south for Altata.  The wind had kept our anchor rode stretched out and we discovered the wind had pushed us into the 5-foot depths of the anchorage - impractical for our 6-foot keel, but we were able to use the anchor and chain to pull us back into 10 feet while we raised the anchor.  After being underway for about 10 minutes the helsman (that's me) ran aground on some sandy shoals before even getting to Topo's main entrance channel.  Fortunately after allowing myself 2 minutes of hyperventilating and swearing we were underway again and without further incident.  And boy, howdy, this time the sailing was great.  The breeze was behind us, a steady north-northwest from 8 to 18 knots.  E-Z.  So good, in fact, that the next day we arrived at Altata some 10 hours before high tide.  Which is inadvisable, Altata's estuary having a shallow bar to cross and the 12-mile channel to town being generally unmarked with a least depth of 10 feet or so.  Sure, we'd gotten a set of 15 GPS waypoints for the channel from friends, but still stinging from the grounding in Topo, the prospect of another grounding (or several) plus the thought of having to hold station most of the day to get a favorable depth to even enter the channel, caused us to defer Altata for another time and just enjoy the sailling.  So.  On to Mazatlan it was.

We had light winds (10 knots or less - mostly less), hot sun, and many sea turtles swimming north as we ghosted south for the final 120 miles or so.  Arrived four days early.  No official slip available at Marina El Cid but no big incident entering the narrow jetty or docking in the currents.  Got reacquainted with old friends on the docks as we waited a couple of weeks for a "real" slip for the June-to-November hurricane season, and settled RIGHT BACK IN to one of our favorite cities in all Mexico.  Hello again, Mazatlan.

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