December 2, 1997-Passing The days in Mazatlan

WINGS rests peacefully in her slip in Marina Mazatlan with winter clouds overhead and a light rain spitting occasionally, the slight impact of a cold front which swept it's storms over the Pacific Coast and was grand enough to swing all the way down to this part of Mexico. Other than this hopefully brief spell of cooler weather (mid 70's) we've had endless days of warm sun and gentle breezes combined with cool nights. The weather has really been nice and so has been our stay in Mazatlan.

We had Thanksgiving here with a lot of the cruisers, contrasting to our last Thanksgiving which was spent with just the two of us in Ensenada. Yes, we've been a year in Mexico now, and those of you watching our trip from home must be quite bored with our lack of progress or new exotic places to report. Well, that's the reality of cruising...months of relaxing and short passages to the next port. After all, we do have years to do this, don't we?

We have been sailing often here and we even sailed in one race, of sorts. It was the Revolution Day Regatta put on by the Mazatlan Sailing Club. There were two local boats out of about twelve which made the start, three visiting yachts, and one sloop from the sailing school at El Cid. The big competition for WINGS was Black Swan, a 44' registered from Seward Alaska and owned by friends Darrell and Sandy.

After a week of build-up, and lots of preparation, the race itself, other than being a great day of sailing, was a little of a let down since the windward mark sank somewhere out in the blue Pacific and the exact place of rounding was left to each yacht's observance of a GPS location. WINGS led the way around and finished 1:15 ahead but Black Swan (or the Dark Duck, as they call themselves sometimes) was credited with the win on corrected time allowance. The other boats trailed in over a period of about an hour and everyone thought it was a lot of fun. This was the first race WINGS sailed in in Mexico where there actually was good competition all the way around and it was a lot of fun holding off the Black Swan guys on the downwind leg but seeing 2nd on the results board put us all in a blue funk. We dismissed the whole thing due to there being no windward mark.

We had a fun crew though, a real multicultural experience. There were four people from other cruising boats (three with experience), and three young Mexican men with little or no experience or English. We selected the crew for fun rather than looking for the hottest talent available (not to discredit Joann, Carl, and Pat who are experienced racers,) so in addition to no-one knowing where we were going all day we didn't know what we were doing either, but luckily no foul-ups or broken equipment although Guillerimo got his neck in a jib sheet and while he saved his head he lost his beloved "Tilly" hat. It put new meaning to the directive, "keep your head in the boat".

We all went out to dinner and the boys had "all you can eat ribs" while us old folks had normal menu items. Some things about sail boat crews never change; take a twenty year old male to dinner and they always want the biggest meal they can get when the skipper is paying.

Tomorrow Judy is heading north to stay with her sister Margie and help arround the house. Margie's husband is home from the hospital and needs a lot of care and Margie could use the help for a while. Judy plans to be back in time for us to go to Guadalajara for Christmas.

So that is about it for now. We hope you all are having a nice quiet winter up north and wish you were here in the sun with us.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Mazatlan