Our plan a year ago when we started this adventure was to be through the Panama Canal and in the Caribbean by now. Maybe even take our boat up the East Coast to Annapolis for Dan’s 40 Year class reunion…. But with all things, flexibility is key when things you can’t control impact plans. Our January shipyard work took longer than 4 weeks and this put us into a situation where we would be hurrying down the coast to get out of the way of hurricanes….. (not an ideal situation) So we made Mexican lemonade and went to The Sea of Cortez – Blog about this adventure = Sea of Cortez Anchorages & Marinas, A Nautical Travel Guide… #29
After our adventures north we stayed at Marina de La Paz. The temperatures were 90 to 100+, so we decided to head to Paradise Village in Nuevo Vallarta (a suburb of Puerto Vallarta) sooner rather than later, where it was a bit cooler, so off we went.
Out trip to Puerto Vallarta would be our third and Dan and I decided we would do this alone without the help of our friends. Our plan was:
But with all good plans….they change. We departed LaPaz as expected, fishing along the way, with no luck. Totally uneventful trip throughout the evening. We had a great sunset, moonrise and moring blue sky.
We arrived at 7am at the mouth of the land where we would enter into the marina de yates. (we had never been to this marina before) 
As you can see the entrance into the marina was very tight and was very hard to see visually. As we approached the opening (or where we thought was the opening) the waves were building up behind us and it was not a comfortable situation to be in. We could have been pushed into the rocks/land very easily. So we abandoned the idea of staying at this marina near Altata. We had already been underway for 20 hours and now we were heading down the coast for who knows how long. We looked for a bay we could anchor in overnight. We found a good looking one about 7 hours away. So we headed toward “Barras de Piaxtla”.
Arriving at a great looking bay with hotels/pangas/beach front and seemed to be popular location. We anchored and I started to cook some dinner. As we were eating, the waves and wind were hitting us from different directions, competing with each other. The wind was blowing and holding us north/south but the waves were hitting us from the west. So we were getting hit broadsided and rolling us side-to-side. It was not comfortable at all. While this was happening I could see lightning stretch across the sky over the land. It didn’t take us long to decide to pull anchor and head towards Mazatlan. We had just completed 27 hours of cruising and really wanted to get a good night’s sleep. But it was not meant to be…. we were back cruising.
“Dan and I trade off the watch schedule with 3-4 hours of watch while the other sleeps”
As we headed to Mazatlan we had 5 hours of cruising and realized that we would be arriving around 2am, not an ideal time to go into the marina. Our plan was to anchor close to Isla de Pajaros Just outside the marina entrance. So after a total of 32 hours cruising we finally arrived, anchored and got some sleep. We pulled anchor and arrived in Marina Mazatlan at about 10:30 am and we stayed 3 nights. This gave us plenty of time to recover and be prepared for our 20 hour run to Puerto Vallarta.
We left Marina Mazatlan 3 days later at around 2pm due to the tide and currents. We planned to be in Paradise Village at around 11am if all went well. We had a pretty rough start but the sea settled down just after midnight. I took over watch from Dan at approx 2:30 am. The cloud cover was heavy and the lightning was surrounding me but was far away. At approx 4:30 am I could see a huge storm right in front of us. I needed to go around it but wanted Dan’s opinion first. So with hesitation I woke him up. We agreed to track the storm as we slowed down a bit to see which way it was going. An hour later I was making my move and decision to go around the storm as Dan slept for another couple hours.
By sunrise I was back asleep and Dan could get a better view of the storm and he cut through the center where the clouds and storm had parted.
We did hit a small corner of the storm as we got close to Banderas bay which gave us considerable amount of rain. With this slight deviation it increased our time by an hour and we arrived safe and sound in Paradise Village Marina at noon.
The evening we arrived, in one of our favorite towns/marina, we were invited to an event at the Vallarta Yacht club for drinks and dinner… and got to meet lots of boating new friends.
We are truly blessed to be able to live this life!
Thank you for following us and reading our adventures!
Dan and Angela on Angelique
han expected) Watch out for the winds and waves which can come up unexpectedly and hit you hard. Have a plan and be prepared on what you will do if this happens.
Puerto Los Cabos is a short jaunt around the corner from Cabo. The marina is small and no town next to marina. There is a small amount of anchorage area inside the breakwater. Small cafe with the “Best pollo nachos”. There is an OXXO on the far side of the marina. Internet and cell service is okay in this location. We enjoyed this marina and would go back. As long as you understand it is a bus or taxi ride to town.
This marina had everything including resort amenities & very luxurious! It is a bit of a ways out of town, so some people don’t like it. But the shuttle runs almost every hour for free, just tip the driver. You can find just about anything in town. Grocery with lots of very good choices, bagel shop, banks, sail shops and farmers market (smaller than PV but still very good) on Tuesday and Saturdays. Marina is very clean, great security, helpful & friendly staff, pool, restaurants, very small store (limited items), fast strong dock based pump out came to us & didn’t have to move, fuel dock, Good internet & cell service. (Not great!)
We have stayed here a couple times too. It is a great location downtown, cheaper than Costa Baja. Docks are newer and seemed well maintained, cable internet (hard wired) & Wi-Fi is good & cell service. Easy walk to lots of restaurants, we have had dental work and new eye glasses done in this town too. Lots of anchorages in bay and dinghy’s come in to dock here. One restaurant at head of marina, showers & toilets. The sewer pump-out at this marina is a manual process and didn’t work well for us. There is a small yacht club, Club Cruceros de La Paz, they have books and DVD for free. Rent DVD’s and exchanges books
This island is the largest in the group of islands just north of La Paz. Lots of snorkeling and scuba is done on the group of islands. We picked Ensenada dl La Raza as our first anchorage location. Very windy stayed 1 extra night than planned because of weather. If we would have been able to get in the water might have rated a bit higher. Lots of turtles cruising around boat. Length of stay 3 nights. No cell service.
We really enjoyed this very small cove. Only a few boats at a time can fit in here. We snorkeled mid-day and saw dolphins hunting all the fish we saw when we were snorkeling. The next morning the dolphins came back in force. It was really fun to watch. Length of stay – 1 night. No cell service.
This was a stop on our way to Santa Rosalia Marina. It had flat sandy bottom for anchorage for hundreds of feet at 20′ depth. It was easy to pull in pretty close We didn’t make the next planned stop to Rosalia due to family emergency. We turned back to Escondido marina to be close to an airport. If we had more time we could have gone into Bahia Concepcion area where there was a lot more anchorages and a bit of population. But family first always.
We had just come from a private island resort at Tinsley Island (sponsored by Jaren Leet ) an outstation of St Francis Yacht club in San Francisco. We stopped in Antioch Marina. At 3am I heard a noise that seemed like someone walking on the back deck. Dan got up to investigate and sure enough a 30-ish lady sitting in our chair on the back deck. When Dan asked her to get off, she didn’t. It took 15 mins or so to get her off. She also decided to show up again the next morning during daylight and ask again if she could come aboard. Both times the police were called. The second time we got good pictures of her. We think she was on some type of drugs. More info in Original Blog Story = 
Official Business – US Coast Guard
The inspector came and said that Dan did a great job patching, but the dinghy was totalled. We decided on a shorter, lighter weight & overall smaller dinghy. We got lemonade from our lemons … We had multiple write ups on this topic… Multiple original blogs = 
