Wednesday, 22 January 2014 – We pulled away from the dock in Mazatlán at 10:00 a.m. and after clearing the islands of Pájaros and Venados off Mazatlán, we set course of 146 degrees south to Isla Isabella. After a couple of hours motoring, we changed to sail and managed to do about two hours of fine sailing at 4-5 knots before the wind changed direction and then it was back to motoring. After an hour, we decided to go back to sailing, doing Jibes down-wind as the wind direction dictated. Hence the zigzag course in our map.

When the wind is directly astern of us, doing Jibes means we swing the stern of the boat through the wind so it is either 30-40 degrees to port or starboard and we can keep our sails full. Thus, we zigzag our way downwind and while it means we add miles to our route, we get the pleasure of silence and the joy of sailing. As we did not have a schedule, it really did not matter.

At 4:30 p.m. we tacked to adjust our course and at 5:15 p.m. we again adjusted our course again to our original heading of 149 degrees south.  At 6:30 p.m. we ran out of wind and it was back to the engine. By then, we were inshore and well inside of the active fishing fleet. This is a busy area with a large fleet passing at least 12-14 boats all actively fishing. At 9:15 p.m. we again adjusted our course to a heading of 170 degrees, directly to Isabella. It was after midnight before we finally put the last of the fishing boats behind us and finally we had the ocean to ourselves. We had covered almost 62 miles to our destination.