Sightseeing Mazatlan - Old Mazatlan, the Cathedral, and ...

Although we were in Mazatlan for nine days and nights, we only got a few days of pure sightseeing in. There were a lot of boat chores and tasks to do.

For instance, I spent a whole day debugging the intermittent radar problem and finally came up with and implemented the solution of doubling the power cables from the battery to the main electrical panel. The old wires were 8 gauge and not built, in my opinion, to handle the kinds of load that were being put on the system. The batteries had plenty of juice, but the voltage would drop at the panel (from say 13.5V at the batteries to 11V at the chartplotter) when we were running the charplotter, radar, fishfinder, nav lights, and then for instance, say, the refridgerator would come on.

After I added another pair of 6 gauge (thicker) wires in parallel to the old ones, the power problem went away (now instead of dropping from 13.5V to 11V it only dropped to about 12.8V, plenty enough to keep the radar going). Note that there is still a problem tho, as the chartplotter seems to crash when the AIS system (Automatic Identification System, see "Improvements Page") is running. I think this is a Raymarine software problem and as long as I keep the AIS turned off, the system doesn't crash now.

I also made another trip back to the Electronics store to pick up the wi-fi antenna, and ran around to all three boat supply stores (chandleries) in town trying unsuccessfully to find a "battery combiner" to replace the one that had burned up with the starter motor that I had jury rigged a repair for. Meanwhile the mate did massive amounts of laundry and took a pulmonia to the Gigante super market for a large provision run.

We did manage to spend some time in the hotel pool and go to dinner once or twice in nearby restaurants, but by the time we got all the boat chores done, we found that a week had slipped by. Still, by and by, we got to spend a good full day seeing the sights of Mazatlan.

We took the hotel shuttle to the main El Cid, and from there caught a pulmonia downtown to the Old Theatre. The first thing that struck us was that it was similar in many ways to the French Quarter in New Orleans. The street signs and squares especially reminded us of the Big Easy. We spent an hour or so touring the Theatre then walked the few blocks to the Cathedral. The Cathedral, the diocese of the state of Sinaloa, was very beautiful with marvelous stained glass that cast an almost day-glo set of colors on the murals in the ceiling.

From there we walked to the open air market, or the Mercado, as it's called in spanish, and bought a few souvenirs (notably t-shirts were very inexpensive). We're always pleased and surprised by the quantity and quality of the goods in these markets. The fruits all look so fresh and healthy and you can get any kind of meat, poultry, or fish that you might desire.

After the mercado, we walked about 2 miles to the tip of the peninsula and scoped out the municipal anchorage. We could have stayed there for free (rather than about $50/day for the marina), and it would have been ok, but we were pleased to be staying at the hotel nonetheless, especially considering the least expensive rooms start at $200/night and go as high as $600 a night! We ended our sightseeing tour by taking a city bus (another new experience for us) all the way back to the marina. At 80 cents per person it was way cheaper than the pulmonias that would have costed 8-10 dollars.

Images of Mazatlan

Finally, after 10 days and 9 nights in Mazatlan, we started to get sailors sickness ... you know ... ships and sailors rot in harbor! Also, from my perspective, there were a fair number of biting noseeums at the marina (which was dredged out of a lagoon) and I had quite a few bites and was beginning to get irritable. So, although we had enjoyed our time in Mazatlan, it was time to move on to the fresh sea air and new places again.