Back in San Carlos

After several Glorious days of Sailing up from Mazatlan we are back in San Carlos for a few weeks to teach some sailing Sailing Courses and then off to the Midriff Islands and L.A. Bay. We sailed almost the entire distance from Mazatlan

to San Carlos with a stop over at Topolobampo. Never in my life have I seen so many Cameroneros, shrimp boats, fishing. Shrimp season starts in September and we just happened to be anchored in Mazatlan at the old Port under the light house when the season opened up for the big vessels. From the moment we left Mazatlan until arriving in San Carlos, some 400 nautical miles later, pretty much the only vessels you will see will be shrmip boats. They fish day in and day out. We were the only sail boat on the water sailing north and when we got to close to the fishing town of Yavarros in southern Sonora we got quite a lot of second glances by the local panga shrimp fisherman. One panga in particular was so enamored by us they offered us a bottle of Sprite. There is little doubt that some of these guys had never seen a sail boat let alone a trimaran with two kids, two kayaks and two cats on board in their whole life.

We along with every shrimp boat within 50 miles of us spent one night in Topolobampo waiting for tropical storm Norman to pass before we headed north. As we departed the marina at Topolobampo the parade of Shrimp boats leaving with us was a spectacle I will not soon forget. There have been several fantastic memories and experiences that we will be writing about in the coming weeks. From collecting turtle eggs on the beaches of Mazataln and then releasing hatchling’s the very next day to swimming with Pechocho the famous solitary dolphin of Topolobampo. The horrific act of sailing through large piles of dead fish thrown over board by the commercial shrimp boats was a constant reminder that commercial shrimp fishing in the Sea of Cortes on the coasts of Sinaloa and Sonora is perhaps the greatest tragedy to affect the Sea of Coretes since the damning of the Colorado river.