An Acquired Taste

Pre-Hispanic people used powdered hot chiles as a weapon and a means of torture – a perfectly understandable use for such a nasty little creation, thinks The First Mate. This ancient weapon continues into modern day use with the deployment of little canisters of hot pepper spray. They are effective at riot control, vending off bears, things like that, but whatever induced some ancient person to ingest a hot chile and then to keep on ingesting them after that first heat-generated gasping experience? Chiles burn; they cause pain. Why put oneself thru that? The First Mate reads in one of the Mexican cookbooks she has on Avante that the sensation of pain causes the body to release endorphins which, in addition to being natural painkillers, are also feel-good chemicals. She knows about endorphins. They make the body relax. One can build up endorphins with a good bike ride or a mountain climb. Exercise is good for you, but why go thru the bother of a good dose of heat-caused pain to get a few endorphins?

Further reading explains to her that a chile’s heat is in actuality a chemical burn. Of course, it’s a burn! There’s no other way to describe the discomfort caused by a hot chile on one’s tongue, lips, mouth, throat and all the way down the esophagus with the eyes tearing in sympathy with what the rest of the body is enduring. This chemical burning is caused by a substance called capsaicin, and a chemist by the name of Arthur Scoville actually spent countless hours coming up with a scale to measure the heat encapsulated in all the many, many different types of chiles that mankind has found to eat. (Mother Nature really went overboard when she created this genus.) I learn that ordinary sweet bell peppers have zero Scovilles. Jalapenos have a 2,500 Scoville score, and one of the hottest little numbers, the Habanero, has 250,000 Scovilles. The First Mate realizes she must have a very low tolerance to pain, because any chile hotter than a sweet bell pepper is generally too hot for her. She honestly doesn’t need a Scoville chart. One of her cookbooks lumps the various chiles into broad categories: Gringo Approved, Gringo Friendly, Gringo Beware and Gringo Killer. That’s enough for her.

That cookbook, however, overlooks the category that best describes The First Mate in regard to the appreciation of chiles. A “Gringo Wimp” is what she is, and she would very much like to progress beyond that nomenclature. She decides a little education of her taste buds is needed and that calls for a willingness to experiment which when it comes to chile tasting definitely calls for her to gear up with a “bite the bullet” approach.. A bit of mental self-talk and a glass of water always at hand ought to do it. But, alas, she reads in her cookbooks that neither a glass of water nor a gulp of cold beer will put out the fire. Liquid actually makes it worse. Instead one should quaff creamy stuff like yogurt, the juice of a lime or a spoonful of sugar for relief. What do you know? Mary Poppins was right all along!

January 25th – 7:30am, we leave our sheltered anchorage below Punta Frailes to head across the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlan.


Looking back at the rocky coastline is impressive. The sea is still rocking and rolling uncomfortably, and we put up sail to help stabilize the boat. Soon there is enough wind to cut the motor and sail. Though we are able to sail all day, the wind dies in the evening forcing us to motor throughout the night.

As we approach Mazatlan in the early morning hours, The First Mate is dismayed at the flat landscape broken only by high-rise buildings. She had mistakenly been expecting a more tropical, palm-treed setting.



The harbor of Mazatlan is one of the busiest along this coast and is filled with tourist, commercial, fishing and transportation facilities. We decide to head to a marina development well north of the harbor. Before development, this was an estuary and lagoon. It is still an estuary and lagoon, but with dredging and a bit of creativity, there are three marinas in the area. We chose the Marina Mazatlan. Descriptions in our guidebooks do not give us any reassurance regarding the conscientious dredging that needs to be done to keep the opening to the estuary at the depths recorded. What we do know is that we will only attempt to enter the channel at high tide. There is a good surge and current at the entrance forcing us to enter at a speed higher than we would like. Watching the depth meter, we cross the bar. Depths read down to 11’, but we are safe. Keeping to the middle of the channel, we slowly motor toward the marina. We are assigned a slip, and dock attendants wait there to help secure the lines. The First Mate really likes this additional help that so far has been there at each Mexican marina we have entered.

Our neighbors on their sailboat, Sea Venture, Normandie and Michael Fischer, prove to be very friendly and helpful in getting us acquainted with the area. In particular, Normandie has the scoop on 3 lavanderías in the area. That job, unfortunately, is The First Mate’s priority today – wash all the sea-soaked bedding from those open windows! Yuck – but it has to be done. We learn that the Fischers have been in the marina since early December with no definite date for leaving even though they are eager to set sail and explore. Their engine died on them, and they are waiting the arrival of parts. After their engine failed at sea, they were able to sail to Mazatlan but had to be towed over the bar into the harbor. Unfortunately, the big fishing vessel that was sent out to tow them in had little experience in doing this sort of operation. The fishing vessel rounded the bend into the channel too sharply and under such speed that Sea Venture felt like it was at the end of a slingshot. Unluckily, it was low tide, and Sea Venture’s 6’ deep full keel ended up hitting the bottom. Fortunately, no damage was done, but one shudders to think what could have happened. A sailboat or any boat without an engine has no brakes. Attached by a rope to the fishing vessel, they were at that captain’s mercy.

It takes The First Mate all of a sticky, hot afternoon to get the washing done, but it is done. The bedroom is put back together and looks good as new. No damage done – to The First Mate’s relief. We had planned to bus into Mazatlan for dinner that evening, but both of us are just too tired.

January 27th – We take the first class bus (supposedly air-conditioned and newer) into Mazatlan to go to the open air market and the Mega Supermercado. We enjoy the market with all its stalls of fresh produce, meat and fish. It reminds The First Mate of the markets she shopped at when they lived in Spain in the 70’s. She feels perfectly at home there. Outside the market, small food vendors have little tables set up. We chose one and order cheese omelets. Bill walks over to another vendor and comes back with a huge, thick and most delicious tropical fruit smoothy. We then take a taxi to the “Mega” which proves to be something akin to a super Walmart. The First Mate has quite a list of ingredients required to make several recipes out of her Mexican cookbooks. Notable on this list are several chiles. Returning to Avante, she adds to her spreadsheet of “Food on Avante” such items as Poblanos, Serranos, Jalapenos, De Arbols and Guajillos. She also adds 6 tomatillos, a large jicama and a Chayote squash. These are items she at least recognizes but has never used in her kitchen. She is definitely blazing new territory here!

Again that evening, we plan to return to town for dinner, but the trip just does not seem worth the effort. We are tired and have another overnighter ahead of us the next day. We eat at a local restaurant in the marina and plan that when we do return to Mazatlan, crowded or not, we will try to stay at a marina in the harbor itself to be closer to town. There is an old section of town that is supposed to be interesting and worth the exploration.

Fortunately, for The First Mate, high tide is not until late in the morning giving us a leisurely start. As we exit the estuary, we note that the lowest depth is below 12’. That is lower than what is advertised as the dredged depth at low low tide. Thus at low tide, the entrance to the estuary is really more like 7’. We wonder how many boats run aground here each season and are glad we were not one of them. Winds are supposed to be between 15 – 20, but by early afternoon, we have a reef in with the winds clocking up to 25. The sideways roll of the waves on the boat begins to affect The First Mate. Making lunch below is out of the question for her, but The Captain does just fine. Before sunset, we decide to prepare Avante for the night ahead by taking down the mainsail and using just the jib. We lose a knot or so of speed, but this configuration is much safer. It enables us to sail deeper down wind in the direction we want to go without any worry of gybing. Also, if the winds pick up during the night, we do not have to deal with reefing or taking down the big mainsail on a pitching deck in the dark. The First Mate is able to cook up a frozen dinner, but The Captain has to serve it up when she can no longer keep it all together down below deck. Shortly afterwards, the winds begin to calm down, and we end up having to turn the motor on by 10 pm.

In the morning, we motor into Mantanchen Bay which is just outside the estuary leading to the town of San Blas. The shore is lined with palm trees. This is more like it! Our first taste of a tropical anchorage, and we are delighted.


The First Mate, still feeling a bit woozy, decides a cool swim and some exercise would be just the thing. It is hard to get exercise on a sailboat. Swimming is one of the few forms available if one happens to be in waters warm enough, safe enough and clean enough for such activity. This is all of that. However, swimming just for the sake of swimming has never been what The First Mate calls fun. She does swim around the boat twice, and then decides that’s enough. Now what? She does not feel ready to get back on the boat. She notices that the sides of Avante are looking yucky. To her amazement, she finds herself asking The Captain for a brush to clean the boat. This activity is definitely one that she has firmly stated was not and would not be part of her job description. Yet here she is paddling up one side of Avante and down the other scrubbing the sides and then kicking up as high as she can go to reach up the side of the boat. This is good exercise – jumping and kicking and scrubbing, use one arm and then the other. Is she really doing this? Guess so – to her it beats swimming in circles.

Back on Avante, The Captain is made breakfast, and then The First Mate gets down to her cooking. The afternoon is set aside for her to fiddle to her heart’s content. She is a happy camper and even The Captain’s “Tom Sawyer” attempts to persuade her to fish cannot change her intended afternoon’s activities.

With a kilo of fresh shrimp to work with, she decides to make a ”Gringo Friendly” Coctel de Camarones Mazatlan and a “Gringo Beware” Camarones en Mojo de Ajo (Garlic Shrimp). There’s nary a chile in sight in the Coctel de Camarones. Just add hot sauce to taste. We have always had Tabasco on Avante, but she reads that Tabasco is more of a Gringo’s interpretation of a watered-down hot sauce. In the market, I had surveyed rows and rows of hot sauce before finally settling on one. It is made with Chile Molidos which I believed were milder chiles and has an added kick of lime juice. It turns out to not be that hot and to have a nice earthy taste. That’s what little I can tell from the tiny, tiny taste I sampled from the tip of my finger. This hot sauce is added judiciously to the camarones, and the mix is put in the refrigerator to cool for cocktail time this evening.

Camarones en Mojo de Ajo is another matter. It calls for Chile de Arboles -- dried, little, bright red twig-like peppers labeled Gringo Killers in my cookbook. Since The Captain is no more an aficionado of hot than The First Mate, she decides to enlist his opinion in the use of chiles. We decide that I will start with half the called for amount of anything hot in a recipe. For this recipe, I will use one Chile de Arbol and 2 black peppercorns. The 5 cloves of garlic will stay. Garlic is good and may even be increased! First step is to roast the one thin chile in a comal, a round griddle used for making tortillas. A basic frying pan will have to do. After 2 scorched, burned disasters which smoke up the cabin, The First Mate finally has one nicely roasted. These dried little numbers really heat up fast. Once cooled, with her rubber gloves on as the cookbooks suggest, she carefully cuts and removes seeds and veins. Veins are where most of that capsaicin resides. Garlic, coarse salt, peppercorns and the chile are now supposed to be ground up in a Molcajete, a small, three-legged, black lava-carved bowl. One then uses a Tejolote, a cone-shaped tool also made from lava, to grind and mash up the ingredients. Bowl and masher tool are described as North America’s first food processor. Lacking both, The First Mate decides to use North America’s modern, electric mini food processor which she has aboard. The food processor mashes up the garlic, but the salt, peppercorns and chile are whisked to the sides untouched. The modern day food processor is not doing the job. She then resorts to a bowl and the flat side of a spoon to mash and combine. Peppercorns are being broken. Chile is getting squished and releasing its color and juices when suddenly the spoon slips off a peppercorn causing a squirt of juice to hit her in the eye. Oh, no, chile juice, capsaicin, chemical burn, in the eye! An eye with a contact in, no less! Keeping the eye tightly closed, she races off to the bathroom. Wash the eye. Then slowly open it. Water makes chile burns worse. Isn’t that what the books said? Too late now. Saline solution at hand and squinting like a one-eyed pirate, she slowly opens the eye. There is no burning. She can see. It’s okay! It’s really okay! Safe for another day and another round of chile mashing. Picking up a pair of sunglasses, she returns to her mashing. The books may mention the use of rubber gloves and the need to wash one’s hands after handling chiles, but there is no mention of protective gear for the eyes, a huge over-sight from The First Mate’s experience.

As the sun sets in our first tropical anchorage, we sit on deck enjoying gin and tonics with a very, very good Coctel de Camarones Mazatlan. The Captain is pleased. The First Mate is delighted.

When it is dark, we go below to prepare dinner. Camarones en Mojo de Ajo is also delicious, but just a bit too hot for these Gringos. Deciding that advancing beyond the Wimp level is going to be a slow education process for both of them, The First Mate voices that perhaps quartering the amount of hot in a recipe would be a wiser choice. The Captain agrees but leaning back contentedly (increased level of endorphins at work?), tells her to keep on experimenting! Life is good aboard the sailing vessel, Avante.


Camarones en Mojo de Ajo with sautéed Christophene (Chayote Squash)

Note: Denby china on board Avante! We are not on a passage now.