February 23, 2016
Tuesday morning I woke with a pain in my left ankle that
kept me from running. Don and I had
agreed to go shopping at 9:30, so I
spent the morning packing and took my first load of belongings to Comet when I went to meet Don. I wanted to go sailing, but was reluctant to
leave Agave Azul and La Cruz in general.
However, I knew we’d be back, so I set off in good spirits.
Don and I took a collectivo to the Mega. We did our shopping and then took a taxi back
to the marina. There is a delicate balance
between having enough fresh food and not being able to fit all of it into Comet’s small refrigerator. We wanted to go to a seminar on tuning
rigging at 14:00, so we went our separate ways to check out with the port
captain and retrieve the last of my gear from Agave Azul and return the keys.
Don and I met back at the seminar and, as soon as that was
finished, filled our water tanks and checked out of the marina. It was 17:45 when we got to the fuel dock and
it appeared to be closed on our first pass.
Then I saw someone taking out the trash, so we pulled in and managed to
top up our fuel before motoring out into the anchorage and dropping the
hook. We wanted to wait until
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| Sunset at Anchor in La Cruz |
February 24, 2016
We got up when the alarm went off at midnight and had the
anchor up by 00:30. There was a full
moon and it was a gorgeous night for sailing.
Don took the first watch and rolled out the jib while I was
sleeping. I came on at 4:00 and we both
stayed up until we rounded the cape and gybed.
The wind died shortly after Don went to sleep, so I rolled up the jib,
centered the main and started the engine.
It was somewhat cold and damp out.
I wore a fleece and my shorts were wet by the time I woke Don to take
over at 9:00.
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| Roca Negra |
February 25, 2016
Don slept late, so we decided to stay a day in Chamela
before heading on to Tenacatitta. I made
coffee and bacon and eggs and we relaxed.
It was a cool day for Mexico in February, so I stayed inside most of the
day, catching up on my blog since I finally had a working computer. Eventually, I ventured out to wash my hair,
but didn’t feel like swimming in the cool weather. Don let me connect my Kindle to his hotspot
and download a supply of books to read.
Dinner was spicy chicken wings, salad and rice. The swells kicked up late in the day and the
boat began to roll. We didn’t pass a
very restful night. I was up every hour
checking the position of the boat relative to the island, visions of Rage on the beach haunting my dreams.
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| The Anchorage at Chamela |
February 26, 2016
We got up fairly early since the boat was bouncing all over
the place. The tide was high and big
swells were breaking right over the reef that had sheltered us in calmer
seas. We made coffee, but passed on
breakfast in favor of getting out of there. We were underway by nine. We motored out of the channel between Isla
Colorada and Isla Cocina and headed around Punta Etiopia and south towards Los
Frailes. There was very little traffic
and no visible sea life. Everyone in La
Cruz had been commenting on the lack of whales and dolphins this year, probably
due to El Nino.
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| Boat at Anchor in Tenacatita |
February 27, 2016
After passing a restful night at
Tenacatita, we had a relaxing
breakfast of coffee and oatmeal. I saw
my first dolphin of the season swimming through the anchorage. We pulled the anchor and motored out of the
bay at midmorning. The day was overcast,
but warm and nearly windless. We saw a school
od large fish jumping on our way out of the bay. Despite the warnings of big swells headed our
way from Hawaii, the seas were calm. We
rounded Cabeza de Navidad and proceeded across Bahia de Navidad to the channel
leading to the lagoon and the marina, arriving about 14:30.
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| Marina Isla Navidad |
It was good to be in a marina
again, especially one as nice as the one in Barra de Navidad. I hosed the dust off the boat while Don
checked in. Then we both went up and
took much needed showers. I reveled in
the first decent water pressure I had experienced in quite some time. The Grand Bay Hotel does things right. On the way to the showers, we ran into my
friend Betty and her skipper, Klaus, whose boat was just up the dock from
ours. They invited us for cocktails
later.
Don and I were hungry and needed a
few provisions, so we took a water taxi over to Barra de Navidad after our
showers. Barra showed some evidence of
damage from Hurricane Patricia, especially along the beach. My favorite bar, which was in the ruins of a
hotel damaged by an earlier hurricane, had been swept away. The largest beachfront hotel appeared to have
been gutted, although it was difficult to tell how much of that was storm
damage and how much was just renovation possibly prompted by storm damage. Further down the beach, Melaque had already
had storm gutted buildings long before Patricia. The Grand Bay Hotel and marina appeared
unscathed.
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| Water Taxi Dock in Barra de Navidad |
We ate a very pleasant and
reasonable early dinner at Ramon’s and then bought beer, rum, and fresh fruit
at the tiendas in town. We took our time
and it was 19:00 by the time we got back to the marina. The cocktail party on Klaus’s boat, Sea Otter, was in full swing by the time
we arrived and we spent a diverting couple of hours there, chatting with Betty
and Klaus and Rick and Pam from Hotel
California.
February 28, 2016
It is always nice to wake up in
the Barra Marina. I had tripped on our
visit to town the day before and sprained my foot, something only I seem to be
able to do. I could barely hobble, but
managed to get myself up to the lovely showers.
I have weak ankles. As a result,
they are so flexible that I can’t twist them.
Instead, when I trip, I always seem to step on the top of my foot and
bend it in unnatural ways. It wasn’t
swollen or bruised looking, so I figured it would eventually recover. I didn’t need to walk much while sailing,
anyway.
We spent a leisurely morning,
enjoying coffee and the pastries delivered to our boat by the French
baker. The marina was full and he was
zipping to and fro, displaying his skill as a panguero. Betty and Klaus left about 10:00, but we
lingered a while longer and then went to the fuel dock to fill up before we set
off. The fuel dock had been damaged by
the hurricane and one of the fingers was in pieces along the shore. We filled up and set off at 11:30. the Fuel
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| Hurricane Damage at the Fuel Dock |
The town of Barra de Navidad fared
pretty well in Hurricane Patricia, but as we rounded Punta Graham, we were
surprised to see a large ship that had gone aground on the rocks there. At first, it looked quite intact, almost as
if it had been parked there on purpose.
However, as we rounded the point, we could see that its back was broken.
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| Ship Aground on Punta Graham |
Rather surprisingly, we had good
wind once we got out of Bahia de Navidad and we had a rollicking good sail all
the way to Santiago. We saw a lot of
dolphins that stayed with us for a long time, although they were subdued and
rarely broke the surface. I used up my
camera battery trying, unsuccessfully, to photograph them. We could see Klaus and Betty ahead of us and
caught up to them just as we both arrived in the anchorage. Klaus chose a good protected spot to anchor,
tucked up against the northwest corner of the bay. It was far from the beach, but we weren’t
planning to go ashore. We spent a very
pleasant evening there listening to music.
The data signal was strong and I even managed to post to my blog via
Don’s iPhone hot spot.
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| Sea Otter at Anchor in Santiago Bay |
February 29, 2016
We didn’t have far to go, so we
spent a leisurely morning at anchor and then motored around the corner from
Santiago to Las Hadas. The Las Hadas
Marina is Med mooring only and Comet has no rear exit, so we anchored outside
the marina in a gorgeous protected cove surrounded by fabulous white stucco
resorts draped in bougainvillea.
Betty and Klaus had arrived before
us and tied up at the marina. The marina
charges 200 pesos to land a dinghy, but we tied up to Klaus’s boat and managed
to avoid paying. We walked around the
shore to the Paradiso Restaurant where we got a nice lunch and some of their
signature blackberry margaritas and enjoyed the view. We could see Comet bobbing peacefully below.
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| The Paradiso Restaurant |
March 1, 2016
Having gone to sleep early the
night before, I woke up at 6:00 and couldn’t get back to sleep. I read and browsed the internet until 8:00
and then got up and made coffee. Don
stirred shortly thereafter. I made us an
omelet out of some leftover spicy pork and veggies while Don took a swim. We
left the boat shortly before noon to head into Manzanillo for groceries. Betty and Klaus had already left when we got
there and, this time, we were detected by the marina staff and had to pay the
200 peso fee. We figured that paying the fee half the time got it down to a
reasonable price and so felt no guilt.
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| Rooms at Las Hadas |
We wandered around Las Hadas for a
bit, admiring the architecture and taking pictures. The resort is well maintained and staff
outnumbered guests. I felt like I was in
a Gaudi building that had been whitewashed.
The details were impressive, all with a vaguely middle-eastern
flair. There were gargoyles and
fountains and bas reliefs everywhere we turned.
Even the restrooms were impressive, with men’s and women’s indicated by
pictures of sheiks and harem girls.
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| Women's Room Door at Las Hadas |
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| Las Hadas |
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| Tower at Las Hadas |
We needed to cross the main road
to catch the bus to Las Hadas and, while we were there, we stopped at the Auto
Zone (Every major city in Mexico has one.) to buy oil for the boat. Then we retreated to a strangely antiseptic,
ice cream only Dairy Queen for cold confections and air conditioning before
attempting the hot bus ride back to Las Hadas.
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| Marina & Anchorage at Las Hadas |
March 2, 2016
We got up before dawn and pulled
out of Las Hadas just as the sun was rising.
There wasn’t much wind, so we motored across Manzanillo bay. The three tall stacks of the power plant on Punta
Campos was belching smoke which painted a brown smear across the sky for miles.
The temperature was pleasant, but the sky was hazy and we never did get enough
useful wind to sail. There was very
little traffic and we saw only one other sailboat and that was heading north.
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| Sunrise in Manzanillo Bay |
We both stayed up most of the
day. I made stuffed chicken breasts for
dinner and then took the 20:00 to midnight watch. It was very dark. The crescent moon didn’t rise until after
midnight. We motored gradually south,
several miles offshore. Don took the
helm from midnight to 4:00, while I tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to sleep.
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| Power Plant Polluting the Sky for Miles |
March 3, 2016
I came back on watch at 4:00. The moon had risen and it was still warm and
dry. We were approaching the container
shipping port of Lazaro Cardenas. The
clouds above the port would suddenly glow orange from time to time, probably
from refinery flares. I kept a sharp eye
out for ships, but never saw any moving.
While it was somewhat stressful to know that a massive freighter might
want to share my space at any moment, the presence of the port made for great
data coverage and I was able to surf the internet from a few miles offshore,
which made staying awake much easier. As
the dawn broke, I could see several large freighters anchored in the bay
outside the port of Lazaro Cardenas.
Zihuatanejo, our objective, lay at the other end of this large bay.
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| Hazy Ixtapa |
Don came up and took over at 8:00. I ate some breakfast and lay down to take a
nap until nearly noon. When I came back
on deck just before noon we were off Isla Grande. We motored past the islands lying off Playa
Linda and Ixtapa, which looked much less spectacular than usual with the hazy
sky. We dropped our mainsail inside the
bay. There were fewer boats anchored in
the bay than we expected with Guitarfest due to start on Saturday.
We dropped anchor near our friend, Dan, on Dazzler and spent the rest of the
afternoon relaxing and recovering from the 30 hour transit. We had a bean dip snack late in the
afternoon, so ended up just having a big salad for dinner, which we ate in the
cockpit surrounded by the lights of Zihuatanejo.
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| Boat at Anchor in Zihuatanejo Bay |
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