Author: Jennifer

Surprise!

It seems some people who are subscribed to THIS blog never subscribed to the NEW blog and are looking for posts – not that there have been a lot… (and I know maybe some of you just didn’t want to follow the new one and that’s fine, too)…BUT if you want to be notified of new posts – please make sure to enter your email address at www.mexijenn.site (over to the left of the screen) – as I am no longer posting here (just this special one-time…).

I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and is starting off 2017 happy and healthy.

In the meantime–

Please enjoy my latest video creation – snorkeling the sunken Jesus statue in Las Gatas beach in Zihuatanejo. That song was playing in my head the entire time, and well, I couldn’t NOT make this video.  Jonny and I just spent some great time together aboard SUMMER.  Real blog. Soon. Really!   For now:

AND

I’m making CALENDARS!  I know, I should have thought of this a couple of months ago.  But here it is.  Who wants a 2017 Calendar?  They will be $19.95 which includes mailing to you (in the continental US only–more for elsewhere).  Next year I will start early and make different themes (sunsets, sea critters, etc).

Please email me soon and let me know if you want one!  Supplies are limited…

Here’s a sample:

We narrowly escaped jetski collisions as we made our way out of Las Hadas. It was a beautiful day and we were looking forward to the tranquility of Carrizal. We passed close by a few tankers and container ships on the way. Each of the little rectangles on a container ship is what you see on an 18 wheeler semi truck…huge – and this one we estimated had over 2,200 containers. That’s a lotta stuff.

When we got to Carrizal, there were 3 other boats and 1 powerboat. Still plenty of room for us to tuck up in there and have some space.

A couple of boats sailed in the second evening and as luck would have it, one was our old pals on Linger Longer! We knew they were making their way north after being down in Zihuatanejo for GuitarFest – we didn’t know they were stopping in Carrizal. It was a happy reunion and we enjoyed hanging out with them as usual. The next morning they headed off to Barra. We hung out one more day before getting up at 4:00am for the daylong sail destination of Cabeza Negra. We were heading into territory not all that well documented in our guide books and many people just make a long passage from this area all the way to Zihuatanejo (around 180 miles). There were 3 spots we were hoping to stop on the way down – being potential surf breaks that Jonny wanted to check out. Cabeza Negra is not even really listed as an anchorage in some books, it offers little protection and had the potential to be un-anchorable.   When we were making our plans, I had said if it was too rolly to anchor there, I wanted to turn around and come back – because it would mean the next two spots would be just as rolly or worse. I was under the impression that was actually our plan.

We left in the moonlight and it was a beautiful sunrise as we sailed on past Manzanillo and an all around decent day. Aside from the huge swell. Even though we were around six miles off shore, we were able to clearly see the volcano in Colima, periodically spewing puffs of smoke. The Colima volcano is one of the most active, and most potentially dangerous in Central America. It was pretty cool to see – as I had no idea it was there at first and learned about it only after noticing it out there.

After a full day of sailing and motor sailing we approached Cabeza Negra.   There was a huge swell on. We slowly made our way toward what would be the safest spot to anchor. I’ve never sailed so close to such huge swell, that was turning into breaking waves far too close for comfort. We did a few loops and tried to figure out if we dared stay. On the one hand we were exhausted and wanted to just stop, so we contemplated just spending a night and moving on. The swell was so gigantic and the crashing waves so huge, that surfing was absolutely not going to be an option. Neither of us thought it would be comfortable to anchor and due to the worry and the rolling we likely would get no sleep. Having just spent 11 hours getting there, the idea of backtracking 11+ more hours back (and in the night) was not all that appealing. Going on to the next anchorage was not an option, as it was even less protected and the huge swell would be rocking there, too. Jonny pitched the idea of just pushing on and going all the way to Zihuatanejo.  We hadn’t actually discussed going all the way down there and I wasn’t really in the mindset to go that far south only to have to come all the way back north in a fairly short amount of time to make our way back up to the Sea for hurricane season. We did not have a lot of time to debate, the sun was sinking slowly in the west and if we were to push on for another 24 hours at least – twice as far as we’d just come – to arrive in Isla Ixtapa before dark the next night, we’d have to go NOW.   We analyzed the situation as quickly as possible and decided to go for it. We had no food prepared for an overnight and, as usual, it was absolutely the worst timing for me girl-wise. I’m not sure why, but I was really feeling like I did not want to go to Zihuatanejo. After a brief cry, I adjusted my expectations and we sailed off as the sun set.

Amazingly enough I did not feel seasick at all on this passage. Even though it was pretty rolly, I was able to put together a simple pasta dinner with artichoke hearts, tomatoes and Parmesan and prepare some snacks for the long night. I had to crash on the early shift, but unfortunately there wasn’t really much sleep to be had. The swell was big and the seas were rough. Jonny handled it all like a champ – sailing triple reefed at 6-9 knots most of his watch. At one point between the swell and wind direction, Summer had a bit of a mini-broach, but luckily Jonny was able to get her back on track and that was the worst that happened.

On my watch there was another beautiful sunrise and we watched the water temp rise and the color deepen to a gorgeous blue-green. We saw a number of sea turtles, and had a fishing line out in hopes of something tasty. We were struggling to sail and motor sail and keep up an average speed so that we could arrive before dark. If we didn’t have the darkness deadline, we could’ve sailed along at a more leisurely pace. Since the wind wasn’t cooperating with our schedule, we had to fire up the ol’ iron genny far more than we had wanted – but it ran like a champ.

We were getting close and it was looking like we might just drop the hook before dark. And this is of course when something HUGE hit the fishing lure. We had no idea what it was, but at first hit it nearly spooled the reel. Jonny fought hard for over an hour.   Reeling in when he could, getting it almost to the boat and it would spook and run again. I managed the wheel – turning us to keep the line from crossing behind the boat and to keep us from sailing too fast. We were flogging and going around 2-3 knots as the sun was eyeing the horizon. I was dying to see what it was on the hook, but then again, it was getting a little old and I was really dying for it to just be over already. Poor Jonny was sweating bullets and using one of our cockpit cushions to protect his leg from the pole end (he should’ve bought that fish fighting belt at the nautical flea market in CA). It was almost to the boat and at the last minute it swam across the stern to the other side. The line got caught over part of the windvane. I was able to pop it up and off in a slack moment and off ran the fish one more time.   Once again, it was almost near the boat – opposite the side Jonny was on. I caught a glimpse of something dark and huge, it was so close! What WAS it!?! Once again, the line was caught over the windvane. I tried the same trick to pop it off, but it was too taut this time and PING. It snapped. Just like that. Over an hour’s worth of fighting and anticipation and then…Nothing. We never even got to see what it was AND we lost yet another lure and a whole lot of line got ruined in the process. It was very likely something we didn’t actually want to catch – like a marlin or some other kind of billfish that would just stab us and bleed all over the place if we even tried to bring it on board. Tell me again why fishing is so much fun?

We shook off our disappointment and I revved up the motor and got us back on course. We were really pushing it now to get into the anchorage. The sun was halfway down the horizon when we were finally able to make out the details of Isla Ixtapa. We made our way around to the east side of the island and got the hook down just as it became too dark to see. After putting the boat together, I had to jump in and wash off the last 39 hours of grime and sweat. It felt great and there was SO much phosphorescent algae in the water – it was magical. And it wasn’t quite as rolly as it could have been – the huge swell was not wrapping around to that side of the island and I could hardly wait to go to eat and sleep.

Isla Ixtapa is a small and quite beautiful island just a short ways off shore from the vacation-haven of Ixtapa. Ixtapa was one of the first resort towns that was designed by the Mexican tourism board (Fonatur) specifically to be a tourist town. The beaches are lined with towering resort hotels and the point houses a Club Med. The island is a major destination for every single person visiting Ixtapa. Starting around 9 in the morning, the water taxis begin ferrying over tourists in droves. Being as it was also the tail end of Semana Santa, the tourists were thick. We spent the entire next day just hanging out in the cockpit, watching the tourist, jet skis and banana boats zip frantically all around us. We were safe on our little fiberglass island of tranquility, sipping lemonade and watching the chaos. We contemplated swimming ashore to check it out. We contemplated that for a few days. We did finally get the dinghy in the water and took off to see if we could make it all the way over to Ixtapa Marina – and see the surf break that is supposedly near there.

We got out around the south side of Isla Ixtapa and headed around the point. We had been so protected behind the island, we didn’t realize the monumental swell was still pumping. It was some of the scariest dinghy-ing I’ve done – but luckily nothing broke over us. We realized it was just too far and too much swell to actually go all the way over there. We turned back and did a little tour along the shore – seeing the fancy homes and Club Med resort and hotels along the way. I convinced Jonny to land the dinghy on shore just past the main water taxi pier – just across from Isla Ixtapa. The beach was packed and we just wanted to do a little recon to see how Jonny might be able to get to surf breaks – buses? Taxis? We had no idea – but we realized taking the dinghy anywhere (with our puny motor) was not happening. We happened upon the crocodile sanctuary and got a whole lot of nature all at once.

There were huge crocodiles – and people feeding them bags of raw chicken – they clambered right up to the fences and chomped their giant jaws.

Then came the iguanas.

We also saw a huge number of Roseate spoonbill birds in breeding plumage – striking pink birds with comical bills – snapping at twigs and leaves and building nests.

And there were the usual snowy white egrets. The fun never ended! But Jonny was worried about leaving the dinghy on the busy beach so we didn’t stay long. We escaped the beach craziness and made it back to our little quiet home.

Realizing there wasn’t really anything productive we could do from that anchorage, we decided to just go the last 10 miles around to Zihuatanejo bay. At this point I was actually looking forward to it. We were coming up on the second weekend of Semana Santa (which really lasts 2 weeks) so it seemed like the island was just going to get crazier, and it was a good time to go. We’d heard all kinds of great stories from Kirk and Kris about Zihua and were looking forward to experiencing it ourselves. They said there was a panga that would bring you water, fuel and even take your laundry in for you. It was hard to believe that kind of service would be affordable, but we were willing to try. We were approaching 2 months of not having done laundry.

We made a quick trip ashore to the Isla before leaving – figured we at least had to see it – and it was so early we were the only tourists there as a few locals were preparing for the coming onslaught.

One section of the island – in a freshly raked restaurant – had about 5 different bunnies hopping around! I ascertained that they were wild rabbits.  They were SO cute though! I chased them around for quite a while.

It was a lovely little trip around the point, past Ixtapa and up into Zihua. Jonny had a line in the water on the way to Zihua and said we would eat whatever he caught – as it’s been so long since we had fish.  Unfortunately he caught a big skipjack – and we don’t like them.  Very dark fish, almost like eating mushy meat.  The only way I can stand it is buried in a curry!  I was instantly enchanted with the anchorage at Playa La Ropa. Even though it was on the far side of the bay from the actual town center, it was much cleaner and prettier and quiet. So we had a bit of a long dinghy ride to go ashore, it was absolutely worth it.   We didn’t go ashore the next day, taking in the magic of the views and the lights of the town sprawling up the hillsides at night.

We called the phone number of the people who provide the water/fuel/laundry services. Sure enough, Hilda was able to understand my Spanish and we made arrangements for them to come pick up our laundry and fuel jugs in the morning. Right on time, a panga showed up and took our 2 huge contractor trash bags full of laundry and our 2 jerry jugs for diesel, and promised to return same time next day with full fuel, clean laundry and 50 gallons of purified water for our tanks. It really seemed too good to be true. I thought for sure at least the message about using only the laundry detergent I provided would somehow get lost.

The next morning, right on time, our panga guys returned. The panga was loaded down with 10 water jugs, our clean laundry (every last bit of it made it back AND it smelled how I like it to) and our diesel. The cost was barely any more than if we’d gone to shore and slogged through all these errands ourselves. I was starting to think maybe Zihua was the best place EVER!

We explored a bit of the town and discussed the best way to get Jonny surfing. When we were hiding behind Isla Ixtapa, we missed out on all the great surf in Zihua (by a day!) caused by the huge swell. So we had to set sites on other breaks.

I was all for Jonny taking a solo trip and having some surfing fun while I got to hangout at anchor and in Zihua, but that just didn’t seem to be a possibility. We looked into taking buses up to Troncones – a good surf spot and small low key resorts on an unprotected bay. We looked into staying there but the costs, even for a hostel, were just too high. We decided maybe we’d rent a car for a week and just be able to drive places every day. Renting a car and driving up to other surf spots – even just 10 -20 miles away, would mean finding a place to park it on shore, getting up well before daylight and getting the boards and all gear loaded onto the dinghy, and going ashore and leaving the dinghy all day on the beach… yeah it was not sounding at all fun to me. The getting up BEFORE the crack of dawn every day for a week wasn’t sounding so great to Jonny either, and if I chose not to go it would mean being stuck on the boat with no dinghy motor (we were too far out for me to row Mini-P)….Ummmm. No. So we scrapped the car idea and just decided to sail up to Troncones and The Ranch (another 10 miles north of Troncones) and see if we could try to anchor safely.

We set off one afternoon back to Isla Ixtapa – just 10 miles, which is about a 2 hour trip for us, not including boat prep and anchoring and all that, so maybe 3-4 hours overall. We anchored and prepared to leave in the morning just before sunrise so that there would be time to get some early surf in. Troncones is just a beautiful little bay with not a lick of protection in any direction for a sailboat.

It was pretty rolly and we had our flopper stoppers out to kept us somewhat sane onboard. I guess the surf wasn’t all that and Jonny was hot to move on north to find some of these mysterious places described to us by a reliable source. We managed to locate “The Ranch” none too easily. It wasn’t even a bay of any sort, it was just wide open straight shore line.  If you look up “open roadstead anchorage” in the dictionary, I’m pretty sure you will see a picture of this place. It was quite shallow even very far off shore and incredibly rolly with a strong current. But… the surf…. Jonny came back after his first session just beaming.  Not only was it a really fun wave, but out of the dozen or so people surfing there that morning, nine of them were women in “cheeky bottoms” bikinis. He was pretty sure he’d died and gone to heaven (except for when he returned to the boat and there I was). He surfed at least twice a day – 4-6 hours per day total. We spent 2 nights rolling around in this crazy non-anchorage and finally Jonny couldn’t handle the rolling anymore so we decided to go back to Troncones. I wasn’t a fan of the rolliness for sure, but I wasn’t about to rain on the surf parade. Troncones was rollier than ever and we only spent one more night there before heading back to Zihua bay.

I had been keeping in contact with our friends on Prism (https://svprism.com/) and they were due to arrive in Zihua any day. We were pretty excited to see them again; it had been over a year since we last hung out. They were kind of our first (and two of our favorite) cruising friends.  We settled down in Playa La Ropa again to hang out and wait.

As it happened, we spent a couple more weeks in Barra de Navidad. Boats were constantly coming and going from the harbor – and that meant many were also running aground, just like we did. It was so nice to have someone zip out to assist us when we ran aground – so every time we noticed someone stuck, Jonny zipped out in the dinghy to rescue them.

 

The first couple insisted on taking us out to dinner, and it was very nice to take a water taxi ashore and eat someplace much fancier than we are accustomed to. Being ashore at night is such a novelty!

Jonny continued to surf nearly every day and I continued to try to avoid the French Baker nearly every day. Jonny realized he needed a different surfboard and was hoping the local surf shop would have one in trade for one of his. There was a potential board, and the shop owner said he should take it out for a test ride the next day. Before we even got that far, Jonny met a guy vacationing from the US who had brought a board with him that he didn’t want to bring back (apparently it’s pretty pricey to bring a board on the airplane these days!). It just so happened to be the perfect board and it just so happened to be a great price. It also just so happened that we hadn’t planned to spend any money on such a transaction…but Jonny was so excited about this board, and it was pretty likely he could sell his other board for the same price someday, somewhere…how could he NOT buy it? He was one happy camper. I mean, surfer.

The week after I returned from Spanish school, I got a call from Chayo – she was interested in coming for a visit on the weekend! I was very excited; since I thought it was a longshot they’d come out. But Chayo and the adorable Jenny, Chayo’s beautiful oldest daughter, Isis and her nephew Giovanni, along with the wonderful Canadians Murray and Beth, trekked out to Barra and took a water taxi out to find Summer. Yes, we had 8 people in our tiny cockpit, and it wasn’t nearly as cramped as I thought it would be. Chayo had told me not to worry about food – and she brought a veritable feast for everyone. There were fruits and veggies, snacks, an amazing caracol (like giant snail?) and shrimp ceviche salad, and sandwich makings. She just sat right there in the cockpit and whipped everything up for everyone. It was quite impressive. Such a fun afternoon and I was so grateful everyone came.

      

I had made some chocolate cupcakes, which everyone seemed to be enjoying, until I told them they were made with black beans – the adults were adult about it, but Jenny and Giovanni refused to finish theirs. We all had a good laugh.

We took one day to explore the canals and barrio at the far end of town. There are 3 fingers of water in parallel that go into Barra from the top of the lagoon.  Not sure how to describe them, canals kept seeming to be the word we used, but doesn’t seem accurate…

One day we took a field trip to the town of Cihuatlan. Not a far bus ride – and we heard there was a propane plant there where we could get our propane tank filled. As luck would have it, another man got on the bus with a propane tank. We asked him where the plant was and he said just to get off when he did. That was convenient. As we made our way into the compound, I noticed one of those signs that says “It’s been X days since we had an accident on the job site”. The number space was blank and I raised an eyebrow. The man working the hoses had a badly burned and scarred face…I’m guessing they gave up on that sign after whatever happened to him.   As usual, they were not able to fill our tank as expected – but we realized that another area had the proper nozzle to fill our tank. Mission accomplished after a fashion.. We were still a ways from the town of Cihuatlan, so we decided to take another bus rather than walk in the heat with a full propane tank (yeah, I know, we should’ve gone to town first and gotten propane after, but we had no idea where stuff was and we got off the bus already—every time you get on or off a bus, it costs (ok, not much, but it adds up!) – there are no such things as transfers in Mexico.

Cihuatlan was a bustling little town with pretty much everything you could ever want – and NO tourists! It was fun to be in a ‘real’ town where no one was trying to hustle us or sell us something or take us on a boat ride, etc. etc.   We had a delicious lunch and got to try “tuba” finally. Tuba is a fermented drink make from coconut tree sap. It’s sort of tasty and refreshing, and very low alcohol content. Tuba is not something you can buy in a store – you can only buy it from guys walking around selling it out of large gourds they carry sometimes hanging from a bar across their shoulders. I learned about it in my Spanish class, and had been on the lookout for guys walking around saying “tuba tuba tuba” – I’d probably ignored it a hundred times before.

 

 

One day after saving a run-aground, Jonny was chatting with the people and spotted a sea horse in the water! He brought it back to show me and we released it shortly after admiring it and having a photo shoot. What amazing little creatures!

We finally decided to say Adios to Barra. Poor Summer had sat for so long in the murky lagoon, we wondered if she’d even be able to move for all the green muck growing on her. We made it to the fuel dock to fill all our fuel, water and hose down Summer a bit – and we were off. We made the huge 4 mile trek out to Melaque, where the water was (somewhat) clearer and we could spend the day cleaning Summer a bit for a longer run south.

 

We had a beautiful day-long trip down to Ensenada Carrizal. Carrizal is a somewhat narrow and long bay surrounded by rocks and greenery. Tucked up in there, we could see nothing else, as if we were far, far away from civilization – yet just around the corner was the huge port of Manzanillo Bay, with huge tankers and container ships coming and going non stop.

 

The water was crystal clear, reminiscent of our days up in the Sea of Cortez. It was some of the top snorkeling we’ve done. The coral just went on and on, in amazing colors and all our usual friends were swimming around in abundance. While I was paddling around gawking, Jonny decided to give his new spear gun a try. After a while, I got a bit chilly (water was cooler there!) and hopped in the dinghy to warm up. Soon after, Jonny comes racing back and jumps in the dinghy rather quickly. He had shot a small triggerfish and was trying to get another, when all of a sudden he noticed a shark swimming out of a sea cave to investigate all the blood floating around. He considered shooting the shark in the head (and, then what?), but instead decided to go away as quickly as possible. It was likely not a dangerous shark (reef shark?), but you can never be too careful… And the triggerfish got left behind – an offering to Mr. Shark, I guess.

After several days of exploring around Carrizal, we decided to check out Santiago. It was just around the corner, and we buzzed over there and didn’t have much interest in staying – so we decided to continue on the short way around the next corner into Manzanillo Bay and to Las Hadas anchorage.

The resorts and homes on the point were breathtaking and coming around into Las Hadas was even more so – it’s a wonder we didn’t pass out from losing all that breath.   Las Hadas reminded me of pictures of Greece – with the sprawling, bright white stone buildings, gorgeous bougainvillea and palm trees interspersed. Definitely not hard on the eyes. We anchored near a small beach under the Paradise Restaurant – as we’d heard it was a good place to land the dinghy (as opposed to the expensive dinghy dock in the ‘marina’) and that they had wifi. The marina there was mostly for powerboats – it is a “Med Mooring” style place – which means you have to back in and tie up from the stern – not super easy on a sailboat, especially one with a windvane and no steps off the stern. Not that we needed a marina anyway. The anchorage was lovely, even swimmable – but the added bonus was right on shore -there were beach showers under a palm tree and overlooking the beach. What luck and luxury!  Oh and a bit of trivia for you – apparently Las Hadas is where the movie “10” was filmed.

All the resorts were built up into the steep hills surrounding the bay. To get from the beach to the street above the resort, we had to wind our way up 220 stairs! Yes, I counted. There is nothing of use within walking distance, and it takes two buses to get anywhere really. Not a huge deal, buses are only 7 pesos. We explored the city of Manzanillo – and found it to be quite charming as big cities go.

 

We also spent some time exploring the smaller town of Santiago, which I quite liked as well. The Saturday market there is gigantic – vendors setting up tables and canopies that seem to go on forever. Everything from fruits and vegetables to fine silver jewelry can be found. We splurged on a small bag of candied pecans and had a fun chat with the “hombres de nueces” as I named them.

 

In between Santiago and Manzanillo is a long stretch with the big box stores and chain restaurants– Walmart, Home Depot, Mega grocery stores etc. We hit up a few of those as well. We did not, however, visit ChickyLandia.

I took a day by myself to go into Santiago and get provisions and find a haircut (I was way overdue!).   I much prefer wandering through a smaller town to stock up than the big cities – and there’s things I don’t like to buy at the chain stores (meat, chicken, certain veg, etc). I checked out a number of peluquerias (hair salons) and finally hit upon one that was just right to cut off my goldilocks.   Peluqueira “Chuy” had a comfy couch and cheery décor. As I waited my turn, Chuy offered me a treat from a jar of candy. Finally in the chair, Chuy had a look at my poor locks. He was quite distressed and could hardly wait to cut them down. He spoke no English, so we struggled a little – but, seeing as I’m not too particular about my hair, I just kept saying “Si! Perfecto!” to whatever it was he suggested. I tried to explain to him I live on a boat and my hair is in salt water all the time…he just kept shaking his head and saying “ooooh, muy muuuuy mal!!” When he’d had his way and I was overjoyed at how light my head felt, I offered him 70 pesos ($4) – which included a 20 peso tip over and above the 50 pesos he charges. I had an also ridiculously inexpensive and tasty lunch and then loaded up on chicken, meat and veg – and staggered toward the buses with my light head and heavy loot.

 

On our final provisioning run to the mega store (for all the heavy dry goods), we decided to splurge and take a cab back – which could snake down to the beach side- rather than us having to lug everything down 220 stairs. It was not really that much more expensive, either! What a treat. Our cabbie spoke perfect English and turns out he had lived in Los Gatos/San Jose, CA for many years.  He’d been back in Mexico for 30 years now.  When asked which he liked better, he said “San Jose is much cleaner, but in Mexico you feel much freer”.  We heartily agreed.

As we got out of the cab and it turned around to leave, Jonny realized he’d left the hot tortillas under the rear window. He took off running to try to catch the cab before it got away. Just then one of the many resort golf carts came up and ushered Jonny to jump on the back – the last I saw of him he was hanging on for dear life as the golf cart sped off – faster than golf carts should go – around the corner. I sat down to wait. A while later, a dejected Jonny came tromping back…the cab had disappeared up the hill by the time the golf cart reached the real road. No tortillas for us.  Although –I did get the Paradise Restaurant to sell me some just before we weighed anchor!

It was a Friday when we left, and for days the craziness had been building up—Semana Santa –Holy Week and Easter are big beach holidays here. The jet skis zooming around and nearly hitting boats, was a little too nerve wracking. We had to escape before the weekend found us with a jetski through our hull (or, as they say “all hull broke loose”). We decided to make the short trip back to secluded Carrizal and peacefully wait out the holiday before heading evermore south.  Exactly where or how far was still being debated.

 

More than a week zipped by in Chamela. We made one dinghy excursion down to the islands in the south of the bay. It was farther than it looked. But the island was thick and jungle-y with a nice little sandy beach away from the wind. We hung out, snorkeled a bit (the water is just gorgeous all over Chamela Bay) and had a picnic lunch.

 

The town we anchored close to is actually called Perula. I never got to see the town of Chamela. Perula is a very sleepy, low key town with limited provisions. The water in the bay is beautiful, clear and tuquiose and it was nice to just hang out on the boat and work on my soon-to-be revealed latest concept. It was quite rolly, but somehow we just kept staying. Going ashore was also not a big draw due to the strong, pounding surf that made dinghy landing downright scary to impossible.

As I was working on managing the books on my Kindle, it up and died. Wouldn’t turn on, off, reset or be recognized by my computer. I was in disbelief (I believe that stage of grief is called “denial”). After several days I tried to contact Amazon for help. I lugged my computer a mile down the dusty main road to an internet café and chatted online with several representatives. After nearly an hour it was determined that they couldn’t help me since I was unable to turn it on.   Ummmm OK. Then they said it was basically a known software problem that happens occasionally and they’d replace it for me. But- then—oops. NO. It was out of warranty, so sorry. I think the anger phase was next, then the bargaining and more denial (I took the thing apart just to see what I could do to it). And soon fell into depression. Not sure I ever really got to the acceptance phase.

One afternoon I was down below and I heard Jonny greeting some people with the most enthusiasm I’ve ever heard from him. Who could it be?!?! I came up to see, much to my surprise, Jeff and Anne – our friends and suppliers of the CPT Autopilot (most awesome thing ever) from Moss Landing! We had no idea if or when we would ever see them down here. They came by the next day and hung out a bit and it was fun to catch up with them. We thought we’d get to hang out more in Tenacatita, but unfortunately we didn’t see them again – somehow missing them before they headed back north. Maybe another season?

We finally decided we’d had enough rolling around in Chamela and set off for Tenacatita.

As usual, we listened to the weather to plan our departure for a day of strong north wind. As often is the case, the weather reports were dead wrong for where we were. Instead we found ourselves beating hard into a strong south wind. We really didn’t feel like motoring the entire day down into that, so after a couple of hours we decided to head in to a bay called Paraiso (“paradise” – how could we go wrong?). The entrance to Paraiso was between rocky out-croppings and islands and was not at all clear or visible. All I could see was pounding surf spraying up onto all the rocks. It was necessary to trust our Navionics chart on the iPad, so I did and just kept heading towards what appeared to be certain death. The sea state was big and fairly rough and I just held our course as Jonny realized he needed to reel in the fishing line. Right at that moment a fish struck the line. We were kind of too close to shore to really deal with this, so I slowed way down and tried to veer off the wind a little bit (straight for rocks) while Jonny reeled in and released a big toro, which isn’t good to eat anyway (Damn the toros! Full speed ahead!).

I got us back on track and soon the entrance to Paraiso became clearer and I picked a path toward the anchor spot.   Paraiso is a teeny tiny “pocket” anchorage, and I couldn’t imagine another boat in there with us. Luckily we had it all to ourselves. And it was insanely rolly – as in you couldn’t sit in the cockpit without being thrown to the sole. But the color of the water was mesmerizing and Jonny knew there was no way I would agree to leave. It was time to finally try an anchoring technique someone told us about a while ago – where you haul up an amount of chain (about ½ a boat length) and hook a line on, drop it back down and put the other end of the line to a cleat at the stern of the boat – essentially turning the boat into a giant bridle. You can then pull in the stern end of the line and the boat will turn away and become beam to the wind. Remember that boats naturally always point into the wind – and in our case, pointing into the wind meant being beam to the waves. So by turning off the wind we were then nose into the waves, which seriously diminished the discomfort level. It was pretty cool how it worked. We were able to eat lunch and then we both wanted to get into the water and explore the shore. There were actually two shores – the main one at a beach with a low key sort of resort and a side beach that was deserted and didn’t appear to have any land access to it.   Since we had the dinghy on deck and didn’t want to go through the hassle of unloading it for one day, we set off with snorkels and dry bags. I went to the main beach and Jonny went to the side beach. After I determined the main beach was kind of messy looking (debris, random things, lots of rocks) and a bit gross, I swam out to the other beach and joined Jonny. We hung out for a bit and were treated to a siting of a Mexican ring tailed lemur who came out to the edge of the woods to spy on us. We also saw the first signs of Hurricane Patricia that made landfall just a little bit south in Barra de Navidad.

That night I was really hot to try a new recipe I found for okonomiyaki – Japanese vegetable pancakes. Despite the boat motion, I was able to pull these off and now I have a new favorite thing to eat! (sorry no pictures–they taste way better than they look).

The next morning we departed early for Tenacatita. It was mostly a very nice sail and the wind was finally behaving itself. We kept hearing how many boats were in Tenacatita (47 at one point) and we sort of dreading pulling into the crowded anchorage. As we rounded the corner into the first part of the Tenacatita bay call The Aquarium, we saw not a single boat in there! It looked nice and we anchored right on the anchor symbol on our chart. It was a bit rolly but looked beautiful with a huge stretch of beach and interesting rocks on our end. The palapas and homes on shore looked like they had been ravaged by disaster. The next day we set out in the dinghy to do some snorkeling. The water was not all that clear and aside from a giant manta ray and a cool rainbow-y fish, we didn’t see much. But it felt good to be in the water. It was a pretty rolly anchorage and we didn’t feel like hanging out on the boat. One thing I began to discover about having your home always rolling side to side – it’s not something you get used to or develop a tolerance to. Instead it’s something that slowly and insidiously drives you completely insane. We had a quick lunch and headed ashore to check out the beach.

A couple more boats had come over from the other bay and gone right ashore in the morning. They were returning to their dinghies when we were landing in the sketchy surf break. I got the skinny on the place from one of the women: The beach had been taken over by some wealthy man who was friends with a previous governor and he kicked everyone off the beach and began to demolish all the homes and businesses. He had armed guards making sure no one came ashore. Not long ago, there was a new governor who didn’t let this man keep the power over this land, so we can go ashore now, but there are no restaurants or tiendas and hurricane Patricia destroyed things just a little more so all that’s left is a depressing array of what once was. Such a shame – as it looked like it would have been a great place. The only way to get supplies was to walk two miles or more inland to a small market and I wasn’t feeling it, we could get creative with the remaining food we had. We explored some of the ruins and finally posted our umbrella and played in the water for a while. I’ve become so spoiled that I don’t even like swimming at the beach that much because of all the sand…jumping off the boat is eversomuch nicer! But it was fun to play in the waves and I went back to the shade while Jonny got the big smile he only gets when being carried forward by waves.

We were getting pretty low on food, so dinners were getting interesting. We knew there were absolutely no supplies at the next stop and we would have to cross the bay to La Manzanilla for a day to stock up. We heard on the morning cruiser net that the resort at the end of the Tenacatita anchorage was offering a deal on Superbowl Sunday (the next day!) – where cruisers could go there and use the all-inclusive facilities to eat and drink whatever they wanted, swim and watch the game on the huge TVs. While the sports game held no interest for us, the rest of the deal was sounding kind of good – given we had no food and a little splurge might be fun.

We headed the short 4 miles over to Tenacatita early in the morning so we could make the most of the ‘day pass’.   I was starving! This is where all the boats were, but only around 20 were left by the time we arrived. We attempted to anchor twice and hit rocks and finally got the hook down in a reasonable spot, out of swinging distance of other boats. We were pretty near Linger Longer and I was looking forward to catching up with them again. Just as we anchored a couple came up to meet us and invite us on a group panga ride to La Manzanilla for the ‘big game’. While we declined, we ended up chatting with these people for quite some time. Finally we were getting in the dinghy and ready to head ashore to the luxurious mecca of food and relaxation. I wanted to say hi quickly to Linger Longer, but we were intercepted by Fred in his kayak (we’d met him in Mazatlan) and had a long chat and drifted quite a ways away. Finally a zip over to Linger Longer, for a chat and more declining of hospitality – I was really anxious to maximize this day pass. It was after 1:00pm by the time we survived the rough dinghy landing and walked over ½ mile to the resort. Walking through the resort, I tried to remain upbeat and positive, but it wasn’t all that nice. The food looked kind of gross and the pools were dingy, old and not in the greatest shape. When we got to the main desk and asked about the deal, they had no idea what we were talking about. They said the day pass was more than twice as much as we were told.   With my bubble burst, we trudged dejectedly back down the beach to the other end where we heard there was one palapa restaurant. We had a ridiculously overpriced and not very good lunch (it took my jaw an entire day to recover from the tough coconut prawns), but I did have a margarita to drown my sorrows.   After lunch, I stripped down to my bikini and we braved the crashing waves to try to get the dinghy out without getting rolled. There was a guy waiting for a good set to land his dinghy, but he finally gave up and just went back to his boat. Not a pleasant dinghy landing!

We swam and hung out at home. We did not think we’d spent much time in Tenacatita as it didn’t seem to be the paradise for us that it seems to be for many other folks. There was no place to get water or supplies, but there were plenty of other people – so it seems the draw to this place is the social scene with little or no interference from “outsiders” (i.e. non cruisers). Tenacatita has its own morning net and they usually announce the time for everyone to swim ashore and play bocci ball. It’s like a little gringo retirement village on water.

The next morning we took Summer across the bay to La Manzanilla. The wind was not coming from the north as it was supposed to, so we had no worries anchoring there and getting ashore. La Manzanilla is a very small and downright adorable town. We found a number of tiendas selling pretty much everything on our list (and then some). We decided to make a pass through town and see all the shops before buying anything, and when we got to the end, we were at the ‘crocodile park’. We couldn’t resist entering the park and walking the rickety boardwalk that circumnavigated the lagoon.

We paid our 25 peso fee and risked our lives for a good close up look at the crocs. At the end of the walk we got to the nursery – so many baby crocs! I had fun grabbing Jonny every time he was staring at crocodiles and watching him jump ten feet (he’s so easy to scare I can’t help myself). We got our groceries, some lunch and made our way back out to Summer. We relaxed for a while in the cute harbor before heading back across to Tenacatita.

Somehow we ended up spending a week in the bay and for the last five days there my feet never hit land. We took a nice long dinghy tour up the estuary, saw lots of birds and crabs, but no crocs (whew! being in a rubber boat surrounded by crocodiles is not my idea of fun).

We visited with a number of friends and made some new friends. I finally got to see another Bristol in person! Summer’s big sister, Gypsy Dream is a Bristol 41.1 and Graciela and Hugh anchored her right next to us. I couldn’t resist going over to say Hi – as I was sure they didn’t notice Summer. They immediately invited me aboard and while it was fun to see another Bristol, it was even better to get to know Graciela and Hugh. They have a wealth of stories from their years cruising.   We were both planning to depart the next morning – us south and Gypsy Dream was heading north.  When I returned to Summer, Kris came by and invited us for breakfast the next morning – so suddenly it seemed very possible we were not leaving the next day (especially as it was mentioned that “Ceasars” might be on the menu – which are like bloody mary’s but with clamato juice (apparently a Canadian thing). I’ve never even had a bloody mary). Linger Longer was all set up for a fancy sit down breakfast and we had a great time and some good eats as always with these guys.

As it turned out Gyspy Dream didn’t leave either, so in the afternoon, they came over for a show and tell aboard Summer. Which of course turned into an entire afternoon of visiting – they have the best stories! I was sad they were going north and we were going south.  They left the next morning and we stayed on one more day. It was already going to be Friday and we might as well stay for the world-famous Tenacatita Friday Night Raft Up. I started to see how this place sucks people in…

I made a big batch of fried rice to share and we moseyed over maybe a few minutes late – 5:12 I think it was…and we were the last to arrive (save for one really late guy on a kayak). Man, these folks are punctual! I’ve always been punctual almost to fault, but in this current life, I’ve sort of relaxed a bit, as I thought it was part of deal, but apparently not here.

Robert (“the Mayor of Tenacatita”) and his wife, whom he calls The Lovely Miss Virginia, have been cruising for many, many years and Tenacatita is their favorite spot. Every Friday night, all the cruisers gather together on their dinghies and tie up in a big circle and pass food around, while Robert blows the conch and thinks of a question that each person must answer when introducing themselves. There were probably about a dozen boats at our raft up and we got to meet a few new folks. We sheepishly wormed our way into the group and got tied up. We ate some interesting potluck foods and heard some good stories and then just chit chatted with folks around us.

As the group was breaking up, we saw a boat entering the anchorage…could it be? Yes! It was Resolute. We’d been hoping to see them come around the corner at any day. We headed over to say hi and got invited up for drinks and I shared what was left of the ginormous mound of fried rice. It was fun as always and ended up being a late night. They tried to convince us not to leave the next day, but we’d already overstayed by two days and were really ready to move on (not to mention we were nearly out of water). As it turned out, Meagan was planning to fly to Florida to pick up some much needed boat parts. Hmmmm…the US, eh?? I asked if she might bring back a small, flat object for me…that’s right A KINDLE! She said yes, so all I needed to do was find wifi and order one before she returned to Mexico. Oh yeah and since we might not be seeing them again, we also had to figure out a way to get it from Banderas Bay back down to me or vice versa. Easy enough, we were hoping to connect with Prism and Orion, and surely they would run into one of them in La Cruz? (as it happens, when Resolute was heading back to La Cruz, they crossed paths with Orion who happened to be coming in from their long journey out to the Revillagigedos Islands!) And hoping they get to meet Prism soon (if not already). My back up plan is they leave the Kindle with our friend Lynne who is living in La Cruz and I don’t get it until we end up back there in a few months.

We had a lovely afternoon sail down to Barra de Navidad.

We did a ‘drive by’ through Melaque, which is just a bit north of Barra. It’s someplace we thought we might like to anchor after stocking up in Barra.   We’d heard entering the Barra lagoon was a bit tricky and I was VERY careful to keep the boat exactly in the middle of the channel as it’s marked on our chart.   Unfortunately that is the very wrong thing to do. We discovered this after we were stuck fast in the sand. Summer’s first true ‘running aground’. What a horrible feeling it is to see the depth sounder plummet to zero and feel the boat slowly grind to a sludgy halt as the keel digs down into sand and mud. After the initial few seconds of panic when you put the motor in neutral, you realize you aren’t really in any danger and the boat isn’t going to fall over, and certainly not sink. Then you begin the problem solving process. Firstly, of course, you try putting it in reverse and pulling yourself back to where you started. When that has absolutely no affect, you then start waving wildly as passing pangas. When that doesn’t work, you get on the radio and announce to everyone in the anchorage that you have grounded your boat and don’t know what to do.

A couple kind souls told us what channel the water taxis were on, and we called to ask for assistance. A panga arrived and we threw them a line and they tried to pull us backwards. We hoped it didn’t pull the cleat out of the transom. It didn’t, but it didn’t move the boat either. We tried a line on the front. A helpful guy (we later learned was Jeff) came out in his dinghy and tried to nudge us as the panga pulled from the front side. Still nothing. The panga motor was not strong enough to help us. The panguero left and we asked Jeff to help us by bringing and anchor out to the side of the boat. By setting the anchor in the direction we wanted to go, we could pull on the line and pull the boat towards it. This is known as “kedging off”, and for some reason we opted not to try that first (probably because digging out the anchor and the line and using our dinghy (which was not ready to go) would’ve been a huge pain in the butt – but with a dinghy there ready and willing, it wasn’t so hard. Jeff and Jonny went out in the dinghy and set the anchor while I paid out the line and then cleated it off near the end.   We then pulled the line in and started to make the boat budge (along with me putting it in gear and gunning it a bit). The panga returned and as all the guys were conversing, I noticed the boat was free and floating away. I had to yell “We’re moving! We’re moving” to get their attention and get Jonny back on task pulling in the anchor line (quickly, so it didn’t get fouled in our prop!).   We were now free to go and Jeff chaperoned us along the proper course through the shallows and out to the also- shallow anchorage.   We picked a nice spot in the back and settled in, feeling oddly accomplished now that we’d truly joined the ‘aground’ club. It still remains to be seen what Summer’s keel looks like after this incident. The lagoon is pretty murky and gross, so there was no reward of jumping in to wash the sweat off after our hot afternoon ordeal.

The next morning was Valentine’s Day, which really didn’t mean that much to me, until the French Baker came by in his panga selling croissants, baguettes, tarts and quiches. I could not resist taking the last chocolate croissant and a pastry for Jonny and a chocolate tart for later. Along with my treats, I was also given a red rose! Suddenly, it seemed like a holiday!

After two nights in the lagoon and getting some food to tide us over, we decided to check into a slip in the marina for a night so we could fill up with water – and clean out the tanks – which somehow were full of debris, wash Summer, flip our 250 feet of anchor chain from end to end (the same end is always ending up in the water while the other end is always dry – seemed like a good idea to rotate) among other projects.   As it was Valentine’s Day when we went to the marina office, they were offering a deeply discounted rate – which they said we could have for later days if we paid on that day. We opted to pay for 2 nights, starting the next day. We got a nice little slip at the end and access to all the facilities of this posh resort we were anchored behind.

While there was no ‘all you can eat and drink’ deal, I did manage to get a few hours of pretending I was on vacation at a swanky resort.   Linger Longer was in the marina too and we had a fun afternoon at the swim up bar, meeting other cruisers. Jonny worked away on most of the projects while I managed to get a blog entry posted and take care of laundry and other business. It was a quick two days. After the first day, Dan on Dazzler pulled into the slip next to us, and it was fun catching up with him and having a wild and crazy neighbor. He gave Jonny a lot of grief for the fact that the French Baker had given me a red rose for Valentine’s Day and Jonny hadn’t given me anything. That night as we were peacefully watching a movie, Dan returned from having a number of drinks and loudly knocked on our boat and said “Hey Jonny, I have those roses you asked me to get! You know, to help you out! Yeah, you can pay me later, but here they are, the roses you asked for – for Jennifer” He handed us 3 red roses, and Jonny, not catching on to the fact that Dan was teasingly trying to make him look good, whispers to me “I don’t remember that conversation”. It went on and on and was pretty hysterical. Dan may or may not have disturbed some of our other neighbors. And I ended up with a nice bouquet. The next morning Dan sheepishly asked if he’d given us roses…

We finished off our work –giving Summer a final good scrub and filling the water tanks before heading back out to the peaceful lagoon. After having seen the town of La Manzanilla, I had been trying to coordinate a week-long session at a language school there, where I would live with a local family and go to classes every day. I really wanted to improve my Spanish and it seemed that Barra was an ideal place to leave Jonny alone for a week and it was a quick trip back to La Manzanilla overland. In Barra there were plenty of good folks around, boat projects to do and even a little wave Jonny can surf. Panic didn’t really set in for him until he realized he was going to have to feed himself.

I managed to arrange the school at the last minute to begin on the upcoming Sunday session. So I had a few days to hang out and see more of Barra. We also we took a bus ride out to see the town Melaque, just a few kilometers away.

Finally it was Sunday and I was packed and ready for my week-long learning adventure. Jonny ferried me ashore and helped me to the bus and off I went.

AND…We’re so grateful to the help we get from our friends now and then feeding the kitty!!

We waited out the supposed ‘wind event’ that was coming through Puerto Escondido area – hunkered down and ready for these 30 knot winds. They never materialized and we were only a little disappointed not to see how well we’d hold up in Honeymoon Cove in that sort of wind. We enjoyed a few more days there until a milder north wind forecast gave us a small window to fly south. Like migratory birds, we felt compelled to keep heading south until there was enough warmth and sunshine to comfortably spread our wings out in the cockpit.

Since the seasonally strong north winds were only easing up for short periods of time, we decided to make an overnight passage and go all the way to La Paz. There were a number of great places to stop along the way, but any stop could mean getting stuck for another week or so waiting for winds to die down. I was a little torn about missing some of the places we had hurried through on the way up, with the promise of “we’ll stop back on the way south”. But the teeth-chattering deck showers convinced me it was the right choice.

It was a blustery and rolly, rollicking ride down and while I didn’t actually get seasick, I didn’t feel great, either. Somewhere in the middle of the night on watch, I realized that not only were we missing stopping at some of my favorite spots, but we were passing them in the dark – I didn’t even get a glimpse. Ah well…maybe another time. Maybe not.

It felt good coming into La Paz – as always – a happy, familiar place. We anchored close to shore and a marina, in hopes of jacking some wifi with my booster. It was a rolly and noisy spot and the wifi didn’t work all that well, so after a couple nights we headed out to the Magote – the long spit of land that curves around from La Paz and forms the outside of the La Paz harbor. It’s calmer, prettier and quieter out there, and the wifi works not at all there, too.

We had, as usual, a whole list of chores to get through as fast as possible so we could continue heading south. I would have loved to take our time and have enjoyable days interspersed with the exhausting days, but that does not seem to be our way. The anchorage in La Paz is a pretty sketchy place, with opposing wind and currents making boats spin around and occasional pop anchor and even “kiss” other boats while doing the infamous “La Paz Waltz”. This situation makes the captain very nervous and unable to relax or be comfortable while we are anchored in La Paz. I, on the other hand, tend to worry about the unknown and the ‘potential possibilities’ far less than I probably should (I save up all my excessive and unhealthy worrying for things that are actually happening). But when it comes to the safety of our boat, I always defer to the Captain, since I’m pretty sure my casual attitude about things would have sunk us a few times over already. So hurry we did.

Our friends on Orion finally arrived and shortly after them, Sang Vind anchored next to us. La Paz was the stopping off point for their 3 crew members that had been along for the past month. We quickly made plans to get together for the famous 2 for 1 Pizza Night at Harker Board. We also discovered that the movie we just noticed playing at the cinema near Mega “In the Heart of the Sea” happened to have our friend Frans from Sang Vind in it! I never got the full story as to how he happened into the part, but he was a crew member on the ship (no speaking part, but with a brilliant death scene). He apparently worked on it for quite some time. Dinner and a movie became our 11 person date for that night. We were all pretty excited to see Frans on the big screen. After our 2 for 1 pizzas and organizing 3 cabs to get us to the theater, we discovered it was also ½ price night at the theater! Tickets were around $3. If all that weren’t exciting enough, we entered the theater to discover it will filled with cushy, leather-like reclining love seats! We were all giggling like a bunch of children (well, except for the 2 children, they were pretty well behaved). We finally settled down with our snacks in our recliners and watched carefully for glimpses of Frans. We all cheered and yelled every time we saw him. It was a bit distracting from watching the movie though – I never realized how focused the camera ALWAYS is on the stars and minimizes everyone else. I have to say I was a bit relieved when Frans died so that I could relax and just watch the rest of movie.

We had a long, late night trek back to the marina with everyone giddy to be in the midst of a movie star. I was thankful to have a dry dinghy ride back out to Summer – a nice end to one of the most fun evenings we’ve had in a very long time.

The rest of our time in La Paz involved going to the Farmer’s Market (twice) and loading up on all sorts of organic fruits, veggies and herbs, and even a whole chicken, and we made our pilgrammage to all the big grocery stores. I got some internet time at the cyber café (which is where the last blog was posted). I also managed to get to a dermatologist and a dentist, just to keep on top of my health. We got propane, gas, diesel, all that exciting stuff.

On our last morning I heard someone announcing on the morning net that they had a very small inflatable boat to trade for ‘coconuts’ (that’s what people say when they are selling something – because, technically it’s illegal for non-Mexicans to sell things here). I had really been wanting another form of transportation so that neither of us would ever be trapped on the boat when the other wanted to do something else. I know we don’t have a lot of room for another full size dinghy, and we hadn’t been able to find an affordable inflatable kayak and a SUP was not all that appealing. I called the boat and tried to arrange to get together to see it before we left. It ended up working out that the guy, Christian, could meet us on shore before he had to go to work – and show us the dinghy in his onshore storage locker. We went up to the designated meeting spot (at Club Cruceros) and waited for quite a while. I finally spotted a guy wearing camouflage shorts (he said he would be dressed in camo). I walked up to him and got his attention and said “Hi, are you Christian?”. The guy gave me a bit of a horrified look and said “uhhhhhh, nooooooo”. I realized what must be going on in that poor guy’s head and I tried not to laugh hysterically as I apologized and said I was looking for someone in camo clothes. I didn’t explain that the name of the person I was looking for was Christian, so that guy will just have to live with the mystery.   We finally met up with Christian and went to look at his dinghy. It was not a cheap rubber inflatable as we’d feared, but it was a teeny, tiny miniature version of Peugeot! It was SO cute and not in bad shape. It rolled up into a pretty small package with it’s own case with oars and a pump – that I could even carry myself. We negotiated a good deal and off we went with our tiny second car. I was pretty excited, imaging myself rowing ashore while Jonny was fishing or surfing, or rowing out to visit other boats while Jonny preferred to stay in. Since our new boat was like a “mini-me” version of Peugeot, I decided to call her “Mini-P”.

We finished our last chores and headed out La Paz for the quick trip down to Balandra for the night and then on to Bahia de Los Muertos to wait for a good weather window to jump across to Isla Isabel, San Blas and then Chacala in time for Christmas.

We had a bit of a cold and rolly night in Balandra and didn’t get to really see any of this, one of my all-time favorite spots. We left just after sun up in wild and rough seas. Plenty of wind in the right direction for a fast trip down to Muertos. Unbeknowst to me, Jonny’s back had been bothering him for some time, and apparently pulling up the anchor in the rough conditions tweaked a vertebra out of place for him. But the time we anchored down in Muertos, he was in a lot of pain. We tried massaging and resting (keeping him at rest is no easy feat).   But he clearly wasn’t getting better. I noticed that his body went off at an angle from his waist up – he was definitely out of whack! But here we were in Bahia de los Muertos –a beautiful bay with just 2 restaurants and some private vacation rentals.      After a few days of taking it easy and no relief from the pain, we started to weigh our options for getting him some help. Sailing back north (beating up into strong winds) to La Paz seemed like a bad idea – not only a rough 11 hour trip, in the wrong direction, but an uncomfortable anchor spot for him in the end. The nearest town is 12 miles from there, which is the nearest place to catch a bus back to La Paz. One of the restaurants had a night guard who ended work at 6:00am and could probably give us a ride to the town to catch the latest bus to La Paz at 8:00am. Then we would have to find a place to stay, eat out and take taxis while trying to locate a recommended chiropractor or osteopath. It all seemed very complicated and expensive. We waited a few more days.

It became clear our original plans were no longer possible, and now we were looking at maybe making it to Isla Isabel to spend Christmas there. The only problem with that is it’s a remote and desolate island. No place to buy shrimp! And as far as I’m concerned, the true meaning of Christmas is SHRIMP. Every Christmas Eve, everyone on my Dad’s side of the family sits down to mountains of floured shrimp fried in olive oil and a special ‘Christmas sauce’ and spaghetti – just like Grandma used to make and all of her family in Italy for as far back as anyone knows. I could live without being able to make any phone calls, only sending wishes via SSB radio, but honestly I didn’t think I could do without shrimp.   I’m not sure if you’ve sensed the theme here, but for me holidays = food.   I took the dinghy ashore myself one day to see if there was any way to arrange to get the restaurant to sell us some shrimp or make an order with their delivery person or what. As I was landing I met the other couple in the anchorage aboard Wasabi (Karen and Al ? I might have that wrong, because my Mom has a dear and wonderful friend named Karen who is married to an Al, but I’m pretty sure that’s what I heard). They had arranged for someone to drive them into the nearest village for supplies. I wanted to jump at the chance to go with them, but I had promised Jonny I’d be right back to make him lunch. I had a drink while they awaited their ride and they agreed to have a look for shrimp for me. Not long after I returned to the boat I heard a dinghy pull up – a kilo of shrimp delivered right to our companionway! What luck! I paid them and thanked them profusely. Now, wherever we ended up, Christmas was saved!

Another boat arrived and we soon met Damon and Desiree on a beautiful junk rigged boat named Gia. They are about our age, and really cool people. I enjoyed hanging out with them while Jonny was incapacitated. They ended up convincing Jonny to try a muscle relaxer and do some stretching and massage to try and get his back to pop back into place. It seemed to help him a bit, but he was still going to need to see someone. I tried to convince my dear friend and chiropractor Dr. Frogley, to fly down to Cabo and meet us, but apparently he already had plans for the holiday (he did share as much advice as he could, though).

We ultimately decided that we would attempt a crossing to Mazatlan. It was the shortest crossing we could do (2 nights) and brought us to a Fonatur marina we’d stayed at before in large city and in roughly the direction we wanted to go. Given the winds, it was likely we would be motoring most of the way, meaning less sail handling work and less worries. It was a bit rolly the first night, and the boat took a roll when Jonny was trying to get up from his bunk, and gave him a jolt that popped his back – he felt a measure of immediate relief! He was still sore and looking a bit crooked, but his pain had dropped quite a lot and he was able to manage the crossing and watches quite well. Whew! He even caught a gorgeous tuna and we luxuriated in pan-seared ahi for three meals.

 

There was pretty much no wind and we had to motor nearly the entire way. A bit of an expensive prospect, but given our circumstances, and how else things could have gone, I think we were incredibly lucky. We got across quickly and with no incidents. We arrived into Mazatlan at high tide and got in through the narrow and shallow harbor mouth, passing inches away from the dredge. It was Christmas eve and we were looking forward to tying up in a slip and having a nice shrimp dinner. Unfortunately there were no slips available! We tied up at the fuel dock (we needed fuel anyway) and were told that a boat was leaving that afternoon and we could have their slip as soon as they were gone. Unfortunately they were not able to leave – the tide was low and the dredger was blocking the entrance so they had to come back to the slip for the night.   We were allowed to stay at the fuel dock overnight – not ideal, but better than nothing! We took a little walk to an upscale sort of market and managed to get a good bottle of wine to have with our Shrimpmas feast.   We were both so exhausted that after enjoying our dinner we were passed out for the night by 8:30 pm.   The folks in our slip were out late the next morning – and I was actually kind of glad they hadn’t left – otherwise we never would have met them! Nice couple I am looking forward to hanging out with somewhere down south. The woman working in the office of the Fonatur remembered me from when we stayed in March. She also had a chiropractor to recommend – an American guy her husband had seen. I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw his name written down – Dr. Backman.

Given that we had not planned to stay in a marina we did not have the usual frantic list of projects we needed to get done. That doesn’t mean the captain didn’t start a list, but it was far more relaxed than other marina stays. I did manage to get 6 loads of laundry done, got Mini-P blown up and tested (I love her!), grocery shopping of course and a few chiropractor visits. Jonny was starting to feel better and then he spent an entire day making a fabric template for dinghy chaps (covers for Peugeot) and he felt pretty bad the next day. Taking it easy was not on his list.

We noticed Arluk in the marina across the way and reconnected with our friends Wayne and Cyndie who were next to us in the marina in Chula Vista CA. Back in the days before we’d all headed into Mexican waters. They invited us over for an evening of sundowners and tasty food and it was fun to catch up and hear all their trials and tribulations cruising around Mexico.

The week in Mazatlan went fast – I never even got back to old town. But we did get to walk around the huge white church turned discotheque / restaurants. Luckily it is situated at the end of the road Mega is on and a few blocks down from the chiropractor. We were able to fit in a quick look-see before our big provisioning trip to Mega.

We also to glimpse the beaches of Mazatlan for the first time. Given that we are spoiled rotten when it comes to beaches, we were not very impressed. Every inch is built up with hotels and restaurants– it’s almost impossible to find a way onto the beach! They are also not the cleanest beaches I’ve seen by far. The “Gold Zone” was definitely not for us, we had passed it by on our last visit, but seeing as the chiropractor was located smack in the middle of it all, we decided to have a look around. I could see how it has a certain appeal for some types of vacationers. When searching for an alleyway to the beach, we passed through a sort of open-air sports bar jammed between buildings – no view of anything but the many TVs and buildings surrounding it. It was crammed full of older Gringos and not a-one of them looked like they were having a good time as they scowled at us passers-by. What a way to spend a vacation! It’s busy and overwhelming for someone not used to so much human-generated stimulation.

Our week at the marina went by fast and came to an end at the end of the year. We headed out at high tide in the morning for a short trip out to Isla Venado – less than a mile from the city. We squeezed by the dredging machine with just a few feet to spare and the crew was hamming it up for the camera.

We anchored near the end of the beach – almost directly across from the big white church turned nightclub and waited for the inevitable fireworks display at midnight. As you can see, I was really partying hard.   Coming back to life near midnight was well worth it. We were treated to several miles worth of fireworks displays up and down the coastline.

The first day of 2016 was a bit chilly and blustery. We didn’t feel it was a good day to hop in the dingy and go ashore. We entertained ourselves by watching the antics of all the boats and jet-skis coming and going around us. A young couple’s jetski died on them, kind of in the center of the 3 boats at anchor. The guy, for some reason, took OFF his life jacket and jumped in the water. I’m not sure what he was thinking of doing, swim-towing it? It must have gotten away from him because at one point they got our attention again when the woman let out a blood-curdling scream. Our dinghy was not in the water, so we could not go rescue them, and one of the other boats had gone ashore and the third boat was loading up in their dinghy, although not with any intentions of helping these folks. We considered calling someone on the radio for them but didn’t know whom. We figured the owners of the jetski rental place would be watching their investment carefully, and sure enough before long a panga came out and took them all back. The woman couldn’t get off that jet-ski fast enough. They are going to have a great story to tell when they get home!

On the second day of the year we were ready to make our fourth attempt at visiting Isla Isabel – the National Park and Internationally protected island, which by all accounts is magical and spectacular. Curiosity is killing us. Before taking off for the overnight passage, we managed to get ashore on Isla Venado in the morning for a quick hike up to the summit and take in the wonderful views.

By late afternoon we were ready to weigh anchor. Dinner was made and on the stove in case it was too rolly to cook and everything was stowed safely away. Will we make it through another overnight passage? Will we finally get to set foot on Isla Isabel? And will the winds and the anchorage famous for ‘eating anchors’ treat us kindly?? Stay tuned!

AND…A BIG THANK YOU goes out to Van and Susan for their wonderful Christmas gift to the Summer cruising kitty!  Here’s Summer’s lucky day when she was piloted by the venerable Cap’n Van:

We of course spent more time in Guaymas than originally planned. There was a strong north wind we were waiting out before crossing back to Baja. Having three days extra meant we didn’t have to bust our butts quite as hard to get all our projects done, but it still seemed we went nonstop the entire time we were there and barely finished every last thing as we pulled away from port.

Getting food was a priority (isn’t it always?). We decided to trek up to the big Soriana grocery store to see if it would be the best place for our big provision later in the week. It was supposed to be a quick trip and we left at noon to walk up there and find some lunch on the way. We didn’t get home till after 5:00pm. There was lunch, and the fabric store (and us with a ‘new’ sewing machine) and then there was this big hill with a park at the top of it that we just had to figure out how to get to. And the views were well worth it! It’s always fun to get ‘the big picture’ of places. Sadly, this Soriana was not “it” and fell far short of what we were hoping for, but we enjoyed the visit at any rate. It seems the rumors of Walmart being THE place to get the best produce etc., were true and we were going to have to bite the bullet and bus it out there.

Boat projects included removing the leaking handrail, digging out the holes and filling with epoxy and replacing it (that took days and days), Cleaning, polishing and waxing all the stainless (my pet project), cleaning out our water tanks, changing the oil in the dinghy motor, changing filters/maintenance on Summer’s motor, cleaning the barnacles and green slime off the dinghy (and stowing it for the passage), getting a blog entry posted, getting propane tank, diesel and gas tanks filled, cleaning every inch of Summer – inside and out (freewheeling water! Whoo hoo!), doing tons of laundry and a number of other things I’ve already forgotten…

We listened carefully to the weather and checked all the online sources to find a good time to jump across. A big wind was coming and if we didn’t leave by Saturday, we could be stuck in Guaymas for another week. Neither of us felt like we wanted to do that. While I really did enjoy the city and liked all the exploring we did, it was still a city and cities have a way of sucking money right off your person. It’s just too easy to stop into the juice place for a drink, or the bakery for a treat or, grab some tacos for lunch or, or…and suddenly you’ve spent a bunch of extra money on top of what you were already out and about to accomplish, which usually involved spending money. We scrambled to get every last thing done and pulled away from the dock by late morning, waving goodbye to all our new friends – ready for our 22 hour journey.

This trip replaces the trip from Santa Rosalia as “#2 Worst Passage Ever”. As we were leaving the harbor area of Guaymas (and it’s sort of like trying to leave Chula Vista to get to the ocean – it’s a big harbor and took us about an hour just to get clear of it) -we had a little bit of rain and there was lightning on the horizon. Lightning is not something you really want to see when you’re on the open sea with a 55 foot metal pole sticking up into the air. We could see a few storms and we contemplated turning back, but the storms appeared to be heading towards us, and heading back would could mean just prolonging our time in storms. So we decided to try to skirt around them – steering to the south where the skies were clear and avoiding being underneath the dark, black clouds spewing lightning. It was a little exciting at first, I felt like someone on those “Storm Chaser” weather channel shows… but it soon got serious. We were way to far to turn back, and as I said, turning back wouldn’t have done us any good. We realized we might not get to San Juanico and would probably have to go someplace further south, and not get to be there. Jonny took a video at the beginning, before things got really crazy. I thought he was using the wind meter, not taking video, so sorry I wasn’t hamming it up. I was a little busy anyway. But please do notice how the stainless solar arch, I so painstakingly polished, glints in the sun!

The wind picked up considerably as did the waves. We soon found ourselves in 8-10 foot seas with 30-40 knots of wind. Definitely a first for us and Summer (we’ve maybe seen 20 gusting to 25 while underway). The direction we wanted to go became irrelevant, survival was the only thing to focus on. We were headed much more southeast (we wanted to go southwest) in an attempt to stay at a good angle not to get rolled by waves and not to round up into the wind and not get hit by lightning. It’s a boat’s natural tendency to want to head into the wind and, left unattended a boat will do just that. I was fighting the wheel with all my might to keep the boat from rounding up, and then having to quickly turn back to keep from going too far downwind. I did this for six hours. Jonny and I briefly reviewed what to do should the boat get knocked down (meaning the mast is laying on top of the water – which I was fully expecting to experience) – it’s quite simple: DO NOT LET GO OF THE BOAT (even if fully upside down, the boat will likely right itself). I was soon clipped in to help with this.

Our hull speed is around 6 knots- I saw the knotmeter register 8 and tried not to look at it anymore. The wind was so strong it was blowing sheets of water around and it looked like smoke everywhere. I refused to look behind me – Jonny’s reactions to the waves were enough and I knew if I actually saw them I might be too terrified to function. He said some of the waves coming up on us were higher than the solar panels. I just focused on keeping us upright and reminding myself of facts, like, we have a 6,000 lb. keel and this wind speed and wave height are not likely to flip our boat, no matter how much it FEELS like it will happen. Remembering stories of people who’ve survived waves higher than their masts, etc. was also helpful. Jonny had to go forward to try to lower the sail, we were already reefed down but it was still too much sail. He fought for a long time to try and get the sail down, it was pinned to the stays and wouldn’t budge. He got it down mostly and we went 5-6 knots with no sails for quite some time. In a surprising twist, Jonny started feeling dangerously seasick and I thought I was doing pretty well. He really wanted to take some Zofran – an anti-nausea pill (my sister had generously supplied us with a few earlier this year for just such an emergency). It was up to me to go down below to find them – which I knew was going to be the kiss of death (seasick- wise) for me. But down I went. I sustained a few bruises from being thrown around in the head, but I got the pills.

We knew it was going to be a long night and probably not OK for either of us to be incapacitated. I was dreading the dark, when you can’t anticipate how to react until after whatever is going to happen, happens. We took a number of waves over the aft quarter and I was soaked from head to toe, and started getting chilly as the sun went down. Luckily the wind abated a bit and we were left with just very rolly seas. As I started shivering, I knew I’d better take a zofran too, although I was a bit worried about other side affects of sleepiness or who knows what with me (most things seem to have opposite side affects on me, so there was a chance I could be wired?). Things calmed to the point we could let Moses (our awesome CPT Autopilot) take over the steering and the wind switched, allowing us to head more towards San Juanico. I went down below to change. I did not come back up…while I never actually threw up, I came awfully close and spent at least an hour in the head hugging the toilet, ‘just in case’ (I realized after a small vurp, that barfing on the rolling and pitching settee, in the dark, would be a huge disaster) and was I unable to do anything useful for feeling so sick. I WAS able to wonder why the hell we do this?? I also got a huge headache and ringing in my ears, so, I’m not entirely convinced the zofran was a good thing for me, although it seemed to work fine for Jonny (maybe if I’d been barfing for days and couldn’t stop, it would be a good thing for me?). Anyway, I felt awful and ended up burying my head under blankets down below, unable to move. Jonny managed to keep watch all night and things got considerably less wild after midnight, but it was a rolly ride the whole way and most unpleasant for me.

I’ve noticed (again) how sometimes sailing simplifies things (or at least crams it all into a short, intense period of time, so you can’t help but notice) and you see lessons that can also be applied to more complicated parts of life: Sometimes you cannot go in the direction you want to go, sometimes your survival is all that matters, and when things calm down again, you may be able to continue on your path, or you may have to abandon your original plans and find a new path. Can any one relate to that?

In the morning when I finally emerged, I could see land and familiar mountains near San Juanico. As lush, alive and exciting as mainland is, arriving in Baja always feels like coming ‘home’ to me for some reason. Jonny said the same thing as I was thinking it.

San Juanico had about 5 boats, 3 of whom we knew. It’s always nice to get welcomed with people waving and someone blowing a conch. We found a spot among all the other boats, said hi to a few friends who came by, secured everything and ate some food and settled in for a nap. Jonny slept from 11:30 am till 6:00 pm, ate dinner and then we slept for 9 more hours. It was so calm and quiet and dark that first night. Lovely. Strong winds were predicted for the next few days so we had no idea how long we would stay or if we could even get off the boat much. But that was fine with me – we had plenty of food and lots of books. Our spot did get quite rolly the second night, so we moved out on the far side of the bay, where there was only one boat. We were a bit like pariahs, but we were OK with that. It took us two days to even get our dinghy put together and into the water. We had a bit of recovering to do! We missed a few of the fun times with everyone else there, but we were just spent and really needed some quiet time to recover from our very eventful and very social past few weeks.

San Juanico is a huge bay. There are at least 5 beaches, each with a different look and feel – everything from all rocky to white sands. I was very glad to be away from the city and done with so many projects – my lungs started feeling clearer right away! The far northern beach is home to the cruiser’s shrine tree. When we stopped through in July, we visited the shrine and vowed we’d come up with something really cool to leave there on the way back. We had all summer to work on it. And we didn’t. We ended up leaving our mark after a bit of debate and effort, and if you want to see what it is, you’ll just have to go to San Juanico and look for it. It was fun to spot some of our friends’ creative offerings.

There was quite a lot of wind and it was not conducive to tooling around in the dinghy. We did a little snorkeling – but the water is considerably cooler now. Water temperature was 76 – not the 85 we’ve come to enjoy and bathing was a teeth-chattering prospect. Even wearing Jonny’s neoprene rash guard, which fit me like a dress, I ended up quite numb! Combined with the howling wind, the cooler temps made washing off a teeth-chattering and unpleasant experience. It’s not like we didn’t know it was coming, but it still seems like the seasons changed so fast. The blankets come out at night and suddenly there are a lot more clothes around. I can even wear my hair down without wanting to hack it off for the heat on my neck.

We did manage to get one quiet wind day and we dinghied down to the southern end of the bay to try to find the petroglyphs we heard about. From the water, the ravine where they were supposed to be looked like an easy walk. Unfortunately the strong winds had caused considerable wave action and landing on that beach did not look like a safe idea if we were interested in staying somewhat dry. We briefly wondered if we were getting soft… We went down one more beach and that one seemed a little more reasonable place to land.

We had a bit of walk to the next beach over and then tried to figure out how to get up to the rocky area, which turned out to be much farther away than it originally appeared. There was a mostly dried up creek that seemed to be coming from where we wanted to go.       With some sand dune climbing, bush whacking and hiking up through the rocky dried creek bed, we eventually came to the lush, giant boulder amphitheater / cave-like area. We had no idea where these petroglyphs were or where to find them. I sat down on a rock, looking up into the steep cliff and boulders ahead, thinking we should probably try to scale up into them and look for a cave or something. As I looked over to my right, I gasped – PETROGLYPHS!! I was sitting right next to some! It turned out all the ones we found were very low to the ground. Clearly the area we were in had been filled in with rocks and sand from the water that rushes through there (or used to?) and it had once been deeper and more protected caves. We found a variety of faint images on the rocks in this area. I have no idea who did the paintings or how old they really are. Some people speculate they are maybe not ‘real’ authentic cave paintings. I have to wonder what the cut-off age is for something to be a breath-taking piece of history as opposed to just ho-hum graffiti. Someday will future generations be digging out and crawling into the ancient highway underpasses of what was once “America” and be fascinated by the gang symbols, curse words and bizarre alphabet the ancients used, and taking paint samples to discern just what material came out of our spray cans? For all we know, these petroglyphs are just the annoying, illegal work of ancient hoodlums. But at any rate, I find them fascinating and was very excited to see all of them.

There appeared to be a break in the winds again, (we sat out the first opportunity to head south) and we finally decided we were ready to move on. We made the relatively short trip down to Isla Coronado – the same one we stayed at in late July (where I spent my birthday). When reviewing our log book, Jonny discovered that exactly one year ago that day marked our arrival in Ensenada, Mexico. We felt it was something to celebrate. I also feel like “What, only a year and we are already getting into re-runs?” Sorry.

We had a few lovely days at Isla Coronado – finally back to the truly gorgeous waters that just make me want to melt into them. The fact that it is too cold to just jump in several times a day and meld with the water is a bit frustrating though! We were the only boat there for most of it (save for a day visit from the Safari Endeavor – a smallish adventure cruise ship). I believe some of our friends were on the other side of the island, which was the ‘right’ side to be on given the wind, but we decided to see how it was on the prettier side and it was just fine!

We were getting a bit low on food, as it had been about 2 weeks since leaving Guaymas. We planned to make a stop over in Loreto for supplies – as we did on the way up. Open roadstead anchorage, not comfortable for an overnighter – which is sad because I would love to be able to spend time in Loreto. It’s got such charm and good vibes, I always loved our stops there when we used to drive into Baja. We left super early to get there and get out before the winds picked up. It was just a 6 mile run and we motored the whole way in flat calm seas. I had NO idea what we were going to find in terms of supplies – I had a secret hope that I might actually find a turkey, seeing as it was the day before Thanksgiving. We didn’t even have a plan for where we were going to go after Loreto. It was dependent on a number of things – such as winds, if we got a good enough load of stuff to pull off something Thanksgiving-ish, if we wanted to go hang with the crowds at Puerto Escondido, did we want to just go back to Isla Coronado to wait out the winds, how far south did we want to go, knowing there was no going back north? We were feeling particularly indecisive. So, we shopped first and figured the rest would come to us. We ran into Tom and Claire, whom we’d met in San Juanico – they were doing the same Loreto supply run as us and landed at the docks right when we did. They hadn’t been there before so we gave them the five cent tour – here’s the old church, the tourist row, here’s where you buy the good vanilla, here are the various markets…. We showed them the ropes and eventually went off to do our own shopping.

I was surprised to find some frozen turkeys at one of the markets. I had my ‘wish list’ of Thanksgiving supplies and somehow managed to get almost everything. THANKGIVING IS ON! I was bound and determined to cook a turkey feast in my little galley. I had the guy in the market searching the back for the smallest turkey he could find. Unfortunately 6.5 kilos was it. That’s 14.3 pounds, people! Yikes! I had NO idea how or if I was going to be able to fit this thing in my oven. But I was too fired up to worry about that. I found fresh cranberries, and even some marjoram (key spice in the stuffing!). The only thing lacking was pumpkin. No pumpkins, fresh or canned to be had. In the last minute I grabbed a huge can of yams, thinking “sweet potato pie” that’s close, right? So now we were fully laden with all manner of foods and the makings for Thanksgiving. I was very grateful to have my new cart to lug all this food around town. Not being weighted down with heavy bags meant my feet didn’t get a pounding and my plantar fasciitis can continue to heal (heel?).

Now we just had to figure how WHERE we were going to perform this Thanksgiving miracle. We were hungry, so we lugged our considerable grocery load to a restaurant to get some lunch. Yes, it felt really weird to bring a load of food to a restaurant and then order more food… But eating and sitting seemed to be an important component to decision-making. We ended up meeting a really nice couple of ex-pats at the restaurant and chatting with them cut into our decision-making time. We were nearly finished eating and still no idea where we were going. For some reason neither of us was really feeling like going to Puerto Escondido. It’s crowded and expensive and it’s not that pretty and there’s nothing really to do there (except try to get a ride to Loreto). We knew we needed to stop there to get water and fuel, so we didn’t want to go south of there. That limited our options a bit. We also realized it was getting too late in the day to do our chores there and then go somewhere else. One of our favorite spots on the way up was Honeymoon Cove on Isla Danzante, which is just across the way from Puerto Escondido. It has three coves that can hold one boat each. We decided to try to go there and see if there was room for us.

We wanted to be near Escondido in the event that Hurricane Sandra (post-hurricane season!) took a turn for the worst, but we just couldn’t bring ourselves to try to stay there. There are three areas (aside from the Fonatur marina) in there – one anchorage is wide open and you are charged nearly $10/day just to anchor there, the ‘ellipse’ anchorage (which, surprisingly is round) is fairly deep and also has in and out and daily fees, and ‘the waiting room’ is a deeper anchorage which is supposed to cost $1/day but no one really pays I guess. There are mooring balls there that are not owned or maintained and you can take one at your own risk if you can find one. Also, that whole place is kind of a ‘scene’ with people who’ve lived there for 20 years and all the politicky stuff that goes on in small communities where people don’t have a lot else to do. We just weren’t feeling it (listening to their morning net was quite enough, and very entertaining). So, Honeymoon it was! We would keep an eye on the weather and go from there, but it seemed we could stay put there for all of Thursday at any rate.

We got underway after stowing all our food. I began to think of all the work ahead of me for pulling off this meal. The turkey was thawing nicely in the cockpit and I finally couldn’t take the suspense. I had to see if it would fit in the oven. With the oven rack resting on the floor of the oven, this bird fit just barely in my pan and slid into the oven with barely a finger’s width of space at the top. I had NO idea if it would cook properly, or if the bottom would burn or what (the heat comes from flames under a metal covering at the floor of the oven) – but I was determined to give it a go. Yes, I could have cut up the turkey and cooked it in pieces, but, to be honest, the only things I truly care about are stuffing and gravy, and cooking stuffing inside a whole turkey is really the only way to get it tasting just how I like it. The giblets and neck are how you get the gravy, so even if the bird got messed up, I could have stuffing and gravy. Yeah, I’m a little crazy about this meal, as it’s probably one of my all time favorite meals when I get to make it my way. I realized I’d better get started right away. So I made piecrust and attempted this sweet potato pie (I was skeptical it would come out) and then I made the cranberry sauce. I never liked cranberry sauce when I thought it was something cylindrical that you sliced, but sauce from fresh cranberries is quite a treat. With that done, my only task for Thursday was to make the stuffing, gravy and potatoes, stuff the bird and fit it in the oven. I decided something green was just too much to ask. I couldn’t even begin to think of how impossible it might to be to store the leftovers.

I discovered something new about my oven – it doesn’t actually go below 350 degrees. The turkey cooked really fast! But miraculously it came out nearly perfect. The gravy was to die for and the stuffing was “ok” (I had to wing it with the spices and the ratio wasn’t quite the “Bell’s Stuffing Seasoning” I’d hoped for). But all in all it was a delicious Thanksgiving and I managed to fit all the leftovers in the fridge. Truly a Thanksgiving miracle. I try to always be thankful for what I have and the people in my life, so of course we spent some time reiterating what we are thankful for and climbing the hill to make some phone calls. But I’ll admit it, it’s really about the stuffing and gravy.

Hurricane Sandra ended up fizzling out and never causing Baja much trouble, so that was a relief. However, the wind was predicted to blow hard from the Northwest for quite some time – as it is wont to do this time of year. We figured being holed up at Honeymoon Cove wasn’t the worst place to be. We had considered going to the southeast side of Isla Carmen, but we weren’t sure what it would be like in this wind and figured it would be better to be close to Escondido just in case. We didn’t have quite enough water to go for five days so we made a quick hop over to Puerto Escondido to get some water at the Fonatur marina and top off our gas and diesel tanks.   Last time we were there, they made a big deal of reading the water meter and charging us for the water we used, so I went to find a Fonatur guy and ask him about using the water. This guy had NO idea what I was talking about when I asked (in perfect Spanish, mind you) if I could get some water for our boat. He looked at me like I was speaking Martian or something. I asked in everyway I could and he finally said “uhhh aqua?” and pointed to the fuel dock, I pointed to our boat and asked if we could just use the water there. He shrugged. I confirmed it was OK to use the water and he said “si”…so I guess the water was free that day! We washed down Summer, filled up all our tanks, rinsed some rags and the unfortunate towel that the turkey pan was set on (and got covered in gravy). I even went and found the bathroom doors open, so I hopped in for a shower. Only cold water, but there was no wind in there, so it was a big bonus – I didn’t come out with numb hands and chattering teeth. I went to check out the little tienda to see if there was anything we couldn’t live without (and get a beer for Jonny). There were a couple shelves with fresh veggies, so I took the opportunity to grab a few more potatoes to go with our leftovers. When I went to check out it came to 95 pesos. That seemed awfully high so I asked how much the beer was – 35 pesos, about right…so…uh, that meant 4 potatoes cost 60 pesos??? Yep, she confirmed potatoes were 15 pesos EACH – that’s nearly a dollar for one potato. I decided we didn’t really need potatoes and I put them all back (I paid 11 pesos for 6 of the exact same potatoes at the grocery store!). That incident just added to the annoying-ness of Puerto Escondido. I ran into Marya who I’d met in San Juanico – she was trying to use the internet and was extremely annoyed that it was very slow (and she was paying to use it) –so I didn’t try to chat long with her. There is supposed to be internet in Puerto Escondido, but everyone is always complaining about it not working. In general all the folks we meet on the docks are super friendly and it’s a very social place, but still we just couldn’t seem to find a reason to drop anchor anywhere in there. We got the fuel topped off and we were on our way. On the way out we were chased down by a dinghy – and Meagan, Jonah and Nia were in it! So great to see those guys – they were all out in the Waiting Room and tried to convince us to take a mooring ball out there. It would have been really fun to hang out with everyone (the one and only benefit of PE that I can see)…but the beauty and tranquility of Honeymoon Cove was just too big of a draw. I’m not a big fan of having to bathe in a crowded anchorage – aside from the lack of privacy, jumping overboard in the middle of a group of boats, when you know everyone is flushing their toilets overboard, just kind of grosses me out. In more remote areas where boats are farther apart, I believe that it’s none of my business what someone sees through their binoculars.

We were soon back to our little cove, a little slice of heaven – it was a bit of a rough crossing and we took a number of waves over the bow – not a big deal, but jeeeez I’d JUST hosed her down! We were determined to set the anchor good and deep to weather the upcoming blow. We tried 4 times and couldn’t get it to bite. We were both getting cranky and needed to eat lunch. After a huge plate of leftover thanksgiving goodness, we were ready to try again. Jonny dove in and checked the bottom and discovered it was all shale and rock there was no way the anchor would set in that. We had to move out to a bit deeper water just a little ways over and we were able to set it good in sand, about 30 feet deep –a bit deeper than normal, but we felt we would be secure and we were in a good position to get protection from the island in the big northwest blow.

There was a tiny cove just to the left of us with a beautiful little beach and gorgeous aqua water. There are great hiking trails all over the island as well. We discovered that there is also excellent cell phone signal at the top of the hill!

Tour boats often bring people into that cove for a swim or lunch break. When we came down from one of our hike we discovered a large white man sitting on our dinghy eating his tour group sandwich. My first thought was “Would you sit on the hood of a stranger’s car and eat your lunch in a parking lot??”. Seriously, what on earth do people think??? I know we often have local children playing on our dinghy and that doesn’t surprise me in the least, but a grown man visiting a foreign country? It just seemed awfully rude to me. Jonny tapped him on the shoulder so we could launch and go back home and I guess he just said “uh… oh thanks for the time!”. How weird!

We took advantage of a calm morning to dinghy down to the next couple coves and just have a look. They were just gorgeous! On the way back we stopped to say hi to Carola, anchored in the cove down from us (the most beautiful cove, too, it’s where we first anchored in July – but they were there before us this time). Cliff and Maryanne have a beautiful Summer-sized boat and are down from the Bay Area (ish) for a couple more weeks. Cliff was worried about running out of reading material as we were stuck there waiting for the wind to abate – his laptop died and that’s where all his kindle books were stored. I offered to share my book collection with him. They came over in the afternoon and Maryann brought a delicious chocolate cake (her latest experiment – it was made with beets – aah yes, an experimental, real-food baker after my own heart!). We had a great afternoon hanging out with them and before we knew it, the sun had gone down. We were left with the rest of the cake and the delicious ginger sauce topping. We got to visit again a couple days later when I returned the containers.

The winds haven’t hit the highs predicted so far, but there are still a number of days to go in this event, so we shall see. A chilly, blustery day is a good day to stay in and do some writing. Luckily we had a bit of sun midday that allowed for a quick swim and personal care – which was a relief as we were both getting a little ripe. It was nice to warm up with a bowl of vegetable turkey soup afterwards, though.

We are not sure exactly how long we will be here, but when there’s a chance we will make a break for our next jump south. It won’t be long before we are in La Paz and not long after that making another crossing back to mainland—to warmer weather and warmer (however less clear) waters.

So there it is, – a whole year in Mexico! It feels like we accomplished something, although I’m still absorbing what that is, exactly. I think we are finally in a place to be able to take a breath and look up, now that we are a bit more accustomed to this life and all it entails. I know I’ve repeated it more than once, but it’s very true that “wherever you go, there you are” or, more specific to the cruising life “you take your problems with you”. We still have to tend to the work that any relationship requires, and this past year has certainly tested us in ways we couldn’t imagine, as well as made it more difficult for us to focus on many of the problems we brought with us. We finally feel like we have the space, and perhaps the urgent need, to focus on some important personal things that got pushed aside while we were learning how to be cruisers. If you’ve been following along, you know this life is not all cocktails and sunsets (what life is?) but of course I leave out many of the ugliest parts, because, what fun would that be for you? (you’ll have to watch reality TV if you want that sort of fix!).

It’s nearly impossible to tell what the next year is going to bring as we are facing a number of pretty huge decisions. These days when people press us for our ‘plans’, I fumble around a bit and usually end up saying “The only thing we know that is going to happen for certain is that we are running out of money”. We are exploring a number of ideas and opportunities in that realm (and are very open to suggestions and ideas!).   Neither of us knows where we will end up or exactly how we will get there, but with effort, cooperation and love, we hope to keep heading there together.