San Diego, USA - Zihuatanejo, Mexico

Wayne

By November 20th we had been in San Diego for two weeks buying supplies, prepping the boat, etc. Finally we were almost ready to leave for Mexico. The hurricane season ends around mid-November so we thought that if we arrived in Cabo San Lucas by December 1st, we would be fairly safe. We had come to the conclusion that there is never such a thing as completely ready. Eventually you just burn the list and leave or you never get to go. Because San Diego is one of the big jumping off spots, there are lots of boats that have literally been there for years ‘getting ready’ to go.

Just a couple of days before, Dennis and Judith on “JAD” had mentioned to us that they were planning to go past Guadeloupe Island on the way down the coast. They asked if we would like to come along. This sounded like fun as the island is 145 miles offshore and it is rarely visited by anyone. There is, however, a small community of fishermen and a minor naval base there. We asked around and were told that a permit was required to go to Guadeloupe, and that it could be obtained in Ensenada. This sounded too much like work for us, so we decided that we would just go, and ask permission when we got there. We figured at worst they would likely let us stay a few days. Jamie and Kathie on “White Squall” wanted to come as well but couldn’t be ready to leave until the 21st, so Susan and I decided to go ahead and meet the others at the island.

We left San Diego Harbour at about 3:00 pm on the 20th and sailed at 2 miles per hour until the next morning when the wind began to come up. Around 11:00 am Susan spotted a Mexican fishing panga. These pangas are large open boats powered with big outboards and used by the Mexicans for all kinds of fishing and diving. This particular boat was about 60 miles west of Ensenada and was fishing with a quarter mile long net for blue shark. We turned to avoid the net and then had to turn again as it was longer than we had thought. When we finally got passed it, we realized that the fishermen were waving at us in more than just a friendly manner. Actually we were tipped off by the guy who was waving a life jacket. When we are far away from land and going the right way, changing direction or stopping is not something that you can do instantly. It probably took us 20 minutes to get our sails down, the self steering vane off and the engine started. We eventually returned to the panga and asked in fractured Spanish if they needed assistance. They replied (in much better Spanish) that they needed a mechanic. Since nobody is ever likely to mistake either of us for a mechanic, we offered to give them a tow instead. They agreed and asked to go to Ensenada. Ensenada is almost the exact opposite direction from where we were going, but towing them 60 miles in the wrong direction sounded a lot better than towing them 150 miles to Guadeloupe. By this time we had gotten a pretty close look at our charges, and a more piratical lot couldn’t be found outside of Universal Studios. Since we were still within radio range of the U.S. Coast Guard, we called to tell them what we were doing and to request that they expect a call from us every few hours. The Coast Guard very politely said that we could help if we wanted, but as these were obviously Mexican nationals they didn’t want to know about it or talk to us unless we had an actual emergency. The Coast Guards are usually the best people that you could ever talk to so this surprised us, but I guess they have their rules. All of this time the three guys in the panga had been pulling in the net and filling their boat up with 5 and 6 foot long blue sharks. When they finished, we motored slowly past and threw them a line, which they tied onto the panga, then we put the sails back up, turned off the engine and headed for Ensenada. About this time the wind had started to blow just the way we like it best and we were able to head directly for our destination at almost 6 miles per hour. This was good as I’m not sure how impressed our fishermen would have been if their rescue had taken a couple of days. We sailed until around midnight and then as the wind had died we had to motor the last 15 miles into Ensenada harbour. It was about 3:00 am when we arrived. We were in a rush to leave again but that was out of the question until after we had been presented with 10 pounds of freshly filleted shark meat.

We had a pleasant and uneventful sail to Guadeloupe Island during the second attempt, arriving there at 9:30 am on November 24th. As we approached the island we began calling the navy to ask permission to anchor but as we received no response, we decided to go ahead and anchor and apologize profusely if they showed up. Because of the extra 100 and some miles that we had added to our trip, “JAD” and “White Squall” arrived shortly after us. The blue shark made a nice dinner for everyone that night.

Guadeloupe is a really impressive island, with steep bluffs, fairly tall mountains, lots of vegetation and very few people. Also the water is very clear with piles of fish and there are herds of elephant seals on the beach. While we were there, we never saw a single person although we didn’t go all around the island.

On the 25th, Jamie and me decided to go spearfishing. We were a little bit reticent to go into the water because of the white sharks reported there, but on the other hand we were hungry for fish. Hunger won and we took the dinghy out and shot 5 or 6 fish. We were just about finished when we saw two giant (around 12 foot) elephant seals swim by within 3 or 4 feet of us. These guys don’t bite or anything, but we thought that they might decide they wanted us for their harems, so we beat it back to the dinghy and home. Subsequently, we learned that elephant seals are so dangerous in the water that the Monterey Aquarium has been unable to purchase underwater footage of them.

Everyone in all three boats slept badly that night as the wind had started to blow strongly and we were in a very poor anchorage. In the morning the wind was blowing over 30 miles per hour during gusts and we all decided that we had better get out while we still could. We had our anchor up by 7:00 am and we headed for the San Benitos Islands. These islands are about 20 miles off the Mexican coast and around 150 miles from Guadeloupe. All that day and the following night and day the wind blew between 25 and 40 miles per hour. Dennis has a long range radio (a single side-band) and was able to get a Coast Guard weather report that said we should expect 45 MPH winds and 18 foot seas. We find it hard to estimate sea heights but several waves went right over the top of the boat, leaving squid behind on deck and entering the boat at every single possible crack and cranny. Our instruments were generally showing 30 MPH with gusts to 40 and we were dipping our main boom in the water from time to time. We eventually took the mainsail down and continued under a jib alone. This didn’t slow us down much and we were a lot more comfortable. We arrived at San Benitos at 2:00 pm on the 27th having gone 172 miles and averaged almost 6 knots for the first 24 hours.

The San Benitos islands are three small islands about 20 miles offshore. They are rough, dry islands with only 2 or 3 permanent inhabitants, a church, a lighthouse and several burros. When we arrived there were eight people there and they had run out of water, so as “JAD” has a watermaker, Dennis took 15 gallons ashore. As a result, we were minor celebrities for a few days and were given the key to visit the lighthouse and had the occasional abalone delivered to the boat. 

The visit to the lighthouse was very interesting. This is one of Mexico’s major lighthouses. It is a beautiful 70 foot tall white tower with a small house at its foot. The light is electric and the power is supplied by a diesel generator. It is a steep 3 mile walk over very rough terrain to get to the lighthouse from the village. That doesn’t stop the keeper from going up every night to turn it on and back up every morning to turn it off. The burros are used to transport fuel up for the generator. Because it is several hundred feet up a cliff, the view is really spectacular. We thought that it would be a good place for an artist or a writer to get away from it all.

The second day that we were at the islands, the abalone season opened and as a result the village went from 8 people to about 50 in one day. The fishermen came from another island about 20 miles away and brought entire households with them including stoves, TVs, satellite dishes and families.

San Benitos is a really nice place and we enjoyed ourselves there but on December 4th we decided to leave for Magdalena Bay. Mag Bay is about three hundred miles south of San Benitos. “JAD” and “White Squall” didn’t want to go that far yet, so we said good-bye with plans to meet up with them in Cabo San Lucas or La Paz.

When we left, there was so little wind that we had to motor, then the wind came up a little and we had a really nice sail for a few hours. Around 4:00 pm the wind really started to build and and it switched to the opposite direction. For the rest of the night it blew hard and rained buckets. In addition the waves were big enough to leave squid on deck and squirt water through closed windows. It got so rough and uncomfortable that we gave up trying to go to Mag Bay and just blew straight out to sea. We had only the jib up and that was reefed down to about 1/2 of its total size. Around 4 am the wind started to drop and we put out the rest of our jib and turned more or less in the correct direction. Twenty minutes later we heard a loud bang that sounded like a shotgun had gone off inside the boat! We jumped out on deck and discovered that our masthead fitting had broken. We had no backstays at all and no forward support for the mast as the bobstay had been sprung off of the dolphin striker. All of the above ‘stays’ are 5/16th stainless cables which in various ways hold the mainmast up. Masts are designed to handle very little bending strain by themselves as normally the stays take all of that load. It’s important that the masts stay up since they cost about as much as a small car and you can’t sail without them. In addition they weigh a lot and if they came down they would likely severely damage the boat and any resident humans. Anyway with a lot of excited yelling but absolutely no bad language we managed to get the sail rolled up and then used every available line to support the masts. During all of this, with the boat pitching and rolling in 10 to 12 foot confused seas and in near total blackness, a small dark bird decided that I might be something good to eat and it began attacking me around the neck. Actually we think that it was confused or hurt in the storm. We aren’t sure how long it took but sometime before 7:15 am we got all of the halyards holding the mast up, all of the loose rigging on deck and tied down, the engine started and we headed for Turtle Bay. On the 700 mile long west Baha coast there are only 4 towns bigger than about 100 people and we just happened to be 51 miles offshore of one of them. Also Turtle Bay is one of the few well-sheltered harbors on this coast. Of course the wind went back up to about 20 miles per hour from more or less where we were going and the seas became even more confused. The trip to Turtle Bay took about ten hours and we were pretty green most of the way since the sails were not available to steady us. Somewhere along the way our jib managed to partially unwrap itself and begin to flog. This was particularly uncool as the forces on the mast were really enormous and our jury rigged stays were not providing the support that we would have liked. We worked frantically to straighten out the mess. We had just about come to the conclusion that the sail would have to be cut away, when we managed to partially unroll it and get it rolled in again properly. We arrived at Turtle Bay just as the sun went down, put out two anchors and slept like the dead for the next 14 hours.

“JAD” and “White Squall” meanwhile had gone to Cedros Island but when the wind came up they had decided that their anchorage was dangerous so they had also gone to sea and ultimately to Turtle Bay. They had arrived just a few hours ahead of us. The morning after we arrived Dennis from “JAD” showed up on our boat. After having a good laugh at our polite refusals of assistance, he spent the entire day helping us first guy the mast very carefully then take the rigging apart. By the end of the day we had the masthead fitting almost ready to take down. This was a miracle of speed and efficiency and probably couldn’t have been done any faster at home. Dennis really deserves a lot of credit as we discovered that he was very knowledgeable about boats in general and guying up masts (and telephone poles) in particular.

On December 6th we got up bright and early and just in time to greet a search party, complete with machine guns, from a Mexican Navy ship that had arrived in the night. The search was very polite and fairly thorough but absolutely routine. When they had finished checking our papers, we asked the commander if he knew of a place in town where we could have stainless steel welded (Susan had been frantically looking up stainless steel and welding in the Spanish dictionary). He said he didn’t but that he would check with the ship. We assumed that he would ask for information, but instead he asked the captain if they could weld it for us. The captain agreed so the commander said that he would go search a few more boats until we finished removing the fitting. We finally finished at 11:15 am and as I came down the mast, the search party abandoned its current search and headed for us. They bundled me and the fitting into their inflatable and we headed out to their ship. I don’t know what sort of ship it was but it was 200 or 300 feet long and appeared to be in perfect condition. Half the crew, including their best English speaker and the first lieutenant, turned out to help the ship’s welder understand what I needed. The welder did a beautiful job. When he was done, I was allowed to go up to the bridge to say my thank-yous to the Captain and then I was taken back to “Day Dream”. Although we would have been happy to pay, in the rush it never occurred to me and no one on the ship suggested it. Now I’m glad that the topic of payment didn’t come up because I think they probably would have been insulted. During all of this the ship was hove-to with its engines running but the minute I was gone, it headed out to sea and the inflatable had to catch up as best it could.

A couple more days had our rigging all back together and in better condition than it had previously been. We were ready to leave. One other interesting thing that happened was the ‘Saga of the Dragging Boat’. When you anchor a boat the intention is that the boat should stay pretty much where you left it. Apparently not everyone agrees with this as one night a large powerboat (name withheld to protect the guilty) began to slowly drag out of the harbor. There were about 20 English speaking boats there at the time and everyone started to yell over the radio about this dragging boat. As there was no response from the powerboat and it had no lights on, no one knew if the owners were asleep or ashore. Turtle Bay is about 1 mile across and this boat had started out approximately in the middle. Before too long it was actually approaching the entrance to the bay. This was pure good luck as it just as easily could have gone the other way if the wind had been blowing at a different angle. Jamie and I were going to take a dinghy out and rescue it but then a sailboat named “Toad” said that they would take up their anchor and go.

This time they decided that it would be a good idea to anchor as close as possible to “Day Dream” and straight upwind. As we still couldn’t raise them on the radio we got out our 2 million candlepower search light and destroyed their night vision for several years to come. This finally got a response and we asked them to move. After some rather huffy comments about how they “...weren’t just going to let their boat drift...”, they agreed. Surprise, surprise they got it right this time and the boat was still there in the morning.

We left Turtle Bay on the 11th of December at 3:00 am for Santa Maria Bay, about 250 miles south. The sail down was fast and pleasant with winds up to 25 miles per hour but nothing very rough. Susan fed 3 or 4 of our best fishing lures to a giant yellowfin tuna and that was the most exciting part of that trip.

We have come to the conclusion that the weather is a little odd this year. Most years there is so little wind on the Baja west coast that people motor all the way to Cabo San Lucas from San Diego. This year 15 to 25 knots has been the norm.

We had guests coming to meet us in La Paz for Christmas so after just one day in Santa Maria, we set out for Cabo San Lucas. The trip to Cabo was our nicest sailing so far. For the first time we wore shorts day and night and the days were really a little too hot! We even caught a fish, but threw it back as our book said it was not good eating. The wind was always from behind or the side and varied between 12 and 20 knots. We had a very fast, easy passage until about 8 miles off of the cape when the wind died completely. After wallowing around for a couple of hours, we gave in and motored the rest of the way. We arrived at about 11 pm on the 15th of December. Our plan was to spend only one or two days in Cabo San Lucas as La Paz is 120 miles away and it’s upwind all the way. 

We spent our two days in Cabo and really enjoyed ourselves. We ran into old friends from various places along the coast and made some new ones. We even made friends with some people who were not on a boat. David and Sarah had flown down for a week of vacation and we met them at a party at the local yacht club (the Broken Surfboard). We took them snorkeling, which they hadn’t done before, at Lovers Beach. We were having far too much fun in Cabo to leave and anyway there was bad weather in the Sea of Cortez. The long and the short of it is that the days slipped quickly by until suddenly it was December 23rd. This was the day that we were supposed to be in La Paz to pick up Ron and Diane at the airport. The plane was due in at 11 pm so a bus trip would have meant spending a night in a hotel. That would have meant leaving the boat alone for a little too long as far as we are concerned. We decided to rent a VW bug and drive to La Paz. Dennis and Judith, from “JAD” had arrived by this time and they kindly offered to watch the boat while we were gone. This may sound a little paranoid but Cabo’s anchorage is really lousy with protection only through 180 degrees and there had been enough wind lately to worry us. When we got off the boat that day, the wind was blowing pretty intensely straight onto the beach and it was raining so hard it was difficult to tell the ocean from the sky. By the time we got to the dinghy dock, the wind was up to maybe 25 knots and there was 2 inches of water on the roads. We borrowed a radio and called Dennis. Did he want us to come back? He told us not to worry; he’d watch out for the boat. At that moment Wayne on the sailboat “Respect” broke in to say that “Melita” was dragging down on “Day Dream”! Dennis left to save us once again and we decided that the boat was probably as safe as a house in his hands so we left for La Paz.

The road to La Paz wanders through a really beautiful desert which that day was in full bloom. This apparently is pretty rare but there had been a lot of rain that morning. The rain had also washed out pieces of the road and we had to find our way through some puddles that were hundreds of feet across and 6 or 8 inches deep. Generally the road was pretty good and the road crews were already out fixing it up. On the way to La Paz we went through Todos Santos which is the site of the Hotel California. Naturally we stopped to look. As far as we could see there were no old rock stars trapped there. We picked up Diane and Ron at midnight and slowly drove back to Cabo. This road is not very safe at night as it is free range land and there are cows, horses and burros all over it. The locals say that they are attracted by the heat that the road retains at night. We arrived back at the boat at about 5 am and everyone got a few hours of sleep.

In case anyone is wondering, Ron and Diane were not, repeat not, arrested at the airport. Susan had asked that they transport 4 or 5 kilos of popcorn seasonings. They agreed before they knew that the seasonings would be contained in ziplock baggies and look like a certain white, illegal powder. Anyway, they made it through customs without a hitch.

We had a really great Christmas with them, although it wasn’t very traditional as we had lobster rather than turkey and spent the day lounging and snorkeling at Lovers Beach.

A couple of days after Christmas, Ron and I pulled a couple of people out of the water after their dinghy overturned. Mike and Linda on the sailboat “Buck-a-Loose” had been returning to their boat when they were overturned by a wave. When we got to them they had been drifting for 10 or 15 minutes with the contents of the dinghy trapped underneath it and the outboard still attached to the back. We managed to rescue everything in the dinghy and Mike later got the outboard running again, but unfortunately their camera was a goner. They had a really interesting trip down from the U.S. as “Buck-a-Loose” is a engineless 25 foot Pacific Seacraft sailboat. They had sailed non-stop from LA using Isla Guadeloupe as a check on their navigation. In all, their trip had taken 11 days, including 2 days of drifting within sight of the cape.

Ron and Diane left on the December 29th. As we had more guests coming to meet us in Cabo on January 7th, we thought that it would be appropriate for us to be in La Paz (ha ha). We left on December 31st and had a nice trip up the coast, stopping every night. 

On January 7th Randy and Leanne arrived in La Paz. Soon after their arrival we left for Isla Espiritu Santo. This island is only about 20 miles from La Paz, but it is absolutely unspoiled. It is uninhabited, mountainous and green with cactus. The water is very clear (about 50 feet of visibility) and swarming with fish. We found a nice little anchorage with no one in it. We enjoyed ourselves so much that we didn’t move until it was time for our guests to go home. There is a reef there with literally thousands of fish on it, an old well on the island where we had showers and some old gravesites (we think) up on a hill. The weather was perfect and our guests were jolly, so we all had fun.

We returned to La Paz on the 13th to drop off Randy and Leanne and for only the second time since August we put the boat on a dock. We had discovered another piece of stainless in the rigging that looked like it was ready to break and we couldn’t face the idea of another major repair with the boat at anchor. The old Pepsi plant in La Paz made us a beautiful new bowsprit endcap and charged far less than they should have. We installed the endcap, tuned the rig and left for Manzanillo the next morning.

Manzanillo is about 500 miles south of La Paz and on the Mexican mainland. “JAD” had left for that area on December 27th from Cabo and “White Squall” had followed on January 5th. In addition we had heard via the single sideband grapevine that Allan and Didi on “Ave Peregrina” (friends that we had met in San Diego) would be there soon. The trip down was pretty nice. On the first day we motored almost the entire day as there was no wind. The second, third and fourth days were great with a perfect wind from the beam. On the second last night we had too much wind and too much sail up. The result was too much adrenaline and minor broken parts. Our problem was that we had had 9 to 12 knots of wind for so long that we thought it would never end. We had twin gennys up on spinnaker poles which is a lot of sail, but not too much if the wind is light. When the wind started to go up, we realized that we had never taken down our free-flying genny in any kind of wind before without having the mainsail up. Putting up the mainsail was out of the question at this point without turning upwind and if we could’ve done that we wouldn’t have had a problem getting the genny down. So, this was a conundrum. We thought about it for a while and then did the exact wrong thing. Rather than gybing the sail and then hauling it down, we decided to tack and haul it down. The sail began to flog wildly and finally broke the shackle at the foot. At this point we dumped the whole mess into the water and hauled it in from there. It wasn’t very elegant but it worked! By the way, Susan was voting for the gybe, and I was for tacking. We eventually got to Manzanillo on January 19th having missed “JAD” and “White Squall” going north. Even though we didn’t get to see them, we did get a chance to talk to them on the radio as we passed in the night. They had gotten tired of Manzanillo and decided to start north a little early. “Ave Peregrina” was in Manzanillo and we hadn’t seen them since San Diego so it was really good to meet up with them again.

Didi and Allen are getting married in Zihuatanejo, a little town about 200 miles south of Manzanillo, and we plan to be there for their wedding. They are heading south then through the Panama Canal and eventually to an island called Bequia in the Grenadines. Didi’s father owns some land on the island and they want to live there for a while and start a restaurant or something. Somewhere along the line we agreed to go down to Costa Rica with them for the hurricane season. We had planned to meet up with “JAD” and “White Squall” again and spend six months or so in the Sea of Cortez. However, the sea is very hot in summer and there is a risk of hurricanes. Besides that, a sail down to Costa Rica sounds like fun.

While at Manzanillo, we were anchored in front of a luxury hotel called Las Hadas. The hotel allowed us to use the pool, dinghy dock and showers for a small fee, and we really enjoyed ourselves there. After a week of living the life of the idle rich, lounging around the pool, we headed down to Zihuatanejo.

This is the nicest Mexican town we have seen so far and we’ve liked every one that we have seen. It is not terribly clean, but the tourist influence isn’t too strong either. The people are really friendly and they have a great open air market. This is the kind of market where you go buy a hunk of cow, chickens with heads, all kinds of fruit and veggies plus almost anything else that you might want. From where we leave the dinghy, we have to cross the mouth of a small river to get into town. The local people have built themselves a footbridge out of tree trunks, old boards and some galvanized wire. It’s about 100 feet across and the bridge is about 15 feet up to allow fishing boats room to pass underneath. The bridge is perfectly steady but looks like something out of Africa 100 years ago. The fishermen here bring in sailfish for meat every day. These are huge fish, many 8 or 9 feet long, with a sail that stands up 18 inches and a sword that is a couple of feet long. I’d like to buy one and have it stuffed, but a certain short blonde person says that it’s the fish or me. Oh well!

We plan to be here in Zihuatanejo for about one month. We have some repairs to do on the boat and a lot of being lazy to catch up on. So far we have been busy making awnings for the boat as the temperature day and night runs between 85 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit. In that kind of heat we need all the shade we can get and as much air flowing through the boat as possible. Early in March we will head for Acapulco, then in late April we will jump off for Costa Rica. We haven’t yet decided if we will stop in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Susan

We are having a great time here in Z-town. I’m writing this at 9:30 at night and it’s still 82 degrees in the cabin. Yesterday we tried our hand at a new sport that we’ve dubbed Lounge Surfing. It requires only an air mattress and a little surf on the beach. I’m sure you get the picture. A great time was had by all and the only adverse effect evident from this new sport was bathing suits full of sand. I’d like to give you a quick list of some things about this cruising life that may or may not interest you. Some of these things are good or great things and some are not so good. See if you can figure out which is which:

·          learning a new language

·          eating, eating, eating and more eating

·          lounge surfing with friends

·          making great new friends

·          missing great old friends

·          catching a bus across town for a peso (33 cents)

·          buying fillets of fresh sail fish - four for 6 pesos (2 bucks)

·          trying new food

·          limes, limes, limes on every thing you eat

·          watching rays, whales and dolphins swimming around and under our boat at anchor

·          sailing in perfect weather

·          sailing in not so perfect weather

·          laundry

·          jumping over the side when you get a little too warm

·          temperatures that were too cold (San Diego and all points north)

·          places that are a bit too warm (here, but we’re adjusting)

·          authentic Mexican tacos (yummy)

·          Mexican ice cream and fruit ice products (double yummy)

·          all the avocados that you can eat without taking out a loan

·          the friendliest country (Mexico of course) that I have ever had the pleasure to be in

·          sand between your toes and in your shoes (and your bathing suit after lounge surfing)

·          lack of air conditioning and central heat

·          not having to get up and go to work

·          putting the TV on top of the dodger and watching a movie under the stars with friends

·          dolphin phosphorescent trails when you’re on the 2-5 am watch

Well, these are just a few of the thoughts that strike me tonight and it’s about time that I turned in. We old retired folks need our rest you know. Tomorrow is a big day. We actually have two appointments! There is a book exchange on another boat at 10 am and then we’re off to the movies tomorrow night. It’s a double feature. “True Lies” with Arnold Swartzenegger and “33 and a Third”. It’s the bargain of the century at 5 pesos a person ($1.60 Canadian). There is, of course, no air conditioning and the sound is sometimes a bit fuzzy but the good news is that we’re beginning to read the subtitles in Spanish.