What’s that dark spot on the radar?

After three years of cruising in Mexico and three years of sailing in Southern California, use of the Radar has been limited to dodging boats and hard bits.

A little different use down here and where we are heading is the dodging of squall lines or picking the easiest way through those lines if we can’t avoid them completely.

We were under motor on our second night when we started seeing lightning in the distance. Most of it was either over the mountains far to the port side (can’t say east of us anymore!) but not all.

So up came the radar screen, which we generally only use once in a while, as we use the radar screen as a data repeater most often. Kelly gained the skill of reading squall lines very quickly and picked our way through that first night with hardly any exposure to that weather. And that is the way it went for the next 12 hrs, kind of lumpy and relatively windless, yet exciting because of the out guessing of the weather flow.

It did cool things down a bit, which was welcome after the very hot afternoon- and it just repeated the next day- even hotter I think.- certainly more uncomfortable.

The next night found us well south of Acapulco, nearing Puerto Escondido and the storm lines stronger yet. We really had to do some dodging and yet the boat was drenched. This is a good and bad thing. Good for washing the salt off, bad because we have to close the boat up and ventilation is markedly reduced. This storm system brought headwinds which naturally were truly head winds as we tried tacking our way up but our VMG (Velocity Made Good) dropped. To less than 2 kts! Not a good speed to enable us to make Huatulco in daylight.

It was really a tough couple of nights, but we did it. There were some amazing moments that made up for the discomfort tenfold. The dolphins coming over to hang out and play for hours on end, the wonderful beam reach sailing in the afternoons, some of the most amazing sunsets and moonsets either of us have ever seen, and the just plain coolness of what we are doing.

We round the bit of Mexico before Puerto Angel and start having to dodge something other than squall lines- now it is Long Line fisherman and the very poorly marked sailboat snags they lay in our path. We missed the first two, but did snag up the third one. After our first experience with long liners North of Banderas Bay, I make a habit of killing the prop as we cross the line whether we feel we are at the end or not. This is when that extra-long extendable boat hook from West Marine paid for itself. Short work of shoving the line down and under the skeg so I don’t have to cut it. Why they use floating poly line here for these I have no idea.. Missed two more and we picked up a nice beam reach and were off and running.

This section of the Mexican coast is spectacular. Big swells at a long period- minimum of 10 ft., likely much higher, but they are so far apart we hardly notice- except when we are traveling this close to shore. When we see the huge surf from this angle, it puts just a little fear of navigation error in you! Some of breakers hitting the rocks had to shoot at least 100 feet in the air!

We had a pass-by from the Mexican Navy, I think because we were hauling butt, they decided to let us pass. Not really, but that seems like a good reason.

Coming into Marina Chahue is extremely disconcerting when the swell is as big as it is. The bay is guarded by some rocks and a submerged reef which after you swing by those you head for the big rock at the head of the bay- you know- the one with the swell crashing against it? Then you slip by that by 15 feet or so and the rocky breakwater to the port side under full throttle as you pull off that slight surf, swing to the right just a bit and then glide into the marina. Of course we are set up for a starboard side tie and they now want us to port tie. Well that ain’t happening.

They are actually very nice here, very much so. This whole town is something different from the rest of our experiences in Mexico. Completely a resort town, yet it seems that they aren’t looking at us as a walking ATM like other resort centers here in Mexico and in the USA. They are genuinely happy to see you and very interested in who you are. Prices are decent and the surroundings are amazing. The bird songs are really fun to listen to.

More on Huatulco later.