03/15/2010, Mexico
We moved into a "real " slip today and saw Hermy and Jack from IWA at one of the buoys in their dinghy waving hello. The marina is absolutely beautiful. When we were here during Christmas of 2007 on our way south. this marina was not officially open yet. We got a slip but it had less than 10 boats in the marina. It was still under construction. This is clearly the nicest marina we have ever been in. There are big doings this month. There are boat races all of this month, several from this marina and several from Puerto Vallarta. All of them in this bay, Banderas Bay. The President of Mexico, President Calderon will be here at this marina to give the Cup winners their trophies this week. There are lots and lots of military people, Navy, Marines, Army. They are all carrying rifles slung over their shoulders and some at the ready. There also is a big Boat Show at the marina for 5 days. There must be almost 300 boats in the slips. There are very few open slips. We were lucky to just show up and get in. There are a lot of things going on. We wandered around the village Huanacaxtle and it is all cleaned up and freshly painted around the town square and it really looks nice. It's funny what a visit of the President of Mexico will do for motivation. There were fire works late at night initiating and finishing the boat show.
Hermy and Jack from s/v IWA stopped over to say hi, we chatted and got caught up on the latest. We gave the boat the first good wash in a long time. Pat cleaned all along the water line a couple of weeks ago and she did a great job, it looks really nice. I spent a couple of days trying to track down a radio problem. The VHF doesn't get as good reception as it should and a radio guy came to the boat and checked it out and then we took the radio up to his house for him to check it out and it was fine. So I have been trying to trouble shoot the problem but I don't seem to be getting anywhere. It will be one on those on and off trouble shooting until I find it. I spent another day fixing some file problems on my computer. Somehow they got moved around and paths are all screwed up. I had to reset the paths on most of my programs so they can be accessed by the icons on the desktop. Pain in the butt. Pat has been cleaning the boat inside and polishing the stainless steel on the outside. We have been in town provisioning as usual and getting parts. We have been seeing some of our friends as they come into the marina. They have a pot luck dinner every Friday night so we get to meet other cruisers. This area (Puerto Vallarta) is a good jumping off point to head to the South Pacific they refer this gathering at this time of the year to be a Puddle Jump. There are a lot of cruisers here and seminars on off shore sailing, provisioning, weather conditions for the journey and what to expect. Starting from here is considered the best point of sail across the Pacific.
We saw our friends on s/v Cirque, Laura and Lewis. Lewis did well in the races and received some trophies. They came down on the 2007 Baja Ha Ha with us. We haven't seen them since February of 2008. We went down to old town in Puerto Vallarta and spent the day sightseeing along the Malacon and had lunch at a nice little Cuban restaurant. It had just opened a couple of weeks earlier. Our friends from Gato Go stopped by our boat and we had a few drinks in the cockpit and got caught up with what is happening in Harbor Island West Marina and our other friends there.
We plan on leaving La Cruz later this week and head up to Chacala and anchor there for a few days.
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03/01/2010, Mexico
We weighed anchor at 7:00am from Las Hadas for a 7 hour sail to Tenacatita. We arrived at about 2:00pm. The seas were very, very lumpy, but there was not much wind. S/v Gato Go pulled in shortly after we dropped anchor. There were about 20 boats anchored there. The last time we were here we took our dinghy up the river, they refer to it as the jungle ride because it has low hanging branches and it gets dark in there because the sun can't get through the over-growth. Lots of strange creatures in there. It is about a 2 hour dinghy trip one way and they suggest you head back before it gets dark. Good idea. We didn't take the trip this time. Tenacatita is also the location of the old TV show called Mchale's Navy. We mostly relaxed and were planning on staying for 2-3 days, until we heard a knock on our hull at 7:30 in the morning of our second day. The person who knocked on our hull was in his dinghy and said there was an 8+ earthquake in Chili and that a tsunami would be hitting our anchorage around 11:00 this morning. It wasn't supposed to be bad, maybe only a little surge. We tuned our radio and heard other boats giving predictions based on what weather input they got from the tsunami warning center. Well it didn't take long to clear out the anchorage. We were gone be 9:00 and by the time we got out into the ocean there we no more boats in the anchorage. The tsunami warning center said that if you get out away from shore and into 600 ft or more deeper water then nothing should be felt. A lot of the boats out there were just hanging around until the 11:00 surge was over then head back into the anchorage. We decided not to go back and instead headed to Chamela which was our next destination about 5 hours away. We did not feel anything during our sail to Chamela. We arrived there 3:00 in the afternoon.
It was kind of spooky coming into Chamela because there were no boats in the anchorage. When we were here before there were about 15 boats here. We figured the same thing that emptied Tenacatita happened here. everyone went out to sea decided to continue on to some place else. We anchored and that later 3 more boats came in to anchor. The little village hadn't change and the palapas were still there. The surge on the beach was not good for a dinghy beach landing. In fact when we were here before we got swamped in our dinghy tying to get back to the boat. Our camera got soak and never recovered. We stayed for 2 days and left for Ipala. We have been trying to plan so we would round Cabo Corrientes (Cape Currents) with fairly good weather. We will stop and anchor at Ipala which is about 2 to 3 hours before the Cape.
We arrived at 5:30pm 10 1/2 hours of motor sail but we got there before dark. This a very small bay/fishing village. there is room for about 2 or 3 boats. There are lots of fishing nets and roped off section so there isn't many choices to pick to anchor. There was one other boat there when we got there and the fishermen were string out lines all around us. We planned on leaving at 7:00am to get a jump start on getting around Cabo Corrientes. Fortunately when we were ready to weigh anchor the nets had been cleared and fishermen gave us a thumbs up so we headed out.
The wind was around 10 knots when we left the anchorage and was up to 20 knots as we were rounding Cabo Corrientes. The seas were a little confused and the currents were against us but once we rounded the cape it started to settle down and the current diminished to 0.5 knots against us, so we were happy. We set our heading for La Cruz in Banderas Bay. We passed Puerto Vallarta. We anchored in La Cruz anchorage and planed to go into the marina the next day. There were about 30 boats at the anchorage and it looked like some kind of race was going up heading up to Punt Mita.
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02/16/2010, Mexico
We left for Guadalajara in the morning and had a nice trip across, around and through the mountains in a nice comfortable, air conditioned bus. They gave us a box lunch and had movies for the 4 hour trip. We stayed in Hotel Francis which is the oldest hotel in Guadalajara. It was built in 1610, very Spanish. It was located within a few doors of the major town square in the center of town. It is a beautiful city and the city was celebrating their 468th birthday in the town square. There were hundreds of people and a big stage where different events took place. We were lucky to get a room so close to the center of activities. We took a bus tour to the village of Tequila which is the town where the blue agave plants are grown and several distilleries are there. We visited 2 of them, Three Mujeres (3 Women) and Jose Cuervo. Of course we had to taste the fruits of their labor. It was a very interesting tour, we went out in the fields to see the actual agave plants and how they dig them out of the ground and process them. It was an all day tour capped off by a nice dinner before heading back to Guadalajara. It was a really nice day.
The next day we took a tour bus to a town called Tlaquepaque and wondered around some very nice and unique galleries. It was a nice day and we just played tourist all day long and saw most of the city of Guadalajara and it's beautiful squares, parks and statues. It is a very old and historic city. We found a nice place to have breakfast each morning lots of nice restaurants and beautiful cathedrals. We wandered around town and walked to the Mercado which is the largest one in Mexico. It was actually a little cold there, it is quite high up in the mountains and people were walking around with heavy coats. We appeared a little out of place with our shorts and sandals. The cool air was refreshing. We were there for 4 nights and it was nice to get away from the boat for a while and see more of the interior and history of Mexico.
After a nice 5 days sightseeing we took the bus back Las Hadas and our boat. We moved out to the anchorage and then went to town to see about getting some fuses for the bow thruster. It takes a 400 amp fuse. That is a very, very large amp fuse. A house takes about a 100 amp fuse (breaker) for everything in the house, so you can see the amount of current the bow thruster draws. We found a place that carries them but they were all out and had to order them from guess where, yup, Guadalajara. If we had only known. They said it would take a couple of days so we ordered them and the weather windowed looked ok for the delay. We ordered 2 of them at $50 each because they are hard to come by down here. We picked up the fuses a few days later. While we were at the anchorage we saw a boat we recognized from San Diego, s/v Coastal Passage, Terry and Michele. Terry gave us our first sailing lesson on our first boat in 2004. We stopped and chatted for a while. Also s/v Gato Go from San Diego showed up and anchored near us, so we stopped over said high to Bruce and Craig. We were heading out in the morning and going to Tenacatita.
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