After leaving Las Hadas Marina on March 15, we had a 150 yard passage to the anchorage outside the marina. After such an exhausting trip, we rested and restored ourselves on rum and pineapple juice. We also installed the new autopilot control head that Diane from Gemini had brought with her from San Francisco. We noodled around Manzanillo for another day then moved Hooligan around the peninsula to the La Boquita anchorage on the West side of Santiago Bay. After a short stay, we moved 25 miles up the coast to Barra de Navidad, arriving mid afternoon on March 18 after a sunny passage surrounded by Spotted and Common dolphin, leaping marlin, basking sailfish, and who knows what other marine life. Nothing that wanted anything to do with our trailing lures, at any rate.
We'd spent a week in Barra back in February and were quite familiar with the lagoon anchorage's idiosyncrasies. It's a shallow (12 feet or less) lagoon with a mud bottom and needs a careful anchor set to avoid dragging when the winds come up, which they do each and every afternoon, usually beginning at 1400. Just about daily, some boat will take off backward through the anchorage, usually with no one aboard. This usually results in a swarm of dingies attempting to corral the dragging boat before it damages itself or another vessel. It's fun and educational to watch or participate in (as long as it's not your boat dragging) and shows how tightly knit the cruising community can be. We now always carry a hand-held VHF radio with us so that if Hooligan takes off when we're ashore, we can at least buy some beer to thank whoever it is that rescues her. Our first afternoon in Barra was no exception as a Morgan 45 backed through the anchorage accompanied by 6-7 dingies. No damage done. On the next two afternoons, another boat, who we'll not name since they're nice people, dragged past Gemini, who arrived in Barra a day after us and had anchored nearby. Another time, we were returning to our boats from a visit to town when a boat we know ran aground as she strayed out of the channel into the lagoon. It took 5 dingies to push her off the mud bank. Again, no lasting damage done, except possibly to the Skipper's ego.
While we were in Barra, we took the opportunity to get a third reef put into our mainsail. Bob Hogin, a well-known sailmaker from the Caribbean and San Francisco Bay, moved to Barra last year and came well recommended, so we laboriously humped the heavy sail into the dingy and took it to the Sands hotel where Bob picked it up and drove it the short distance to his house. For a fraction of what it would have cost stateside, he installed the third reef and got the sail back to us in two days. Bob's a great guy and we heartily recommend him if you're in Barra and need some sail repair. Just hail him on VHF channel 22 and tell him Hooligan sent you.
We left Barra on March 22, buddy boating with Gemini, bound for the notoriously rough and windy Cabo Corrientes (Cape of Currents) and Punta Mita, 125 miles away. We had a good forecast for Southerly winds during the day and a "flat calm motorsail" around Corrientes in the wee hours of the night. Boy, were they wrong. We did have a lovely sail until we were perhaps 10 miles south of the Cape. Then the wind shifted around until it was coming from directly where we wanted to go (Noserlies) at 25+ knots and the seas became confused, lumpy and much larger than we'd had all day. We double reefed the main and pressed on grimly, taking solid water over the deck every few minutes. At times our Speed Over Ground (SOG) was less than one knot, despite our engine running at a speed that normally sees Hooligan along at seven knots. It took us nine hours to cover the last 27 miles of the passage and it was with profound relief when we finally dropped anchor at Punta Mita, on the outskirts of Banderas Bay. While normally we hide from rough weather and wait for ideal conditions for our passages, it's ALWAYS rough and windy going around Corrientes and the weather we encountered is considered mild by most people familiar with the Cape. We arrived at 0730 on March 23 and spent the day napping and tidying the boat, then slept like the dead. On March 24 we were still a bit tired from the trip. After listening to the weather forecast on the Amigo net this morning, a daily ritual, we took the dogs for a long beach walk and had a fantastic cheeseburger at a small café in Punta Mita. Back on Hooligan, we cleaned the bottom of a weeks worth of accumulated growth, then took another nap.
We're not sure how long we'll be in Banderas Bay. A friend on another boat became ill and had to return home, leaving his boat in Manzanillo. Since our friend won't be able to return to his boat for some time, Les from Gemini and I are going to deliver her to La Paz where she can be shipped home via Dockwise Transport. It's a five hundred mile trip to La Paz, the capital of Baja California Sur, with a lot of weather-related variables so we need a good weather window before we can set sail. Which we don't have for at least a week. And since we'll be away from our own boats for at least a week during the delivery, we've come into Marina Vallarta so that the boats will be safe while we're both gone. It's now Wednesday, March 28, 2007 and we're leaving for Manzanillo tomorrow. I'll try to update the blog regarding the delivery if we stop anywhere enroute to La Paz.
PS??"for those who want to know where Banderas Bay is, please refer to previously posted route maps.
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Comments [2]
03/14/2007, Las Hadas, Manzanillo, MX
Per requests
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03/14/2007, Las Hadas, Manzanillo, MX
Work, Work, Work. A four letter word in the most literal sense. For those who might think that Cruising is all play and no work, let me disabuse you of that notion. There's plenty of play time, of course, but the primary focus of our lives is keeping Hooligan functional and pretty. Which takes work. Labor. Trabajo. And, oh yeah, that reminds me: It's UNPAID WORK. No salary for said labor. No dinero. Bupkus. Ewwwww.
On the other hand. we do get to work on our boats in beautiful places, like our current location, the Las Hadas Hotel and Marina in Manzanillo, Colima, Mexico. The above picture shows Hooligan med-moored along side our friends on Endless and Gemini. All three of us decided to come into the marina for a bit of TLC for our boats. While it's not all that difficult to do work while on the hook, the marina gives us access to unlimited fresh water and electricity, which means that our boats, and ourselves, can become the shining examples of the scrubbers art that they once were. With plenty of work, that is. In Hooligans case, it's been nearly two months since we were tied to a dock and she was looking a bit crusty, despite our best efforts.
Since we arrived in the playground of Mexico's elite, not to mention Dudley Moore and Bo Derek(remember "10"?), we've rewired our stern anchor light, washed and waxed the hull and topsides, repaired and reinstalled our Air-X wind generator (yay??"free juice!), polished all of our copious stainless steel, and serviced and polished both our sheet winches and anchor windlass. Sound fun? Well, not exactly, though there's a lot of satisfaction in getting Hooligan to shine again. And when everyone else is working, it's hard not to feel guilty if you've left something undone in favor of heading to town or out to lunch. Also, to be perfectly honest, we don't usually work this hard when we're at anchor. Not enough fresh water or electricity, right? Yeah, that's it. Built-in excuse.
Our friend Diane from Gemini is currently in San Francisco on a bit of business and will be bringing us a care package in the form of a new Autopilot control head to replace our current one that is suffering from some sort of mental disorder. After a bit more labor (are you getting a sense of Theme, here?) we'll be able to get our primary autopilot back on line and our venerable, yet reliable, wheel pilot will be having a well-deserved vacation.
We'll be here in the Manzanillo area for another week or two before beginning the 400 + mile trek North to the Sea of Cortez, where Hooligan will spend the summer. At our usual lethargic rate of travel, we'll probably get there sometime in September.
If you'll excuse me, I need to get back to work. I hate those four-letter-words.
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