02/26/2009, Isla Mujeres
What a great place to remember Mexico by! Isla Mujeres is a very casual, but nice touristy area. Our check-in and paperwork was pretty standard but took 5 hours to complete...At least Immigration and Health departments came to the marina, so we only had to go visit the Port Captain's office. Our big tour was an all day trek to the Mayan Ruins of Chichen Itza. We left the boat at 6am and returned at 10pm! Quite an impressive spread of structures, very well reconstructed but somewhat more commercialized than either Lamanai, Belize or Copan, Honduras. The master piece temple ("The Castle") was built to honor the king Kukulcan and is a testimony to the Mayan's amazing architecture and knowledge of astronomy and their belief in the Sun God. Twice a year at Spring Equinox and Autumn Equinox there is a light and shadow event that happens when the sun is just right in the sky and setting that the shadows on the North side of the temple make it seem like "a snake slithering down from the top of the structure, along the stairs". The Ball Court is huge and apparently was where the best of the best Mayan warriors (athletes) came here and played a ball game where the winning team were "sacrificed before the gods" to give them their place in the spiritual world. The whole site is huge and the 3 hours we were on the site was just not enough time to see it all...or even half of it. Our days we have spent doing some snorkeling (boy what a current around some of the reefs) and getting to meet and spend some time Terri's son, Mike! Our day of "sight-seeing" around Isla Mujeres on a golf cart was great fun and Rob even got to drive a scooter! (5 wouldn't fit on the golf cart). The shoreline is absolutely beautiful...once again the clear, dramatic shades of Caribbean blue and rolling surf were 2nd to none with cold "Sol" cervezas at a cute little cantina with swings for chairs around the bar was really cool and lunch at Casa O's along the shore was as delicious as it was breathtaking! Finally learning how to play Mexican Train Dominoes and meeting new fellow cruisers as well as getting reaquainted with Surf Scooter (Poul & Manfred from the HaHa), many who will most likely be traveling with us to our next stop...the Dry Tortugas, then Key West. We expected to leave on Saturday, the 28th, but this morning (Thursday) we got our updated weather report that the cold front coming into Florida was much stronger than earlier expected packing winds of 30+ knots and 12-18ft seas and coming sooner than originally forecasted! So now we will wait until hopefully mid next week for the seas to settle down and the winds to clock back around from the east/south east. Golly, I feel a beach day being added to our itinerary for the weekend now that we have more time! Of course that's after our provisioning run to Sam's Club/Costco and Wal-mart! Ahhhh it's good to be back in Mexico!
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02/14/2009, NW Caribbean
We finally had a good weather window with the seas calming down so we could get thru the reef opening at San Pedro and had a great passage to the Chinchorro Banco in Mexico. The winds were only 30 degrees off our nose and the seas were still 8 ft so we motored most of the way to Chinchorro Banco...our 1st stop back in Mexico...Before we could get the hook down we were greeted by the Mexican Navy who told us we couldn't stay there... even tho we told them we were tired and needed to sleep. Then the Park Policia came by and said that the area is now considered "restricted" and private "yachtee's" are not welcome to anchor there...we were allowed to pick up a mooring ball for the night...pay a park fee of $7.00/day and then leave the next day! HOWEVER we were informed that without a guide we were not allowed to swim or snorkel the reef or coral! :( anyway we left there Saturday morning and had a fantastic sail all the way to the Cancun area. That was our "Happy Valentines' present' to each other...a beautiful sail! Our planning was to travel an average of 5 - 5.5 knots of speed but with the beautiful winds 18-20 knots on our beam and seas only 5-7 ft we were averaging 7-8 knots most of the way! There was also a current running with us that we didn't count on which added 1, sometimes 2.5 knots to our speed. We at one point even hit 10.3 knots of speed!!! That's a record for us!!!! What we thought would take 26-28 hours took barely 20! We passed Cozumel at 2am and arrived at Cancun channel at 5am! We did reef our sails to slow us down so we could see the shallows as we headed to Isla Mujeres...got our selves anchored right away and did our usual after an overnight passage...ate alittle breakfast and took a nap!
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02/03/2009, San Pedro Town, Ambergris Caye
The sail to San Padro was gorgeous. 15+ knot winds ESE and 1-2 foot seas! Triple Stars just loves that 60-75 degree, steady trade wind angle! Feeling really confident now sailing with only 2-3 feet of water under our keel and the water a beautiful minty greenish/blue our 2 hour sail came to a sliding HAULT! Yep we had sailed right onto a shallow sand bar! Only 20 minutes away from the anchorage we spent the next 45 minutes, trying to back up then kedge ourselves off by dropping our anchor in the dinghy and taking it out to turn our bow towards deeper water and finally pushing the bow with the dinghy while I throttled forward. There were even people that had come out onto their dock to watch the entertainment! We did enlist the help of a local passerby with an 85 horsepower Yamaha and a boat named Reef Raf! He was able to take our line and with Rob pushing on the bow in the dinghy, him pulling us towards a little deeper water and me throttling to 1800 RPM's we slid right off! So much for a blissful sail in 6 feet of water! We made it to the anchorage without additional sand dredging! There were some 10 other boats here all getting hunkered down for the next cold front to arrive Tuesday It took us almost an hour to get the anchor to set and when Rob dove on the anchor to check it out discovered it's fluke (pointy end) had only dug in about 6 inches! He put out our storm anchor (65 lbs Delta) right away as a precaution. Still in only 7 feet of water we had 100 feet of chain on 1 anchor and 90 feet of rode out on our storm anchor with our primary anchor dug in 6 inches and the other one just laying on it's side! Sans cles made it in only an hour after us and had a similar anchor situation. Altho he decided to wait to put out his 2nd anchor on Tuesday before the norther WELL the front came thru at 2:30am we spent some time that night in the cockpit watching our location and monitoring the chart plotter, just waiting to drag only to see sans cles moving further away from us! He needed to reset his anchor and in the dark and for the 1st time ever he set a his anchor. (Best job he had ever done! We told him he should try anchoring in the dark more often!) We have now both been thru 3 days and nights of 20-25+ knot winds with some pretty choppy seas and have held our position! With all of this "breezy" weather, we have only been to town 1 time for 3 hours. A little bigger beach town than Caye Caulker with cobble stone and white sand streets and quite a bit of golf cart, motorcycle and minivan traffic. Lots of restaurants, small convenient type grocery stores and touristy shopping, Real Estate offices and dive/water sport places. With any luck and these winds and sea chop don't last all week we hope to take a snorkeling trip to the Hol Chan Marine Reserve where they claim is "Shark/Ray Alley" and some stunning coral. Meanwhile, I am now up to date on writing the blogs thanks to being boat-bound for 2 days! We've even watched 4 episodes of Boston Legal, Season 4 with Terri & Lyman! Jim & Kay we are thinking of you Denny Crane!!!!
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