We've spent the last 3 weeks in Zihautanejo 2 of those weeks were spent in the company of our good friends Lynne and Harvey from Vancouver. Once again I won't go into to to much detail about their visit because they did say that they would send a blog and I will post it, but it was a good visit and we are happy they came and spent some time with us.
On March 1st, we decided it was time to head back north. The leg between Zihautanejo and Manzanillo is a long one with only a few very marginal anchorages to stop in none of which would be good in bad weather. So it is important to try and get a good weather window to leave in. The weather was calling for 10 knots from the SW and 10 to 15 from the W the next day. So with that we decided to go even though the W wind would be mostly on the nose. We had large swells which made for a lumpy trip but the winds were mostly on the light side but we were able to motor sail all the way. Basically motor sailing is really motoring with the sails up to catch what wind there is so instead of doing say 3 knots you are now doing 5 to 6 knots. We also lucked out with a current in our favour for over half the trip giving us almost an extra knot of speed. The wind was clocking around for most of the trip so some times we actually had great wind and we got up to 7.5 knots but only for a short time as the winds were also a bit gusty sometimes up to maybe 12 knots and other times maybe 6.
It took us 35 hours to do 185 miles which averages out to 5 and a quarter knots of speed which for those non sailors is about 5 miles an hour. Imagine driving 185 miles at 5 miles an hour! But we were happy with that and arrived in Santiago Bay at 9:30 pm last night. Since we had been here before anchoring in the dark was not a problem. Coming into the bay we had a big freighter go by us about half a mile away which sounds like a lot but when they are as big as they are it feels too close. Just after it passed us there was a huge splash as a whale breached about 100 feet away from the boat. So an exciting entrance in the dark. We did have a half moon but it was hidden in a cloud so didn't help too much.
Had a great night sleep and today we are still recuperating. Ian is suffering from a sore throat so we are taking it easy today. Tomorrow we will probably head out to Barra 24 miles north and the next day on to Tenacatita. We are in a bit of a rush to get to La Cruz as our FM3 visa's expire on March 22 so we need to get there in time to renew them. Too bad as we hate to rush.
So that's where we are for now. Things are good and life is great.