Lauri. It is sunny, humid and cool.
The Gulfo de Tehuantepec. Tehuantepec means "hill of the demons" and refers to a ferocious tribe of warriors that once terrorized the area, but demon winds are a continuing feature. The winds blow extraordinarily large, from both north and south. They can blow so hard, they literally part the sea and cause currents on each side of the gulf.
We had a consistent 20 knot headwind from the start, the evil we chose. Dois had cleaned up the autopilot connections and found a setting that Hal seems to like and was much more amenable for the first two days of the voyage. But Hal still refuses to play in large swell or steep wind waves, of which we found both.
It wasn't pleasant ride, Ashika rising steeply on 10 to 12 foot waves, her bow clearing the crest and then plunging abruptly down into the trough before taking on the next wall of water. Our new coffee maker flew through the cabin on one of these roller coaster moments leaving coffee grounds and the remnants of the morning's coffee dripping down the companion way ladder filling the nooks and crannies of the teak and holly floor boards.
The conditions were wet; Ashika taking water over the decks, Captain and crew sweating buckets. I changed three times, Dois just removed clothing.
Conditions were deteriorating as we maneuvered through a freighter ship mooring field outside of Salinas, so we headed for Bahia Chipehua about 10 miles south. There was no moon and we risked an instrument landing again. The map showed a long sandy shoreline ending in a hook and a 25 ft shelf, so we pointed Ashika in that direction. When the depth finder said 37 feet we could hear crashing waves to our right. When the depth finder said 35 feet, we could hear crashing waves to our left, huh? We stopped the boat to listen, there must be an uncharted reef out there, but nothing bad was happening so we dropped out anchor right there. Dois was up and down all night checking to make sure no waves were sweeping us toward shore.
On awakening we could see the breaking reef clearly, but it sheltered us rather than endangered us. Lucky fairies are alive and well. It was eight am and we had 50 miles to go before the wind picked up. Hualtulco seemed so far away.
This is B. Chipehua. As we sailed out of the bay there were surfers with boards walking the beach headed for the point break. This was undoubtedly a surf camp.
B. Chipehua is on the other side of this peninsula. The sand dune is created by the Tehuantepec winds blowing sand from the other side.
The first 25 miles took us 4 hours. The next fifteen miles took us 4 hours. The last 10 miles took us 5 hours. It was a heinous and bewildering pounding. The swell kept getting bigger, and bigger but the wind was the ultimate antagonist; 20 to 25 knots on the nose with lots of time and room to build up a vicious chop in addition to the swell. Up, up, up, Ashika would go, then wham, struck hard on the bow by steep wind waves, slowed to a stop or near, then down the backside where more wind waves awaited their turn at battering Ashika. We would charge into the waves with the bow plunging deep into green water. We lost a couple of teak bow sprit boards along the way (Scotty, save those teak scraps!).
Dois tried a scallop-like path where he would bear off to starboard to gain a little speed, quarter the wave and then bear left (port) near the top of the swell to take the punishing wallop on the starboard bow keeping a little speed that way. But the scallop pattern pushed us closer and closer to shore and the waves were crashing onto the beach with an explosive show of power and we heeded, straightening our course and taking our punishment.
Although tempting, we did not turn away from land and quarter the waves and wind for any distance. It was too nasty to be going away from our target port with bigger wind and waves forecast further out. We were also under the gun of a setting sun. The entry to the Hualtulco Marina is not terribly well lit and there are hazards to be negotiated, and our charts were not accurate in this area; we needed daylight to enter. If we missed it the alternative was to continue on in these conditions, but that would mean many more hours of this savagely slow ass kicking.
We made our turn into the bay just as the sun was hitting the horizon. There is a small island in front of the breakwater leading into the marina, but the island was a white frothing giant guarding the entrance. We snaked our way around it to find the navigation lights to aim between the breakwater and a cliff. We rode one swell through the narrow entrance and... whoosh...into the marina.
When I was about 12 or 13, I would save all my allowance for rental horses out on the Ortegas. I was riding Luca, a gelding along a strawberry field that ran next to the freeway when a snake slithered out in front of us. Luca reared, I grabbed a hold of his mane and he went tearing off towards the highway. I could see a semi truck coming from the opposite direction and the path Luca was on would put us right in front of that semi. I couldn't let go. As we swerved up the path to cross the hwy in front of that truck, Luca stopped suddenly. It was over. All the pounding and fear was over, shaken yes, but we would live another day.
In a similar deja vu moment, we went from a galloping wild ride to a watery oasis where everything was calm and simple again. A tourist bus with a comical arrangement of blinking lights rolled across a bridge just a couple hundred feet away. Two little boys were scrambling up the rocks with a fish on the end of a stick and an elderly woman walked her dog along the docks.
Later, sitting at a small restaurant on the quay, drinking, laughing, eating shrimp and bbq ribs by candle light with a cool breeze coming from the sea, we are completely aware of the changing conditions of our life. The amazing things we see, the incredible people we meet, the beauty all around us is in sharp and sudden contrast to our challenges.
Peace