Mexico is a very, very big country, and diverse. The Pacific coast alone runs to close to 2,000 miles. In our first two months we have skirted the state of Baja and lingered longer in Nayarit, the southern most corner of which we now find ourselves at anchor in, at La Cruz de Huanacaxtle.
From Punta de Mita, the northern gateway to Banderas Bay, we motored the few miles to Las Tres Marietas, a group of small low lying rocky islands in the mouth of the bay. A day of snorkeling and watching humpbacks and giant manta rays some way off was followed by a beautiful downhill run of twenty miles to La Cruz. With the main and Big Panties (huge nylon drifter) we flew, not losing ground to a 37' Tayana that followed us. But, Pride proceeds the Fall, and as we headed up to drop the drifter an " Oh Shit" moment. The downhaul had wrapped itself around the block of the jib halyard and Big Panties refused to come down. After much futile tugging there was nothing for it but to go up the mast, so, muttering "this bullshits for Ellen", up I went, while Virginia did her best to keep Mandy head to wind and stable. The thinking about it turned out to be much worse than the doing and within an hour we were at anchor in La Cruz, post-morteming the cause of the problem and how to prevent it in the future. The next day we were offered a 'Teach Youself to Sail" book by friends that had seen the debacle.
La Cruz has a contingent of Puddle Jumpers (Mexico to the Marquesas - 3,000 miles) preparing to leave in February and March and it is hard not to get drawn into it. It's daunting, yet exciting and I believe the boat is essentially ready to go. But all the mundane issues of our other life, tenant, taxes and funds feel constraining, so we will probably continue south and perhaps cross the Pacific, via the Galapagos, in the spring of next year.
With flat water and consistent afternoon winds the Bay provides some wonderful sailing opportunities, so we plan to stay here a while, practicing our anchoring techniques in the tricky anchorages on the south side and fine tuning the Monitor self steering vane.
The summer hurricane season dictates that we leave Mexico around May 1st , and we shall probably do so from Huatulco in the state of Oaxaca.. To the south is the dreaded Bay of Tuantapec, where the winds funnel across the peninsula from the Caribbean at consistent gale force, followed by Guatemala and El Salvador and several hundred miles of flat inhospitable coastline with no useful anchorages. South of the Gulf of Fonseca we have heard some good things of Nicaragua, which we may try to visit. Then it will be on to summer in Costa Rica and Panama.
That leaves the next three months to enjoy Jalisco, the tiny state of Colima, where we hope to visit the mountain city of the same name, Michoacan, Guerrero and Oaxaca. All that and we are only scratching the surface. It's a really big country.