We finally got our act together enough to pull up the anchor in La Cruz and head south. It had been over two months spent in the Banderas Bay area! Shocking, really, but we had lots to keep us busy.

Somehow leaving is always difficult. We'd planned to leave at midnight in order to make our way southwest to Cabo Corrientes, a major point with major winds and seas, before the afternoon winds picked up. But we dallied over dinner and then wrote some email, and around 9 pm as we were headed back to the boat we realized we'd have to deflate the dinghy and stow the motor away before we left. That was excuse enough to delay our departure until daylight.

By 1045 or so we had the anchor on its way up, and there was a pleasant westerly wind into which we beat our way slowly the thirty miles to the point. At 1800 we started the engine in exasperation and pushed ourselves around the cape itself that way. We motored gently with sails up until 0200, when there was enough wind to get us moving steadily along. The moon set and the sea was bright with luminescence: our wake trailed behind and the wavetops flashed all around. It was a beautiful but increasingly slow sail until 0945, when we gave up on the drifter and started the engine. Big sea turtles of various kinds lazed on the surface in sufficient numbers that we had to be careful not to hit them. Around 1300 the wind abruptly picked up and we set our yankee jib and main, and began sailing on a faster and faster reach, the wind coming out of the west while we were headed southeast. The breeze picked up so by 1600 it was really whistling, and the waves were fast and steep.

Finally we made our turn into Chamela Bay, and as usual we were surprised by the increase in apparent wind when one turns toward the wind. The boat flew over the big swells, waves splashing brine through our open ports, the rig shaking in the breeze. When we got into the bay itself and turned north into the anchorage, we found the wind undiminished. It was so strong that once we had the sails down we had to motor hard just to get the quarter-mile upwind into the anchorage. We dropped the hook close to the beach where the wind was a little less; the out-of-tune wailing and microphone pops and clunks of boozy Karaoke drifted down to us from a palapa restaurant just upwind.

By morning two of the five boats had left, heading north as the season ends. A navy patrol boat--undoubtedly a hand-me-down from the United States, judging by its World War II appearance--had come in and anchored among the yachts. And the fierce wind was gone. People on shore played music and drove ATVs up and down; a man in a dinghy came around with a small boy, teaching him to sail. We spent the day reading and snoozing after our 100-mile trip, at anchor again but under way.