19° 17.298'N, 104° 50.298'W

It seems like I'm always playing catch-up on this blog, have I said that before? We have not had much internet again and this will again be a late post. We departed Bahia Chamela on Sunday, 1/2/11 and made an uneventful 31 nm, 6 hour passage to Bahia Tenacatita. We had to motor sail the entire distance, but we had to make water and charge batteries anyway and that about topped us off in both departments. I think I mentioned this before, but we have a 400 Amp hour house battery bank, which really means 200 usable hours and with refrigeration pulling down 4-5 amps per hour 24/7, plus lights and etc, you use it up quickly. We do have solar panels and they are great, but do not make enough to fully compensate for what we use; they just post pone charging. The good thing was that we were fully topped off on power and water when we got there.
We were on a heading of roughly 120° traveling basically ESE down the coast and had a pretty good following sea, which means that the swells were coming at us from behind. The wind was from the ESE as well and we motor sailed with just the main sail most of the time. The following seas can give you a little boost, but they also tend to push the stern of the boat around and that means a lot of hand steering because the auto pilot can't handle it.

We arrived at Bahia Tenacatita with our "buddy boat" So Inclined with Mike and his guests Bill, Cindy and Josh Roush still aboard at about 1300 hrs. In short order were anchored in about 20 feet of water and had our dinghies down and were heading to the beach. This is a pretty large bay and there are two anchorages on the north side. The outer anchorage is behind series of rocks and reefs known as "the aquarium", but we didn't stay there because that is also the site of the former beach community also known as Tenacatina that was recently taken over by court order on behalf of the plaintiff in a suit in Mexican Courts. The new guy promptly had the entire place bulldozed, fenced off and patrolled by armed guards. Needless to say we avoided that entire issue. In Mexico the beaches are public property to the high tide limits so you could still get onto the beach there, but there is nothing left. We were tucked up safely inside the second bay behind Punta Chubasco. This bay is also called "Blue Bay" because there is a hotel at the eastern most section of the beach called Hotel Blue Bay. Was the water blue? Actually there has been an algae bloom taking place and the water all the way down this area of the coast is green and cloudy with limited visibility but a beautiful spot and almost no development. This entire strip of beach is vacant accept for that hotel and at our anchorage there is a small, privately operated tent campground that caters to vacationing Mexicans from the inland regions. There is also at a small river mouth here that feeds a large estuary landlocked behind the two bays within this bay.
This was a great place to put the paddle board and surf board into the water and head to the sandy beach. We saw a few small rays and there have been some jelly fish, but they are readily visible so we watch where we are going to jump before getting into the water. It was a fun afternoon at the beach and in the water, and it turned out that the little camp ground had a palapa cantina that served cold beer and some great chips and salsa!
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The following morning we had our own "jungle river tour" in our dinghies. We went into the river mouth on the slack tide and headed inland to the head water about 2.5 miles upstream. There is a larger lake there and it is actually behind the beach at Tenacatita, which is roped off and there are guards on that side as well. It was pretty interesting trip in that we actually saw two baby crocodiles and a variety of birds. The channel gets narrower as you proceed further up into the estuary and the mangroves eventually overlap the entire water way. We were back to the boats in time for lunch then back to the beach where we tried to surf some of the very small waves. Some of the photos of our dinghy show wheels and tires at the back of the boat with the tires raised up above the transom. Those wheels are mounted there to be dropped and pinned in place for beach landings. When we approach the beach we stop and lower the wheels then proceed onto the beach. The wheels touch the sand before the propeller from the dinghy motor and the best part is that we can step out of the dinghy and pick it up by the bow and walk it onto the beach, like a reverse wheel-barrow. The dinghy and motor combined weigh about 140 lbs. and are just too heavy and awkward to try to drag up the beach.

We tried to take a land excursion out of here to what was rumored to be the town of Tenacatita, about which there were also rumors that it was only a half hour walk, maybe 2 or 3 kilometers. Well after walking UP the long driveway from the Blue Bay Hotel and not finding a road we accepted a ride from one of their employees, Marcus, who was driving a hotel van, with air conditioning. Did I tell you it was about 80° and all uphill? Anyway, Marcus was a good sport and offered to take us to the main road where we could catch a bus, but he advised Tenacitita was really 45 minutes by car from here and it will cost us $300 pesos for a taxi ride back, with six of us we would need two taxis! What to do? We all discussed our options while Marcus patiently waited. For $200 pesos he took us back to the campground at the beach where we were anchored. We were happy, Marcos was happy, and to boot, he had some ice cold beer that he offered us for only a small "propina" or tip. It seems the beers were left over from a hotel function, what a deal. That's how things just seem to work down here.

Listening to the "cruiser's net" in the morning I recognized a fellow that I had met last Spring while doing a delivery out of Puerta Vallarta with my friend Terry (Coastal Passage II). Herb and his wife Juliette were also bringing a boat north and were friends of Terry. Anyway, Herb and Juliette live aboard Synchrony in this general area of Coastal Mexico and Herb was here in Tenacatita while Juliette was visiting in the States.
Herb gave us some great "local information" and for something to do accompanied us the following morning the 3 miles across the bay to the little community of La Manzanilla. We anchored off the beach at La Manzanilla at about 0800 hrs. on Tuesday, 1/4/2011 in about 25 feet of water. We were the only boats there and dinghied to the beach to make a surf landing. La Manzanilla is a small, somewhat colorful Mexican community that caters to a limited tourist trade because it is so isolated and has a natural, small town atmosphere. We all had breakfast at Martin's Restaurant where both Herb and the cruising guide said we could get great cinnamon rolls. It seemed Martin was either late or we were early and things took a little longer than planned, but the food was very good, although we are still waiting for those cinnamon rolls to come out of the oven!

We walked the town and I found a couple of tool items I'd needed to supplement my stores at a local 'ferretería', but not much else. Of interest, they do have a crocodile sanctuary 'in town' that is chain link fenced to keep the critters from strolling through town. Herb warned us that the afternoon winds would kick in and to be out of there by noon, which we were not, and they did. It was "fun" getting the anchor up with 18-20 knots of breeze across a long fetch. The wind waves were of short period and steep. We also didn't take the dinghy up, but were towing it, which is not a good thing to do in any kind of wind or sea conditions. We bashed back across the bay to the shelter of the headland behind Punta Chubasco where we put our dinghy up on deck and got our main sail up, put in a reef then headed back out. So Inclined had departed directly from La Manzanilla and our next stop was Barra de Navidad or just "Barra" about 15 miles further south.

We finally got to sail. It was about 15 miles out of Bahia Tenacatita, around the point, Punta Estrecho and into Barra. We were reaching across the bay then broad reaching around the point, gybed and headed downwind into Bahia de Navidad. It was pretty windy, 22 knots true when we dropped our sails before entering the channeled enterance. But, Barra de Navidad will be another story. This one has gone on long enough!