Tourists In the Bahias de Huatulco - March 30 - April 6, 2014

While we awaited the arrival of our second guest star crew member of the season, Bob Romano, and then waited a lot more for a weather window which made crossing the Golfo de Tehuantepec seem like an okay idea (see our prior post on that happily uneventful trip) we engaged in some Bahias de Huatulco-area tourist activities.  

Puerto Angel

On our way from Acapulco to Marina Chahue (in Bahia Chahue, one of the nine Bahias de Huatulco) we considered anchoring at Puerto Angel, some 24 miles north of Bahia Chahue. But we arrived outside of Puerto Angel in the middle of the night and decided to continue on to the marina.  

Curious about our decision, we took a second class bus to Puerto Angel for the day, and found that it has much to recommend it as a sailboat anchorage.  It is a just fine, sleepy little beach town, with a smattering of just fine enramadas on the beach that will feed you just fine fish in one of five ways (all with rice) accompanied by a cold beer. The bay is pretty and didn't appear to be shockingly rolly. But holy panga did it look crowded with fishing pangas and tourist pangas! 

Puerto Angel - aka Bahias de las Pangas

We had a nice day, a just fine lunch and came away just fine with not having tried to anchor there.  

La Crucecita

The town within walking distance of Marina Chahue is called La Crucecita (little cross).  It's only been in existence since the Bahias de Huatulco were developed for tourism about 25 years ago. Despite being so young the town manages to have a certain amount of charm.  It also has some pretty good restaurants - including several Italian restaurants in a part of town referred to as "Little Italy" (take that, New York).

Mama Mia's Ristorante in (of course!) La Crucecita's Little Italy

There's also a pretty church: La Parrochia de Nuestra Senora Guadalupe. The tourist literature talks only about the ceiling portrait of the Virgin of Guadalupe (largest in the world, some say). And the ceiling is lovely.

Virgin of Guadalupe

But what is more interesting to us is the Capilla de Nuestra Senora del Perpetuo Socorro (Chapel of Our Lady of Perpetual Help), in which the virgin is displayed in a strikingly Eastern Orthodox style. 

La Capilla

The Helpful Virgin

We saw no information about how this chapel came to be in La Crucecita, Mexico.  An Eastern European family immigrated to the area? A sister city in Eastern Europe? A priest raised in Eastern Europe that pined for the art of his homeland?  Your turn to guess - or, if anyone actually has some information about this chapel, please let us know, will you?

Once Bob joined us, we extended the range of our tourist activities:

Santa Cruz

The commercial port for the Bahias de Huatulco is in the town of Santa Cruz, which is often just called "Huatulco". That's where the cruise ships come in. 

Near the cruise ship dock is a chapel just waiting for that destination wedding.

A Way To Get Married At The Beach Without Blowing Sand

The chapel comes equipped with a legend (which seems to have also been borrowed by the town of La Crucecita). At the heart of the legend is the following:  Before the Spanish conquest the indigenous people in the area that is now the State of Oaxaca incorporated a cross, representing the four cardinal points, into their religious practices. In 1587 the English pirate Thomas Cavendish showed up in what is now called Bahia de Santa Cruz and was offended by this non-Christian use of the cross symbol. Even a pirate can have a misdirected conscience, apparently. He ordered his men to destroy the offending cross. Now the legend begins: Cavendish's men were unable to either burn or tear down the cross. The Catholic Church concluded that this was because the cross had really been brought to the area by St. Thomas (the doubting guy) shortly after the death of Jesus of Nazareth. Like all good 16th Century religious, the Pope of the day decided the best use of this miraculous cross would be to part it out - and apparently bits of it can be found throughout The Christian World. All that's left in Santa Cruz is the story.  

The commercial port at Santa Cruz also includes a fuel dock, where in the past sailboats in need bought fuel -- hopefully using lots of extra fenders:

If The Hose Can Reach A Panga . . . 

Having heard about this fuel dock, we filled both tank and jerry jugs (thanks again, Frank!) before leaving Acapulco. Recently we heard that the Marina Chahue fuel dock has finally opened for business so the Santa Cruz fueling option can be avoided.

The main square of Santa Cruz is a hopping place on Saturday mornings, with a farmer's market and (because it's Mexico) music and dance.

Plenty of "Aye Yei Yei" Going On!

And Plenty of Flirtation, Too

One dancer on the sidelines that Saturday was quite an attraction. When his parents finally hauled him away a group of young girls gave him a big round of applause!

That Boy Is Rockin It!

Snorkeling Adventures

Another day we sailed off to visit Playa Jicaral which we had been told was a wonderful place to snorkel. And we are sure it is. But it also proved to be too far for sailing, lunch, snorkeling and return sailing before dark. We diverted instead to nearby Bahia Maguey. 

This bay has a nice snorkeling area with lots of colorful fish and coral. But it also has heavy tourist boat traffic. Note To Selves: Don't plan on snorkeling without having the dinghy available to ferry swimmers to and from the snorkel site. Or go to one of the undeveloped bays that will hopefully have less traffic. Maybe even Playa Jicaral -  ?

Beyond Huatulco

And finally, the weather reports about the Golfo de Tehuantepec looked so bad for so long that we decided to take a trip into the interior to the city of Oaxaca.  Next post!

Puerto Chiapas -- Beyond The Safe Line -- April 13 - 15, 2014

Checking and Double Checking

We stayed in Marina Chahue (pronounced "Cha-HWEY") in one of the nine Bahias de Huatulco for over two weeks. On March 31, our friend and fellow sailor Bob Romano joined us directly from a week vacationing with his wife at the splooshy time-share they own in Puerto Vallarta. We can only imagine Bob's culture/weather shock on exchanging an air-conditioned two bedroom suite with pool and nearby restaurants for life aboard Abracadabra. He may have missed the chocolate on his pillow at night -- but only until he realized that on Abracadabra it would have melted into a little chocolate puddle . . .

During our stay at Marina Chahue we caught up on some blog posts and committed some acts of tourism (more on that in a separate post).  But mostly we checked the weather. We checked Buoy Weather. We checked Predict Wind. We looked at Gribfiles. We even found new sites to check. [For a totally cool view of the wind blowing through your neighborhood see: http://earth.nullschool.net.]  

The reason for all this checking is that our next passage included crossing the Golfo de Tehuantepec -- a passage that worries all thoughtful cruisers who venture to and from Central America. The Golfo is on the Pacific side of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the narrow (125 mile) band of land between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific. On the isthmus the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca stop and the Sierra Madre de Chiapas don't rise for about 75 miles. In this gap the isthmus is flat and, to quote the author of several cruising and weather guides, Cpt. Patricia Rains: 

"That's where the wind funnels through." 



Where The Wind Funnels Through



When there's activity in the Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean it can really funnel through. So much so that the wind has been given it's own name: a Tehuano or to many cruisers, a "T-pecker".  A Tehuano in full force will fan out from the town of Salina Cruz on the north shore of the Golfo (about 60 miles east of Marina Chahue) for several hundred miles into the Pacific. A Tehuano can have sustained force of 60 knots and create a sea state of 25 feet or higher. A Tehuano is not to be taken lightly.

So - before taking off on the 240 mile long journey around the Golfo we wanted to make sure we would be able to do so between Tehuano events. 

As you may have gathered from prior posts, calculating how fast Abracadabra can travel over an extended distance is not an exact science. She can motor at about five knots, if there's no heading current or swells. In some winds she sails six knots; in others, two; in others, not at all. Add to this calculation the fact that over the last three months her engine has begun to consume oil at an unfortunate rate, exhibit low oil pressure and smoke. All signs of advanced age. We rolled all this information around - and decided to gamble on being to make an average of four knots, either under sail or by motor. 

Eventually all of the weather predictions showed a window of at least 50 hours between Tehuano events (most more, none less). An average speed of four knots would see us at the far side of the gulf and out of the heavy wind area before this window closed.  So - it was time to go.

The Crossing

The safest approach to crossing the Gulfo is to creep around the shore rather than go directly across. In fact, many recommend staying at the 30-foot depth line, which is quite close to shore - the "one foot on the beach" approach. The thinking behind this recommendation is that if a Tehuano starts to howl one can anchor on the (then) windward shore and ride it out. 

In light of our clear, if short, weather window, we decided to take the "modified one foot on the beach" approach in order to avoid a couple of shoals and to sail more of the trip to spare the ancient engine. We traveled between six and 20 miles off shore: 

The Modified One Foot Method

We left at 11:00 on Sunday, motoring, Captain and Chief Mechanic Bryce adding oil to the engine after four motor hours, a practice he maintained throughout the passage. We were aided by a strong current in our favor. Around 17:00 the winds built enough to let us sail at or faster than our four knot number. We sailed for five hours with the main and spinnaker. We usually take the spinnaker down for night sails because it is hard to gybe and furl in the dark, but there was a full moon and it was like sailing at dusk, so we were able to leave the finickity sail up until the wind was too strong for it. Around 23:00 we furled the spinnaker and sailed with the jib instead. 

At around 01:00 we passed Salina Cruz (see the third waypoint on the chart above) -- historically the heart of Tehuano activity. 

Around 02:00 the wind began to drop and we began to experience a counter current of one and a half knots, causing us to slow below our four knot average. We continued to sail as we were making around three knots and had hopes for higher wind near dawn. Around 05:00 the wind did rise to a respectable 16 or 17 knots, but the counter current was joined by a swell pattern against us, and we were still making less than our 4 knot average. 

At 10:45, despite our concerns about the health of the engine and our desire to sail we realized that, unless we motored we weren't going to make it to the "safe line" (a point after which Tehuano activity has historically been relatively slight) within the predicted weather window. So, despite the fact that Abracadabra was moving smoothly through the water, and the sea was so calm that it was hard to believe any bad weather could be on the horizon . . .  we switched on the beast and started meeting our four knot production number. 

The gulf was eerily empty during most of our trip but at about 13:00 on Monday afternoon we were approached by a panga occupied by three fishermen and a pile of recently dead sharks.  Bryce was off watch and resting below. Bob and Molly struggled to understand what the fishermen were saying. It didn't help that their motors were louder than Abracadabra's little 33-hp diesel. Whatever they were saying had to do with food, but didn't appear to be the usual offer to sell fish. Just as Molly began to understand that they were asking for food for themselves the panga-generated surf splashing into Abracadabra's port-side ports woke Bryce from his nap. He was able to confirm that these poor guys had been out fishing for two days, had run out of food and were really, really hungry! Molly went below and began digging through the food lockers trying to find food that didn't require any preparation before consuming.  We tossed them a plastic bag containing a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. The poor guys were so hungry that, after thanking us profusely and offering a weather report, they motored only a few feet away and began chowing down. Their weather prediction was that the next Tehuano event wasn't going to happen until Tuesday night.

We were initially happy to get an updated prediction that gave us a few more hours of calm weather - until one of us suggested it might not be a good idea to rely on three guys who hadn't planned ahead to bring sufficient food to work. So we motored on.

Around midnight we reached the "safe line" - the part of the gulf that conventional wisdom considers outside the arc of most Tehuanos. We hadn't realized quite how tense we had become until we reached something that we (rightly or wrongly) had decided to consider a "safer" zone.  We were then able to enjoy something that Bob's wife Kathy had told us about - a "red moon".

Red Moon Party

We were all up at 02:30 Tuesday morning to watch a total eclipse of the moon that we had heard would cause the moon to look red. And it did. Because our cameras were too wimpy to capture the event, here's a picture from Wikipedia:

We had a great time watching the movement of the shadow the earth cast across the moon through the binoculars. Though more than one of us had a pretty sore neck the next day! 


Marina Chiapas

Happily the heading current dissipated during Monday night and the wind came up around 07:45 on Tuesday. We were able to sail the last seven hours of the trip - making well above our four knot average even though we no longer needed to. 

And we picked up a radio weather broadcast from the Capitan de Puerto of Chiapas.  The prediction was for sustained winds of 110 kilometers per hour (60+ knots) and six meter (20+ feet) seas. Soooo glad to be beyond the "safe line" and, really, it was just a prediction. 

We arrived at Marina Chiapas at 15:45 and after tying up and checking in we headed directly to the marina restaurant for a beer and some nachos. Bryce got called back to the boat to meet with the Capitan de Puerto so his dedicated crew saved him from cold nachos and ate them all. They did send his beer back to be held in the refrigerator. .  . . .  

While checking Abracadabra into Chiapas, the Capitan de Puerto told Bryce how lucky we had been. The port at Salina Cruz had been closed the day before as a result of -- sustained winds of over 60 knots and seas over 6 meters.     

Whew.  Like life, sailing really IS all about timing . . . 

Another Flashback: Barra de Navidad - February 14 - 23, 2014

The Following Is Another Flashback Post -- 

Valentine's Day - Who Loves Ya, Baby?

February 14, the day after we arrived in Barra de Navidad -- as every woman in North America can tell you -- is Valentine's Day.  And yes, they do celebrate this holiday in Mexico - or at least the enterprising merchants of Barra do.  

You may recall (or not) that one of our favorite things about Barra de Navidad is The French Baker. Six mornings a week during the cruising season the French Baker rings a little bell on his delivery panga and announces over VHF Chanel 22 that "Ze French Bay-kair es een ze marina!"  He delivers freshly baked croissants, pastries, pies, breads and quiches dockside -- making the world a better place.  

Ze French Bay-kair

On Valentine's Day he also shamed most of the men in the marina by giving a single rose to each of his female customers. Bryce immediately invited Molly out for a lovely Valentine's Day dinner . . . 

A Rose Is A Rose - No Matter The Giver

Paperwork Tangle Tango Estilo Estados Unidos

Before we enjoyed another of our favorite things about Barra -- the pool at the nearby Wyndam Hotel -- we logged on to Earthclass Mail (our internet mail forwarding service) and found a scan of a letter from the California Public Employee's Retirement System (CalPERS) announcing that we had five weeks to prove that we were married or Bryce would loose his health insurance!  

Background: CalPERS is the entity through which most California government employees and retirees purchase health insurance. Bryce has been insured through the CalPERS system as Molly's dependent for twenty-four years. When we each retired three-ish years ago, we went through the process of confirming that we were still married for a variety of retirement-related purposes. And now they needed us to prove that we were married -- in less than six weeks. 

Now as anyone eligible for a certification of mental competency knows, there's no joy in trying to reason with a government entity that is on a mission to find "waste, fraud and abuse". Nor is there any hope that an exception will be made just because a likely malefactor is living abroad. Besides, all we had to do was upload an electronic scan of our marriage certificate and the first page of our 2013 tax return to the website of CalPERS' efficient third party contractor. How simple is that?  

Our 2013 tax return was easily accessible from our computer.  Sadly, our marriage certificate is in a box in a storage locker almost 1,500 miles north of Barrra de Navdad.  

But wait - a certified copy of our marriage certificate was available through the City and County of San Francisco's third part contractor (it's the season of "privatization" efficiency). They would send us a certified copy of our marriage certificate for only $27.50 USD, and all we had to do was provide them with a notarized statement that we were the parties identified on the marriage certificate. 

Of course they didn't know - or care - that the only place to get a U.S. notarization outside of the U.S. is at a U.S. Consul's office, the nearest of which was in Nuevo Vallarta -- 133 miles behind us.   

As we had only recently been released from embargo in Bahia Banderas we were not anxious to return there for any reason -- and particularly not by sailing into wind, back around Cabo Corrientes, at 5 miles an hour or less. We checked bus schedules and hotel booking websites; we despaired and fumed.   

As we were in the depth of our despair -- telling our sad story to any sailor that made the mistake of asking cheerily how we were doing -- we received an e-mail from friends Pam and Ted Simper (S/v Roundabout II).  Roundabout II was currently docked in La Cruz, but Pam and Ted were coming to Barra on a road trip to drop their daughter and son-in-law at the Manzanillo airport.  Did we have time to get together? 

Sometimes even the crappy things in life work out.

Pam and Ted arrived, we enjoyed dinner with their family and they took the bait when we told them our sad story. They offered us a ride to Banderas Bay in their rental car! We had a great chat in the car on the way Nuevo Vallarta and even stopped for a quick visit and lunch at the Puerto Vallarta botanical gardens.  

Crews of S/v Roundabout II and S/v Abracadabra

    

   

And because sailors just can't help themselves, we stopped for a quick trip to Zaragosa Marine - the West Marine of Mexico (aka: "Zar-a-gosa my money" -- thanks for the line, Janet!).  After a night at the Paradise Village Hotel (where they couldn't figure out why we weren't staying a week on the all-inclusive beverage plan . . .) we visited the Consul and got the necessary notarization (only $50 USD - maybe they need a third party contractor). After a bus ride back to Barra, scans of the two-page certification (thanks, S/v Kaylami!) and a fax by the hotel to the second third party contractor -- only three weeks and some $300 from when we started -- we had the proof that we were married. And a great story of government insanity, estilo estados unidos. 

We uploaded the marriage certificate to the CalPERS third party contractor and - voila - two weeks later we were deemed compliant.  

If anyone knows whether CalPERS actually caught anyone insuring a non-eligible dependent, would you let us know?  Just wondering.  

And The Tally For This Cruising Season IS: 

What are the odds that in any four month period (a) Abracadabra would be embargoed by the Mexican tax authorities for reasons never explained to us; (b) we would have to prove to our health insurance purchasing entity - after 24 years of coverage - that we are married; and (c) our (now former) marine insurance broker would suddenly assert that our policy requires Abracadabra be dry-stored during our summer absence?  

We'd end this post with something cheery such as "all's well that ends well" or "bad things happen in threes" except that . . . we're not ready to tempt fate yet. 

And along the lines of not tempting fate, we're currently unwilling to sail from Huatulco because weather reports call for very high winds across the Gulfo de Tehuantepec for the next week. Rather than continue staring at weather websites on an hourly basis, tomorrow we're off for a few days in Oaxaca to enjoy the unique culture of one of Mexico's colonial jewels.   

We'll be on our way to Chiapas soon - we're sure. 

La Cruz to Barra -- February 3 - 13, 2014

More catching up (think of it as a movie flash back):

Heading Out -- February 3:

We were released from embargo on January 31 and left Marina Nayarit three days later . . . sailing a whopping nine miles west to the Punta de Mita anchorage.  Our plan was to spend time acclimatizing to life on a moving vessel before heading around the somewhat intimidating Cabo Corrientes and further. Every departure from the dock brings a feeling of freedom - but this time we felt very free!

At 18.30, three hours after we departed the dock in La Cruz -- just in time for cocktail hour -- we dropped the hook in sight of the Four Seasons Punta de Mita golf course.  Dinner on the grill and a rum and tonic in hand we celebrated escaping the bizarre paperwork tangle tango that had kept us in La Cruz for six weeks longer than planned. 

At Anchor - Better Than A Night At The Four Seasons!

The next day we prepared meals for our overnight trip around the cape, kept our eye on the golf course to see if we could see anyone famous, and watched the local fishermen at work.

Another night at anchor helped prepare us for sailing again.  

On To ??? -- February 5 - 6

Bryce brought the anchor up at 08.30 and we motored into light breezes.  It was a gorgeous morning. A whale energetically waved good-bye to us; or perhaps was simply flipping sideways to nurse a calf -- but we like the idea of the whale wishing us a safe journey.

Hasta luego, Abracadabra!!!

The winds came up around 13.30. And then up, and up and up . . . We had winds up to 28 knots with gusts up to 34 for the entire day and night. But by the time the sun came up:

  

Sunrise

. . . the wind had dropped like a rock and we were motoring and we had zipped past our initial destination (Bahia Chamela) in the night!

We decided to sail on to Bahia Tenacatita, and dropped anchor there at 11:00. We were happy to see Flyin Sideways a boat we had "met" over the radio while rounding Cabo Corrientes and several other boats known to us from Mazatlan and La Cruz.  

We stayed in Tenacatita Bay for a week reveling in being at anchor and, sadly, we managed not to take a single picture the whole time we were there!

In Tenacatita, on every Friday night during the cruising season, there is a "Mayor's Raft-Up" - a sort-of floating cocktail party. Everyone at anchor in the bay (there were over 20 boats at anchor that week) dinghies to a calm part of the bay and ties up to a central anchor set by "the mayor".  Appetizers, books and CDs are passed and stories are swapped. We've enjoyed these parties in the past and this raft-up was no exception. 

On our last day at anchor we took our dinghy to shore and shared a cab with the crew of S/v Overheated (Rita and Darrel) to the nearby town of La Manzanilla.  We walked through the town, had breakfast and purchased groceries while Overheated's laundry was done at a local lavanderia. Retail activities finished, we taxied back to the enramada on the beach near the anchorage for lunch - and after a careful (dry) dinghy launch, motored home to Abracadabra with food for the next leg of our journey. 

Tenacatita to Barra de Navidad -- February 13

From Tenacatita we planned to travel to Cuastecomate , which is called the "secret anchorage" in cruising literature because the entry to this pretty little bay is so well hidden.  This bay was a favorite of ours in previous seasons and we were looking forward to another visit. We lazed out of Bahia Tenacatita after lunch and sailed the eleven miles to Cuastecomate only to find that -- the secret as out!  Cuastecomate was a very full anchorage.  

So we sailed on to the next planned place, the marina across from Barra de Navidad, located next to a very luxurious Wyndam Hotel!

The Wyndam at Barra

We were happy to arrive in Barra because our friend Jim Thompson was scheduled to meet us there on the 21st, and we were looking forward to a little hanging-by-the-pool time before we all set off on a trip to Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo.

But sadly, lurking in our e-mail inbox was another "paperwork tangle tango" -- this time a tangle tango created by our very own California Public Employee's Retirement System!  

More to come.  

[This is what they call a "cliff hanger" in the movie biz . . . ]

Blessing Something At Banderas Bay - January 24, 2014

This is a "catch up" post about an event that took place last January while we were waiting to be released from embargo.  It belongs under the heading of "fun stuff we managed to do while waiting to be released from embargo".  

Bucerias is a town on Bahia Banderas about an hour by local bus north of Puerto Vallarta and about 15 minutes (on the return bus) east of La Cruz de Huanacaxtle.  It is a great location for good restaurant dining (Karen's Place, Encore and Sandrina's are only a few of our favorites) and a good place to shop for quality tourist clothing and tchatchke. There are some nice little hotels in town and it looks like a great place to spend a couple of low key months in the winter if you want to enjoy the bay without the bustle of Puerto Vallarta.

On January 24 every year there is a gathering in Bucerias for either the "blessing of the fleet" or "blessing of the fish", depending on who you talk to.  Whatever they are blessing, it's a tradition for the local small boat fishing fleet and a fun day that should not be missed if you are in the area on January 24.  

We did not see anyone blessing anything, actually.  Somewhere in the crowd on the beach we assume there was a priest - but we never saw him.  What we saw looked more like "crazed panga drivers with balloons".  

Our viewing stand was a table at a shore-side restaurant which, fortunately for us, our friends John and Gilly Foy (S/v Destiny) had grabbed earlier in the day.  As we were wandering through the gathering crowd looking for a place to watch the festivities they called out to us and invited us to join them.  Lunch was well prepared standard beach fare (fish, shrimp, limonadas, etc.) and the company was great fun.  

Gilly and Jon Heading To See the Chaos

As we were finishing our meal we saw the fleet approaching the shore from La Cruz.  

Like An Approaching Nautical Circus

The pangas were brightly decorated with balloons and streamers and palm fronds -- and chocked full of fishermen's families.     

Parade Floats On The Sea

The Blessed (Unless Of Course It Was The Fish . . . )

The pangas approached shore and began jockeying for position. On occasion one of them would receive some kind of "go now" signal and would rev up and rush to shore at ramming speed.  

Ramming Speed, Caaptan!

Apparently there was a cleared zone for the boats to run up onto the beach because as they disappeared in the crowd, there was some scattering - but no wailing or ambulance sirens or other evidence of disaster.

It was a wild show, a great day at the beach and we think notwithstanding who the blessing is for -- we were the ones that were "blessed" to see the whole event!