After being at anchor in La Cruz for 2 weeks we had some vague plans of going various places for several reasons. The La Cruz anchorage has been suffering from red-tide for the last couple of days and it’s kind of gross. The water is an icky brownish red color and it doesn’t seem wise to run the water-maker. We’d also skipped Mazatlan on the way to Puerto Vallarta and there was a weather-window to blast up there. With all this in mind we got an early start and left the anchorage headed for a place called Punta de Mita. This place is right at the point at the North entrance of Banderas Bay and a good spot to jump off North to Mazatlan . There’s a Four Seasons Resort, St. Regis Hotel and some other expensive places there but also supposedly some beach restaurants with an anchorage that is well protected from swell and rolling so we had high hopes.
The wind picked up and we sailed and saw a number of whales on our journey. This gave us a chance to practice ‘heaving-to’. In a sailboat, that means turning into the wind allowing your speed to die off then allowing the jib to backwind while at the same time turning the helm hard upwind. This sets the boat up to have all sails engaged with the boat going nowhere except sideways at about a knot. It was perfect for when we saw a whale ahead and we wanted to stop and watch it. At one point a momma whale and her calf were in front of us with the calf breaching and playing in the water. Pretty darn cool!
As we neared Punta de Mita our plans began to go awry. The water got less and less appetizing and soon we were in Red Tide again (strike one). Darn. At least we’d made a little water on the way so we wouldn’t go thirsty. As we hauled in the sails to motor into the anchorage the prop wash looked ‘funny’ and the boat wouldn’t make good speed (strike two). I began to wonder if I’d snagged something on the prop and made a note to grab my mask and snorkel and take a look. We took Riley and the dinghy to the beach and walked into the small town. It was filled with small shops trying to be expensive boutiques for the tourists at the high end hotels. Even the food was twice as expensive as in La Cruz (strike three). We returned to the boat surrounded with icky brown water and I reluctantly put my snorkel on to look at the prop. No wonder the prop wash looked funny, the prop was covered in a layer of barnacles. Ugh (strike 4). I returned to the surface and Bev got me a scraper, by the time I’d cleaned just the prop, my hands and arms were bleeding and I was scraped up on my back from sharp barnacle shells. Bev helped me shower on the swim step of the boat to feel human again and we decided to abandon our plans for Mazatlan and return to La Cruz for a much needed bottom scraping.
Back in La Cruz the next day we got together with some friends from the dock who left the Seattle area for Mexico the year before we did. Since they have the same boat that we do, it was fun to catch up and compare notes about the different things we’ve learned about sailing the same boat and our different trips South. The next day we arranged for a diver to clean the bottom of the boat and started to discuss plans for our next weather window. Do we go North or South for a 10 day adventure? We made the decision to head North so off to Mazatlan we go!
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