We left our Marina slip in Barra de Navidad at 6:00am dodging pangas fishing in the channel into the harbor as we left. Barra was a fun spot to be and we’re sorry to be leaving friends and a fun place. It seems as we head from one beautiful beach to another. As we sail South we notice the water is getting warmer and clearer.
We’re headed to an anchorage right in the heart of Manzanillo at Las Hadas, to meet SV Salt Whistle with Rob and Dawn to buddy boat to our next port. To get to the anchorage we have to weave between container and cargo ships at anchor. We only have the opportunity to spend the evening and overnight but it’s a beautiful spot. White buildings and towers working up the hillside with cute shops and a small marina. There was a nice restaurant near the marina that we decided to have dinner at and enjoyed a multicultural Asian fusion menu (nice break from Mexican food). Manzanillo had good provisioning opportunities and is a sheltered spot to stop on a trip South so I’m nearly certain we’ll be back when we have more time.
Waking in the morning we and our buddy boat headed out for the start of a 188 NM passage to Ixtapa. The passage will take us at least 31 hours and we’ll be going all night long. We plan to arrive around mid-day (hopefully) and worst case in the evening to Isla Grande (aka Isla Ixtapa) and get some rest from our passage.
After leaving Manzanillo it wasn’t long before we began encountering long lines. (Longline fishing utilizes monofilament lines with hundreds of hooks attached that can be as much as 62 miles long. The line itself is buoyed by plastic soda bottles. Usually, at about every 100ft, a secondary line is attached and hangs down from the mainline.
It’s often hard to know the logic of where a long line of several miles will be stretched out but it’s not much fun running across them. Island Summers has a keel that is over 7 feet deep and two rudders towards the rear that are nearly 5 feet deep. Our keel will catch the lines and then they’ll drag behind the rudders. Worst case they’ll tangle with the prop and we’re dead in the water until someone can dive beneath the boat with a knife and cut the lines away. We keep on the lookout for the floating flags indicating the end of the line and a place to go around them and exchange information on the radio with boats around us when we see a flag or a line. This goes on for hours.
Soon we’ll be traveling in the dark with no hope of seeing the lines. The only thing we seem to be finding is that there is usually about a mile between the beach and shore where there are no lines, and the lines aren’t in the shipping channels. We move out to 10 nautical miles from shore (well into the cargo shipping lanes) and we don’t see them there.either. Our buddy boat had a mechanical problem early in the trip that has left them without an auto-pilot. It can be exhausting steering by hand- let alone doing it for 32 hours. During the night Island Summers takes the lead so Salt Whistle can follow our navigation lights without continuously checking a compass heading. This is a lonely stretch of the Mexican coast and it’s easy to feel alone out here. There are a handful of poor anchorages that don’t offer much protection from the pacific swell so we’re bypassing them and making a straight run to Ixtapa.
During the night we negotiate our passage with cargo ships heading North. The next morning we pass the busy port of Laslo Cardenas and talk with some huge ships moving in and out of port. Mostly we confirm which side we’ll pass each other on and verify that they see us on radar or AIS. We have to cross the shipping lanes here so we’re all on watch. It’s amazing and a little terrifying to see a 1400 foot cargo ship moving toward you at almost 20 knots. We’re glad we crossed this area in the daylight.
About noon the day after we leave Las Hadas we are within sight of Ixtapa and Isla Grande. We are extremely happy to arrive at this fairly busy place with water-taxis ferrying guests to the beach and palapa restaurants lining the shores of Isla Grande. We arrive and drop anchor just as the beach restaurants are closing but we don’t care. We’re exhausted from a night of very little sleep. We turn in early and sleep for almost 12 hours.
Leave a Reply