We’ve landed in Banderas Bay, the mouth of which is at least 25 miles across from north to south and the bay extends east about 20 miles from the opening to the eastern shore. At the moment we are in an anchorage in the northeast corner of the bay, as we await our reservation in the Paradise Village Marina starting on December 1st. We plan to reward ourselves with five-star living for a month and then get back into the anchoring business and the use of a dinghy to get around.
We left Mazatlan for San Blas last Saturday, just after I published my last blog. Since we knew it was a 20-hour trip at least, and since we didn’t want to show up in the middle of the night, we left at 2 in the afternoon and headed out for an overnight sail. The channel is being dredged every day from the marina area out to the sea, and the dredging equipment takes up most of the channel. However, they shut down and pull the equipment to the side of the channel from 10-11AM and from 2-3PM to allow boats to enter and leave. The large sight-seeing catamarans leave at 10AM and return at 2PM along with the fishing boats that left before dawn; so we take advantage of those times as well. It’s a good thing they’re dredging because we only showed about 3 feet of water under our keel at one point as we went out with the tide up.
Notice the birds waiting for handouts on a typical shrimp boat.We had a very enjoyable sail until 11PM, when the wind died, and stayed to seaward of the area where fishing boats were showing lights and fishing all night. This whole coast seems crawling with shrimp boats, nets being pulled along the bottom and periodically raised and dumped on deck. I can’t believe there is much growth on the bottom as often as the nets are pulled across the entire area. It’s a wonder that there is any food left for the shrimp. We saw very little sea life on this stretch, but much of our time was spent at night. We arrived at San Blas (lat: 21°32.47’ N / long: 105°17.61’ W) at 9AM and found that the entrance to the estuary had been filled with sand over the very rainy summer. We called and found that we needed to hug the right side of the channel going in, and managed to avoid running aground (although we showed just 6” of water beneath our hull at one point).
Another couple, Jim and Susan of “Windward Bound” left on the morning we did, and ended up in San Blas about the same time frame. They elected to avoid the shallow estuary and anchor in Matanchén Bay around the corner, which meant that to get into town they had to take a dinghy into the beach and grab a bus or cab to town. We later met in town for a couple of beers at the San Blas Social Club run by a former New York restaurant owner, who claimed he was in the witness protection program and would have to kill us if we learned his real name. Actually he goes back to New York during the hot summers here, apparently to get back in touch with his roots. We later had dinner at MacDonald’s – not the fast food franchise, but an upscale restaurant in town.
The next day we sat around the boat, reading and listening to news and music on our Sirius radio. All of a sudden we heard our names called from outside the boat, and found Les and Diane of “Gemini” in a dinghy at the side of our boat. Since we were the only sailboat in the estuary, we were surprised to see another dinghy. Les and Diane had anchored in Matanchén Bay and brought their dinghy around to the estuary to do some bird watching. We invited them aboard and found them to be a very interesting couple who have been cruising for about 10 years. Les was in the mortgage loan industry, but retired just as the “lying” loans (as he calls them) were coming into play. Those are the loans that are afflicting us now, where loan applications were written with imaginative personal income numbers designed to satisfy the loan criteria. Diane worked in the computer industry attached to geology.
I was told to include more pictures of Sheilagh in order to keep our readers' interest.We never did get the energy to dinghy into town, nor did we have to because we didn’t need any supplies; so we just stayed on the hook in the estuary and watched the fishing pangas go back and forth from the fishing grounds. Since the tide changes twice a day, we were pirouetted by the current every six hours toward the mouth and then away from the mouth. Sheilagh started and finished a novel that day and keeps reading a lot faster than I do. I prefer to take breaks and work puzzles to “keep the mind sharp” I tell myself. Sheilagh doesn’t do puzzles and seems about as sharp witted, but then she’s two years younger; so she has more active brain cells.
Nevertheless, I still win all the Scrabble matches we have, except one a few months ago when I must have been half asleep. I usually make points when Sheilagh challenges me unsuccessfully on words that are valid in crossword puzzles and in the dictionary, that she has never heard of. I keep suggesting she might want to start doing crosswords to build her vocabulary, but she retaliates that she needs to let me win something or I’ll be difficult to live with. Maybe she’s been throwing these Scrabble games on purpose all this time!
On Tuesday we got up early in order to pull up the anchor and leave on the high tide at 7:30 in the morning. We did just that and managed to avoid any chance of running aground as we exited the estuary. The GPS unit that we use for navigation shows our track wherever we go; so it’s a fairly easy process to follow the incoming track as we go out to make sure we stay clear of shallow water. Once outside the estuary, the sea outside San Blas must be a level 40’ deep for miles, and everywhere there are shrimp boats going back and forth over the bottom. We maneuvered between them and set a course for Punta de Mita, which is the northern tip of Banderas Bay. On the way we played with several dolphins, saw a couple of turtles lazing on the surface, and had a good sail south for several hours.
At one point we noticed some painted coke bottles and white liquid soap bottles strung across our path, indicating a “long line” with several fishing lines extending down along the full length of the buoyed bottles. We aimed between two bottle-buoys, as we have done in the past, knowing that the line sags between them and allows us to cross without tangling our prop. Alas, these fishermen were using polypro lines (like water ski lines) that floated on the surface, which I saw at the last minute. I immediately switched to neutral on the engine, but we still got the line tangled in our prop. Normally I would not want to cut a fisherman’s long line, but if he’s going to float it on the surface, then too bad for him.
We grabbed the boat hook, pulled up the two lines streaming behind us, and cut both of them with our ever-ready fish knife (that we leave in the cockpit for cutting lines in an emergency). It appeared that the line on the prop dropped away, and we continued without problems. I can just imagine the problem we’d have had if we had encountered that line at night. We probably would have had to sit there the rest of the night waiting for daylight in order to go overboard and cut a lot of rope off the propeller, assuming we hadn’t had the propeller or prop shaft damaged in the process. Just another reason to avoid night sails except far off the coast!
Things got a bit tight as we neared the point, because there are three sea mounts that rise up from the bottom to within three feet of the surface. Two of these have been plotted on the charts, but the third has done some damage but can’t be exactly located. The guides say that if we stayed within one mile of the point as we rounded it, we would miss the unknown seamount, since it is 2.25 miles out. Sheilagh got down below on the radar and helped keep us on that one-mile arc, although it is still a heart-in-the-mouth process to think of our boat running onto a seamount and possibly being destroyed in the process. We made it fine, and set our sails for La Cruz, where we anchored that night just at dusk.
The next day we went into Philo’s Restaurant and Bar, the local cruiser hangout, and for the price of a beer were able to get onto the internet. Sheilagh made Skype calls (computer-assisted and cheap) to a couple of our daughters, while I caught up on sailing-related and political websites. We grabbed some lunch at Philo’s and let him know that we would be back on Thanksgiving with a potluck dish to share with the other cruisers for Thanksgiving Day dinner. Philo provides the turkeys and generates a lot of liquor sales as folks arrive up to two hours early for dinner. As each cruiser arrives, he/she is handed a playing card that determines his/her position in the eating line. He has about three decks of cards and hands out 12 aces first, then 12 deuces, and on down to kings. He and his band entertain the guests as each number is called.
A man's work is never done, though we work from sun to sun.We showed up two hours early and got one ace and one deuce. Philo needed some turkey carvers; so Ed of “A Cappella” and I volunteered for the duty – nothing like being close to the turkey even before the aces are called. We each grabbed an apron and with little more than our fingers, began stripping two turkeys apiece. We shared a cleaver to slice the white meat, and a fork to strip some of the hotter pieces of meat. Naturally we carvers got the sweet breads and a few other tastes of both white and dark meat “to make sure the turkeys were fully cooked.” Since I was still stripping turkeys when the eating lines started, Sheilagh grabbed the ace and got in line first. I finished my job about the time the “fours” were joining the eating line, so I got right in with my deuce.
The salad and vegetable table at the Thanksgiving dinner at Philo's RestaurantSince every cruiser couple attending had brought a salad, a vegetable, a potato dish, or a dessert, there had to be some 50 dishes and the attached picture doesn't even show the turkey, the potatoes and gravy and some 30 pies and cakes for desert. Since the plates only held so much, it was necessary to pick out what would be the most popular items and grab the first plate-load with those, knowing that other dishes could be tasted on a later trip after the “kings” had been served. Sheilagh brought a key lime pie that went quickly, but there was definitely food left over. We had a good time meeting other cruisers and had dinner with Ed and Cornelia of “A Cappella” with friends of theirs who have a winter vacation home nearby.
I’m afraid we’re too old for the loud music that began punctuating the limited space of the restaurant after dinner; so we didn’t stay long. I was also beginning to hurt from the kayak trip I had taken earlier that morning to the town of Bucerias, several miles away. My idea had been to paddle into the wind for about 40 minutes and then back downwind for an easy 20-minute paddle back. I hadn’t reckoned with a 180° change of wind direction when I got there in 45 minutes. My one-hour paddle turned into an hour-and-a-half paddle with no assistance from the wind. It took three aspirin to tone down the pain enough to let me get some sleep. I’ve got to take it a bit easier as I try to get back into shape.
Today is Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and we are sitting around on the boat and getting tasks done. We give thanks for all of you whom we count as our friends and family. It’s too bad we can’t all be together, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t thinking of you.
More later . . .
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