We’ve been away from the internet for over a week, and did not have a chance to post this until now. We thought we would be in Tenacatita by now, which is one of our favorite anchorages. However, a series of delays has put us in a temporary anchorage just 30 nautical miles from Tenacatita after several days of sailing southeast along the coast of Mexico. We had planned to leave Banderas Bay on Sunday but were delayed two days to get some business done on our computers in a local internet café. We motored west on Monday evening to Punta de Mita to knock an hour off our run south to Cabo Corrientes. Corrientes is one of those points of land that causes disruption of the seas and winds around it; so we take great care to approach it in good weather.
Sunset at Punta de MitaOn Tuesday morning we listened to the weather report from Don Anderson, a former cruiser living in Oxnard, California, who does weather on the marine high frequency radio for us cruisers for the Sea of Cortez and the eastern Pacific Ocean. Since he cruised this area for years, he can interpret the major weather reports and translate them into the micro climate along the west coast of Mexico. In this case he predicted 25 knots of wind and rough seas around Cabo Corrientes on Tuesday and most of Wednesday, which is about 10 knots over what Sheilagh is comfortable with; so we cooled our heels in Punta de Mita for a day. There was another sailboat anchored with us, whose owners decided to wait as well. Don has been right so many times that it’s foolish to take chances against his advice.
On Wednesday morning Don continued to forecast strong winds all day, but he indicated the winds would be slacking off on Thursday. Since we had strong winds all night in accordance with Don’s prediction from the previous day, we decided to sit out another day. We hadn’t intended to be at Punta de Mita for more than a day; so we had left our dinghy covered and tied up on the front of the boat, and the motor on its perch at the back of the boat. Before deciding to put it all back together to go into the beach, I took out our inflatable kayak (which was also inflated on the front of the boat) to paddle inshore and check things out.
Punta de Mita is well known for its surfing waves, which allows very little opportunity for getting into shore and back out without a protected spot to do it. I paddled into a small protected anchorage surrounded by large boulders and found wall-to-wall pangas and no place to land a dinghy. I actually had to paddle swiftly to get out of the anchorage over the incoming swells that were crowding the mouth. I also went along the beach and found nowhere to land a dinghy and be able to get back out through the surf. However, I did get a good hour of paddling exercise and a lot of respect for the surf here and the surfers who challenge the waves.
How the lovely Sheilagh deals with delayWe stayed aboard and read books for two days, interrupted by a nap or two. In the evening we began watching some “Law and Order” DVDs that we had gotten from another cruiser in exchange for several seasons of “24” that we had finished. Our Sirius radio kept us up to date with the news – which wasn’t very reassuring. It’s difficult to believe that the inmates in the Washington DC asylum are going to help us get out of the mess that most of them helped get us into. I might become an ex-patriot to Mexico, if its government wasn’t worse than ours. Not really! A trip to any foreign country helps one appreciate what we have in the United States.
The little anchorage at IpalaOn Thursday we made it south from Punta de Mita to Ipala (Lat: 20°14.17’N / Long: 105°34.36’W), a small anchorage 40 miles south along the coast. We were the only cruiser in the anchorage, which has been reduced to a very small area by dozens of pangas, and a multitude of floating Clorox bottles, Coke bottles, and other homemade buoys designating fish traps strewn throughout the bay. Ipala has a small hotel and a couple of restaurants, which may account for why the pangas aren’t pulled up on the beach as in every other fishing village. Instead they all take up moorings in front of the hotel. It’s not something to complain about, since the country is theirs, but it certainly discourages cruisers from anchoring and spending money ashore for dinner and supplies.
And on Friday we came south another 45 miles to Chamela, where we just anchored. The winds were supposed to be no more than 10 knots from the northwest (directly behind us), but by noon we had 10 knots of wind almost in our face from the south. We were able to beat against the wind for the rest of the day while using our engine to keep up our speed. We had allowed 9 hours for the trip at 5 knots an hour, but realized with the aberrant wind that we needed the help of the “iron genny” to get us here by daylight. The wind blows from the northwest approximately 80% of the time at this season. It was just our bad luck to encounter the 20% wind factor on this trip.
It was warm when we arrived; so we stripped down to bathing suits to cool off with our “anchoring beer” – the one we reward ourselves with just after anchoring. After that ritual I grabbed my fins, mask, and snorkel, but couldn’t convince Sheilagh to join me in checking out the fish along the edges of the anchorage. I got a good swim as well as a look at the exotic-looking fish that inhabit this warm water. If I had taken my fishing spear with me, I know I could have gotten dinner for us, but neither Sheilagh nor I have any interest in cleaning the darn things. It doesn’t help that the fish which are easiest to catch are also the toughest to cut into.
One of my favorite perches for observing wildlifeTomorrow we head for Tenacatita, where we will relax for awhile and enjoy the company of several other cruisers who make that a primary destination during the winter season. Tenacatita is only about 30 miles south; so we are looking for an easy 6-hour day of sailing/motoring. We saw very little marine life on this trip so far – a couple of whales breaching a long way off, one manta ray that disappeared after showing us its white underbelly, and a tortoise that dived as we approached. The birds, on the other hand, were plentiful, particularly near the fishing pangas, where they benefit from the immediate cleaning of the fish by the fishermen. We encountered several squadrons of pelicans flying just inches over the water in a “V” formation just past our boat. One of these days we’ll grab the camera in time to get a film clip of a pelican flyby.
The pelicans are using what we call “ground effect” in aviation that comes into play when we are landing a plane. It turns out that the aircraft’s drag is reduced when it is within one wing-length distance from the surface of the runway. In other words, if a wing is 25’ long (the length of one wing of a typical sailplane), there is reduced drag on the airplane when it is within 25’ of the surface, which causes the aircraft to glide much further before touching down. This helps us do softer landings, in a sense cushioned by the air itself compressed below us. As I observe pelicans flying above the water, I notice that they descend to the point of almost touching their breasts and wingtips to the water as they use the “ground effect” to glide for very long distances, ascend slightly to flap their wings a bit, and then drop back down to the surface to continue their long glides.
We glider pilots would give a right arm to be able to fly like that over long distances, except that we would need instantaneous power in short spurts that we could depend on, an ability to land on the water safely and take off again as desired, and we would need to fly so slowly that the touching of the wing tip accidentally in the water would not cause an immediate swivel to one side. I don’t think we are even close to developing a sailplane with those characteristics.
I’ve also observed a lot of high-flying frigate birds which seem to consistently find lift over the water, never having to flap their wings. We sailplane pilots are told to avoid flying over bodies of water because the air is typically creating a downdraft to displace the rising air over warmer land masses. I have determined (after considerable study of these birds as I lie on my back on the deck of the boat) that the slow speed of the frigate birds, as well as their innate ability to discover lifting air, allows them to find and circle in very narrow thermals that we sailplane pilots could not begin to find within the area of descending air, and which we couldn’t begin to circle in with our faster speeds. You may be able to tell that my bird observations are giving me a desire to get back to soaring when we start spending time in San Diego during the summers. Sorry if I’ve bored some of you, but others of you may want to take a sailplane ride sometime to get a thrill.
More later . . .
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