January 7th – Chamela – Jim’s Blog #14

[Another catch-up blog - pictures later]

As I closed off the last blog we were retiring for the night at Ipala with about 7 other boats and wondering how we would extricate ourselves from the crowd around us. We woke up in early dawn to the sound of an anchor being raised just about 30 feet from our bow and I popped a head out of the front hatch to see what was going on. Imagine my surprise to find that all the boats in the inlet had already departed except for one sailboat besides the one just departing. We hustled to get up and get going so as not to be the last in the next anchorage, where there might be a shortage of room. Yes, we cruisers do have a competitive nature despite our protestations to being constantly relaxed.

We headed out and found that the steering was stiff making it difficult to turn the boat. A little trouble-shooting (in a big hurry) revealed that the electronic autopilot was permanently engaged due to a faulty engagement cable. We grabbed some tools and got it disengaged, and then chalked up another task to replace the cable when we could find the part.
A good 12 knot wind came up off the bow, so we raised the sails and proceeded down the coast with several distant masts in sight. Now in the sailing community it is generally understood that any two sailboats going in the same direction are racing, whether they admit it or not. So there I was with 5 sailboats and two motor trawlers ahead of me which it was my duty to catch. We passed the first sailboat within an hour or two, because it was having some trouble with its engine early on and had stopped to fix it. We never did catch the two powerboats, which must have been doing about 8 knots or so. The next sailboat took about 3 hours to catch and I can’t tell you how sweet it is to inch up on a boat and pass it after several hours of keeping the sails positioned just right for the wind.

Sheilagh thinks I’m nuts to spend hours adjusting sails to eke out another half a knot of speed, but she just doesn’t understand the need for speed. A half knot is not a big deal, if you are traveling at 65 miles an hour, but at 5 knots, it is an increase of 10%. I also passed a third sailboat with no others in sight ahead of me; so I’m not sure what happened to the other two sailboats in the anchorage at Ipala. They could have been heading north, or they could have left very early in the morning to get to a further anchorage by daylight. At any rate, the crowning moment was listening in on a radio conversation between the two boats I passed near the end of the day, where they were discussing that Valiant sailboat (mine) that passed them as if they were standing still. Ah, the sweetness of small triumphs.

We anchored in Chamela Bay where the southern swells tended to make the boat roll back and forth quite a bit. Normally we just snuggle up against a bulkhead (wall), wedge a pillow on the exposed side, and allow ourselves to be rocked to sleep. In this case the movement was more than we liked; so we created our own “flopper stopper” to keep the boat more steady. This device involves a flat surface and a weight hung by lines off the boom, which is placed at a 90 degree angle to the boat; so that the flopper stopper hangs in the water beside the boat. The flat surface is set up so that it will rise slightly with the swell which is opposed by the weight, but when the swell passes, the flat surface opposes the downward movement. We tried it out last night and saw a big difference. Normally a commercial flopper stopper is about $250 and would take time to be delivered. We happened to find plans for a makeshift one and had the parts onboard to make one; so we are quite proud of ourselves.

The day after we got into Chamela, I came down with stomach pains, sweating, and a general need to spend time in the head. It is a time like this that makes one wonder why we are on a sailboat off the coast of a third-world country with none of the benefits of pharmacies, doctor’s offices, special foods, etc. Of course I felt the same way when I was on a project away from home and came down with something that meant I was by myself in a hotel room with no one around to help out. Then today, when I feel tremendously better, I realize that we are on an extended vacation that includes all the time we want to read, sunbathe, visit with cruising friends (and sometimes natives), listen to the surf, and investigate new towns, beaches, bays, and local entertainment.

We made a trip into the local tienda (store) which had been pointed out to us as quite a ways down the beach. Rather than land at the usual location on the sand, we decided to take the dinghy down the beach and land nearer to the tienda, rather than have to walk all that way. When we arrived at the location on the beach opposite our destination, we followed the directions for landing in waves and followed the backside of the wave, rather than allow it to push us into shore, and made a very comfortable landing, hustling to get the motor tilted up before the propeller touched the sand and then getting the dinghy up on the beach before the next wave broke behind us. We have a couple of wheels on the back of the dinghy that drop down to allow us to walk the dinghy up the beach above the high tide line by lifting and pulling on the front of the dinghy. We did our shopping and returned to the beach to realize that we had to get back out through the waves.

I have done a lot of body surfing in the past and have spent hours in the surf looking for the best waves to use. Now I needed to find the flattest waves to give us a chance to get the dinghy out before any larger waves came along. We loaded up the dinghy, put the key in the ignition of the engine, and positioned it bow first to get back through the waves. We felt we had found a lull in the waves and gave it a good shove, after which I climbed in and tried to start the engine. Sheilagh climbed in as well and naturally the engine wouldn’t start. We quickly pulled out the oars to paddle our way out, but we were too late. A wave broke just in front of us, swiveled the dinghy around so that Sheilagh and I were “grabbing on for dear life” (losing an oar in the process), and shoved us back up on the beach as if we were a mere plaything.
We recovered the oar and considered whether we had the strength to walk the dinghy all the way down the beach to where the waves were not so large – a distance of at least a quarter of a mile.

The decision did not take long, since we were not prepared to walk that far lifting and dragging a dinghy full of supplies, even if it did have a couple of wheels on the back. This time we decided the engine couldn’t be trusted and that it was more important to walk the boat out as far as possible, regardless of how wet we might get. We lined up the dinghy, tilted the motor back, raised the wheels on the dinghy, positioned the oars at the ready, waited for what appeared to be a lull, and pushed that dinghy out through three small waves until the water was up to our waists – well it was up to my waist, but it was a bit higher on Sheilagh.

I managed to get in and man the oars, while Sheilagh, starting from a position practically under the dinghy, clawed her way over the side with one leg and both arms over the front of the dinghy. Since I was madly rowing to get the dinghy past the spot where the waves were breaking, I couldn’t help her despite her cries for assistance; but she managed to scramble over and get in just before another wave almost picked us up. I only got a glimpse of Sheilagh behind me, as I was facing aft with the oars, but I can say that the sight of her climbing into the dinghy was not one that would be found in the dictionary next to “coordinated,” “gorgeous,” or “svelte.”

It was a good thing we were away from the crowd of cruisers; so that no pictures could be taken and we would not have to suffer the embarrassment of being critiqued by our peers. When we got back to the boat, we both took a fresh water shower in our clothes on the side of the boat to get the salt water washed off of everything, and decided that we will be much more careful in the future as to where we land the dinghy in the first place.

My stomach ailment has continued to plague me; so that I am eating watery soup and drinking a lot of water and not much else. Hopefully, I am shedding pounds in the process and will emerge as a thin version of my former self. I think it must be the raw oysters I ate here that are causing my problems – I ended up consuming some 18 oysters in the course of a day, and none of them were the small ones that just slip down the throat. I can’t believe I didn’t think about the fact that we should only be eating cooked food and either boiled or bottled water when we eat out at these small palapas. Hopefully this will serve as a strong reminder in the future. Tomorrow we intend to head down to Careyes (a former Club Med vacation spot), which has room for a couple of boats in the small anchorage, and then on to Tenacatita for a longer stay. More later . . .