February 14th – Barra Lagoon – Jim’s Blog #24

We left Isla Grande at Ixtapa early on Monday morning, as soon as we could pick out landmarks in the gray morning light, and headed up the coast in a northwesterly direction. We’re on the underside of Mexico at this point where we travel about three miles west for every mile north. We knew we had a 12-hour motoring trip ahead of us in opposing wind and sea to get to a possible anchorage at Caleta de Campos before nightfall. On the way down we had bypassed this anchorage because the wind and sea swells had made it less than a safe place to anchor. In this case we planned to check out the anchorage and continue north all night, if the anchorage was as unreliable as before. We buddy-boated with the motor vessel Mañana all day, keeping them in sight as they did us. They were a bit farther off the coast than we were on a parallel course, and it was interesting how we had the benefit of the current early on, but the current helped them toward the end of the day. We would have wasted more time trying to find and stay in the favorable current, than we would have by staying where we were.

By late afternoon we approached Caleta de Campos a mile or so behind Mañana, and we found that it provided very good protection from the swells we had been up against all day. We both anchored in the small bay, whereupon three small surfers paddled up to Mañana to say hello and collect whatever candy was being offered. We had Jim and Jan over for dinner and found out that we should have a stash of candy on hand to pass out to the kids in these small out-of-the-way anchorages. As it was, Mañana had the requisite candy and passed enough out that the kids didn’t bother us.

Caleta de Campos – a view into the sun of the beach, and a view down-sun of the remoteness of the anchorage

They brought along the wine this time and shrimp arrozo (“rice” in Spanish) that we combined with our chicken tamales and sliced cucumber and tomatoes for a salad. [Since lettuce doesn’t keep very well here in the tropics, and each leaf has to be thoroughly washed in clean water to rid it of possible germs from the irrigation water it gets, we don’t eat lettuce salads anymore.] We had a pleasant evening with them and learned a lot about a rescue operation they had been part of when another motor vessel ran aground and sank near where they were anchored on a previous trip to Mexico. Apparently some twenty cruisers helped refloat the boat in a massive salvage operation over the course of about three days that included the use of 50-gallon drums positioned around the vessel and gradually filled with air to float the boat. There was much more to it than that, but Sheilagh and I spent the entire night checking on our anchor every hour or two to make sure we weren’t dragging it and running aground on the rocks, as the unlucky vessel did that we learned about that night. We have since decided to avoid listening to any cruiser “horror” stories at night before going to bed in the future.

We decided that we would “gut it out” and head straight for Barra de Navidad in the morning, without stopping for the night. We left at 9AM so that we would arrive at Barra at dawn the following day (approximately 23 hours of motoring). Since the prevailing winds are from the northwest along this northwest-oriented coast, we couldn’t rely on the wind helping us out; so we motored at about 6 knots for the entire 23 hours. We still don’t have an electronic autopilot; so it meant that we each had steer the boat manually during that entire time. Hopefully we will get our repaired autopilot returned to us in Barra de Navidad, and the motoring we will have to do in the future will be guided by that device. Jim and Jan of Mañana stayed behind; so we had the sea to ourselves all day. We noticed three sailboats heading southeast along with a freighter further out to sea, but we saw no sea life to speak of.

How do we handle these long periods of empty sea and sky? I have been listening to an “Audiobook” on my IPod, The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett, which is a lengthy novel about the building of a cathedral in 12th century England – 40 hours of listening, actually. This is one of those books I had wanted to read for a long time, but never had the time to really get into before. Follett goes into the cultural, economic, religious, and social background of the Middle Ages in some detail, and I am surprised it isn’t used as a way to teach the Middle Ages to schoolchildren in a form that would actually keep them interested. I discovered historical novels in high school and have preferred learning history that way ever since. In the course of the trip I finished that book and started on Follett’s follow-up book, called World without End, which covers the 14th century in the same locale in England – approximately 200 years later. It looks as if I have about 40 more hours of listening ahead of me, and I’m looking forward to it.
Even if we had the autopilot working, we have to keep watch and check around us every 10 – 15 minutes, since a 15-knot freighter that was invisible before could be within a half-hour of running us down. This was proven that night when we noticed a faint light ahead of us on our course. We checked the radar and identified a fairly large blip. Then we took a look at our AIS (Automatic Identification System) and saw that it was the freighter, Panamax Otter, with a course and speed that would bring us within a half-mile of each other in the next 30 minutes. AIS is a system that all commercial shipping is required to have which automatically transmits the ship name, course, speed, destination, etc.; so that other commercial traffic can track them. The transmitter is fairly costly for cruisers, but the receiver is only about $150 and can be attached to the VHF antenna on the boat. We connect the AIS from the VHF with the GPS and can plot our position and the position of all commercial shipping on our Nobeltec software. [Sheilagh says I am using too many acronyms, but she also suggests that I should mention that we do all this ASAP.] The software even plots the “closest point of approach” (CPA), so we were warned well in advance.

Sure enough the lights got brighter and we veered a bit left of course to widen the distance between us. If they had altered course to come nearer to us, we would have called them on the Channel 16 emergency channel, using their name, and warned them about our boat. We did that with the Golden Princess on our way south on the Baja Ha Ha near Bahia Santa Maria, since its course and speed indicated it would run right up our tail, if it continued. When you use the ship’s name, the radioman definitely responds, and in that case we told him there were about 150 boats around him in case he hadn’t been checking his radar. In a few moments he acknowledged that he saw all of us and that he was changing course to miss the fleet. We also learned later that all commercial shipping must have someone available on watch who speaks English – similar to the way all air control organizations around the world must have someone on the radios who speaks English. One more good reason to be raised in an English-speaking environment – thank goodness for the British Empire and our own dominance in the world.

Back to the other night, we didn’t find it necessary to call the Panamax Otter, because it maintained its course and speed; so it was easy to avoid. Sometimes these freighters have been known to keep a fairly lackadaisical watch, particularly out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but this vessel was in the shipping lanes, fairly near a major commercial port, so it was probably well-manned in the bridge. It is still an eyebrow raising sight to watch a couple of white lights and a green starboard light materialize as a very large boat in the middle of a black night just a half mile away. It is easy to see how a small vessel like ours could be demolished in a collision with a vessel that large that was traveling about three times as fast. That’s why we keep a watch.

The night watches are actually quite peaceful when the moon and stars are visible, but in this case the moon went down at about 1AM and clouds of smog from a nearby manufacturing region of Mexico blotted out the stars. Then we were in pitch black, with some glows from the land indicating cities or towns. It’s not as if we get the kind of vertigo that causes pilots to lose their equilibrium and crash into the ground, but it is a good thing we have only the two dimensions, because there is absolutely no horizon visible at all in these circumstances. To add to the disorientation, the glow from some of the phosphorescent sea life makes it seem as if there are stars down in the water. We are very happy that we have several tons of lead in our keel that keeps us upright in situations like this; so there is no chance that we will do anything that would cause us to tip over. Incidentally, we are told that this sailboat is designed to right itself even if the waves should tip us completely over. We don’t intend to ever be in waves that would cause us to “turn turtle,” but this make and size of vessel (a Valiant 40/42) was used by a single-handed sailor to sail around the world by way of Cape Horn, and was tipped completely upside down a couple of times without losing the mast or the sails. The difficult part for him was hanging on to supports in the cabin to keep from being bashed around in the salon.

First light came at about 6:30 AM and dawn at 7:30 on Wednesday, at which point we could see the large bluff that protects Bahia de Navidad, and we could avoid the isolated rocks around the edge that could do some damage to our boat. It was a pleasure to finally come back to a bay we had already been in; so we knew the ropes ahead of time. We managed to stay in the channel and keep from running aground, but it took us three tries to set the anchor in the lagoon to avoid being too near the other boats. We heard later that a sailboat had come in a day earlier, had run aground, and had to spend the night tipped over at a 90° angle for the night. The rest of the cruisers in the bay got them off the sand bar the next day.

After anchoring we listened to the local net and then turned off the VHF and went to bed for several hours to recoup our energy. That night we met up, and had dinner, with Rich and Debbie of Oasis, who had farmed out their children, Kyle and Ryan, for the night. It was great to catch up on the cruiser gossip and find out what had been going on in the Barra de Navidad/Tenacatita area. Rich and Debbie have a fine looking ketch and are spending a lot of time refinishing and varnishing the wood trim. We made sure our boat had no exterior wood trim to speak of, and what wood we have is oiled, not varnished. We spend our days cleaning fiberglass and shining stainless steel. However, I have to admit that a highly-varnished, wood-trimmed boat is a “thing of beauty and a joy forever” – well, maybe not forever, but at least until it needs re-varnishing.

Thursday, Valentine’s Day, we found out our propane was near empty and our dirty clothing had built up; so we dropped them off to be filled up and cleaned respectively. We did some necessary shopping for groceries and then joined our new cruising friends, Mick and Pam of Mola Mola, along with our former neighbors in Lake of the Pines, Gary and Bonnie, (who had been long-time friends of Mick and Pam) for a cocktails on the boat and dinner at Maya’s in Melaque, a nearby town. We had a great time learning about our partially-demolished former house (next to Gary’s and Bonnie’s) that is being rebuilt to grander specifications than we had ever envisioned, and hearing the latest gossip from Lake of the Pines, where we had lived for seven years prior to moving to San Diego. You would need to read an earlier blog to find out how a chance acquaintance at a restaurant in Zihuatanejo with Mick and Pam led to a dinner with our former neighbors at Lake of the Pines.

Earlier in the evening Pam presented us with a CD of the pictures she had taken of our boat as we finished the sailboat race in Zihuatanejo, which you can see on our February 3rd blog. The evening was a great way to celebrate Valentine’s Day with two other long-married couples, who are still having a great time together. More later . . .