On Friday morning we got up later than usual, but just in time for the morning net. We learned during the check-ins on the net that Cornelia from our sister-ship, A Cappella, (another Valiant 42) had returned from a land trip and was back aboard her vessel in the marina. Cornelia’s husband, Ed, had gone home for a couple of weeks to visit his dying mother, and he had not yet returned. We contacted Cornelia and got an invitation to get together and share the three-leveled swimming pool at the fancy resort here to which she has access by being in the marina.
Just about the time we completed that radio transmission we heard the French Baker announce that he was entering the lagoon and would be taking and delivering orders. The “French Baker” who sounds as if he is imitating Pepe Le Peu, brings freshly baked bread and croissants of various types to the boats in the marina and the lagoon. He has a panga driver who motors him through the fleet, where he drops off orders from the day before and sells directly from his stock, if he has what a boat wants. We were quite impressed with the service, when we first got here, but the cost of $2 per croissant quickly diminished our enthusiasm for his wares on a daily basis. However, we had ordered a ham-and-cheese croissant and a raisin Danish for this morning; so Sheilagh had to get out of bed earlier than she likes to flag him down.
The day before we had turned in our large propane bottle (that connects to the inside stove) to have it filled, which left us without the use of our stove to heat hot water for coffee. We found a way to make do by heating up the hot water on the propane barbecue on our aft rail that uses small propane bottles for fuel. In a cruising boat it is necessary to have backup for nearly everything we do. We have even heard of cruisers with engine problems who had to put their dinghy in the water with their outboard engine to tow their sailboat into an anchorage or marina in no-wind conditions. At any rate, by using the barbecue on the back of our boat, it meant that we had to get dressed before starting the coffee.
We took care of some internet business, including loading up my blog #23, and then went in to meet Cornelia at the hotel pool. If we had any doubt about the 5-star rating for this hotel, the lavish three-level pool with poolside service on comfortable chaises eliminated that doubt. The pool has slides between the three levels and uses slightly salty water to avoid the need for a lot of chlorine. What was puzzling to us was the lack of people lounging around the pool. There was room for at least ten times the number of people we saw.
We ran into Noel and Ashley of the sailing vessel, Ketching Up, who had dropped off their three sons with Rich and Debbie of Oasis, in order to spend one night at the hotel as part of a Valentine’s Day break. They told us that the cost of the hotel for one night was $450, but they had gone on the internet to Expedia.com and found a price of $225 per night. These are dollars, not pesos, and these prices can quickly wreck a cruising budget. So why is a resort that is only partially full still charging prices that keep the clientele away during the peak season? For that matter we learned that a round of golf at the local facility is $250 a round. When we walked part of the course for some exercise one day, we saw one foursome at most. We were told that it is a private golf club that doesn’t care whether anyone plays or not.
Naturally my cynical mind sees this whole operation as a way to launder drug money (the cruising guides warn us that drugs are prevalent along the coast from here south to Zihuatanejo). What better way to launder money than to declare the hotel to be full of guests at $450 each and the golf course to be full of players at $250 each, despite the fact that only a tenth of the rooms are really full and very few rounds of golf are ever played. In fact, any clientele at the hotel or golf course reduces the amount of money that can be laundered each day. I want to assure everyone who reads this that I have no personal experience with laundering drug money, but I’m getting a lot of ideas from the many crime novels I’ve had a chance to read lately.
The tide has been very low in the lagoon lately and Friday another sailboat ran aground on a sand bar in the channel until some cruisers in dinghies came to its rescue. The depth of the lagoon is only about 7-12’ depending on the tide and the location in the lagoon. At the moment there are some 45 boats in a lagoon that can comfortably fit about 30; so we were relegated to the edge in about 8.5 feet of water at high tide. When we checked the tide tables for Saturday we found that low tide would be 6.5’ above the level of the lagoon. Since the depth of our boat is 6’, we would be only half a foot higher than the bottom at 1:30PM. We checked out the true depth at 1:30 and found that it read 6.5; so we knew the tide tables were accurate. At the time we were coming up on a full moon in four days, and the tide tables said that low tide during that time frame would be at least half a foot lower that it was on Saturday, which would have had us sitting on the bottom of the lagoon. We had some decisions to make, but not before a cocktail party on Ketching Up that night.
About 3PM on Saturday the wind suddenly started blowing at 20 knots through the anchorage, kicking up waves that made it difficult to use the dinghy without getting wet. I was safely ensconced in the boat all afternoon doing some reading, while Sheilagh had taken the dinghy into the marina to join some other ladies to play the Mexican Train game for a couple of hours. I had passed on this opportunity to sit with the ladies and gossip, which is the reaction they surely expected when they invited me to join them. Sheilagh made it back from the marina in the strong wind without getting wet because the wind was at her back.
At 5:30PM we got into the dinghy in our best dress-up shorts and tops and started upwind against the wind and waves to get to Ketching Up for the cocktail party. We tried to dodge the waves and wind, but ended up getting soaked in the 5 minutes it took to get there. Sheilagh had worn a sweater to take the brunt of the spray, but my shirt was soaked through. As we climbed aboard Ketching Up, Noel offered me a towel and a clean T-shirt for the party. Eventually Noel, Ashley, Sheilagh and I were joined by several other drenched individuals: Rich and Debbie from Oasis with their two boys, Cornelia from A Cappella, Louis from Cirque, and Barry and Pat from Pacific Voyager. During the course of the evening we were introduced to a drink called Bushwhacker, which went down very smoothly, and which helped us catch up on all the cruiser gossip that all of us brought to the table. Noel and Ashley’s three sons watched a movie in one of the cabins with Rich and Debbie’s two sons.
One of the items of discussion was the tide and what to do about it. Louis’s Cirque had an 8’ draft and was fine if it stayed in one position, but the wind had blown his boat around his anchor to a slightly shallower area that put it on a tilt part of the day. He had decided to put out another anchor to position his boat over the deeper part of the bottom covered by his current anchor. If all the boats are swinging on one anchor, they can run into a boat that is positioned with two anchors not to swing; so Louis was planning to place his boat very carefully with regard to the other boats near him. We knew we had to reposition our boat but decided to wait until morning to determine what to do.
Early on Sunday morning we pulled up our anchor and began wandering around the anchorage to find some deeper water with enough space between boats to allow us to fit in. We looked all over the place and could find nothing; so we motored to the fuel dock to fill up with fuel, and decided to go to Tenacatita Bay (about two hours north of Barra de Navidad) to wait out the full moon for a few days. We knew that Tenacatita had a depth of 20-30’ in the main anchorage area, and had a wide enough area to handle a lot of boats. When we got here, there were only about 15 other boats, and we found a great anchoring area that keeps us well free of other boats. We also found out that the afternoon sea breeze was actually a breeze, rather than the high wind that characterized the same phenomenon in Barra de Navidad.
So our plan is to sit on the hook for a few days here in Tenacatita and head back to Barra de Navidad afterwards to pick up the parts that are being shipped in, pick up our mail (which should have most of our IRS information for last year), regain access to the internet and friends there, and avail ourselves of the shopping opportunities that location affords. It also means that these last couple of blogs will not get published as quickly as I would like. Maybe I can take the time to make them more interesting before they get published. More later . . .
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