Transitioning from Surf to Sail

The past month of surfing around Punta de Mita has been amazing. Zipping around in our surf-mobile (which we literally made for this place) to whichever break struck our fancy for the moment. Catching memorable waves; Shawn dropping down the glassy face of a head high wave and riding it out to Whiz's hoots at La Lancha and Chris catching a mini-barrel down the line and carving it up at La Bahia. Solo surf sessions as the sun rose and set. Observing swell in this La Nina year. Getting pummeled by the ocean (mostly Shawn?). Meeting the local surfers, gringo and Mexican alike.

It is to a local surfing couple now living in Punta de Mita, Jason hailing from San Diego and Ana from Guadalajara, that we are leaving our much loved surf-mobile. The finalization of this transfer is the start of our transition from surf to sail. Don't get us wrong, we'll still surf, but next time, we will have sailed our dinghy, Fatty, to the break. Although nostalgic and sad to let go of Eeyore and Ruby (including all the gear we've collected to make it so sweet: dinghy wheels, foot pump, bilge pump, canvas dinghy cover when inflated, dinghy cover when rolled up, dinghy patch repair kit, extra raft material, two gas tanks, extra 2 stroke oil, Yamaha spark plugs and repair parts, engine lock and mega-chain...) we couldn't be happier with the family that is going to take care of them and use them for their intended purpose. Most importantly, now we have a good 300-pounds of weight off of Tao. An added bonus, we look forward to this forcing us to slow down our pace. No longer having a 15-hp to push us around, will require a shift in our thinking from, “Let's just do this really quick” to, “Yes, this is what we want to do, let's make a day of it”.

A quick and relaxing sail downwind to the La Cruz anchorage and tomorrow morning we will take a slip at Marina La Cruz so Ivett (A Stitch in Time) can do the much anticipated first fitting for our dodger. We've lived up the last month spending our energy having fun and trying not to think too much about all the things we still have to get done before our upcoming voyage. So, to be as efficient as is comfortably possible getting everything organized, we plan to be at the dock for the next couple of weeks steadily checking things off of our “to do before leaving for Hawaii” list(s). The only other time we've tied up to a slip during our Mexican adventures has been a day or two prior to hauling out. Wish us luck with our projects and keeping Grizzly aboard!

Surf and friends early April 2011

Goodbye San Blas and Hello Mexican Riviera; not a lot of wind and nice swells always rolling in at anchor. After finishing the building and installation of the dodger frame, sailing Fatty around the estuary and hiking over the protective dunes to see the ocean, on Tuesday March 29th we finally exited San Blas Estuary. Much less exciting exiting than our entrance had been, we motored out early while the tide was at its highest and after briefly attempting to sail on the nonexistent breeze, continued to motor the 5-nm to Mantenchen Bay. Although happy that there was no swell running to exit the estuary, as we hopped in the surf-mobile for Chris to show Shawn around the bay, the “longest right” in Mexico was sadly not going off.

A quick swim in the clear water later, the breezes came up and we weighed anchor for a beautiful sail southward along the coast on the afternoon sea breezes. As the light winds vanished, around 1700 we decided to exercise Yannie in order to make Chacala by sunset. We reached the anchorage- full of sailboats heading north, and decided to set a bow-n-stern at the pole position just off the little village. Heading back to the outside edge of the anchorage, we prepped the stern anchor (it had been awhile for us to set two anchor) and agreed upon a plan: we motored forward onto anchor, let out 200-ft of chain in 20-ft of water. With the chain locked Rocky set, Tao swung around and we then backed down until we were perpendicular to the swell at which point we chucked out the stern anchor. Pulling in nearly 100-ft of chain on our front anchor we let out rhode for our stern anchor. Happy with our spot, we stayed two nights. While there, we took our surf mobile around the corner and got in the water to surf Chacalas wave (though very small) and also met the circumnavigators on Mantarua, the only other boat that stayed in the anchorage. We gave only a momentary thought to trading our 33-ft NorWest for their 41-ft Cheoy Lee…

Thursday the 31st we sailed out of Chacala on the afternoon sea breeze and again motored the last hour to our planned roadstead anchorage at Sayulita. Renowned for its surf and being a cute jungle town we thought we might stay a few days. However, even with settled conditions and a bow-n-stern anchor set, it was an uncomfortable anchorage. On top of that, the surf waves were tiny and overflowing with hopeful surfers. So, instead, we dinghied into shore, had great street tacos and perused the scene checking all the surf shops for a possible board to buy for Shawn. After motoring around the corner of the bay to check for possible secret surf spots and finding none, we pulled Ruby aboard and weighed our double anchors to motor out in search of the afternoon sea breeze. It finally filled in around 1400 and the sails went up as we checked the shoreline for possible surf breaks and were visited by a few whales. We had a slow but pleasant sail around Punta de Mita into Banderas Bay and set Rocky as the sun dipped behind the peninsula that provides protection from NW weather as well as creates several great surf breaks.

With pre-scheduled appointments in La Cruz April 3rd, we only spent 1 full day at Punta Mita for Chris to get his surf fix before buckling down for the next few days to get some balls rolling on projects that are waiting to get done before our May crossing. We just made our noon appointment (it was only 1000 our time with time zone change and spring forward). Several busy days ensued though we still can’t figure out why people spend so long anchored here. It is quite uncomfortable every afternoon as the breezes suck onto shore with 20-30 knots and wind waves to boot. However we met with and got estimates from two women to sew our dodger cover and started the process of selling our surf mobile on the morning VHF net (yes, it is sad).

On the fun side, we managed to have a couple dinners with Di and Andrew of Saviah who were staying in the marina feverishly finishing tasks before crossing to the Marquesas and we even met a couple more young cruisers also about to jump. In our wanders, we stumbled across a young couple and introduced ourselves to the Lauren’s of Piko at the dock in Marina La Cruz, and admired their new stern arch and solar farm. They mentioned that another fun young couple was anchored out and we should stop an introduce ourselves. Turns out Britannia was right next to us in the anchorage, so on our motor out we stopped by and were easily enticed aboard to share their relaxation from provisioning with Coronitas, amazing margaritas and shared stories. It is refreshing to meet other crusiers that are in the same stage of life and therefore facing the same life questions as we are. It turns out they had gotten two surf boards stolen in Mantenchen Bay the same night Seahor was stolen, small world...

After 3-nights, we hurried out of La Cruz’s uncomfortable anchorage to enjoy some surf and sun at our favorite surf/sail locale thus far- Punta de Mita. Also, for the second year, fellow Canyons river mama Whizzy came to Punta de Mita to unwind from a long hard winter in Idaho working at her yurt by surrendering to the ocean on a surf board, and this year Bruce joined her. At the same time, a dozen or so boats poised to head across the Pacific were waiting for the wind to fill in to pull up their anchors. As the swell bumped up we enjoyed a few surf sessions and Shawn’s birthday with Whiz and Bruce staying at Villa Las Olas on shore and Amanda and Krister on Britannia awaiting the perfect not-Friday weather window to push off for the Marquesas.

Our “herd mentality” clicked in as we watched neighbors weigh anchor and listened on the radio nets to boat after boat departing for the South Pacific and even two for Hawaii. Everyone else is leaving now, what are we doing? Are we too late? No, we just have to be careful during NE Pacific hurricane season which doesn’t officially start until June 1st. Breathe. In a perfect world, we would be ready for a May 1 departure. Unfortunately getting our canvas sewn for the dodger cannot be done until May 15. When it comes down to it, we would rather cross dodger-less without risking a hurricane than having to weather big storms with a dodger. But it sure would be great to have both a completed dodger and no hurricanes. The final decision is yet to be made. What we have decided to do is to completely relax for the rest of Whiz’s visit spending each day with her in the surf, having discussions about life, and eating well.

Every day the Eeyore and Ruby surf-mobile is employed carrying anywhere between one and four surfers and boards multiple times per day. Chris is loving his 5’10” quadfin fish and eagerly awaits more forecast swell for later this week. Shawn is practicing post-falling-evasive-maneuvers in an attempt to avoid any further surfboard-to-face contact (X-rays show no breaks only a deviated septum). And princess Grizzly is annoyed that a hinge broke aboard and therefore her favorite hiding spot is currently out of commission but she is surviving in all of her alternative hiding spots. We’re all immensely enjoying our time in Mexico and expect the preparation pace will pick up quite soon, commonly heard here, maybe mañana.

R.I.P. Seahor(se), could be worse...

Yesterday at 0200 Saturday March 26th, Seahor was taken from us, literally. A crazy 24-hrs ensued. Chris bolted out of bed at a noise in the quiet night. He opened the hatch and looked out, Ruby was there, must not be anything. "Hola?" he said, confused. No answer. Then he noticed that Seahor was gone and a mere 2 meters away was a small canoe being silently and quickly rowed by two men. Both Shawn and Chris started yelling at them then in Spanish, "Bring back our motor!! Thieves!!" Our only response was very loud whistling.

The next half hour was a blur. Chris lowered Eeyore into the water, unlocked Ruby and hoisted it from Tao's stern onto Eeyore as a white panga with no lights raced across the estuary toward the whistles. Shawn watched the canoe meet the panga which had a large engine (at least 75-hp) and grabbed the binoculars to follow the pangas movements. It raced back across the estuary to the Pemex fuel dock area. At that point Ruby was ready to go and both of us had shoes so we pushed off from Tao, and sped across the estuary to confront them. Before we could get there, (luckily) the panga and one man raced off up the river and we assume the other thieves had left the scene with Seahor via truck or foot. Still in a half-awake adrenaline-pumped stupor we motored around the dock and saw a man in an oversized black sweatshirt with its hood up and shin-high white rubber boots just hanging around. We went over and asked him if he saw anything. He beckoned us to shore to talk but says he heard nothing and that he was a fisherman (he MUST have seen what happened...).

We motored back to Tao in our sadly deflated (due to the cold) dinghy, very cold, and quite shaken. By then it was about 0245 and sleep was not going to come easily. Every noise seemed too loud. The roosters were for some reason already crowing. Chris was philosophical about it and listed off all the things he was grateful for mostly saying that although it was less-than-ideal it could've been so much worse and hey, that's 25 pounds off the boat and when we sell the surf-mobile set up, we now won't need to carry any gasoline aboard. Shawn, filled with anger, struggled to see the silver lining. We discussed all the times we had been stolen from in our lives and how each situation felt and tried to sleep.

After fitfully tossing around for several hours, the sun finally rose. We went ashore and made a beeline to the weekly flea market (held on an old runway) to look for Seahor, pretending to be in the market to try to find some leads to where we might "buy" a small engine. No luck. Since this also happened to be the freshest food market, we quickly bought fresh provisions and headed into town. Once there we did a few more errands before stopping at the police station to make a report. Of course, the one in the center of town was the "policia municipal" (i.e. they had bullet proof vests and machine guns) and we apparently needed to get to the "ministerio publico" (public prosecutors) offices. Weighed down with our packs we headed in the direction we were pointed and when we finally found it, we had been right next to it earlier in the day at the flea market..

A sole public servant was working in the office this Saturday, surrounded by paperwork. For the next 2-hrs he took our statements, in Spanish, with photocopies of Chris' drivers license and our original owners manual with Seahor's serial number and wrote up an official report. He subsequently called the police comandante (commander in cheif, or captain of the police force) who was currently a few towns away. He said we could leave and the comandante would be along to our anchorage in a little while to question us.

Still weighed down with our provisions, we walked back to the Singlar Marina (where we safely leave our dinghy) and transported our purchases out to Tao. By this point it was 1530 and both of us were extremely tired so we took a half hour siesta before getting Chris ready to head back to shore, talk to the boss of the Singlar Marina, Arie, and make a report with the Port Captain's office on the other side of town. Shawn was staying aboard to clean fruits and vegetables and be available speak to the comandante whenever he made his way to the marina. At 1730 Chris dinghied out to pick Shawn up as the comandante was due at the marina in a few moments. On our way back in, we stopped by Third Day to see if they'd be willing to listen to the 1800 weather for us and we found out that they had had their 3-hp stolen the night before and had heard that to two surf boards were also stolen from a boat in nearby Mantenchen Bay...

We got back to the marina office and Arie, the comandante, and three of his men were waiting for us. Chris again retold the story (in Spanish) and Shawn added to parts that she remembered more clearly than he. The comandante was a very commanding figure, yet was able to make us feel completely listened to and heard. He told us there is a certain population of drug addicts in the area and he thinks they are the probable culprits, though a fisherman many have been an accomplice, and small motors tend to be sold elsewhere as they are of no use to anyone here. He said that we were the first to report actually witnessing a dinghy motor theft and if they find anything they will be in touch. We thanked them for listening to us and tiredly made our way back to Tao around 1900.

Since then, we have continuously discussed what happened. We truly believed that no one had a need for such a small motor and therefore we did not lock it up. This has been proven true for the past two years of cruising all over the Sea of Cortez as many fishermen have commented on it's small stature and a few even made jokes asking us what we use it for, a drink mixer? Shawn specifically continues to struggle with anger about the theft and her already lacking faith in humanity. But the anger did began to melt as the police took time to listen to our account of the incidents and are apparently doing what can be done to find the stolen motors. It also helps that, barring more preventative maintenance of actually having locked the little motor as we do our larger one, we feel we have taken all possible steps to help our situation.

In hindsight, we don't think we should have left Tao. Once someone has committed to stealing something, they are not likely to back down and really bad things could happen. If we had caught up to them, what would have possibly happened? Nothing good. If it happens in the future we will instead, utilize the air horns, pull out the spotlight and the camera, NOT let anger blind us into making poor decisions and remember that our own safety is more important than anything else people might try to steal from us.

For now, we will continue to work toward letting go of our attachment to Seahor. Our Seahorse was a white, 1978, 2-hp Johnson outboard with an orange racing stripe. She had one caring owner for the first 30-years of her life and we loved and had many great adventures with her the past 3-years. We hope she finds another good owner in the future.

San Blas Ramble 2011

To us, the “cruising lifestyle” (or ours at least) is defined by going with the flow as much as possible. It has become crystal clear that we enjoy taking our time getting to know select places versus stopping quickly into many places. Or maybe we're just slow. Testament to this, once we head out of the San Blas Estuary we will have been here nearly a month! The estuary has turned out to be an amazing place, not only because of the fascinating ecosystem (remember we are scientists), but it is flat calm (read: easy to do projects) and relatively ignored by the cruising community (read: mellow and still very Mexican as opposed to a “little America of cruising yachties” that many of the gems in Mexico have turned into. Don’t get us wrong, we enjoy those for what they are as well). In our estimation this is due to (1) the no-see-um population which is rampant during dusk and dawn, (2) the difficult entrance in which timing during the tidal swing is important, and (3) the on-going drama surrounding some long term cruisers in the estuary and San Blas’ character Norm. As we are just part of the transient community, we choose to embrace all of it while at the same time keeping busy with our own agendas.

Without planning it, we managed to get to San Blas just in time for the near week long celebration of Carnaval marking the beginning of Lent. We enjoyed the small town feel of Carnaval in San Blas. Although it lacked the amazing firework display reenacting a battle that Chris enjoyed so much last year, we didn’t miss the touristy cordoned beer garden with a captive audience feel of Carnaval in Mazatlan. In addition to the usual vendors of indigenous Huichol wears, crowning of the town’s beauties, parades, and the crowd joining in the “quema del mal humor” (roughly translates to burning away negativity) by lighting a piñata with fireworks strapped to its back in the center of the crowd, there were some beautiful professional cultural dances and even fire throwers that performed!

We of course also checked out the fort that overlooks San Blas where the local, Guillermo, sang us a beautiful song. And we also spent a day with Andrew and Di of Saviah doing a jungle tour. “What exactly does one see on a jungle tour, monkeys?” asked Shawn’s Mum. To start, riding in one of the 21 coopertiva pangas from a large saline river upstream into smaller and smaller branches of what turns into freshwater mangroves along winding tended watery paths through red and white mangroves, lilies and flowering bromeliad is an experience in itself. Throughout the trip our guide pointed out numerous species of birds, turtles, fish, the random movie set, and the culmination: crocodiles! Before heading back, the trip stopped at a crocodilario (which in addition to baby and mating crocodiles housed other random creatures, all of which made Shawn very sad to see caged). We spent the final hour of the tour at La Tovaro, an idyllic fenced off area in this “protected reserve” in which we could swim safely. Shawn and Andrew’s cameras were working overtime…

Birds

Movie Set

Reptiles

Andrew and Di of Saviah

The time we have spent here has also been marked by some monumental natural history in the making. The estuary is fluvially very interesting as it is the mouth of a river at the edge of the ocean; always moving with shifting sand bars and the channel ranging from only 10 to 15-feet. We’ve become familiar with the 12 hour tidal cycles- laying on anchor either up the river or 180-degrees the other direction toward the estuary mouth with the flood and ebb of water into and out of the estuary. Since we’ve been here, many boats have obliviously cut corners or motored over very shallow areas, the unlucky ones have run aground to await help or an increased tide. We had been here a week when the earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit Japan. At noon the next day we were braced for what might come, but were lucky that the effects we saw were merely an enhancement of the normal cycle. Instead of switching directions every 6-hours, we experienced rapid switches every 10 to 15-minutes. For nearly two full days Tao swung around on anchor as the water level quickly rose and fell. Also, creating extremely high and low tides and quite strong currents flowing into and out of the estuary, the full moon just past was the closest the moon has been to the earth in 19 years!

All of this fun-having has, of course, been heavily interspersed with projects. After recovering from Dave’s visit and enjoying Carnaval, we got back down to business and started fixing and improving things that we had noticed during our sail down from San Carlos. Up the mast to pull the radar reflector add more chafe protection and tie it to the newly installed port flag halyard (that will hopefully loosen less as we sail). The epoxy came out to fix a creaky bulkhead in the galley. Seahor was finally given some love in which she was completely disassembled, impeller checked, new oil added to the lower unit, and finally she received some 4200 to seal the 1/8" copper cooling feeder tube which has markedly improved the movement of cooling water and gotten her running well, if not completely purring like Ruby. Shawn continued with, and finally finished, 7 coats of varnish on our rowing oars and then started on sewing the leather chafe protectors.

In addition, one of the things we were looking forward to in San Blas was checking out a Fatty Knees (a hard bottomed sailing dinghy that we’ve always been interested in) that a friend had stored down here, just waiting... We'll spare you the details, but it was quite an adventure through parts of San Blas that we would never have otherwise seen to find all the pieces and to get everyone to believe that we were indeed not stealing it. We did prevail and finally committed to bringing the 8-ft hull and all its sailing gear aboard. While Shawn worked on the oars, Chris sanded and re-glassed several holes and cracks in the dinghy hull. He then moved on to rebuilding the rudder (which was snapped in half), glassing a micro crack in the two-part fiberglass mast, and working on the accessories. Shawn took that opportunity to paint the hull inside and out twice then added a racing stripe to match Tao's and painted the accessories while Chris patched a few spots and the batten pockets on the sail. So, after two weeks of wild goose chases around San Blas gathering and paying for the gear and one solid week of refurbishing, we splashed her- a beautiful, new-to-us, brightly painted, chunky, 8-ft, 1983 and as of yet nameless Fatty Knees, and went for a sail as a reward.

Mostly, we have felt solitude in the estuary anchorage. However, as the weather warms up every day and Grizzly sheds her fur, the fleet of sailboats that have been in Banderas Bay preparing for crossing to the Marquesas is pushing off, and the other fleet of boats that hang out south for the winter are now migrating north into the Sea of Cortez. This has brought several waves of boats through the estuary, filled with many interesting characters. One of these boats (Pelican, an Alberg 35) had just completed a singlehanded circumnavigation and we enjoyed talking to Jonas for hours about his cruise and the differences between Mexico versus tradewind versus high-latitude cruisers, feeding our excitement about our upcoming Pacific crossing. Today we are relishing being the sole boat in the anchorage as we continue to chip away at our projects. We’ll be here yet a little longer while Chris works on constructing a dodger frame (!?!) and then we will push south looking for surf and continuing preparations for our May crossing.