Once we got the paperwork under control, I got out the dive gear and went over the side into the chilly waters of Marques. I cleaned the through hull fittings first. The large ones weren't too bad but the 3/4 inch ones were all almost closed with growth. The prop was a mess as I suspected! This time there is a growth that we haven't had before; a squiggly, hard, white, calcious deposit on the prop and in clumps on the bottom. It looks like the stuff covering the pearl oyster shells we saw on Esparitu Santos Island north of La Paz last year. I wonder why it is suddenly growing so fast. I spent most of my tank of air and almost wore out my arm scraping the prop but I got it fairly clean so it should be able to do its job. I used the remaining air taking the clumps of growth off the bottom and got most of it on the starboard side. I thought about breaking out the second tank but just didn't have the energy. If we find a little more pleasent diving south of here I'll work on it some more, but it's obvious that we're going to have to haul out before too long. We've heard good things about the yard at Puntarena in Costa Rica.
14:30 All the gear back on deck, covered with tiny creatures. We hung it in the sun so they will dry and die. Then they brush off easily. I took a shower to get them out of my hair, beard, and ears, then we hauled anchor to get away from the ski boats which are now buzzing around us like flies at a picnic. We were the only cruiser in the harbor so they all tried to see how close they could come to us.
15:00 Back at the yacht club anchorage we found a buoy open and hung on it. The skiers are here too, but they have more targets to shoot at. I'll sure be glad to leave Acapulco behind! I can only give it two plus marks; the yacht club is beautiful, and you can find almost anything you need in the city if you look hard enough. Other than that, it's a zoo! I've never, ever seen so many people working so hard at having fun. In hindsight, we'd have done better to have stayed in Zihuatanejo for all our visitors and Lois' trip, and stopped here only for grocery shopping.
After breakfast we put on our walking shoes and headed out to do battle in the supermarkets. We did most of our shopping at Gigante, loading two of the big push carts to overflowing; then I left Lois with that load, walked over to Super Super a block away, and loaded another cart with stuff we'd missed at Gigante. It's interesting what you can and can not find in these stores. For instance, on the shelves in the paper products department you can find Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil, waxed paper, Kleenex wipes and napkins, and lots of trash bags; but we have yet to find our first ziplock bag. In the canned vegetables there are, of course, lots of peppers of every description and shelf after shelf of canned peas, peas and carrots, peas and onions, peas and etc.; but you never see green beans, beets, or pickles of any kind, and not even tomatoes which are so common in the Mexican diet. I guess we won't have to worry about it much longer, these are the last supers until we get to Panama.
When I finished at Super Super I found a cab, loaded my stuff in it, went back to Gigante where we loaded up about thirty bags of goodies, and headed home. I had the taxi driver take us down to the party boat sea wall which is only a couple of hundred yards from our boat and we unloaded the stuff there; then Lois waited with it while I went back to the club, picked up the Metz, and brought it over to the wall. That saved us packing all our stuff through the club and loading it at the dinghy eating docks. It must have taken us a couple of hours to get everything stowed, but we got almost all of it tucked away. Should last us for a while.
We then took the empty air tank over to the panga beach where Lois again waited, this time with the Metz, while I went up to the dive shop and had it filled. By the time we got that done and the tank stowed it was four o'clock, so we put on our swim suits and headed for the club where Lois managed to soak up a few of the last rays of the sun at the pool while I walked across the street and picked up our laundry, the last task of the day. A swim and a shower really felt good!
On the way back we invited Doran and Donna over for a drink and we got to talking about the good dinner we'd had at the Cantamar Hotel so we decided to go there for dinner again. What a disappointment! I guess we found out why there were so few people there the other night. Tonight they were out of almost everything on the menu. None of the good beef brochettes I'd been raving about, no carne asade; we ended up eating club sandwiches and chicken tacos. I should know better than to make a strong recommendation of any restaurant.
07:35 Fishing lines out and the HRO on. We fished all day long, trying some of the new lures Bob brought us plus some of the old ones and never got a thing. I'm not sure what the problem is. Maybe it's the time of year. We had this problem last year in the sea of Cortez. Guess we'll have to buy our fish from the fishermen.
08:30 We're into a "Red Tide", the reddest I've ever seen, so I shut down the watermaker and cleaned the filters. By the time I was through the water was green-blue again.
The rest of the day was pretty boring. There were three sailboats making the same run (Donna Jean, Seabiscuit, and Felix), all of whom left Acapulco yesterday. We hear them on the radio but can't see them. I spent quite a little time getting weather facimilies from Norfolk. Looks like the best charts for predicting the Tehuanepecers are the 20:00 and 21:20 Zulu Surface Analysis and prognosis, both show what's happening in the Gulf of Mexico. Today there was no high pressure and the winds in the Gulf of Tehuanepec were ziltch.
At dark I pulled in the fish lines and we started our two hour watch schedule with Lois taking the first, 7:00 to 9:00. Just rolling along.
.pa
El Miercoles, 5 Abril 1989
--------------------------
We start the new day somewhere about ten miles off Punta Maldonado. We watch the radar for traffic and plot our position from the Satnav. The only things to see outside are dim lights along the shore and those of an occasional freighter passing. We see their blip on the radar before we see their lights. I saw one coming up on us from directly behind and, when he got to within about five miles without changing course, I called him. He acknowledged our position and said he would pass on our starboard. Nice guy, heading for Panama. The traffic lanes come very close to the coast here.
06:00 Lights of Puerto Escondido are visible in the distance now - 'bout ten miles to go.
08:00 In the bay and ready to anchor but having a heck of a time finding a place. The bay is open to the west and has a very uneven bottom with holes to 200 feet and mounds as shallow as thirty. The surf comes right into the south end of the anchorage, while the north end is dotted with mooring buoys for the pangas. We first dropped our hook in sand about a hundred yards off the beach but then moved after Bill from Sloop d' Jure (sp) came over and told us we would be right in the breakers if the surf came up. We then moved out to a safer, if more rolly spot.
We'd hardly gotten our hook down when a panga approached with a young, smartly uniformed man aboard. He wanted us to check in at the new Port Captain's office on the beach. I gave him a copy of our crew list and told him we'd check in if we came ashore. This is eveidently something new; all the books say there is no Port Captain here.
We spent the rest of the day resting, napping and lazying around on the boat. Puerto Escondido is another Mexican resort community, not yet spoiled by a flood of Gringos, but with lots of small hotels and restaurants along a very nice beach. If we hadn't had our fill of that sort of thing for a while, we might have gone ashore. As it was we were still "entertained" with rock music until 3:00 AM. Maybe on the way back north we will be ready for the bright lights again.
We picked up a few interesting notes on the radio this morning. I'm still not sure how to record some of this stuff so that we'll have it when we want it, but if I put it down here at least it won't get thrown out with the trash.
* The Waterway Ham net has a good weather summary for the east coast at 12:45 Z on 7268.0.
* A guy named Manuel in stall 13 of the open market in Puntarenas is a good contact who will provide much help.
* George on Vorsifilis (Sp), now in Puntarenas, has data on computer program which will put weather fax on your screen rather than having to eat up paper.
11:00 We were cruising along talking about this and that when a loud BANG on the hull brought both of us to attention. I immediately reduced power and looked aft but saw nothing, there was no change in engine or prop sounds, and a check of all compartments and bilges showed nothing. I'm pretty sure we hit something, but whatever it was never showed. That's the first time we've hit anything since we left the tree strewn Northwest.
12:30 Anchored at Puerto Angel. The first impressions of this place are as good as those of Puerto Escondido were bad. It's a very small cove in a rocky shore, almost round and not more than a quarter mile across at the widest point. There are two steep sand beaches; one in front of the small village and army base, and the other fronting several palapa restaurants and a small hotel. A pier juts out from the former and along both are anchored dozens of pangas, many of which were filled with people fishing. As we put down our hook an army platoon were double-time marching around the pier.
After about a half hour a panga approached us with, as in Escondido, a uniformed official aboard. It was the Port Captain who had commandeered a fishing boat and crew in order to visit us. We invited him aboard and offered he and his crew pop and cerveza. They took the cerveza, he the pop. He is named Tibo, speaks a little English and is a very nice and helpful guy. We hadn't finished with him when another panga showed up, this one from the Armada, with one guy in the standard army dark blue uniform and the other three in shorts. They had a form they needed to fill out and seemed very unsure of how to do it. They too took the offered pop and beer and, after quite a bit of help from Tibo, got all their information from our crew list and documentation. Like Tibo, they were very friendly and invited us to come to the Army Commissary to buy groceries.
After all our visitors had left we took everything out of the Metz and turned it over to clean the bottom. What a mess! I hadn't realized how bad it had gotten in Acapulco, even with us hauling it up every night. It took us more than two hours to scrape off the barnacles and clean the oil and crud off with Softscrub. I then decided to put Armorall on the bottom, hoping that it might discourage the barnacles, so we never did get the Metz in the water. Instead we stayed on the boat and watched the evening fishing party while I barbequed a steak. At the peak of activity there must have been a hundred people fishing with small, treble hook jigs, pulling in fish after fish all around us. I tried it and pulled in four in a few minutes. They are little guys, not more than about eight inches long, with huge round eyes. They must be in close packed schools because every fish I got, or saw caught, was snagged. I'm not sure what they are called, but you see them in restaurants all the time.
I think we're going to like this place!
By the time we'd had breakfast, put another coat of Amorall on the Metz and got it into the water, putout a stern anchor, got up our awning, and scrubbed the waterline on the shady side of the boat it was almost noon and getting pretty warm. Lois wasn't very excited about going ashore so I decided to take the paperwork in alone. There was a fairly heavy surge so, rather than try to land the Metz by myself, I anchored it our and swam in. When I got to the Port Captain's office I found that: (1) Tibo is not the Port Captain - he wasn't even there; (2) The Port Captain is a sour faced old guy who takes himself very seriously, doesn't know a word of English, and isn't very interested in trying to understand pidgin Spanish from a gringo. He called in another nice young man to act as translator and proceeded to tell me that they had to have two copies of our vessel document and that we owed a port fee of 17,000 pesos. The port fee was no problem, that's standard, but this was the first time we'd ever been asked for copies of our documentation.
Well, so be it! The young man named Umberto told me that there was a restaurant nearby where I could get the copies so I set off in search of it. I had thought I had the directions right but took three wrong streets before a nice lady finally got me headed to the right restaurant. They had a big banner hung on the wall advertizing "Photocopias" but when I asked they said the machine was out of paper and the only place to get copies was in Pochutla, about ten miles away. Well alright, the bus was ready to leave so I got aboard figuring I could be back in an hour if I got my copies and took a taxi back. The bus goes along the waterfront for a little ways and, as I looked down to where I'd left the Metz, I could see that the surf had risen and that it was dragging anchor toward the beach. Rather than take a chance on it getting rolled in the surf, I got off the bus.
Back at the Port Captain's office I explained my dilema to Umberto who said that he was going to Pochutla this afternoon and volunteered to take our papers and make copies for us. With some trepidation (I hate to ever let the boat document get out of my sight) I turned them over to him and headed back to rescue the Metz. Capitan Evaristo assured me through Umberto that they woud be ready for me in the morning at 9:00 o'clock. By the time I swam out to the Metz it had definately drug quite a ways and I knew that Lois, who could see it, was worried so I'm glad I decided as I did.
Later I took the mask and fins and went all around the boat looking for any sign of whatever we hit yesterday - nothing. While I was at it I scraped all the growth off down to about three feet. It's amazing how fast it grows!
I was taking a siesta when Panache arrived. They had sailed straight here from Acapulco, not stopping in Puerto Escondido. Donna is looking great with her peeling shoulders and developing tan. They joined us for a drink before dinner and we had a nice chat. They said they saw several sea turtles on the way down. That may be what we hit; a five hundred pound turtle would make quite a bang. I also managed to get a call through to Nancy on the radio - no schedule for Howard and Judy, and she hasn't heard from Bob and Kris. I told her that Puerto Madero is the next check point.
From there we walked along the waterfront over a little hill to the navy base, about a quarter mile, to see what they had in the commissary about which the young man who had boarded our boat told us. What we found made us wish that we'd waited until we got here to do our reprovisioning. The military store here is better stocked than the big Super Markets in Acapulco and the prices are considerably less. You have to sort of dig for what you want because the aisles are barely sholder wide and the stock is packed onto shelves reaching almost to the ceiling. We bought some cheese, tortillas, and munchies. Also, just in front of the entrance to the base we found a produce vendor with as good fruit and vegetables as we'd seen in the Acapulco markets. There we loaded up with oranges, bananas, onions, lettuce, peppers, beets, and avacados.
It was almost noon by the time we got our load back to the Metz. By then the surf had built until it was really booming into the corner where we were parked but, by waiting for the right group then making a run for it, we managed to get launched with only a slightly wet pair of shorts. As we came out, Doran and Donna were coming in to check in at the Port Captain's. He was just as insistant on copies with them as he'd been with me and they ended up taking a taxi to Pochutla to get theirs, making the round trip in less than an hour to meet his 1:30 closing deadline. If they hadn't done that they'd have been stuck here until Monday.
Back at our boat, while Lois washed and put away the goodies I took a sauna in the engine room while checking all the engine zincs (All OK, none more than about half gone). We then took the Metz and met Doran and Donna on the west beach called Playa de Cemeteria because of the beautiful cemetery just above. There we found a half dozen restaurants, none of which seeming to have much business. We walked up and down the beach, then the young folks hiked to the top of the hill while Lois and I, after a swim, retired to one of the many outdoor bars for a cerveza. There we met a couple named Jim and Joyce from England who had sailed for three years on the Mediterranean Sea and who are now touring Latin America. They were very high on Guatamala, saying that, of all the places they'd been recently, it was the least expensive and friendly.
We had dinner on the Sea Raven or, as Doran calls us, the Cuervo del Mar. I made up my famous spagetti sauce and Donna made a super cold slaw and we stuffed ourselves.
11:00 Heading 060 degrees, east by northeast, the first time we've had a northerly heading since leaving Santa Rosalia. We've come round the "bottom" of Mexico. We've also picked up a couple of nice Bonito. Fish for dinner tonight!
12:30 We're here, and Huachulco is a pleasent surprize. I'd been expecting to see the new Club Med and Sheraton hotels and find lots of gringos here in Mexico's latest place to separate the tourist from his dollar but what we found was a beautiful natural harbor with what appears to be a nice landing where pangas take mostly Mexican tourists out on sightseeing tours. There's a small village and quite a few palapa restaurants on the beach but all-in-all a pretty, quiet place. Later we found that the hotels are around the point on the beach in the larger Bahia Cruz rather than in Huachulco.
We anchored, had a bit of lunch, then I took a nap. We've only got one side to our bed but somehow I must have gotten up on the wrong side of it because things started going wrong. First off, when I started Genny to print out the weatherfax her flow sensor alarm wouldn't stop, even though she had plenty of water. Oh well, I'll work on that tomorrow. I got the weatherfax, Panache showed up and anchored nearby, I took a swim and talked to Mark and Carol on Freebird, the little 17 foot sailboat which has been here for a week. I invited them over for a drink and, when I came back and opened the freezer to ice the glasses, found that it was starting to thaw. Oops, need to charge it with freon- number 2 problema!
Anyway, Doran and Donna came to join us for Happy Hour and, because both Mark and Doran are surfers, I got the answer to why the wave at Ixtapa ground me up. They said that is what they call a "ground breaker beach", the waves don't break until they are almost on the beach and, by the time they do there's no water beneath them. Also, they said you never ride straight down a wave, always on an angle, and you steer out of it before it breaks. Said I should have tried it at Puerto Escondido where the waves break far out and where surfers come from all over the world because of the ideal surfing conditions. I think I'll leave the big ones to them!
We'd been sitting and talking, not paying much attention; and, when Mark and Carol started to leave we suddenly realized that the big shrimp boat we'd anchored behind was now about ten feet off our stern! The wind had died and we had swung in opposite directions. Problema number 3! OK, I start up Gimmy to move us away - and his alarm won't go off! A quick check shows that there is indeed no water coming out his exhaust! I check the seascreen and nothing is blocking it. Problema number 4! About this time I decide that it's time to call it a day before anything else breaks, so I went to bed. Lois spent half the night worrying about the shrimper but, fortunately, a little breeze sprang up and we stayed separated. Tomorrow will be a busy day!
We got ourselves anchored and were still running Gennie to bring down the freezer so I figured we might as well make some water. Here comes problema number 5 - the danged HRO won't stay on for more than about five minutes! I checked to make sure that there was good flow and that pressure was normal then jumpered first the high pressure cutoff switch, then the low flow shutdown switch. Still the machine would shut itself down in minutes. Since those are the only two things that the manual says cause it to shut down, I had to conclude that the problem is in the control circuit board. Sure enough, I put in our spare and it solved the problem. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get the bad board back to Standard Communications for repair.
By about 10:30 our water tank was full and the freezer was down to 10 degrees, so we decided to shut Gennie down and go take a look at the town. I grabbed our empty jerry jug for outboard fuel and we headed in. There is a fairly good sized, dredged, inner harbor surrounded by concrete bulkheads and with room for a hundred or more boats moored "Med" style with stern to the bulkhead. Right now there are only pangas and what the locals call "launches", extra large panga type fiberglass boats with an awning on top used for the sightseeing tourists. We got off at a float which they use to load passengers and tied the Metz up to a bollard big enough to hold the Queen Mary. Just off the ramp there is a shed where an old guy sells gasoline, dispensing it out of five liter jugs for a price just a little above Pemex. We had him fill our jerry jug, paid him and left it with him to pick up later, then headed off to see the sights.
The village here is a strange mixture of new and old. Along the beach the palapa restaurants and small businesses look very much like those in the other small Mexican waterfront villages we've seen. Behind the beach, surrounding the new inner harbor, the whole area resembles a modern builder's development with wide paved streets, curbings, sidewalks, new light poles with underground wiring, and brick paved walks through small park areas. A few buildings, possibly hotels, are in the early stages of construction but, for the most part, only the ground work is complete. Between the beach and the new developement are dozens of tourist shops, mostly just shacks, selling the same stuff that you see wherever the tourist are: T shirts, silver, and souvenirs. Surprizingly, on a dirt street behind some open ditches we had to walk over on planks we found a modern building housing two banks. This is handy, so we decided to spend our last peso on lunch and buy some more at the bank tomorrow. We went to one of the beach palapas where we had a beer and quesadilla while a talented young man played music for us on a uke, a flute, and then a guitar.
We arrived back at the boat just in time to meet a launch carrying officials from the Port Captain's office and Mark who was acting as their interpreter. They appropriated our crew lists and told us we could pick them up at the office in Cruzasita, a small town a couple of miles across the hill. No problem, we wanted to visit there anyway.
In the afternoon we had lots of vistors; Bill from Sloop d' Jour and a lady he'd met at Club Med came by, then Mark came to pick up some meat he'd left in our freezer and stayed talking for a while, then Mark and Mary from a boat called Felix came over to talk about weatherfaxes. They are thinking of crossing the Tehuanepec in the next day or so, so want all the info they can get. I showed them the charts I've been getting from Norfolk. Interesting couple, he's an electronics whiz much in demand by other boaters. They have a ten year old boy, Luke, with them and have been traveling with Seabiscuit, a boat with two young girls aboard. The two ladies take turns at teaching school.
GMC manual which has a picture of the pump and there is nothing I can find that would explain what's happening; so, rather than get myself in trouble by tearing things apart, I decided to think about it for a while.
After breakfast we went to the bank and bought a $100 dollars worth of pesos (2,371 this morning), then headed off to town to retrieve our crew lists. The bus to Cruzasita costs 500 pesos but as we were waiting for it a taxi came along and offered us the same deal so we had a first class ride across the hill to the big city. We've seen nothing like Cruzasita in Mexico before - the whole town is brand new! Built to house the workers who built the Club Med and Sheraton hotels, all of the buildings are modern, mostly built of concrete blocks of brick, the streets are paved and wide and, except for the familiar quality of Mexican contruction, it looks for all the world like a suburban development in the States. We walked up and down several of the streets gawking. Lois found a place to have her hair cut so, while she did that I continued my walk. There's a nice plaza with lots of green lawn but, as you'd expect, no trees big enough to provide shade. There are all kinds of stores of the type usually seen only in the larger cities; for instance, a computer supply store. They wanted 55,000 pesos for a box of ten floppies, but they were there. There's also a nice, small open market which differs from the norm in that the floors are concrete and the stalls were obviously planned from the beginning to be either produce, meats, nicknacks, or lunch stands - all laid out in order instead of the usual jumble.
Once we'd taken a quick survey we started hunting for the Port Captain's office - that took a bit of finding. It's way out on the west side of town in a residential district. When we finally found it only the secretary, a young lady who speaks not a word of English but speaks Spanish at a very high rate, was there; but she had our papers ready. She gave me one copy and explained that I was to go get at least two more, plus two copies of our boat document. Alright, we had already scouted the copy places so, no problema! We headed back to town, got our copies, went to the market for some chicken and beef for tacos, met Mark and Carol in one of the lunch stalls and, on their recommendation, had a very good lunch of Bistec Mexicana for a buck and a half. While we were there Doran and Donna came along and were headed back for the marina, so we all walked together back to the Port Captain's, then they continued the walk while Lois and I cheated and got a taxi. Well, it was Hot!!!
Back at the boat I spent most of the afternoon getting weatherfaxes again. Today there's a front going thru the Gulf of Mexico which is kicking up the winds in the Tehuantepec, a pattern to watch for when we're ready to go. By the time we got through with that the engine room was so hot I didn't feel like tackling my water pump problem again so I'll save that for tomorrow. More boats in the harbor today. We now have quite a bunch waiting to make the jump: Sea Raven, Seabiscuit, Felix, Donna Jean, Panache, Norena, Sloop d' Jur, and the two newcomers, Akavit and Teal. More on the way.
So, we went to work on removing the pump housing. The manual says, "Remove the six slot headed bolts holding the pump housing and pull it off the impellers." The words were reminiscent of those in the Johnson Outboard Manual and the situation was about the same. The bolts, threaded steel machine screws about four inches long, were badly corroded and two twisted off as I removed them. Then Lois and I worked for almost an hour before we managed to "pull the housing off the impellers", she holding a light or a prying tool while I hammered away. It finally came off when one of the broken screws, which was stuck both in the housing and the adapter plate, broke again. Both of the neoprene gears had broken loose from the hubs and one was completely split. I guess if one gives up the other almost has to slip also because they are so flexible they will jam.
Then came the job of removing the hubs from the 3/4 inch shafts. One slipped off easily after a small nudge with a pry bar; the other just wouldn't give up. We pryed and hammered, while I worried about the shaft bearings, until we'd gotten about a quarter inch of movement. About then I took a break and decided to put out a call on the radio for a wheel puller. Sure 'nough, back came a call from Bob on Akavit - he had several I was welcome to use. I ran over to his boat, picked them up and, after a bit of fiddling, found a combination which would pull our hub. Strangely, one of the two woodruff keys on this shaft were missing! I'm still not sure whether I assembled it that way three years ago, or whether it had completely rusted out - the slot was full of rust. In any case, I made a new one of bronze, filing it out of one of our now useless hubs. Now all I had to do was to install the new impellers and reassemble the pump. One of the new impellers went on easily - one shaft must be slightly smaller than the other. The other took a lot of pounding, a scary thing to do when you have no way of supporting the shaft, but it finally was in place with the proscribed 0.005 clearance. The pump housing fussed a bit but I got it on, held by four of the six bolts, liberally doused this time in Neverzeez. When we get near a machine shop again I'll take the whole pump in and have the holes drilled out and re-tapped, a thing I didn't dare try with steel bolts in a bronze casting and no drill press.
When I got it all back together and started the engine it worked! I've got a couple of leaks around the fittings which will be easy to fix; but, by this time I was so hot and dirty I just went over the side into the cool, cool water of the bay.
With the weather looking good for at least 36 hours, four of the fleet left today for points south: Donna Jean, Norena, Felix, andSeabiscuit. Doran, Bob, and Mark (Freebird) are planning on leaving tomorrow which will leave us the only boat in the harbor - that is until the rest of the bunch coming from Acapulco get here. We hear that Moon Dancer, Tortuga,and Margorie Grace are on the way. We have a bit more cleanup work to do before we go - our freezer needed more freon today and may have a leak. We might leave Friday if we get that fixed and the weather looks good.
Ended the day by watching Arabesque, a movie with Gregory Peck and Sophia Loran. We sure enjoy the movies Dick copied for us.
Other than for me fussing about the pump, it was a pretty nice, quiet day. We went into town in the morning, looked without success for some freon in the one pound cans, bought a few fresh fruits and vegetables, and picked up a couple of cases of beer and some ice. We're all ready to go if I can convince myself we've got an operable raw water pump. The people who left last night are reporting flat seas, no wind, lots of turtles, and a few dorado. Some of them are even starting to get enough confidence in the weather to "cut the corner" - turn directly toward Puerto Madero rather than hugging the coastline. The forecast is for light winds at least through Sunday. Our plan is to go to Salina Cruz, about a ten hour run, then do an overnight to Puerto Madero.
Margorie Grace, Tortuga, and Moondancer arrived early this morning while I was fussing in the engine room. Tortuga and Moondancer just stayed for a few hours then headed on. Margorie Grace stayed while Bill did some work on his radar. We had Bill and Debbie over for cocktails in the evening and had a nice chat. They'll be here for a day or so.
We'd hardly gotten out of Huachulco before we started seeing sea turtles. They were everywhere we'd look, lying floating on the surface in the morning sun. Some had birds standing on their backs. There were so many that I had to steer around them several times, and I'm sure now that that is what we hit the other day coming into Huachulco. They lie with only the shell protruding from the water so, unless you are watching pretty close, it would be easy to miss one. If we came very close, the turtle would raise it's head, look around, then slowly sink into the depths. I'm sure the one we hit would not have surfaced again for a long time.
We also picked up one nice bonito, and hooked and lost another early in the day; but then dragged the lines for the rest of the day with no success in getting the dorado we wanted. Oh well, maybe tomorrow.
As we neared Salina Cruz we started to see a shoreline with features different than we've seen before. The mountains, which on this side come right down to the shore, meet dunes which seem to be rising to meet them. One grand dune at Punta Chipehua is over 500 feet high! It covers a volcanic peak on the point like a giant, tan snow drift. Several of these huge dunes testify to the power of the winds of Tehuanepec.
17:00 Anchored in the outer harbor at Salina Cruz. We'd slowed down to about six knots in the hope that we'd have no visit from the port officials after four o'clock on a Friday afternoon. We'd no sooner gotten our hook down than a launch loaded with about a dozen blue uniformed men headed our way. Turned out that they were navy, and they just circled us, waved and went on their way. We were happy about that - we just wanted to get a good night's sleep and then be on our way to Puerto Madero, not go messing around with checking in and out. Salina Cruz is a big, commercial shipping port. Here in the outer harbor there are only two boats: we and a huge, modern container ship called the Toluca. The container loading facility looks brand new, and is very much like those on the Seattle waterfront. It might be fun to go look at the town, but the books are unanomous about it's undesirablity, especially when the wind blows, and it looks like we've got a good weather window right now, so we'll skip it this time.
I tried to get Nan on the Hi Seas but by the time we got a clear channel she'd left the shop; so I called Kris instead. We were very dissapointed to learn that they won't be able to crew with us to Costa Rica - Bob is involved in some problem at Weyerhouser. Well, we'll have to work out something when we get to Puerto Madero. Had a good dinner of bonito and went to bed early to the sound of music from the container ship.
07:10 We'd been seeing masses of forage fish on the surface and now we saw a group of several sharks feeding, the first time we've seen more than one at a time. They do look like something you don't want to mess with. Wind picking up a bit now - about ten knots out of the north.
08:00 We may not get home free yet - the wind is now up to fifteen, gusting to twenty, and the seas are starting to build. I point the nose a little more toward shore and we start to splash into it. The morning sun is hot coming through the windows but I can't open the upwind door - I'm in a sauna at the wheel.
10:00 Really blowing now, twenty-five with gusts to thirty-five. Seas are up to four to six feet, and steep. We tried running with it for a while, putting down one flopper-stopper to slow the roll, but had to turn shoreward again when it kept pushing us out to sea. So, we just splashed into it, quartering the seas as best we could, but taking a lot of spray over the boat. Got our decks washed really well! Talked to Sloop d' Jur and Freebird on the radio - they are behind us, hugging the beach and motoring.
12:00 Three miles offshore now, near the entrance to Laguna San Francisco. The seas are down and we are able to turn to put them on our quarter. We've survived our first bout with the Tehuantepec. I don't think you could really call this a Tehuantepecer, but I can sure see why they say to hug the coastline.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. By 14:00 we had the wind full at our backs so we stopped and pulled in the flopper-stopper and started making better time - we'd been averaging about five knots.
19:00 At the last light of day we turn to our final heading of 120 degrees. From here to Puerto Madero the coast is a long straight line to the southeast. Lois takes the first evening watch while I try to get a bit of sleep. We'll try two hour watches which seemed to work pretty well before. Our water pump is working well even though it's leaking and, if the bilge pump holds out that's no problem.
El Domingo, 16 Abril 1989
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00:00 Running in the moonlight with about seventy miles to go. The wind has died and the seas are almost calm, just a gentle rolling motion as we cruise along. We see an occasional light on the shore, or on another boat - there are quite a few shrimpers along this coast. It is quite shallow; I don't think we were ever in more than thirty fathoms of water.
04:00 It's Lois' turn again but she's sleeping soundly on the couch so I let her sleep. I'm feeling pretty good, and love to see the dawn. By five the first light starts to show in the eastern sky, and by five thirty it's fully light. Days are pretty consistant here at 15 degrees latitude. Sunrise and sunset are about six o'clock with dawn and dusk at five and seven, respectively.
10:30 Puerto Madero! A port only ten miles from the Guatemalan boarder built by dredging a lagoon, this is the only shelter on the coast south of the Gulf of Tehuantepec. The entrance is interesting - two rock jetties sticking out into an otherwize unbroken beach upon which the sea beats mercilessly. It is quite shallow (Charley said 19 feet at one point) and the Pacific swell builds to what looks like mountains as it encounters the shallow water. We roller-coastered our way through the entrance and into an outer basin where two waterways lead off to two anchorages. All of the other yachts (I think there are about nine of them which arrived yesterday) are crowded into the south basin with a hundred or more of the big shrimp boats. We, after talking to several of them on the radio, took their recommendation and went to the north basin where there is nothing but a couple of navy ships and some abandoned fish boats on the beach. Between the two basins, on the north shore, is a fishing village with maybe two hundred pangas, each with TWO fifty horse outboards, pulled up along the shore in front of several dozen palapas.
We anchored, got down the Metz, put up our awning, and were relaxing with a cerveza, when a panga pulled along side and a man and a boy jumped out into the Metz and bid goodby to the panga driver. I got a bit excited and was hollaring, "No pase! No pase!", but the guy just seemed to ignor me, taking off his leather boots, laying them in the Metz, and instructing his son to do likewize. When I was adament about them not boarding, he looked a little hurt and pulled a quite official looking ID card from his pocket, explaining that he was from the Port Captain's office and just wanted to help us. Turned out that he was a pretty nice guy, and one of the few who speak slowly enough for me to understand. His name is David and his son's Juan. He asked if we needed fuel or water and, over a cerveza, told us quite a bit about the harbor, the town, and surrounding country. I ended up taking them back to the shore in the Metz, dropping them on a fish boat tied to the wharf near the navy ships.
Later in the day I braved the heat of the engine room to replace Gennie's impeller (Again!) and get her flow alarm working, then I took the Metz on a tour to the south basin. The sailboats are really crowded in there - some of them rafted together and all much to close for comfortable swinging. Let's see how many I can name: Panache (They moved over with us later), Moon Dancer, Tortuga, Teal, Norena, Felix, Seabiscuit, Donna Jean, and Mother Lode. I think there may be a couple more, but can't remember. All will be trying to get to the Port Captain and get fuel tomorrow. It'll be a busy day for him!
Doran and Donna came over for dinner with us. They'd gone to Tapachula today on the bus. Said it was a good sized city, about the size of La Paz, with all the stores and services. They also plan on going to Union Juarez, a small town in the mountains near the Guatemalan border which they've been told is like a Swiss village. That's a little hard to imagine - we might join them.
Back at the office, we paid our port fee (no local tax here, just 350 pesos per ton), the Aduana stamped our crew list, the Port Captain stamped and signed them (adding a note that there was no Migracion office here) and told us we were done - we had our Zarpe, or authorization to leave the country. When we get to Costa Rica we'll find out if one with a green border is any better than ours. Who knows, they might send us back!
We'd allocated the whole day for the Port Captain and were through by 10:30, so the rest of the day was pretty relaxed. A big power boat being delivered to Florida, the Regal Lady, had come in during the night and anchored near us, and about noon Moon Dancer and Tortuga moved over from the other basin to join us. Then Margorie Grace, Summer Breeze, and Sailorr came in from Huatulco so with eight boats here we're no longer lonely in the north anchorage. The Regal Lady and Tortuga both dragged anchor in a stiff north breeze this afternoon. Ivan was off getting fuel and Kate was on the Tortuga alone, so I ran over to help her reset her anchor. They have an electric windless so it was easy. The bottom seems to be a very soft mud, not very good at holding the plow anchors - you need a lot of scope out.
We'd planned on going to Union Juarez tomorrow, but Donna wasn't feeling to well this evening - symptoms of what I call the Evaristo Blues; fever , headache, and hurt all over. We'll see.
The passable waterway ends with a pile of debrie under a bridge leading to town. There are a bunch of pangas there, all tied to the bank with anchors in the river; so I decided to do the same. I picked up our little folding dinghe anchor, set the blades, and as Lois maneuvered into position, tossed it into the water. As it went over the side and disappeared into the muddy water I realized to my horror, it was attached to nothing! In Huachulco we had used the anchor line to tie the stern of the Metz to one of the ramps and somehow it had been pulled out of my swivel block on the anchor chain. A probing oar confirmed that the water was at least five feet deep and, since we had nothing with which to grapple, we had no choice but to abandon it for the time being.
We walked about a quarter of a mile to the beach front and crossroads in the center of the village. The town looks like it could have been a fairly prosperous community at one time. The buildings, mostly delapidated and run down now, were obviously well constructed. A lot of money has been spent on protecting the shoreline with miles of rock breakwater against which the sea pounds mercilessly. It almost seems as if the shoreline was at one time farther out, for the old abandoned hotel building sits so close to the beach that it surely would be washed away if it were not for the rock bulkhead. We'd forgotten to bring money and I had only about seven thousand pesos in my pocket, so we couldn't have lunch, but we had a refresco at a local restaurant, spent the remainder on some fresh vegies, and headed back for the Metz. We met Kate and Dee on the way and Doran stayed to help them load a couple of cases of beer in their ding.
Lois and I went back to the boat, tied our old rusty clam rake to a long pole, and loaded the Metz with it, our super magnet, the Hawaian sling with a hooked spear point, and my dive mask, regulator, and air tank. The water is so muddy that I doubt the visibiliy is six inches but I figured that, as a last resort, with air I could go down and feel my way around the bottom. Lois manuevered the Metz with the oars and I started probing with the magnet. We had a pretty good fix on the location because of the pangas and it wasn't long before I had a tug that felt like a fair sized chunk of metal. After a couple of failures I managed to run the rake down the line to the magnet, slide the tines under whatever it was, and slowly bring it to the surface. My heart sank as the tines had nothing on them except a tangle of wire and fishing line. I pulled it up a little farther to disentangle the rake and what did I see tangled in the fishline but our little anchor! I froze and held everything still until Lois could reach over and grab it in her hot little fist - Wow! The anchor, swivel block, and chain are worth about $50.00, but the real problem is that they can't be purchased down here at any price. The fishermen all use rusty hooks made of re-bar, not a suitable anchor for a rubber boat.
After that, the rest of the day was an anticlimax. We stayed on the boat, read, and watched all the sailboaters scrapping over who would get the limited supply of fuel left over from the truck Regal Lady had come out from Tapachula. Buying diesel here isn't an easy process and there are some pretty uptight people who have been here several days and have still not been successful in getting what fuel they feel they need. I'm sure glad we don't have to go through that kind of trama. We won't need to fuel again for another 2000 miles. When we do, we'll try to do it in a place that's easy.
The ride into Tapachula was interesting even though we had to stand up, bending low to see out the window, all the way. As soon as we left Puerto Madera we entered beautiful agricultural country. In the thirty kilometer ride we saw every crop we've seen anywhere in Mexico, plus several we'd not. There are large fields of corn, maize, and sorgum; mixed orchards of everything from coconuts to bananas to mangos; fields of cotton and fields filled with cotton bales awaiting shipment; and even Pawnee and Stearman cropdusting airplanes. Everything is so green, even here at the end of the dry season, that the water table must be very close to the surface.
In keeping with the agricultural nature of the surrounding countryside, Tapachula reminds me very much of Spokane, Washington. At the outskirts of town are the farm equipment dealers; John Deere, International Harvester, Mercedes Diesel, and others. There are big feed and fertilizer stores and lots of other businesses closely associated with farming. The city itself is very much a Mexican city; wandering, chaotic, hot, dusty, and smelly. In the several hours we were there we never saw another Gringo. The central plaza, or Zocalo, and the surrounding buildings are beautiful, but outside of that the city stretches for miles in every direction with narrow streets and unpainted buildings.
We started out by hunting up my hose for Gennie and some freon for the freezer. The hose was easy - the second or third refaccionaria we checked had it; the freon took the help of a friendly taxi driver to find. Once we had those essentials taken care of, we headed for the Guatemalan Consulate which our taxi driver found with just a little difficulty. The sign on the door said they were open from 8:00 to 16:30 and it was 12:30 but the door was locked and the sound of a socker game was coming from a TV upstairs. After several minutes of ringing the bell and knocking, a young man reluctantly came down the stairs and let us in. He was very nice and immediatley started working on our visas, but left the room to find out the score every time a cheer was heard from upstairs. The Guatemalan visa is just a stamped and signed entry in our Passports. It's good for five years and cost us 5000 pesos each. The consule also sold Doran and me each 50 Quetzales for $20.00 U.S., an exchange rate of 2.5 to 1. Don't know whether that's good or bad but we'll find out if we go into Guatemala.
Our last stop was the public market, a block square operation near the Zocalo. It's a bit similar to that in Acapulco except that we couldn't find a section devoted to produce. All the fruits and vegetables seemed to be vended by little old ladies sitting on the street outside the main building in which were the meats, fish, chicken, and trinket booths. I managed to find, with a little searching, almost everything on Lois' list - at least I found all I could carry.
We got to sit down on the bus on the way back, plus it was a local, stopping almost every quarter mile, so saw more of the country. The big international airport is about half way between Tapachula and Puerto Madero. I don't know how many flights a day they handle but it sure didn't look very busy today. Back at the bridge, we called the ladies on the handheld radio then I walked a block up to the Corona distributor and bought an ice cold sixpack to cool us off while we waited for our pickup. We'd each had two BIG glasses of orange juice in town, but were still dehydrated from sweating in the ninety degree plus heat of the city.
Dinner on Panache with the kids - the last of the Dorado they caught on the way across the Tehuantepec. Really good!
In Tapachula we managed to get separated when some of the group decided that they wanted to stop for an orange juice between bus stations. We, Doran, and Donna kept going and got to the bus depot just as it was ready to leave. No big problem, the run every hour. The ride to Union Juarez was about as pretty a ride as I've ever had anywhere. Almost at the city limits the road crosses a white water river, then starts climbing through beautiful farm and ranch country. Everything is lush and green and although we can't really identify many of the crops they all look healthy. Fine horses and Brahma cattle are all along the roadsides and in pastures. About 20 kilometers out of Tapachula we went through a small town called Tuxtla Chico which had a pretty plaza and a very clean looking open market and which a sign said was at 500 meters, or 1500 feet. Soon after, we decended into a beautiful valley and were surprized to find ourselves at the Guatemalan border. The bus only stopped, let off a couple of people and took on a couple of others, then turned around and climbed back out of the valley to a crossroads where we really started climbing.
We went through a couple of more small villages and I would guess that we were at about 3000 feet when we started to see a new plant in amongst the trees, one with crinkly leaves and tiny green berries along the stems. They seemed to be planted everwhere, on steep hillsides, along the roadside, in peoples yards, almost to the exclusion of other brush. It took a while for us to realize that what we were seeing was coffee, "Mountain grown coffee"! Harvesting the stuff must be a labor intensive effort; no kind of picker but human could navigate the steep hills.
When we finally reached Union Juarez it was, as we'd been told, like a Swiss Village. Perched at over 5,000 feet on a ridge just below the 13,000 foot peak of the Tacana volcano, its streets are so steep that the bus could barely move in low gear. Walking, you have to be careful not to let the downhill momentum build up. It was 12:30 by the time we got there, so we looked for a place to get some lunch and found one immediately, a nice clean looking place with tables outside overlooking the town plaza where orchids bloomed along with roses in the gardens. We had a super good lunch; then, while we were sitting there, the rain started. The first shower was quick, a bit of thunder and lightning, then a short, heavy downpour, then sunshine again. By this time the others had showed up on the next bus; so while they ate lunch we took a walk. There's not really a lot to the town but what there is is sure nice. The people obviously don't see many Gringos, they were very friendly and curious about us. The few stores are stocked with the staples but nothing for the tourist trade which must be nonexistant.
We wandered out to a beautiful cemetary with a view far out toward the sea in the west, then down a well traveled path to a green socker field where a couple of horses grazed. On the way back the proprietor of a small hotel and restaurant asked us in and then proceeded to give us a history of Union Juarez, starting with the Spanish under Queen Isabella. We couldn't understand all he told us but one thing came through that was interesting. He said that the Tacana volcano erupts every thirty-six years and last did so in 1958. It'll be due again in 1994!
He'd just finished his lecture when the rain came again - this time with avengence! Lois and Doran had gone ahead and were safe and dry at the restaurant. Donna and I ducked into the little market and bought a couple of plastic bags which we put over our shoulders, then braved the downpour for the two blocks to join them. The rain kept up 'till bus time and we were treated to some really loud crashes of thunder from nearby strikes. On the way back we were happy to have a conservative driver who used his gears rather than his brakes to navigate the steep hills. The scenery was, if anything, more beautiful, the rain haven fallen far down the mountain and making the many little waterfalls leap with joy.
It was after six before we got back to the boat with Bill towing two dings to get us all in one trip. We were tired but feeling good about the day; then something happened which makes me think there is a fuel jinxs on this place. People on the radio were still fussing about what happened yesterday in the fueling mess and, somehow, Lois and I got into a terrible argument. We weren't even involved! It's amazing how emotions seem to be contagious. A lot of people have bad feelings about Puerto Madero because of that.
10:30 Everything stowed and we're on our way, this time to say goodby to Mexico at least for a while. Panache was leading the way and we had an interesting time getting out of the port. Two things made it a spooky exit: (1) The dredge was right in the middle of the channel churning up the bottom and spewing crap out both sides; and (2) It was almost low tide, but with still an outgoing flow meeting the big Pacific swell, and the rollers were breaking on both sides of the channel almost to the center. Doran did one 360 before screwing up his courage and running past the dredge. We did the same, passing both it and him as I tried to keep good way on in the center of the channel. The bow came down a bit hard a couple of times as we'd climb one of the steep waves and then have it drop us, but it never dug in and we were soon out of the real steep stuff. It would have been a great place to surf - steep waves that never broke!
Once out of the channel things settled down and we turn our noses east toward the Guatemalan border. We were in the lead but trying to pace Panache and soon found ourselves back to 800 RPM in order to keep from running away. Later when the wind picked up a bit they were able to sail at about seven knots, but still couldn't make good more than about five in the direction we wanted to go. The rest of the day and night could best be described as "jiggly". We had at least three different sets of swells coming from three different directions plus a nice wind chop, first from the south and later, after the sun went down, from the north. It wasn't particularly rough; we just seemed to jiggle along in a way that made it difficult to keep our sea legs. Since we were running so slow anyway, I finally dumped the parafoils in the water which made things a bit more comfortable.
13:30 South of 14 degrees, 30 minutes and into Guatemalan waters - the first time the boat's been out of Mexico in a year and three months. You can't tell much difference in the shore line, still low sandy beach backed by green vegetation. Not any shrimpers though, they all stayed north of the border. Lois spent a couple of hours making a Guatemalan flag out of the legs of a pair of my faded jeans and an old sheet. Luckily, it's a simple three band flag, blue-white-blue. GOODBY MEXICO! More?