Bandaras Bay, Chacala and Isla Isabel

After arriving in San Blas (and having a sleep), Boomerang and I went to Chacala, a small Mexico beach town. It’s great here, but the swell rolls into the bay and so a stern anchor is needed to avoid being rolled to death once the wind switches.

The boat next to me (with noone on it) failed to do so and so swung into me in the middle of the night. Lovely.

Beautiful sunsets, though, and some really good cheap food

After a couple of days there, we headed back to La Cruz, via Punta Mita. While there, I was rudely awoken by a thump – sticking my head out I saw a Valient 40 sailboat stuck sideways on my bow! His stern rail kept catching under my bow rail and looked like it was going to rip it right odd, so I ran up to the front of the boat and fended him off – unfortunately, it meant I couldn’t do anything else! Eventually, a dude appeared and said ‘oh one of us dragged’. I politely pointed out to him that I was downwind of him and could he please start his engine and move away from the boat? Sadly, this wasn’t apparently an option as his batteries were too low to start his engine apparently. Which meant his windless wouldn’t work either. I suggested getting some fenders out so I could get away from the bow and move but he’d ‘lost them all in San Blas’

At this point we just sorta hung out for 5 minutes, me holding a multi-ton sailboat off my bow and him just…. chilling out I guess. Eventually, I asked him to let out some more anchor rode, in the hope I could push him off and he’d pass by. This worked – though I had to scamper along the boat, fending him off so his dinghy didn’t wipe out my solar arch. He settled behind me and I got my anchor up and made tracks, well upwind of him.

In the morning, tired and grumpy, I arrived in La Cruz where I picked up Emma. The next day, we scooted off back to Chacala where we spent a number of days, meeting a few boats of other younger cruisers that lead to some evenings drinking, playing music and singing, which was really pleasant. We also went on a trip to a ‘hidden’ beach, where we did some spearfishing, as well on a really nice hike up to the top of an extinct volcano.

We then headed off to Isla Isabel, and had two days of snorkelling fun. I shot a milkfish, which turned out to be reasonably tasty but really bony. Not getting one of these again!

You could also hear whales calling, and the snorkelling was amazing. I keep meaning to put a video together but for the time being here are two short clips.

There were also a bunch of Humpbacks

and on the way back to La Cruz we saw huuuuge pod (several hundred at least) of spinner dolphins

Once back at La Cruz, I dropped off Emma and started thinking about getting ready to head out to French Polynesia!

Matt

2 Comments

  1. So you are going! I was wondering since the vote. Awesome…you will have to up your blog game though 🙂

    I was wondering how the stern anchor worked since you are solo. Do you just hope the boat holds in place, or let out tons of stern rode and then try and have to haul the stern back in?

    • Yeah, I’ve been unbelievably busy since I got back to BBay, finally having time to catch up. I’m also gonna post every few days from sea because well, what else is there to do?!

      Stern anchor basically works the exact same way as stern tying – set the primary, leave it in low reverse, hop in dinghy and row like hell!

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