We spent the night anchored in Tenacatita and then the next day, after doing the jungle ride, in a panga because the outboard wouldn’t start, we upped anchor and headed down the coast 15 miles to Barra de Navidad.
I remembered where the channel through the lagoon was from my time here last year, so we found a spot in the anchorage with no problems. Only 12 boats were there before me. It gets crowded with 45 not being unusual during the season, and somebody mentioned the record is around 70 boats at one time. Bottom is mud, poor holding. There are a lot of problems with boats dragging anchor when the wind kicks up. The wind comes right into the lagoon from the ocean, straight down the channel.
We had a gas hanging out in Barra. It is a neat little funky town, nothing pretentious and a lot of eateries and bars and hangouts and street vendors and street markets and flea markets. I think a lot of Mexican families come here to hang out when they are on vacation. The Grand Bay Hotel is on the south side of the inlet to the lagoon. It is really a pretty grand place, as is its Marina, which is new and well up to US standards.
On the 8th Spike and Carol took the bus back to Puerto Vallarta to catch their plane home. The bus is a nice comfy bus, maybe once it would have been called a luxury bus, and is cheap and runs on time.
The practice when anchored in the lagoon is to either dingy over to town or to VHF hail one of the many, and cheap, water taxi pangas, which run frequently and maybe all night. It is so easy to catch a taxi to town, hang out, and cruise home pleasantly stuffed and groggy. And lots of fun to be zooming along at high speed through all the boats and harbor traffic.
We took a water taxi into town one day and walked to the Port Captain’s office to check in. It was easy, took only a few minutes, and if memory serves it was free. Nothing tricky in Spanish, they did the paperwork. Ditto on the check out. Vilma later explained to me that it was impossible for her to have checked me out from Paradise Village, that the yacht Captain has to sign papers personally. That may only be true in PV, or may be true everywhere. However, the Barra Port Captain didn’t even raise an eyebrow about my lack of paperwork from PV.
In the morning the French Baker can be heard on the VHF, letting you know his location and when he will get to your area in his panga, and asking for your order for that morning and for special orders for the next morning. He is a great baker in the true French style, using quality ingredients including a lot of butter. Amazing how cheap his stuff is, too. Bread, pastry and pies. Yummmmm. He pulls up in his panga and displays his wares, daring you to buy only one or two things.....
The lagoon is one of the main anchorages on the Gold Coast of Mexico. It is very shallow and tricky, and it is at least a weekly occurrence that somebody goes aground until the tide changes. Since the bottom is mud, there is usually no damage to the boat if you just relax and wait for the tide. Don’t go aground at high tide, though. That said, a friend of mine got stuck in the lagoon close to what is called Dog Island (because of all the dogs that live on it) and asked a big panga to tie onto the bow of his old Formosa 56 (54 or 58?) and spin him around 180 degrees. His boat spun all right, but his rudder didn’t spin as fast as the boat. He bent his rudder controls and thereafter couldn’t really steer properly. He could turn to port or maybe make a degree or two to starboard. A bunch of fellow sailors showed up with tools and managed to straighten out things enough so that he was able to limp to Mazatlan for a haul out and repairs.
As a note, I was really amazed at how soft the shaft coming up from the top of rudder was. Really soft metal that, under the force of the dragging, had developed a big twist. Also, the emergency tiller's connection to the rudder post was so incredibly lame, dangerous even, but was probably the state of the art in the mid-1980s for Chinese made boats. I don't think it would have worked out in a big storm at sea, either.
No comments:
Post a Comment