Bahia Chamela

We have finally left La Cruz and Banderas Bay, our home for the last 3 and half weeks.  We had a great stay and really liked La Cruz and the surrounding area.  Our stay there, however, was much longer than we wanted due to a few boat issues that needed to be addressed.

The worst of the boat issues is that our inverter/charger decided that it was time to die.  Nothing we did would bring it back to life.  We had only our solar panels and the diesel engine to keep our batteries charged.  The solar panels did a pretty good job, but left us short by about 30 amps each day.  With a 400 amps battery bank you can only go so far before you have to fire up the engine to recharge.  We had to do something quick to make the repair.

In the end we ordered up a replacement inverter/charger from Amazon, had it shipped to our condo in Seattle and Paul cashed in some frequent flyer miles to fly home to retrieve it.  The trip was highly successful on many levels.  Not only was he able to pick up the inverter/charger, but he was able to buy a replacement water pump for our air conditioning unit that had failed a few weeks back, he bought a Honda generator to help us stay up on our battery charging while at anchor, picked up a laundry list of other miscellaneous parts and things and was able to renew his tourist visa upon re-entering Mexico.  All is good and the boat electrical system is back and performing as it should.

While Paul was gone, Janet made a quick trip into Sayulita one day, went to the Sunday market and volunteered to crew on sv Pied a Mer, a 37’ catamaran from the Portland area for a sailing regatta out on the bay.  She had a great time while he was gone, but was glad to have him back with all the goodies, especially the chocolate from Theo’s Chocolate in Seattle.

All of that behind us, it was time to move on.  We headed out of Banderas Bay at about 4 PM in the afternoon for Chemela, about 90 miles or so south.  The plan was for an overnight passage, arriving at around noon the next day.  Even though winds were light as we headed out of the marina in La Cruz, by the time we were just a few miles off, the winds cranked up to about 23 knots.  We had sails up and were making a good 6.5 knots on a close reach.  To reduce the heal of the boat we reduced sails by putting in the first reef.  We rounded Cabo Corrientes around midnight with winds now only in the low teens.  The reef came out and we sailed for a few more hours until the wind dropped off to less than 5 knots.  At that point we fired up the motor and made our way into Chamela.

We stayed two nights in Chamela.  Swimming off the boat was the highlight.  The water here along the Costalegre (Happy Coast) is a consistent 80 degrees.  Paul used the opportunity to do a little bottom cleaning.  It had been about a month since it was last done and there was a fair amount of growth starting to pop up here and there.

The weather was so nice we stayed out in the cockpit one night and had movie night.  We pulled up a couple of episodes of Dexter and watched them outside.  It felt like going to a drive in.  The moon was up and nearly full.  Dolphins were swimming around the boat, occasionally snorting and blowing.  It was a great evening.

On day two, our friends John and Sue on sv Wizard arrived and motored over for a visit.  We hooked a ride with them to shore along with Don from sv Distraction who we stopped along the way to say hi and he jumped into the dinghy with us.  Not much to town, but we did have a fabulous lunch at Manuelitas, a small beach side palapa restaurant.  A full plate of garlic shrimp and rice each for about $200 pesos ($15 USD).  On a short walk into town we found an abarrote (small grocery store) and bought beer and eggs to restock the cupboards.

The Mexican Navy was out and about during our stay and at one point came motoring by as we were swimming next to the boat.  They are a pretty ominous sight with their big gray ship, guns and such.  Our wave to say hello was greeted with a friendly wave back.

All in all, we had a very relaxing time while in Chamela.

Before arriving in Chamela, we were greeted with an
amazing sun rise, one of the cool things about
night passages.

We also had some great sun sets while at anchor in
Chamela.