Getting Jack home

Karin wrote:

We Love Jack, and he is an awesome little guy, but it has been a real pain trying to figure out how to get home with him.  We can't fly him into Phoenix because it is too hot.  So we looked into renting a car. Last week we were told it would cost $2500 to drive a car from Tapachula to Nogales.  He can't ride on the bus, so we thought about one of us flying home and getting the Toyota and driving back to the boat (which is on the Mexico Guatamala border) and THEN driving all of us back home......crap!  So we looked at options of just staying here in the Tapachula area for the summer, and Joe and I taking turns flying home.  We really love it here and would love to rent a little place in the mountains, but we need to do some work on the house in Scottsdale to get it ready to put up for sale, see my Mom, and replenish the sailing kitty.

 Leave it to a dog to mess with the kitty!

Today Joe tried an online rental car booking site and got a quote of just over $1000. usd ( $900. of it is a drop off fee). We have to drop the car in Hermosillo, Sonora about 4 hours from Tucson. That works for us, plenty of friends could pick us up from there!
Now we have a departure date of May 6th so preparations for leaving the boat are underway.  We hope to come back July or August and continue exploring this area and hopefully rent that little cabin in the Mountains!

p.s.

I do need to give a special thanks to Mark for being a great crew member! He was willing to help out with anything, and was always up for having fun!

4/24/2014; Marina Chiapas and beyond

 Once we had settled in to the marina, it was time to explore the area. The local taxis are very reasonable; 14 pesos each to get to Puerto Madero., and 20 pesos on the "collectivo" to get to Tapachula. Puerto Madero is a small town, notable for its rickshaw style taxis, (peddle and powered). We walked up to the beach, and saw a small seafood restaurant,; time for lunch! When we walked in, we were surprised to see a pool for the children to play in, right in the middle of the restaurant.

After enjoying a great ceviche, and fish fillet, we were entertained by watching the iguanas sunning themselves on the rocks.

A few minutes later, an old woman selling mango's came up to our table, Karin bought a few, but the woman insisted  that she get a few more.  We were obliged to help her out; we've seen so many people, selling anything, trying to get by. They carry heavy loads, all day, in the sun.. to maybe sell  some fruit, or shoes, or jewelry,  or carvings. I have to admire their stamina, and patience.

Next, we decided to rent a car and see some of the surrounding area. The fact that Easter weekend was approaching was evident by the crowds in the marina restaurant, and on the road to the beach. Ruta de Cafe sounded interesting, a drive up into the mountains = cool air!! It has been hot and humid, thankfully our A/C is working great, but it's time to get off the boat for a while.

As we wound our way up into the mountains, the road got smaller, and eventually deteriorated to a steep rocky  trail. The little Hundai made it. At one point the road was so bad, we seriously considered giving up and turning around but Mark said "Carry On!" Glad we took his advice. When we arrived at Finca Hamburgo, we were amazed to find a beautiful restaurant, and 70 degree temperatures, overlooking cloud forests and coffee fields.

Bertha, the hostess/manager was so nice. There are three cabanas, which were full, and we were thinking about staying the night, because none of us were looking forward to the bone jarring ride back down the mountain. Berta being a good business woman, said we could rent one of the apartments in the coffee mill for $80.00. Two bedrooms, one bath and a kitchen. Karin and Mark went to check it out, while I stayed with Jack. They came back smiling! We'll take it. What a relief... we can relax, hike around, and come back for dinner.

A short walk up the hill, led us into the workers village. There seemed to be a celebration going on. In this part of Mexico, the Easter festivities are not as Catholic as you would think. We were  confused about the costumes, men dressed as women,  devils, and ghouls. Supposedly, it's more about Judas, than Jesus, I don't know, but everybody was having fun.

We still had the car for another day, so after we left Hamburgo, we got back to the boat, and planned to go to the volcano the next morning. Another drive through some small towns, but this road got steeper  and steeper, until the little Hundai could go no farther. We stopped in Union Juarez to see more of the Judas celebration, then made our way down the mountain to for some lunch.

Now, it's time to get back to sorting out stuff on the boat, and making a plan for the haul out.

As usual, we've found ourselves with too many options......should we stay here for the summer?, should we go home?, should we bring the car down? I think things will work themselves out, it's just very hard to make plans.... things change, new situations come up....we'll figure something out!

4/19/2014: Crossing the Tehuantepec

Going back to the crossing... our friend Mark arrived on Friday morning, the weather window was open; so we agreed on a midnight departue. After stowing the dinghy and securing the deck, we headed into the night.
There was no wind to speak of, so we motored through the darkness, using our AIS and radar.
The next day, Mark took the helm all day, allowing us some needed rest. We enjoyed sailing at 4- 5 knots on our course!

I put out a line, and soon hooked a Bonita. We let him go, and caught another one 5 minutes later. We brought in the line... tired of injuring fish lips for no good reason. That evening the wind backed off, so we motor sailed through the night on 3 to 4 hour watches.

Shortly after sunrise, I was on watch, and noticed a difference in the water about a mile or two ahead.

Very quickly, the wind came up to about 30 or 35 knots ( a guess), with line of building chop as far as I could see! All I could think of was that an unexpected Tehauntepecker was brewing; we were about 8 miles offshore, so I turned into the wind, and our speed dropped to about 2 knots. I woke Karin up, and  was seriously concerned about our situation. Fortunately, I think it was a local condition of cool night air descending from the mountains, and it quickly abated. Whew! That was exciting!

The rest of the crossing was uneventful, except on night watch, we passed an unlit panga, miles offshore, and by the time I saw him, had we been a quarter mile north, we would have hit him. Oh well, we didn't!

We were making good time, and had to slow down to arrive in daylight, so we heaved to for a couple hours and had lunch. Shortly after sunrise, we were on our approach into Chiapas.

We docked in the marina. and were soon boarded by the Navy, and Harbormaster;  they were very friendly, courteous, and enjoyed telling us about the Miss Pacifico bikini contest, including wet t-shirts! We all had a good laugh. Once we had cleared  the paperwork, we headed to the palapa bar for breakfast and our landing cocktail!

That's it! This sailing season is done.... we'll spend the week exploring Tapachula and Puerto Madero until Mark leaves on Monday, then we'll figure out our plan for the summer. We've got more photo's and stories from this week.. so ... we'll update soon.

4/15/2014; Marina Chiapas

Just a quick update; we made it across the Tehuantepec! So far, we've traveled 3044 nm since November.
I've still got to upload some photo's, and then I'll post about our latest crossing.

4/8/2014: Bahia's Huatulco

Last Friday morning; a panga comes up to our boat and starts knocking on the hull at about 6:30am! "The Port Captain said you must move! Cruiseship coming now!"  O.k....... try to process information.......Karin, get up and start the motor, we have to move now! We managed to get everything in order quickly and haul the anchor. We moved to another part of the bay, but the man in the panga said we were still to close to the channel. O.k., one more try, except, the anchor was snagged on a large piece of concrete with ropes around it. The windlass struggled, but I was able to see the problem. Now, we could only let out as much chain as possible to back off of the channel. I let out about 240' of our 300' of chain, and felt like we were far enough away with out backing us onto the rocks.

The ship arrived a bit later with a lot of excitement! Even Jack had to check it out.

So, after the ship was settled, we decided to head up the coast to another bay, but first I had to get in the water to deal with the anchor. I pulled it up with the windlass, and luckily, I was able to reach down with a knife and cut the rope. We're free! The wind came up, so we raised the mainsail and took off for Bahia Jicaral.

Our private little bay! We were the only boat, except for one other sailboat that stopped overnight.

There were snorkel tours that came by everyday for a couple hours, but when they left, we were alone.

We brought  our beach umbrella and settled in for a great afternoon of snorkeling, and running Jack on the beach. I was amazed when Karin was offshore snorkeling, and Jack took off swimming toward Karin. He scared the hell out of her when she felt him climb onto her shoulders, she wasn't expecting it at all!

Around the corner from us  was Bahia San Augustin, we met a nice young man named Jasil, who told us he worked at one of the Palapa's on the beach, and offered us a panga ride to check it out. He was very helpful, and took care of our trash ( a constant challenge!) for us. We had the famous Camerone 4 x 4. 4 each of  4 differently prepared shrimp. It was pretty good, the main thing was helping out Jasil. He went out of his way looking for customers, and took good care of us. The next day he came by with his son Dillon. Karin had given him some lollipops the day before, then we gave him some toy airplanes and a notebook and crayons. We gave Jasil some fishing stuff to help out. So far, we've been fortunate to have met so many nice people, I only hope that we've left a good impression on them too.

Back in Santa Cruz to provision, get fuel, and watch the weather. So far, Saturday looks pretty good....we'll see. 

4/3/2014: Bahia Santa Cruz

We anchored here in Bahia Santa Cruz yesterday, to have the bottom cleaned, and get out of the marina.($)

We enjoyed our marina week. Watching movies with the A/C on was a nice treat; while we were on shore power, why not? The showers were nothing special, but we really appreciated them. We did some provisioning, got haircuts, had some sushi at  the Konichiwa  sushi bar, across from the marina, it was very good, and reasonably priced.

I did manage to go surfing at La Bocana, Copalita. Karin and Jack stayed on the beach,she enjoyed walking, and watching Jack chase crabs.

I decided to go back the next morning, I caught some nice waves, but on one of them, I felt a "pop" in my left knee......uh oh. I went to a local doctor for an exam, he was nice, spoke english, and calmly explained that I had torn both meniscus. Oh well, he gave me a prescription for some anti-inflammatories, and a referral for an MRI, all for $40.00. So, I'll make it to Chiapas, just not too much activity on the way.

The rest of the week we spent some time with other cruisers in the marina, that were on their way to the El Salvador Rally. 

We had already made the decision that we would leave at high tide, because the channel was very narrow, and not too deep. High tide was at 5, and we were supposed to meet  Enrique at 4, so we left at 3, in some very gusty conditions. Planning our exit, and moving to the upwind side of our double slip, and asking for help on the docklines, made our departure uneventful. Yeah!!!

Santa Cruz is pretty nice, we found a decent anchorage, and today, we took the dinghy to town.

A nice shady square to rest and listen to the birds squawking in the trees.

Jack gets attention where ever we go, he sits calmly,

even when we take stupid pictures of him.

The next week, we'll spend anchoring in some of the many bays  here in Huatulco.

Next Fri. our friend Mark will arrive, and the we'll start watching the weather for the Tehuantopec.