Cabo San Lucas to Puerto Vallarta Nov. 10 – 13, 2003

 

It was a short hop from Cabo to Puerto Vallarta across the mouth of the Sea of Cortez.  Winds were light and variable and we ended up motoring about half the time.  This route is a popular cruise ship lane and we were passed by three large cruise ships at night.  In each case we contacted them by VHF once we had them sighted just to make sure that they knew we were there. Banderas Bay is a huge, huge body of water that Puerto Vallarta lies around the east end of – it took us over six hours just to get from the mouth of the bay to the other end where the marinas are.  We arrived at the inner harbour entrance at about 4am and stayed outside until daylight as the chart showed a fairly complicated layout.  A good thing we did because access to the marinas is via a very narrow channel crowded with boats tied up either side.  We spent a few days in PV reprovisioning and then left for Zihuataneo.

 

Puerto Vallarta to Zihuataneo Nov. 15 – Nov 18, 2003

 

We left PV at 1400h, Nov. 15 and sailed west out of the huge bay – we turned the corner outside the bay to head south shortly after sunset.  By midnight we were motoring in winds under five knots.  By 1700h, Nov 16 the wind had picked up enough to raise the spinnaker and sail south at between 3 and 6 knots.  The next day the wind continued to build and we picked up speed.  As we approached our destination the wind shifted around, hitting us on the nose so we were forced to motor a bit.  We made it into Zihuataneo shortly after dark but good charts and the judicious use of radar and sonar enabled us to put our hook down in a sheltered spot. 

 

Zihuataneo turned out to be our favorite Mexican port, a beautiful little town with a large, well-sheltered harbour. The place is by necessity a tourist spot but it manages to maintain it’s fishing village feel.  There is a great little expat place called Rick’s Bar, on a pedestrian-only street, run by a Canadian named Rick (of course), with an open stage every night.  After Rick told me that musicians drink free, I strapped on the gitbox and performed a couple of old blues standards in order to buy drinks for all my friends .

 

A day trip via local bus to Ixtapa, the next town to the north, gave us the skinny: it has several miles of beachfront hotels, shopping plazas, Planet Hollywood, dolphin petting zoos, and the like.  The one saving grace might be the large marina with services but we had been warned about the large breaking surf at the harbour entrance and didn’t feel the need to go in and tie up to a dock.

 

Zihuataneo to Acapulco Nov. 22-23, 2003

 

After leaving Z-town, we had a short 24 hour run SE to Acapulco, our final Mexican port, downwind the entire way.  The crew learned a little about sailing dead downwind (DDW) with the asymmetric spinnaker and main wing on wing.  It was pretty tricky steering to keep them both full since we could not put a spinnaker pole on the clew of the aso.  We tried it, but it bucked and jumped around so much that we had to take it off.  Wheatstrong’s lovely green, gold and white asymmetric spinnaker is a huge sail of over 1400 square feet – almost 50% more sail area than the main and jib combined.  We call it the big green monster because  if you are not careful it will scare the life out of you.  It has a nasty tendency to cause the boat to round up if you are not paying attention to the helm.  That gets everyone’s attention. The Hydrovane was unable to reliably steer the boat with the spinnaker up so we had to hand-steer most of the time.

 

We arrived at the mouth of the Acapulco harbour in late afternoon and sailed over to the south where the guidebook said we could anchor.  However, conditions looked rough there so went back across to the other side of the harbour (about five miles away). In keeping with our tradition of nighttime arrival, we made it to the anchorage shortly after dark and put the hook down in about 50 feet of water between the local yacht club and the cruise ship terminal.

 

In Acapulco we spent the first couple of days on the hook near the cruise ship terminal then moved to the Club de Yates.  Here I did some boat maintenance and replaced all the batteries with six new lead acid truck batteries – each one cost about US$150.  Mary and Stephanie went to the local Costco to provision and took in the view on the way back. We also picked up two sets of diving gear from Swiss Divers Association at a cost considerably higher than we would have paid in the US.