June 25, Barra and Tenacatita

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Friends in Barra

Today the wind went east of south for the first time this year.

We were a little surprised as it wasn’t in the forecast, but not shocked; there were storms brewing out in the Pacific and those storms could mess up the weather without trying and, after all, the summer winds should be predominantly southerly.

We shifted our anchor closer behind the nearby headland for more protection in case the SE wind came in stronger, which it might in the next few days. We circled like a dog getting ready to lie down, just to check out the surroundings before dropping the anchor in 15 feet.

It looked safe but if a strong easterly comes in we’ll move over to the bay at La Manzanilla. I don’t worry about that eventuality, I even relish it, as we’ve wanted to see Manzanilla for a while. An easterly wind would give us a good excuse.

All of this is taking place in Tenacatita where we arrived two days ago from Barra De Navidad, and we can see ourselves staying here, weather permitting, for a week or two. It’s quiet here; no other boats are anchored here and, other than a few surfers and some hotel guests walking on the beach, we are alone. We’re thinking of setting up the dingy and going ashore ourselves. There is a restaurant here which has a good fish roll with shrimp and cheese inside, Rolla Del Mar it’s called, and cold beer. Although with our new refrigerator our beer is pretty damn cold itself. Same with the cokes; one blew up yesterday so we turned the refer down from seven to four.

We’d been in Barra de Navidad for the previous few weeks. We spent a few days in the marina, but mostly anchored out in the lagoon. We were the only boat in the lagoon. It’s been OK though, it’s really quiet there. We love the birds, the solitude, and the scenery. We have friends on their boats in the marina so we take a water taxi and go in almost every day.

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Ted & Brenda at the pool

The friends in the marina at the Grand Hotel are all from La Cruz, people we know well and like. It has been fun to socialize with Chris and Monica from Sea Glub, Kelly and Deborah from Simpatico, and Ted and Brenda from Firefly. We’ve had a great time with them at various restaurants in Barra and going to the hotel pool and swimming laps with Ted and Brenda. The swimming has helped our bodies recover from the sedentary life at anchor. There are five other boats from La Cruz here for the summer but the crews of all of them were gone somewhere. I won’t be surprised to see more boats in Barra in the future. The summer prices are cheaper and the facilities much better than La Cruz. For us though, the community at La Cruz will keep us going back there.

Yeah, we got a new refrigerator. The old one was acting up for a few weeks but I kept thinking it was a wiring problem or some other thing I could fix. Then, boom! It went down for good.

I was depressed at first but in the end it wasn’t bad; we ordered new parts and started living on bags of ice which, other than not so cold beer, was fine.
It took two weeks for the parts we ordered to make it through Mexican customs and while waiting we refurbished the refrigerator box. The new refrigerator was costly but refurbishment was worth it; the new setup takes less power and has more room for frozen goods.

We’ve had other boat repairs to do, but they have been less expensive. A loose wire on the alternator needed to be refastened. The impellor on the engine finally wore out and we replaced that. There have been a few other repairs we needed to do but not too many.

But then the osprey showed up.

We’ve not seen this bird around here before, but coming back to the boat on Saturday night there he was, perched on our wind instruments. Holy cow! He could break them!
The osprey flew off as we arrived and I saw his huge talons knuckled under his belly as he flew away. That was an omen. Then I noticed the wind instruments: they were broken! That bloody bird and his huge talons had crushed the windvane and there was not nothing left of it. Oh Damn! The wire probe I put up to dissuade frigate birds was apparently no issue for the osprey. He simply pushed it aside.

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Judy winches me up

The whole way to Tenacatita I was thinking of how I was going to fix those instruments, but first I had to get them down and take a close look. Shortly after the anchor was down in Tenacatita Judy ran me up the mast to retrieve what was left of the wind instruments. I found that mostly they were OK but the vane, which provides wind direction, was simply missing. Gone! I looked all over the boat to see if it fell somewhere so I could repair it, but no luck. It was nowhere to be found. The bird must have knocked it off and it landed in the water and sank.

OK, I went to work. I found some aluminum in the lazerette which I could cut with tin-snips, and after making a paper template, I cut out a new wind vane. It looked a little crude but I thought it would work.

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New wind instrument

It did, and now we have wind instruments again.

Such is cruising. Unless you are lucky something will break every day. You just go to work and find a way to fix it, or you live without it. We don’t know what will happen next, but for sure, something will.

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Wings in Barra

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Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Tenacatita, Mexico