May 29, 2020-Sometime After Midnight

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Wings in Boca de Tomatlan

Sometime after midnight the wind came down the mountain and breathed softly on the bay where Wings lay anchored.

The boat turned to face the breeze and swung into deeper water.

That set off the alarm.

I woke and rolled off the starboard settee where I had been sleeping, fully clothed, ready for just such a moment and climbed the ladder to the cockpit to see what the commotion was all about. This was the fifth time that night that one of the alarms woke me. Usually they had been the shallow water alarm, less than 60 feet, meaning we could be getting closer to shore. This time as I climbed up the ladder I noticed the depth: 97.5 feet. Good, we’re in safe water.

Then I smelled the dirt in the air and I knew the downflow from the mountain had reached us and I could relax. For the rest of the night that downflow would keep our bow pointed into the valley and our stern out to sea and over deep water. It would also align our length with the sweep of the swells, and reduce the rolling. We’d sleep better.

I undressed and got into my bunk.

But I left the alarms activated, just in case.

All of this because we’re anchored on the edge of a deep underwater canyon, in a place called Boca de Tomatlan (the mouth of the Tomatlan River). The anchor is placed on the only spot in the Boca where we could place it, in 70’ of water right near the shore on the west side, a spot about 25ft square. The rest of the Boca had depths of 100-200ft or, if shallower, were within inches of the rocky shoreline. Even the 70’ spot was close to the shore. We could only put out 2:1 scope on our anchor chain because we were within about 100 ft of the rocks and with more chain the boat could possibly swing into the shore and touch.

But we’d been looking at Boca de Tomatlan from the road above as we passed by for years and always thought it looked enticing so this year we decided to give anchoring here a try.

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Boca de Tomatlan


Now, since we made it through the night without having to bail out and leave, possibly we can stay for a few more days.

Boca de Tomatlan really is lovely and it reminds me so much of the small villages at the end of so many roads on Vancouver Island or on the Canadian mainland. The terrain is similar, high hills and a small village at the foot of them with a wharf around which most of the action centers. You see, for commerce or travel out along the south shore of Banderas Bay, Boca de Tomatlan is the end of the road. From here on you have to take a boat. So all day pangas come and go with people and goods. Oh, and yes, there is more to the village. There is a bus stop up on the highway, and some palapa restaurants on the beach and some stores, and perhaps more to be discovered.

We’ll put the dingy together today and go ashore, and report more after that.

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Judy at the town wharf

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Boca Lagoon

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Judy in the companionway

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Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Boca de Tomatlan


Anchoring in BocaTomatlan (the details)

There is one big challenge to anchoring in Boca Tomatlan: it is impossibly deep here.

For years I was interested on this beautiful and quaint inlet but all the information I could find told me, “No Way, too deep!”
But this year I got some Navionics charts which showed a lot more detail including soundings for the whole bay. But I saw some areas along the west shore where the contour lines indicated a high spot or two in the bottom. As we arrived and cruised the shoreline the lowest number we saw was seventy feet? Could we manage that? Well yes, we had plenty of chain, but with only 120’ from the rocky shore to the spot we wouldn’t be able to use normal 3-1 or 5-1 scope. But if 2-1 would hold maybe it would be OK.

It took a few tries to find that 70’ spot again, it’s not very big, but eventually we got right over it, backing down slightly, and lowered the anchor. We put out 150’ and pulled on it, but not much. With 2:1 scope it wouldn’t hold very much, but it seemed to stop us. We pulled a little more. No movement.

OK, we’ll try this, we thought.

To solve worries about swinging into the shoreline or dragging we set three alarms on our instrument system:
1. We set a shallow water alarm for 65’ to alert us if we swing towards the shore.
2. We also set a deep water alarm, for 100’ to alert us if we drag of into the middle of the bay or out of it.
3. Finally we set an anchor watch for 300’, meaning that if we moved 300’ in any direction that alarm would go off. This third alarm was rather useless since 300’ was quite a long ways to go before sounding an alarm, but that’s the best our Lowrance can do.

Now we’ve been here for 5 days. We’ve had a few (several) alarms which woke us during the night, mostly because swinging towards the shore, but we’ve never gotten too close or dragged. I have changed the settings to reduce false alarms. I still set the alarm but it only goes off occasionally.

Where is the spot?

So here is where we found the 70’ patch to anchor in:
Lon 20 30.805
Lat 105 19.069

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Boca de Tomatlan Chart

Blasting out of La Cruz

There was a strong thermal which had resulted in over 22 knots of true wind on the day we left La Cruz to come over to this side of Banderas Bay.

As soon as we got out of the marina and hoisted the mainsail we were subjected to that breeze. I decided to put off setting a jib. We didn’t need it.

Judy was on the helm and I gave her a rough heading to follow and left her to it and went below to do a more careful navigation, finish the log book entries (for fueling, water top up, and departure), and to tidy up since the fenders, lines, and other dockside detritus were still scattered around. This is actually a typical approach for us, and admittedly it is due to my impatience to get going. I rarely want to hang around at the dock or inside the marina until everything is shipshape and put away. “Never a moment to lose, let’s get going”.

Because of that we always have these tidying up details to complete at the beginning of a passage or trip. Judy would rather steer than go below when the boat is jumping around so she steers and I go below.

So, while I was below decks Judy was blowing through the crowded anchorage at high speed on a close reach and dealing with all that wind and some good sized waves and a handful on the tiller at times. She is good but I am sure it was a little tense for her. Wings is a powerful boat and in 22 knots it does power up pretty quickly. I stuck my head up when she called and helped grind in the main and I noticed we showed a boat speed of over 7kts, not bad for just a mainsail.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

“Yeah, just get your stuff finished please” she answered.

I did finish up, and while doing so I heard quite a few good sized waves slap on deck as Wings sliced the tops off of the waves kicked up by the wind and the long fetch.

When I went on deck to relieve her I took the windvane blade and set it. From then on the sailing was easier.

Judy was ready for a nap.

May 17, 2020-Cruising Closer to Home

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Judy Sailing

The need to get moving and get to the next place is an itch which has to be scratched.

It doesn’t matter how nice it is where you already are, you still wonder about the next place.

It doesn’t matter how many pictures you’ve seen or how many guide book descriptions you’ve read, you never know what that next place will really be like until you see it for yourself.

And when you have been wondering about that next place for so long that you just have to get going, it has already become an itch.

So you scratch that itch and you get going and when you are finally on the way and the destination draws near there is an excitement and a thrill that you’re finally going to see it.

That excitement and thrill becomes addictive, and even if some of the places don’t turn out to be all that special; they are still new and there is a sense of wonderment at actually being there.

We’ve had that addiction for many years. It was one of the drivers that kept us going all the way around the world.

In fact, we were already hooked back in the 90’s when every year we went on a cruise into Canada and each year we ventured farther to see another new place.

Finally we realized that going 200 miles north into Canada and back in a three week vacation just to get to some place we haven’t seen before was getting a little extreme.

That was when we decided to try a new approach.

We thought, “When there is nowhere else to go, why not go closer to home?”

We realized that for years we had been travelling on our way to those famous distant paradises without stopping at some interesting and nice places nearby.

When we started to cruise closer to home we found many of those little spots that we had been passing for years. Places like Bowman Bay, Mystery Bay and over in Canada, Sooke Harbor, Beecher Bay, and Port Renfrew (a destination all by itself). Of course there were places in the San Juans, the Gulf Islands and even in Puget Sound we visited that we’d never before seen. They were lovely, interesting, and close.

And they were best enjoyed when we stayed longer than just overnight.

Now we are living in La Cruz, Mexico, and we’ve been to all the great places up north in the Sea of Cortez or down south past Barra. They are wonderful places to visit and for sure we’ll go back to Tenacatita and Loreto and other favorites in the years ahead.

But what about going closer to home?

This year we decided to stick closer to La Cruz. Partially it was Covid-19 that influenced our decision, but we also wondered what was nearby that we’ve been missing. So we took a look.

We’ve been out here now for six weeks exploring within 60 miles of La Cruz finding neat anchorages and we still have not been to all of them.

We spent weeks in Punta Mita, then finally we set sail northward.

We visited the Marias islands and found them stunningly beautiful and wild (and protected, we got kicked out) and we look forward to seeing new anchorages there when they are opened to visitors. We stayed for weeks at Matanchen Bay and that was peaceful and beautiful and we took a dingy trip into San Blas for shopping. In Matanchen we had a long running battle with some little birds who were insistent that they were going to build a nest in our boom. (This also happened a couple of years ago in Santiago Bay.) We grew to like these little birds who always tweeted (really tweeted, with their beaks)their daily arrival for nest building, and they in turn became comfortable with our presence and would fly in and out of the boom within inches of our heads as we sat in our chairs in the cockpit. They only gave up on home building when Wings sailed away.

Nest Building

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Going Shopping in San Blas


Next we went to Chacala, where we’ve stopped on previous trips but we never stayed long and we never went ashore there. This time we stayed for several days and we took the dingy in and walked all over town. It was quiet.

Morning in Chacala

Two other boats, Summer and Kognita, were in Chacala and we anchored near them. The view from the beach was of three similar boats, all performance cruisers with fin keels and Monitor windvanes on their transom, anchored bow to the waves with stern anchors set. That was an interesting coincidence.

Chacala was beautiful and quiet, and we enjoyed the sounds of birds ashore each morning, though thankful that none tried to move in.

The crews of Summer and Kognita were surfers and each day they dingy’d up the coast to a point break at La Caleta where the waves were big.

John and Jenna

One day we took our dingy there and got some photos. It was a good thing that I have a long lens on the Nikon because Judy would not let me get close to the waves.

The season has a lot to do with our ability to do this cruise. In April and May the northerlies have stopped and on this coast we have only light SW winds and daily light thermals. This makes some north facing bays into good anchoring spots. Our stays in these places have been times of relaxing and enjoying the scenery. We haven’t been on the move every day and it’s been nice.

The afternoon thermals though have given us some great sailing. We’ve used very little fuel going from one place to the next and the ocean has always been blue and calm.

After Chacala we spent a few days at Las Ayalas in Jaltembre Bay, the first time we were ever there and we plan to go back. Now we are again in Punta Mita. Tomorrow we’ll go back to La Cruz for supplies, but in a few days after that we’ll head out again for some more “closer to home” exploring.

Sunset in Chacala

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Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Punta Mita

April 26, 2020-Well, That was Fast

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Buenos días Capitán, We are the Mexican Navy

We’d planned to spend a month or more away from civilization, away from people and boats; away from the Internet.

We went to The Marias Islands, hoping the authorities would let us stay, or just leave us alone. For five days that plan worked. The first four days we were undisturbed where we anchored in South Cleofas Bay. It was beautiful but wild. We grew tired of the huge Pacific swells which hammered the island and on day four we moved to Cleofas Hook on the east side of Maria Cleofas Island.

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Time to Relax

That anchorage was much more peaceful and equally beautiful, but just one day after we anchored there the Mexican Navy came and informed us that we’d have to leave; it was a protected environmental zone, no one was permitted within 12 miles.

So we weighed anchor and left.

Ten hours later, after a nice spinnaker run directly to the East, we reached Mantanchen Bay and anchored there.

And connected to the Internet.

So that’s where we are now slowly working through our supplies and thinking about when and to where we’ll move again.

Click here To see more images from Cleofas Hook.

To read about our adventure in the Marias, click here and to see the photos, here.

Fred & Judy, SV Wings, Mantanchen Bay

April 26, 2020-Wild Cleofas

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Raising Cleofas

At sun-up we raised the island, tall and silent, and shrouded in clouds. “That could be Tahiti.” But, of course, it wasn’t. The old sailor and his wife were sailing northward in the Sea of Cortez not westward across the Pacific.

Each year as the “puddle jumpers” set off across the Pacific bound for Tahiti and the South Seas I always felt wistful seeing them depart; but I am always torn, not wanting to be left out yet not wanting to cross the ocean again.

This year that migration to Tahiti didn’t happen. The plague, that virus, struck. The South Sea Islands closed their doors; not allowing boats to come. Maybe some early departees got away before the closure, but most puddle jumpers were stymied, couldn’t go.

So the puddle jumpers, many of them, headed north into the Sea Cortez to various marinas where they could have their boats hauled and cheaply stored while they headed home to wait out the virus and wait for another season. However, the marinas and storage yards filled up and they also became closed. The cruisers piled up in the anchorages around La Paz and Loreto.

Some wandered aimlessly.

Judy and I weren’t puddle jumpers but as we usually cruise somewhere each spring, this year we’d planned a trip north ourselves. But instead we idled for weeks close to our home marina where we would be allowed to return if we so desired. The talk of port closures and crowded anchorages up north worried us.

However, a magic island beckoned, one that wasn’t too far north and wouldn’t be crowded.

The island was Cleofas, in the Marias group, which for years had been a federal prison and forbidden to all visitors. Recently the prison closed and the Marias had become a national park. Not officially open but nevertheless some cruisers had anchored there last year. The authorities had been lax and might be again we reasoned, or they might not.

The old sailor and his wife were quiet about their plans, slipped out in the middle of the night and set sail for Cleofas to time their arrival for mid-morning when the sun was high and the uncharted hazards would be the most visible, because Cleofas was basically uncharted.

And in the morning they sighted Cleofas and they soon discovered however that Cleofas was wild. Pacific swells rolled towards it and turned into crashing waves which pounded the island. The bay on the south side which offered shelter from a north wind was open to the south and there was a southwest swell which came in unimpeded.

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Cleofas South

As we cautiously entered the bay on the south of Cleofas, feeling our way, looking for a calm spot, I watched the maelstrom on either side wondering how long we’d be there if we were wrecked by one of those waves. How long would it take for someone to find us? We had come there un-announced and no one knew we had come to Cleofas.

I kept these thoughts to myself.

At first we went deep into the bay to anchor for protection from any winds which might arise, but the beach was a lee shore and the swells were breaking just behind our stern. The holding was not good either. It was rocky and the anchor rumbled ominously.

The old sailor was uneasy, and his mate more so.

I said, “Well, what do you want to do? Stay or go, and if we go, where? Or should we just shift anchor a little and move away from the beach?”

“You decide.”

So they shifted, twice; closer to the waves outside but farther from the beach. Finally it looked OK. Then a south wind came up, 12 knots, then 15. In their position they were exposed to this wind. That was a new worry: what if the wind continued to rise and the whole bay became a lee shore?

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Contours

Cleofas was beautiful alright, but its wild beauty was not comforting.

But things got better. The wind eased off. The bay got calmer; the swells didn’t look so threatening. We could relax and enjoy the remote beauty. We made cocktails.

For two days it was OK.

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Huge Swells Comings

On the third day the swell was up, way up. Huge mountainous rollers came into the reefs just outside of the anchorage, and crashed in a fury against the rocks on either side of the bay. The bay itself became turbulent and the long swells lifted the boat as they rolled towards the beach and they spent their rage pounding the island. The bay was a virtual washing machine.

When this happened it was too late in the day to leave unless we wanted to spend a night at sea waiting for daylight, which we didn’t. We decided to stay the night in the bay. But in the morning, after a restless and uncomfortable night with the boat constantly rocking and pitching, we’d had enough of wild Cleofas. We quickly got underway.

Once out of that bay things got a lot calmer. There was no wind and once away from the island, no big waves.

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Motoring North

We motored northward again, hoping the next place would be better.

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Fred & Judy, Isla Cleofas, Mexico