March 1, 2010

RAIN, TSUNAMI AND BEES


It has been an interesting season here in Mainland Mexico. After arriving in Barra de Navidad (one of our all time favorite destinations), we were surprised by gale force winds and torrential rain. We were not prepared for rain and at first thought we would maybe get a sprinkling. However, as the rain poured with a force, we scrambled to get things out of the cockpit and into the safety of the boat. We have always been very relaxed about leaving books, pillows, hats etc in our little yard (cockpit). The dodger and bimini usually give us enough protection from the dampness, but, certainly not in this amount of rain and wind. I have never seen anything like this storm. The worst of it hit our area at about 0100. Terry stayed awake to be on anchor watch (we were anchored in the Lagoon in Barra de Navidad). I did go to sleep earlier in the night but was wide awake for the winds that had the power to heel our boat and looked out to see a boat that was dragging anchor very near our boat. In as much as I was happy to be anchored in a lagoon and not out at sea, the concern at anchor is being near other boats and being at the mercy of their ground tackle and ability to have anchored securely with chain and anchor. It was raining so hard, it was difficult to see the boats next to us. Some boats had mast lights and others had solar lights arranged on different parts of their boats. Besides the rain, we also had a thunder and lightening show! There were some good things about the rain. The boat got a good wash down and I was thrilled to be collecting buckets of fresh water. I set up one bucket on each side of the dodger and was able to fill the buckets in a matter of minutes. The water filled three sun showers and I felt that I had accomplished something. It was such a strange feeling to close up the boat. In all of our time in Mexico, we have never needed to close all ports and hatches. We experienced three episodes of this rain during the month of February.

We did enjoy some sunny, partial cloudy days in Barra de Navidad before we moved on to the anchorage of Tenacatita. It finally felt that we were enjoying Mexico waters the way that we had remembered and loved when we were awoken by a guy in a dinghy yelling “TENACITY, TENACITY”, there is a Tsunami warning. We turned on the Sirius radio to hear of the earthquake in Chile and the warnings for the Pacific Ocean. Channel 22 VHF radio (our way of communicating with local cruisers) was busy with discussion about possible changes in our conditions here at anchor. We decided to waste no time with talk, we quickly prepared to motor out to sea. Certainly the fastest we have pulled our anchor and left an anchorage. So fast, that we later realized we had forgotten to pull the swim ladder. It must have been amusing for any one behind us to see our ladder dangling in the water. Every boat in the anchorage left (about 30 were anchored near us). It was quickly named the Tsunami regatta, and actually turned out to be one of the nicest sailing days we have had while in Mexico. We motored for a while, turned on the water maker and filled the tanks. We then enjoyed a nice sail back a few hours later to the same anchorage. We heard of some changes of tide on shore, however, we noticed nothing as we were out in 400-500 feet of water.

The next “adverse event” was the incident of BEES. It all started while we were aboard the boat “40 Love”. Joel and Terry thought it was a fire on a neighboring catamaran- it turned out to have been a fire extinguisher. The catamaran had been “attacked” with the bees. Chris and I stayed on the boat “40 Love” where we swatted at bees and quickly closed all ports and hatches. Terry and Joel motored the dinghy over to Tenacity to find bees attached to our boom. Literally thousands of bees that formed the size and shape of a football. As they attempted to get them off the boat, the bees flew up to the top of the mast. To make a long story short, there were thousands of bee carcasses to clean the following morning and we were thrilled to find that they were no longer clinging to our mast.

The way I see it is that things happen in threes. So, we are done with adverse conditions and situations- Rain storms, Tsunami warnings and Bee invasions. The sun is shining today and the air and water temperatures are in the 80’s. We are ready to enjoy Mexico the way we have always enjoyed it with kayaking, swimming, snorkeling, dolphin and whale watching.

We are thinking of everyone at home and wish you all a happy day and a great month of March!!

We will start our trip north on Wednesday or Thursday with the usual stops in Chamela and Ipala. We plan to spend a few weeks in La Cruz before heading back to Mazatlan. We have decided to have the boat hauled (boating lingo for taking it out of the water) to have the bottom paint done and a few other projects before we venture into the big seas and sail home to San Francisco.