South is East

South is East

The charming little boys at Caleta de Campos wore out a little bit of our affection after we discovered during our before-crack-of-dawn departure that the day before they had lifted a couple of our good headlamps.  While irritating for us, it is surely understandable and hard to begrudge a young boy developing covetous feelings towards a really cool flashlight.  Absolving them of their boyish moral failings, we also speculate that they swiftly got caught using the rather “conspicuous at night” purloined goods. As day broke we were already 6 miles out and busy with raising the main when Alice heard a radio call for “the sailboat leaving Caleta de Campos”.  Other tasks having higher priority, we didn’t answer the ambiguous radio call and by the time we mentally connected the possible dots we decided it would be too long a trip back to recover a couple of $30 headlamps.  May the boys enjoy them, if with a small tinge of lesson-learned guilt…

Our onward track that day was towards Zihuatanejo, a much favoured southerly destination in Mexico for yachtistas and also where each year in the first week of March they hold “Guitar Festival”. For Guitar-Fest, Zihuatanejo Bay fills up with over 40 boats, not to mention the many land-lubber folks who get to listen to the same great music, yet still sleep softly in their comfy air-conditioned rooms.  The musicians hail from all over, Mexico, Canada, USA, Cuba, Bolivia, etc. and all are virtuosos within their particular musical styles.  Better yet, the event lasts for a week and each night a local restaurant hosts a “gala dinner” with one of the musicians in a close and intimate setting, so you can pick your favourite musicians and enjoy their play only a few feet from your dinner table.  Z-town is a cool little tourist town with an interesting vibe and definitely a recommended stop, sailor or not.

Zihuatenejo Sail Fest

Mezcal served with chocolate and fruit.

Music is great fun, but our reverie was interrupted by the news of the passing of our friend Paul’s father, the inimitable Gord Henderson. Back in the day, having sailed quite a lot with Gord and his wife Anne, and subsequently knowing them both well, I decided to cash in some bonus points and take a short trip home to attend the service for Gord back in Vancouver.  However, with the boat at anchor and needing to be supervised, this meant Alice got left behind for a week as a lonely boat guardian.  By the time I got back, all the boats had already left. It was time for us also to make some long tracks in the direction of the Mexico-Guatemalan border, where the boat would end the season up on the hard.

The geography of this part of Mexico surprises most folks, because while you are heading for the southern border it is not south that one points the bow, it is eastward. Good anchorages on this part of the coast are also infrequent, so passages are often longish slogs, motor sailing.  The consolation prize of being at sea is sea life.  Turtles & dolphins, both too numerous to count, whales, leaping mabular rays, flying fish, schooling fish at night seen as glowing pools of green light and the best of all, dolphins rushing towards the boat in the night, leaving their green hued torpedo-like tracks.  The beauty during a dark night of a group of dolphins surfing the bow cannot be overstated. Their bodies glow green and their tails sparkle, bursting with bio-luminescence, all while they playfully curve about, tracking sinuously up, down, around and under, bouncing to the surface for short wheezes of air, then down again. Impossible to photograph, but a wonder of the world just the same.

Sights and Wonders at Sea

I needed this shade umbrella.    Thanks, Greg.

Another whale sighting.

Boobie having a rest.

The next big stop was historic Acapulco, where we were lucky to have reciprocal yacht club privileges, allowing us to stay at the very classy Acapulco YC. While Acapulco’s heyday as a tourist mecca for rich and famous Hollywood types is long over, the city at night is like being in the middle of a bowl of multi-coloured shiny jewels.  Here we held a brief and luxurious respite, dining and drinking to refurbish our bodies from our onward journey, south by east.

Acapulco Yacht Club

Our exercising days at the Old School Gym at Zihua.