Log postings while we sailed around the Pacific
Quick update from Zihuatanejo. Yesterday we got to go see the school that the funds earned at SailFest last year helped build. Unfortunately it’s Easter week so there were no kids in attendance, but it was really quite incredible to see the result of all our hard work last year. There are some pix posted in the Southbound 2008 album in Gallery. We’ll be leaving for Huatulco in the morning.
Today on Yohelah we’re kind of restless and ready to go…….
We’ve stopped in Marina Chauhue in what we thought was the town of Huatulco in the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico to wait for a weather window to cross the Gulf of Tehuantepec. Upon arrival we were welcomed by the other cruisers here in the “waiting room” who are also heading south into El Salvador. Today it’s blowing 40 knots in the Gulf, making it a very dangerous place to be, so we wait.
The Gulf of Tehuantepec is the body of water adjacent to the lowlands of southern Mexico where the winds from the Gulf of Mexico cross out into the Pacific. The winds blow extremely hard when there’s a high pressure system on the Atlantic side and funnel out for three hundred miles. The seas are on your beam and quickly become very steep (easily 15′) and close together, making it a dangerous crossing. We’re told by the Enrique, the marina manager here, that about 20 people die every year in the Tehuantepec. The Tehuantepec is also the only place that weather systems from Africa can cross into the eastern Pacific and all of Mexico’s hurricanes begin here.
Fortunately with the advancements in weather forecasting it’s easier now to predict when the winds will blow and when they’ll be calm. And we’re traveling between seasons when the occurrence of high winds is lessened significantly. According to all forecasts, the current gale will finish up tomorrow and by Thursday we should have a weather window long enough to scoot across before another system develops. It’s 450 miles to El Salvador, so we’ll be 3 nights and 4 days out. Unfortunately it’s feast or famine with the winds in the Tehuantepec, so we’ll likley have to motor the entire crossing.
Tomorrow we’ll check out of Mexico and get our Zarpe for El Salvador. The Zarpe is our official exit documentation from this country that says we left in good standing, and is required by the next country we enter. It takes about 5 hours tomorrow to get all the clearances and checkouts done.
I mentioned that we thought this was the town of Huatulco because Rob found out from Enrique yesterday that it’s the area of Huatulco and the town of La Crucecita, and before 1984 there was nothing here. This is a tourist area developed by the Mexican government at the same time they built Ixtapa near Zihuatanejo, Cancun on the Yucatan peninsula, and Loreto in the Sea of Cortez. There are four areas of lovely beaches here and a small town with lots of restaurants and tourist shopping. It’s by far the cleanest city we’ve seen in Mexico, and somewhere I’d definitely recommend for folks wanting a lovely getaway to warm weather and warm water.
And if you happen to be an investor with $30 million US dollars to spare you might want to know that they’re trying to sell off the marina which is currently government owned. They’re hoping to find someone who can develop the area around it with more facilities for the boaters and make it more of a destination for the yachties and not just an in transit stopover.
When we arrive in El Salvador we’re going into Bahia Jaltepeque where the Hotel del Sol resort welcoms cruisers. It’s the worst bar crossing in Central America, so we have to time our arrival with a high incoming tide and wait until it’s calm enough to get safely inside. The hotel sends a panga out to guide you through the channel. If the waves are breaking too hard to get in there is an area we can anchor and wait a day or two for a safe crossing. But it’s a great place to leave Rob and the boat while I come back to the states to take care of my sister after some surgery. He’ll have full use of the resort including the pool and facilities for a very reasonable fee.
Today on Yohelah we’re preparing the boat for what hopefully is a very calm and boring crossing of the Tehuantepec. Then I can quit worrying about this one and enjoy the year in Central America……
We’re anchored in an estuary that the yachties refer to as “Bahia”. The El Salvadorians call the area Costa del Sol (Sun Coast). Usually by 8:30 in the morning it’s over 80 degrees inside the boat, but generally a breeze will blow during the day and cool it off a bit. The tropical sun is relentless and staying out of it is absolutely necessary. The evenings are cooler, but the lightening storms are occasionally a little too close to the boat for comfort. The storms can be spectacular to watch, but the results of a strike to the boat would be disastrous and take out all of our new electronics. We’re insured for it, but the hassle of buying, shipping and replacing nearly new instruments would be painful.
Our transit of the Tehuantepec from Mexico to El Salvador couldn’t have been any better. I was wrong about feast or famine; we had wind during the day to sail with, except the second day when we were way out in the middle. At night it was motor boat time, but that was ok because it was so much better than it could have been. We even got to fly our spinnaker the third day while we were trying to catch the boat ahead of us (which we never did). As usual, after worrying about the transit for the last year, it was actually a nice sail.
El Salvador is a marvelous place to be. The Salvadorians are incredibly friendly people and couldn’t be more welcoming. While cruising Mexico we never got off the beaten path and out of the tourist areas, and found no opportunity to meet the locals. In Bahia we’ve had local visitors out to the boat twice already and been given a tour of the area with a family from San Salvador on thier boat. It’s so refreshing to be in an area where the people are happy to meet new visitors and not just burned out by massive groups of people offloading from a cruise ship for 3 hours of shopping.
The day after we arrived we took the “chicken bus” into the town of Zacatecaluca, which was quite an adventure. A ride on the El Salvadorian buses is a trip not to be missed. The notion that the bus is full never exists, no matter how tightly you’re packed in. It was nearly two hours each way with a transfer in the middle, and our timing was poor as our return trip was during the after work and after school period.
One of the benefits of being in a poor country is inexpensive food. Meals out average in the $4.00 range, which is very convenient when it’s so hot you just don’t want to heat the boat up any more by lighting the stove to cook. The Salvadorians don’t eat spicy food like the Mexicans and it’s often a bit bland. The local specialty item is called a pupusa, which is a fried corn tortilla filled with beans, cheese and/or meat. At $.35 each for a pupusa and $1.00 local beers, dinner out at a local pupuseria is pretty simple and cheap.
We’re planning our first inland trip since we started cruising two years ago. We’re going into Antigua, Guatemala for some immersion Spanish. Not being able to converse in the native language of the locals is frustrating, but the further we get from the tourist areas the more practice we get. Hopefully a few weeks of intensive study will boost us beyond the basics and give us some much needed confidence and ability. We’ll also travel a bit in Guatemala and explore some of the Mayan ruins and tourist areas.
Today on Yohelah Rob is puttering with some boat projects while I’m home in Seattle taking care of my sister for another week…….
We’ve just returned to the boat after taking our first inland trip in two years of cruising. We went into Guatemala for two weeks of Spanish classes in Antigua, and took some short trips from there. Originally we had planned to take a weeklong road trip after classes ended but we were both ready to get back to the boat, and I was even more anxious after having been gone for two weeks to Seattle immediately prior to this inland trip.
Antigua was a great little town and we enjoyed it immensely. The Lonely Planet guide says “Antigua is almost impossibly cute … cobbled streets, mustard and ochre-colored houses with colonial fittings, the leafy central park… Some people love it, some people hate it, but you’d be silly to miss it.” We’re definitely in the “love it” group. The fascinating thing to me about Antigua is that all the blocks are completely walled in. There are doorways everywhere that open into hotels, restaurants, homes and shops, most of which have lovely little courtyards. I was always curious about what was behind the door as we passed by. From above you can see what look like jumbles of disorganized walls, roofs and gardens inside each block. There were also church ruins all around the city, which was leveled by an intense earthquake in 1773. Prior to that earthquake Antigua had been the capital, but it was moved to Guatemala City afterwards. There was also another earthquake in 1976 and you can see in the ruins relatively new damage from the latest “terremoto”.
We studied Spanish with private instructors for four hours every day and spent several hours daily doing our tarea (homework) and memorizing new words in the park or in a courtyard cafe. We chose not to do a homestay with a Guatemalan family, and instead found a lovely little hotel that had shared kitchen facilities where we cooked breakfast and lunches. That left us evenings to explore and enjoy the many restaurants and bars in Antigua. The town definitely caters to tourists, most of which this time of year are from Australia, Central America and Europe. I would highly recommend Antigua to anyone traveling in Central America. The people couldn’t have been more friendly and the climate is absolutely perfect – it claims to be the land of eternal spring.
One afternoon we went on a tour to a live volcano about 2 hours from Antigua (Volcan Pacaya). We were in a van with about ten other people, none of whom were American and all of whom were about 20 years younger than us. It was an absolutely grueling climb up from the van to the crater, at about 8,000 feet where I’m not used to traveling after so many years at sea level. But the rewards were plenty. I’ve never stood and watched volcanic lava flow right in front of me before. It was hot as the dickens in there, but really fascinating. The most interesting thing to me was the contrast of the area around that volcano to the area around Mount St. Helens at home, where nearly 30 years after the eruption little has grown back. At Pacaya there were flows of cooled lava right through lush green treed high mountain meadows. Listening to the rumble of the volcano was a bit intimidating, espcially since the Lonely Planet warns that people do die when it erupts unexpectedly. But it was fun to see.
Another trip we took was in a van to the mountain village of Chichicastenango (tenango is Mayan for town). There is a huge Mayan market there on Sundays that is great fun. We had our stack of Quetzales (the Guatemalan currency, not the bird) and were ready to bargain. The market was noisy, crowded and exciting, and ended up being as much fun just sitting above watching during lunch as it was shopping. We found some beautiful treasures, but did pass on buying any live chicks for the boat. The most amusing sight was the huge basket a Mayan man carried on his back with a larget net holding live turkeys inside. The turkey heads were bobbing high above the crowd as he pushed his way through. A few hours was definitely enough and we were glad to have the van driver take us back to Antigua afterwards.
Our last trip was up to the ruins at Tikal, which is on a low lying hill in the lowland jungles of northern Guatemala. We took a first class bus out of Guatemala City overnight on Friday after our last day of school. Riding the buses in Central America is easy, comfortable and cheap. And overnighting on the bus worked out great – it was definitely more comfortable than flying a red-eye, just a little noisier and bumpier, but we slept great! We arrived in the town of Flores early Saturday morning and decided to rent a car for our two day stay. I had a room reserved at the Jungle Lodge Hotel, which was out of town inside the National Park boundaries, so it was easier than arranging shuttle trips back and forth.
The Jungle Lodge was fun to stay at, and a nice splurge after being at the little local place in Antigua for two weeks. It has duplex bungalows and was originally built for the archaelogists who were unearthing the ruins. We were hanging out in the pool to escape the opressive 104 degree heat after visiting the ruins on Saturday and could watch the spider monkeys in the trees nearby and hear the impressive sounding howler monkeys in the distance. A very cool spot for the last night of our trip.
The ruins of Tikal are fascinating. The Mayans built an amazing and impressive city beginning as far back as about 600 BC, with building conuining steadily for nearly 1,100 years. The building was all accomplished without the use of any metal tools or beasts of burden. The park consists of 6 square miles containing over 3,000 structures, only about 20% of which have been completely unearthed. As you walk among the ruins you see excavated temples and buildings alongside mounds of dirt that contain ruins yet to be cleared. The main temples tower nearly 200 feet (20 stories) overhead, and are made of limestone blocks sealed with a mixture of tree sap and limestone to preserve them.
One of the many fascinating facts about the Mayans is that they created a perpetual calendar and most ruins can be accuratley dated using glyphs and radiocarbon dating from some wood beams. Another sad fact is that there is no other written history about the culture; what little writings and glyphs they do have has not yet been understood and no “Rosetta Stone” is known to exist at this time. The biggest mystery is why Tikal was completely abandoned and never repopulated, and what caused essentially the collapse of Mayan civilization in the lowlands around 900 AD.
The guidebooks and tour guides suggest you should see Tikal at sunrise “as the Mayans did in their time”. Of course we bit into this idea and set the alarm for 4:15 so we could get into the park before sunrise and for, as they suggest, some quiet and meditation. Unsurprisingly, they sold this idea to another 150 people. So it became a sprint across the park and a hike to the top of Temple IV (remember that 20 flights up) in a crowd. But listening to the howler monkeys in the trees as we passed by in the dark was pretty impressive. And truly, watching the sunrise above the jungle was a beautiful sight.
Later on Sunday we turned in the rental car and toured around Flores and found dinner in the 100+ degree heat where there was not even a tiny whisper of wind. We pretty much just sat on a terrace and watched each other drip for a couple of hours waiting for the time when the bus left. Again we went in a first class bus for an overnighter into Guatemala City. We arrived there 8 hours later and took a cab to the other bus company for a bus to San Salvador, which was leaving in 45 minutes. Another 4 hours later we caught a last cab to the local bus station in San Salvador, where a chicken bus to Costa del Sol left 2 minutes after we got on. Two hours later we were opening up the boat after an amazing trip of 700 or so mountainous miles by bus in 16 hours.
Now we’re getting ready to leave El Salvador after a wonderful 6 weeks here in Bahia Jaltepeque. We’ll head down to Costa Rica for a short stay where we’ll refuel and wait for a decent weather window for our passage to Ecuador. What I think I know is that as summer arrives the ITCZ (intertropical convergence zone) moves north and we end up in the southeasterly trade winds for longer of this trip than we’d like. It’ll be a bit of wind on the nose, but it’s less than 600 miles so we should be able to motorsail a bit if we have to. After the summer rainy season is over in Central America we’ll return to cruise Costa Rica and the Pacific side of Panama.
Today on Yohelah we’re re-acclimating to the heat and are very very happy to be home after our first wonderful inland trip……
On the street outside the Hotel Bahia del Sol in El Salvador is a small tienda where we could buy paper products and some fresh vegetables. One Sunday afternoon we heard from our friends on Mita Kuuluu that they had kittens that needed a home – in particular the sweet yellow type. We wanted another cat but had planned on waiting until after we traveled in Peru so we didn’t have to find a cat sitter. And of course we didn’t want a sweet kitty, we wanted another feisty calico. As we walked into the tienda and the tiniest little furball of fleas and bones with calico markings came running right to me and pounced firmly on my feet.
The next morning Rob was on the chicken bus into San Salvador looking for cat supplies, a tougher task that you might think since the Salvadorians don’t generally keep cats as pets. Monday night we went back to the tienda and picked up our new crew member, who Rob named Maya. We took her to the vet two days later and found out she was 5.5 weeks old and weighed less than a pound. Her fleas were gone by then thanks to some Advantage and she was starting to put some meat on her bones.
Her first trip offshore was our passage from El Salvador to Costa Rica less than a week later. Crossing the bar to get out of Bahia was extremely calm, but the seas were lumpy and confused outside because a hurricane had formed a few days earlier and gone ashore further south. Maya did marvelous the entire passage, even when the boat was pitching and rolling as we sailed through one squall and electrical storm after another.
We stopped in Bahia Santa Elena three days later and immediately loved Costa Rica. We were the only boat in the bay and it reminded us more of home than anyplace we had been in the last two years (except the howler monkeys and parrots of course). The next day we had a spectacular sail across the Gulf of Papagayo and moved down to Playa del Coco to get checked in to Costa Rica, where we’re now on anchor in Bahia Culebra at a little beach called Playa Panama. In another day or two when we’ve both shaken the colds we brought from El Salvador we’ll move south through Costa Rica. We’re definitely looking forward to coming back here in the winter when it’s not raining every night. There’s a dive shop on every corner in this little town and we’re certainly interested to see what’s underwater.
Today on Yohelah we’re having tons of fun watching Maya grow and play and learn to climb…..
At 7:30 this morning when we woke up it was 80 degrees in the cabin. While that might sound blissful, it was also 84 percent humidity. Now at 9:00 the humidity has decreased somewhat but that’s because the temperature has risen substantially. It’s a beautiful day out there, but definitely a scorcher.
Today we have a list of chores to take care of on the boat before we head south tomorrow. Foremost is to get in the water and clean the bottom. We’ve been in a dirty estuary in Puntarenas and are going to be in another estuary in Ecuador when we get there, so the bottom cleaning has to be done in between.
And we definitely need to get south now. The ITCZ is just off the coast and has spun off two tropical storms in the last three days and currently there’s another low forming. The storms are well north of us and heading out to sea, but they still get our full attention. Hopefully the passage will just be moderate headwinds…..
Teresa
Well after a planned two or three day stopover in Costa Rica on June 2nd for fuel and rest we’re finally on our way south. Needless to say Costa Rica is gorgeous and we can’t wait to come back in the winter. We didn’t see too much since we both had colds the first two weeks. But it is beautiful.
Right now unfortunately we’re motoring into 5 knot headwinds. Even if they weren’t on our nose, we have a hard time in the big ocean swell making headway with only 5 knots. We don’t have enough fuel to motor the whole way, but expect some wind tomorrow. The ITCZ is far south of us right now so hopefully we’ll have a couple of nice days before it heads back north again and we cross into the southeasterly trades from the southern hemisphere (which technically don’t stay in the southern hemisphere, they just stay south of the ITCZ).
All is well onboard. I prepared and froze dinners for 2 weeks so we don’t have to do too much cooking underway. Maya is doing just fine and sleeping in her bed right now – thankfully she’s less bothered than either of us on passage. That’s all for now.
Teresa
The ITCZ definitely moved north yesterday and we got a full dose of it last night on passage. Rob went down to rest about 6:00 and I started watching the radar light up with squalls. They turn bright yellow and blue and are kind of fun to watch. In the past we’ve been able to navigate around most of them. Not last night.
I realized you could make shapes out of the radar returns for the squalls like you do for clouds. First there was a cute little puppy. Then Amy Winehouse was there singing. I know it was Amy because it had the full beehive. She was off to starboard. Then, unfortunately a huge squall started to materialize forward of our port bow. I thought I was going to be able to sneak between the monsterous blob and Amy Winehouse, but no joy. The two squalls merged right into each other as I tried to squeeze in between.
And then it poured. And poured. For over an hour. So hard the water was white. And there was lightening all around. It didn’t make sense for Rob to come up and get soaked too, so I tried to wait it out. But we just couldn’t get out of it. No matter which way we turned it was always “just two more miles” ahead of us. It was just insane. Finally it slowed down enough for Rob to come out and we put a reef in the main and sent me down to bed. He was in rain nearly all the night.
Today I tried again dodging them but no luck again. It rained for a couple of hours. But now it’s finally done. We’re hoping this is our last night of it and the ITCZ stays where it is for a couple of days while we get south.
Teresa
We did finally find our way out of the ITCZ. Night before last there weren’t squalls and we didn’t see any lightening. But still no wind. Yesterday morning we were still motoring along. Which might be all right, but we don’t carry enough fuel to make it all the way to Ecuador. I thought the wind would be just south of the ITCZ, which the high seas forecast said yesterday was all the way up at 10 degrees, and we were at 5 degrees.
So late in the afternoon I was on watch and an enormous squall was in front of us right in our path, of course. And I was just tired of driving around the darn things for miles and miles. The worst wind we’d seen in them was 20 knots of wind, and there was no wind at the time at all. So I adopted the “take your medicine like an man” plan and decided to take the shortest path right through the middle. Well you have to know where this is going. God immediately decided it was time to get out the humility stick and give me a big ‘ole whack.
So into the middle we head and the wind starts building and keeps building. Suddenly we’ve got 30 knots on our nose and it’s still building and I know there’s no way we’re going right through the middle. We’ve got a reefed main up, so I turn down as far as I can without gybing the main and decide I better run with it for a bit. About this time the skies completely open up and it starts pouring. Rob is up from his nap but we decide he should just stay inside and not get wet since I’m already soaked (is there a pattern here?). Also about the same time I get hit up alongside the head (literally) with a huge wave. But running with it is not getting us out of it because we’re now just traveling in the same direction as it is. I really need to head up and work my way out. As luck would have it, it was raining so hard the seas were totally flattened out. That was amazing to see.
So after about 20 minutes more we finally scooted out the south end of it. And there was the wind we had been waiting all day for. It must have been just getting sucked into this massive squall and up over the top of us.
We set the staysail since it was getting late and we like to sail really slow and conservatively at night. And it was gorgeous last night sailing along. It was blowing 18ish, so the staysail and a reefed main were perfect. This morning when I came on watch at 5 the wind slowed down and the staysail wasn’t powerful enough to keep momentum in the big seas that had built up. So now we’ve got a double reefed jib and a reefed main and the windvane is driving us like a champ.
We’re still 3 or 4 more days from landfall, but the boat’s moving along beautifully and we’re not worrying any more about running out of fuel on the way.
Teresa
We’re making ground south, slowly but surely. The wind is conveniently coming from the southwest and not the south, so we’re on a lay line for Bahia Caraquez. Theoretically we should be trying to stay as far west as possible because the winds come up the South American coast and our last day could be a total bash with wind and waves completely in our face. But we’re hard on the wind and headed exactly where we want to go, so it’s hard to turn off and head west at this point. Plus, the forecast for Monday says that there should be light westerlies in that area anyway, so we may be completely spared.
Right now we’ve got 240 miles to go and are chugging along at about 4 knots. We figure we’ll make landfall Tuesday morning. High tide is at 7:56 am, so we need to be there and ready for our bar crossing or else we’ll have to anchor out overnight until Wednesday, which would be very sad after all this traveling.
Nothing new to report onboard. Rob and Maya are outside and Maya is playing with her toys in the cockpit well. She’s just never been bothered by passages and we’re extremely thankful for that.
Teresa