Departed Huatulco for Puerto Chiapas

15 53N 95 40W
Enroute to Puerto Chiapas

We got up early this morning, recovered our stern anchor with aplomb, weighed the Rocna and were off. We're on our way on the last two days sailing on Leg 2 of The Voyage, heading for Puerto Chiapas, our final port of call in Mexico.

Roy and I both noted the nice smell of the land in Huatulco as we departed. It's lightly spicy, slightly sweet, a bit floral, like a potpourri you might have in your closet or chest of drawers to make your clothes smelling nice, hinting of the fragrance of a chai tea.

We sailed nicely close hauled in about 8 knots of wind, making a steady 5-5.5 knot over the ground. Then at noon the wind died so we furled up the jib and are motoring, heading offshore to see if we can find the wind again. It's a beautiful blue day with light chop on the nose, gentle swells from the starboard bow.

We've been catching and releasing bonito like crazy all day. They aren't the tastiest fish, but I think we might keep a small one later to make into poke for dinner.

I've been exchanging emails with our new crew for Leg 3, John and Kim, and I finally spoke to them briefly this morning while we still had cell reception. They owned a catamaran and cruised for seven years in the Caribbean, notching up over 7,000 nm under sail. They're from Missouri, are looking to buy a new catamaran and are excited about making the Panama Canal transit, something that's been on their bucket list. I'm looking forward to them joining the boat later this month and meeting them in person.

Yesterday we replaced a malfunctioning switch for the electric winch and then took a kayak trip to the bay next door, Bahía Malguey, which has a long line of palapa restaurants along the beach. We saw lots of people. We ate tacos and ceviche. We drank beer. We had paletas (frozen fruit bars) for desert. We kayaked back. A very nice finish to our time in Huatulco.

Bahia Organo: Tamed the Swell

Last night Intermezzo lay beam to the swells coming into Bahía Jicarol and rocked so badly it made for a challenging night's sleep. I say "swells" because there were two swells, one coming from the east the other from the southeast. When they combined, the boat was rocked violently for several waves at a time, then would subside into tolerable rocking, only to be shaken again in a few minutes. It was far from a peaceful night at anchor.

This morning we moved the boat to Bahía Organo, a larger, deeper bay that provides protection from the larger easterly swells. Only the smaller southeast waves make it to where we dropped anchor. To ensure our comfort, we set an additional stern anchor to keep the bows of the boat points into the swell. Much, much better.

Bahía Organo is another beautiful bay, with a steep, sandy beach at its end, rocky cliffs on each side. I swam to the beach and took a walk on a trail through the jungle that leads to the highway about a kilometer away. It is dry season, so the much of the vegetation is brown and dormant, interspersed with larger trees with green leaves, green vines and ground cover. The jungle gives of pleasant dry, spicy, almost-burnt smell as it bakes under a hot sun.

The Tehuantepecker blew hard today but is still forecast to subside on Friday. We're planning to leave early that morning. So one more day, lazing around, waiting and then we're underway again.

Bahia Jicarol: Rocking and Rolling

We're rocking and rolling here at anchor in Bahía Jicarol waiting out a Tehuantapecker. The gale force winds in the Golfo de Tehauntapec spread out like a fan, sending swells right into the little bay in which we are anchored, Intermezzo often lying abeam to them and rocking back and forth with gusto. This afternoon we shifted the boat as deep into the bay as we could without getting too close to the rocky shore, but it hasn't helped much. We'll move to another bay with better protection tomorrow.

Last night I realized I'd left my hat on the beach when we went kayaking there. (For those of you who follow this blog, you'll remember that I lose my favorite hat more often than I like, but somehow I've always recovered it...so far.) I was a little annoyed at having to kayak back to the beach in the dark to retrieve it. My annoyance turned out to be a treat. The bio-luminescence was amazing, a dense bright stream of sparkling stars flaring out from the bow of the kayak, a pool of sparkles with each dip of the paddle, a trail like the Milky Way behind me. When I returned to Intermezzo with my hat, Roy had to go out for a paddle to enjoy the plankton fireworks.

Today we got the Code 0 sorted out from our furling failure and hoisted, ready to go. I also spent a fair amount of time underwater, replacing the propeller anodes and cleaning the props, sail drives and slime along the waterline.

The weather forecast is looking good for a Friday morning departure, when the Tehuantapecker subsides.

Approaching Bahias de Huatulco

Yesterday was another great day of sailing, a near copy of the day before but with stronger winds. I could write again about the wind, water, sky and dolphins, but I would be repetitive. I must mention the flying fish, though. We went through a patch of them and their aerobatic skills were amazing. They would glide sometimes for hundreds of yards less than a foot above the water, carving their flight at high speed between and over the waves, their baby-blue wings outstretched, small blue-silver bodies glistening in the sun. I like to imagine that flying for them is like surfing is to us, a fleeting joyous thrill in a foreign medium, air for them, water for us.

We had some unique excitement yesterday afternoon, though. At 1630, the winds were blowing steadily a notch over 20 knots true, my limit for flying the Code 0. Furling this big sail in such strong winds is sometimes a challenge. It took me a couple of long passages in varying conditions to get the knack of it. Apparently yesterday I was a little rusty.

The sail rolls up by twisting a very stiff "torsion rope" along its luff (front edge of the sail) by pulling on a line that rotates a furler at the tack (bottom corner of the sail). In strong winds, if you don't get the sail in just the right position, with just the right tension on the sheet (the line that controls the sail), the torsion rope twists itself like a rubber band as it tries to roll up the sail. At some point, the rubber band wanting to untwist prevails over the sailor trying to furl and the sail suddenly unrolls itself with urgency. Compounding the fiddlynature of this process is that the boat slows down as the sail rolls up, which increases the apparent wind speed and thus the force on the sail.

Well, after several failed attempts, I finally got my touch back and the sail rolled up. Only I forgot to instruct Roy to make fast the furling line and sheets, which caused the last bit of the sail to unroll itself backwards. We tried to make things right, but it just wasn't going to happen in 20+ knot winds, hanging out on a bowsprit in pitching seas. A small mess but one that couldn't be cleaned up while the sail was hoisted, so we dropped the 99% furled Code 0 and lashed it to the deck. We'll hoist it up again and sort things out at anchor in calm conditions later.

Last night we sailed along in mostly Force 3 winds (10-15 knots TWS) under just the jib, making a steady 5 knots progress in gentle following seas. Another beautiful, peaceful night.

We're heading now to Bahía Jicarol, a tiny secluded bay for which we have little information: a chart with little detail, a "community edit" description of the anchorage on the Navionics electronic chart and a blurry aerial image from Google Maps. We'll check it out and if it looks good, drop anchor and wait out the Tehuantepec blow there. Or maybe move on after a couple of days to check out one of the other bays in the interim. The Bahías de Huatulco consist of nine pretty little bays with sandy beaches fronting a jungle landscape. We passed them by on the last two trips up and down the coast in 2016 and 2017. They looked so beautiful as we sailed by, I remember feeling some regret at not taking the time to stop. I'm glad to have a chance to explore them now. That's one good thing about a "Tehuantepecker" blowing for a few days.

Peaceful

16 00N 098 08W
Enroute to Huatulco

We had a peaceful sail last night, ghosting along again in light winds. The Code 0 keeps the boat moving along at over 3 knots in only 4 knots of apparent wind (about 6 knots true wind speed). Nice.

The only mildly exciting time of the night was managing a two "vessels meeting on reciprocal or nearly reciprocal courses" situation (e.g. potential head-on collision) with a big ship. COLREGS requires both vessels to turn to starboard. The big ship didn't. Intermezzo did. It's called The Rule of Gross Tonnage. We passed each other with plenty of room, 2 miles, to spare. Actually not even mildly exciting, but it gave me something to do besides gazing at the sea, the stars, the dolphins and babysitting the autopilot.

This morning I switched fishing lures. We haven't had a bite on the two we've been trolling from sunrise to sunset. I also did laundry, which might have been torn off from where it was hanging on the lifeline to dry and hurled violently into the sea when Roy decided to jibe the Code 0. I'm being dramatic. The wind was light. The sail wafted gently into place. It wasn't the least bit exciting.

The wind started building at 1100 and continues to get stronger. We've run the engines much, much less than we have on previous passages along the Mexican coast. It helps that we're not going upwind this time!

We Bounded Along

16 18.1N 99 01.6 W
Enroute to Huatulco

The wind piped up as expected around noon today and we were soon bounding along.

But just beforehand, we hit the seaweed lottery. We were motoring along in light winds on the port engine. I was on watch and had scanned the sea ahead of us before attending to something inside and all looked. Several minutes later I heard a crunch and the engine faltered. I dashed out quickly to the helm and threw the engine into neutral. We had run over a patch of thick seaweed about three feet in diameter. Figure the odds of the one running propeller on a 20 foot wide catamaran hitting the only patch of seaweed for as far as the eye could see in any direction. It took a little while to clear the prop of weed, but no damage done and we were soon back on our way.

Today's sailing was marvelous. We romped along, the sail filled and pulling strong on the sheet. The sea was a sharp metallic blue color with small white caps that sparkled like diamonds. Nimble wind waves passed under and lifted the boat from behind, while more ponderous swells from abeam rocked us gently. The sky was an almost-white pale blue on the horizon, light blue overhead, the sun such a bright white you couldn't look at it for a second. Glorious!

I did yoga today on the forward deck under the blazing hot noon sun. It was a good workout and my neck feels much better. It's hard to get good exercise while making a passage, but a good series of yoga postures works every muscle in your body and feels great.

The ECMWF wind model and routing worked well for us today. Though I haven't done any formal verification, this model seems to be the most accurate of the ones available to us via PredictWind. I set a couple of "wind waypoints" on the chartplotter based on the wind model routing which took us a bit further offshore. We certainly weren't disappointed by the wind when we got there. But who knows, maybe the wind would have been the same had we followed our rhumb line. Can't be in two places at once fo know.

I've been catching up reading Economist magazines from the past few weeks, started reading H Is For Hawk (Helen MacDonald) and I'm on Day 33 of Sam Harris' "Waking Up" meditation course (highly recommended).

Life is good.

Passing by Acapulco

16 35N 99 48W
Enroute to Huatulco

We sailed most of last night, not starting an engine until 0500 this morning when the wind disappeared. We ghosted along with the Code 0 pulling lightly from the bow, collapsing gently with a crinkling sound every once in a while when the wind shifted or we slid slowly down the slope of a swell. The autopilot clattered quietly as it held its course. Acapulco was a long smear of twinkling lights ahead, it's lighthouses blinking bright white, on and off. A constellation that clearly forms a cross stayed fixed in position to the south- I wondered if it was the Southern Cross, not sure if it is visible this far north of the equator. The sea was calm but every so often a little whitecap would break with a noisy hiss alongside the boat.

Most people, including me, think of sailing from Mexico towards Panama as traveling south. Yet from here on, most of the coast runs in a more east-west, so we are making more distance eastward (longitude) than we are south (latitude). It puts us on a good angle for wind, when it decides to blow.

The forecast is for light winds until this afternoon. According to the latest ECMWF model, we might enjoy decent winds from then on until the night if we head a bit further offshore. So that's where we're heading.

I made a radical navigational change yesterday- switched course display from "Magnetic" to "True". OMG! How bold! (What a nerd!) In the past, I thought it better to know our desired course per magnetic north in case the electronics failed and we had to use the compass and paper charts. Intermezzo's compass deviation is so great on some headings, due to its proximity to electronics, that I realized that doesn't really make sense. It's better and easier to know the true course and work out magnetic variation and deviation manually to determine a ship's compass course to steer, if the need ever arises. The other 99.99% of the time, working with true direction makes periodic plotting on the paper charts much easier.

Roy and I are both suffering from mild discomforts. Roy has a mildly infected eyelid that's bothering him but looking like it will get better on his own. I have a stiff neck that limits comfortable sleeping positions, which has nothing to do with being older. It is punishment for not doing a minimum of 30 minutes of yoga each day like I vowed to do. My body is talking to me. So boat yoga starts today on the forward deck at noon, under a blazing tropical sun. Good medicine!