ZIHUATANEJO! WHAT A TOWN! FINDING FOR WAYS OUT OF THE FINANCIAL SQUEEZE
Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico, Thursday, 09 March 2006
Zihuatanejo! What a Town!
Now this is a really nice place! Zihuatanejo, “Zihua” (as even Mexican bus-drivers sometimes call it) or “Z-Town”, as Americans affectionately refer to the place, has managed to retain much of its small-town atmosphere. There are no large hotels, though there are lots of small ones. On the periphery there are a few big supermarkets but in town the Tiendas are all small. Many of the streets are blocked to vehicular traffic, which makes walking a treat. There is a nice mix of tourists, tourist restaurants and trinket shops cheek by jowl with local, home-grown activities like hardware, clothing, cobblers, appliance and food shops, not to mention a proper Mercado and an outdoor basketball court smack in the middle of the town where it faces the beach. While there is a small dock or breakwall behind which the Armada Mexicana have a small station, there are dozens of fishing pangas drawn up on the beach and a palm-shaded area in front of rows of beach-front dining establishments where fishermen hang out and keep their storage boxes, and where fish are laid out on tarps for purchase. Of course, there are multitudes of children of all ages and no small number of slow-moving and frequently somewhat mangy dogs walking or lying about. In Mexico only the dogs inside fences bark; the free-range hounds simply gaze at you and amble out of the way. Daytime or evening, there are lots of people about.
The sports fishing fleet has commandeered the best sheltered area over near the breakwall. About half a mile away, out at Playa Ropa (so named for a Spanish wreck containing silks that once washed up there), there are a couple of dozen sailboats with US or Canadian flags and in the smaller, inner bay another dozen anchored. When we arrived on Saturday, we settled the boat at the far end of this small, circular, inner bay in front of the town. It is in fact quite a row to the other end of the beach where the surf is the least threatening for landing. But where we are the daytime sea breezes keep Vilisar’s bow pointed at the long swells coming in from the Pacific, and the gentle land winds at night swing us completely around to face the beach so that our stern is pointed at the swells. We are therefore always refreshed by breezes while the boat itself pitches slightly or simply rides up and down on the swells but does not roll.
We have run into a few old acquaintances here: Kurt aboard S/V Sea Reach out of Nanaimo, BC; Alex and Susan on S/V Mai Tai Roa (spelling); Stephane and family on the gaff-rigged converted lifeboat S/V Emigrants from France, for example. Al and Judy are here aboard S/V Monrova out of Vancouver; and so is Maggie aboard S/V Kismet; and Lew, Oy and their 10-year-old daughter, Merritt, aboard their sailboat from Portland, Oregon. And we have also met some new people: experienced South-Sea sailor Chuck with Linda aboard S/V Jacaranda, San Diego; Ron and Linda on S/V Morning Star II out of San Diego; Frenchman Bernard single-handing aboard S/V Honu out of San Francisco; Penny and Phil on the catamaran Sisiutl out of Seattle; and Harald, currently ashore looking for a crew position on a vessel heading south.
We are still scratching our heads about a visitor who, according to Susan on S/V Mai Tai Roa, came by while we were ashore the other day: Howard, a Canadian who insisted on coming by before departing to the Marquesas as a crewman aboard S/V Aquarelle. We wonder if it might not have been Howard Lund of Long Beach, California, but Susan insists he is a Canadian. We are puzzled. One day, perhaps, the puzzle will be solved.
Zihuatanejo is definitely hotter than, say, Barra de Navidad. The water here, a little murky here in the bay, has already reached 80° F. Daytime air temperatures are now in the low 90s. If there is no breeze it definitely feels hot and we are happy to have the awning up. We have also begun using the swatches of “Cooleroo”-brand artificial sun-shading material to keep the direct sun off the skylight and to keep the cabin from heating up. We also use this material for side-curtains that we hang from the brown-canvas awning with clothes-pegs. It is much hotter in town where the sea breezes cannot penetrate; I have no idea how anyone can stand it there in the summer. I imagine a hurricane passing through must at least appeal for its cooling impact.
This is the southern terminus for Mexican cruising boats, we are told. In another month most if not all of the cruising boats will have left here. It’s one hundred miles and at least one overnight to Acapulco. Boats that are not heading back up to summer over in the Sea of Cortés or to be hauled out at Puerta Vallarta, Mazatlán, La Paz or San Carlos will, like us, be jumping off from here for longer passages to other countries: southeast down the coast to Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama; westward to French Polynesia or Hawaii; or south and east to The Galapagos and/or Ecuador. The cruisers here organise small seminars for themselves where the more experienced sailors give them tips about dealing with new waters. Chuck of S/V Jacaranda spent ten years in the South Pacific and had lots of good tips. The talk is of cruising guides, dealing with southern-hemisphere weather, attractive places to visit; entry and cruising permits; fuel and water sources; anchoring techniques for deep coral lagoons, etc. Some cruisers have also banded together to get good deals on provisioning from the one or two big supermarkets here. This morning, for example, they were headed up to Commerciale Mexicana to make arrangements with the butcher to prepare meats for them. After they go together to buy a side of beef or pork, the store will cut it and wrap it into one-pound packages and then freeze it for the end-users who will then store it all in their freezers back aboard. This sounds great. But, without refrigeration, it is out of the question for us. We have to find non-perishable foods.
In one sense we are not so eager to get to Acapulco. We could just as easily replenish here for our two or three-week offshore voyage to Isla San Cristobal. Zihuatanejo has everything we need and we can anchor here for free. In Acapulco, on the other hand, it reportedly costs US$10 a night (APPI fees) just to anchor off in the large commercial port, and between twenty and thirty dollars (sic) a day simply to land your dinghy at a yachting facility. We were originally going to meet friends from Chicago in their time-share apartment there and so everything else became organised around Acapulco too; i.e. the visit of Kathleen’s mother and sister, and the arrival of son Andrew to crew with us to The Galapagos; provisioning for the bluewater passage. I am sure it will work out but we have decided to leave it till the last minute to arrive in Acapulco and will therefore leave here next Monday or Tuesday, putting in only at Bahia de Tequepa before we embark on the overnight to Acapulco. I can give the boat bull and prop another scrub before we get settled in a dirtier commercial harbour.
Looking for ways out of the financial squeeze
Our financial situation is really miserable after prepaying some child support and buying Andrew’s airline tickets to here and later back from Guayaquil. We decide to follow the advice of other “budget cruisers” and attend a presentation for a time-share.
Ten miles from here lies Ixtapa, the Mexican-Pacific’s answer to Cancun – in other words, a stamped-out-of-the desert city of full of flown-in-every-week-by-the bloody planeload tourists and time-sharers. All along the bay are tower hotels to house and entertain them: they’re just like the apartment buildings they live in back home! Forget Mexico! It’s the Poughkeepsie Riviera!) In Cabo San Lucas and Puerta Vallarta the streets swarm with young Mexican guys ready to chat you up and rope you into a time-share presentation. They offer as much as US$200 up there to get you to go along. In our desperation we jump a local, rattle-trap bus over to Ixtapa to make our fortunes listening to time-share sales pitches.
Sure enough, there they are, little so-called “Tourist Information” booths lining the boulevard that runs past all the multi-story hotels. We permit ourselves be drawn into conversation with a fresh-faced young man named Daniel. After a while I say we should be glad to go to the presentation, but, as in Cabo and PV, he should pay us some money. At first he declines, and we walk away thinking we need to perfect our non-pitch. A couple of blocks later, though, Daniel catches us up in a panel truck with “Royal Vacations” on the side and says he will give us $100 if we pass the pre-qualification stage (i.e. age, valid credit card, minimum income requirements, etc.) We agree, and he drives us to one of the hotels, leads us through to a sales centre, and introduces us. We pass the pre-qualifications, and he gives me his name-tag so I can find him later.
Right from the beginning, I tell everybody that we are interested, but under no circumstances will we sign anything today. Our friend Jens aboard S/V Veleda warned us to take this line; he himself used to sell time-shares. We are passed up through three separate salespersons: a very nice American man who warms us up with lots of positive comments about anything he can think of – “You live on a sailboat! Wow! That’s fantastic!” He also gives us a tour of one of the flats. Then we get a hard-nosed and clearly bored or exhausted but, of course, nicely dressed and coiffed Mexican lady who yawns continuously so I can see her tonsils while she talks to us like a machine. Three hours later, when we still have not signed, the head honcho, another American, goes to work on us. He does everything but tie his dick in a knot in order to get us to sign. Actually, I think he might also have done that if I had even hinted that it would lead to a signature. By the time he finally gives up, he has the price-and-benefits package structured so attractively that it is hard to refuse. But of course, we have no dough so, no matter how attractive, we cannot afford to bite. Thank God! No matter how great the package you still have to lay out some money up front and monthly and you have to pay for your flights to wherever it is you intend to hole up for a week or two. And how badly do we actually need a stay in an industrial-tourism plant anyway? We own the whole Pacific Ocean as it is! We don’t have to work for 50 weeks a year on the 45-year-plan to be able to afford things like two weeks here or in Cancun or wherever! Brian, “our representative”, keeps trying to identify what it is that we don’t like about “the concept” so he can work on that angle. Is it the money, or the company or the bennies? Meanwhile he pulls out all the stops and keeps adding more bennies. But I for my part just keep repeating my mantra, “The concept is very appealing. It’s just great, fact. But I simply do not sign on the same day!”
“Well,” he says trying not to show his frustration, “the special offer is off the table when you walk out of here.”
“Are you saying,” I reply, “that if I come back tomorrow morning and am willing to sign, you will not offer me this package?”
“Nope! That’s Mexican law.”
“Rubbish! Mexican law has nothing to say about that at all.” I say.
“Well, I can always go to my supervisor and I usually get what I want”
Aha! It’s all total bullshit, naturally. But we have been bullshitting just as much. Daniel, however, gets paid just to be the cowboy who ropes in passing tourists for a presentation, and he has a deal with us: we go to the presentation, and if we pass the initial screening he will get his pay. We leave the sales centre totally wrung out after four hours, hungry and depressed having only had a dried-up club sandwich to eat since early that morning.
Back on the street there is no Daniel. Nor anyone else, for that matter! Everybody seems to have disappeared for lunch.
“He’ll be soliciting at Elvira’s Restaurant in Zihua tonight,” one of his buddies says after we have waited several hours for them to get back from siesta break.
Needless to say, back in Zihuatanejo, Elvira’s Restaurant is closed on Mondays and there is of, course, no sign of Daniel. We check again the next night and see no trace of him then either. This morning we take the bus back over to Ixtapa and talk to his colleagues. We even go to their administrative offices.
“Daniel has quit and moved to Acapulco,” we are told by the receptionist, clearly trying to fob us off.
More BS! Well, we didn’t solve our financial problems by doing time-share presentations, or least we have not solved them yet. But we did come out of it with a bottle of Tequila and a bottle of Kahlua.
Drown your sorrows Captain Ronnie, Boy Spot-Welding-King-of-the-World; Captain Epoxy!
WHAT BUGS US MOST!
Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico, Friday, 10 March 2006
What bugs us most!
About ten days ago we first noticed them: two types of creepy-crawlies. One is a small, black beetle (it doesn’t look like a cockroach, at least); the other is an insect with wings that it doesn’t seem to use. It could be that they are the same bug, but one is a juvenile. Switch on a light suddenly at night and you are likely to see one or the other of them standing motionless in the corner of the galley counter or along the wooden coaming above the port settee. I also saw one way back up on the galley stove. Lunge at them and you will witness a new definition of “fleet of foot” (or perhaps fleet of feet). They’re tough to catch and they are seemingly crush-proof. I kill about three out of every four I go for. Kathleen first freezes and squeals but has taken, however, half-heartedly, to attacking them, having first given them a reprieve by waving her hands at them. I suggest she should shout “Argh!”, like a pirate. Maybe they will jump ship.
We have been well over four years aboard and have never had bugs. But this is the tropics and bugs can be a problem. Books on cruising recommend you never bring any cardboard on board or can with labels on them since cockroaches – cucarachas! - lay eggs there. It’s a lot of work to strip and label all the cans especially when you are anchored off and we have never actually done it. Mind you, we don’t use many cans anyway. But we do stock up from time to time. Eggs come in cardboard cartons, of course. Maybe the bugs came from there. They just don’t seem like cockroaches.
Last week Kathleen emptied all the Ziplocked bags of flour and other dry comestibles out of the dry-storage well behind the galley sink, cleaned everything with a strong bleach and soap solution, inundated the whole box with roach spray and clapped the lid back on the unit. Then she inspected each of the bags for weevils or other non-vegetarian matter. Nothing! Eventually everything went back in, but the bugs are still in evidence. These guys can multiply very quickly so we do something fast about it.
Enter Rick, the owner of the bar in town of the same name. He is a great resource for any cruisers coming into Zihuatanejo and was himself once a cruiser. His bar has fresh-water showers, laundry machines and computers; not to mention beer on tap, CNN; i.e. all the things cruisers normally need. He speaks Spanish fluently and knows where to get help for you in town. Despite the fact that he seems to be working like a dog, he always has time for your problems.
He thinks that an exterminator is the only way to go and he calls one up that he wants to use himself. His whole two-story restaurant cost only Pesos 400 the last time so it should not be too expensive even given our pinch. We should pick the guy up from the beach tomorrow morning at 1000.
After checking our emails and using our new credit card again to raise some cash, we drop by the mercado to buy fruit and vegetables, corn tortillas, eggs and one or two other items. It’s nice to be able to feed ourselves for a few days for only a few dollars.
Bernard of S/V Honu is leaving today for the U.S.A. for a couple of weeks. When he came over for dinner last night he brought us a couple of bags of fresh veggies and fruits and a huge amount of cheese. He doesn’t eat meat so he also made us a salad of raw beets and carrot chips (he normally grinds them but we don’t have a grinder) that he marinated in lime juice, salt and dried pepper flakes. Delicious! For the main course we had boiled potatoes and blue-fin tuna steaks fried in oil, ginger, garlic and onions. The fish, which tasted like red meat and was super-delicious, was sent over to us by Lew and Oy and their daughter Merritt. They are cruising aboard a small sailboat out of Portland, Oregon. Lew told us that this was the first time he had ever caught a fish and didn’t really know how to fillet it. They cannot store a whole 20-pound tuna and shared it with us. Now this is my idea of hunting and gathering! Later in Rick’s I explained to him how to fillet fish the way Susan on S/V Liberty Card taught me last year in the Sea of Cortés.
Lew is a pretty interesting guy and one of several Americans we have met in Zihua who have more or less turned their backs on the U.S.A. Lew won’t fly the US flag. He doesn’t even have a name on his sailboat. It is not uncommon to find people in the cruising community who have exiled themselves. There are two kinds: the ones who find the whole, high-maintenance urban lifestyle “bullshit” and those who are disgusted with the current government and its illegal and immoral behaviour both at home but especially abroad. There currently seems to be no alternatives for them that have any chance of succeeding. The Democrats are Bush Lite. There are some conservative “libertarians” who don’t want to pay US taxes because there is too much government and anyway, we’re not using the highways anyway.
This second group seems pretty limited but I don’t have any problems with the first category and clearly there is almost nobody in the political spectrum in the U.S.A. who is seriously opposing Bush et alia. The last Federal-Election campaign was a farce, surely. Have we ever seen anyone so klutzy as John Kerry? Even people like Hillary Clinton signed on for the duration. Comic figures. (“Don’t get me going!”)
The old saying, “My country, right or wrong!” can have several layers of meaning. If it is just blind obedience to whatever the government says, that is surely misconceived and you have essentially abandoned your critical faculties and your responsibilities as a citizen in a republic in favour of Cadavergehorsamskeit, as the Germans call it (the loyalty of a cadaver). It is the loyalty of the SS camp guard.
At another level, however, I have a responsibility to correct abuses, evils, etc. because it is my country. I encourage all of my American friends to try to get rid of the Bush-Cheney cancer in the body politic. You don’t have to emigrate to Canada. Nice as it is, Canada has a lot of problems of its own to deal with. It’s your country! Right the wrongs!
WAITING FOR ANTONIO; MONEY IN THE BANK; OFF TO ACAPULCO
In transit from Zihuatanejo to Acapulco, Monday, 13 March 2006
Waiting for Antonio
Rick had arranged for the fumigadoro to show up at the dinghy beach at 1000 on Saturday morning. We spent Friday night and early Saturday morning clearing out all the food and sensitive items so the spraying could be done quickly and efficiently. Early on Saturday we move Vilisar closer to the dinghy beach so I won’t have to spend so much time and energy transporting the guy out to the boat and back and then we go ashore to be there punctually at 1000.
Kathleen goes off to check her emails while I wait. I chat in broken Spanish with an 18-year-old (he appears that old, at least) marine sentry at the barracks by the beach. He is wearing immaculate battle fatigues with polished jump boots, metal helmet and a bullet-proof vest. He carries a rifle and has eight or ten 20-round spare magazines in pouches so he has about 100 or more rounds on his body. He tells me it gets really hot in all this gear. Daily temperatures are heading for the 90s now. On the beach in front of the gate where he stands watch is a fenced off area to protect the eggs laid there by green sea turtles. It looks like he is guarding them. I also watch Mexican kids frolicking in the water, their mother sitting in the shade with a toddler. None of the kids wears a bathing suit; they just swim and play in street clothes. That’s pretty typical. A cruise ship is in and the mole is busy with tourist coming ashore and people selling fishing tours, golfing, etc.
After an hour I head over to Rick’s Bar. He tells me that they called to say they couldn’t make it after all. Then he calls them up and they agree to come at noon. I sit around reading and talking to other cruisers. About 1400 three guys show up. At first I think I shall be rowing them all out to Vilisar. Rub-dub-dub! In the end only Antonio comes with me. About twenty, he is clearly nervous about being in the dinghy and clutches his spray things for support. On board, he starts spraying and I direct him. Everywhere around the galley sink, dry storage, the cupboard under the sink, the storage spaced for cleaning materials by the steps, all around the stove, under the settees and all around the water tanks there, under the cabin sole after I tear open the floorboards. I don’t spray the forecastle because we have never seen any bugs there. Twenty minutes later we are on the way back to shore and the whole thing cost about $15 though I gave the money to Rick and he will just put it all together with his bill when the guy comes to do his kitchen.
That night, when we get back on the boat, there are a few groggy bugs staggering around. The next morning I saw a couple too. But since then we have seen no more. Maybe we were lucky and were able to nip all this in the bud. We surely do not want a plague of them while we are on a long passage next month. It turned out, of course, also be an opportunity – let’s call it that - to clean everything including all the dishes and bottles and spice jars.
Money in the bank
Thank you, thank you Sebastian, for the translating job! I got a four-page legal translation from the agency in Germany that will bring in € 200. If Sebastian pays me promptly we might not actually have to declare bankruptcy, after all. I sat all day Sunday in the shade just outside Rick’s Bar and did the translation. I made sure I did not pull up another chair to the table since that it only encourages people to sit down and have a longer chat. Friends and acquaintances would come by but only stay a few minutes.
Sisiutl
We have met Penny and Phil, a really nice couple aboard what they call the sailing cat(amaran) Sisiutl. They are from the US west coast and have been cruising up in Alaska and the Charlottes and are now on the way to Central America, though I think, like us, that this is one of those vague plans to which cruisers adhere to strictly. We have spent a couple of evenings with them and really enjoy their company since they are not part of your typical beach-holiday-on-a-boat crowd who have little or no intention of going offshore. We had a delicious Thai-chicken dinner with them on Sisisutl (B.C. native word for some sort of double-headed sea creature or god) on a very bumpy bay last night (there have been big though slow swells here the last day or two).
Off to Acapulco
It was too dark and bumpy to put the dinghy on deck last night. Going to bed, we set the alarm for 0545, but both of us toss and turn most of the night knowing we shall be moving again today. I am awake and reading from about 0430. When the alarm goes off it is still very dark, and we wait till 0630 when there is enough light to get the dinghy unbolted, separated into two parts, lifted and stowed onto the foredeck. The bottom of the dinghy is surprisingly clean considering that Vilisar’s hull had quite a bit of green whiskers at and plant growth below the waterline when I tried cleaning it yesterday afternoon during my swim.
I am rather hesitant to do much swimming off the boat here. For one thing, the water is pretty murky at best and dirty and possibly polluted at worst. For another, some people say the crocs from the lagoon swim here too though nobody who has told me this has actually seen one anywhere near where we are, and they have never lost a tourist or local yet to the beasties. I come back dripping on deck and covered in sea lice. They live in the marine growth that I have just scraped off. They can be brushed off and they squirm and die out of the water. They feel a little icky, though. There is actually quite a lot of fauna down there including little crabs that crawl up the rudder from underneath the boat where they too live in the marine growth. Maybe there is a fumigadoro for all that too. All-in-all, my enthusiasm for swimming is, shall we say, dampened. I originally only jumped in for a quick wash and to cool off. But that’s when I saw that some cleaning was required before our trip. I got out the plastic scraper and did what I could reach without mask and flippers. The prop felt rough but not encrusted. Maybe I can do more if and when we reach our destination of Punta de Pampanao today, there is still enough daylight, the water is clear, shark- and crocodile-free, and I can screw up my courage and enthusiasm to the sticking point. A clean bottom and propeller saves diesel fuel and motoring time. That ought to help me get going. Although we seem to be going very slowly coming out of Zihuatenejo this morning, we are actually going 4.5 – 5.5 knots. That’s normal for us.
We listened to the Southbound Ham Net last night with Phil and Penny. Sainted Don of meteorological fame predicts 15-20 from the W today and Tuesday and the seas, although fairly large, are slow (17 seconds). We might actually be able to sail at least part of it today. We have a little less than half a tank of fuel, which should get us to Acapulco and to spare if we do have to motor it all. But it would be nice to sail.
We pass a cruise ship coming in for the day as we get Vilisar headed out to sea. First we pass Sisiutl to holler good-bye. We visited Kurt, our Danish-Canadian friend yesterday afternoon before he sets off on his single-handed voyage to French Polynesia. He will likely leave on Tuesday. Hearing bon voyage twice certainly can’t hurt so we also tootled past S/V Sea Reach to say farewell. His dinghy is there but no response from below. Fair winds and following seas, Kurt!
PUNTA DE PAMPANOA
In Transit to Acapulco, Tuesday, 14 March 2006
Yesterday turns out to be a long, hot day. Our total distance is only less than 40 Nm and, leaving as we did at dawn and making about 5 knots we made it in eight hours. But until the last couple of hours the only breeze we have we make ourselves by motorsailing. The Horse Latitudes! About noon a wind does come up from behind but not enough to help us much. We had thought about waiting till later in the day to leave Zihuatanejo. But since the sea breezes don’t come up till about noon anyway and only get some useful muscle about mid-afternoon, we would not have made our anchorage by nightfall.
About and hour after we get our anchor down behind the first of two breakwalls at Punta de Pampanao, get the awning rigged and a cuppa char in our hands, we hear Sisiutl hailing us on Channel 16. The transmission is quite broken up but they are not too far away. They have decided to bypass Pampanoa and sail through the night on their catamaran to Acapulco. By the time this is written they should already be at the Club de Yates. Their cat is much faster than we are and probably needs less wind to get her skirts up.
Pampanoa is probably our penultimate stop before Archipel de Colón (the Galapagos Archipelago), and very likely the last quiet one. Acapulco is a big city and a big port. Kathleen and Vickere, Kathleen’s mother and sister, arrive tomorrow in Acapulco. In a couple of weeks my son Andrew arrives and shortly thereafter – April Fools? – we head offshore. Both Kathleen and I are still feeling fairly sanguine about the bluewater passage, where other big jumps in the past – e.g. from Cape Flattery to the Golden Gate - gave us heart palpitations in advance. We talk about our feelings for these steps, trying to hear if there are any concerns that the other has. My only concern is whether our old sails will hold up. Our new acquaintance, Chuck on Jacaranda, said he never used his mainsail in the South Pacific and, if there were no winds, he just waited. He sailed to Fiji on three gallons of fuel, i.e. just getting in and out of harbours and lagoons.
To pass the morning and to appear busy while Kathleen is baking belowdecks, I repair the dinghy seat by setting bronze screws. Of course the battery-operated hand drill is dead and, using the brace, I break off one of my good drill bits. But eventually it is done. At some point I shall fill the screw heads and paint the whole seat again. After Acapulco it will be stowed in the forecastle for the offshore voyage (You see! It’s on my mind all the time now!).
That little job completed, I get out the fins, snorkel and mask to clean the hull again. It was not possible to see clearly enough underwater in Zihuatanejo. The prop has picked up some more barnacles, of course. I scrape and use the stiff wire brush to get nearly all of it off. Then I make the circle around the hull from stern to bow and back down the other side scraping the little black furry things off as far down as I can reach. This is about 75 % of the way to the bottom of the keel. In the swells that are coming into the harbour, the boat tends to hit you on the head with a thump when you swim down. I also do not have weights to get near near-neutral buoyancy, which also makes it more difficult. I have come to accept “good” over “best” here. Before we leave Acapulco we shall stop at the outer cove and do the bottom again, I am sure.
Well, we are motorsailing today. After a little calculating, we decided to leave once the wind started up today. Promptly at noon, we had the anchor up and were motoring out from behind the breakwall and out around the point. For some reason, the swells near the shore seem to be much bigger and certainly more confused as we get waves ricocheting off the rocks to meet the swells coming in. We have not hoisted the mainsail which would certainly steady us.
Our tactic for today is to use the BRD (Big Red Drifter), possibly together with the staysail. In other words, we shall try Chuck’s approach and use only headsails. Since we have to go to windward to get around the point, however, we are motoring and have no steadying sail up. This makes a big difference in how much one rolls around. We pass a number of panga fishermen and a diving panga and once we are out a ways I fly the BRD. There still is not enough wind for it to help us much but at least there is enough wind to keep it filled with air. This comes from the fact that we do not have the mainsail up. If it were it would partially block the flow of following breezes to the headsails.
The secret reason for not raising the main is that, with it down, we can leave the awning rigged. Yesterday was very exhausting in the sun. I can take it but it is unpleasant and, by late in the day, you are getting tired and dehydrated no matter how much you drink. The electrolytes help. But you are wiped out anyway. Today we shall be in the shade!
While we waited for the wind this morning Kathleen baked a loaf of bread since our last tortillas turned mouldy. We ate Huevos Rancheros without tortillas! Yesterday we had Quesadillas with refried beans and salsa for dinner. The leftover beans – made from canned refritos (just add oil, sautéed onions and salsa) - along with eggs sunny side up made up our breakfast. An hour later we were sampling fresh dark-bread with country honey. Delicious! I love Mexican food! So far we have not bothered to make our own flour or corn tortillas but this may change. Certainly in stocking up for the long passage we will be buying refritos and other Mexican-food items and will learn to make our own tortillas.
Kathleen has found the perfect time-passer for when she is on watch: SODUKO puzzles. Our friend, Bob Ferguson, introduced her to them, and Kathleen brought several books of them back with her from Germany. She can sit in the cockpit with the tiller on a bungee cord and look up occasionally to make corrections without it distracting her from what she is doing. The amazing thing is that she can do even the hard ones.
I have no interest really. So she ordered a book of the easier Guardian Crossword Puzzles for me. I cannot do the hard crosswords. The so-called easy ones are not that simple either. The difference is that the easier ones require an encyclopaedic general knowledge (River in Mexico [6], for example, or “Tudor composer [4]”) while the hard crosswords require a lot of that and lateral thinking as well (e.g. “Cleaning Goetz’s body part [4-2-4]”, or “Tired love is wearing [8]). If you know the answers send them to me at ronaldjbird@bigfoot.com.
Oh, so you like tests? Try these too:
1. How long is a fathom?
2. How long is a chain?
3. How long is a cable-length?
4. What is a jicama?
Winners may be sent one of the above as a prize.
GETTING TO ACAPULCO; LEARNING A LESSON THE HARD WAY; GETTING SETTLED IN ACAPULCO
At anchor in Acapulco Harbour, Guerrero, Mexico, Wednesday, 15 March 2006
We finally got here, entering the big wide harbour mouth at sunrise this morning, and having motored the whole way. A few hours after left Pampanoa yesterday noon the wind dropped and the seas flattened until they were like glass. Thank goodness we had the awning up! Without it we would have been fried! At one point we had the BRD and the staysail up and tried sailing. But soon we had to haul the BRD in, leaving the staysail up to catch whatever zephyrs happened our way and to act as a steadying sail.
Learning a lesson the hard way
We were tooting along at well over five knots when we realised that we would arrive in Acapulco about 0300 and then have to stand off until daybreak before entering what for us is a new harbour. We don’t do that so we throttled the engine back until we were doing between 3.5 and 4 knots. To do that it seemed that we had to cut the engine back by quite a bit and couldn’t get her slowed down. Strange! But it was a lesson for us for our coming bluewater passage.
A boat is like a bicycle; the faster you go the more energy is required for each incremental bit of speed. A boat has a maximum speed in still water (disregarding currents) – this is called Hull Speed - based upon its length at the waterline (LWD or Length of Designed Waterline). In still water (i.e. no currents) the boat cannot exceed its Hull Speed no matter how much you pour on the coal. There is a formula for calculating Hull Speed but the essential bit is that, the longer the LWD, the higher the Hull Speed. Big container ships can travel at 25 knots (they have a restriction on their top speed as well, of course) while little ol’ Vilisar with it approx. 34 feet probably has a Hull Speed of only about 6 knots (I don’t have an accurate measurement for our LWD so have never calculated Hull Speed exactly).
The obverse rule, I was made to realise yesterday, is that each marginal cut in speed will not reduce the boats speed equally. The first cuts don’t do very much to slow you down. In practical terms, if you don’t push the engine to get top speed you will burn fuel far more efficiently. Do you see where this is going? Assuming that on a long bluewater passage where you have lots of time but only a finite amount of fuel on board, it is better to sacrifice a little top speed in order to save fuel. If we are becalmed in the Doldrums north of the Equator on the passage to The Galapagos Islands and we decide to use the engine, we can get much better mileage if we travel at three knots rather than push for 5.5 knots. Experience shows that even in lighter winds you can often get 2 or 3 knots out of a boat even in what appear to be quite negligible winds. That’s why we fly the BRD, a lightweight head sail for light following breezes. Using headsails (sails in front of the mainmast) for downwind sailing instead of the mainsail (behind the mast) also balances the boat much better – pull-me sails rather than push-me sails – makes it possible also to use the windvane steering effectively.
So, although our original intent was simply to slow Vilisar down by cutting the engine rpm’s so we wouldn’t arrive in the dark, we learned a useful lesson. Running the engine slower also meant that the engine also ran much cooler, something that in the tropics is devoutly to be wished. The only thing we sacrificed was time and we had and will have plenty of that. It’s a lesson in patience too.
This whole learning thing is about the only aspect of our voyage from Zihuatanejo to Acapulco that compensates for the fact that we had a boring motor passage while at least two other boats that we know of – Sisustl and Morova left Zihua later on the same day and were able to sail the whole way in one go because they took advantage of the winds on Monday while we put into Pampanoa and for the night and fell into the next day of no wind at all. That’s another lesson we learned the hard way: if there are winds forecast take advantage of them now!
Well, at least we had a full moon to sail by. The sea was lit up as if it were daylight. We stood two-hour watches, which seemed less onerous at night than our normal three-hour gigs. We still don’t have our tiller pilot rigged. But with bungee cords attached to the tiller the watchkeeper could read or watch the dolphins that accompanied our boat at night or just sit and watch the sea. Yesterday afternoon we played canasta in the cockpit and fixed a lunch of eggs, frijoles and chorizo and a light evening snack of jicama with lemon juice and dried jalapeños sprinkled on top followed by Kathleen’s dark bread with slices of goat cheese. The voyage was a little tiring, of course, but it was actually kind of fun.
It was cool enough under our awning to be out on deck all day and it was warm enough even at night to wear essentially nothing until shortly before dawn when the land breezes brought the intense smell of the land to us. Motoring is not our favourite activity. But you couldn’t fault the climate.
Getting settled in Acapulco
I am at the helm when our perfectly timed approach brings us to the Boca Grande (Big Entrance) just as it is getting light. A long line of sports-fishing boats are heading out with tourists for day on the water; they wave to me sitting on the boom gallows and steering with a foot on the tiller. The sun comes over the mountain to the east as we turn into the inner bay and begin to look around for the Yacht Club anchorage.
We spotted the boat basin easily. The marina is full of big motor yachts, no doubt that go with the spectacular houses hanging from the cliffs that you pass coming in. But I see Al’s boat S/V Monrova on a buoy and over there is Neil’s sailboat with its yellow sail covers and yellow and white-striped striped sun-awning. Sisiutl, I think, was heading for the marina yesterday.
The buildings are packed together on the hills all about the anchorage, and there are lots of high-rises scattered higgledy-piggledy up and down the hills. There are a surprising number of empty shells. Big ones too. There aren’t that many beaches here in Acapulco Bay, in case you’re wondering. Over along the eastern side the towers are huge, hotels likely. I guess people come to swim in the pool.
We are approached by a man named Angel in a rubber dinghy who wants to offer us a mooring buoy at US$ 8 per day. We say we prefer to anchor and leave him. We actually do anchor though it is very difficult to find a suitable spot in water depths that are manageable for a boat without a power-anchor windlass. Most of the free spots are at least twenty or thirty metres deep; the attractive spots, of course, are filled with mooring buoys. At last we find a spot in just over thirty feet, however, and drop the hook. We don’t have much room to swing. Half an hour later as we are settling down to breakfast, a panga comes by and the Mexican chap politely suggests we might find it a bit dangerous where we are parked because the big day-tripper boats need “our” space to swing around to their dock. In a hard wind they are a little unmanageable and can easily collide with us. I consider briefly just ignoring this advice. But eventually we up anchor and try another spot nearby only to find that our anchor will not set; it simply drags over rocks. Finally, tail between our legs, we head over to find one of Angel’s mooring buoys. Even that has its trials since the one we tie up to initially turns out to be wrong and, when he finally returns, he moves us to another one. Two anchoring attempts and two mooring buoys! Practice maketh a man perfect! By 1000 we are at last settled, and sea breezes have sprung up and are being funnelled through the anchorage to keep us cool under our awning. (Where were they yesterday when we needed them?)
We are not sure where we are going to get the money for moorage since we only have Pesos 80 (ca. US$ 8) in hand and it will cost us another US$ 5 to land the dinghy each day at La Marina not to mention bus fares into town and the cost of groceries. We might be able to swing things for the four days that Kathleen’s Mum and sister are here. But then we shall likely have to move to an outer bay, Bahia de Marques, a long way out of town and landing through the surf). We can perhaps come back for a day when Andrew arrives on 28 March for the Galapagos passage. Looks like no more beer for a while. I wonder if Sebastian has paid me. Kathleen heads into the forecastle to catch up on her sleep while I drag out the laptop and sit out in the cockpit to write this. We’ll launch the dinghy and deal with Acapulco later today. I think I need a nap too.
Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico, Thursday, 09 March 2006
Zihuatanejo! What a Town!
Now this is a really nice place! Zihuatanejo, “Zihua” (as even Mexican bus-drivers sometimes call it) or “Z-Town”, as Americans affectionately refer to the place, has managed to retain much of its small-town atmosphere. There are no large hotels, though there are lots of small ones. On the periphery there are a few big supermarkets but in town the Tiendas are all small. Many of the streets are blocked to vehicular traffic, which makes walking a treat. There is a nice mix of tourists, tourist restaurants and trinket shops cheek by jowl with local, home-grown activities like hardware, clothing, cobblers, appliance and food shops, not to mention a proper Mercado and an outdoor basketball court smack in the middle of the town where it faces the beach. While there is a small dock or breakwall behind which the Armada Mexicana have a small station, there are dozens of fishing pangas drawn up on the beach and a palm-shaded area in front of rows of beach-front dining establishments where fishermen hang out and keep their storage boxes, and where fish are laid out on tarps for purchase. Of course, there are multitudes of children of all ages and no small number of slow-moving and frequently somewhat mangy dogs walking or lying about. In Mexico only the dogs inside fences bark; the free-range hounds simply gaze at you and amble out of the way. Daytime or evening, there are lots of people about.
The sports fishing fleet has commandeered the best sheltered area over near the breakwall. About half a mile away, out at Playa Ropa (so named for a Spanish wreck containing silks that once washed up there), there are a couple of dozen sailboats with US or Canadian flags and in the smaller, inner bay another dozen anchored. When we arrived on Saturday, we settled the boat at the far end of this small, circular, inner bay in front of the town. It is in fact quite a row to the other end of the beach where the surf is the least threatening for landing. But where we are the daytime sea breezes keep Vilisar’s bow pointed at the long swells coming in from the Pacific, and the gentle land winds at night swing us completely around to face the beach so that our stern is pointed at the swells. We are therefore always refreshed by breezes while the boat itself pitches slightly or simply rides up and down on the swells but does not roll.
We have run into a few old acquaintances here: Kurt aboard S/V Sea Reach out of Nanaimo, BC; Alex and Susan on S/V Mai Tai Roa (spelling); Stephane and family on the gaff-rigged converted lifeboat S/V Emigrants from France, for example. Al and Judy are here aboard S/V Monrova out of Vancouver; and so is Maggie aboard S/V Kismet; and Lew, Oy and their 10-year-old daughter, Merritt, aboard their sailboat from Portland, Oregon. And we have also met some new people: experienced South-Sea sailor Chuck with Linda aboard S/V Jacaranda, San Diego; Ron and Linda on S/V Morning Star II out of San Diego; Frenchman Bernard single-handing aboard S/V Honu out of San Francisco; Penny and Phil on the catamaran Sisiutl out of Seattle; and Harald, currently ashore looking for a crew position on a vessel heading south.
We are still scratching our heads about a visitor who, according to Susan on S/V Mai Tai Roa, came by while we were ashore the other day: Howard, a Canadian who insisted on coming by before departing to the Marquesas as a crewman aboard S/V Aquarelle. We wonder if it might not have been Howard Lund of Long Beach, California, but Susan insists he is a Canadian. We are puzzled. One day, perhaps, the puzzle will be solved.
Zihuatanejo is definitely hotter than, say, Barra de Navidad. The water here, a little murky here in the bay, has already reached 80° F. Daytime air temperatures are now in the low 90s. If there is no breeze it definitely feels hot and we are happy to have the awning up. We have also begun using the swatches of “Cooleroo”-brand artificial sun-shading material to keep the direct sun off the skylight and to keep the cabin from heating up. We also use this material for side-curtains that we hang from the brown-canvas awning with clothes-pegs. It is much hotter in town where the sea breezes cannot penetrate; I have no idea how anyone can stand it there in the summer. I imagine a hurricane passing through must at least appeal for its cooling impact.
This is the southern terminus for Mexican cruising boats, we are told. In another month most if not all of the cruising boats will have left here. It’s one hundred miles and at least one overnight to Acapulco. Boats that are not heading back up to summer over in the Sea of Cortés or to be hauled out at Puerta Vallarta, Mazatlán, La Paz or San Carlos will, like us, be jumping off from here for longer passages to other countries: southeast down the coast to Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama; westward to French Polynesia or Hawaii; or south and east to The Galapagos and/or Ecuador. The cruisers here organise small seminars for themselves where the more experienced sailors give them tips about dealing with new waters. Chuck of S/V Jacaranda spent ten years in the South Pacific and had lots of good tips. The talk is of cruising guides, dealing with southern-hemisphere weather, attractive places to visit; entry and cruising permits; fuel and water sources; anchoring techniques for deep coral lagoons, etc. Some cruisers have also banded together to get good deals on provisioning from the one or two big supermarkets here. This morning, for example, they were headed up to Commerciale Mexicana to make arrangements with the butcher to prepare meats for them. After they go together to buy a side of beef or pork, the store will cut it and wrap it into one-pound packages and then freeze it for the end-users who will then store it all in their freezers back aboard. This sounds great. But, without refrigeration, it is out of the question for us. We have to find non-perishable foods.
In one sense we are not so eager to get to Acapulco. We could just as easily replenish here for our two or three-week offshore voyage to Isla San Cristobal. Zihuatanejo has everything we need and we can anchor here for free. In Acapulco, on the other hand, it reportedly costs US$10 a night (APPI fees) just to anchor off in the large commercial port, and between twenty and thirty dollars (sic) a day simply to land your dinghy at a yachting facility. We were originally going to meet friends from Chicago in their time-share apartment there and so everything else became organised around Acapulco too; i.e. the visit of Kathleen’s mother and sister, and the arrival of son Andrew to crew with us to The Galapagos; provisioning for the bluewater passage. I am sure it will work out but we have decided to leave it till the last minute to arrive in Acapulco and will therefore leave here next Monday or Tuesday, putting in only at Bahia de Tequepa before we embark on the overnight to Acapulco. I can give the boat bull and prop another scrub before we get settled in a dirtier commercial harbour.
Looking for ways out of the financial squeeze
Our financial situation is really miserable after prepaying some child support and buying Andrew’s airline tickets to here and later back from Guayaquil. We decide to follow the advice of other “budget cruisers” and attend a presentation for a time-share.
Ten miles from here lies Ixtapa, the Mexican-Pacific’s answer to Cancun – in other words, a stamped-out-of-the desert city of full of flown-in-every-week-by-the bloody planeload tourists and time-sharers. All along the bay are tower hotels to house and entertain them: they’re just like the apartment buildings they live in back home! Forget Mexico! It’s the Poughkeepsie Riviera!) In Cabo San Lucas and Puerta Vallarta the streets swarm with young Mexican guys ready to chat you up and rope you into a time-share presentation. They offer as much as US$200 up there to get you to go along. In our desperation we jump a local, rattle-trap bus over to Ixtapa to make our fortunes listening to time-share sales pitches.
Sure enough, there they are, little so-called “Tourist Information” booths lining the boulevard that runs past all the multi-story hotels. We permit ourselves be drawn into conversation with a fresh-faced young man named Daniel. After a while I say we should be glad to go to the presentation, but, as in Cabo and PV, he should pay us some money. At first he declines, and we walk away thinking we need to perfect our non-pitch. A couple of blocks later, though, Daniel catches us up in a panel truck with “Royal Vacations” on the side and says he will give us $100 if we pass the pre-qualification stage (i.e. age, valid credit card, minimum income requirements, etc.) We agree, and he drives us to one of the hotels, leads us through to a sales centre, and introduces us. We pass the pre-qualifications, and he gives me his name-tag so I can find him later.
Right from the beginning, I tell everybody that we are interested, but under no circumstances will we sign anything today. Our friend Jens aboard S/V Veleda warned us to take this line; he himself used to sell time-shares. We are passed up through three separate salespersons: a very nice American man who warms us up with lots of positive comments about anything he can think of – “You live on a sailboat! Wow! That’s fantastic!” He also gives us a tour of one of the flats. Then we get a hard-nosed and clearly bored or exhausted but, of course, nicely dressed and coiffed Mexican lady who yawns continuously so I can see her tonsils while she talks to us like a machine. Three hours later, when we still have not signed, the head honcho, another American, goes to work on us. He does everything but tie his dick in a knot in order to get us to sign. Actually, I think he might also have done that if I had even hinted that it would lead to a signature. By the time he finally gives up, he has the price-and-benefits package structured so attractively that it is hard to refuse. But of course, we have no dough so, no matter how attractive, we cannot afford to bite. Thank God! No matter how great the package you still have to lay out some money up front and monthly and you have to pay for your flights to wherever it is you intend to hole up for a week or two. And how badly do we actually need a stay in an industrial-tourism plant anyway? We own the whole Pacific Ocean as it is! We don’t have to work for 50 weeks a year on the 45-year-plan to be able to afford things like two weeks here or in Cancun or wherever! Brian, “our representative”, keeps trying to identify what it is that we don’t like about “the concept” so he can work on that angle. Is it the money, or the company or the bennies? Meanwhile he pulls out all the stops and keeps adding more bennies. But I for my part just keep repeating my mantra, “The concept is very appealing. It’s just great, fact. But I simply do not sign on the same day!”
“Well,” he says trying not to show his frustration, “the special offer is off the table when you walk out of here.”
“Are you saying,” I reply, “that if I come back tomorrow morning and am willing to sign, you will not offer me this package?”
“Nope! That’s Mexican law.”
“Rubbish! Mexican law has nothing to say about that at all.” I say.
“Well, I can always go to my supervisor and I usually get what I want”
Aha! It’s all total bullshit, naturally. But we have been bullshitting just as much. Daniel, however, gets paid just to be the cowboy who ropes in passing tourists for a presentation, and he has a deal with us: we go to the presentation, and if we pass the initial screening he will get his pay. We leave the sales centre totally wrung out after four hours, hungry and depressed having only had a dried-up club sandwich to eat since early that morning.
Back on the street there is no Daniel. Nor anyone else, for that matter! Everybody seems to have disappeared for lunch.
“He’ll be soliciting at Elvira’s Restaurant in Zihua tonight,” one of his buddies says after we have waited several hours for them to get back from siesta break.
Needless to say, back in Zihuatanejo, Elvira’s Restaurant is closed on Mondays and there is of, course, no sign of Daniel. We check again the next night and see no trace of him then either. This morning we take the bus back over to Ixtapa and talk to his colleagues. We even go to their administrative offices.
“Daniel has quit and moved to Acapulco,” we are told by the receptionist, clearly trying to fob us off.
More BS! Well, we didn’t solve our financial problems by doing time-share presentations, or least we have not solved them yet. But we did come out of it with a bottle of Tequila and a bottle of Kahlua.
Drown your sorrows Captain Ronnie, Boy Spot-Welding-King-of-the-World; Captain Epoxy!
WHAT BUGS US MOST!
Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico, Friday, 10 March 2006
What bugs us most!
About ten days ago we first noticed them: two types of creepy-crawlies. One is a small, black beetle (it doesn’t look like a cockroach, at least); the other is an insect with wings that it doesn’t seem to use. It could be that they are the same bug, but one is a juvenile. Switch on a light suddenly at night and you are likely to see one or the other of them standing motionless in the corner of the galley counter or along the wooden coaming above the port settee. I also saw one way back up on the galley stove. Lunge at them and you will witness a new definition of “fleet of foot” (or perhaps fleet of feet). They’re tough to catch and they are seemingly crush-proof. I kill about three out of every four I go for. Kathleen first freezes and squeals but has taken, however, half-heartedly, to attacking them, having first given them a reprieve by waving her hands at them. I suggest she should shout “Argh!”, like a pirate. Maybe they will jump ship.
We have been well over four years aboard and have never had bugs. But this is the tropics and bugs can be a problem. Books on cruising recommend you never bring any cardboard on board or can with labels on them since cockroaches – cucarachas! - lay eggs there. It’s a lot of work to strip and label all the cans especially when you are anchored off and we have never actually done it. Mind you, we don’t use many cans anyway. But we do stock up from time to time. Eggs come in cardboard cartons, of course. Maybe the bugs came from there. They just don’t seem like cockroaches.
Last week Kathleen emptied all the Ziplocked bags of flour and other dry comestibles out of the dry-storage well behind the galley sink, cleaned everything with a strong bleach and soap solution, inundated the whole box with roach spray and clapped the lid back on the unit. Then she inspected each of the bags for weevils or other non-vegetarian matter. Nothing! Eventually everything went back in, but the bugs are still in evidence. These guys can multiply very quickly so we do something fast about it.
Enter Rick, the owner of the bar in town of the same name. He is a great resource for any cruisers coming into Zihuatanejo and was himself once a cruiser. His bar has fresh-water showers, laundry machines and computers; not to mention beer on tap, CNN; i.e. all the things cruisers normally need. He speaks Spanish fluently and knows where to get help for you in town. Despite the fact that he seems to be working like a dog, he always has time for your problems.
He thinks that an exterminator is the only way to go and he calls one up that he wants to use himself. His whole two-story restaurant cost only Pesos 400 the last time so it should not be too expensive even given our pinch. We should pick the guy up from the beach tomorrow morning at 1000.
After checking our emails and using our new credit card again to raise some cash, we drop by the mercado to buy fruit and vegetables, corn tortillas, eggs and one or two other items. It’s nice to be able to feed ourselves for a few days for only a few dollars.
Bernard of S/V Honu is leaving today for the U.S.A. for a couple of weeks. When he came over for dinner last night he brought us a couple of bags of fresh veggies and fruits and a huge amount of cheese. He doesn’t eat meat so he also made us a salad of raw beets and carrot chips (he normally grinds them but we don’t have a grinder) that he marinated in lime juice, salt and dried pepper flakes. Delicious! For the main course we had boiled potatoes and blue-fin tuna steaks fried in oil, ginger, garlic and onions. The fish, which tasted like red meat and was super-delicious, was sent over to us by Lew and Oy and their daughter Merritt. They are cruising aboard a small sailboat out of Portland, Oregon. Lew told us that this was the first time he had ever caught a fish and didn’t really know how to fillet it. They cannot store a whole 20-pound tuna and shared it with us. Now this is my idea of hunting and gathering! Later in Rick’s I explained to him how to fillet fish the way Susan on S/V Liberty Card taught me last year in the Sea of Cortés.
Lew is a pretty interesting guy and one of several Americans we have met in Zihua who have more or less turned their backs on the U.S.A. Lew won’t fly the US flag. He doesn’t even have a name on his sailboat. It is not uncommon to find people in the cruising community who have exiled themselves. There are two kinds: the ones who find the whole, high-maintenance urban lifestyle “bullshit” and those who are disgusted with the current government and its illegal and immoral behaviour both at home but especially abroad. There currently seems to be no alternatives for them that have any chance of succeeding. The Democrats are Bush Lite. There are some conservative “libertarians” who don’t want to pay US taxes because there is too much government and anyway, we’re not using the highways anyway.
This second group seems pretty limited but I don’t have any problems with the first category and clearly there is almost nobody in the political spectrum in the U.S.A. who is seriously opposing Bush et alia. The last Federal-Election campaign was a farce, surely. Have we ever seen anyone so klutzy as John Kerry? Even people like Hillary Clinton signed on for the duration. Comic figures. (“Don’t get me going!”)
The old saying, “My country, right or wrong!” can have several layers of meaning. If it is just blind obedience to whatever the government says, that is surely misconceived and you have essentially abandoned your critical faculties and your responsibilities as a citizen in a republic in favour of Cadavergehorsamskeit, as the Germans call it (the loyalty of a cadaver). It is the loyalty of the SS camp guard.
At another level, however, I have a responsibility to correct abuses, evils, etc. because it is my country. I encourage all of my American friends to try to get rid of the Bush-Cheney cancer in the body politic. You don’t have to emigrate to Canada. Nice as it is, Canada has a lot of problems of its own to deal with. It’s your country! Right the wrongs!
WAITING FOR ANTONIO; MONEY IN THE BANK; OFF TO ACAPULCO
In transit from Zihuatanejo to Acapulco, Monday, 13 March 2006
Waiting for Antonio
Rick had arranged for the fumigadoro to show up at the dinghy beach at 1000 on Saturday morning. We spent Friday night and early Saturday morning clearing out all the food and sensitive items so the spraying could be done quickly and efficiently. Early on Saturday we move Vilisar closer to the dinghy beach so I won’t have to spend so much time and energy transporting the guy out to the boat and back and then we go ashore to be there punctually at 1000.
Kathleen goes off to check her emails while I wait. I chat in broken Spanish with an 18-year-old (he appears that old, at least) marine sentry at the barracks by the beach. He is wearing immaculate battle fatigues with polished jump boots, metal helmet and a bullet-proof vest. He carries a rifle and has eight or ten 20-round spare magazines in pouches so he has about 100 or more rounds on his body. He tells me it gets really hot in all this gear. Daily temperatures are heading for the 90s now. On the beach in front of the gate where he stands watch is a fenced off area to protect the eggs laid there by green sea turtles. It looks like he is guarding them. I also watch Mexican kids frolicking in the water, their mother sitting in the shade with a toddler. None of the kids wears a bathing suit; they just swim and play in street clothes. That’s pretty typical. A cruise ship is in and the mole is busy with tourist coming ashore and people selling fishing tours, golfing, etc.
After an hour I head over to Rick’s Bar. He tells me that they called to say they couldn’t make it after all. Then he calls them up and they agree to come at noon. I sit around reading and talking to other cruisers. About 1400 three guys show up. At first I think I shall be rowing them all out to Vilisar. Rub-dub-dub! In the end only Antonio comes with me. About twenty, he is clearly nervous about being in the dinghy and clutches his spray things for support. On board, he starts spraying and I direct him. Everywhere around the galley sink, dry storage, the cupboard under the sink, the storage spaced for cleaning materials by the steps, all around the stove, under the settees and all around the water tanks there, under the cabin sole after I tear open the floorboards. I don’t spray the forecastle because we have never seen any bugs there. Twenty minutes later we are on the way back to shore and the whole thing cost about $15 though I gave the money to Rick and he will just put it all together with his bill when the guy comes to do his kitchen.
That night, when we get back on the boat, there are a few groggy bugs staggering around. The next morning I saw a couple too. But since then we have seen no more. Maybe we were lucky and were able to nip all this in the bud. We surely do not want a plague of them while we are on a long passage next month. It turned out, of course, also be an opportunity – let’s call it that - to clean everything including all the dishes and bottles and spice jars.
Money in the bank
Thank you, thank you Sebastian, for the translating job! I got a four-page legal translation from the agency in Germany that will bring in € 200. If Sebastian pays me promptly we might not actually have to declare bankruptcy, after all. I sat all day Sunday in the shade just outside Rick’s Bar and did the translation. I made sure I did not pull up another chair to the table since that it only encourages people to sit down and have a longer chat. Friends and acquaintances would come by but only stay a few minutes.
Sisiutl
We have met Penny and Phil, a really nice couple aboard what they call the sailing cat(amaran) Sisiutl. They are from the US west coast and have been cruising up in Alaska and the Charlottes and are now on the way to Central America, though I think, like us, that this is one of those vague plans to which cruisers adhere to strictly. We have spent a couple of evenings with them and really enjoy their company since they are not part of your typical beach-holiday-on-a-boat crowd who have little or no intention of going offshore. We had a delicious Thai-chicken dinner with them on Sisisutl (B.C. native word for some sort of double-headed sea creature or god) on a very bumpy bay last night (there have been big though slow swells here the last day or two).
Off to Acapulco
It was too dark and bumpy to put the dinghy on deck last night. Going to bed, we set the alarm for 0545, but both of us toss and turn most of the night knowing we shall be moving again today. I am awake and reading from about 0430. When the alarm goes off it is still very dark, and we wait till 0630 when there is enough light to get the dinghy unbolted, separated into two parts, lifted and stowed onto the foredeck. The bottom of the dinghy is surprisingly clean considering that Vilisar’s hull had quite a bit of green whiskers at and plant growth below the waterline when I tried cleaning it yesterday afternoon during my swim.
I am rather hesitant to do much swimming off the boat here. For one thing, the water is pretty murky at best and dirty and possibly polluted at worst. For another, some people say the crocs from the lagoon swim here too though nobody who has told me this has actually seen one anywhere near where we are, and they have never lost a tourist or local yet to the beasties. I come back dripping on deck and covered in sea lice. They live in the marine growth that I have just scraped off. They can be brushed off and they squirm and die out of the water. They feel a little icky, though. There is actually quite a lot of fauna down there including little crabs that crawl up the rudder from underneath the boat where they too live in the marine growth. Maybe there is a fumigadoro for all that too. All-in-all, my enthusiasm for swimming is, shall we say, dampened. I originally only jumped in for a quick wash and to cool off. But that’s when I saw that some cleaning was required before our trip. I got out the plastic scraper and did what I could reach without mask and flippers. The prop felt rough but not encrusted. Maybe I can do more if and when we reach our destination of Punta de Pampanao today, there is still enough daylight, the water is clear, shark- and crocodile-free, and I can screw up my courage and enthusiasm to the sticking point. A clean bottom and propeller saves diesel fuel and motoring time. That ought to help me get going. Although we seem to be going very slowly coming out of Zihuatenejo this morning, we are actually going 4.5 – 5.5 knots. That’s normal for us.
We listened to the Southbound Ham Net last night with Phil and Penny. Sainted Don of meteorological fame predicts 15-20 from the W today and Tuesday and the seas, although fairly large, are slow (17 seconds). We might actually be able to sail at least part of it today. We have a little less than half a tank of fuel, which should get us to Acapulco and to spare if we do have to motor it all. But it would be nice to sail.
We pass a cruise ship coming in for the day as we get Vilisar headed out to sea. First we pass Sisiutl to holler good-bye. We visited Kurt, our Danish-Canadian friend yesterday afternoon before he sets off on his single-handed voyage to French Polynesia. He will likely leave on Tuesday. Hearing bon voyage twice certainly can’t hurt so we also tootled past S/V Sea Reach to say farewell. His dinghy is there but no response from below. Fair winds and following seas, Kurt!
PUNTA DE PAMPANOA
In Transit to Acapulco, Tuesday, 14 March 2006
Yesterday turns out to be a long, hot day. Our total distance is only less than 40 Nm and, leaving as we did at dawn and making about 5 knots we made it in eight hours. But until the last couple of hours the only breeze we have we make ourselves by motorsailing. The Horse Latitudes! About noon a wind does come up from behind but not enough to help us much. We had thought about waiting till later in the day to leave Zihuatanejo. But since the sea breezes don’t come up till about noon anyway and only get some useful muscle about mid-afternoon, we would not have made our anchorage by nightfall.
About and hour after we get our anchor down behind the first of two breakwalls at Punta de Pampanao, get the awning rigged and a cuppa char in our hands, we hear Sisiutl hailing us on Channel 16. The transmission is quite broken up but they are not too far away. They have decided to bypass Pampanoa and sail through the night on their catamaran to Acapulco. By the time this is written they should already be at the Club de Yates. Their cat is much faster than we are and probably needs less wind to get her skirts up.
Pampanoa is probably our penultimate stop before Archipel de Colón (the Galapagos Archipelago), and very likely the last quiet one. Acapulco is a big city and a big port. Kathleen and Vickere, Kathleen’s mother and sister, arrive tomorrow in Acapulco. In a couple of weeks my son Andrew arrives and shortly thereafter – April Fools? – we head offshore. Both Kathleen and I are still feeling fairly sanguine about the bluewater passage, where other big jumps in the past – e.g. from Cape Flattery to the Golden Gate - gave us heart palpitations in advance. We talk about our feelings for these steps, trying to hear if there are any concerns that the other has. My only concern is whether our old sails will hold up. Our new acquaintance, Chuck on Jacaranda, said he never used his mainsail in the South Pacific and, if there were no winds, he just waited. He sailed to Fiji on three gallons of fuel, i.e. just getting in and out of harbours and lagoons.
To pass the morning and to appear busy while Kathleen is baking belowdecks, I repair the dinghy seat by setting bronze screws. Of course the battery-operated hand drill is dead and, using the brace, I break off one of my good drill bits. But eventually it is done. At some point I shall fill the screw heads and paint the whole seat again. After Acapulco it will be stowed in the forecastle for the offshore voyage (You see! It’s on my mind all the time now!).
That little job completed, I get out the fins, snorkel and mask to clean the hull again. It was not possible to see clearly enough underwater in Zihuatanejo. The prop has picked up some more barnacles, of course. I scrape and use the stiff wire brush to get nearly all of it off. Then I make the circle around the hull from stern to bow and back down the other side scraping the little black furry things off as far down as I can reach. This is about 75 % of the way to the bottom of the keel. In the swells that are coming into the harbour, the boat tends to hit you on the head with a thump when you swim down. I also do not have weights to get near near-neutral buoyancy, which also makes it more difficult. I have come to accept “good” over “best” here. Before we leave Acapulco we shall stop at the outer cove and do the bottom again, I am sure.
Well, we are motorsailing today. After a little calculating, we decided to leave once the wind started up today. Promptly at noon, we had the anchor up and were motoring out from behind the breakwall and out around the point. For some reason, the swells near the shore seem to be much bigger and certainly more confused as we get waves ricocheting off the rocks to meet the swells coming in. We have not hoisted the mainsail which would certainly steady us.
Our tactic for today is to use the BRD (Big Red Drifter), possibly together with the staysail. In other words, we shall try Chuck’s approach and use only headsails. Since we have to go to windward to get around the point, however, we are motoring and have no steadying sail up. This makes a big difference in how much one rolls around. We pass a number of panga fishermen and a diving panga and once we are out a ways I fly the BRD. There still is not enough wind for it to help us much but at least there is enough wind to keep it filled with air. This comes from the fact that we do not have the mainsail up. If it were it would partially block the flow of following breezes to the headsails.
The secret reason for not raising the main is that, with it down, we can leave the awning rigged. Yesterday was very exhausting in the sun. I can take it but it is unpleasant and, by late in the day, you are getting tired and dehydrated no matter how much you drink. The electrolytes help. But you are wiped out anyway. Today we shall be in the shade!
While we waited for the wind this morning Kathleen baked a loaf of bread since our last tortillas turned mouldy. We ate Huevos Rancheros without tortillas! Yesterday we had Quesadillas with refried beans and salsa for dinner. The leftover beans – made from canned refritos (just add oil, sautéed onions and salsa) - along with eggs sunny side up made up our breakfast. An hour later we were sampling fresh dark-bread with country honey. Delicious! I love Mexican food! So far we have not bothered to make our own flour or corn tortillas but this may change. Certainly in stocking up for the long passage we will be buying refritos and other Mexican-food items and will learn to make our own tortillas.
Kathleen has found the perfect time-passer for when she is on watch: SODUKO puzzles. Our friend, Bob Ferguson, introduced her to them, and Kathleen brought several books of them back with her from Germany. She can sit in the cockpit with the tiller on a bungee cord and look up occasionally to make corrections without it distracting her from what she is doing. The amazing thing is that she can do even the hard ones.
I have no interest really. So she ordered a book of the easier Guardian Crossword Puzzles for me. I cannot do the hard crosswords. The so-called easy ones are not that simple either. The difference is that the easier ones require an encyclopaedic general knowledge (River in Mexico [6], for example, or “Tudor composer [4]”) while the hard crosswords require a lot of that and lateral thinking as well (e.g. “Cleaning Goetz’s body part [4-2-4]”, or “Tired love is wearing [8]). If you know the answers send them to me at ronaldjbird@bigfoot.com.
Oh, so you like tests? Try these too:
1. How long is a fathom?
2. How long is a chain?
3. How long is a cable-length?
4. What is a jicama?
Winners may be sent one of the above as a prize.
GETTING TO ACAPULCO; LEARNING A LESSON THE HARD WAY; GETTING SETTLED IN ACAPULCO
At anchor in Acapulco Harbour, Guerrero, Mexico, Wednesday, 15 March 2006
We finally got here, entering the big wide harbour mouth at sunrise this morning, and having motored the whole way. A few hours after left Pampanoa yesterday noon the wind dropped and the seas flattened until they were like glass. Thank goodness we had the awning up! Without it we would have been fried! At one point we had the BRD and the staysail up and tried sailing. But soon we had to haul the BRD in, leaving the staysail up to catch whatever zephyrs happened our way and to act as a steadying sail.
Learning a lesson the hard way
We were tooting along at well over five knots when we realised that we would arrive in Acapulco about 0300 and then have to stand off until daybreak before entering what for us is a new harbour. We don’t do that so we throttled the engine back until we were doing between 3.5 and 4 knots. To do that it seemed that we had to cut the engine back by quite a bit and couldn’t get her slowed down. Strange! But it was a lesson for us for our coming bluewater passage.
A boat is like a bicycle; the faster you go the more energy is required for each incremental bit of speed. A boat has a maximum speed in still water (disregarding currents) – this is called Hull Speed - based upon its length at the waterline (LWD or Length of Designed Waterline). In still water (i.e. no currents) the boat cannot exceed its Hull Speed no matter how much you pour on the coal. There is a formula for calculating Hull Speed but the essential bit is that, the longer the LWD, the higher the Hull Speed. Big container ships can travel at 25 knots (they have a restriction on their top speed as well, of course) while little ol’ Vilisar with it approx. 34 feet probably has a Hull Speed of only about 6 knots (I don’t have an accurate measurement for our LWD so have never calculated Hull Speed exactly).
The obverse rule, I was made to realise yesterday, is that each marginal cut in speed will not reduce the boats speed equally. The first cuts don’t do very much to slow you down. In practical terms, if you don’t push the engine to get top speed you will burn fuel far more efficiently. Do you see where this is going? Assuming that on a long bluewater passage where you have lots of time but only a finite amount of fuel on board, it is better to sacrifice a little top speed in order to save fuel. If we are becalmed in the Doldrums north of the Equator on the passage to The Galapagos Islands and we decide to use the engine, we can get much better mileage if we travel at three knots rather than push for 5.5 knots. Experience shows that even in lighter winds you can often get 2 or 3 knots out of a boat even in what appear to be quite negligible winds. That’s why we fly the BRD, a lightweight head sail for light following breezes. Using headsails (sails in front of the mainmast) for downwind sailing instead of the mainsail (behind the mast) also balances the boat much better – pull-me sails rather than push-me sails – makes it possible also to use the windvane steering effectively.
So, although our original intent was simply to slow Vilisar down by cutting the engine rpm’s so we wouldn’t arrive in the dark, we learned a useful lesson. Running the engine slower also meant that the engine also ran much cooler, something that in the tropics is devoutly to be wished. The only thing we sacrificed was time and we had and will have plenty of that. It’s a lesson in patience too.
This whole learning thing is about the only aspect of our voyage from Zihuatanejo to Acapulco that compensates for the fact that we had a boring motor passage while at least two other boats that we know of – Sisustl and Morova left Zihua later on the same day and were able to sail the whole way in one go because they took advantage of the winds on Monday while we put into Pampanoa and for the night and fell into the next day of no wind at all. That’s another lesson we learned the hard way: if there are winds forecast take advantage of them now!
Well, at least we had a full moon to sail by. The sea was lit up as if it were daylight. We stood two-hour watches, which seemed less onerous at night than our normal three-hour gigs. We still don’t have our tiller pilot rigged. But with bungee cords attached to the tiller the watchkeeper could read or watch the dolphins that accompanied our boat at night or just sit and watch the sea. Yesterday afternoon we played canasta in the cockpit and fixed a lunch of eggs, frijoles and chorizo and a light evening snack of jicama with lemon juice and dried jalapeños sprinkled on top followed by Kathleen’s dark bread with slices of goat cheese. The voyage was a little tiring, of course, but it was actually kind of fun.
It was cool enough under our awning to be out on deck all day and it was warm enough even at night to wear essentially nothing until shortly before dawn when the land breezes brought the intense smell of the land to us. Motoring is not our favourite activity. But you couldn’t fault the climate.
Getting settled in Acapulco
I am at the helm when our perfectly timed approach brings us to the Boca Grande (Big Entrance) just as it is getting light. A long line of sports-fishing boats are heading out with tourists for day on the water; they wave to me sitting on the boom gallows and steering with a foot on the tiller. The sun comes over the mountain to the east as we turn into the inner bay and begin to look around for the Yacht Club anchorage.
We spotted the boat basin easily. The marina is full of big motor yachts, no doubt that go with the spectacular houses hanging from the cliffs that you pass coming in. But I see Al’s boat S/V Monrova on a buoy and over there is Neil’s sailboat with its yellow sail covers and yellow and white-striped striped sun-awning. Sisiutl, I think, was heading for the marina yesterday.
The buildings are packed together on the hills all about the anchorage, and there are lots of high-rises scattered higgledy-piggledy up and down the hills. There are a surprising number of empty shells. Big ones too. There aren’t that many beaches here in Acapulco Bay, in case you’re wondering. Over along the eastern side the towers are huge, hotels likely. I guess people come to swim in the pool.
We are approached by a man named Angel in a rubber dinghy who wants to offer us a mooring buoy at US$ 8 per day. We say we prefer to anchor and leave him. We actually do anchor though it is very difficult to find a suitable spot in water depths that are manageable for a boat without a power-anchor windlass. Most of the free spots are at least twenty or thirty metres deep; the attractive spots, of course, are filled with mooring buoys. At last we find a spot in just over thirty feet, however, and drop the hook. We don’t have much room to swing. Half an hour later as we are settling down to breakfast, a panga comes by and the Mexican chap politely suggests we might find it a bit dangerous where we are parked because the big day-tripper boats need “our” space to swing around to their dock. In a hard wind they are a little unmanageable and can easily collide with us. I consider briefly just ignoring this advice. But eventually we up anchor and try another spot nearby only to find that our anchor will not set; it simply drags over rocks. Finally, tail between our legs, we head over to find one of Angel’s mooring buoys. Even that has its trials since the one we tie up to initially turns out to be wrong and, when he finally returns, he moves us to another one. Two anchoring attempts and two mooring buoys! Practice maketh a man perfect! By 1000 we are at last settled, and sea breezes have sprung up and are being funnelled through the anchorage to keep us cool under our awning. (Where were they yesterday when we needed them?)
We are not sure where we are going to get the money for moorage since we only have Pesos 80 (ca. US$ 8) in hand and it will cost us another US$ 5 to land the dinghy each day at La Marina not to mention bus fares into town and the cost of groceries. We might be able to swing things for the four days that Kathleen’s Mum and sister are here. But then we shall likely have to move to an outer bay, Bahia de Marques, a long way out of town and landing through the surf). We can perhaps come back for a day when Andrew arrives on 28 March for the Galapagos passage. Looks like no more beer for a while. I wonder if Sebastian has paid me. Kathleen heads into the forecastle to catch up on her sleep while I drag out the laptop and sit out in the cockpit to write this. We’ll launch the dinghy and deal with Acapulco later today. I think I need a nap too.
posted by rjb @ Friday, March 17, 2006
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