Leaving Mexico  March 7 to March 9

Crossing the dreaded Tehautepec

As a cruiser we have all heard of the dreaded winds of the Tehautepec.  The winds can be very snotty and come up quickly, if you are caught out away from the shore.  The winds are gap winds and are caused by conditions in the Gulf of Mexico.  A high pressure over Texas will cause the winds to accelerate through the isthmus of Mexico and blow several hundred miles offshore.  At Marina Chahué Enrique, the harbor master, keeps a watchful eye on the wind to allow cruisers to make good decisions on their crossing.  When the winds are light there are two different approaches to this 270nm crossing.  One is to keep one foot on the beach as they say, in other words, you are close to shore so that you can run for cover if needed, staying close doesn't give the wind sufficient fetch to build up big seas but close means within a mile or so.  Kinda scary at night with lousy charts.  The other approach is when you have a calm weather window; you go straight across the bay and hope that all weather predictions were correct.

We had returned from our Oaxaca road trip on Monday thinking that the window was going to be Thursday.  Using a wealth of weather web sites, we say that Saturday was a good day and that by Sunday it would be flat calm.  Now being a sailboat we don’t really want flat calm, but you don’t want it to all of a sudden blow 35kts either. We had filled out all our paper work, met with Enrique who was nice enough to check all our work, and then Enrique took Hank and eight other cruisers who were leaving over the weekend to the Port Captain's office to get our Zarpe. The Zarpe is needed to check out of one country and to check into the next country.  Our paper work was ready late in the afternoon and we were cleared to go.   Five boats headed out that Saturday morning, Lost Elvis and Equinox left at 9AM and Effie, Inspiration, and Eos departed at 10AM. Originally we were going to go up to the 16 parallel, follow it over toward land, and then do a rum line down to El Salvador.  After about an hour Lost Elvis said they had a phone message from their weather router recommending a straight across approach.  We all decided to take the chance and head east.  We were going to keep in touch by SSB at 12 :00 and 24:00 so that if we got out of VHF range we could still communicate.  Later we changed the time to include 06:00 and 1800 so that we knew how everyone was right before it got dark.  The boats separated into two groups moving right along for we had a great aft current.  For the first 24 hours we had winds ranging from 1 to 7 knots, now you know for sure that the engine was on, and we were going about 7ks.  Hank caught a nice Dorado and then he released the next 4 for they were all about the same size and we felt one was enough for the time being. 

The following morning we were looking back at our lure, which was a cedar plug and saw a green flash strike at it.  Unfortunately that is all we saw, for the line never went taut, in fact when a touched it, I realized that it was limp.  The large Dorado had struck, the lure was in its lip, but the line broke and now we saw the fish jumping until he got the hook out of its mouth.  Oh, well, we could almost taste that nice looking fish!   Hank was upset to say the least as it was our most successful lure.  When we got to El Salvador he ordered three more and had our daughter bring them down.  More on her adventure in a later post. 

Sailing that day was good in the afternoon.  We got to turn off the motor and go for about 5 hours. Finally it was getting dark and Lost Elvis radioed that they were just putting down the hook at the bar going into Bahia de Sol. Their 8ks of motoring had paid off for them.  They had made the passage from Hautulco to Bahia de Sol in only two nights.   We were envious thinking that they would be getting a good night’s sleep at anchor while we were still underway for a third night.  Later we learned that they had had a rough night with an almost 45 degree roll.

 We arrived at the sandbar meeting spot about 9AM.  The high tide would be at 2PM and the panga would be coming about 1 to start taking the boats into the estuary.  By one o’clock, the two other boats had arrived so there would be 4 boats to do the bar crossing before the tide started to change. It was good that we got there early for we had time to rest, get everything stowed away securely, and even have a shared beer.  The crossing is much worse when you are watching than when you are actually doing it.  For Betsy the hardest part was getting the anchor up, for being in the surf as we were, the chain seemed to have a mind of its own.  You had to be so careful to have your foot on the windless brake, bring the chain in as the boat went down, and stop it as it rose with the wave action. Fingers have been lost with chains and windlass accidents, so she did a great job, all fingers were intact.   If you did not get this down the chain would be pulled out by the strength of the wave action.  Finally she got it up, and we proceeded to get in line behind Lost Elvis.  We listened to the Spanish directions of how you were to go at maximum speed when told, and to slow down when waiting for a wave to roll by the boat.  Follow me became very important!  Since we were not able to take pictures as we were talking on the radio and driving all pictures are of Lost Elvis as they went across the bar.

 When it was time to take Equinox over the bar, Hank did a great job of driving and following the directions.  The boat had a natural reaction to want to round up into the wave, so Hank had to constantly correct. Finally we were through the sandbar and the panga driver, Rogilio, told us to go straight and then left for he needed to back for another boat.  We looked at each other and wondered were we really through for we saw waves behind us, but we also saw waves still in front of us.  Motoring on, we came to a wide estuary and saw the marina on the left.  Lost Elvis was already tied to a slip and we were directed to take the slip B11.  All seemed so much easier now that it was over!   It was truely Miller time or in this case Pilsner, the local brew available at Bahia for $1.00.  Hank and Thea from Lost Elvis pose with one of a few Pilsners that we relieved the bar of that day.  This bar was much more fun than the entrance bar. 

We had made it to El Salvador right before their presidential election, and we were told that although it was only Tuesday, we might want to know that there would be no alcohol sold from Friday through the following Monday night.