Dodgem in the dark

Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico

We are back to being a motor vessel again.

We left Manzanillo around 12:30 PM, after topping up our diesel at the Pemex station at the marina - lots of fun at a very surgey dock in maybe 7 or 8 feet of water.

My fears for this coast were correct.  We had very light winds throughout the two-day cruise, only once did it get over 10 knots and that was only for a few hours.  The winds came from the SW most of the day, usually less than 5 knots, shifting to the east in the early morning.  The good thing about the lack of wind was the flat seas, with at most a 2 to 4 foot swell - it made us rock around a bit, but was overall very mild.  Susanne did not get sick until the 2nd night, when the swell direction changed - up until then it seemed to be coming from the NW, directly behind us, but then it changed to come from the SW.

We tried to sail on three occasions, but with little success.  The first two attempts were aborted when we could not keep our speed over 1.5 knots.  The third time, on the 2nd afternoon and evening, we managed between 2.5 and 3.5 knots for about 6 hours.  Overall we sailed for only 9-1/2 hours out of a total of over 46 hours for the passage.  Pretty pitiful for a sailboat.

We had a nice send-off from a couple of whales as we left Manzanillo bay, and were visited by some small pods of dolphins on at least 3 occasions - always a treat.  On the 2nd morning we found a few squid on our dirty decks - the seas were never that high so I'm not sure how they got there - do squids fly?

Sunrise directly in front of the boat

The odd thing about this passage was that we seemed to be going a lot more east than south - take a look at that coastline if you don't believe me.  The annoying thing about the passage was the need for constant vigilance, as this is a major shipping channel.  Between the busy port in Manzanillo and the immense port at Lazaro Cardenas (about 35 miles short of Zihuatanejo), there is a stream of big ships going up and down the coast.  It was mostly a game of "who can run down the puny sailboat first", especially at night.  Thank goodness for radar.  This also contributed to our aborting our last sailing attempt, as we just did not have the needed maneuverability at such slow speeds, without the engine running.

Just before arriving at Z-town (as the cruisers call it), we passed by the resorts at Ixtapa.  There is a marina there, but it has a reputation for high prices in an uninteresting location.  We will give it a miss.

By 11 AM, we had the anchor down near the town, here in Zihuatanejo.  There are only about 8 boats in the anchorage at the moment.  Since it is Saturday, we will not be able to check in with the port captain until Monday, so we decided to not even launch the dinghy today and just catch up on our sleep.  We will explore further tomorrow.

Note: The autopilot continues to work like a trooper - maybe all our problems are over.

{GMST}17|38.099|N|101|33.234|W|Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico|Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico{GEND}