Fast passage

Marina Chahua, Huatulco, Qaxaca, Mexico

An blissful, uneventful passage.

We left La Marina Acapulco at 9AM, motoring out into the open Pacific once again.  Again, as we started our journey we were greeted by smooth seas and almost no wind.  This trip however, unlike the last one, the winds never really did appear and the ocean lived up to its name - very light swell for most of the time.

We managed to sail on two occasions, for a total of 12.8 hours and 48 miles, out of a total for the trip of 48.7 hours and 244 miles travelled.  We put another 35.5 hours on the engine.  If fact, I thought we did pretty good considering the lack of wind - we probably would not have even done that much sailing if not for a very favorable current.  As we approached within 60 miles of our destination, and some 12 miles offshore, we encountered such a lot of current that I was concerned we may not be able to slow down enough to avoid arriving in the dark.  At one point, I had the engine at an idle, just enough to keep some steerage and we were still making a steady 7.5 knots, sometimes as high as 8 knots.  Fortunately, as I steered closer to the shore, after a couple of hours the current subsided and I was able coast along at not much more than 5 knots for the last stretch, timing our arrival for around 9:30AM this morning.

The conditions were generally good, the boat just rocking gently up and down and back and forth.   Susanne was a little queasy on the first night but was able to do her watches, and she was perfectly OK by the 2nd night, when in fact the conditions were a bit more boisterous.  As a result, we both arrived much better rested than after the last passage.

That's about all you see of a turtle passing by

Along the way, we were also treated to some excellent wildlife.  Several turtles drifting by just outside of Acapulco, lots of birds, and several encounters with dolphins.  On the 2nd night, before the moon came up, we entered an area of phosphorescent seas and had a small pod of dolphins streaking about the boat leaving glowing trails in their wake.

As we were approaching Bahia Chahue, where the marina is located, we passed through a couple of large pods of dolphins (hundreds of them).  Some of them stayed to play in our bow wave for a while, and a few were putting on some pretty impressive aerial demonstrations.  We have never seen them do the twisting jumps that these guys seemed to love.  All in all, a great welcome to Huatulco.

We have paid for only 2 nights here in the marina, because there is an unusually long weather window for the Gulf of Tehuantepec for the next few days, and we need to cross this body of water to get to our final destination in Mexico, at Puerto Chiapas.  If we don't take advantage of this opportunity, we may have to wait for days or weeks for another.

Some nice people just came by offering to do our laundry.  Since we haven't had any done for almost a month, we just bundled up pretty much all of the clothing we own and gave it to them.  They say they will have it back to us tomorrow morning, although we don't really know who they are or where their business is, or how much this is going to cost.  Sometimes you just have to love Mexico.

{GMST}15|45.854|N|96|07.321|W|Huatulco, Oaxaca, Mexico|Huatulco, Oaxaca, Mexico{GEND}