NUTS & BOATS

 The twice monthly newsletter for to-be and already-are cruisers

Volume 2, Issue #13 - July 1, 2004
Publisher: Trish Lambert
www.takehersailing.com
(C) P. Lambert 2004

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IN THIS ISSUE

• The Book of Walter: To Baja and Back

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CRUISER’S EYE VIEW
The Book of Walter: To Baja and Back                                                    by Walt Platkus

Note from Trish: Walt and Shelley Platkus are members of our “family” at Silvergate Yacht Club in San Diego,California, where we lived for a number of years. They sailed their floating home, Dune, to Mexico a couple of seasons ago, and upon their return, Walt wrote about their trip for the club’s monthly bulletin. He has kindly edited and provided it to me to share with you.

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Our long awaited cruise began on a sunny, calm Christmas Eve in ’02, heading for Mexico about one month later than planned.  The calm was soon replaced with significant wind and sea conditions that began Christmas night and never let up until our arrival at Cabo San Lucas about three weeks later.

Our first stop, after two days and two nights of 20-knots-plus winds and 6- to 8- foot seas coming at us from dead astern (I only looked back once and that was enough), was Cedros Village harbor at Cedros Island.  We stopped to get a little rest before the short jump over to Turtle Bay and, lo and behold, the perfectly calm anchorage at 2:00PM in the afternoon turned into a very rolly and uncomfortable place to be by 7:00PM when the winds picked up to about 25 to 30 knots out of the east and the waves began to roll in.  Without a surfboard this wasn’t much fun and no rest was had by all on board.

We spent about a week in Turtle Bay meeting people on about 15 other boats, mostly Canadians, and had a great New Year’s celebration at Sam’s Palapa on the beach and later at a New Year’s party held in the village.  Mercedes and Carlos from Sam’s became really good friends during the visit and we had lots of great times getting to know the family.  There were really only two of us in the bay that spoke Spanish and as a result our friend Enrique and I became the social directors during the stay.

We left Turtle Bay with about 30 to 35 knots of wind out of the east and as promised by Don on “Summer Passage” (the weather guy), the wind disappeared when we had gotten about five miles off shore.  During the night the wind picked up again, and we did the only sustained sailing to occur in our four-month trip.   About noon the next day the engine started up again and was shut off when we got into Magdelena Bay.  This trip proved to be the foundation for the first principle of cruising (in a sailboat): you really don’t need sails at all, just a really good engine.

We visited San Carlos twice and had a very restful time in Mag Bay for about four days before we departed for Cabo.  Most of the gang from Turtle Bay arrived in Mag Bay about two days after we did, so cocktail hour at the palapa on the beach became a daily standard.

The 36 -hour trip to Cabo was extremely unpleasant with heavy, confused seas all the way to the entrance to Cabo coupled with another northwesterly wind at about 25 to 30 knots.  Unfortunately during this leg, the wind was swinging about 30 to 40 degrees and we had to constantly gybe the boat or we would have ended up plowing dirt or been wearing grass skirts in Hawaii.  In Cabo we spent about a week decompressing and waiting for parts for my watermaker.  About $1000 in slip fees later, we still didn’t have our watermaker parts and we headed off for Nuevo Vallarta.  This was about a three-day, two-night trip. After we left some moderately confused seas, we ended up with flat water and no wind all the way to Banderas Bay.  It’s spooky to travel all of this distance and never see another boat or ship – but we did get to see our first and only “green flash” which is pretty impressive.

It was during this crossing that we learned the second fundamental principle of cruising: When you are close to your destination or you can see your destination the weather and sea conditions will do everything they can to prevent you from getting there.  In this case we ended up crossing Banderas Bay with a 24-knot wind right on the nose and some real short choppy seas.  Needless to say we fell off a bit and arrived in Nuevo to the sight of Mike and Sylvia from “Sabbatical” on the breakwater helping us find the sand bar at the entrance (which we didn’t). We immediately headed for Negra Modelos [a great Mexican beer] and lunch in that order.

Paradise Village was a great place to stop and fix stuff and finish off some projects.  We planned to stay three days and left after ten days to go south.  We jerry-jugged fuel using Bob and Karen O Hara’s jerry jugs.  Amazingly enough there is a PUR watermaker repair guy in the next bay and we got our watermaker fixed.

Going south from Paradise Village we stopped at Ipala, Chemela, Tenecatita, and finally Manzanillo.  While in Chemela we were introduced to the third fundemental principle of cruising: When you choose to leave shore with your dinghy, the wave height will increase in relation to your ability to successfully cross the wave without getting wet.  The long and short of it is that we got swamped, poor Dooley our Wonder Dog got it right in the face and the local kids got a big charge out of the wet gringos.  Our performance improved (until Punta de Mita) after that.

Manzanillo was our southernmost point on the trip and also the first meeting of Silvergate Yacht Club South at the Club Social in Manzanillo.  From Manzanillo we stopped at Bahia Santiago for about 5 or 6 days and then we went up to Barra Navidad for two nights in the marina. 

Tenecatita was the scene of two Silvergate reunions. Amazing that six boats from our small yacht club are in the same place, at the same time, so far from home.

After a week we headed north to go back to Paradise Village and meet up with Shelley’s mom and sister for a week.  Conditions weren’t real wonderful, but this soon changed and things got much worse.  We left Chemela about 6:00PM after a short rest and headed north with another boat that was passing by from Barra Navidad.  The winds and seas were supposed to calm down and we thought we could get around Cabo Corrientes escaping the wrath or the rough weather in that region.  It was pretty bad and the other boat, turned around about 8:00PM and we turned around about 9:00PM after getting launched, fully airborne on four waves in a row – this is supposed to be vacation.  The 8 miles northbound we had made in three hours, were recouped in 1 hour and 15 minutes (the time of the return trip to Chemela). 

We set out the next morning to about 15 knots of wind on the nose and lumpy, but not unmanageable conditions.  About 8 miles from Ipala the winds started building to about 40 knots and the waves began breaking over the side of the boat.  Remember Principle Two, it reared its ugly head again and we got the worst hammering of our trip for 8 days (actually only 3 hours on the clock).  Upon our arrival and our second Gin Gimlet we were deciding on whether to sell the boat, truck it back, hire someone to bring it back, or get some crew to help get it to San Diego. 

We spent two voluntary weeks in Banderas Bay at Paradise Village and La Cruz (a really neat little town and bay) and one involuntary week at Punta de Mita waiting for a weather window to head for Mazatlan.  At Punta de Mita we again revisited Principle Three by leaving shore and motoring through a very large, about 6-foot high, breaking wave and testing the aerodynamic design of our inflatable.  It doesn’t fly well, but did land on its bottom with about 8 inches of water inside and us with wet underwear (multiple sources of wetness). 

The trip to Mazatlan was very nice, flat calm seas (no wind of course) and we did a one night stop in Matenchen Bay a really beautiful bay just a skinch south of San Blas.  During the trip a booby bird took up residence on our mast at 1:00AM in the morning and moved to greener pastures at the Mazatlan Fuel Dock about 8:00AM. Unfortunately he/she succeeded in breaking off my windex, which almost hit me in the head about 3:00AM and ate the “windvane” off of my electronic wind instrument.  This plus a form of bird effluent that is somewhere between concrete and epoxy on your deck is probably the reason why some people carry guns on their boats.

Two days later we got a weather window, and off we went to Cabo. We had a pretty good trip, however the wind was again just off the nose (not as predicted).  We learned more about sailing our boat and had a really good passage averaging well over six knots motor sailing at low RPMs with a tiny genoa cross-sheeted to give us pointing ability.

Our crew arrived in Cabo on April 4th and we promptly left town about 2:00PM only to turn around at 7:00AM the next day and return to Cabo.  We spent so much time under water I began the genetic transformation in to dolphin (well maybe a whale).  We left again on the 10th and began slogging our way northward in unpleasant conditions of anywhere from 15 to 30 knots of wind on the nose and extremely confused, high, lumpy, crummy, awful, steep, disgusting, seas.  I think that says it all.  We arrived in Turtle Bay three days later alive and well and ended up waiting about 7 days for the winds to get below 20 knots and the seas to calm down.

Wow, great weather forecast, 5 to 10 out of the NW one day, 10 to 15 out of the SW the next (might actually be able to sail for a change), and 10 – 15 out of the NW the next day (we could make it to San Diego in that amount of time).  He lied!!!!!!!!!!!   We got to Cedros and anchored in a really beautiful spot on the north end of the island, albeit very windy and that night the forecast changed to NW 15 -20 for the foreseeable future.  Don even said this was going to be the best it was going to be for a very long time and we might as well go for it. 

Off we went with two other boats, a trawler (to blaze the path for us) and a 40-foot cutter (to follow because our autopilot quit working and we were hand steering since Abreojos). Two hours of crud and things got better, it was windy and uncomfortable, but tolerable for the rest of the trip.  The decks were washed frequently, but we weren’t banging and crashing our way and that was an improvement over the previous leg.  We used bungee cords for an autopilot when things were a little calmer and it actually worked out pretty good.  We averaged about 4 knots most of the way, and from the Coronados Islands  to San Diego bay we averaged about 7.5 knots motor sailing (I think we wanted to be back).

Was it worth it?

Lots of people have asked – would you go again?

• Following a golden trail illuminated by the setting sun to a destination you were planning for 10 years
• Meeting hundreds of happy, helpful people in another country that want nothing from you but your friendship
• Drinking Negra Modelo in a palapa on the beach at Bahia de Tortugas
• Having ghostly friends keeping you company in the middle of the night surfacing occasionally to “squeak” a hello and a smile as they act as your guide throughout the nite.
• Watching a mother whale and her calf jump out of the water in a fantastically high concentric arc  in the air and completing a magnificent swan dive into the water
• Drinking a Negra Modelo in a palapa on the beach in Bahia Magdelena
• Watching the beauty of huge waves breaking around you boat covered in moonlight and with the luminescent peaks racing past you boat.
• Watching a huge full moon rise and help light your way through the darkness
• Watching Venus rise, in the early morning,  in full phase with a brilliant light that looks like a freight train coming at you from the east
• Watching a beautiful blue/green meteor land in the water only miles from you boat
• Drinking a Negra Modelo in a bar in Cabo San Lucas
• Looking over the side of the boat at 3:00 in the morning and looking at the back of a whale pacing your progress through the nite
• Needing to drink a Negra Modelo in the mall at Nuevo Vallarta
• Watching a new day born by the sun rising over the mountains to the east every day.
• Catching a lobster thrown to you from a panga
• Sitting and have coffee in the morning with Mercedes and Carlos in Bahia de Tortugas
• Playing bacci ball on the beach
• Having a Negra Modelo in Bahia Tenacatita after playing Bacci Ball on the beach.
• Seeing hundreds of sea turtles lazing away the day and diving into the water as you pass
• Watching hundreds of thousands of jelly fish, some brillant blue jewels in the water and some long, gossamer, white parachute like shapes swimming in the water.
• Having a Negra Modelo at the Bar in Las Hadas
• Watching the kids laugh just after you swamped your dinghy and Dooley has his best “pity me” expression on his face.
• Having a Negra Modelo on the beach in Chemela after and/or before you swamp your dinghy.
• Stopping in a tienda in Mazatlan looking for a boat part and having the owner tell you where you can find it at another store just because he wants to help you
• Listening to a husband and wife playing guitar, magically connected through their eyes and singing about love.
• Listening to Gypsy music in La Paz
• Being the rhythm section for Bubba and the Bottom Feeders in Nuevo Vallarta

With a list like this, wouldn’t you go again?

iVaya bien!