Costalegre: Chamela Bay Islands – Remote Getaway

Mid-March, 2011 - Despite the drawbacks of red tide, jelly fish blooms and land disputes,

the anchorage at Tenacatita held us in its grasp for ten happy days.  Old time cruisers

who had been coming to Tenacatita for years initiated games of Bocce ball on the beach,

they encouraged cruisers to gather for beers at the beachfront palapa restaurant La

Vena, and they organized group dinghy provisioning

trips across the bay to the village of La Manzanilla.

Beginners luck prevailed for us in Bocce ball, and we

nailed a few throws to win the first game.

Dinghy landings in this bay are quite a challenge,

because of the pounding waves and surf on the beach.

We hitched rides with friends several times to learn the

technique for landing the dink and launching it again

later without getting too wet.  We learned that waves

come in sets, often 6 or 7 at a time, and the trick is to

wait until a set has passed to make your move.  You get a total of about 15 seconds to ride

behind the last wave to shore or to jump in the dink and start the outboard during a launch

off the beach.  One false move by a passenger, or an unexpectedly stalled engine, or a

miscalculation of when the last wave has actually passed can spell the difference between

being wet up to your shorts or flipping the dinghy entirely and getting drenched head to toe.

We watched in amazement from the beach as one

seasoned pro accidentally flipped his dinghy during a

launch when his inexperienced passenger took too long to

climb into the boat. The dinghy hit a huge oncoming wave

and flew straight up in the air like a rocket, landing upside

down in the surf.  Workers from the restaurant dashed

down to the beach carrying a five gallon jug of fresh water

to flush the outboard engine while cruisers searched the

waves for lost cargo.  Fortunately the outboard responded

to the treatment, most items were found, and the dinghy

was soon re-launched without mishap.

La Manzanilla on the far side of the bay is a small

seaside village, and we enjoyed watching the locals

going about their daily activities.  Two men stirred a

cauldron filled with ham hocks (hooves included),

while a dog waited patiently.

There was plenty of construction going on, all done

by hand.  We watched one worker shovel gravel into

a bucket on the street and then hoist it to the roof of

a building using a rope and pulley system.  Water

was then hoisted in another bucket, and the worker

on the roof mixed and poured the concrete by hand.

In another area we watched a worker mix his

concrete in a little pile of gravel right on the street.

This may not produce the highest grade concrete,

but there is a quiet calm and pride in the way these

men go about their work.

Out in the bay the red tide began to go through its lifecycle phases.

First the water turned from beet red to murky brown to grey green.

Then a huge blanket of foam formed in the middle of the bay.

Several hundred feet across, the foam began as a solid sheet of tiny

white bubbles and then began to dissipate into elaborate patterns as

the current ebbed and flowed beneath it.

The pelicans had no qualms about

the water quality, and they dove for

fish each afternoon.  They looked like

flying knives being hurled into the

water.  I tried in desperation to get a

picture of one just at the moment of

impact when their wings are pressed

tightly against their bodies, but I

never quite caught it.

One morning we awoke to a pan-pan call on the

radio.  This is an emergency alert for anyone within

earshot, and as I laid in bed with my eyes closed

debating how we'd spend our day I heard, "Japan has had a massive earthquake

and a tsunami is headed this way.  It will arrive here in two hours."  That got me out

of bed in a hurry!  Pre-coffee and still half-dressed in pj's, we hauled the anchor and

dashed out of the anchorage.  A fishing panga was nearby and we waved them over

to pass on the warning.  I hated the thought that they might fish by the rocks all

morning and never know what hit them.

Out on the open water we were able to connect to the internet, sort of.  If I stood in

the cockpit holding the laptop over my head with the USB antenna pointed towards

shore, I could download a page in about 3 to 5 minutes.  This was just enough to get some Google News reports detailing the

unfolding disaster.  Meanwhile the radio was abuzz with cruiser chatter.  People were sharing information they were receiving

from single side band radio broadcasts, from cell phone calls to friends and family on the west coast and from the internet.

We soon realized the predicted time for the arrival of the wave was 1:45 pm, not 10:45 a.m. as we were first told, and the

effects could last up to nine hours after the intial wave hit.

This meant a long day of sailing.  We had planned to stay in Tenacatita for a few more days, but once we were out in the

ocean it made more sense to travel up the coast a bit to Chamela Bay.

Almost the entire cruising fleet joined us in the open water, and a huge game of musical chairs ensued.  Just about everyone

changed anchorages and moved north or south to the next spot on their itinerary along the coast.

Out on the water the regular ocean swell was running about five

feet, so the five foot tsunami waves were undetectable.  Our

biggest challenge was trying to determine whether the waves

had arrived on shore or not, and whether or not it was safe to go

in to anchor.  Once the initial waves had hit California and then

Cabo San Lucas, all new internet reporting ceased.  The

Mexican news stories were only about warnings, not about

actual wave arrivals in the various ports nor about damage, so

we had no idea what the status was along our coast.

However, the air was warm and the breeze too light to sail

much, so Mark lazily dropped a handline over the side of the

boat as we motored along.  Within an hour the line suddenly

went taut and then limp.  He brought it in to find that a huge fish

had struck and broken the clasp holding the leader line to the

handline.  Somewhere out there a fish was swimming around

with a six inch blue feather lure hanging out of its mouth while

fifty feet of nylon leader trailed behind him.  Darn!

He quickly found another lure with a stronger clasp and thicker leader line, and threw it over the side.  Wham!  Another fish

was on the hook.  Holy cow.  Mark has trailed handlines up and down this entire coast with only one catch so far.  And now

within minutes he had two, with the one that got away being (undoubtedly) one of the biggest fish in the ocean.  Was the

tsunami herding the fish somehow?  Whatever the cause, he hauled the fish in and we had a good look at it.  It was beautiful:

big and silver with bright yellow fins and tail.  Unfortunately, it was the inedible Jack Crevalle, or "toro" in Spanish, a fish that

has meat so red and bloody that it is considered inedible.  Toros have big puppy dog eyes, though, and this guy was staring

up at Mark in stark terror.  He quickly unhooked the lure from its mouth and we could feel his utter relief as he swam off into

the depths.

We pulled into Chamela Bay around 5:00 p.m., thinking the worst of the waves must have passed.  As we lowered the anchor

over the flat sand bottom, I watched the depth gauge read a steady 22 to 23 feet and then suddenly dip to 14 feet and then

rise again to 22 feet.  Within seconds I heard an enormous crash of a mammoth wave pounding the shore, and I turned to see

its foaming mass sweep well past the highest tide mark on the beach.

Our radio instantly crackled to life as a friend of ours used her hand-held radio to describe the utter pandemonium she was

seeing on the beach.  Mark had to calm me down a bit, as I started to rant, but no waves quite that big rolled through after

that.  However, all was not right in the water.  Every boat in the anchorage did steady 360 degree turns around its anchor,

completing a full turn every minute or two.  After a few clockwise turns the boats would all begin to turn counterclockwise as

their hulls followed the pull of the ocean surge washing in and out of the bay.

The next morning we woke to thick fog, the first we had

seen since we were in Chamela Bay four months earlier.

The scene around us had an eerie glow.

We walked along the shore later in the day.  The ghost town

feeling that Chamela Bay had had in November still

persisted, especially now that the fleet of fishing pangas had

been dragged high onto the beach out of reach of the

tsunami waves.

A little restaurant at one end of the beach was stranded

by the tsunami.  Usually a path through soft sand leads

to this building, but the tsunami swell was continuing to

disturb the peace a day or two after the first waves

arrived.  A steady river of water washed to and fro in an

estuary, making access to the restaurant a dicey affair

that included wading in water up to your shorts.

Elsewhere around Chamela Bay little had changed.  More flowers

seemed to be in bloom, but the pretty little waterfront RV park was

totally empty now.

We decided to take Groovy out into the bay for a few days where three

small uninhabited islands huddle together.  There are several

anchoring spots out there, and we found it to be a cozy, hidden

paradise.

As we dropped the hook we heard the loud and rather

urgent cries of hundreds of pelicans roosting in the trees

on the shore.  These islands are an ecological preserve

zone, and pelicans rule.

We took the dinghy ashore and stood in awe watching two different

species of pelicans engaging in what can only be described as a

springtime orgy.  Throaty groans, flapping wings, and awkward

physical postures gave the rugged shore an emotional vibe that

made us feel we were intruding on the most intimate of erotic

moments.

Averting our eyes from these

impassioned birds, we found

a host of hermit crabs

scurrying across the sand.

They crawled over each

other and tapped on each

other's shells.  These little

guys were inhabiting a huge

variety of shells, and one or

two were running around

naked looking for a new home.

The water was a

gorgeous shade of

blue, a welcome

change from the post-

red tide grey-green

that filled Chamela's

main anchorage.

Around the beach there were cactus and palm trees, and stubby little deciduous trees

too.  But it was the tide pools that really got our attention.  The waves sloshed in and out

with a vengeance, but a few were out of reach of the surf, and life in those pools was

calm and serene.

Back on the boat it

seemed we were in the

perfect place to have a look at the underside of our

hull.  We had been cleaning it every week or so

down in Zihuatanejo where the water was warm

and the barnacles grew quickly.  Since we had

been up north of Manzanillo, however, we hadn't

had a chance to give it a good look or a good scrub

because of the murky water.

Mark tackled the lowest parts of the hull and keel

with his scuba gear while I held my breath with a

snorkel and popped the offending barnacles off the

higher parts of the hull.  The water wasn't exactly

clear, and while we were in it a new wave of post-

red tide scum floated by.  Suddenly the water was

full of white puffy stringy stuff, and we quickly

wrapped up our work.  Unfortunately, the waves

were surging so vigorously that at one point each

of us accidentally gulped a huge mouthful of water.

Over the following days we both

went through a series of weird symptoms, starting with sore shoulders

followed by swollen glands in our necks and nasty head aches.  Mine

ended with a round of vomiting, while Mark was nauseous for two days.

After a week the symptoms passed.  My advice to anyone following in

our path:  don't drink water tainted by red tide.

Chamela Bay is the last good anchorage along the coast heading north

before the much feared Cabo Corrientes where high winds and

conflicting swell can make for a miserable passage.  The bright lights of

Puerto Vallarta lie beyond that point, but it is a 100 mile trip to get there,

so boats gather in Chamela Bay and watch the weather forecasts like

hawks, waiting for the best 24 hours to make the trip.  Before long we

got our chance, and we dashed out of the bay towards the Puerto

Vallarta suburb of La Cruz de Huanacaxtle.

Find Chamela on Mexico Maps

Visit Anchorages on the "Mexican Riviera" (northern Pacific coast) to see more cruising posts from this area!