Tag Archives: Our travels in brief – Snapshots!

Shipwreck in Paradise – A unique ship hits the beach!

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Shipwreck at Paradise Village Resort

Flying Dragon grounded hard on the beach at Paradise Village Resort

April 2, 2013 – What a surprise it was for everyone in Paradise Village Resort (Puerto Vallarta, Mexico) when a boat grounded on the beach yesterday, right smack in front of the resort’s hotels, swimming pools and beach palapas.  Wow!!  The exotic nature of the boat and it’s perfect, straight-up landing on the beach made for lots of chatter among all the tourists strolling the beach this morning.  Yikes!

From what we understand, Flying Dragon, a wooden boat, was on its way to the marina at Paradise Village yesterday afternoon.  As they approached the entrance, the crew took the sails down and started the engine.  But the engine died.  Before they could get the sails back up again, the boat hit bottom and then the steering mechanism failed.  Ugh!

Efforts to help went on late into the night, with cruisers heading out in various motor boats to try to tow Flying Dragon off the beach.  But she’s 41 tons (for comparison, Groovy is 12 tons), and the small power boats and thin line that folks had available weren’t strong enough.  Half-inch line snapped like nothing, the outboard engine on one of the boats blew a cylinder, and the bow roller on Flying Dragon got bent out of shape.  She was stuck hard!!

This morning some locals brought out a cutting torch, and they began to remove the rudder from the boat. The owners were also very busy removing all their belongings and much of the boat’s gear.  All of this was in an effort to lighten the boat and hopefully make it easier to float it off the beach at high tide.

Meanwhile vacationers sunned themselves, played in the waves and took banana boat and jet-ski rides all around this action.  Other folks set up beach chairs to enjoy front row seats at the salvage operation.

Later on, a backhoe dug around the perimeter of the boat.  As the tide came in, just about every man on the beach joined in an enormous tow-rope line and pulled (see the pic at the top of this page).  Eventually the waves lapped the hull and the boat began to rock a little.  The guys on the tow-line disbanded and the crew threw an anchor out into the sea and slowly pulled the anchor line in and inched the boat off the beach.  Around dusk, Flying Dragon was finally free — and taking on water and working her bilge pumps overtime.

But the excitement didn’t end there.  In the dark, guided by dinghies and a panga, Flying Dragon negotiated the shallow entrance to the marina channel where the swell had picked up and serious waves were breaking.  Miraculously, the dinghies kept the boat perpendicular to the waves and she surfed down the channel on four or five heart-stopping rollers.  Now, at last, she is snug in a marina slip.

We have seen only one other shipwreck in action in our 3-year cruise of Mexico, when the yacht Valkyrie hit a pinnacle rock (½ way down the page) in the Sea of Cortez just outside of Puerto Escondido.  Six months later — and 1,000 miles away in Acapulco — we were delighted to read in a yacht club newsletter that Valkyrie had been salvaged and restored.  We sure hope Flying Dragon has the same kind of good fortune ahead…

See all our “snapshot” posts and our most recent longer posts…

 

And God said: “Let the Beer Flow”

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Mexico Tecate beer promotion - a beautiful model in hot pants

Mark had eyes only for the red Tecate cooler bag…!!

March 30, 2013 – Easter week, or “Semana Santa,” is a HUGE vacation week in Mexico. Everyone from the interior cities comes down to the beach to play, it seems. So when we got to Walmart yesterday to do an ordinary provisioning run, we were there with the rest of Puerto Vallarta (and Guadalajara and Mexico City). They were all stocking up on party basics. Of course, the most important party basic is BEER, and the beer manufacturers were doing all they could to get their product out of their hands and into ours.

Their method is incredibly effective. We were debating between a twelve-pack of Pacifico and a twelve-pack of Tecate. Then Mark noticed that the Tecate was on sale: two twelve-packs for 185 pesos ($14.80 USD). Well, that was a no-brainer since Pacifico was quite a bit more. We loaded two twelve-packs of Tecate into our cart and carried on.

Then we noticed a very svelte Tecate girl in very hot hot-pants. How could you not notice her, especially since she was in stiletto heels and was about 5’10” tall?! We have learned that these beautiful beer models are always in the stores with some kind of cool promotion, and we quickly discovered what hers was: buy four twelve-packs of Tecate and get either a Tecate umbrella, a Tecate beach chair or a Tecate shoulder-bag / cooler for free.

Mark’s face lit up. He loves a deal, and he instantly had his eye on the red Tecate cooler bag she had on her shoulder. So, into the cart went two more twelve-packs of Tecate.

I’ve gotten used to the beer gals and their promotions after three seasons in Mexico, so I wandered off to sample the free potato chips that were being offered to customers. Yum (except the jalapeño chips — Yikes on those!!).

I turned back to see Mark and another Tecate gal taping extra cans of beer onto the twelve packs in our cart. Huh? It turned out there was another promotion going on: buy a twelve-pack of Tecate and get two extra cans for free, taped onto the outside of the box.

Wow, suddenly we were getting four twelve-packs plus 8 extra cans of beer plus a shoulder cooler bag, all for 370 pesos, or a little under $30. That’s 56 beers – so it translates to just over $3 per six-pack – plus the cooler bag that we would pick up in the Tecate tent outside the store. What a deal!!

The Coors folks were trying hard too, but they were using another tactic that wasn’t quite as effective. They had a studly guy with bulging muscles giving away Coors T-shirts. Unfortunately for him, Coors is an imported beer, so it was quite a bit more expensive. And, I have to say, the guys weren’t exactly lining up in front of this hunk to get their picture taken with him.

However, outside the store in the Tecate tent, where the music was blasting and the giveaways were flying off the tables, the male customers were nearly knocking each other over to get pics of themselves with the Tecate girls. One girl in particular was a stunner, and she had the moves down as she posed too. I wonder how many guys forgot to pick up their umbrella or beach chair or cooler bag in all the excitement?

No matter. Looking down the line of guys waiting for their photo op, I saw Tecate twelve-packs and taped on pairs of cans practically spilling out of all their shopping carts. The Easter party bash was just getting started!

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Other blog posts that give a glimpse of what it’s like to live on a sailboat:

What Is It Like to go Cruising on a Sailboat in Mexico?! – Insights for planning a sailing cruise of Mexico

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Showering on the hook = A carnival ride with your eyes closed!

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13-03-27

Smaller than a phone booth…

One thing that takes a little getting used to in this oddball life of anchoring out in a sailboat on Mexico’s Pacific coast is that the boat never stays still.  Cruising northern New England and the Caribbean in the past, I don’t remember our boats rolling around quite so much.  But Mexico’s Pacific coast is different.  The ocean swell barrels into Mexico’s coast with force, and there’s nothing to slow it down on the way in.  And most of the anchorages offer minimal protection.

So taking a shower in a space smaller than a phone booth can be an exercise in agility.  Invariably, once I’ve gotten myself all watered down and all soaped up — with my eyes tightly closed — the boat rolls out from under me.  Not a gentle little sway but a great big lurching roll.  With a stifled shriek I find myself grasping desperately for a handhold.

Just as I find the wall and steady myself, the boat is tossed the other way and I hear my razor slip off the shelf and hit the shower floor.  The blade pops off, and then I’m suddenly groping around my feet trying to find where the two pieces disappeared to.

Wham!  The boat pitches again while I’m doubled over searching for that razor, and I’m thrown into the shampoo rack.  My feet slip on the soapy floor.  As I fall, I’m wondering whether it’s better to sit down hard on the bench or twist a little more gracefully on the way down and catch my fall with a hip and a hand.

At this point I usually peek a little bit — who cares if I get soap in my eyes? — and I hear Mark’s distant voice, “Sweety, are you okay in there?!”

“Oh yes, just fine!!” I yell back just as a bottle of body wash flies off the shelf and crashes onto the floor with a bang, spilling a puddle of soap around my feet.  “If someone could just stop this carnival ride for a minute or two while I get rinsed off…”  But the waves march on, never ending.

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Other blog posts that give a glimpse of what it’s like to live on a sailboat:

More funny stories from our Mexico cruise + Tips for planning your own sailing cruise

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More of our Latest Posts are in the MENU above.

Surfing the dinghy = Crash landings on the beach!

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March 19, 2013 – One of the craziest aspects of cruising Mexico’s Pacific coast is the insane dinghy beach landings. Sometimes the surf is up, and you have to time your beach landing carefully, or you’ll get a serious dousing. We watched an experienced cruiser lose control of his dink on his way out from the beach one time. It shot into the air like a rocket and flipped over upside down, scattering his belongings everywhere.  Worse, his outboard was toast!

Sailing Mexico means surfing the dink sometimes

Not so easy getting in… and not so easy getting out either!!

Sooo… heading in to shore in Cuastecomate the other day, we packed our cameras in dry bags and set out to hit the village for some fun photography. But as we neared the beach and heard the huge crashers, we got cold feet. Back to Groovy we went, tails between our legs. Later, staring at the shore sulkily from the cockpit, we decided to give it another go. Properly dressed in bathing suits, and with everything lashed down in the dink in case it flipped, we saw a break in the rollers and Mark floored it towards the beach.

Dinghies with wheels just roll right onto the beach, but our porta-bote doesn’t have wheels. So Mark cut the engine at the last second to get the prop out of the water before it hit the sand. At the same time, I jumped out of the dink to pull it onto the beach before the next wave caught us. But this is a steep beach. I jumped too soon. The water was too deep. My feet didn’t hit the sand til I was half under the boat and hanging on for dear life. A huge wave grew to mammoth proportions behind us and crashed just inches from the back of the dink while I staggered to pull it to shore. It was all very funny, and we were both laughing hysterically. But a nicely dressed older couple walking hesitantly past us under a shared parasol stared at my dripping, sandy, soaked body in total disbelief.

Little did we all know, they had a better show coming. On the return trip into the crashing surf a few hours later, we waded into the series of small waves that was to be our escape route and jumped in the dink. Mark pulled on the outboard starter while I rowed with all my might. But he got no response from the engine. We were still floundering in the surf zone when the waves started to grow. “Hurry hurry!” I yelled, making little progress with the oars because his body was right where my left oar needed to be. The dinghy barely climbed over one breaking wave and then struggled over the next bigger one behind it. We just missed a good swamping each time.

Ten yanks on the outboard and some really colorful expletives later, the engine finally started. We were free. Looking back at beach, I could see the little old couple sitting under their parasol. Their mouths still hung open as our prop finally bit into the water and lurched us back to safety aboard Groovy.

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Other blog posts that give a glimpse of what it’s like to live on a sailboat:

More funny stories from our Mexico cruise + Tips for planning your own sailing cruise

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More of our Latest Posts are in the MENU above.

Swabbing the decks underway!

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Swabbing the decks cruising Mexico

Swabbing the decks is one way to pass the time!

March 16, 2013 – Long passages under power can be a bit boring, so one way we sometimes spice it up is to swab the decks! This is especially helpful if we’ve been in a dirty port for a while (Manzanillo is notorious for the soot from the power plant), or if we’ve had a particularly gnarly passage with lots of salt spray on deck.

After much trial and error with everything from garden sprayers to “Absorber” towels, we’ve figured out a system for cleaning the boat at sea. Mark gets the watermaker going, and I get busy with a soft bristle brush and bucket of soapy water (boat soap or Turtle-Wax car washing soap). Starting at the highest point on the boat, I swab my way down to the gunwales, and then from forward to aft, ending up in the cockpit.

While I’m swabbing away, Mark fills 5-gallon bottles of water and hands them up through the companionway hatch so I can rinse as I go. We use old plastic drinking water bottles, the kind with handles that are easy to carry. He rotates 3 bottles, and can get one filled in about the time that I use one up, going through about 20 bottles in the process. One of the great things about using watermaker water for washing the boat is that it doesn’t spot. So there’s no need to wipe anything down afterwards!

This is a great workout — we always end up quite sore afterwards — and it’s good for practicing your balance too, because the boat heaves and rolls in the swell (of course we only do this when it’s calm!). The reward for this hour or two of hard labor is having a sparkling clean boat when we get where we’re going.  But one thing we learned the hard way: if we’re cleaning the cabin too, we shake out the rugs before swabbing the decks!!  (And, of course, in a dry climate like Mexico, washing the boat is bound to induce rain… our latest cleaning brought a torrential downpour with 24 hours!!)

If you’re thinking about going cruising, and haven’t outfitted your boat with a watermaker yet, consider getting a very large capacity watermaker (ours is an Echotec 900-BML-2 which we’ve found produces 60 gallons an hour).

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Other blog posts that give a glimpse of what it’s like to live on a sailboat:

More funny stories from our Mexico cruise + Tips for planning your own sailing cruise

Our most recent posts:

More of our Latest Posts are in the MENU above.

Red sky at morning… should sailors take warning?

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Cruising Mexico (Manzanillo Bay & Santiago) Red sky at morning

Sunrise in Santiago this morning.

March 12, 2013 – Staying here in the Santiago area of Manzanillo Bay, we have been treated to some of the most lovely sunrises we’ve seen anywhere on Mexico’s Pacific coast.  This wonderful daily drama sets up each day to perfection.

Oddly, the colorful skies are largely due to the coal fired power plant that sits at the opposite end of the bay.  Manzanillo is a huge industrial port, loaded with freighters, and the smoke from the power plant fills the air with a steady stream of soot.

This isn’t so great for the deck of Groovy — after one day here the entire deck and cockpit were gritty with black dust.  However, the sunrises and sunsets are truly magical.  Our best “boat-in-a-sunrise” photos have all come from this bay (one of my favorites, from our first visit here in 2010, is on our home page).

Every morning since we got here, we’ve bolted out of bed to see what kinds of colors are on tap for the Good Morning Manzanillo sky show that day… So did the red sky this morning really mean “sailors take warning” ?  Not so far.  The pink clouds hung around to give us a largely overcast day, but there are no storms on the horizon…

See all our “snapshot” posts and/or our most recent longer posts…

Shhh!! Bootleg DVDs are like a box of chocolates…

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Bootleg DVD street vendor

Pick a movie, any movie!

March 8, 2013 – Bootleg DVDs are sold on the street all over Mexico.  They usually cost about 20 pesos ($1.60 USD), and they come in a plastic wrapper with a xeroxed image of the original DVD cover along with the unmarked DVD.

Some are clones of original DVDs, some are clones of Academy Award distribution copies, and some are from a video recorder that someone propped up in the theater (these usually have terrible sound quality, and one we saw had the bizarre periodic interruptions of the guy in front swigging a bottle of Dos Equuis beer every so often).

The Spanish movie titles often bear no resemblance to their English counterparts, and it’s a crap shoot as to what you are buying. If you like, the vendors will play the DVD on their TV/DVD player before you part with your money, and they usually swap the movie for another if it doesn’t work out.

Last night we had the intriguing international maritime experience of watching the movie Kon-Tiki, a documentary about a 1947 balsa wood raft that drifted from Peru to Polynesia, proving ancient Polynesia was settled by Peruvians rather than Asians. The dialog was in Norwegian and the movie had Spanish subtitles.  Gosh, did those subtitles scroll fast. Luckily we knew the story!!

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La Tia Hot Sauce – The best among millions!

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March 6, 2013 – One of our favorite things in Manzanillo is locally made La Tia hot sauce.

La Tia Hot Sauce

We found it!!

We aren’t spicy food eaters, but this stuff is good!

We first discovered it two years ago at Frida’s restaurant on the marina docks in Las Hadas.  It was made nearby by the family of restaurant owner AgustIn.  But this year Frida’s (and Agustín) are no longer there.  And our three one-liter bottles we bought last year were gone!

Bottle label in hand, we went on a scavenger hunt around the shops in Santiago. But all we got from everyone was a head shake and a “No lo tengo” (I don’t have it).  Finally we rounded a corner – and Mark spotted it on a shelf!  The vendor was shocked when we bought three one-liter bottles, but she said she loves the sauce too and that’s why she carries it!!

Ahh… mission accomplished… yummy bean burritos are on the menu aboard Groovy once again!

See all our “snapshot” posts and/or our most recent posts

Cruising = Fixing your boat in exotic places!

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March 2, 2013 – Outboard engines these days are equipped with a fail-safe mechanism for when you accidentally hit something while the prop is spinning.  A little rubber hub inside the prop rips, saving the prop and engine from self-destructing, but disabling the prop from ever turning at full speed again.  Suzukis are especially sensitive.  Sigh.  Mark fixed the problem by drilling 3 holes in the prop to affix it to its mount permanently.  But the screws sheered.  Double sigh!!  So in Zihuatanejo we went in search of a welder.

Getting our outboard prop fixed in Zihuatanejo

Our prop gets 3 big holes in it

Local folks pointed us in all kinds of directions with great recommendations for this guy or that, but in the end our cabbie chose our guy, since he’d never heard of any of the welders on our list.  He drove us way out of town, dropped us off in front of a shop and vanished.

There we were, prop in hand, standing in front of a row of mechanic shops, in the middle of nowhere.

Part of cruising Mexico is learning to describe mechanical problems in Spanish.  Not easy!  But some sign language, lots of turning the prop in our hands and pointing, a few trips up and down the row of shops — all accompanied by our halting Spanish and their halting English — finally got us to the right guy in the right shop.  But did he really understand what we were talking about??

The prop was placed in a vice and the drill came out. Suddenly a second guy showed up and a shower of Spanish ensued.  Mark was whisked away in a car to a Tornillería (a screw store) a few miles away.  “Cruising” means going with the flow and having infinite faith that all will work out.

Twenty minutes later, after the shy, young mechanic and I had exhausted the limits of my Spanish conversational skills while we perched on his bench, Mark returned with three enormous stainless steel hex-head set screws — hopefully impervious to sheering.  The holes were tapped, the screws installed, and the repair was completed for 200 pesos ($16 USD).  The work was superior.

One of the unique things about this cruising life is that rather than being mere sightseeing tourists, we usually go to town with a purpose and a mission.  Having faith and allowing fate to take us by the hand and lead us to our destiny (and destination) has been one of the great lessons we have learned.

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Other blog posts that give a glimpse of what it’s like to live on a sailboat:

More funny stories from our Mexico cruise + Tips for planning your own sailing cruise

Our most recent posts:

More of our Latest Posts are in the MENU above.

Generosity and friendliness are the hallmarks of Mexico!

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Cagiva motorcycle

Mark receives a surprising offer…!

February 28, 2013 – We are always impressed, surprised and taken aback by the extraordinary generosity and warmth we experience with the locals here in Mexico.  Yesterday, while walking into the dollar store in Zihuatanejo, Mark noticed a Cagiva motorcycle.  After admiring it and taking some photos of it, the owner walked out of the store towards us.

“You want to take it for a spin?” He asked Mark with a grin, holding out the keys.

What??  Mark laughed incredulously and said no.  But the guy insisted he at least throw a leg over it to check it out.  So Mark hopped on and we stood around talking motorcycles with this fellow for a few minutes. Then he put on his helmet and disappeared on his bike, and we continued on into the store.  Honestly, that would never ever happen back home.

See all our “snapshot” posts and/or our most recent posts