New Times, Old Friends, New Friends, and Mexico’s Gold Coast

We are presently in Bahia Chamela waiting with about 15 other boats for favorable conditions to round Cabo Corrientes heading back into Banderas Bay and La Cruz. We’ve been cruising Mexico’s Gold Coast now for about a month. The entire time, minus 2 days in Barra de Navidad, spent “on the hook” as they say. Rounding Cabo (cape) Corrientes will signal an end to this part of our cruise. We’ll be traveling in the states for most of April and in early May Music will head back up into the sea of Cortez for the summer there is still so much to see. But all of that’s in the future.  

Just why is this section of coastline referred to as Mexico’s “Gold Coast”?  Perhaps the historical answer is most easily found in the newest cruising guide Pacific Mexico, A Cruisers Guidebook; Shawn Breading and Heather Bansmer ©2010; pg 163: On the evening July 27, 1862, the engine room of SS Golden Gate caught fire and foundered about 12 miles south of Barra de Navidad. That night, many lives were lost along with 1.4 million dollars in gold. According to Shawn and Heather after significant storms, (or tsunami?) gold and silver coins can still be found washing up on the beach near the present day Manzanillo airport. Hmmm? Did we make a mistake in bypassing that beach after leaving Las Hadas in Manzanillo Bay? But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. For us on Music, we have our own host of reasons for calling this cruising ground Mexico’s Gold Coast”. And gold isn’t one of them. - John

We left La Cruz roughly a month ago to head south to Bahia de Navidad to meet our friends, Jim and Diana Jessie, who would be cruising with us for a couple of weeks.  Jim and Diana have sailed this area extensively over their many years of cruising, and Jim’s many years of racing prior to that, so it was great to have them as our tour guides.  We visited a few of their favorite anchorages, did some snorkeling, practiced our dingy beach landings to visit some of the restaurant palapas on the beaches, and spent a lot of time catching up and listening to just some of their cruising stories over cocktails on board. 

Bahia de Navidad from an upstairs outdoor restaurant where Gail and I had lunch.

We spent the first couple of days at the marina in Barra de Navidad provisioning and loading up with baked goods from the French Baker.  What a treat!  An honest to goodness French Baker comes around to the marina and anchorage in the lagoon in his boat selling fresh baked baguettes, croissants, Danish, quiche, tarts, and more.  After stalking up we then headed to Santiago Bay for a few days. 

Moon Rise over Bahia Santiago

I think Santiago Bay is one of my favorite places.  The water was relatively clear, the beach was long and beautiful, and it was a peaceful place to spend a few days.  John and Jim did some snorkeling around the shallow wreck of a 300 ft. steel cargo ship driven aground in about 25 ft of water during a hurricane in 1959.

Las Hadas Resort and Anchorage, Manzanillo Bay

Then it was on to Las Hadas, a beautiful cove of an anchorage in an exquisite setting.  Many years ago someone built a grand resort in a Moorish style of architecture and most other later developments have kept with the same theme.  It’s almost fairy like.  For a small dingy fee we could use the resort pool and facilities.  Jim and Diana took us into Manzanillo to a favorite spot of theirs for dinner – the Colonial Hotel. 

Las Hadas is a very special place for Jim and Diana, as it was from here that they took off for the South Pacific on their circumnavigation. And, it was here that they closed the loop, crossing their outbound track while heading back home to San Francisco Bay.  We are both proud and privileged to have shared Las Hadas and Manzanillo with Jim and Diana, and to consider ourselves part of their extended family of cruising kids.

After a few days in Las Hadas we headed back to Bahia Santiago for a couple more days and John did a scuba dive on the wreck. Visibility wasn’t too good that day, but he seems to always find lots to look at even when others report a lousy dive. Our next anchorage was Ensenada Carrizal, an absolutely stunning cove, both beautiful and remote.  Jim, John, and I snorkeled the north side of the cove our first day and the south side on our second. We concluded that the south side of the cove was the best with a gorgeous variegated carpet of red and brown corals, and even an octopus.

Carrizal is one of the few anchorages that has yet to be developed and Jim and Diana knew of the cove prior to its having been named in any cruising guide so they gave it their own name in honor of a good friend’s wife. With tradition firmly established, we gave Ensenada Carrizal our own place name, Jessie Bay, in honor of Jim and Diana Jessie.

The second morning anchored there while John and I were having our coffee up in the V-berth, we heard the unmistakable sound of a whale blow.  We popped our heads out of the forward hatch and watched a momma and baby humpback whale working their way through the cove feeding along the tide line.

Next stop was Tenacatita where we went ashore for a nice meal at the local beach palapa.  A specialty there is a local dish call Rollo de Mar – a fish fillet wrapped around shrimp and topped with a cream sauce.  YUMMM!  Unfortunately our time was running short with the Jessies, so it was back to Barra to bid them a fond farewell.  We left Tenacatita early in the morning in hopes of getting back to Barra in time for the French Baker who started making his rounds at 8:30.  We made it and had quiche for breakfast.  Diana and I took an afternoon shopping trip into the town of Barra while John and Jim stayed on anchor watch in the lagoon that windy afternoon.  The wind had picked up right after we came in and I’m glad we were well anchored by then.

French Baker, Barra Lagoon

After Jim and Diana left, we took the dingy in to Barra, as cruisers call it, had a mid afternoon meal on a terrace overlooking Bahia de Navidad, ran into some other cruising friends from s/v Serendipity, and enjoyed the local “Fat Tuesday” parade a week early. Two days later with clean laundry, a few fresh provisions, and full water tanks we headed back to Santiago Bay to meet up with Dick and Ann on Full and By, friends we’d made the acquaintance of months earlier at Santa Catalina Island while we were coming down the coast.  It was great spending time with them and meeting some of their other cruising friends.  But alas, the time came to move on since we needed to do some provisioning before starting the trek back north to La Cruz. Where to provision was simple. Due to its proximity to grocery stores our destination was once again Las Hadas. Our intention was to spend a few days poolside and toast a wonderful month as well as restock provisions.

Contrasts – What a difference a day Makes

Our last day in Santiago Bay started out magically.  While we were having our morning coffee we heard something soft and distant, something that sounded like something rubbing.  Having our morning coffee in the V-berth we were listening and feeling the pitch and fall of Music in the low swells. Then the rhythm changed ever so slightly but distinctly, and, we realized we were hearing our first whale songs in person. 

Note the difference in size beween mom and her calf.

John popped his head out of the forward hatch but didn’t see anything. Meanwhile, the singing continued. A short time later after hearing a distinctive “blow”, we popped our heads out the hatch like a couple of Jacks in the Box and were met with the sight of 3 whales; a cow, a calf, and a presumably a male. Like at Carrizal, they started working their way through the anchorage feeding.  Rushing on deck we found everyone in the anchorage was up on their decks too.  All silently watching the whales come up for breaths and then make slow, graceful, dives.  The whales turned toward Music and crossed our bow before heading out of the bay.  Going below we could still hear their songs and decided it just doesn’t get much better than this. 

Unfortunately it was time to go so we raised anchor and made for Las Hadas where we spent a relaxing afternoon by the pool and planned what we would do tomorrow – which included doing the provisioning. 

A day later we awoke to a tsunami warning due to the massive earthquake in Japan.   Fortunately, waves shouldn’t strike the Mexican coast for a few hours. Even so, we decided the prudent thing would be to head for deeper water and wait for things to settle down.  Within 20 minutes the anchor was on deck and we were motoring out. 

Once out in 300 feet of water since it was a beautiful day, and since we’d be out here for a several hours (reports were for possible successive events to occur within a 6 hour window after the first waves struck) we decided we might as well start heading north. So, off we headed for Tenacatita.  We had been talking on the radio with some other boats in Las Hadas so we “buddy boated” with them. While heading into Tenacatita, a whale surfaced less than 25 yards off our port bow.

While approaching Tenacatita and preparing to drop the hook there was a lot of chatter on the radio with folks cautioning us to wait a bit before anchoring.  It seems they were still having “events” in the bay and the boats at anchor were swinging around crazily while experiencing about a 5 to 10 ft change in water level over a 30 minute period associated with a lot of current. 

Normally, boats all face in the pretty much the same direction in an anchorage – either into the current or the wind – except perhaps at tide change.  But these boats were facing in all different directions and swinging around like crazy!  Taking our time we waited until things settled down before anchoring in about 40 feet of water where we put out 200 ft of chain and had a pretty uneventful night.  

In the morning, with a gentle breeze off the port beam, we headed to Chamela, which is both a new anchorage for us having bypassed it on our way south, and our last before rounding Cabo Corrientes heading back into Banderas Bay.  We’ll be here a few days waiting for favorable conditions for our northward rounding of Cabo Corrientes, and while we have to say good bye to the Gold Coast, we’ve also want to acknowledge we’ve had a ball. – Gail & John;

(Note: While the introduction, editing and additions are from John, the general text was written by Gail.  Additions by John were inserted from Gail's perspective for consistency.)