New Years Turn Around

Feliz Ano Nuevo… As the calendar turns so we have.  On January first we turned in our New Year’s Eve anchorage and headed north.  We are feeling good about our choice of southernmost Mexican destinations, and having it coincide with the new year seemed like a good marker.

This is a Booby who wouldn't get off the solar panel.
We think he was just a youngster which may explain why his fee aren't blue

The 30^th of January, we had a wonderful sail about 12 miles south to a small indentation in the coast that is called Cuastecomate. It is only listed in two of the three guide books we (and everyone else) use and it is referred to as “the secret anchorage” because it is sandwiched between the more favored Tenacatita to the north and Barre de Navidad to the south. We were glad we stopped. We were one of 3 boats, we all used stern anchors as well as bow lines to keep facing toward the ocean and the swell. We were proud of ourselves for setting our stern anchor efficiently (and without leaving the boat in the kayak or dinghy to do so). Setting two anchors is something we are still improvising on and sometimes quite the ordeal. 

I loved the town immediately. Only 4 square blocks, mostly palapa beach restaurants, a few accommodations, and from what we could tell, almost all the revelers were Mexicans on holiday. It was a festive place to spend New Years! We talked with a Mexican man who swam out to the boat, swam to the beach for ceviche, and walked a couple blocks in town and found only one closed aborrate (little grocery).

Baking becomes a big highlight while cruising!!

 On New Year’s eve the weather provided us some novel entertainment – a rainstorm! Our first in Mexico, and I think our first water from the sky since July something in Seattle. The rain was wet but warm and did not deter the kids from swimming all day. It was cozy in the boat and a perfect day for reading, writing sailmail, and baking. We had fresh oatmeal molasses cookies and peanutbutter chip brownies for our celebration aboard.


We stayed up (almost) until midnight by watching a Harry Potter movie (thank you Carol for sending us off with your collection). As we were crawling into our forepeak berth, we heard the midnight celebration and poked our heads through the hatch to watch fireworks 100 yards away on the beach.
No pictures seem to mark the auspicious occasion.

New Years day dawned rainy, but not stormy, and we decided that Cuastecomate, the secret anchorage, was a perfect southern-most destination, so we pulled out our foul weather jackets and had a very Northwest kind of sail back to Tenacatita Bay. Back in the anchorage we heard reports of 5 inches of rain in 45 minutes. And… even freakier we heard a radio report from a boat who had been surprised by a snake in their cabin the night before. The skipper was bitten, but recovering and crew from other boats had come to the rescue to remove the invader. Not common, but not unheard of with the estuary close.

On January 2^nd, the weather was still not totally settled, but the rain had stopped and the forecast was for some nice wind from the south – rare, but good for the route north that we planned. We said goodbye to folks in Ten Bay and took off around 10 am – we didn’t get far as the next blog post will explain.