Passage Huatelco(Mexcico) to Bahia de Sol (El Salvador) Part 4 Final night in Mexico Waters

Sowell Family's Travels on Gijima
Skipper: Tim Sowell Admiral Tracy Crew Sean & Alex
Fri 2 Apr 2010 06:23
Destination: El Salvador
Passage length 465 NM
Distance to go:305 nM
Location:(15:12.356N 93:31.351W)
Speed: 6.4 knots
Motor Sailing

It's 11.30 pm Thursday evening local time, no parties out here, we are 30
miles off the Mexican coast running nearly parallel on a heading of 140,
with a 120+ miles on this leg of the passage to go. This leg will take us
past the final Mexican port of Madero (mainly a Naval port just short of the
Guatemalan border) and then on the initial half of the Guatemalan coast
line. We are hoping to be far enough off the coast not to get a naval stop,
with the drugs in Mexico at the moment the Naval policing has been strong
all the way down (a good thing) and they often check ships in this area. But
that will be early tomorrow morning.
I have just taken over from Tracy who is able to get to bed at 10.30 pm and
sleep through until the boys wake her at about 7 am, we try to let her sleep
in but the boys enjoy jumping on her when they wake.
The seas are 3 feet and laying down from the SW, the wind is 4 knots from
the north, up our aft, but this is a local land / sea breeze. It was so nice
that for dinner we had a barbeque on the aft deck (where the barbeque is
mounted) we had chicken breasts, and toast a cold beer to being past the
worst of the Tehuantepec (it was only one as we still have a long way to go
on this passage). But the ice cold beer on a warm night as the sun set in a
bright red/ orange ball off our aft quarter was nice.
We caught 4 fish today, put them all back but they are good for the boys to
see, and talk about how they are designed and breath etc each one caught is
discussed with them. But we are ever hopeful for that rare Mahi Mahi maybe
when we get out of Mexican waters?
We have set up a local passage NET (Single Side Band (SSB) radio schedule
calls) between the boats doing the passage, we have moved off the local VHF
as we are all now spread out and can only get VHF within 10 to 20 miles, so
SSB on the lower frequency is good. This gives us a sense of community, we
check in and discuss the different boats positions (as some do not have SSB)
and then review what we have between us as the latest weather, and discuss
the days activities and the plan ahead. Tracy did this latest schedule which
was her first use of SSB, (which up until now I have found not very useful,
but it does seem to be benefit in situations like this for inter boat
communication, also some of the bigger land based nets and then emergency)
but it is pleasing to see her take this on as it is important out here, as
our friends and community are the other travelling boats. We meet up with
the same boats at different occasions and meet new ones, our boat business
card holder is filling, as we have business cards for the boats with the
name, call sign, email etc. When you meet a boat again we get in the habit
of catching up on their travels and ports since we last crossed paths, but
it is like meeting a long lost friend, and the SSB and Nets allow us to keep
track and in touch with this ever moving neighborhood. The bigger land based
nets give boats north and south access to weather experts and allow people
to understand where we all are and conditions, but in our case we are the
only ones out here so we communicate more regularly.
The group of boats travelling with us seems to have split into two groups,
us with Telecom at the front by 50 miles and then the others back behind us,
(they made some more conservative decisions on the initial breeze this
morning and did not leverage it as a pushing wind). Telecom is going into
Madero to check out of Mexico which we did at the last port so they will
arrive early morning tomorrow but I think they will be stuck for 4 to 5 days
as Easter is in full swing here so getting government check out maybe hard.
So a rest for them will do no harm as they still have 2 days + from there to
El Salvador.
As I write this I stare up at nearly a full moon, and the bright white it is
with the dark craters on the surface, it is bright tonight so many of the
stars are lost, but we are following a siliver paved road over the water
with the slight ripple on the surface giving it the paved effect. I know on
this blog I have often talked about the peace and relaxation I get at night
shift, but it is back with me, on our final night in Mexican waters. How
different it is now from the first night in Mexican waters in the first
couple of days of January off the San Diego coast, where we had the heater
running in a fully enclosed cockpit. Tonight all I have on is shorts, the
cockpit is full open to allow thru breeze and no heater, we have every fan
in the boat on, and I am using the extractor fan in the engine room to
remove heat from the engine room. As we past San Diego and into Mexico in
January the coast was full of lights, tonight it is dark and un developed
down here, what is common is that we do not have much wind.


Night passages have come part of our cruising arsenal and tools, and Tracy
and family have become very comfortable with them, the boys have no issue,
and Tracy has come to prefer them as she is cool at night and it helps in
the policy we made of doing bigger jumps down the coast and staying more
days in the location, versus doing short jumps and stopping in lots of me
too ports. So Mexico has been a good ground for developing our cruising
processes, and routines which now seem to be second nature. As John from
"Wunderlust" put it the other night he is now very comfortable in the
cruising lifestyle that it seems effortless to carry on, yet he said 4
months ago when they started (they do 4 months a year) it took a 2 months to
get into the lifestyle and routine as natural. But we look forward also to
getting to a cruising ground that we doing small day sails up to 20 miles
between calm anchorages (last place like this was La Paz in the Sea of
Cortez) maybe Costa Rica and Panama have the promise of this.
That's what I will dream of tonight!!