January 29, 2005
Melaque, Colima Coast (19o 12' N 104o 40' W, about 90 miles south of Puerto Vallarta)
We made the last of our over night hops last night. The plan was to wait in a little anchorage called "Maruata" for the northwesterly winds to back off. That is, the forecast northwesterly winds. You see, we wanted to go to the northwest, but the weather forecast was for high-ish wind from the north west. The problem was that is wasn't blowing from the north west, in fact it was blowing from the south east, exactly 180 degrees opposite of the forecast. Not only that, but Maruata is completely exposed to the southeast so when the wind started to pipe up we had to abandon the anchorage. Oh well, we set sail and were actually having a pretty good day, except we kept waiting and waiting for the forecast northwesterly to slap us in the face and send us back to Maruata. That never happened. We sailed all day and into the night with a fair breeze and then the wind died. It never blew from the northwest. The second problem was that since we had to leave Maruata at a time other then our own choosing we were early. It's 95 miles from Maruata to Melaque and at 5 knots it takes us 19 hours to make the trip. We had to bug out of Maruata at 1230, which would put us in Melaque at 0630. The problem is the sun doesn't come up until 0730, so we had to purposely slow down just so we'd arrive in the light (a good idea if you've never been into the place before).
Anyway, we're back into a regular cruising area with good anchorages and short runs in between. Hopefully the area hasn't gotten too crowded in our absence.
John and Linda
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