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Monday, March 13, 2006

Tenacatita

12 March 2006

We had a pleasant 15 mile sail from Barra de Navidad to Tenacatita on Thursday, although it took us six hours to get here. It was a close reach in light air for the first 10 miles with John hand-steering because of the 20 degree wind shifts, puffs, and swells. After we rounded the point to make the right hand turn into the bay, we set the spinnaker and had a great time doing 4-5 knots. There were several other boats making this short hop but the only ones sailing it were headed south. When we were settled into the anchorage we got lots of compliments on our red and white spinnaker and the fact that we came in and anchored under sail (main only). All that practice in the Sea of Cortez last summer has paid off nicely.

Since the "Mayor of Tenacatita" departed for the season several weeks ago, John declared Friday's traditional "Mayor's dinghy raft-up" to be "The Great People's Republic of Tenacatita Citizen's raft-up" and instead of holding it off of "Good Dog Beach" it was "Comrade Dog Beach." He used an interesting blend of communist and anarchist terms to announce it over the radio, but people came and had a good time, ignoring politics as usual. The Friday night dinghy raft-up here is a nice winter tradition which typically gets going when the more or less permanent population arrives and a "mayor" is drafted or volunteers. It's mostly a meet and greet position - kind of like a welcome wagon. The mayor anchors his dinghy off shore and all the other dinghies tie up together. Everyone brings their own drinks and some type of finger food to be passed around. It's a nice way to meet people from other boats. The especially cool outcome of this particular raft-up is that after we finished anchoring our dinghy the first couple to row over and tie up to us was John and Kathy from the Bristol Channel Cutter, Gertrud, whom we met up in Canada (see 7/20/2004 blog entry). Another one of those "small world" moments!

After a walk on the beach this afternoon I helped John scrub the bottom. He's been working on it every day since we left Barra and it's ready to take us on a fast passage north now. He says there are spots where the bottom paint is disappearing fast, and it will be a challenge to get through the summer before our haul out in San Carlos in September. But it's great exercise and we always come out of the water feeling that good kind of tired.

We're buddy boating with Christie, who's single handing on Island Girl, because her engine is a bit on the fritz and we're slow enough for her to keep up with sailing. We both plan to leave for Chamela on Tuesday assuming the wind lays down after tomorrow as forecasted. It's been unusually windy down this part of the coast (well, not for March according to Don on Summer Passage), and there are several boats here waiting it out to go north. It's been very comfortable here in the anchorage since the wind doesn't come up until around 1:00 in the afternoon, and later it makes for cool evenings which are so nice and cozy for sleeping.

The last time we were here a couple of friends reported catching dorado right from their boats in the anchorage! The water temperature is back up to around 78 now and no one appears to be catching anything, but it's just perfect for swimming. John hasn't gone out at all yet - I think he's waiting for the better fishing in the Sea, but it sure would be nice to eat dorado again!

Linda and John