I've been here in La Cruz (once again) for 5 days now, but this time my only visit to the marina is in my dinghy to pay the 100-peso dinghy dockage fee and walk into town or use the restarant/lounge. Instead, my main purpose here is to keep cool at anchor with the breeze blowing through the hatches, and to get work done utilizing the Internet from the marina a few hundred yards away. The days here are pretty predictable, and I'm looking forward to leaving soon for a little more excitement once I get done what I need to get done. In the meantime, however, in checking my anchor this morning I remembered how worried I've been in the past about the unknown, boat-wise. And now those worries seem so silly. Standing on my bow watching my anchor hold me securely in 20 knots of wind, I thought back and had to wonder where I'd be if I'd let those old worries keep me from doing what I needed to do.
My first sailboat, Chemistry (I), was a beautiful, flag-blue Sweden Yachts 36. A fast and graceful sailboat - a sister of the better-known Nautor Swans from Finland. Better laid out and brighter below than the Swans, I think. When I got that boat, I remember sitting in the club with my friends Bob Byrd and Craig ("Doc") Jackson and asking them everything they could tell me about anchoring. I'd never done it before and somehow with everything I'd read up to that point anchoring was the thing about boating that most concerned me. "What depth do you anchor in? How crowded are the anchorages, usually? How far are you from the other boats? Have you ever dragged into anyone else? How hard do you back her down to set the anchor?" Etc. The reality is you just have to do it. Anchoring now is nothing. There are very few ways to screw up anchoring as long as there's decent ground to hold you and you land your anchor on that decent ground instead of on rocks or coral or a bottomless pit. I won't go into a tutorial - there are plenty of those around. Now docking... that's another matter. Chemistry (I) handled like a sports car. I'd single-hand her all the time and get to the dock and back her in, just like the power boats do with their twin-Cat diesels and their bow thrusters. This Chemistry doesn't handle so well and really likes to "walk" to port, but I've yet to have a mishap and don't expect one as long as I'm smart about the weather and the dock hands aren't too overzealous.More recently, my main worry was paperwork. I'm justified in that, because I'm the worst record-keeper / paper-organizer in the world. Taxes kill me. So before I set out to Mexico I was very worried about the paperwork part of it. Getting the proper clearances, checking into ports.... That again is another fear that has been washed aside by just doing it and figuring it out along the way. Of course, Mexico is a little more advanced with that stuff than a few other Central American countries I'll deal with next year when I make another go of the Panama Canal to Florida route. But Mexico is a good learning area because they deal with so many cruisers.For friends, family, the curious dropping by to see some pictures of sunshine, I thought I'd give you a better idea of what it looks like around here in the anchorage. And if you're curious about anchoring....
This is a view looking west towards the Pacific Ocean. The wind is blowing about 20 knots and you see the line running into the water which attached to the anchor chain a few feet below the surface. The snubber serves a few purposes. Mainly, it's to take the load off of the windlass. It also reduces the angle of the chain in relation to the ground, which lets you hold better with less chain. Instead of coming off the very tip of the boat, the load is against the snubber which has a slightly lower angle. Generally, boats using something like this have it set up more like a bridle, with one end of the line going to the port cleat and one to starboard, so the whole apparatus stays off the center of the bow. My snubber isn't spliced correctly (the lengths at the cleat ends are too short to reach both cleats at the same time), which is okay because when I have it snubbed off one side it keeps me turned just a bit so I can control the direction of the bow into the waves, which makes for a more comfortable time sitting at anchor.Here's a photo of the "yacht club" - the new La Cruz marina building with restaurant, lounge, showers, etc.... They have a "Sky Bar" on the roof, which I'm sure will be a hit when they're all done with construction in and around the marina in a couple years. Granted, it's not a great photo of the building; I'm mainly interested in showing the view from my boat towards the building. :)
Here's my latest mounting technique for my wifi adapter / antenna. I've picked up a much better signal since mounting it higher, and I think it also benefits from the mast acting like a backboard. The wifi signal I'm using is coming from the marina building above.
When it really starts blowing and I want to double-check that my anchor is holding securely, I'll go right to the bow and look towards shore. Because the strong afternoon winds always come from the same direction, I can line up the green buoy in the center of the picture with the farthest-most part of the jetty, and I know I'm stretched out and not dragging.
And finally, just a view aft towards some other boats in the anchorage. The streaks on the water indicate the strength of the wind. The buildings in the background are Bucerias, I believe, which is about half-way between La Cruz and Puerto Vallarta.
So at the moment it's 4:26 Nayarit time (Mountain Time in the US), and I've been eating come chips & guac, listening to Radio Lab podcasts, and answering emails and doing other work since I woke up around 10:30 (hey, I was up till 4am, again). Time for a check on all the scripts and processes I'm waiting on.... When you're dealing with database tables of 50+ million rows, sometimes it takes a while (some photos and a blog entry's worth of time, for example) to get things done.TT
