Huatulco, Oaxaca

You can't direct the wind,
but you can adjust the sails

Chris, doing her best Corona beer Ad in the La Crucecita town square.

No numbers in this write up, and no dashes between sentences for dramatic emphasis. The top row of my keyboard died, so all the numbers, dashes, plus sign, and parens are out of commission. It’s hard to write stream of consciousness without a few dashes. looks like the upper case is flaky too, so excuse the missing caps.

We had a good sail after we escaped Acapulco to head to Bahias de Huatulco. Nice winds for about thirty hours dash I guess it’s OK to spell out a number every once in awhile. On the second day the wind died in the early evening and we had to motor through the last night. We got in a morning spinnaker run in some good breezes. We spent most of it trying to catch the only other boat out there. here’s Lovely Lady out of Seattle, a Halberg Rassey forty six, with her spinnaker up, jeorgia still trailing behind but getting closer.

 

A couple of Huatulco greeters playing in front of  Jeorgia’s anchor; dolphins accompanied us along much of this run…. showing up as phosphorescing streaks in the black water around the hull at night

The main town next to the beaches and bays of Huatulco is La Crucecita. It’s a really clean town laid out nicely for walking and for touristas. The sidewalks are all at the same level, something novel for a Mexican city. Lots of expat and visiting Canadians down here, apparently they haven’t heard about how unsafe it is.
We headed into town using a  twenty peso paren two bucks close paren taxi to get my glasses fixed. Somehow they got sat on while I was doing an oil change on the engine. The cabbie knew just where to take us for a raparicion. The glasses shop worked on them for about a half an hour, returned them better than new for fifty pesos. 
There are a half a dozen bays with decent anchorage and some good diving near Huatulco.

Jicaral bay, one of the Mexican national beach parks here and a beautiful little anchorage.

 Here’s Henry off the cat Rapsucllion telling us how big a lobster he’s going to catch.

And here’s his quarry. Too bad it is an empty shell from a large lobster that had molted.

 

Henry and Chris practicing their synchronized snorkeling routine. 

A small eel a little disturbed by the photography

 

A sea snake hanging on the bottom

And slug hanging near the sea snake

protecting his turf

Jeorgia hanging in Jicaral bay paren click to biggerate close paren

a ghost crab on the beach

a spot on spot ray

check the size of this manta ray who cruised through the anchorage one morning. it is just passing the bow, you can see a part of the bow pulpit for sizing. it had to have a wing span of nine or ten feet, awesome

yet another lurking ray

yet another beautiful beach, chachacual

swimming with chris’ turtle in chachacual

turtle tracks heading up the beach so momma can lay her eggs in the bowl at the top

the navy armada with their four, two hundred and fifty horse, yamaha outboards on an oversized panga. they came through the anchorage in the morning just to take a peek. i took the photo from below out of a port, as the military is not big on getting their faces shown in mug shots. apparently this is an area where they have intercepted a few of the mini submarines. these run mostly below the surface to bring drugs north from central America. must be a lucrative trade if you can afford to engineer and build mini subs.

the beach at san augustin, a bigger bay around the point where we were anchored we went over for a beach walk and lunch

larry and vicki from rocinante and henri off rapsucillion  headed into the bay next to us to check out the pallapa restaurants. when the waiter found out it was my birthday he immediately brought out a can of fresca and a shot of tequilla. it actually went down pretty smooth. feliz cumpleanos

paul