Busted in Jaltemba!

From Chacala, Jaltemba is only a short 2-hour motor away—I know we are in a sailboat, but for such a small amount of time it is not worth unpacking the sails for the trip. It is a huge bay with spans of beautiful beach that is mostly unoccupied. Mostly, that is, until you get to the southern end of the bay where it becomes crowded with hotels, resorts, and beachfront restaurants with a backdrop of stunning, rugged mountains.

About a mile offshore, there is an island (formally called Isla la Peña, now called Isla Coral). It doesn’t look like much. Most of the island is trees growing on steep cliffs inhabited by nesting Pelican and Frigates, but there is a cute little beach there where they shuttle tourists during the day. The shuttles start at about 9 or 10 in the morning, however by 5:00 (a time when things are just getting crazy on the mainland), everyone has left the island for the day and we can enjoy this island anchorage in peace and quiet. We like to anchor off the island not only for its evening solitude, but it provides great protection from the sea swell for calmer anchoring.

Isla Coral

Things have changed quite a bit since we first started anchoring here. What seemed to be a tourist area for Mexicans has been flooded with more and more gringos from Canada and the U.S. each year. Also, the number of small fishing pangas moored at the far end of the bay continue to be replaced by “banana”, tour, and party boats. While anchored near the mainland, most mornings we dinghy ashore for a walk before heading back to the boat to enjoy the afternoon reading and swimming. Lily doesn’t enjoy swimming so much as riding on her “surfboard”.

Surf's Up

She’s got the routine of getting on and off her board figured out.

Let's Go

Ride's Over

Whether anchored near the mainland or the island, we enjoyed some beautiful skies.

Even Lily enjoys sky-watching in the evenings from her comfy spot on the sail bags.

One morning while anchored at the island, we were enjoying our morning coffee down below when we heard the telltale sound of a whale blow…and it sounded close! We quickly jumped on deck, and sure enough there was a mama and her baby not 50 feet off our starboard flank. Just when we thought out whale sightings were done for the season (and we were definitely coming out of this season completely satisfied with way more and way closer than average experiences), here was the closest one yet. There is no way for us to know exactly how old this baby was, but we suspect it was quite young by how close they stayed together and how mama would swim up underneath baby to help lift it when it surfaced. How exciting it was to watch them interact in the still waters of that early morning. We spent over an hour and a half watching them before they moved further away—it was a magical experience that we couldn’t walk away from.

I hope you aren’t tired of whale pictures and video.

Lily talking to the whales.

And a video collage....(this may take a bit to load, but worth it if you like baby whales)

Now for the part that I have been dreading to write about and that has caused such severe procrastination that we may be home by the time I get this posted…It started out a peaceful morning anchored at the city front. We took our dinghy ashore for a morning walk before returning to the boat to enjoy the day. At night we always secure our dinghy on board to ensure that it remains “our dinghy”, but during the day we typically leave it tied to the side of the boat. For some reason on this day we tied our dinghy near the stern and let it trail behind our boat (I don’t know why as we hardly ever do this).

In the late afternoon we all went down below as things started to pick up in the bay. Lily is pretty tolerant of all the pangas towing around their inflatable “bananas” and “hotdogs” loaded with whooping and hollering tourists. We are also pretty tolerant of them and often wave to the driver and their customers out of good will as they circle around us. What Lily is NOT tolerant of is the jet skies buzzing about which they apparently rent to anyone with a pulse and a credit card (not necessarily in that order). Lily seems to spot them from miles away and will continue to bark at them until they return to shore. It is a vicious cycle where she barks at them, her barking attracts their attention, her cuteness keeps them coming back for more which assures her continued barking. Therefore, once they start coming out, it is time to go down below. Which is exactly what had happened on this particular day.

While we were down below, we heard the roar of an engine at high rpm’s that sounded way too close for comfort. We jumped out on deck to see what was going on. The offending jet ski was going so fast that in the seconds it took to get topside, all that was left was a white-water trail leading straight towards our boat and making a 90° turn barely a yard from the hull and a wake that left our boat bouncing and rocking like we were in the middle of a storm at sea. The wake also pushed our dinghy under the the stern where our Monitor (used for steering a course based on wind direction while sailing), is mounted. Since we were not sailing, the rudder of the Monitor was hinged up. So, when the boat bounced on the dinghy, the hinge scraped across the top before cutting a 3 inch hole in her.

The hinge 

BUSTED!

Busted!

And it is worse than it looks. Our particular dinghy has 2 separate tubes. The picture taken immediately after the event makes it seem like only one of the tubes was affected. That is what we initially thought as well; however, the scratch across the other tube was deep enough that it cut through the Hypalon causing a slower leak. (Heavy sigh…)

In the ensuing weeks, we struggled to repair our dinghy. It came with a repair kit of sandpaper, glue, and patches. It included many large Hypalon patches, but we’ve had larger tubes of hemorrhoidal ointment than the tube of glue included in the kit. The directions said that 3 coats of glue were required on both the dinghy and the patch, which clearly was not going to happen for such a large patch. It also mentioned a flat surface and a clean, dry environment…which is also not going to happen on the deck of a boat in the ocean. We focused our energy and supplies on the large cut, figuring we could deal with a slow leak on the other tube until we could find a source of repair glue.

Sadly, the first patch was a failure. Small amounts of air were leaking from all sides of the patch. We had some contact cement onboard, so we decided to use that to patch the edges of the original patch. It seemed to work until a few days later under the heat of the sun the air was filling up the patches with contact cement causing them to bubble up. Failure number two. We finally resorted to using silicone (since we had it), spreading it all around the original patch and the deep scratch. This worked—sort of. It only held of a few days before needing to be replaced.

We were beside ourselves about what to do. A catastrophic failure to our dinghy is quite problematic for us. As “coastal” sailors, we have never prioritized the huge expense of a life-raft. In the unlikely event we need to abandon ship, we figure we can survive on our dinghy long enough for a rescue. In addition, and something I haven’t previously mentioned, we have been having problems with our Garmin emergency satellite device. It not only leaves “bread crumbs” to track our location, it also has an SOS that can be activated in an emergency. Unfortunately, the second malfunction this season caused it to return to factory settings where the satellite could only be reactivated with a wi-fi signal, (I know, if I had a wi-fi signal I wouldn’t need the satellite!).

We decided to start heading north towards home and hoped to find a solution to our dinghy woes in Mazatlán. Which we did. Our good friends Frank and Patsy were in Mazatlán when we arrived. They had some great two-part epoxy like adhesive that relied on a chemical reaction rather than dry air for curing. It worked perfectly. With both leaks properly repaired, it left us time to have some fun with friends before continuing home. As for our SOS…it continued being problematic. Wish us luck trying to get that figured out/fixed without having to spend nearly a thousand dollars purchasing a new one in our world where everything is disposable.

As I’m writing this, we are back in Guaymas days away from being hauled out of the water for the season. We had great fun this season in spite of it being the coolest temperatures we’ve seen in a while. Another oddity for this season was the amount of foggy days—I guess that goes along with the cooler weather? As always, we feel fortunate to have a life where we continue to look forward to the next thing. We love being on the boat, but look forward to being home!