Careyes and Food

Jan 31 - Feb 1, 2008:

Careyes is a beautiful anchorage, located where the old Club Med "Playa Blanca" was located. It has now become a location for some of the more spectacular homes to be found on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. Wow!










More importantly, what do sailors eat when they are cruising? Well, if you're with Diane, Ray, Jim and Darda (Bill's good for dishes and that's about it), you eat like royalty! Here are some sample dishes:

Around Cabo to Ipala; Oops ... Chamela

Jan 26th - 30th, 2008: After an early morning departure from Yelapa, we rounded Cabo Corrientes without difficulty. First lesson learned; even if you cleaned your boat bottom 2 weeks ago, Banderas Bay (and more specifically the anchorage off La Cruz) is amazing at growing beards on boats! Clean your bottom before rounding!

We were not able to make the speed we had hoped, but since our first stop was Ipala, 15 miles around the corner, it shouldn't be a problem. We arrived at Ipala about 10:30 in the morning and spent about 45 minutes anchoring. Ultimately, Bill (me) didn't like the limited room with the fish nets, etc. and decided to push off for Chamela, another 50 miles down the coast.

If the bottom had been clean, no problem. As it was, we couldn't squeeze more than 6 kts. out of Wirewalker so we arrived after dark into Chamela. First, my apologies to the crew, who didn't sign on for that kind of adventure! What made it better was our chartplotter's ability to overlay radar onto charts so we could tell where the land "really was" vs. the 150 year old charts. To add to that, we had some friends 'inside' Chamela already who relayed waypoints for rounding the entrance and avoiding an extensive outlying rock group. Very handy.

With the anchor down at 9:00 pm, we enjoyed a superb meal and rest. We spent 5 days in and around Chamela, enjoying the land and the sea.

Next Stop; Yelapa

Better a palapa in Yelapa, then a condo in Redondo ... or so the saying goes. Yelapa continues to be one of our favorite places to visit in Banderas Bay! With the moorings that now exist, it's fairly secure to spend the night there, so we made the decision to visit Yelapa and 'stage' ourselves for a 3:00 am departure around Cabo Corrientes. Start early avoid, minimize the winds.

Yelapa lived up to it's reputation. All had a terrific time visiting this quaint little village with no roads (or cars). They do have "quads" and donkeys to provide help in moving things around, but no cars. All supplies arrive by boat. Very nice.

The Blessing of the Fleet; KJ'ers in Banderas Bay

Jan. 20th - , 2008

The sad departure of our children; Elyse, Greg and son, Hayden, was softened a bit with the arrival the next day of our good KJ friends, Jim, Darda and Ray, who were joining us for the adventure south to Zihautanejo.

First things being first, we needed to provision and also make sure our friends had a chance to see some of the local color. La Cruz de Huanacaxtle provided that color, with the blessing of the fleet! Many of the local fishing boats were decked out in baloons, streamers, and (yes) fireworks for the parade/event. Like many of the good fireworks displays in Mexico, something will probably go wrong and, sure enough, not long after firing off a few of the fireworks, the entire crew of the boat dove overboard! Seems the inventory decided to go off prematurely! Oops. Well, it was still fun!