Cruising the Costalegre!

Costalegre in espanol means the ‘Coast of Joy’ or the Happy Coast as many refer to it. It encompasses an area on the Pacific side of Mexico between Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco and Manzanillo, Colima. Brian and I have been to this area many times together; the first being in 2004 when we were just dating! Six years ago while sitting on the beach in Melaque, we first entertained the idea of long term cruising. There has been a lot of water under our keel since then!

After crossing from Cabo to Chamela we knew we would have several weeks to a month or more to cruise the anchorages here. We don’t want to head up into the Sea of Cortez too early. As we experienced last year, the northers blow hard until the end of February and it is cold in the Sea. Ok, I know those of you in Canada are laughing at my reference to cold… but after 30 degrees C almost every day, 21 or 22 degrees and 12 degrees overnight is cold. I don’t want to have to put on a jacket, long pants or shoes unless absolutely necessary! As I write this it is 29.5 C (85 F) and 75% humidity in the cabin.

So what have we been doing to avoid the “cold”! Well we started in Punta Perula in Bahia Chamela and spent our first week plus hanging out with our buddy boat SV Raicilla. We explored the very small town and it was quite busy as Christmas approached. There was an ‘adult night out’ that may or may not have involved lots of tequila and riding the carnival rides in the jardin (the town square)!

I also realized while in Chamela that we had achieved our 4 month cruising anniversary and you know how much I like statistics! So to recap we have travelled over 2700nm, visited 3 countries (including Canada), stayed in 20 anchorages, 2 marinas and on one mooring ball. All that and we only ran the engine 194 hours. We much prefer sailing to motoring!

When planning this trip, we thought we would like to be in Barra de Navidad for Christmas, but were unsure if the timing would work out. But after a short stop at Tennacatita we made the 15nm hop to Barra meet up with our two favourite buddy boats – SV Brigadoon III and SV Raicilla. On our way we stopped briefly to drop the hook in front of Melaque at the other end of the bay from Barra. It was an emotional moment for the two of us to finally have our boat in that bay. We had watched several boats with Canadian flags on them in that bay six years ago and dreamed of being here on our own boat. And here we were!!

Entering the Barra lagoon can be a bit of an adventure. It is very shallow and it is not uncommon to see boats go aground. Well Christmas Eve it was our turn! It was a very low tide but fortunately we went in as it was rising. For any of you ever planning to enter the lagoon, pay very close attention to the waypoints in Navionics. Straying slightly to port was our mistake and we came to a sudden stop on the sandbar. Fortunately the bottom is soft muddy sand and no damage to our boat occurred. After waiting 30 mins and with help from another cruiser, his dinghy pushing our bow, we finally floated and made our way into the anchorage and dropped the hook! Whew! We saw at least 2 other boats in our stay there make a similar mistake. Unfortunately one did it on a falling tide and were left leaning over for nearly 12 hours.

Our stay in Barra was great; Christmas and NYE were fun. We had a great Christmas dinner out with Patty & Doug – Brigadoon III and Mark & Jaclyn – Raicilla. NYE was spent with a potluck on Brigadoon followed by fireworks in the resort next to their marina.

The last month has been spent moving back and forth between Barra and Tenacatita; and now finally back to Chamela. We are waiting for an appropriate weather window to round Cabo Correntes and enter Banderas Bay. We are hoping for a nice southerly wind direction as we head north. You can see below the different wind directions and how one has to choose carefully. The capes (aka Cabo) can cause the winds to accelerate and the seas to get much bigger. Going downwind in that is still work, but upwind would be very uncomfortable.

So I will leave you with some photos and highlights of our stay here on the “happy coast”.

We plan to head up towards Mazatlan before crossing over to the Baja side of the Sea of Cortez in March. Can’t wait to explore all the anchorages we missed and those we loved from the last two seasons! Stay tuned!