Monday 28 Feb, Mexico day 40, Punta Allen: Captain gets a haircut, dolphins play with the dinghy, searching for manatees, and parts go overboard while we prepare for departure.
This morning our surroundings are not as tranquil as yesterday. All morning the wind blows quite hard from the north, so we decide to relax on board as we are surrounded by white caps in the turquoise water. While Cloudy is quite happy in this snug anchorage, heading off anywhere in the dinghy would be a very wet affair. Not recommended for Bunnies (i.e. Oana) who don’t like getting splashed!
So, no.1 task of the day is to de-scruffify the captain, who is long over-due a haircut. Oana has been my hairdresser for the last several years, and I now get a standard cut each time, plus I no longer have to second guess how good the barber is. In fact, I’d have say she is now the best barber I’ve ever had, by far. And I’ve had a few. My last experiment with an unknown barber was in a small hut in St. Vincent where, halfway through the cutting, the young black barber declared that he had never cut a white man’s straight hair before! Needless to say, in places I looked like I’d been scalped and other places I remained as shaggy as before. Oana did her best to correct it later, and in turn became my defacto barber.
After pottering with a few other things on board, we set out mid-afternoon for another adventure in the dinghy. Having studied the drone footage more closely we now see that yesterday we had been very close to getting all the way to the town dock that lies in the in the middle of the mangrove jungle. Until that is, we had ran aground and covered the dinghy in poo-smelling mud. Armed with this new information, this time we do make it all the way into the docking area, even though some of the cuts through the mangroves were barely the width of the dinghy.
Our intention was to dock the dinghy and have a 1 hour walk to the lighthouse on the southern tip of the peninsula. But we couldn’t see a safe place to leave the dinghy that wouldn’t be encroaching on other boat’s dockage. So we about-turned, headed all the way back out the mangroves and started the 2 mile ride around to the northern dock.
But on the way we got somewhat distracted. Two large dolphins started to swim towards us and within a minute of spotting them, they had neatly hidden themselves so perfectly under the dinghy that all we could see of them was their snouts just in front of the bow. Now, we have often had dolphins swimming on the bow of Cloudy Bay, some 2.5m below us on the bow deck, but we have never had them swimming with the dinghy, so close to us that you could almost touch them. As I slowed the dinghy, they would pop out to one side, come to the surface for air and give us the eye – as if to say “come on, lets play!”. So we would speed the dinghy up and they would swim ahead, like they were winning a race. And as I turned the dinghy one way then the other, they would follow. I could even turn in a full circle and they would emulate our move. Such amazing creatures. They made us both quite emotional with their apparent playful affection. They swam and played with us like this for the full mile to the next dock, only peeling away once the water started to get too shallow.
Boosted by this experience, Oana got chatting to the tourist boat drivers on the jetty (you can clearly see the Mexican’s instantly warm to her when she speaks to them in her perfect Spanish). Now that we have seen dolphins, we really want to see the manatees too. And the drivers point us to where they usually gather. Basically: “around the corner, take the channel into the lagoon and they will be on the left”. Easier said than done in this maze of mangroves and channels. Around which corner? Which of the many channels should we take? And which lagoon? Eventually we do find ourselves inside a large lagoon but no sign of manatees. And to be honest we don’t know what we are looking for. Being large slow mammals, we assume they will surface for air thus occasionally be visible to us. Then the driver who gave us directions speeds up to us, complete with 4 tourists onboard, and tells us to follow him. Such kind people. But alas, neither they nor us ever spotted a manatee. A shame. But never mind, at least we had seen one before in the wild, oddly in the middle of Fort Lauderdale!
We then spend our last evening back dining in the village and using the WiFi to catch up on the news. Each day we read that the pesky Ruskies have not yet managed to take any one city inside Ukraine, is a good day. Long may they hold out. It’s also very interesting to read stories of how the Russian soldiers are all a bit confused. It seems they were told their mission was to liberate Ukraine and that they would be welcomed. It’s turning out not to be quite that situation.
After our dodgy dingy ride in the pitch-black darkness trying to find Cloudy Bay last night, tonight we are sure to be back just before the last of the evening glow disappears. Then, in the darkness we get the outboard engine off and raise the dinghy and secure its belly straps on the davits, ready for our passage to Honduras tomorrow. Unfortunately, in the process, the outboard lock that I had placed on the swim platform, rolled off and “plopped” into the sea. Damn and double damn! You would think I would have learned by now that things will head to Davey Jones locker when left unattended on the swim platform.
I curse myself, but I have no intention to dive into the blackness to try to recover it. Last time I tried that I had an unpleasant encounter with a large barracuda that nearly made me poo my pants! So instead, I throw over a line with dive weights on one end and a small float on the other end. Hopefully that will roughly mark the spot and I can dive down tomorrow at first light.
The rest of the evening is preparations for our departure. The wind looks like it should be 12-18kts just aft of the beam, making it a fast and fun sailing trip.