Saturday 26 Feb, Mexico day 38: Sailing south, El Cid Marina to Bahai De La Acensione.

Having completed the checkout formalities on Thursday, we officially must depart Mexico within 48 hours, or by 9am today. What we have neglected to divulge is that while we will indeed depart the marina, we have no intention to leave Mexico. At least, not just yet. We want to stop a night or two at the village of Punta Allen, which is supposed to be quite unique. So, we will be illegal immigrants for a couple of days! Additionally, this short stop will break the passage to Bay Islands in Honduras, meaning from there it will be just one overnight sail rather than almost 3 days.

We have a 5am alarm for a 6am departure. We don’t normally stress ourselves like this, but to cover the 80nm and ensure our arrival before sunset, today’s early wakeup is a necessary evil. While the trip should be quite straight froward, the unknown is the north-going Gulf Stream current. To have any chance of less than 1kt of current against us, we will have to sail extremely close to the shoreline and/or reefs. People have told us any deeper than the 10m contour and we will be in the current. This is another reason for getting this leg done during daylight. Navigating uncharted reefs in the dark is not a good recipe.

We slip our lines bang on 6am and after a bit of floating around in the harbour to tidy lines and fenders, we are quickly out into the sea, heading SW down the coast. As we exit the harbour we are immediately rocked around by a large swell (1.5m) left from the previous few days of continuous easterly trades. Up until daylight (sunrise is at 7am) we start at 20m depths and already feel almost 1kt of current against us. But by sunrise, now that I can see the waves breaking on the reefs, I’m more daring and we sit on the 7-10m contours with one eye glued to the depth instrument and the other looking ahead for signs of shallows. Oh, and by the way, the Navionics charts are pretty useless here. Excepting around the ports, most of this coastline is uncharted or crudely charted at best.

We are sailing in reasonably clam water, but just ¼ mile on our port side, there is a clear demarcation line where the Gulf Stream current begins. Beyond the line the water darkens, and waves have white-caps and are chaotic. In the middle of the stream, the currents can reach 5kts and with today’s northerly wind, it is no place to be. At one point we pass a catamaran going the other way right in the main current. The current is clearly helping his speed, but the catamaran is hobby-horsing like hell. One second the 2 bows are clean out the water and next second water is gushing up through the trampoline and I can see the rudders. Glad I’m not them.

We pass Playa Del Carmen so close to the beach that people wave to us from the sun beds! Can’t help but wonder what they think seeing a British flag yacht passing by like this. Again, we are in awe at the extent of the hotel development along this coast. It’s pretty much uninterrupted all the way to Tulum. And even where there are still virgin bays and beaches backed by jungle-like vegetation, there is usually some construction underway. It’s not difficult to see this whole coast will be holiday accommodation in the next decade or so. It’s a shame they don’t try to conserve some of this wonderful coastline with national park status.

Our sail plan today is wing-on-wing (mainsail to starboard and poled genoa to port). The wind is about 150 deg off our port quarter allowing the main to be powered up and the genoa sailing by-the-lee. It’s pretty fast like this. At one point I did think about spinnaker. The wind speed and angle would be perfect, but given we need to be ready to pounce on the wheel for a quick maneuver to avoid a reef or tourist boat, the spinnaker is not a good idea today. We leave that sail to when we are well offshore, out of everybody’s way.

Once in the lee of Conzumel island the easterly swell disappears, giving us a really tranquil sail along the hotel-fronts. But by the time we reach Puerto Aventuras the swell is back with vengeance, on our beam, rolling us all over the place. This continues for several hours until we can finally gybe the genoa and bring the wind on the beam too, making for a much more comfortable ride for the rest of the day.

Further south, as we pass Tulum (the beach we had walked on last week) the wind picks up to 15-18kts and we are thundering along at full speed doing 8.5kts along with a nice counter current.
Talking of current, it turns out that we actually managed to have counter current helping us for most of the day. In-fact there was only really a period of about 1 hour where we had current against us. And then it was only about ½ a knot, maximum. So hugging this coast south was a good plan for a passage to the Bay Islands. I must thank all those on the Honduras Cruisers Net who gave us this sound advice.

Bang on 5pm, as we had hoped for, we turn inland just south of Punta Allen light house. The bottom comes up pretty quickly to 4m but surprisingly this area has been very well charted by the Mexican Navy and the data is included in Navionics charts. Hence we have confidence to go into the bay under full sail. Maybe a bit foolish, but it did work out, allowing us to sail all the way to our anchorage.

As we come into the lee of Punta Allen mangroves, the sea flattens, and peace descends. We drop the anchor at 6pm and we are treated to a wonderful sunset (big red ball with no clouds) while we have a very relaxing dinner in the cockpit. After 3 weeks in the El Cid Marina, along with all its lights, tonight is going to be wonderfully pitch black. We are going to sleep like babies in this natural paradise.

Tomorrow we take the dinghy, for the first time in weeks, and go to explore the village and see if we can spot some wild manatees on the way.