Huatulco To Puerto Chiapas

1/31/15 – 2/3/15
250 NM

I'll make an effort not to ramble as much in this post. JUMBLE had a good, mostly uneventful crossing of the Gulf of Tehuantepec. We encountered some 20 knots winds a bit off the bow our first evening entering Salina Cruz, which hosts a large commercial shipping facility. There appeared to be fires on the hills behind the town, sort of BladeRunner-esque. I think these are the port's super-bright lights, but maybe there's a PEMEX refinery or something. With the offshore breeze, the smell was of smoke and dust, but not the usual smell of burning trash we've come to associate with populated areas in Mexico. Two large ships were anchored and another was moving at very low speed. Our charts show offshore lighted buoys/moorings, presumably for loading tankers. We passed very close by one that showed on our charts as a yellow flash, but I never spotted it.

The Shrimper Menace

Everyone hates Frigatebirds

An all too common sight along this coast

By the next morning it as calm and flat as we hugged the shore a few miles off just in case the wind decided to start howling. The only traffic was shrimpers, who seemed to be operating around the 100' contour, mostly. One sailboat passed a few miles to the south of us heading north in the afternoon. Around this time our Raymarine SPX5 wheelpilot, a product I cannot say enough bad things about, quit on us. When we're actually sailing, we use our Sailomat self-steering vane (a superior product), but for motoring we need the electronic autopilot. Hand-steering is anathema to us and I assume any other sane cruiser. Anyway, for the next 40 hours or so, we sailed whenever there was a enough wind for the vane to work and worked out a system to steer with the mizzen while motoring, although this required at least a puff of wind. We went over our weather window and got a little bit of Tehuantepec wind one evening, 25-30 knots and gusty, but only for a couple hours before sundown. Good sailing.

Spin Sheet on Genny for better lead downwind

The most we got from Tehuantepec

For Puerto Chiapas, I'll let the pictures do the talking. Helpful marina, but a very bad place to be stuck when you're broke as there's no anchoring. Raymarine puts a $5 brushed hobby motor, the kind you'd find in an cheap RC car, in their $1600 pilot. Raymarine will charge you $75 for a replacement with the little drive gear. They won't ship to Mexico. When we get back to the States I'd like to make a franken-system with higher quality drive components. There was nothing available locally. The motor's brushes had fallen out and the commutator was shredded. We found a small robot parts outfit in Colorado willing to deal with us. This is where we finally encountered the difficulty of getting things shipped to Mexico and we were not the only ones stuck in “parts purgatory”. The Marina has an address for shipping and allowed us to use their phone to make a few international calls, but it took about a week and a half for our little package to arrive. $12 for 2 motors, $67 for shipping. All told, JUMBLE had a much easier time than most, given the horror stories we heard. We now understand why many people structure their re-supplies around flights home or visits from friends.

Exotic fertilizer: less manure smelling, more stale coffee or fish

Side Channel towards Muelle de Pesca and the Marina

They're more impressive from a distance

It also made us consider how misleading it can be to think of cell phones (everyone in mexico seems to have one), internet and social networking as a sort of gateway for the developing world into the 21st century. Sure, it's a great thing and cell towers are easy to build and profitable. However, being able to find something on the internet and actually being able to access it through a reasonable supply train are totally different things. Talking to some of the locals it's often a case of either go without or have friends or family bring the items over the border themselves. The basic logistical and political problems can't be defeated by innovation alone.

Anyway, the crew of JUMBLE kept busy and enjoyed hot showers for 15 DAYS. A real hemorrhage of cash. We tackled numerous small projects that have been piling up:

-Comprehensive mosquito netting; compromise between ventilation and tightness
-Clean and lubricate all blocks, many had become 'talkative'
-Replace windvane drive lines with spectra for less stretch and friction
-Divide and hinge port bunk storage to eliminate toolbox on starboard
-Route main halyard to avoid chafe problems on spreader
-Run additional anchor chain into bilge instead of vee-berth; modify floorboards to allow access
-Inventory all lockers (only 1/3rd done)
-REPLACE AUTOPILOT MOTOR
-Cleaning, laundry and sundry

Anna is one cool cucumber. 50 mph in a pickup bed

Wine from CINNAMON and schnitzel

We lined the bottom with pieces of yoga mat

The gaff is JUMBLE's most popular perch

Right at the last minute, after the drug-sniffing dog came aboard and we had our Zarpe to exit the country, we met a Dutch cruiser, Ben, who shared GBs of e-charts with us. We made a show of turning on the motor, checking lines, hanking on sails and otherwise killing time as we waiting for the files to copy. Technically, you're supposed to leave immediately after the inspection and I think they were a little annoyed with us, but the charts are tits. Thanks Ben.

One brush in the gearbox

Pressing the gear

Rewiring

We'll see how long this fix lasts.