Bahia de Navidad!

We left our great anchorage of Bahia Tenacatita around 10:45am to head 14nm to Bahia de Navidad to anchor in Melaque anchorage, what the cruisers call "Rocky Melaque".  We had a great motor sail down with around 10 knots of wind, no fish but we saw whales, a sea turtle and a Mexican Navy Boat. 

Looking at the beach of Melaque from the anchorage

A small town Melaque is at the north end of Bahia de Navidad and the town Barra de Navidad is to the south end of the bay.  We chose to anchor in Melaque anchorage instead of going into Barra de Navidad lagoon.  We have heard of stories of people running a ground on unmarked shoals, and since we are only planning on staying a couple of days we decided to anchor and put out our stern anchor to help point us into the swells so we don't roll as much.  The first day that we arrived the wind was hitting up to 20 knots so we were not able to get our dinghy down to put out our stern anchor, but we had a great night with very little rolling.  The next morning before going into town we decided to put our our stern anchor, but for some reason we were turned in such a direction that pulling the boat around by dinghy made it hard to get the anchor in the best spot to point the boat into the swells.  Needles to say the next night was really really really rolly, but oh well we can fight it one more day. 

A little friend hanging out by the school

town square, where there are a couple of streets full of shops, grocery stores, and meat markets

the colorful church

in the middle of the plaza at the square

Skeeter dancing for some ice cream

 As like many of the anchorages here on the Pacific Mexican Mainland we have to surf land our dinghy on the beach.  Well we have been so far lucky coming onto the beach, but here we were not so lucky getting off the beach.  It is all about timing the breaking waves, they seem to come in sets, a couple of large ones and then a couple of small ones.  Sounds easy, well not so much for us.  We were not so lucky trying to leave the beach one afternoon and Jerry, myself and Skeeter got soaking wet, but at least we did not flip the dinghy.  But we did decide to pull the dinghy back up on the beach and have a couple of beers while we waited a while, mostly for there not to be such an audience around.  The beach gets full of all the part time Canadians that live down here.

Sitting at one of the palapa restaurants waiting for a easier surf to get the dinghy back off the beach

at least he is making use of SV Red Coats dinghy on land!