Author: Pam
After a night of dodging ships around Manzanillo, we are happy to be out of the major shipping traffic of this area. We have seen more ships on this leg of our journey so far, not our favorite way to spend our watches in the middle of the night wondering what direction is that big dude going? As the morning approached we began to feel slightly concerned about the fuel consumption it took to fight the wind, waves and current on our nose. We left Zihautanejo without a completely full tank of fuel, which was a first. The only fuel dock is at the pier in Zihautanejo and is very difficult to get into due to the breaking waves and current. We chickened out trying knowing there was a fuel dock 240 miles away in Barra. This was the first time on our journey we have felt the slightest concern about our fuel. As we approached Barra de Navidad, the needle was sitting on E, not our favorite letter in the alphabet. We made the right hand turn into the channel and headed for the fuel dock. It was a welcome sight. After getting diesel we decided to investigate the options for staying in Barra. We were planning to continue the ten miles to Tenacatita and anchor for a night or two. Since we had already explored Tenacatita and we had a few days to spare, we thought it would be fun to add one more spot in Mexico to our itinerary. With that thought, we headed on foot over to the marina to check out options for a slip. When we walked down on the docks we were greeted by the narrowest fairways we have ever seen. Yikes, not the best variable for comfortable parking. So, we headed back to the boat to try to find out the scoop on anchoring in the lagoon, the other option. Scott called on the VHF radio to the fleet in the lagoon and requested info on anchoring. His call was answered by the sailing vessel Effie and basically it boiled down to lining up with palm trees etc… to avoid getting stuck on the sandbar. Yikes again, we decided it probably wasn’t a good idea for us to figure out which palm tree was the target (even with the GPS waypoints he offered). So, we decided to walk back to the marina and talk to the Harbor Master to see what options he could offer. If we didn’t feel comfortable going to the marina, we decided we would go with plan A and head to Tenacatita. The Harbor Master walked down on a dock with us that had a bunch of open slips, he said “we could have any slip we landed in.” Well, who could pass up that offer? So…. we hiked back to the boat and headed for the marina. On the way down the channel we had several people offer help catching our lines, but unfortunately they could not get to where we were going from where they were. Once we made our left hand turn feeling very large for once, Scott headed for the second open slip, started to make the turn and then we discovered there was a dinghy parked on the left side (it was a double slip), so much for our wide open hopes. No worries, Scott did a great job parking and a couple of guys working on a boat across the way caught the lines. I am very grateful to the many people who seem to come out of nowhere to help when we are parking, muchas gracias. After we got all settled and checked in and of course took a shower we decided to go check out the town. Barra de Navidad gets points for the best water taxi service in Mexico. It costs 10 pesos (not quite a dollar) per person for a very fast, less than five minute ride to the pier in town. It was a lovely evening and we enjoyed a sunset walk on the beach and dinner at a very good Italian restaurant (however our waitress was French). The town of Barra de Navidad is a very quaint beach side town, we are thrilled we needed fuel and decided to stay.
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