14 February 2013 Isla Mujeres, Mexico
I did a few jobs in the morning - recharged the damn fridge again and cleaned the bilge which has become filthy from the diesel leaks that I had on the generator fuel pump and primary fuel filter.
In the afternoon, we chilled out reading and sorting out some administration. I sent off an email to Hallberg Rassy asking them about our rudder. It’s been making a worrying clunking sound especially when we’re running downwind. I’ve discovered that there’s a few millimetres of play on the lower bearing and I believe that it’s making the noise. In addition, we’ve got signs of a leak around the seal where the rudder shaft goes through the hull. Hallberg Rassy came back and said that the play is not a big problem and that the leak can be fixed by replacing some seals and bearings. They can supply the parts to sort it out everything for only £1,200! I’ll probably order the parts and wait until we get hauled out in a year or so.
Glenys did some research on medical insurance. We've been paying over £2,400 per year for private health care and not made a single claim in two years. We really only need some sort of travel insurance that will give us cover for emergency medical treatment in case we have an accident, but it's difficult to find one that will cover us for years – most are geared around single holidays. Glenys eventually found one aimed at backpackers that will cover us for 12 months. It’s still a bit expensive at £800 for both of us, but is 1/3 the cost of our current policy, so she ordered it on-line.
15 February 2013 Isla Mujeres, Mexico
In a fit of madness, I decided to clear out the aft toilet hoses. Over a period of time, the insides of the two-inch hoses become furred up with deposits like lime-scale which reduces the flow of the waste out of the toilet. The only solution is to remove the hoses and clean them out or replace them. Not a nice job. I've been putting it off for a year now, but the toilet nearly jammed yesterday and if the hose is blocked with effluent… Well, you can imagine it’s going to be more unpleasant.
It was a major struggle to remove the two hoses which pass through a bulk head into the engine room, then go in a loop through the cockpit locker and down to the sea cock. It took an hour to get the damn things out with a lot of swearing and scratches on my arms and chest as I lay across the engine. The hoses had 3/4” thick deposits leaving a small 1/2“ diameter hole instead of a nice big 2” diameter hole, so the job was well past due.
I used a rubber mallet to bash the rubber hoses and break up the deposit, dumping it overboard – the easiest part of the job. It then took me a couple of hours to replace the hoses. To get the hose through the cockpit locker, I had to empty it completely, including removing my dive compressor, which was a pain in the neck (and back). Anyway, it’s all done now and we can use the aft heads with confidence.
After lunch, we went into town to do some more shopping and then I dived down on our anchor to check it. There’s a Norther coming tomorrow and the cold front will be bringing 30+ knot winds from the north. We’re a little bit exposed in the middle of the anchorage, but the anchor is well buried in the soft sand, so it should be no problem.
16 February 2013 Isla Mujeres, Mexico
The wind picked up from the north overnight and we had 20-25 knot winds when we woke up. We decided to stay on-board while the front goes through and settled down to a chilled out day. In the middle of the morning, Glenys was in the cockpit and noticed that “Bellatrix” was re-anchoring closer to the shore.
Ten minutes later, she said “Errr, I think that we’re dragging”. Sure enough, we were side onto the wind and slowly heading towards the shoal patch behind us. I was aghast - I’d checked the anchor yesterday and we NEVER drag…
We motored forwards and re-anchored in a slightly different place, but it seemed pointless to stay in the same area where the holding was obviously not very good and we were exposed to the wind and waves. The forecast was for the wind to veer more easterly tonight, so I decided to re-anchor closer into shore where we would have much more shelter when the wind veers. The holding seemed to be good, so we settled down, keeping a close watch on a bearing that we took to a building on shore to check that we weren't dragging again.
Meanwhile, other boats were having problems. A large 100 ft Danish sail-training yacht dragged through the anchorage and ended up where we were originally anchored. When a couple of other boats re-anchored, I started to worry. We were only 100 metres from the shore and my confidence was shattered because we'd dragged, so we put out a second anchor at 30 degrees to the first anchor. This should spread the load between the two anchors and reduce the chances of one of them dragging.
We spent the afternoon trying to ignore the howling wind – we were getting gusts of 30-35 knots. The wind didn't veer as much as I expected and we had uncomfortable waves bouncing us around most of the evening , so we did what we normally do in these circumstances - have a few beers and watch a film.
17 February 2013 Isla Mujeres, Mexico
By morning, the wind had dropped and veered to the north east and it was a lovely day. Being a Sunday, we decided to walk into town and have lunch ashore. We spent the morning just doing our own thing, reading and playing musical instruments.
We had a very pleasant lunch in one of the small “eating places” in the market place. I hesitate to call these places restaurants or cafes because that makes them sound too posh. There’s four of them in the market in Isla Mujeres and they consist of a small kitchen behind a counter and ten or so plastic tables. The food’s great and it’s pretty cheap – we had two big meals with a starter and four beers for £8. I had Chicken Mole which was served in a separate bowl swimming in a rich chilli and dark chocolate sauce - delicious!
Continuing Glenys’s worrying obsession with grave yards, we had a stroll around the cemetery and what a lovely place it is. The plots are all occupied with brightly coloured tombs that are packed so tightly that we could hardly walk between them. Each grave has a small shrine like a little house perched on top. The shrines have glass doors and you can see the various offerings that have been placed there by family – these are not only religious artefacts, but include things that the dead person would have liked, such as a bottle of beer.
After searching for a while, we found the grave of Fermin Mundaca de Marechaja. He was a pirate during the early 1800’s and fell in love with a young woman on Isla Mujeres. As a token of his love, Mundaca built her a lavish plantation, but she spurned him and married a younger man. He died broken hearted. His grave has a skull and crossbones on the north side.
Even on our slobby Sunday, we couldn’t pass by the supermarket without picking up some more provisions, so I lugged five litres of orange juice back to the boat. We had a quiet time for the rest of the day.
18 February 2013 Isla Mujeres, Mexico
It was still a bit windy today, but it’s more from the east and is supposed to drop overnight, so our plan is to finally get moving tomorrow. We’re going to sail down to Cozumel and clear out there before heading down to Belize.
We spent the day on-board making use of the internet while we still have a good connection. We read the policy documents for the travel insurance that Glenys bought a few days ago and, in retrospect, we’re worried that we break a few of their definitions and it will be easy for them to deny a claim. So, I sent them an email describing our circumstances and cancelling the policy.
Our medical insurance runs out at the end of the month, so we did some more research and found a few other companies that look like they have policies that may suit us better, so we sent off emails to get quotes from them.
For some strange reason, I decided that I needed to start researching where we’re going in the Pacific. It’s still at least a year away, but we’re planning to go back to the UK in September and that would be a good time to be buying any cruising guides and charts that we may need for the trip. I really got into it and ended up working out a circumnavigation over the next five years travelling to Easter Island, various pacific islands, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Africa, Brazil and finishing up in Grenada –phew!
19 February 2013 Isla Mujeres to Puerto Morelos, Mexico
We were up early and away from the anchorage by half past seven. It felt good to be moving again – we've been in Isla Mujeres for almost two weeks.
We had a great sail, the wind was from the east and we stayed close to the reef to avoid the strong two knot current that sweeps up this coast. We even managed to sail most of the way into the anchorage before the wind headed us and we had to turn on the engine. The anchorage at Puerto Morelos has really good holding, but it's fairly rolly because the only protection from the easterly swell is a breaking reef and waves were sneaking over it.
We went ashore and walked ½ mile to the Port Captain’s office to report in. According to the officials in Isla Mujeres, we only have to tell them that we've arrived, but the Port Captain had other ideas and wanted a copy of all of our documents. Fortunately, I had copies of some documents, but he was going to make us walk back to the town centre and get others copied at an internet café. I asked him why he needed all of this information and eventually he relented and scanned a few into his computer to print out later – thank goodness.
There’s not much to the town – restaurants, tourist shops and tourists. One of the main attractions of this place is to snorkel on the “fantastic” reef and there are lots of people selling snorkelling trips. We took our dinghy over to the reef and tied up to a buoy. It’s a shallow reef and the water is pretty clear with lots of fish, but not as world class as they want the tourists to believe.
Back on the boat, I had to service a winch on the mast that has started squealing alarmingly. Fortunately, the only thing wrong was that the grease had dried up, so it was just a matter of cleaning it up and re-greasing the various bearings and moving parts. I just love Lewmar winches – they are one of the best pieces of engineering that I've ever seen. They handle terrific loads, yet can be serviced without any tools - how cool is that?
20 February 2013 Puerto Morelos to Cozumel, Mexico
We were up early again and had a good sail to Cozumel. Again, we followed the coast just outside the reef in 15-20 metres depth. There were lots of sports fishing boats trolling up and down about ½ mile further out than us. As usual, we were trailing a fishing line, but we haven’t caught anything for ages, so I decided to move out to the fishing boats to see if that would improve our chances. Unfortunately, they were trolling just along a big drop off where we hit an adverse 2 knot current and very confused seas, so we moved back into shallow waters – “forget the fishing, let’s get to port”.
We hugged the shore until we were north-west of San Miguel, the main town of Cozumel, and then had a fast, if bouncy, close reach for eight miles to the anchorage. Thankfully, the large waves died down as we entered the Cozumel anchorage just to the north of the ferry dock. The cruising guides said that the holding was poor, but we found a very good sandy patch which was good.
Being in the lee of the island, the anchorage is mostly protected from the easterly swell, but some of it hooks around, making this a rolly anchorage. It’s made worse by the tourist and local fishing boats that roar past causing big wakes. There are only four other boats in the anchorage, a couple of small local sailing yachts on moorings, a catamaran (“La Isla”) and a big pirate ship - bloody tourists.
After lunch, we went ashore, which was easier said than done. The shore in this area is a very thin strip of sand, but with rocks guarding most of it. There were lots of local fishing boats pulled up on the beach, but there was no way that our inflatable dinghy would survive the rocks. We looked at the ferry dock, but there was nowhere that we could tie up our dinghy because it’s all being used by ferries or tourist boats. Eventually, we found a small concrete dock to the south of the ferry dock, which is used by dive boats and they let us tie up there.
We want to clear out tomorrow, so we walked to the Immigration office which should be the first step in the bureaucracy. The immigration officer could speak a little English, told us the procedure and even stamped our crew list with tomorrow’s date, so that we’d have a head start. What a nice friendly guy. He even told us a little joke. “Where does the Pink Panther live?” Answer, “Tulum, Tulum, Tulum, Tulum, Tulum …”
On the way back to Alba, we called in to say hello Roberto and Tatiana on “La Isla”. We ended up on their boat having a few sunset beers and showing them our charts of Belize and talking about where we are going. They invited us to stay for dinner which was nice. Tatiana is Brazilian so speaks Portuguese, a little Spanish but very little English. Roberto speaks Spanish, Portuguese and reasonable English and we speak English and a tiny bit of Spanish. It was an interesting night.
By the end of the evening, we had agreed to sail down to Belize together because they have no cruising guides, limited charts and no access to weather forecasts in remote places - Roberto bought their catamaran in Cuba and hasn't been able to sort everything out yet.
21 February 2013 Cozumel to Banco Chinchorro, Mexico (Day 1)
The plan was for Roberto and Tatiana to come into town with us, so that we could go through the clear-out process together, but their outboard wouldn't start, so they had to go to the marina to sort it out. This left Glenys and I trying to understand the process and wandering around town by ourselves.
First, we went to Port Captain’s office, filled in multiple forms and handed over the usual plethora of photocopied documents. They gave us a document and told us to go to the bank to pay a fee. We found a bank in the main square and thirty minutes later reported back to be told that the Port Captain wasn't around to sign our zarpe (exit clearance papers). We’d have to come back in an hour.
We wandered around aimlessly, trying to avoid the tourist shops and the touts – “Hello, my friend, come and look at my things…” Cozumel is not a very interesting place, very touristy and geared to scuba diving – there’s a Starbucks, Hard Rock Café, Diamonds International, MacDonald’s, etc., which have little interest for us.
An hour later, clutching our signed zarpe, we walked back to the immigration office, where we gave them another handful of photocopies and finally had all of our clearance papers. In retrospect, it wasn't too painful and would have been fairly quick, if the Port Captain had been in his office.
We went to supermarket and spent our last pesos – it’s a weird feeling to spend all of your money. When we arrived back at the anchorage, “La Isla” had returned, so Roberto and Tatiana took a couple of our charts to get them copied and went to clear out and buy some provisions. They were successful in clearing out, but didn't manage to get the charts copied.
We left at four o'clock and motor-sailed along the coast of Cozumel passing four huge cruise ships and endless dive and party boats. As the sun went down, we had a chat with “La Isla” who were a few miles behind us and confirmed that we were going to Bahia Espiritus Santos.
As we headed out to sea past the south end of the island, the wind gradually picked up to 20 knots from the south east, so we were hard on the wind on port tack just making the rhomb line to Bahia Espiritus Santos. It was a pretty night with a bright ¾ moon and clear skies, but it was miserable trying to get comfortable while we were banging and crashing about in the big confused seas.