21 March 1996 Isla Mujeres, Mexico
We decided to have a day out. We caught a ferry to Puerto Jaurez and then a bus into Cancun. We made a slight mistake and got off the bus at the main bus terminal, so we had a long walk back to the centre of town. We hadn’t got a map, so we didn’t know where we were. It’s more of a trauma dragging the boys around when we’re lost!
Cancun is very spread out, so when we arrived at the centre, we still didn’t know we were there! Brett spotted a McDonalds and then sulked for an hour because we said we weren’t going to have lunch there – what a prima donna! Eventually at half past ten, Glenys suggested we call in at McDonalds for a coke and a Breakfast McMuffin. That cheered Brett up, but hacked me off because we’d pampered to his whims.
We wandered aimlessly around the shops for a couple of hours and then went to a restaurant for lunch. Pretty boring place! The highlight of the day was seeing a machine for making tortillas in the supermarket. Glenys bought 1kg (about 3 inches high) for $0.20!
22 March 1996 Isla Mujeres, Mexico
School work in the morning. The wind has finally switched from the north to east, but we decided to stay here for another week – we don’t want to get to the States too early. There’s another front due on the 26th so we’ll go after that. We spent the afternoon pottering about doing small jobs and tidying up. Rolf from “Schlampe” came and bought my compressor for $1500 US and a BCD and regulator for $200 US. I was quite pleased with the price, but sad to sell it. It’s the start of the end of our cruising!
23 March 1996 Isla Mujeres, Mexico
I listened to the weather again and I think that today would have been a good day to go. I’m going to keep an eye on the weather to see if I’m right.
The Cruisers Net continues to amaze me. It’s basically run by American cruisers, who need the security of knowing where everyone is. The opening statement by the Net controller is a hoot “Welcome to the North West Caribbean Cruisers Net. The purpose of this Net is to facilitate the dissemination of information amongst the cruising community” – they actually talk like this. They give the weather which is very useful, but then they go into a prolonged “boat check in” where a large number of boats call in and say where they are “located”. Very boring and it’s always the same boats. Some of these people must spend 2-3 hours a day on their SSB radios – yawn!
Glenys did school work in the morning and I dug out the old, rusting ballast from under the locker on the aft starboard quarter. The iron in the ballast has expanded as it’s rusted and has pushed the woodwork out of shape. I removed as much of the damaged wood as I dared and I’m leaving the woodwork loose in the hope that it will settle back to its original position. After lunch, Glenys took the boys to the town beach and I followed them a little later to help with the shopping.
In the evening, there was a barbeque party organised by “Cortica”. Despite valiant efforts by Debbie, “It just didn’t happen, man.” There were too many old fogies with too much intense conversation (disseminating information). The highlight of the night was Brett and Craig attacking a Piñata bear with a cricket bat. The bear was about 2’6” high made of papier-mâché and had loads of candy in it, which they got after the boys knocked its head off!
24 March 1996 Isla Mujeres, Mexico
A quiet day. Glenys took the boys to the town beach at midday. I sold all my remaining PADI stock to a local dive shop and then worked out that our diving has still cost us £2,600 – not too bad considering we’ve got £1,200 worth of equipment and have done 344 dives between us. I had a quiet afternoon and then met Glenys and the boys in town, where we had a meal in a local restaurant. I had Pollo De Mole – chicken in chilli chocolate sauce. Not too bad - definitely an acquired taste!
25 March 1996 Isla Mujeres, Mexico
The forecast is for E to SE winds at 15-20 knots for the next 3 days. There is a front coming south, but it is forecast to stall over Texas and then go back north. The winds are due to increase in three days’ time so we decided to go tomorrow. We went to the fuel dock and filled up with diesel and water. The water is said to be drinkable, but has so much chlorine in that it tastes awful. We will be scrubbing the tanks out in the States, so it’s not too big a problem.
Dane off “Cortica” gave us his Dad’s telephone number in Cocca, Florida in case we want to look him up. We cleared out, bought food, four cases of beer and got ready to go. “Flow” turned up today and Horst came to get some cases of beer with us. We ended up on “Flow” having a rotisserie chicken meal and catching up on the past two years. The boys were itching to have a go on Horst’s Nintendo and played Super Mario World until half past ten when we dragged them away.
26 March 1996 Isla Mujeres, Mexico
We both got up at six o’clock this morning. The wind is E25 which is a nuisance because we want to head north east. We went back to bed. I got up at half past six to try to listen to Mistine – too faint, so back to bed! I got up again at seven o’clock to listen to the computer voice of WOM. There’s a stationary front lying E-W across the north of the Gulf of Mexico. A low has developed near Louisiana (wherever that is!) We are expecting E25-30 today, going to SE15-20 tomorrow. There’s a cold front due on Saturday 30th.
We decided to wait until tomorrow and did school work instead! In the afternoon, I wrote an advert to put in June’s Yachting Monthly to sell “Glencora”. We had a quiet day and evening.
27 March 1996 Isla Mujeres, Mexico
I got up at half past six. The wind was ESE20-25. WOM says that it will be SE20-25 but dropping to SE15-20 tonight and S15-20 tomorrow. It was blowing hard and I don’t trust them about the wind direction tomorrow, so we decided not to beat our brains out and did school work.
In the afternoon, Glenys and Brett went into town to do some food shopping, Craig played Lego and I played clarinet. We invited Horst from “Flow” to come over for a beer and to “make ze music” and he ended up staying for dinner – meat and potato pie that we were going to eat en-route. Pleasant evening.
In a flash of confidence in the weather forecast, I took the dinghy down and stowed it on deck. I hope we don’t have to stay another day – I’ll be very cross if I have to put it up again.
28 March 1996 Isla Mujeres to Key West, Florida (Day 1)
We got up at half past six and started to get ready for sea. We had a SE15 wind. The forecast was for SE15 becoming SW1-15 tomorrow – time to go at last. As we motored out of the anchorage, Horst blew a conch in farewell, which was very nice of him.
We motored around the north end of Isla Mujeres, which has a reef stretching North to South with a gap that is at least 5 metres deep. As we approached the place where we thought the gap was, we were confronted with 6ft breaking waves coming straight at us. We bottled out and motored parallel to the reef. I checked the chart again and decided it was the right place, so we clenched our cheeks and slowly motored east. I stood at the bow which was plunging 12ft up and down - I could see reef below us in the incredibly clear water. We made it out OK, with depths no less than 5 metres but it was scary!
We set sail on an Easterly course and, by ten o’clock, we had caught two fish and had a visit by a pod of dolphins. Been there, done that... We went to windward all day again. It’s been the same since we left Roatan in January. We were sailing 090°, but our track over the ground was 050° because of the Gulf Stream pushing us north. Before we left, we attached our No. 3 genoa anticipating a beat, but now I wish we’d left the big genoa on because it’s slow going.
29 March 1996 Isla Mujeres to Key West, Florida (Day 2)
We had a slow night, averaging only 4 knots over the ground. At seven am, we seemed to have lost the 2 knot Gulf Stream. The wind has been backing from SSW to SE15 which has meant that we’ve been hard on the wind. The seas have been small so the night was fairly pleasant, apart from one close encounter with a tanker, (where I had to slow down) and a thunder cloud with lots of lightning that insisted on staying in front of us for an hour until it decided to head north.
The weather forecast is SE10-15 veering to S10-15 tonight, but I’m not counting on it. We managed to stay close to rhumb line but is it the best strategy? At half past seven, the wind had dropped enough that I started the engine. At half past nine, we swapped back from No.3 genoa to No.1 genoa and tried to sail – but we only had SE5 so soon gave up.
During the afternoon, the sea was very smooth - not much wind (N5) and no sign of the Gulf Stream. At six o’clock, the wind was NE10-15 so we set off on port tack and amazingly found the Gulf Stream. Unfortunately, we were doing 7.2 knots on a course of 135° instead of 060°. So we tacked and ended up 040° at 5 knots, much better! Nice calm seas as well. We did our 15,000th mile since leaving the UK.
30 March 1996 Isla Mujeres to Key West, Florida (Day 3)
Beautiful calm night with ESE10-15 knots. We sailed on starboard tack, hard on the wind all night and it was idyllic – if you like sailing at night and doing god-forsaken 3 hour watches. Myself, I just read a book and tried to get comfortable. After two days and nights, I’ve now got a sore bum and find it hard to find a comfortable position to sit and read.
The morning weather forecast says that it will be SE10-15, veering south tonight – they said the same yesterday but it didn’t happen. We had a calm day with E10 winds. I enjoy going to bed during the day for a couple of hours – I can catch up on some sleep and it helps to relieve my boredom.
At about six o’clock, as the sun went down, Glenys went down below to look at where we were before the night watches started. To my total surprise she found out that we were only about 15 miles south of the 100 metre contour, which runs along the Florida Keys (and I was just about to tack north for a few hours!). We bumbled along in light winds and slight seas. At ten pm, we rolled away the genoa and motored east at 3-4 knots with only 20 miles to go, trying to slow down – again!
31 March 1996 Isla Mujeres to Key West, Florida (Day 3)
Just after midnight, I was awoken by lots of noise from flogging sails. I jumped out of bed and dashed up into the cockpit (naked of course), to find that the wind was gusting 35 knots. We still had a full main and a full mizzen up. Glenys had released the main sheet, but was struggling. I decided to drop the main – after I had put on some underpants and my musto jacket. I then dropped the mizzen.
I went back to bed for my remaining 10 minutes leaving Glenys alone with the maelstrom! At one o’clock, we changed watches and by two o’clock, the wind had dropped to NE20 so I turned the engine off and wandered East with just a bit of jib.
By four o’clock, the wind was down to NE10, so Glenys turned the engine on and wombled east. The seas were quite big after the front. At five o’clock, I had to get up and have a look. I decided that we would motor straight for the Key West entrance buoy and set the auto pilot so that we cut straight in front of a freighter. (Well, about a mile in front, but Glenys sweated for 10 minutes while I went back to bed.)
Jimmy God got me back because at half past five there was a terrific bang. I leapt out of bed (I’d slept in my underpants this time) and rushed up to find that the stainless steel toggle at the bottom of the baby stay had broken and the baby stay was flapping about the mast. “Oh my God, the mast could fall down in these confused seas”. I dashed forwards and lashed the baby stay back to its chain plate fitting with a bit of rope. I then spent 10 minutes arranging the spinnaker pole up-hauls to act as temporary baby stays.
We motored into Key West in a channel marked by proper buoys, complete with bells and lights – the first we’ve seen since Europe! (They are, of course, back to front with the green and red buoys on the “wrong” sides of the channel – typical Americans, driving on the wrong side of the road, dates back to front and still clinging onto imperial measurements.) We anchored to the north of the main docks, and after breakfast, I went to bed.
At midday, Glenys woke me up and said that we ought to move. There was strong tidal current and it was causing us to swirl around (like Chaguaramus) so that we went close to another boat. Eventually, after a bit of motoring about, we decided to go to the west of the two small islands. The anchor rumbled a bit, but seemed to be well in. To be sure, we reversed hard to try to snatch it out but it held. We had a lovely calm evening and ate in the cockpit for a change before collapsing into bed at eight o’clock!
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