Category Archives: Cruising Guide

Information for other cruising boats. Our experiences finding places to anchor, dealing with officials, provisions, etc.

Exploring La Cruz de Huanacaxtle

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Wednesday, December 11, 2024 — Before we get into the day, we want to give a couple of quick backgrounds. Our beloved Gig Harbor hard sailing/rowing dinghy, Kosmopolitan, which circumnavigated the globe with us, was seriously damaged while we were in Baja. We managed to keep her floating with duct tape until we got back to San Diego. Upon return to San Diego, we replaced her with an OC Tender, which is also named Kosmopolitan. Here’s a photo of our new dinghy taken in San Diego. 

When we were in the hurricane in Baja, the boat next to us in the storm was named Lusty. The people aboard Lusty were named Karen and Max, and they may be the funnest people we’ve ever met. We had an incredible time in the Bahia de Los Angeles area, largely because Max and Karen arranged a party every night — and Karen would cater it with incredible food. Christi was amazed at what Karen could make aboard a tiny boat kitchen. 

On to our day… In the morning, Eric washed the boat, then walked over to the Port Captain’s office to check in. Meanwhile, Christi and Keith worked on school and did some cleaning inside. 

As we were leaving to go to lunch, we bumped into our neighbors and noticed they had a dinghy identical to the original Kosmopolitan. Then we noticed the name on the back was Sprezzatura, and asked if they had gotten it from our friend on the Nordhavn 40 named Sprezzatura. They confirmed it was the same dinghy, though it had changed hands a couple of times between our friend and our new neighbors. What a small world!

Our destination for lunch was a restaurant called El Ring, which was around the corner from Ballena Blanca. We noticed that the restaurant on the corner was named Lusty on Land. We knew it had to be Max and Karen’s. Especially when we saw they didn’t open until 1600 and had music every night. 

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Welcome to La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Nayarit, Mexico

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Tuesday, December 10 – Dawn on Monday was ominous, with a red glow behind deep gray clouds.

We’d changed course, so now the swell was coming from the behind us and the wind chop from our port side. The swell was large and created a lot of motion, but the intervals were far enough apart that it wasn’t terrible. The wind chop, on the other hand, was big: 3 – 5 feet of breaking whitecaps on our beam. Every once in a while, a wave would hit the pilot house windows. The combination of waves from two directions made it uncomfortable, though not terrible. We definitely needed to hold on tight when we walked around the boat. Sea conditions more or less stayed the same all day.

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Ensenada to Puerto Vallarta — Days 4 – 5

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Sunday, December 8 — Saturday we had mostly hazy sunshine and calm seas: 1 – 3 feet, 1 foot wind-chop, long swell period. At one point, we entered a cloud and rode in fog for a while before popping out of it. It’s a wonderful ride.

It warmed up significantly today. We’re finally at a low enough latitude for it to be shorts weather. 

In the wee hours of the morning, we’d moved into a more favorable current and have been making good time today, averaging close to 7 knots @1800 RPM. Eric wants to keep RPM up because he knows we’ll eventually slow back down again, and he wants to ensure we make it to Puerto Vallarta during daylight. 

In the am, Eric spotted a sailfish (we think) doing several theatrically high jumps. In the afternoon, Keith spotted a whale. We watched it spouting on the surface for a while before it disappeared without a fluke. 

We passed Magdalena Bay in the afternoon, which was roughly the halfway point for this leg. Whale season has just begun, so it is unlikely we’d see a baby whale so early in the season. There was a bit of traffic around Magdalena Bay, but overall, we haven’t seen many boats today.

It was a beautiful sunset/twilight:

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Ensenada Check-In and Lunch at El Rey Sol

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Monday, December 2, 2024 — There were two main reasons why we usually went to Marina Coral instead of Maina Cruiseport whenever we were in Ensenada. The first was that Coral has a fuel dock, and they used to offer a discount on fuel if you stayed in their marina. However, Coral no longer offers this perk. In fact, it is currently cheaper to buy fuel in San Diego than in Ensenada!

The other reason is that Coral will help you with your Mexican check-in paperwork for a nominal fee. This service has paid off in spades for us in the past, especially when we needed help getting a new Temporary Import Permit (TIP) after our first one had expired (note to cruisers: Always make sure to renew your TIP prior to expiring. Getting another new one issued on the same boat can be a nightmare). 

Nowadays, Cruiseport offers a check-in service, too. Between the lack of fuel discount and the fact that we can get check-in services at Cruiseport, we may choose to go to Cruiseport in the future. While Coral is very nice, it’s also pricey, has serious surge issues, and is on the outskirts of town. Of course, Cruiseport has issues, too, particularly with soot from the cruise ships, noise and touts. You have to pick your poison.

Yesterday, the marina had told us to be at the marina office at 0930 to do the check-in. After they packaged up all of our paperwork for the authorities, they shuttled us into town, where all three offices (customs, immigration and port captain) are conveniently housed in one building. 

This was the busiest we’d ever seen it. We had to wait over an hour for our turn, but once we were served, the paperwork took the typical 45-minutes to process. 

Once we were done with that part of the paperwork process, we celebrated by having lunch at our beloved El Rey Sol. As always, the food was wonderful. 

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