Exploring La Cruz de Huanacaxtle

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

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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Keith’s Perspective on Week 1 of our Cruising Adventure/Le point de vue de Keith sur la première semaine de notre aventure en croisière

This week was really eventful. We started the trip on Sunday December 1, and got to Ensenada on that same day. We were trapped on the boat until Monday because we hadn’t checked in to the country. 

Monday might’ve been my favorite day of the week! We checked in, which took a while. After that, we went to El Rey Sol. It’s a really fancy French restaurant with really good Caesar Salads. I ordered the French Onion Soup and a Fondue Pot, both of which were really good. Mom and dad got beef tenderloin which I got a few bites of, and we all got Caesar Salads. Dad and I also split a fruit tart.  

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Ensenada to Puerto Vallarta — Days 4 – 5

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 to Puerto Vallarta — Days 1 – 3

Friday, December 6  — As mentioned in the last post, the sea conditions were not bad when we left Ensenada on Tuesday night. Despite the good conditions, Keith did initially get sick. But within 12-hours, he was feeling good enough to play video games

When dawn finally broke on Wednesday, we saw it was 3 – 5 foot waves with a 10-second swell period + 1 – 2 foot wind chop waves. Thanks to the long enough intervals in between the waves, it wasn’t uncomfortable. The wind was light, came from behind us, and it was overcast all day. 

Unfortunately, we were moving very slowly, only averaging 5.7 knots at 1650 RPM. Eric eventually sped us up to 1750 RPM, but our speed only improved to 5.8 knots. He’s concerned that we have a net or kelp or line stuck to our propellor or stabilizer fins that is slowing us down. He was considered stopping in Turtle Bay to dive on the bottom.

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