Punta Ipala, Jalisco, Mexico

Monday, March 18, 2013

020-14.180 N
105-34.320 W

Ahoy from the crew of the BlueJacket at Punta Ipala!

When you last heard from us, we were in La Cruz and were about to head across Bandaras bay and down the coast. We spent a very rocky night in Punta de Mita and left before sunrise. On the south side of the Banderas bay you find Cabo Corrientes, or Cape Currents in English, which seems to generate fear in some cruisers. It's known for strong current and high winds. At the head of the cape the cliffs are over 500' high and there are 2000' mountains behind them. As a result, northerly winds get accelerated Some cruisers have taken to leaving at night when the winds are the lightest to get a smoother ride.

We decided that if we left at daybreak that we could be around the cape area by 11 AM as it's about 24 miles from Punta de Mita. The winds typically haven't picked up by that time, so this seemed like a good plan. We started off with very light NW winds and we motored along. About an hour before we reached the cape, the winds picked up to around 12 kts, which would have been sailable. At this point we just put up the jib as we really didn't know what to expect. I really didn't want the main up in 25-30 kt winds. As it turned out, the winds peaked at around 24 kts, but stayed in the 20-24 kt for quite a while past the cape headland. Unfortunately we didn't have the main up, as it would have been quite the nice sail. Once the winds dropped below 20 kts, we raised the main and enjoyed a fast sail.

As we sailed along we began to see quite a few turtles. Sue is the queen of spotting turtles and by the time that we got to Ipala, we (more "she" than "we") had spotted 33 turtles, which was a very good sign for the population, as all of the species of turtles found around here are on the endangered species list. That defiantly brought smiles to our faces as we have never seen that many turtles before.

Our destination was a small fishing village named "Punta Ipala" which provides marginal protection from northerly swell and moderate protection from NW winds. Unfortunately a large portion of the anchorage has been taken over by panga moorings and aquaculture, so the anchorage has been forced to the outside of the bay, which greatly limits any protection that you get from the land. We got there mid-afternoon and were happy to see that we were the only boat there, so we got the prime anchoring location. We had other boats tell us that when they were there, there were 5 boats in there! I can't imagine how.

After experiencing the roll for a few hours, we decided to deploy our "flopper stoppers", which are hinged metal plates which you suspend off the side of boat which minimize the roll. The image to the right shows it while I was rigging it at the dock. The plates fold up when the boat rolls to the side that they're on, and flatten out when the boat tries to roll back. I'm guessing that there's about 6 square feet of material, so they can offer some resistance, but don't completely arrest the roll. This was our first time using them and we were quite happy with the results.

The day that we arrived in Punta Ipala was a holiday, so people were on the beach and racing around on a jet ski and as usual seemed to think that BlueJacket made a great object to use as a turning point. We were tired and didn't want to put the dinghy down to go ashore. Close to sunset a 73' sports fishing boat named RedNeck pulled in and got to anchor even further out. We had a nice conversation with the captain and he highly recommended the restaurant on shore and told us that the restaurant would pick us up, but as we already had dinner underway we stayed aboard. Shortly thereafter a panga pulled along side and offered to take us to the restaurant. As it was, we had chicken Marsala, risotto cakes and a spinach salad. I don't think that we missed anything ashore!

-- Geoff & Sue

Log ID: 2201