Santiago Bay Area, Colima, Mexico

Thursday, April 11, 2013

019-6.551 N
104-23.686 W

Ahoy from the crew of the Bluejacket!

I'm a bit late in writing this, but our Internet has been very sporadic and it's hard to get all of the parts of a log assembled without it. Anyhow when you last heard from us we were in Barra de Navidad enjoying the beautiful Grand Bay resort. We finally extracted ourselves from there and headed about 20 miles SE to Ensenada Carrizal, which was supposed to be a beautiful uninhabited anchorage with wonderful snorkeling. Once we pulled in and got ourselves anchored, Sue informed me that the white "foam" that was floating on the surface was actually masses of jelly fish. We checked the bay out and found that they were everywhere including deep into the water column. Since the only reason to be in this cove was for the snorkeling, we departed after having lunch and cleaning a bunch of the jelly fish from the engine raw water strainer.

We then headed about 5 miles further to Bahia Santiago and pulled into the main anchorage at Playa Boquita, which has very good protection from the southerly swells. The biggest issue with this anchorage is that it's near the town of Manzanillo, which has a large shipping port and a power plant which belches smoke from it's bunker fuel powered boilers. Depending upon what direction the wind is blowing (or not blowing), the smoke from this can settle over the entire region. Luckily afternoon winds tend to clear it all away, but it's yucky. I must admit that I've forgotten what it was like to have plants like these polluting the air. For anyone who who thinks that we need to gut the EPA because it hurts business and costs money, you just need to come here to see what it would be like without them. What's really amazing is that the plant has been converted to natural gas, but whoever negotiated the gas contract did a terrible job and the price of gas has fallen about 70% since it was negotiated and they don't want to pay the high price, so they'll just keep burning oil. Amazing....

Playa Boquita is a nice beach town with many of the same things we've come to expect at such locations. The beaches are lined with palapa restaurants and umbrellas. What's different is that they have huge 12' diameter umbrellas semipermanently installed side by side running down the beach and 2 to 5 layers deep.. They're so close that no sunshine gets through and the form a virtual canopy for huge tracts of beach. They back up to the palapas forming a non-stop awning. You rent these for $150 pesos/day ($12 USD) and you get a table and 4 chairs. This must be great business as there are a hundreds and hundreds of umbrellas. What's also different is that it seems like the people just sit under their umbrellas and drink. We saw more drunk Mexicans there than we've seen collectively in all of the other places we've been.

The palapas are primarily located on the west end of the beach and as you work east from there the umbrellas thin out considerably. The beach itself is wonderful to walk on with nice soft sand that's firm to walk on. I don't know what's in it, but it sparkles with gold flecks. A little way down the beach is a gringo hangout named the Oasis Beach Bar and Restaurant. We stopped in for happy hour a couple of times as you couldn't argue with the prices as beers were about $1.20. The food looked great, but we didn't get a chance to eat there. The owners, Diego and Kate, are very nice and will go out of their way to make you feel welcome. Sue just reminded me that also have yoga something like 3 days a week. Check their bulletin board for details.

There's a large wreck of the 300' freighter San Luciano that sits in about 25' of water just to the west of where we anchored. It's full of small colorful fish, but I recommend snorkeling it towards the end of the incoming tide as the water quality is best then. If you snorkel it on the outgoing tide, the water clarity suffers due to outflow from the estuary. There's nice snorkeling on below the cliffs just S of the anchorage. I was quite surprised at the amount of coral, so be very careful where you drop your anchor to make sure that you're not damaging it. We tried to take the dinghy back into the estuary, but found it extremely shallow, even at high tide. Tide levels in the estuary seem to lag the ocean levels by about 2 hours and the current can really rip through the channel.

S/V Capriccio has spent quite a few years in the area and they took us under their wing to show us some of the town of Santiago. Jan and Vivian were headed into town and invited us along. We beached the dinghies and walked down to an area where the road ran along the beach and the busses stopped. We hopped on the #1 bus and for 7 pesos (USD $0.56) got a ride into town. They then provided to show us their favorite shopping areas and restaurants. We wandered around the market and I was amazed at the amount of raw chicken just sitting out on counters at room temperature (80F) waiting to be bought. This is why we try to buy all of our meat at large corporate style supermarkets who hopefully use better food safety. Lunch, which consisted of a large sandwich and a soda, cost the princely sum of $40 pesos ($3.20) each.

We stayed longer than expected because it was just a nice place to hang and once we start moving S, we'll make big jumps and before you know it, we'll be at the end of this year's journey. From here we're going to make short hop to the Las Hadas resort in Manzanillo.

The photos from Santiago are located here.

-- Geoff & Sue

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For the cruiser:

At Ensenada Carrizal we anchored at N19-05.77 W104-26.25 in about 28' over sand. Had we stayed we would have put out the stern anchor and flopper stopped as the swell worked into the anchorage pretty well.

In Bahia Santiago we anchored at about N19-06.55 W104-23.69 in about 24' over sand. There's lots of room for boats in there. It can get very busy on weekends with jet skies buzzing the boats.

You can land your dinghy to the NW of the anchorage where you see a gap in the swimming lines. This is a 100+ yards from the end of the umbrellas and where the wall for the housing complex begins. The surf breaks much mor heavily as you work east.

Log ID: 2207