CHAPTER 13
The first storm Tony and I encountered shortly after exiting San Diego was due to our own stupidity. We hadn’t given attention to multiple reports about the Yukon Express and took unnecessary risks, not wanting to delay our departure again, which had been stalled by Denise’s unfortunate accident. Now we had no reliable weather forecasts, and depended on pilot charts, common sense (now there’s an oxymoron), and informative books relating to weather for the mariner.
Puerto Vallarta sits inside a 24-mile bay called Banderas Bay. Some reading this may recall the movie, Night of the Iguana, filmed here, where crusty ugly iguanas are in ample supply. We found them docile, shy, and reclusive, unless cornered, which makes them angry—like any cornered creature.
The entrance to Banderas Bay is narrow and congested. Massive, threatening, angry black clouds chased us as we sailed close to land approaching the narrow entrance—it’s seaside marker just visible three miles distant. The wind rose steadily and quickly.
“I’m not liking this!” said Tony, gripping the wheel and looking astern as the water began to froth and the wind played tunes in the rigging.
“I don’t feel so good,” moaned Art, appearing ghostly pale.
The sudden squall hit fiercely. Within minutes seas became confused, steep and close, as they do in shallow water, but Endymion performed beautifully. We reefed the main at twenty knots apparent wind and were sailing fast: “Nine knots,” shouted Kim . . . just hit ten–ten there, you guys!”
The wind was abeam and we were in an exhilarating groove that couldn’t last because we needed a course and sail change at the harbor buoy now a half-mile away.
Next came lightning, followed immediately by deafening thunder, telling us the storm was imminent. We had caught a fierce chubasco by the tail, and that tail was shaking us.
Then came rain so intense we could hardly see the bow from the cockpit. Tony and I, acting as a team, leapt back and forth checking instruments, radar, radios, and headings.
Art was having a hard go of it. Wretchedly seasick, he lay in a lee-side salon berth, firmly clutching a bucket. Laurie had the humor to toss him a teddy bear.
Like most chubasco storms, this one ended as it started—fast. We dropped sail and headed for Nuevo Vallarta, a new marina with new docks a few miles north of the city.
“Docks . . . really! We’ll be connected to land for the first time since San Diego. Nice!” Tony was excited. “Fresh water, electricity, a real shower . . . We’re stylin it.”
Art and Laurie had jobs so they headed back to the States. Kim didn’t face work issues, but she also left. There were typical goodbyes, but I believe Tony was ready for this. His eye had begun to wander. Was his infatuation perhaps declining?
Nuevo Vallarta was home for eight blazing hot days. With summer still months away, several yachts planned to make this their permanent home, and one Canadian chap had set up a ham radio net.
One morning a yacht’s skipper was on the VHF radio complaining: “I have no idea in hell how it got there, but this morning I nearly stepped barefooted on a coral snake wriggling his way aft on my deck.”
“Bullshit!” answered another boat. “Coral snakes are not swimmers—especially in salt water.”
The snake boat owner promised to meet curious nature lovers at the customs office at high noon. Tony and I went, and sure enough, there was a colorful, now deceased coral snake in a Jiffy peanut butter jar. We concluded the poor fellow had been snatched by a bird, which lost its passenger flying over the anchorage, and dropped the little critter on the yacht’s deck, still alive and able to strike, perhaps like a cornered iguana.
Generally speaking, Puerto Vallarta was a destination with plenty of activity and a wide assortment of vessels. I was impressed the way cruisers helped each other. During our short stay two rescues took place involving our marina neighbors. A desperate cry for help from a small 23-foot sloop sailed by a young California couple said their boat was breaking up in rough seas twenty miles off the coast. A large Mexican powerboat from Nuevo Vallarta, with a group of volunteer yacht owners from the marina, went to their rescue. The relieved couple tied to the dock next to us showing high spirits by pledging to continue their adventure. Truth be told, not many quitters get this far south. Most, who become overwhelmed by the rigors and danger of cruising, tend to turn north no further south than Cabo San Lucas.
The second rescue involved Encore, a 57-foot, high-tech racing sloop, also from Newport Beach, that lost its keel while slugging it out sailing north from Acapulco against wind and sea. (Remember, going north—mail it.) Taking on water, Encore was in grave danger of sinking. A Coast Guard plane, actually dispatched from somewhere in Alaska, had parachuted a pump and raft. The pump failed (can you believe it?) and the same group of guys from this marina went to sea again, put a temporary patch on the leak, and towed them in.