WINTER 2026
Our goal for the winter of 2026 was to work our way down the Mexico Pacific coast in our Lagoon 420 catamaran with our final destination to be at least a four week in the bays of Huatulco. About 2000 miles of sailing lie ahead of us before returning home and we used the Baja Ha Ha cruisers rally as the kick off event for our adventure.
My wife watched us leave San Diego bay from atop Point Loma from the Cabrillo National Monument as we left on our winter voyage south on November 3rd without a stick of wind for almost two days. As it does in Baja, things change fast and the wind started to blow. And blow. We had a sleigh ride into Turtle bay which included blowing out the head of our spinnaker. We got some much needed rest in Bahia Tortuga and even mustered the strength to share a night of libations with a local baseball star German, who gave us his official game jersey and ball cap. Go Pescadores! It was also our great fortune to run into the crew of Occasio who generously offered to repair the head of our spinnaker with their own time and material at no charge to us. That’s some Ha Ha love.
We left Turtle Bay and had a nice downwind sail to Santa Maria, including two straight nights with our newly repaired spinnaker up. This also included some truly amazing hiking to the highest mountain top overlooking Bahia Santa Maria.
We departed Santa Maria and entered Cabo with guns a blazing to 25+ knot winds while trying to coordinate a burial at sea of my father’s ashes at Lands End. Cabo was one of his favorite places on earth and I had promised I would sprinkle his some of his ashes there. That fresh breeze ensured those ashes probably made it to San Jose del Cabo which was just fine as he loved San Jose almost as much.
We continued on to Mazatlan after a couple nights at anchor in Cabo San Lucas and Los Frailes with a beautiful 30 hour beam reach to Mazatlan and Stone island just outside of Mazatlan. What a treat. We ended up staying a couple of extra days climbing the local mountains with wild goats and surfing off the dinghy at the uncrowded breaks along the beach. You better be a big fan of banda music because it’s not uncommon to hear battle of the tubas playing on the beach all day. It is loud and makes you appreciate silence when all the enramadas shut down at 6pm.
We then overnighted sailed along the Riviera Nayarit under full sail to old San Blas and Mantachen bay. We anchored under a stunning mountain landscape pretty far offshore to avoid the biting no seeums famous in the area. The crew and I had been getting up to speed since we left San Diego on the local pirate history of the Mexican Pacific. This area was gound zero for a lot of famous pirate exploits against the Spanish crown. We were bound and determined to find the exact spot where the famous privateer John Clipperton, he of Clipperton Island fame, was hanged in the bay. San Blas also had some very famous visitors. One of the last poems Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote was about the bells at the chapel in San Blas and every Californian recognizes the name Father Junipero Serra who famously launched his epic expedition of the founding of the
missions in California from the port of San Blas.
We made another multi day stop in Chacala on our way to Banderas bay and Marina Nayarit in La Cruz. We were stunned to be escorted by numerous humpback whales who seemingly didn’t really care that we were heading right toward them. This was more than a mild concern by the crew and I as only the day before a tourist had died when the boat she was on collided with a whale right there in the bay.
We left the marina at La Cruz after a well deserved few days rest in a slip. After picking up my wife at the Puerto Vallarta airport for her two week voyage with us, we left for a night crossing of Cabo Corrientes for a morning arrival into Perula in Chamela bay. It was looking quite festive as Christmas was rapidly approaching with huge a Christmas tree in the center of town sponsored by Coca Cola as seen by the only decorations being Coca Cola bulbs and very questionable carnival rides in the plaza including a swinging boat ride called the Titanic. It’s always a treat to experience old Saint Nick with sweaty beads on his forehead from wearing his north pole gear in 90 degree heat and 85% humidity. The town had done a very nice job putting a new malecon along the estuary from the bay that made for a very nice dinghy landing. We did hit bottom with our dinghy as we entered the channel and learned quickly to follow the other pangas in. When they lifted their outboard, we lifted our outboard.
Our next stop was one of the most beautiful on our trip. Paraiso was a very tiny anchorage and apparently a popular stop for the high end yachts plying the Costa Alegre. Whales could be heard very close to the boat at night groaning and splashing.
Other stops as we moved south included the roasty lagoon in Barra de Navidad and Christmas at anchor in the beautiful bay of Manzanillo in front of the Las Hadas resort. Our goal was New Years in Zihuatenejo so we departed after a couple of nights of luxury on land at Las Hadas.
We threw off anchor from Manzanillo for what turned out to be a surreal night crossing of the busy commercial port of Lazaro Cardenas. As we approached the port, it literally looked like we were crossing the river Styx and the gates of hell with large shadows of moving container ships juxtaposed against the massive flamethrowers of the refineries flaring off gas with huge red flames into the night air. My crew found it a bit stressful as those ships can look very close at night regardless of what the radar or AIS shows and those flames weren’t giving anyone comfort.
We arrived in Zihuat just in time for fireworks over the bay for New Years. We spent a couple of very warm days in the bay before my wife left us to fly back to San Diego as we continued on.
We were anxious to get down to Huatulco but couldn’t pass up the pretty bay of Petatlan and Barra de Potosi just around the point from Zihuuatenejo. I had an unexpected treat surfing the sandbar into the lagoon all by myself for an hour before the army of local surfers and pangas returning from their day excursions arrived. Surfers were literally dodging pangas in the lineup. There was significant swell that didn’t allow for safe dinghy landings on the beach but a paddleboard and a drybag worked just fine for a little land exploration. Some of the boutique hotels along this stretch of coast were unique and might require a further visit.
We weighed anchor and headed south. I’m not sure we ever felt more alone in our life. We did not experience a sail or pleasure boat besides Acapulco for the next 350+ miles to Huatulco. Not one. We saw very few lights on the coast at night and during the day it was just the grandness of an empty coastline framed by the towering Sierra Madre Del Sur mountains as far as the eye could see.
We didn’t have a lot of great options for anchor after leaving Potosi. We ended up overnighting in Puerto Marquez which was an experience unto itself. We are not fans of Acapulco and this was confirmed with the many motor boats cutting across our bow dangerously close to our anchor line and sizeable swell and wind we had all night. We were however amazed of the skill of the pangueros who backed their pangas to the beach, transom in the sand, and loaded old and young tourists alike in 2-4 foot swell just for a trip around the bay for lunch.
We got into a bit of drama crossing the Bajo Tartar shoals at night after leaving Puerto Marquez. Everything we read and were told said eight miles offshore should be plenty of room to clear the shoals. My depth sounder disagreed. We were incredulous as we saw the depth reading bounce around from 30 feet to as low as 6 feet over eight miles from shore! Perhaps there was something else stirring underneath us but we didn’t wait to find out, taking a hard turn south to put a couple of more miles between us and the shore. Of course, it wasn’t very comforting either to drill down on our chartplotter to see that most of the obstructions identified off the coast were ship wrecks!
We arrived into the national park of Bahias de Huatulco around the first week of January with great hope of spending some time in a slip at Marina Chahue to enjoy the sights in and around Oaxaca for the next four weeks. Wrong. We had suspicions that there might be issues with the marina but had heard conflicting information from the port captain and others who had knowledge of the marina. Of course, as is often the case in Mexico, there was no response from the harbor master or marina manager on the VHF and there was no way I was going to pull into the marina and figure it out. We ended up anchoring around the corner in the beautiful bay of Tangolunda for what turned out to be our entire four week stay. After we walked over to the marina and were able to locate the harbor master, our caution was warranted. The marina could only be accessed by shallow draft boats at high tide IF they had a spot close enough to the deeper area of the marina for a catamaran. They did not.
We learned to live with long dinghy rides into a small darseana in a protected cove that was a gem of a find in Tangolunda to avoid beach landings for the next four weeks. The walks were down a long dirt road before you could catch a taxi into town but we were glad to find such a beautiful anchorage. The Tehauntepec winds, that blew at least 50% of the time during our stay, made us maintain our vigilance with weather windows if we wanted to explore the area by boat. When conditions were good, they were very good. We visited numerous beautiful bays around Huatulco during our stay and even got a surf trip in, dropping the hook next to the world famous right handed handed break at Barra De La Cruz.
Our return trip was mostly influenced by water ingress of the port side sail drive when we picked up anchor in Tangolunda to return home. We made the decision to keep that engine reserved for emergency use. So, we 1. had one engine, 2. had a catamaran going to wind, and 3.had a ripping current 2 to 2.5 knot current working against us that shows up between Tehauntepec blows for 100 miles. Needless to say, it was slow going.
We finished the return leg of our journey back into Puerto Vallarta with our phones blowing up about cartel violence that was literally happening as we were rounding Corrientes. We were warned that the port was closed and ships and boats were being turned away. We carried on anyways to Marina Nayarit where the fantastic staff opened in the morning to check us in, cartels be damned.
It’s been almost ten months since we left San Diego on the Ha Ha and we are now in Barra de Navidad for the hurricane season after having our boat hauled out in Puerto Vallerta to fix that sail drive and have some other work done. We gave up our slip in the cushy Loews Coronado marina back in San Diego and have decided to keep the boat in Mexico for the time being. What’s the hurry? Ohh, the life of sailors.
