January 30th 2016 – Moving on to Chacala!

San Blas Anchorage

We left our happy place in our anchorage in San Blas. I was again sad to leave…sad to say goodbye to Barro and Alicia who we saw every day while we were there. We told them we’d be back by on our way to La Paz. Hopefully that will be the case.

As we motored away from our anchorage we stayed in close to shore all of the way to Chacala. There wasn’t enough wind to sail so we just relaxed and enjoyed the scenery.

We arrived at Chacala around 2ish in the afternoon. It’s a small little bay but a lively one. The beach was lined with palapa’s, restaurants, vendors, people sunning on the sand and in lounge chairs, and children playing on the beach and swimming in the water. There were more locals than tourists enjoying the beach.

We anchored pretty close to the beach and to the dinghy pier. There were a few other sailboats out with us, and one powerboat. A few of the boats we recognized from our anchorage in San Blas but never got a chance to meet the crew.

Cute little beach town of Chacala 

After we got a little organized we got in the Dingy and rowed to the dingy pier, which one of the guide books says is a convenient place to land your dinghy. This was definitely not the case! It was next to impossible to get in there due to all of the fishing panga’s and the surge. Rick ended up dropping me and Harley off at a small private beach around the corner. Then he rowed back to the boat to get the dinghy anchor so he could anchor just beyond the breakers and swim to shore. We met up with him as soon as he swam to shore and then we all walked the beach.

We ended up walking to a resort at the end of the beach called Mar de Jade. It was really nice!! It was tucked into the side of a mountain with little bungalow looking buildings surrounding a main building, restaurant, swimming pool and hot tub etc. It looked like a Spa Retreat more than just a hotel resort. 

After sitting in the resort lobby/restaurant area drinking Limonada’s and watching the waves crashing on the sand, we headed back to our dinghy. We almost thought about getting a room for one night just so we could take a nice hot shower.

The night was pretty uneventful. We just stayed in and ate whatever I could throw together. We are getting low on provisions and it’s forcing me to get creative.

We went to sleep with a gentle rocking of the boat while listening to the music playing on the beach. It was nice at first but then the music seemed to get a lot louder and continued until around midnight.  It was hard to really sleep soundly.

This morning we woke up and all of the other boats are gone. It was eerie at first and made us wonder if there something we should know about. Was there a storm coming?? Rick checked the weather and all looks good for leaving tomorrow and heading to La Cruz.

Later in the day after we had dinghy’d to shore, we noticed a sailboat coming in. It appeared to be our friends Steve and Marilyn on S/V Toccata we met in San Blas. Yay! We were excited to see some friends. So after a day on the beach we got back in our dinghy and headed to our boat but made a pit stop by Steve and Marilyn’s boat to say hello. We talked for a while and they invited us to come by later for a beverage and hors d’ourves.

Back at the boat Rick and I shampoo’d up and jumped in the water to rinse off. We wanted to be somewhat cleaned up before being too close to other people. I think I might have mentioned that it’s been almost a month since we both had a REAL shower.

We met up with Steve and Marilyn on their boat enjoying a bowl of mixed nuts (something you cannot find anywhere in Mexico which I have been missing) and a glass of ice cold water! They have a water maker and an icemaker on board (both of which we do not have). So it was a big treat for us!! We also got a tour of their boat, which is a Jenneau 43. We loved the boat a lot! The cockpit was huge and fully set up with an Iverson dodger and bimini. The cushions looked brand new and were super comfortable. It was SO relaxing.  They had all the gadgets and electronics you could think of. Two state rooms, two full heads, and a huge comfortable salon and dream like Galley! Unfortunately when we look at nice boats such as Toccata, we are almost sad to step foot onto our boat. We love our boat mostly because she handles the ocean so well and she’s beautiful in an old worldly kind of way, but we wouldn’t mind more space and a fridge or a real shower, which would be huge….and a more comfortable & spacious salon and cockpit. The list could go on…

We spent quite a while on their boat and headed back to our boat in the dark.  When we got back we put the dinghy back up on deck and got the boat ready to leave early in the morning for La Cruz.