Cruising Adventures of the Red Witch

December 27, 2024  We stayed anchored in the large bay of Chamela for several more days, and we made many trips to the beach.   With the many Mexican families down on the beach for the holidays Falcon had opportunities to play with some of the children.   He enjoys seeing other children, and always points and says “kid”.   When he would see one that he wanted to go and play with he would pick up his bucket and shovel and take it over to them, offering it to them as a way to ask if he could play.   Only once did the other child say no, so he had lots of opportunities to play in the sand with other children.   For two of the nights we moved anchorage over to the large islands in the middle of the bay.   This was a park area and the island that the panga tours came out to. We found a lovely beach on Isla Cocinas that did not seem to be frequented by the panga visitors.   We h...

December 25, 2024   On Christmas morning Falcon was the first one out of bed and he was very excited when he found a small pile of presents by the fireplace.   Right away he wanted us to get up and open them.   We had a good Christmas morning with Falcon opening his stocking and opening and playing with presents.   We had a delicious Christmas brunch and then headed for the beach for a fun afternoon playing in the sand and the waves.   Christmas in Mexico is a big family event that is mainly celebrated on Christmas Eve.   From what we learned they usually stay up late on Christmas Eve and everyone sleeps in on Christmas morning.   The afternoon is spent with family, and in Chamela that meant that everyone came down to the beach.   The easy end of the beach to access that had the restaurants became loaded with families, and many families spread out down along the beach as ...

December 24, 2024  On Christmas Eve we decided that we wanted to get some groceries for a more special menu for Christmas Day.   We took our kayaks and paddled into the estuary.   Depending on what the tide is doing the waves can build quite a bit at the entrance as the water from the estuary runs out and the swells come in.   We timed our entrance and rode a smaller wave in, and then we easily paddled our way up and figured out where the deeper channel was that the Pangas followed, although even that got very shallow at low water.   We found a spot on the docks that was out of the way for the Pangas and left our kayaks to walk along the main road, the only paved road, through town.   All of the other roads were sand.    Once we had gotten our groceries we returned to our kayaks and paddled back down the estuary.   Unfortunately from inside the estuary it was hard to see the swells t...

December 22, 2024  Bahia Chamela is a very large bay with a beach that is more than 5 kms long.   At the north end is a small Mexican town called Perula that gets business from Mexican tourists.   We anchored off of this town and spent the next five days there.   Like most beaches on the west coast of Mexico, Chamela is open to the swells, but the town of Perula has an estuary that flows out and they have a pier beside it and a light that marks the entrance.   Local Panga boats tie up to docks up in the estuary, and they come and go through the entrance all day long.   They run tours out to Isla Cocinas, an island about 2 nautical miles south in the middle of the large bay.   After we were anchored we saw the many fishermen and then tour pangas pass us by.   All of them were very friendly and gave us big waves and smiles, especially when they spotted Falcon standing and waving from the cockpit.     The water temperature...

December 21, 2024     We headed out of Isla Isabel on a beautiful morning just as the wind was starting to pick up.   We motor-sailed for a while, then got a few hours of good down-wind sailing in before we had to start motor-sailing again.   Finally the wind died off completely and we finished our passage motoring, and arriving in Punta Mita, just north of Puerto Vallarta, at midnight.     We had an uneventful journey and unfortunately we did not fish at all because we still believed that our freezer was full of delicious tuna.   Who knows what we missed out on catching on that journey? Our stop in Punta Mita was merely a rest stop to break up the journey, and so as to be able to time our rounding of Cabo Corrientes with favourable conditions.   We had anchored at Punta Mita at midnight and we pulled up anchor once again at 15:00.     This time we did an overnight passage and arrived in to the Chamela anchorage, just o...

December 20, 2024  We spent our third and last day at Isla Isabel just enjoying our beach area.   It was a relaxing day of watching all of the life around us.   There was constant whale activity just outside of the anchorage and I managed to get a picture of our boat with a breaching humpback whale, a blue-footed booby bird, and a Frigate bird all in one shot.   We knew from watching the Frigate birds in La Paz that they could be the biggest bullies.   Here was no exception as we watched time and time again when a Frigate bird would spot a booby bird returning to land with fish, and the Frigate bird would gang up and harass the booby bird, chasing it down to the water until it spat up its catch, at which point the Frigate bird would let the booby bird go, and scoop up all of the dead floating fish.   With the number of Frigate birds constantly watching for an easy meal it was amazing that the booby birds survived here at all.   Clearly some managed to ...

December 19, 2024     Our second day at Isla Isabel was spent on shore.   We packed water and a picnic lunch, and we rowed into the beach once again.   After pulling Kiki well up the beach and tying her off we put on our shoes and started along the beach towards the trail that we had found the day before.   It was slow progress as we kept stopping to watch the birds and with my big camera along there was the frequent sound of the shutter.   The birds were so photogenic and with being able to get so close to them without even trying there was no need for a large telephoto lens.     As we entered the forest we had to be careful not to step on any lizards or iguanas as even they were fearless, although they did seem to move at just the last second, otherwise I fear that we would have stepped on several of them since they were camouflaged so well.   Now that we were away from the shoreline there were no booby birds around.   The forest floor...