Arriving at the Marina in San Blas

April 13, 2025 

The next morning dawned clear, and there was no sign of fog over the lagoon area. 

As we pulled up our anchor, tree swallows came flying around our boat and they followed us for a short way as we motored out.  As we rounded the corner, everything towards the lagoon looked clear, we had full visibility; there was no fog in sight.  We had also lucked out because according to the swell forecast the swells had decreased by 0.2 of a meter since yesterday morning, and as we motored along the shoreline there were a lot fewer large sets of swells that really towered and crested far out from shore.  There were still some, but they were less frequent.   

We knew that we still wanted to time our entrance during a small set, so our plan was to wait outside of the channel entrance until we saw a large set go through, then we would follow the last large wave in. As we were approaching the channel entrance a large set was just arriving.  We slowed down and let the four large swells lift us up, and down, up, and down. When the last of the largest of the waves had passed underneath us we throttled up once again and made our entrance into the protection of the lagoon. As we passed the surfing grounds there were four people waiting to catch the next large set.  We had timed it perfectly, and while we were bobbing over the building swells the tree swallows had come out to greet us, and they gave us a full escort all of the way in and to our slip.   

The security guard had seen us coming and came down to take our lines.  A man off of the neighbouring boat also took our lines and we recognized his boat as having been next to us in the marina in Ensenada back in October of 2022 when we first sailed down to Mexico from Canada before Falcon was born.  That was also the last time that we had been tied up to a dock.

This was Falcon’s first time ever watching us dock the boat and being able to step off onto a dock from the boat.  It all went very smoothly and soon we were all on the dock with Falcon running around in his life jacket and saying hi to the very friendly dock cat. 

We arrived into the marina on Sunday morning and our plan was to haul out on Wednesday night.  The office staff had told us that it had to be at night because the evening high tide was the highest.  Although our sailboat does not draw very much water compared to most sailboats, we did not debate this as we had told them our draft and trusted their statement that the evening was better.  More water is always better anyways. 

After being in the marina for Monday we asked if it was possible for us to stay at the slip until Friday and haul out then,  as life at a dock is much easier than life on the hard.  Although we were told that the slip was available, we were also told that we had to haul out on Wednesday night because starting on Thursday the tides were too low for us to move our boat over to the lift.  So Wednesday it was.   

On Tuesday morning Jason had winched me up to the top of the mast and I was taking down our wind transducer, our radar, protecting our navigation lights, and cleaning our rigging when one of the marina workers came by and told us that they needed us to move into a different slip.  They spoke no English, but with our bit of Spanish we understood that the slip that we were currently in was needed for a boat that was launching and that we had to move now. 

Down the mast I came, we cleared the deck, prepped the boat, started the engine, and off we went into our new slip, and then back to work on our projects.  A little unexpected excitement to spice up the morning.  Sure enough on the high tide they launched a sailboat that was longer than ours.  We had needed the longer slip, as the one that we moved into left our back end sticking out, but that was not an issue at all, and clearly the larger boat needed the longer slip more than we did.