Sailing in Mexico

There is a major difference between sailing in Mexico and sailing in the United States. Most of the places we sail to and from, have no docks.

That means when we sail into a bay or visit an island, we must drop our anchor or tie up to some kind of a mooring buoy.

None of this is new of us, having sailed in Mexican waters for the past 12 years, however, with each new season, lessons need to be relearned. New crews and new locations often require new techniques.

Like the two sailing trips we took recently, both with different crews.

The weather in both cases was absolutely perfect for sailing. Winds were a little over 15 knots and our boat called the Flying Dutchman, heeled over on it side as it skimmed across Bahia de Conception. (The Bay of Conception the main area where we keep our sailboat moored for most of the winter).

On the first trip, dolphins greeted us at the entrance of the bay and we slapped the side of the boat to tell them they were welcome to join us for the fun.

We had rigged the Dutchman with a newer main sail, for this trip, because the old one had seen too many years of Mexican sun. The new sail formed a perfect wing jutting toward the sky, and we braced ourself for each gust of wind.

Before too long the wind seemed to die and we were now far off shore and worried about getting back to our mooring buoy. We turned around and had a beer while we waited for more wind.

It was not long before the wind came again, however, this time it came from a different direction. When we started out, the wind was from the south east and now the wind blew from the north east.

Bahia de Conception was named because it used to be the place where the whales came to give birth. Long ago the native Mexican Indians netted most of the bait fish which caused most of the whales to stop entering the bay.

It is a 35-mile-long bay with a ridge of low mountains on either side. This channels the wind from the north and the south and sometimes the winds can become ferocious. Fortunately this was not the case on this day.

However as we came up to our mooring buoy the winds were on the rise. Our plan was to head upwind toward the buoy and snag it with the boat hook. We had used a small version of the Boston Whaler to get to our boat and it was tied to the buoy.

We were successful in catching the mooring line and brought it on the boat but a wind shift pushed our boat overthe line and in seconds the rudder cut through the line setting the Whaler adrift. This was not good.

We were still under sail so we chased down the Whaler and a member of the crew used it to bring our boat back up to the buoy.

That was the first trip. And the second sailing trip we found ourselves in the same situation only the winds were a lot stronger. We lower the jib sail and drifted down onto the buoy.

Once again a crew member grabbed the mooring line to the dingy with the boat hook, but the winds were so strong the crew couldn’t hold onto the boat hook and it went overboard. We watched as the mooring line went down under the boat and this time the keel sliced the line in half leaving the Dutchman to drag the dinghy downwind.

We were fortunate in holding onto the dinghy because otherwise someone would have had to swim for it. We lowered the main sail and made one more approach to the mooring buoy but this time with more success.

Somewhere in the sands of Conception Bay is our boat hook which we hope to retrieve at a later date.