Adios, Mexico!

                      The crews of Talaria, Jace and Espiritu head to the beach Mexico style
                         in the back of our friend Mamo's truck. This is the last beach on the
                                              Mexican coast before Central America.

"Hey, Mom! We're driving like 70 MPH! In the back of a truck! Without a seat belt!
Or a helmet! And we didnt' even have to sign a permission slip!"

The view from our v-berth (sleeping quarters) can't be beat!

                                           

           In other news, during those dark, slightly unsettling hours of our T-peck crossing, we were able to see the Southern Cross at the distant horizon. Yes, it is visible from the lower latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. She's a beauty!
      
            Another new development: we've heard via the sailing grapevine that a much beloved American expat who we all grew to appreciate up in La Cruz was recently seen on "America's Most Wanted" and has since fled the area.

       When you think about it, the movies are full of American criminals trying to head south over the border to Mexico to escape the law:

If this movie is true, then Andy ended up somewhere near Zihuatanejo after he busted out of prison

George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino slipped below the border in "Dusk 'til Dawn."

         And then there's my favorite movie on the planet: "Thelma and Louise." These fugitives on the run utter maybe the best line in all of moviedom: as they're trying to escape to Mexico from Arkansas, Louise hands Thelma a map and says:

"Find us a route to Mexico where we don't have to go through Texas."

Thelma, looking at the map: "But Louise, between Arkansas and Mexico, all there IS is Texas!"

Louise, yelling: "Trust me, Thelma -- if a woman shoots a man with his pants around his ankles, Texas is not the place you want to get caught!"

:-)

Well, I got a bit distracted there. But anyway, the point is, if the movies are to believed, Mexico is definitely FILLED with criminals.

White, American criminals.

Could the irony be that the people we should be fearing down here in Mexico are not the Mexicans, but our fellow Americans instead?

Aye, carumba... (LOL)

Well, our plan is to head south from Marina Chiapas tomorrow on 3/27 at daybreak with Jace, Talaria and Stray Cat. We will bypass Guatemala completely, and should arrive in El Salvador early thursday morning (two nights at sea).

As always, we're not sure when we'll get internet in El Salvador so give us a week or more to check in.

Adios Mexico -- simply put:

You're beautiful.

XOXOXO Chris and Liz

The night the engine died in the Tehuantapec

"You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side. You need to trust yourself, where amid the anxiety and self-doubt, there should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and gathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Trust them." -- 

-- Anne Lamott

This wind chart perfectly portrays the horror when the Tehuantapec explodes. Note that there is no wind anywhere else on the map, except the T-pec. The bright red means 70+ knot winds. 

Fortunately, we and our little armada all crossed the Gulf of Tehuantapec safely, with relatively calm seas. But the thing about "T-peckers" (what they call a Tehuantapec gale, as portrayed above -- aggressive sexual connotation intended, no doubt) is they can come on suddenly, with little warning.

And it takes 2-3 days to cross the thing.

So even if you have a safe weather prediction, you're never really "safe" until you see the shore on the other side.

 It's kinda like crossing railroad tracks. You may not see or hear any train coming, but you're not exactly going to sit down and take a nap on the rails. You get the hell over the tracks and heave a sigh of relief.

The first moonless night passed smoothly enough. And Chris caught us a 5 pound tuna in the first 24 hours. Things were going so well...

Beautiful conditions greeted us for our dreaded T-pec crossing

Night number two found us about 2/3rd of the way across the T-pec around midnight, when Chris awoke me from a fitful sleep to announce that our motor failed.

There was no wind. There was no moon. Sitting there in the black silence, interrupted only by ominous lightning strikes in the distance, Chris immediately went into master mechanic mode and began methodically taking the motor apart to diagnose the problem.

                      This is Chris at 2AM in the T-pec working on the suddenly failed engine. Note how everything is thrung about in the cabin. Our boat is usually neat and tidy. But when the engine fails in the middle of the T-pec, there is alot of throwing open hatches, tossing aside stuff looking for parts, etc.

Unfortunately at the exact moment when Chris awoke me, I was distressed to find myself with a sudden onslaught of bilateral, purulent conjunctivitis. Gunky, yellowy sludge coated both of my eyes, and my conjunctivae were blood red.

I could barely see.

Looks like it was our turn in the barrel.

I went to the sink and gently cleansed out my eyes with a wet towel as best as I could. I then called the other boats in our group on the VHF, and as the Doolittle family aboard "Jace" was the closest (a few miles away), they stepped up to the plate, changed course and headed in our direction to see what they could do to help. "Talaria" and "Stray Cat" also checked in and monitored the situation with us over the radio.

                  The family Doolittle aboard "Jace" -- left to right: Ben, Mickey, J.P. and Molly



   As "Jace" headed our way, Ben and Chris calmly discussed the mechanical puzzle over the radio, and part by part, mechanism by mechanism, different causes for the problem were investigated and ruled out.

  The cheerful red and green running lights of "Jace" popped from the darkness around 1AM.  They quietly motored a wide circle around us as we continued to try to find the problem.

Needless to say, simply their presence here in this dangerous, lonely place so far from home was an unspeakable comfort to us.

  About 3 hours later, the cause was finally found (a broken impeler, for you boat mechanics out there). Fortunately we had a back-up impeler (doesn't EVERYONE? LOL), so Chris replaced it, the motor started and we were on our way.

The next morning, I started myself on a regimen of antibiotic eye drops from our medicine chest.

  I would say that we "owe" Jace and the Doolittle family, but I know that they would simply shrug, blow it off gently and say:

"It's just what we do out here. We take care of each other."

Yep.

Especially down here. We're not in Puerta Vallarta anymore. We're 10 miles from the Guatemalan border, where things should really start to get interesting.

Mexico has been wonderful. It's a fantastic training ground for the cruising life. It's so comfortable and welcoming that many cruisers never leave Mexico. But not us. It's time for us to head south to Central America.

Espiritu rests happily in the foreground (left) in the brand new Marina Chiapas

We and a small band of adventurous sailing families are heading south out of Mexico and on to El Salvador. We'll spend a few more days here in Marina Chiapas (they've been wonderful!) resting, provisioning, preparing the boat and checking out of Mexico.

And then...endele pues! (Let us go!)