Bahia de Tenacatita

We found Bahia Careyes to have too much swell and very little room and we made a quick decision to continue down the coast to Bahia Tenecatita. As we headed in to the inner anchorage there were probably 20 other boats anchored there and among them were our neighbors on dock 6, Rena and Allan from Follow you, Follow me. That night we hung out on their boat and met their new crew member, Jan, who will join them as they cross the pacific this March. The following day Rena, Allan and Jan in Me2 and us in our Ghetto Duck headed to the beach to do the jungle river cruise. It was a bit tricky to land the dinghies onto the beach with the surf but we managed and were off on an adventure. We took our time going up the river and enjoyed the wildlife along the way. At the end of the tour we headed to a palapa restaurant on the beach of the outer bay and enjoyed a fantastic lunch of fish rollovers in almond cream sauce...yummy! On the way back Justin and I raced back down the river with Gregg and Kate from Sirius......it was crazy scary and fun!

On the way back from the river tour Justin noticed that Lady Hawk was anchored in Tenacatita and was very excited to go over and say Hi. We had drinks and dinner that night with Mike, Marilyn and Jane on Lady Hawk, it was fun to meet another boat that Justin had been good friends with in Mazatlan (on Dock 6) and to hear about their adventures. The next day Tristan and Mindy came over to invite us over to their boat for drinks before the Friday night raft up. Justin spent the afternoon making peanut butter chocolate chip cookies and we headed over to Aita Pe'a Pe'a where we got a tour of their high performance catamaran and met their adorable cat Joey. The dinghy raft up consisted of 21 dingies tied to each other in a circle with a couple of people throwing anchores in the water to keep the group in place. The hors d'oerves were passed around in a clockwise direction as crew members introduced themselves to each other. This was the largest dingy raft up at Tenacatita for the season and the food was running out, luckily we saved some cookies for ourselves on Steady Beat. It was a nice way to put faces to the many boat names we were hearing on the radio.

On Saturday we decided to race up the river for lunch with Aita Pe'a Pe'a and we met Sirius at the palapa restaurant. The 3 dinghies raced back down the river where we laughed the hole way down.....there were some near misses with mangrove branches sticking out of the water but Justin refined his dinghy driving skills on this trip. When we got back to the beach Justin and Tristan went surfing while Mindy and I hung out in the water.

We spent Sunday washing the boat inside and out and invited Aita Pe'a Pe'a for pizza dinner aboard Steady Beat. We spent the night chatting with them and exchanging videos. On Monday we had very good visibility to the bottom (20') and we decided to anchor in the outer anchorage where there is supposed to be decent snorkeling. We left the inner anchorage and saw hundreds, literally hundreds of jelly fish (gross!), the outer anchorage had no visibility and was very rocky so we headed back to the inner anchorage and went swimming at the beach.
On Tuesday we got a call from Cathy and Steve on Lilly, a 47' Benateau, that we met in Mazatlan on Dock 6. They had arrived the previous night in Tenacatitas inner anchorage and had decided to re anchor closer that morning. As steve put his head in the anchor locker he was shocked to see a snake coiled up at the bottom of it. Cathy wanted to know if we would come over and help them remove the snake. Once we had established that the anchor locker did not communicate with their bilge (as ours dose) Steve fashioned a hook out of a plastic hanger and the end of a butterfly net. The first attempt to hook the snake failed and he moved further back in the anchor locker under some chain. Steve let more anchor chain out till the snake was visible and with some luck we hooked the snake (who was about 4' long) and tossed him in the water. He looked upset and tried to find a way back into the boat. He swan to the back of the boat and finally crawled into one of the 4 dinghies tied to the stern. We concluded that he probably was not a water snake and decided to drag the dinghy with the snake to the shore and remove the snake. Once he got into the water and saw land he swam straight for it and it was a happy ending for everyone. The remainder of the day Justin scrubbed the bottom of Steady Beat and we got ready to leave for Melaque in Bahia de Navidad.

There are about 5-6 resident dolphins in Tenacatita that you can see every morning and every evening hunting around the bay. These dolphins on occasion will swim up and down your boats anchor chain to scratch themselves. There is one dolphin in particular who is supposed to be friendly with cruiser and he is aptly named chip for he has a chip out of his dorsal fin. On several occasions I (Dalia) have noticed the dolphins swimming close to the boat and have slipped into the water hopping they will swim up to me and let me touch them. Every time they seem to be focused on following the fish and ignore me. The day we motored out of Tenacatita the dolphins were fishing in our area. They swam up to the boat and started playing in our bow wake, there were 3 and then there was only chip. I looked down from the bow sprit and said Hi to Chip and he squeaked back. He stayed with the boat for a minute and then went back to his pod (who were hard at work getting breakfast). As he did this he breached 10 feet out of the air 4 times and then went back to fishing. This is one of the most spectacular things we have seen so far and there are no pictures because we were living and enjoying the moment and it truly was a memorable moment.