Santiago Bay, Las Haddas

A few days after returning to Barra, we left for Santiago Bay, just outside Manzanillo. Enroute we encountered our friends Pinky and Danny on Dulce Sueno . They were headed north but turned around and spent a couple of days with us in Santiago Bay. They introduced us to a restaurant at the resort overlooking the bay, which is reached by a river that flows into the bay. Pinky and Danny had visited it previously by kayak, but thought we could make it in our dingy, so the three of us carefully navigated up the river at a rising tide, with the motor on tilt to avoid the shallow bottom. We tied up in the mangroves and hiked to the top for great margaritas and a seafood dinner. We visited the big market in the small town of Santiago the next day, where I replaced my flip flops, broken the night before when tieing up the dingy. We had cocktails the next night with Rick and Darcy and their family on Tea Leaves. They joined us on board for dinner the following night. I dove the wreck of the container ship, part of which is visible above water even at high tide. We left a couple of days later to go around the corner to Las Haddas (the fairies) made famous by the movie "10". We anchored out, intending to leave for Ziuat in a couple of days, but unfortunately, the gen set overheated, so I arranged to go into the Las Haddas Marina to fix it. This was our first experience Med-Moored and we did not enjoy it. You set the anchor and then back down to the dock, tieing the stern to the dock. The surge and the close proximity of the adjacent boats made for some uncomfortable nights. We met the Hooligans (Tim and Paula), Gemini (Les and Diane) who had come into the marina the day before and they helped us tie up. We had to take the dingy off the davits for stern boarding. We hosted all the cruisers for cocktails that night. The next day, we met the famous Bob Bitchin and Jody, publisher's of Latitudes and Attitudes magazine at the pool. We introduced them to mango margaritas, and were invited to visit their boat, the Lost Soul, the next day. We really enjoyed meeting Bob and Jody. I had read a couple of Bob's books, "Emerald Cove" and "King Harbor". They had added many new items to Lost Soul and after hearing his quiet Panda gen set, I decided to dump our 25 year old gen set and get a new Panda. Bob arranged for us to get a large discount on the new Panda. The next night around 30 cruisers celebrated Bob's birthday, at a restaurant overlooking the bay. Linda surprised Bob the next day with a ceramic sea horse, both we and Bob and Jody had seen our first seahorse shortly before. Our sea horse was hanging out on the line to the flopper stopper (see photo) Because of our concerns about the gen set and the projected arrival of the new one in PV, we decided not to go further south. On the 14th we had a fabulous dinner at the restaurant on a peninsula overlooking the bay, about 40 feet above the waves crashing on the rocks and above the finishing hole on the Las Haddas golf course. Linda's 60th birthday was on the 15th and she wanted to go back to Santiago Bay. We spent her birthday using our new boogie boards. After a few days we returned to Barra for about a week before heading back up the coast to PV. We had a near miss and one mishap en route. Shortly after entering Chamela, I dove the anchor and checked the bottom of the boat where I found a plastic bag clogging the engine thru hull, although we never overheated. The wind picked up to around 20 knots apparent between Chamela and Ipala, and when we got ready to anchor in Ipala, we could not get the main to furl, so I had to drop it. The foil that holds the sail had come out of the bottom part that holds it (probably due to wind pressure). I refitted it but we decided not to fly it the next day going around Cabo Corrientes. Although the wind got up to 25 knots, we had a decent passage into the bay and saw two big manta rays right next to the boat on the way in. Their wingspan must have been close to 12 feet.