Mexico to Central America and Tehuantepec

[LByers]

Hi all,
We are a 40 ft cruising boat with 2 crew sailed from Seattle 8-09 to Mexico currently plan to cruise the Sea of Cortez till the fall and then head down the coast to central America.
Would like info from experienced cruisers on crossing the Tehuantepec, we have a general guide which gives normal and expected vs highest for wind, seas ect. by the month. It looks like the weather improves giving longer weather windows moving from Dec to June but since our plan is to head south in November not sure if we want to still be in Mexico until April??
Any info and experience would be greatly appreciated

Vicki

[Pete the Cat]

Your information is correct about general trends, but what is more important is getting into a specific weather window to do the crossing--I ended up waiting a couple weeks for mine in April. Conditions can change very fast there and high winds (70Kt+) can occur on very short notice. I suggest hanging out in Huatulco--has many nice beaches and there is a marina there that most folks hang out in waiting for a window. The Port Captain, other cruisers and the Marina folks (is Enrique still there?) will help you, but you need to make your own decision on the window--there can be problems with groupthink sometimes. The guides will tell you to "keep one foot on the beach" and "when you can't hear the dogs barking you are too far off the shore". I think this is good advice and it will only add a few hours to the trip. Having said that, I did not do this. I went about a third of the way around and then bee lined it in flat calm the rest of the way. The wind filled in with sizeable seas right behind me so I was just lucky. A solo circumnavigator came into Huatulco completely beaten after getting hammered by a "pecker". He was finishing up a trip and said he had never experienced anything like it in his life. I would guess it is about a 40 hour trip for your boat.

[LByers]

Thanks for that info Ray, we also had friends that crossed in April of this year and did just fine also. Looking at the trends just means that I don't want to try to cross in Jan when I can just as easily enjoy the southern coast of Mexico and wait until a little further into the year when the chance of high wind is lower.