Quote:
Originally Posted by APETE
Thanks for all the above regarding US East coast – sounds (mostly) awesome! Likewise for the input regarding offshore or not.
Thanks to all you guys’ input, at least we’re starting to narrow ourselves down to the waters surrounding the N. American continent..
If we were to go for SOC as recommended by Captmikem and quiet a few others above, is it an option to go down to Central America for one of the hurricane season that we may spend there? Besides that there appears to be a few tricky parts on the way down there, incl. Golfo de Tehuantepec, is it known to be difficult sailing? We have heard good things about Costa Rica and Panama’s Pacific coast has been recommended above (we have spent more than a year in Latin America and speak some Spanish)
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We left Ensenada MX (80-miles south of
San Diego CA) last October with the
Baja Ha Ha. Our goal was a lazy
delivery to
Florida with no schedule or itinerary to speak of. After 6-months, we paused for the rainy season by leaving our
boat on the hard in Puerto Madero (Chiapas MX) on the south end of Tehuentepec. After the
Baja Ha Ha, we joined the
Panama Posse, a very loose confederation of cruisers most of whom are transitting the
Central America area. Finally, although we left our
boat in Puerto Madero, we hitched a ride on another boat to
Costa Rica and spent about a month in CR before heading back home for the summer.
Plan A was to leave the boat in Costa Rica for the summer because it's below the
hurricane line (however, there is risk of lightening strike). We scuttled that plan when we found out pricing - slips sized for our 36-foot boat were few and far between and the
price of a 45-foot slip would be approx $2000/mo. $12k seemed like an incredible waste of
money to leave a boat for 6-months.
Plan B was to leave our boat on a
mooring in
Bahia del Sol, El Salvador. There is a small marina run by an American couple with an incredible reputation amongst the cruiser community. And then
Rum Truffle, a Moody 46 sailboat who we'd met in Acapulco, was
lost crossing the bar into
Bahia del Sol.
Rum Truffle's
captain is an experienced yachtsman who had been into BdS before - the loss rattled us and scared us off.
Plan C was Chiapas. We were a bit worried about being in the hurricane zone. But a bit of
research shows the storm track in that area is rare. Risk was acceptable to us. Frankly, it was a good decision for us. There are strong opinions to the contrary, but in my opinion, leaving our full-keel
trawler on the hard carried less risk than leaving her in the
water. Plus she'll have a fresh coat of
bottom paint provided before launch when we return in late October.
At the end of the Baja Ha Ha, we stayed in
La Paz for a couple weeks. We had done the BHH on a friends boat several years ago and have been to
La Paz a few times over the last 35-years. We did not find the cruiser haven La Paz is often touted to be. What we found were
marinas chock-full of full time expat
boats at very high prices. Since Covid, people just don't come and go, and if they do, they keep their slip to assure they have a place to return to. The anchorage outside La Paz is not great. La Paz's 'Cruiser Vibe' is much different than truly transitional cruiser venues such as Mazatlan or Zihuateneo/Ixtapa. As an aside, Puerto Vallarto has a similar dynamic so we stayed in La Cruz while in Banderas Bay which was fine. We have traveled quite a bit in
Mexico (I am writing from a condo we own in Playa del Carmen south of Cancun) and found La Paz to be an extension of Southern
California. As an aside, we found Ensenada to be much more authentic, albeit an industrial city. For whatever reason, the SoCal ex-pat crowd seems to cluster in Rosarito Beach, halfway between Tijuana and Ensenada.
We decided to bypass
Sea of Cortez. Years ago I hauled a
Catalina 22 down to Bahia de Los Angeles and spent a couple winters beach camping and sailing the islands at the northern half. Since then, reports are SoC has gotten fairly crowded with cruisers which seems hard to believe given the vast size, but we decided to bypass. My original post to this thread was you need to define what cruising looks like to you. If being anchored off a deserted beach is what you see when you conjure your dream, SoC might be for you. For us, we'd like a small village (BTW - downside to the small village is it often hosts beach-attractions for locals and can get pretty noisy, especially on the weekends). Don't get me wrong - we thoroughly enjoyed Baja, but if we were to do it again armed with our knowledge, we would do the same thing to escape the hard-core gringo crowd of Baja sailing.
Sailing from La Paz area to Mazatlan is a sizeable trek - 200 miles or so. I forget exactly how long we waited for a
weather window but it wasn't long. We arrived in Mazatlan in mid-December. Marina Mazatlan is situated up a mile-long estuary in a fairly large basin. It's well protected from swells so is a good storm location, but the marina itself is a bit tired and the
water does not fully flush so is sort of gross. The cruising community is second to none. We met several people who based their boat there and cruised 6-months a year either up to the SoC or down to Banderas Bay. Seemed like a hot setup for half-time cruising.
As another tangent, since you seem to be more of an adventure-centric vs a sailing nut, here's a
trawler that's been
for sale in Mazatlan for quite a while that has always caught my eye.
https://www.lapazyachts.com/yachts-f...r-lrc-trawler/ Don't let it's traditional
Taiwan Trawler look fool you - it has
fiberglass tanks and dry
exhaust. This example is a bit tired but who knows - might be easily brought back to life. I would guess she'll end up selling for around $50k. For a year of cruising, you'd have a tough time spending more than about $5k on
diesel, roughly what you'd probably spend getting sails/rigging/lines in shape on a similar sailboat. Point being don't let
diesel be your barrier. If you love to sail (or want to learn), by all means - go with sail. But if your goal is adventure travel, much to be said for a trawler. Cost to operate is around the same.
I'm already at a very long post and I haven't even started on cruising the middle section of
Mexico. We simply loved the stops all the way down, though they become less frequent south of Acapulco (which was dessimated last October by Cat 5 Hurricane Otis). Bahias Huatulcos at the northern edge of Tehuentepec is an amazing cruising ground.
BTW - T-Pec absolutely deserves respect. We waited a week or s for a superb
weather window and glided across on flat water. Bahia Papagayo south of Costa Rica is not as easy to transit so we'll have to figure that out this coming season. BTW - crossing these zones poses a conundrum for a sailboat - they want
wind but not too much. For many sailboats, motoring really sucks. Not so with a trawler - you want no-wind.
While I've bare-boat chartered in the
Caribbean, I can only knowledgeably speak to Central America. We are looking forward to stops in El Salvador and Nicuragua before going into Costa Rica this fall and will then stop in
Panama for a bit. It's all pretty easy cruising as long as you have time to wait when needed. Frankly, our problem hasn't been finding time to wait, our problem has been we've simply stayed much longer than we planned in several places. We stopped for a few days in Mazatalan and stayed for 6-weeks. We stopped for a few days in Barra de Navidad and shed a tear when we left 3-weeks later. But getting up the
Caribbean to
Florida will be a major challenge, by far the most difficult logistics of our journey. May is the best month so will either be May 2025; but we've been thinking of heading to the Santa Marta area of
Colombia near Baranquilla so it may be May 2026 before we
head north.
Frankly, it probably makes little difference where you
cruise (well, except you want to snorkle/dive). For us, the people we've met have been the highlight. We've just met more people than we usually do and the people who
cruise are very interesting - they tend to lean-in to life. It's been refreshing to escape the standard topics of life at home. I think you'd find that as long as you're on a boat anywhere - The Loop comes to mind. My closing
advice would be to make your plan as achievable as possible and not focus too much on the 'where.' Focus on the 'when' and make it happen. Everything else will fall into place.
Best regards - Peter
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