Tuesday to Friday, June 15-18, 2010 – At Sea

We spent the morning taking care of business. At 11am, we launched the dinghy and went for a ride around Acapulco harbor. It was not easy to find a place where we could bring the dinghy to shore due to the heavy surf and pounding waves, but we made a go at it right next to a roped off swimming area. As it turned out, we had trespassed on federal navy property and the guard with the machine gun politely showed us which side of the line we needed to stay on. Mark and Gale dropped the girls off with the dogs on the shore and then took the dinghy out a few feet where they dropped an anchor and swam to shore.

The beach was lovely and we found a few tables with umbrellas where we ordered a light lunch. As we sat on the beach, we were bombarded by locals selling their wares or services. One little boy who looked to be about 6 or 7 years old, came by with his tin can to try to sell us a song as he wrapped his knuckles on the can.

After our lunch, we jumped back into the dinghy (not very gracefully, by the way) and continued our ride around the harbor. We rode by the cliffs made famous by Wide World of Sports and the Acapulco cliff divers and then back to Adventure at 3 pm to prepare for our departure.

Before leaving the dock, we experienced a problem with clogged sea strainers that the guys tried to troubleshoot. The slip where we had stayed the night was full of garbage and it seemed that our sea strainers had taken in a lot of trash. In addition, the warm waters we’d been traveling in promoted a lot of barnacle growth in the hoses. The consensus of the crew was that we had enjoyed Acapulco very much, but we were all anxious to move on, so at 4:15 pm, we did just that.


The weather outlook showed three tropical depressions in the area and we came through one of them the first night out. It was our hope to anchor at Zihuatenejo Tuesday night but due to the rough seas, we passed it by and kept on moving. “Z-What” was the place where Andy told Red he could find him when he got out of prison in the movie Shawshank Redemption.

Over the course of our passage we experienced swells of 8 to 10 feet with chop making for a rather uncomfortable ride. At other times, the seas were fairly smooth. One night, Mark observed large patches of bright blue bioluminescense in the sea. There were more thunderstorms on Wednesday night.