We left Marina Chahue in Huatulco on February 7, 2015. I noticed that even at mid-tide on a falling tide, the surge in the marina was impressive. As it can be, there. (Protip: break out the trucker hitches you'd used as mooring lines in Mazatlan, and use them again in Marina Chahue.)
It was very light air underway, hot and humid as usual. We motorsailed with staysail alone and ran 5.5 knots SOG at 2000 rpm.
All was well until 3:45 PM, when we were a couple miles west of Puerto Angel. (IIRC we were following our typical 5-to-10-miles-offshore-during-daylight protocol. Sucks, that I didn't note it in our log.) I failed to see a line of fishing floats until The Fox had crossed it and snagged the line in the rudder. Luckily, with our skeg-hung rudder the line did not wrap in the propeller. GB took a swim and in less than 2 minutes he'd freed the rudder and the pangueros' line was undamaged. Win-win.
GB glanced at the bottom paint and pronounced it in good shape, but he saw that the propeller had collected some barnacles after almost 2 months total afloat in Marina Chiapas and Maria Chahue.
Very little vessel traffic overnight: just a single freighter. At night and into next morning, seas grew choppy and rolly while the breeze grew to 10-15 knots right on the nose. As expected when rounding any point of land anywhere on Earth, when rounding Punta Maldonado conditions were quite bouncy and SOG was only 3.5 knots. Had we been southbound it would have been awesome. Still no vessel traffic until right at sunset on February 8, when freighters appeared from everywhere. We were the only boat who hadn't gotten the memo.
Overnight and through the morning of February 9, the 15-knot westerly-noserly breeze and
2'-to-5' chop persisted. Eventually, toward noon, the breeze dropped and our speed increased. We entered the deep and steep-to Puerto Marques, just outside the entrance to Acapulco, at 1:15 PM and the bottom of low tide. We saw that most of what was once an anchorage in the southern part of the bay had been completely taken over by a large pier; a new, almost-complete marina; and many power boats on private mooring balls. Nevertheless we shoehorned The Fox into the last best space in the bay's southwest corner and anchored in 46' at low tide. Sadly, though, now that three years have passed, I doubt that anchoring anywhere along the south side of Puerto Marques would still be possible.
Puerto Marques was nevertheless a nice bay that day, with very sheltered water even when the evening breeze piped up. The small palapa restaurants lining the shore closed at sunset and we saw very few lights in the condos surrounding the bay. All this made for a calm, quiet night with good sleep opportunities. We'd traveled 240 miles in 51.25 hours and needed good sleep opportunites.
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