In 1988, when we first cruised down the Mexican mainland Pacific Coast, we anchored off the beach at Melaque, close under Punta Bahia in the northern bight. The refracted swell that surges into this anchorage day and night is enough to convince any boat to set fore and aft anchors to hold the bow into it. Hobby-horsing is generally preferable to rolling, in my book.
In those days, the cruisers' haven and central gathering place was the restaurant closest to the anchored fleet, Los Pelicanos, owned and operated by Philomena, a wonderful, energetic, warm, Mexican-American woman married to a Mexican citizen, Trini. Everyone called her Phil. She started the local daily cruisers' net on VHF. She provided information for local assistance, propane tank filling, water, and all kinds of entertainment. We all made sure we painted our boat and crew names on her restaurant's interior walls, but we had to do this anew every year, as she white-washed the walls before hurricane season each year. The Saint Patrick's Day parties she threw were the high point of the cruising season. She brought in entertainment such as Folklorico dance troupes and put on a marvelous feast for all. Phil and Los Pelicanos were synonymous with San Patricio de Melaque.
One night there had been a great party at Phil's. We returned to our boat quite late and simply collapsed into bed. We didn't think anything of just tying off our dinghy to the boat, complete with outboard. We also had tied off to our boat the dink of a friend who had gone off to crew on a MEXORC race. About 3 a.m. our dog began barking. I told him to knock it off, but he kept it up for a little while longer, almost getting brought down below. Soon everything was quiet again.
In the light of day we discovered that dinghies from three other boats anchored nearby had been stolen. Neither of the dinghies tied to our boat had been touched, probably thanks to our dog's alertness (certainly not ours).
Phil was outraged when the thefts were reported on the morning cruisers' net. She vowed to find the dinghies and the creeps who had stolen them, and she did. The dinghies were found, without their outboard engines, barely afloat outside the mouth of the bay. The thieves had punctured their inflatable tubes in an apparent attempt to sink them. Hooray for the inflatable! However, the outboards weren't found until four days later when someone discovered them all hidden under an overturned panga way down the beach from Los Pelicanos. As to the thieves, Phil wouldn't talk about it much, but we got the feeling that they had been found and severely punished for their mistake, not necessarily by the authorities. Apparently the dinghy motor thievery business in Bahia de Navidad fell off sharply after that.
The surf all along Bahia de Navidad is always ferocious, most particularly in the southern end near the small village of Barra de Navidad. Just in front of Los Pelicanos it was probably about the best for landing dinghies, but it was still rough, coming or going. Those who had successfully landed and were sitting in the restaurant overlooking the beach held up point scores from 1 to 10 for most enthusiastically performed dinghy wipe-out or crash-and-burn.
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We honed our basic skills in keeping from getting sideways to the breaking waves to a fine edge on this beach. Some never did get it down right and were frequently given very high points for most entertaining landings and takeoffs. I particularly recall one man who was so concerned about getting away from the beach that he left his wife standing ankle deep in the surf. She was yelling for him to come back to get her, and he hollered back, "Get a ride with someone else...no way I'm going through that again!" Right after that, the surf caught his dink and flipped it completely over backwards. His wife nearly fell down laughing. While he was awarded a 9.8 for that performance (for dramatic content), we often wondered how long their marriage survived afterward.
Melaque had everything we needed: a great central mercado, lots of restaurants, and even a "house with the green door" where people could bring their own jugs and purchase a gallon of mescal for about 50 cents U.S—a really cheap way to kill yourself, drinking that stuff!
They even had the only bank in the area so it was easy to exchange dollars for pesos or get an advance in pesos on your credit card (no ATMs in Mexico in those days). Mike went into that bank once on what must have been the day before payday for the ranches out in the campo, because waiting in the line for the teller were several men wearing vaquero outfits complete with Stetson hats, carrying money bags and packing six-shooters on their hips. Shades of the Old West. Of course, the bank guards were more modern with their M-16 rifles.
You had to check in with the port captain, but he was all the way down at the other end of the bay in Barra de Navidad, and still is to this day. In those days they didn't charge a fee and they weren't particularly insistent that you go through the procedure, but most of the cruisers made the bus trip of half an hour to Barra and back... out of courtesy if nothing else. There wasn't much of interest in Barra de Navidad in 1988 outside of some really great surfing so most of us hung around in Melaque.
Philomena and her restaurant are gone now. She passed away a few years ago, and her death saddened all of us in the cruising community from Alaska to Panama. We miss her raucous laughter and horrible jokes and warm friendship. No one has stepped forward to replace her services. Cruisers still anchor in front of the restaurant that now sits abandoned. But on some moonlit nights, you can hear echoes of music and laughter just faintly, and someone swore he saw a "10" scorecard flash in the dark when he dumped himself and his dinghy on the beach in front of the abandoned building.
Next month, Bahia de Navidad in the 21st century.
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- Local News for Southern Sailors - March 2002 Next Story
