December 14, 2023
Anchoring is usually pretty non-eventful for us, except when stern lines or stern anchors are involved. Today, it was a stern anchor. Okay, we’ve tied stern lines but never dropped a stern anchor. How Annoying could it be? We googled and had a general idea. It would be fine.
We scouted out a spot at the front of the anchored boats with plenty of space between them. We dropped the main anchor and backed down. Then, the tubas on the beach started playing. Then another sailboat started hovering around, shouting, “Are you anchored yet? We’re going to go right behind you.” Ok. We’re halfway sorted. Cue the stress sweats. Everyone’s starting to peek out of their boats to watch. There’s a boat hovering beside us. There are tubas playing jaunty Mexican music on the beach. But we’ve got one anchor down, almost done.
Except we weren’t. We still needed to drop the dinghy and deploy the stern anchor to hold us bow into the swell. Mark starts dropping the dinghy as the boat slowly drifts sideways into the swell. Dinghy’s dropped. Tubas still playing. Boat still hovering. Mark jumps down and starts pushing the 22,000 ound boat with a 9 horsepower dinghy into position then quickly drops the stern anchor. I pull in the slack and it seems like it’s worked.
The other boat whizzes past, does a 180 and drops their anchors in minutes. Show offs.
Wtf. We’re sideways to the swell and rolling side to side. The stern anchor popped. Mark goes back to the dinghy and resets it. Ok. It’s got to have worked now. Spoiler alert: it didn’t. We ended up resetting it a third time in the pitch black.
After 72 hours at sea, neither of us felt like cooking. So we decided that we would go to shore.We get to shore to realize that I’ve got no shoes. I forgot them on the boat. Oh well, we’ve come too far. Thus begins the no-shoe era.
We followed the path leading us straight to the beach and all of the palapas. Except, it turns out that this sleepy Mexican town shuts down when the sun sets. Being 6 pm, it was dark and not much was going on. We managed to find a stand on the side of the road selling hamburgers. Dreams do come true! We sat on the side of the road, on a makeshift plastic table eating burgers and fries.
Let me tell you. Mexican hamburgers—or hamburguesas—are not a traditional burger. There’s a bun and toppings, but that’s where the similarities end. The patty is thin and soft. The hot debate in the boat is whether it’s even beef. But I love them. And the hamburger stand in Chacala has the best ones I’ve had in Mexico.
The following day, we set out to explore Chacala. It was everything we’d hoped for. Palm trees, sandy beaches and warm sunshine. We spent the day lounging at the beach with a big bottle of beer, eating enchiladas and enjoying doing a lot of nothing. We got back to the dinghy and didn’t realize that a pair of flip flops went missing. Mark’s flip flops. Given there were a ton of kids playing in the dinghy, we figured they were also now proud owners of rotten, stinky flip flops.
The next day, we dropped off our laundry. We’d met some other cruisers and hiked up the old volcano, where we were treated to great views of the anchorage and coast. Along the way, we were adopted by a dog who followed us the whole hike but abandoned us at the end in favour of more hikers going back up.
Chacala was an interesting stop. It’s not an American or Canadian tourist hot spot, but it is a vacation spot for Mexicans. It was the weekend and busload after busload of families were pouring out of boats and onto the beach. And Mexicans know how to beach better than anyone. They set up full tables of food, umbrellas, coolers of beers and settled in for the day. The beach was full of vendors selling everything from shrimp on a stick to donuts. Those tuba players were out in full force too. Everyone was having a good time…except for that one small kid that Sprocket chased down the beach.
We loved Chacala. It was a slow paced couple of days and we knew we’d be visiting again in the Spring on our way up to Mazatlan. Maybe next time we could have less tuba when we’re trying to anchor.
NM Sailed: 0
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