The Dingy

A bit about everyday life on the boat… Getting Ashore. To get ashore from the boat at anchor to enjoy the liquid delights at the palapa or buy some avocados or get to the lavanderia (laundry mat) or internet cafe or whatever you’re going to do, you have to take a dingy. Dan’s dingy is a Port-a-bote, which is made of spaced aged materials designed by an aeronautical engineer (yes, really) which folds for storage. He’s very proud of it, and talks with other port-a-bote owners about how great they are. Most other folks have an inflatable with a hard bottom. Some mount wheels on the back, which we didn't have and which I really didn’t see the point of at first.

To make things simple, Dan stores the port-a-bote fully assembled and hanging off the back of the boat, on the davits (kind of a frame that holds the dingy). To launch the dingy, I’d lower it into the water from pulleys, Dan would hop in and move it forward a bit. Then I’d unclamp the 3.5 hp outboard engine from the railing, pick it up and over the railing and hand it down to Dan in the dingy, taking care not to drop it in the water. He’d attach it to the dingy, I’d hop in, and we’d take off (rather slowly, as the port-a-bote won’t plane) for shore. As we approached the beach, and it would start to get shallow, Dan would rev the engine for a last burst of speed, and then kill the engine and raise it up so it wouldn’t drag in the sand. Then I’d jump out, grab the rope at the front and drag it up to the beach. Fortunately, there wasn’t much surf at any of the places we’d landed. We needed some practice at timing the landing maneuver with the wave sets. Sometimes Dan would kill the engine a little soon, and a the dingy would start to turn sideways to an incoming wave. So then I’d jump out in a panic, and the wave would push the dingy into me as I’m getting my shorts wetter than I was hoping I would, much to the amusement of spectators on shore. But we never flipped, though I was nervous after we talked to someone at Chamela who had flipped theirs.

Anyway, dingy landing was complicated at La Cruz by a couple of things. First, the little enclosed harbor area where you had to land also happened to be near where the sewer outfall was located. Gross. So I wasn’t really excited about hopping out into that. Second, it wasn’t a beach, it was a single narrow gravel ramp crammed between beached fishing boats that everyone, including fishing boats used. So it wasn’t enough to just drag the dingy a little bit up to clear the high water mark, we had to drag it up past the ramp and over to the side. Dan's on the left there, washing the sand off his feet after dragging our dingy off the ramp. The 'ramp' is the area between Dan and those kids with the fishing pangas (that's what they call those type of boats down here). That fishing boat in the background isn't coming in or going out, its just sitting in the way, and continued to do so for the three days we were there. This is where wheels would have been useful. Other dingies have wheels mounted on legs that fold up when the boat is in the water, and can be extended below the boat when it gets close to shore, so that you can easily roll the boat up the beach. Anyway, the last other about this place that was weird was the bottom contours of this harbor-like-area. It got really shallow in the center. In the picture above, you can see the end of the breakwater which is where we'd be aiming for when we got back in the dingy to get back to the boat. Looks like a straight shot, but it isn't, because of the shallow depth. Instead you have to veer way off to the left and creep around the edge. We cut it a bit close once and hit the 55-gallon drum that was partially submerged, supposedly marking some obstacle (at least when it isn’t submerged). The swell had picked up while we were ashore one day, and there were waves breaking in about three different directions near the ramp. Interesting… but my worst fears of flipping in this foul water were not realized, and we got back to the boat without incident.

Not everyone shared my disdain for this area. One day there were a couple of people riding the waves in kayaks. This pic shows one guy after he flipped. Ick.

La Cruz was otherwise a nice spot. Had a few places that have live music by gringos. Here's a couple of them...