Are we there yet? - Yes - Isla Mujeres, Mexico!

Things came together surprisingly well last week - isn't it strange how sometimes things just seem to work that way?  First, and very important, two members of our crew arrived on Brian's boat.  They sailed up from Tampa, FL - see previous blog.

The week of May 1 was a key week for things to come together.  First, our crew needed to arrive  -and that happened; second, the new liferaft was on order and scheduled for delivery - it arrived on Monday; and third, the boat needed to be  ready....and it was almost ready!  A few more projects needed to be completed, including re-mounting the AIS antennas, adding an external antenna for the Iridium Go (new purchase for this trip).  Those projects seemed to come together on Monday and Tuesday.

Finally, the weather needed to look good.  we had been closely monitoring the weather for several days and it had been looking very optimistic.  A cold front was making its way down from the north, and we could see the effects on Monday and Tuesday from our home. On Monday and Tuesday, we saw some showers and brief thunderstorms which are characteristic of the leading edge of a cold front; but so far, the wind direction had not shifted and was predominantly from the south.

We made a decision on Tuesday that we were ready to go - was everything finished?...ha, no, its a boat! nothing is ever finished.  Were we close enough with all safety systems and equipment in place - yes and the  few known remaining items were either of low importance or were just simply on the "wish list".  We pushed off from Josephine, AL on Tuesday afternoon headed for Ft. McCree,, which is at the Pensacola Pass - our exit point to the Gulf of Mexico.  We made it there in a couple of ours with plenty of time to anchor and have dinner before settling down for an early night.  The winds were calm, and still had a southerly component.

Sunrise from Ft. McCree

The next morning, we awoke pretty early and started to get ready to leave.  We pulled the anchor and left the anchorage right at 7 am, motoring to get out of the pass.  The wind had clocked!  and although it was light, it was indeed out of the north - perfect for a near due south passage,  In fact it was almost a little too perfect being almost directly behind us.  Given the conditions, I elected to use Genoa only as the main tends to blanket the Genoa when its more than 120 degrees behind us.  This worked well, but we could have used a little more wind.  We were making progress, but it was a little under 5 kts.  During the night, the winds lightened up, so we motor-sailed until things picked up again.  Nonetheless, this was very pleasant and was a good way to make sure everything on the boat was working well.  As our good friend Patrick would say "It doesn't get any better than this!"

When the wind picked up we got our 20-25 kts and the genoa alone kept us at more than 6.5 kts, occasionally hitting 7.5.  For the next couple of days, the wind stayed from the north making it a wonderful sail.  At times we saw some lumpy seas - not particularly big, maybe 6 ft with occasional 8 ft. rollers, The problem was the very short period of about 4 seconds, making the boat roll a lot rather than riding the waves.

UPS Sail Flying

For the next couple of days, we alternated between the genoa and the UPS sail (asymmetrical spinnaker), although we only used the UPS during daylight hours - simply because we know that "bad things can happen at night" and this is not a sail to be wrestling with in the dark!  We have it mounted on a continuous loop roller furler, which helps handling, but it still really takes 2 or 3 people to handle it well and without getting into a tangle.

We soon realized that at the speed we were making we would have to slow down to avoid a night-time arrival.  Since none of us had been into Isla before, we decided that a morning arrival was much safer and preferable.  So on Sunday night, we avoided the temptation to motor and we continued sailing with the Genoa - slow (2-5 kts) and not in a direct line for our destination.  We sailed off the wind a little to keep the genoa full of wind.

We did a good job of slowing down - in fact a little too good.  We had hoped to arrive at first light, but actually got in around 10:45am  As always, once land was sighted, it always seems to take hours to actually arrive!

We spotted Contoy light during the night and knew we were approaching our destination.Once we passed Contoy, we had about 25 miles to go.  At this point, the winds started to clock around and we really felt a very strong current pushing us northwest.  Since we were nearing our destination, the time of day was good, and we had no desire to sail backwards, we motored the last leg of our journey.

We spotted Anvil Rock - our last waypoint for the turn into Isla Mujeres.and gingerly crossed the reef, marked at a minimum depth of 7 ft.  We actually didn't see less than 12 ft of water, which is always a relief.  We absolutely didn't want to ground on the reef so close to our destination!

Our arrival time  of 10:45 am, was closely monitored by Brian and Gale who had bets going as to whether we would be over or under 100 hours from our departure.  10:45 put us at 99 hours and 45 minutes, giving the prize to Gale, at Brian's expense!

The Crew - happy with our arrival in Isla Mujeres

Our Route - courtesy of DeLorme

Happy to be safely into Isla Mujeres, there was one last and very important task for the crew before starting the check-in process!.........see below!