20th Dec 2009
Well it is now 14 hours later (since leaving Zihuantanejo) and Don and I are exhausted – shortly after writing the above I went below for my 9pm til midnight rest while Don kept a lookout. Within minutes of actually falling asleep Don woke me for a hand to lower the mainsail. He said there was a thunderhead approaching. I was dopey to say the least, stumbled up to the cockpit and took ages to get my brain to link the cogs and workout what was going on – the sky was lit up every few seconds by a blinding light that covered as far as we could see. I thought Don had the strobe light on and for some reason it was brighter than usual. It was lightning – massive forked bolts came down next to us blinding us with their intensity. There were 3 large thunderheads all sending off bolts of lightening and constantly showed us the huge thunderheads – it was like being in a discothèque with a strobe ball only many times brighter. I put all our mobile electronics in the oven – I know that sounds strange but having listened to other sailors, it appears that is what one must do when facing a lightning hit. If hit, the electrical charge will most likely destroy all our communication equipment. Not only would it mean we would have difficulty navigating but we would not have any emergency radios etc. It would take us months and many thousands of dollars to replace those pieces of equipment. It does happen – we have talked to people who have been hit by lightning – an aluminum mast sticking up straight and tall in a sea is a great conductor. I mentally pictured where all our fire extinguishers were (thought maybe if the deck were hit the teak may catch alight) and wondered if I could get the thing up and squirting quickly in the dark. I did do a course on extinguishers 6 years ago !!!
Don secured all the sails and bits and pieces around the deck – whilst I held my breath. I have never known him to take longer to down the mainsail and tuck it securely away – all the time I was picturing him being thrown on the deck by an electrical charge running down the mast. The winds grew from nothing to 20 knots and the seas grew from flat to monstrous and bumpy – well rough anyway !! All we could do is sit and watch the spectacle hoping that it did not come any closer. We huddled together in the cockpit – both exhausted but too worried to go to sleep. The show went on for over 3 hours – all the time we had the engine racing trying to outrun the show whilst tracking the storm cells on the radar. We also had a 2 knot current against us so progress was slow.
We arrived safely in Acapulco at 8am. We have caught up on some lost sleep and plan to take it easy on the boat for the rest of the day.
The next day and we were anxious to get off the boat and go sightseeing. The Puerto de Capitana was first to check our yacht in, next the Fort San Diego which was closed, we found an airconditioned restaurant and plopped our hot sweaty bodies there and drank our fill of coffee. We visited the local Church then on to the cliff divers. They were amazing – I was more fascinated by watching them scale up the cliff without any structured feet or handholds – they took a different path each time. I had been looking forward to watching them and I wasn’t disappointed.
Our impression of Acapulco was of a tired old city, hot and very busy and none too clean. It doesn’t cater very well for cruisers with very limited anchoring room and excessively expensive marina fees at the yacht club. The other marina – La Marina is a wreck with some evidence of gradual refurbishment. Even there they charged us 80 pesos to tie the dinghy to a sinking dock for 3 hours and no other facilities available.
We didn’t explore very far a field, as it was hot. I am embarrassed to say we found an air-conditioned restaurant and plopped ourselves down for morning tea. It was lovely to drink coffee and talk in a cool clean atmosphere. After that we went by the local church then up the hill to the cliff divers –they were spectacular and very difficult to take a decent photo of.
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