Chip & Debbie Willis on s\v Elegant'sea: Barra de Navidad Lagoon bottom cleaning, yuk but we did it

End of January 2016 - Anchored in Barra de Navidad lagoon, Mexico

The plan was for Debbie to go up the mast of s\v Falcon a 46' Cal and then when we got back to s\v Elegant'sea, our 36' Islander Freeport I was going to clean the bottom.

Of course, Debbie going up the mast took longer than expected and so the tide was further on its way out than I had planned. That means more cloudy conditions and less water. It was 11 feet deep at best at anchor. The tides were having a large swing because of the moon so the tide was out a few feet. That gave me only a few feet between the keel and the muddy bottom. Because I could not see much I decided to for-go the wiping off of the hull, after scraping it. It was more of a touch and scrape operation. Feel the barnacles and scrape them off. The wind was up a bit so the boat was moving around some or I probably could have stood up in the mud in my flippers and cleaned some of it. At times I had to lay horizontal and scrape with my flippers hitting the muddy bottom.

Usually we would go to Tenacatita from Barra de Navidad and anchor for a bit and while there clean the bottom. However because of my hip needing replacing I am a very slow moving and not nimble so the dinghy landing would not be in my favor. The waves there were getting in the 5' + range and at least one dinghy destroyed it's out board on a dinghy landing\launch attempt. There was also other dinghy carnage on the beach at times so we opted to stay in the lagoon longer. We wanted to leave for Manzanillo in a bit and thought we would from Tenacatita but this changed that. So it was dive the bottom in the lagoon. We could have gone over to Melaque but opted not to. It would make the small trip to Santiago more complicated. After all it is only about a six hour passage.

The Barra de Navidad Lagoon is not my first choice for cleaning the bottom but it is do-able. Some days at times the lagoon can be clear enough to see fish but most times it is real murky. There are locals who will swim out to the lagoon holding onto a five gallon bucket with the bottom cleaning tools in it, offering to clean the bottom or sometimes in pangas with the oyster dive compressor in it.. Our budget did not include them. Next time.