Sailing Playa Del Carmen

Just a quick blog about a funny afternoon in Playa Del Carmen (a beach about an hour south of Cancun). Unlike our guidebook informs us, Playa Del Carmen is not the sleeply little ¨getaway¨from the hectic Cancun. It is infact a mini LA, with more plastic fantastic than you can poke a stick at.

We decided to hire a small hobby catamaran for only an hour, to go for a sail around the bay and have a look at the coast from the water. Upon hiring the vessel, we assured the nervous owner that we were more than qualified to return his boat to him in the amount of time we had paid for.

With the prowess of a Sydney to Hobart skipper we easily managed to make our way down wind and around the 100m jetty jutting out into the sea. At about the half an hour mark we decided we should head back, but realised this would be a bit more difficult with the wind howling from the direction we neaded to head. After about 20 minutes of pulling all the various rudders, sails and ropes, the sail came down.

So we headed to shore, and the blokes walked the 1.5 km back up the beach to a concerned owner, while the girls remained with the beached boat. The first question the owner asked to Chook and Richo¨, in broken english was ¨where have you sunken it¨? We walked back to the boat for him to sail us back after rerigging the sail, and after an hour and a half of floundering in the water, the boat was again beached by the skipper so that us four could wlak back. He tried to navigate it himself one more time, but ended drifting backwards into the marina full of boats, and making the marina master beach the boat again, and we think it was still there the morning after. So it was by no means the fault of the four at sea, simply faulty equipment that impeded our return sail.