Tehuantepecer!

“Mayday! Mayday!” Kathy shouted into the microphone of the VHF radio as we were slammed by another ferocious gust of wind which buried the gunwales of the sailboat into the surface of the sea. We both knew that her call for help was more than likely futile, because the range of the VHF radio is twenty to twenty-two miles and we were at least eighty from the closest port of call, and in Mexico there is no coast guard.
Usually sailing is a pleasurable activity, especially along the Pacific coast of Mexico in a stout boat with an experienced captain and crew. But this was an atypical scenario. The Isthmus of Tehuantepec is home to some of the strongest and most unpredictable winds in the Pacific. The winds that can gust up to eighty knots and cause twenty-five to thirty foot waves over an area of one hundred square miles can come up with little change in the barometric pressure and under clear skies. The gales are created by intense continental highs moving across the Gulf of Mexico that are then constricted by the Sierra Madre del Sur, to the west of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and Sierra Madre de Chiapas in the east, rushing violently out into the Pacific.
Kathy, my only crew member, had been my sailing companion since we left Canada and was a reliable and capable sailor. We were cruising in the beautiful bays of Huatulco, with its clear, emerald-blue waters and pristine white sandy beaches, waiting for a window in the weather. There are two strategies for crossing the Gulf of Tehuantepec. One is to ‘keep one foot on the beach’, that is, to stay so close to shore that if the violent winds did pick up, you could literally just drop anchor in twenty to twenty-five feet of water. If the winds were not too strong you could continue sailing (with reduced sail) because you would be close enough to shore that the wind would not have the distance to build into dangerous waves. The other strategy is to go about six hundred miles offshore—far enough that the hazardous winds and seas are dispelled. Because of the size of our ship and, more specifically, her fuel capacity, the offshore option was not practical. Although there was the potential for gales because of the local phenomenon of what the cruisers have affectionately called the ‘Tehuantepecers’, there was also the possibility of days without wind because this area was also in the doldrums.
After a week in Huatulco, listening to the weather reports every day, we carefully chose our window of opportunity for the crossing. We left early one morning on the promise of an auspicious weather report, and began our race to the other side of the gulf. It was a typical beautiful and windless day for that time of year, the sun brightly shining, not a cloud in the sky. We hugged the desert coastline. Throughout the day we made good progress motoring at about five knots per hour. The sun began to sink into the scarlet and orange sea.
They always happened at night—all of our storms. On my chart was the word ‘BREAKERS’ that went out five nautical miles into the Pacific at the mouth of a river. It made sense. The river deposits sand from the desert, creating shallow water where the seas break—great for surfers, a nightmare for sailors. I decided to move away from the shore just to get around the dangerous shallow waters. I did not want to get stuck on a sandbar in the pitch-black night with breaking seas.
We were at the furthest point from the shore when it happened. I felt the slightest breeze on my cheek. “Land breeze?” I asked myself hopefully. A second later my question was answered by a resounding NO! Tehuantepecer! The breeze grew steadily into a wind, into a gust, into a gale, into a storm, into almost hurricane force winds in the matter of minutes. Over the howling wind, I screamed at Kathy to take the tiller and I rushed to the foredeck to take down all sail.
Aquila was constantly being blown to her side with all the sail up, the gunwales being swallowed by the black sea. I was nearly tossed out of the boat a few times as I wrestled with the sails to bring them down and store them below. Although I was tethered to the boat, it would have been extremely difficult for Kathy to drag me into the boat with the seas steadily increasing. I had to get a small hurricane jib up as quickly as possible. With no sail, we were being pushed steadily out into steeper seas, thus decreasing our chances of survival. When I finally got back to the cockpit after raising the hurricane jib, I was pretty beaten up. Thrashing lines and sails can do a lot of damage in such vigorous winds. Kathy looked as white as a sail and I told her to go below and batten the hatches. The last I saw of her for some time, she was shouting a mayday into the VHF.
When I got back to the tiller, the engine was still running. I put the engine in gear and revved it so high it whined. There was no way I could turn Aquila back into the wind to get closer to shore where we could anchor. The best I could do was a beam reach (so that the ship was perpendicular to the direction of the wind) to keep us from going any further out. This was all done by feel. With the spray of the water and the sand from the desert whipping across my face, I could not even open my eyes unless I was looking downwind into a black and tumultuous sea. I grabbed my snorkeling mask from the cockpit locker and slipped it over my face so that I could take a look around. To my delight I could see the lights of the city of Salina Cruz in the direction we were heading. I knew it was about forty miles back because we had passed it earlier in the day, but we would make it as long as the motor held out.
Our reliable motor pulled us through, and about eight hours after the storm hit we dropped anchor just east of Salina Cruz in a long sandy bay. Kathy and I were alive to tell the tale, but did not have the energy to celebrate. We crawled into the forward berth and slept the sleep of the just.

Excerpt from Voyage to Destiny:Sailing to Success