Places We’ve Been: Cuastecomate & Melaque , Jalisco MX

Let’s get this out of the way first:  Use this post for information or entertainment only, please do not use this post for navigation.

Ahhh, the winter months spent leisurely exploring the Costalegre of Mexico’s West Coast (Gold Coast) won’t be soon forgotten, even if we did do those explorations during the Covid years.  Mexico is a relaxed place to cruise regardless and I’m thankful for the time spent there.  Let’s get into two places we went, but didn’t spend that much time in….Cuastecomate and Melaque, Mexico.

Prepping to leave Tenacatita after nearly two weeks there, we heard all sorts of complementary tales of the beach, village and snorkeling at the “secret anchorage” of Cuastecomate, which is just before the Barra de Navidad Marina and Lagoon.  So we were determined to check it out, despite also hearing there might be swells there.  I had also heard of boats having to stern anchor there, but that’s not something we were very good at on Tulum, we figured we’d check it out regardless.  The anchorage was smaller with the usual assortment of pangas and bouys set up, so we couldn’t really get in much behind the headland, but at least two or three other boats were tucked in, making it look pretty ideal.  Before entering, one of our buddy boats called and told us the visibility for snorkeling wasn’t good, they were proceeding on to Melaque.  We decided to check out Cuastecomate anyways, so we headed in.  At around 1250 we found a spot we liked and anchored over sand in 33 feet of water with about 170 ft of chain out.  Since we were already rolling a bit, the HelmsMistress decided to go check out the snorkeling area on her paddle board to see if we wanted to stay.  She came back pretty quick….the visibility was indeed shiiite.  So….we made the call to move to Melaque as well.  At 1400, we pulled the anchor back up and started to move.  We arrived in Melaque around 1510.

Melaque is part of a very large bay with the town of San Patricio on one end of a long white sand beach (covered in incomplete hotels) and the Barra de Navidad resort and lagoon/swamp on the other side.  Waypoint JAL 121 (on page 141) from the “Pacific Mexico, A Cruisers Guidebook” has boats tucked up behind the headland/rocks at the north end of the bay, but it was shallower than we liked and full of panga floats, so we anchored a bit further out.  And, of course our buddy boats had beaten us into the anchorage….but we still anchored a bit further out.  We anchored over sand in 20 feet of water with 150 ft of chain out.  My log says that we should really called this….”rocky Melaque”, because there was swell coming in around the rocks, panga and jet skis using us as waypoints and noise from the beach.  We did what we could to solve these problems, deploying our trusty flopperstop off our main boom….it helped.  We would last the night, then follow our buddy boat as they went into the marina at Barra and we headed for the lagoon to check it out.  That’s next week.

Here’s more info:

Ease of anchoring:  We anchored over a sand in both locations with decent holding.    

Noise at anchor:  Yes, at Melaque there was noise from the beaches and noise from the pangas and jet skis that came to check us out. .    

Provisioning:  Yes, but we didn’t provision here.  We waited till Barra to provision….with a Costco coming up at Las Hadas

Cellular reception at anchor:  Yes.

Wifi in the anchorage:  None

Water Clarity:  Not much. 

Protection:  Protection from the north.  I would not stay here in a blow, I’d move to the Marina at Barra or the lagoon.  The mud in the lagoon seemed to have good holding once we were set.  

Bugs:  Not at anchor.  

Beach:  Yes, long white sand beaches.  But they were covered by lots of people, folks who wanted to get outside during Covid.   

Would We Go Back:  I would love to go back to check out Cuastecomate.

Wanna read some of the other places we’ve been….check out these links:

Places We’ve Been: Bahia Tenacatita, Jalisco MX

Places We’ve Been: Bahia Chamela, Jalisco MX

Places We’ve Been: Punta Ipala (Tehuamixtle)

Places We’ve Been: Major Stops Along Mexico’s West Coast

Places We’ve Been: Heading To Lower Mexico And Central America