We pulled anchor in beautiful Chacala just before 8am. There was little wind so we motored away, heading for Banderas Bay. On the way we saw dozens of humpback whales.
All was going great until about 2pm when we were already in Banderas Bay, about 3 miles from our anchorage. Then we hit something hard. Peggy and I were both at the helm and neither of us saw anything before the impact. We were doing just over 7 knots and the whole boat shuddered. I looked behind to see what it was as we passed, and there was nothing there. So it could not have been a floating log or such. A quick look at the starboard bow showed minor damage and bits of dark stuff stuck to the bow. We don’t know for sure, but we think it was probably a whale that was surfacing right as we went by.
We are safely anchored just outside of the La Cruz Marina. Tomorrow we will go in and start talking to people about getting the bow repaired. We were probably going to have a haul out here anyway to fix an engine issue. Just one more item for the list.