Tehuantepec

Yesterday Don Anderson, the weather guru for sailors in this part of the world, had some words to say about the "Tehuantepec".

The Golfo de Tehuantepec is a very narrow part of Central America in southern Mexico near the Guatemalan border. There the land runs east-west and the Tehuantepec is centered on the longitude 94W30. On a small scale map you can spot it easily at the narrowest part of Mexico, right at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, with the Yucatan peninsula hooking to the north at the right. Don described it as the most dangerous coast line between Canada and the Horn and said that the statistics on the number of fishermen lost in this gulf bears him out. The terrain along the Tehuantepec rises to 700 ft, but on either side are mountains rising to 2000 ft. Any northerly winds coming down from the US Gulf Coast gets funneled through this gap giving rise to phenomenal wind speeds along this stretch of coast line while wind speeds on either side of it are normal. It seems like every week there are 1 to 3 days of 65 knot winds blowing through this gap.

The doctrine is to hug the coast (with "one foot on the beach") to avoid the phenomenal waves that build up and have rolled over boats that made the mistake of crossing the Gulf in the middle. But I read in a cruising guide for the Caribbean how one boat hugging the beach with one of these 65 knot winds on the beam was literally sand blasted and the crew was forced to wear snorkeling masks to protect their eyes.

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