When cruising from the U.S. East Coast to Mexico, thousands of boaters each year look for the closest landfall and a handy port for clearing into the country. Although Cancun is popular with fly-in visitors and cruise ship passengers, it has no facilities for oceangoing yachts.

Instead, boaters can easily clear into Mexico at Puerto Juarez, a small seaside community 7 miles north of Cancun and 3 miles west of Isla Mujeres. The modern Central Integrales de Servicios (CIS) building next to the new port captain’s office building houses individual desks for each of the official agencies required for boaters’ international arrival in Mexico. This CIS building is the Caribbean coast counterpart to the CIS office in Ensenada – enabling the streamlined clearance process.

For oceangoing yachts, the only two marinas in Puerto Juarez are La Amada and Hacienda del Mar. Dockmasters at each of them are authorized to handle your port-clearance papers.

La Amada Marina, which opened in May 2009, has twin breakwaters made of giant concrete jacks, leading to a large interior basin with 200 slips at concrete fingers and two 200-foot mega-yacht side-ties. The community around La Amada is called Playas de Isla Mujeres, but it is on the mainland, not on the island.

Hacienda del Mar is about 3 miles farther south, about a mile north of the Puerto Juarez ferry terminal. Hacienda del Mar Marina and its adjacent Blue Bay Hotel have long been popular with sport anglers, and tournaments are frequent. But about 30 of the 100 boats I saw here last week were cruising sailboats.

The exterior marina has an F-shaped dock layout for about 100 boats, protected behind wave baffles. Hacienda del Mar is just far enough outside Cancun to avoid the noisy traffic.

Another interior marina project is under construction on the north edge of Cancun’s tourist zone: a large resort called Puerto Cancun. Puerto Juarez has become the “Ensenada” of Mexico’s east coast cruising circuits.