Mañana at the dock in Paradise Village
As always - To remove yourself from this mailing list all you have to do is hit the reply button and type "Count me out, vagabond".
But for now try singing along... "All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go”.... Okay, no jet plane, but how about "I'm on the road again”.... No? Then "Sailing, sailing over the bounding main”... That's better. But maybe "Wasting away again in Margaritaville ..." hits just the right note.
Andrea and I are off on another "adventure at sea" and this year's starting point is Puerto Vallarta, Mexico where we left the boat floating peacefully at the Paradise Village marina while we weathered the Pacific hurricane season in sunny CA. Golf, farming, farmer's markets and, yes, income taxes, are only our summer vocations. For November and December we are sailors and this year we expect to cover about 1400 miles under sail as we move the boat from Puerto Vallarta, MX to Barillas in El Salvador.
If you'd like to follow along on this adventure I highly recommend the free Google Earth program that will allow you to zoom in on some of the prettiest beaches on the Pacific Coast. (Even if you don't follow our trip it's always interesting to see your own neighborhood from space). When the boat actually starts moving I'll try to provide some Lat/Longs (Latitudes and Longitudes) that will let you see exactly where we are in living color. AND, if we can ever get the camera working on a regular basis I will try to include some photos. Just type Google Earth into your search engine.
We arrived back in Mexico on October 21. The first three days were devoted to un-storing the boat, which is all the things we did last June only in reverse. Sails back on, running rigging replaced, engines commissioned, dinghy pumped up, lots of cleaning and polishing... and all in 95 degree heat with 95 percent humidity. Seems Mexico is having an "exceptionally" hot October. We do try to stay hydrated, but there may be a limit to the number of beers that can be consumed in a day. We haven’t found that limit, but it may exist… theoretically. The pool helps.
We are reconnecting with other cruisers we met last year in Vallarta and other anchorages on our trip south from San Diego. Since their plans and boats will take them in all directions from here (except east, see the aforementioned Google Earth). Many of them will sail north to revisit the Sea of Cortez or to return to CA, OR, WA and Canada while others will sail south at a faster pace than us, and we will not likely see many of them again. For right now it’s a large party of “where are you going, when are you leaving, how long will you be sailing, what do you need to fix before you can go?” people.
The weather cooled perceptibly by the weekend (October 25) and made everyone much happier. We have only two items hanging over our heads before we can actually cast off. First, of course, is the fact that our insurance agent won’t let us move south until after November 1. That is the official end of hurricane season and despite the fact that we can all see that there are no Pacific storms right now EVERYONE is waiting for November 1 to start moving (lest you hit a whale and find the insurance company wiggling out of the repayment because you were somewhere you weren’t supposed to be. The second item is a problem with our solar panels. Right now they are not properly charging our batteries. The boat is run entirely on solar power (lights, radio, navigation equipment, refrigeration, engine batteries) so without them we are lost. The fact that ours aren’t working should not be a problem… for an electrician. I, on the other hand, am not an electrician, and until I can find an English speaking one I will continue to have this “problem” for at least a few more days.
We did take a vacation from our vacation to go on a snorkeling trip to the southern beaches of Banderas Bay. Banderas is the 3rd largest bay in North America (yes, I can name the others) and has over 120 miles of shoreline. We booked a trip on a large motor catamaran that offered breakfast, lunch, snorkeling, beach party, and an open bar for the entire 8 hour trip, along with a cruise past Vallarta and a running history of the bay. Snorkeling in Banderas and Mexico is definitely NOT to be confused with the spectacular snorkeling in the Virgin Islands, but the water was warm (85 degrees), filled with fish, and had reasonable visibility.
We also got a quick history lesson about Puerto Vallarta from the time the Spanish entered the bay over 400 years ago. The most interesting part of the lesson was when our guide pointed out the 5 cornerstones of Mexican culture that exist in almost every town in Mexico. We had seen all of these in our travels, but we had never thought of them as any more than “what’s there”, certainly not as part of the culture. Each town has a church and right next to it a city hall, a nearby flea market, a school, and a plaza (usually with arches). The church is there because of the importance of religion (in this case the Catholic religion) in Mexican culture. The city hall because this is the power, and the flea market that is the economic heart of the Mexican culture. (In many small towns there are no stores other than the “tiendas” (very small food stores) and the occasional “ferreteria” or hardware store. There are no clothing stores, shoe shops, record (CDs?) stores, etc. (all of the stores we would expect to find on Main Street in any US town. All of the goods these stores supply at home are traditionally sold via the flea markets throughout Mexico. The schools are for the children who are a large part of the Mexican population and, finally, the plazas which are the very center of the Mexican social life. The plazas are the place for to meet your friends, sit with your family, play with others, and just enjoy watching life. They are the center of the community. We have found that every time we wander into a new village we too immediately seek out the plazas.
Back to the task at hand. Today is La Dia de Muertes throughout Mexico and tomorrow is our planned departure date. We have already sampled our Pan de Muertes (baked only for this one day each year) so I guess that damn battery is our last obstacle. The first few stops are merely anchorages along the Pacific (Ipala, Chemela, Carreyes) so no internet access for at least a week. Check Google Earth at Lat 20 41.5 /Long 105 17.5 for Paradise Village. Then move down the coast to Lat 20 14 for Ipala, 19 34 for Chamela and 19 26.5 for Careyes. No Longitudes given, just move along the shore line.
