Thursday, 6 April 2006
We were sucked into the black hole of Banderas Bay on March 18 and we're only just barely making our way back out of it.
We left Chamela at 6:30 PM on March 17 for the overnight trip to round Cabo Corrientes. Unfortunately it took us until 4:00 AM to break an average of four knots of speed - motor sailing! I'd look out at the ocean during my watch and I was sure that if I could only walk on water, I'd get there faster that way. It felt like we were wading through molasses. We finally rounded Cabo Corrientes on flat seas at 10:00 AM. This felt great until we remembered that we still had to cross Banderas Bay to get to Punta de Mita. We finally turned the engine off at Noon and sailed slow for four hours. Ninety two nautical miles from our start we dropped the anchor at almost 6:00 PM. Yeehah!
We moved into Marina Nuevo Vallarta almost a week later and tied up to a set of concrete pilings. This was a great deal. No dock, no water, no electricity - but only $7 a night. The two (unisex) bathrooms are nice and clean, and Juan, the dock master, is a very nice guy. John spent the next four days training with Bob and crew on Air Power, a J-41, for the Banderas Bay Regatta. He'd come home wiped out from a long day in the sun, and we'd go out to dinner more than usual as a result. It was non-stop busy and I didn't even have time to check email. It didn't seem like I was getting all that much done on the boat, and I know I wasn't doing much reading, but the time just flew. There's a huge amount of socializing here because it's a such a major waypoint on everyone's itinerary. When John wasn't racing we both had our teeth cleaned, ran errands, and even managed to see a movie (Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang). I got my haircut and bought three kilos of good coffee beans in Puerto Vallarta. I also walked down the beach one evening with some friends to participate in a baby turtle release in Nuevo Vallarta. We each got two baby turtles, set them down on the beach (well after sunset), and watched them slowly walk the 3-4 feet to the water. One of mine was especially reluctant to go, and kept turning around the wrong way, but it finally got swallowed up by the swell.
If you're wondering how the race went, Airpower got a second in class and third over all. We placed second in the first race, third in the second race and second in the third race. All in all a pretty good showing for a (mostly) inexperienced crew. John only had to apologize for yelling 5 times, so you can tell it was a lot of fun.
Tuesday we left Nuevo Vallarta, filled up on diesel and gasoline at Opequimar in Marina Vallarta, and sailed out here to Punta de Mita. Yesterday John changed the oil and we spent the rest of the day reading and doing nothing. Today we had to go back in to Nuevo Vallarta, but we struck out on the two errands we'd hoped to accomplish. We made up for that by having a huge shrimp lunch at Mauricio's in Ixtapa. For 110 pesos each (plus drinks and tip), this is the best deal in all of Mexico.
Now we're thinking about how soon we'll get to La Paz. We may end up skipping Chacala and San Blas on our way to Mazatlan. It will depend on how the trip goes. We're anxious to get "home" to Baja so we'll probably be on the fast track once we leave Banderas Bay.
Linda and John