Raining in La Cruz

Good morning from beautiful Banderas Bay! We’re in the marina at La Cruz just up the bay from Puerto Vallarta. The rain has finally caught up with us, but we knew that would happen eventually as we moved south. Fortunately, it’s light and refreshing and has brought the temperature down to 73° from the high 80s. It’s nice to be at the dock again for several nights, as we had a few very rolly polly nights underway and at anchor before arriving here.

Low clouds over the hills bring morning rain.

Good morning from beautiful Banderas Bay! We’re in the marina at La Cruz just up the bay from Puerto Vallarta. The rain has finally caught up with us, but we knew that would happen eventually as we moved south. Fortunately, it’s light and refreshing and has brought the temperature down to 73° from the high 80s. It’s nice to be at the dock again for several nights, as we had a few very rolly polly nights underway and at anchor before arriving here.

I’m sorry we’re a little behind on our blog post updates as we know all of you are interested in where we are, what we are seeing, and how life is going on the boat. As you might imagine, moving around from place to place and trying to keep up with schoolwork, bills at home, boat maintenance, meeting new friends, and seeing new places. It’s not all fun and games and lounging about!

La Cruz is a small fishing village that was much sleepier 10 years ago until the Marina Riveria Nayarit opened their doors (slips?) 10 years ago, bringing many more visitors to the village. We’ve already discovered a delicious Italian/pizza restaurant, German restaurant (and beer), plus the usual smattering of Mexican fare. Jess and Janet Coburn are the proprietors of Todo Vela Mexico, a small but well-stocked chandlery, with very fair prices compared to most chandleries we’ve come across, including a place in Cabo that stocked half their store from West Marine at triple the prices. In my view, this is another version of modern-day piracy. Jess is also an excellent rigger and helped me with a couple rope splices I’m learning.

Jess of Toda Vela teaching me pro splicing techniques.

While we are here we are trying to catch up on everything, including some blog posts. The girls have been trying to finish the semester and take their tests to earn some holiday vacation. We are trying to finish up teak varnish and treatments to protect our wood from the strong sun, install new dinghy wheels to make beach landings easier, get window shades made, have our laundry done, and more. As we’ve found everywhere, the marina staff is very friendly and helpful. We found some local help on the dock for our wood projects, so we don’t have to sand and clean so much. Parts and materials are 30% or more expensive here, but the lower cost of labor helps make up for it.

Tomorrow we’re moving further into the bay for several more days at Paradise Village Marina in Nuevo Vallarta. Our friends Craig and Trish Unger are flying down for the holidays and we’re excited to meet up with them for a few days and get in some fun gaming time. Please let us know what else you’d like to hear about in future posts. We hope everyone is ready for an enjoyable holiday season!

Enroute to Bahia Santa Maria

Greetings from the next leg of our Baja Ha Ha rally! Despite our late start from San Diego we arrived in Turtle Bay in just two days with a pack of boats coming in just after dawn. Most of the trip down the 313 nm was motor sailing due to light 3-5 kts winds. We sailed under main and spinnaker for about 3 hours on the second day before winds let us down again.
It was in interesting two days in Turtle Bay as local fishermen in their “panga” boats came out to offer taxi rides, garbage pickup (basura), ice (hielo), and fuel at a pricey $6/gallon. We opted to fill our four Jerry cans with 20 gallons but the credit card machine was down due to bad connectivity. We were told that 4 rallies pass through this little fishing village each year and the locals are friendly and helpful, and certainly happy for the business opportunity. The kids were let off school on Thursday and Friday to help out their families in support of the fleet and to participate in the baseball game on Thursday and beach party on Friday.
The cell tower had been down when we arrived but was fortunately fixed sometime on the morning of November 2nd. Voice and texting worked find, but data was flaky. We’ll post more with photos when we have a faster data connection. Our next stop will have no services or connectivity.
Fortunately, the wind is back today and we are sailing with spinnaker and main at 7.3 kts down the Baja coast. We had a chance to try out our new spinnaker pole for the downwind run this morning. It’s very pleasant and to be making such good time with no engine noise and mild seas. The crew is in good spirits but Camille and Kyra still need to get going with today’s schoolwork to make up for two short school days at Turtle Bay.
Fair winds until our next post!

Underway from San Diego

We are a day late leaving from San Diego on the Baja Ha Ha due to finding oil on the bottom of the windlass and not being able to tell if it had any oil or not in the gear case. We relocated from Chula Vista to Harbor Island on October 30 while Dave and Kevin set to removing and servicing the windlass. Due to the design of the anchor locker separator, it was not possible to completely remove the unit, but they cleaned and regreased the upper unit and found that the gearbox was full of oil.

Confident that we can now retrieve our anchor we are underway for Turtle Bay and to catch up with the fleet!