First Day of the Passage from Mexico to the Marquesas

We left Barra de Navidad yesterday (March 26th, 2011) at around 11am. The winds were pretty light and directly out of the west (the direction we wanted to go) for the first few hours. There were sea birds diving all around us and we could see the water roiling with bait fish and their predators so we decided to put a line in the water and see what happened. Given our dismal record as fishermen (fisherpeople?), we weren't really expecting to catch anything. I had put the rod in its holder on the rail and started to work on the daily lubrication of the windvane steering system (see previous entry on the subject) when the line started paying out of the reel. My first reaction was to accuse Christine, who was sitting near the rod, of bumping it and letting line out. Thankfully, she pointed out the obvious for me; there was actually a fish on the line.

This was my first time with a fish over the size of about ten inches on a line and I wasn't entirely sure what I was supposed to do so, like any good American, I just did what I'd seen people do on TV. I took the rod out of the holder, braced in on my waist, let the fish run a bit of line out, increased the line tension, yanked the rod up in the air when I felt a little slack, and cranked the reel as I brought the pole back down. Apparently, this was the correct thing to do because I soon had some sort of tuna flopping around on the deck. It actually was pretty damn fun to reel the critter in, see what it was, and hoist it on deck. I can understand a bit of why people get so into sport fishing but there was one problem. Once we had it on deck, we quickly realized that while we knew the general principles of what comes next, we were really fuzzy on the details.

Christine gaffed our catch on to the deck where it promptly started to bleed all over the place. I knew that some violent clubbing of the fish's head was called for so I looked around from something club like. The only thing at hand was a long metal handle for our windless so I used that to whacked the crap out of fishy friend. More blood followed and this was where our grasp of fishing procedures ended and Christine had to consult a fishing handbook that we had on board. Turns out there's a lot to the process of killing one of these things correctly. Who knew? We followed the instructions as best we could and got some big fillets out of it but the meat was very dark. We ate as much of it as we could but it didn't taste great. I think we blew it on the processing and we felt pretty bad about killing a decent sized fish that high up in the food chain - not to mention the mess we made on deck - so we made a new rule. We will do no more fishing until two conditions are satisfied: 1) Our supply of fresh meat is exhausted. 2) We read up on how to properly kill these things for maximum tastiness.

Just to make matters more entertaining, we were under sail the whole time this was going on and with all the fish handling, boat handling took a back seat so we were steering a somewhat erratic course. It just so happened that the Mexican navy was within sight and decided to motor over on their big scary looking steel boat to have a look at us. We smiled and waved as they came around behind us and photographed the back of our boat, presumably to read our name and hailing port off the transom. Just as they passed behind us, I managed to lose hold of the bucket I was using to pull up salt water to rinse the deck with and it went overboard. So, within plain view of the navy, we tacked around awkwardly while still managing fishing gear and made a failed attempt to retrieve our bucket. Oh well, we have lots of buckets.

Ready to go!

Architeuthis is ready. We are loaded to the gills with food, water, beer, booze, surfboards, spare parts, and other miscellaneous crap. We are sitting lower in the water than ever before and kind of wish that we'd painted a little higher with the antifouling paint. Anyway, we're really excited and looking forward to the passage and to the arrival in the Marquesas. We'll talk to you all once we get there!

How to track us across the Pacific

We're still here in Barra de Navidad, Mexico but we'll be leaving by Saturday to make the long (~3000 mile) passage to the Marquesas Islands. While we are in route, we'll be checking in via the radio with the Pacific Seafarer's net (www.pacsea.org). In theory, they will be entering our location and check-in information into their fancy system so that you will be able to see our latest position by going here: http://shiptrak.org/?callsign=KF7NXT. You should be able to get a different view of our check-ins here: http://www.pangolin.co.nz/yotreps/tracker.php?ident=kf7nxt. As you may or may not have guessed from those two links, my ham radio call sign is KF7NXT.

The important thing to remember with this stuff though is that there are about a million reasons why we might not be able to check in but are still completely safe. For instance, our radio could break and we could end up unable to check in. So, what I'm saying is that there is no reason for alarm if our position reports do not show up.

Catching up on photo posting.

We just arrived in Barra de Natividad in the Mexican state of Jalisco and we've finally found a good internet connection so I figure it's time to catch up on photo posting. We're going to be here for a few days while we make the final preparations to head off to the Marquesas.

The first set of photos is from awhile ago. It shows the mounting of the used wind vane steering system we bought from another boat in La Cruz. We got a great deal and the wind vane (named Jack by a previous owner after a crew member that died while on a passage from Hawaii to the mainland). This contraption will steer the boat for us without using any electricity. This set of photos also shows the buff and wax job that we paid for in La Cruz. The guys that did us showed us why it looked like crap when we did it ourselves. It turns out that the wax we had bought only really works on light colored paint even though it doesn't say anything about that on the label. Oh well, now we know.

The next set of photos is from the day that the tsunami hit us down here. Nobody wanted to be in a shallow marina or near shore when it hit so pretty much everyone down here took their boats out for the day. There were more boats out on the bay than I'd ever seen at one time. ...including boats that I'd never seen leave the marina at all. Though details were sketchy at the time, we were all aware that the quake and tsunami had been a horrible tragedy in Japan but down here it was an oddly festive event. We used the opportunity to take pictures of each other's boats under sail. It's actually difficult to get pictures of your boat under sail because, generally, when it's sailing you're on it so you've got to get other people to take the pictures. Anyway, we took pictures for our friends and they took some pictures for us.

The tsunami did cause a bit of damage down here but it wasn't too bad. The section of dock nearest the entrance of the La Cruz Marina did end up getting destroyed. The water level within the marina changed by around six feet over a period of minutes causing strong surges of water but, as far as we know, no boats were damaged in La Cruz. However, some of the channel marker buoys dragged their moorings and moved and sand piled up at the entrance.

The next set of pictures for today is from a little excursion we took during the one full day that we were in Tenacatita bay. It was a lovely bay and we both really wish we could have spent more time there. The trip we took was a dinghy ride up into a mangrove estuary river kind of deal. There was a ton of wildlife including some kind of badger monkey ant eater looking thing. Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of it but it was freaky lookin'. It was about the size of a large dog. It had a kind of badger shaped head and a really long fuzzy monkey looking kind of tail. Anyway, here are the pictures. Sorry we couldn't photograph the badger monkey.

Remember in the last post how I promised more photos from leaving Banderas Bay? That's okay, I barely remember it either. Anyway, here are those photos. Don't forget, you can click on these slide shows and go look at larger versions of the photos.

Okay, that's all we've got time for now. We're itching to get underway for the Marquesas but we'll try to make at least one more post before we go.

Escape from La Cruz

We finally made it out of Bandaras Bay. We had a mostly awesome sail down from La Cruz to Chemala. I say mostly because the wind died for a while and left us flapping around uselessly. We're really trying to conserve fuel because we'll only be able to get fuel by going ashore in our dinghy (Squib) and bringing fuel out in cans between here and the Marquesas. There is a fuel dock a bit south of here but it's been out of order since a very large motor yacht tried to drive away without untying it's dock lines a few months ago. Anyway, we only have one more small project that needs completion before we leave Mexico. We just need to install a salt water faucet in the galley sink that will be powered by a small secondhand foot pump. This will let us rinse dishes without wasting fresh water or electricity. If all goes well, we should be underway for the Marquesas in a week or less (or more).

On the way down from La Cruz, it worked out that we were leaving at the same time and in the same direction as our friends Kevin and Evelyn on their Ingrid 38 Tuatara. Tuatara is of somewhat similar design (a traditional ketch) but has a longer waterline (due to her being 38 feet long as opposed to our 31 feet) so we figured that she would be slightly faster than Architeuthis. However, it turns out that we're faster. ...at least in those conditions.

There's lots more to write and tons of photos to upload but we don't have time right now. For now, this posting and a couple of pictures will have to do.

Architeuthis as photographed by our friend on Inga during the tsunami.

Architeuthis preparing to pass Tuatara.

Tsunami?

Apparently there has been a large earthquake in Japan that has sent a tsunami our way. The word on the VHF radio is that it has just passed Hawaii generating a 4-6ft rise and that they are currently trying to assess the damage level and that the swell is currently headed for California and, later, on down to us in Mexico. The rest of the word is that Mexico has closed all of its west coast ports, which means nobody is allowed in or out of the harbors. That's a bit of an inconvenience for us because we were supposed to go to Nueva Vallarta to do some paperwork for our international exit but the good news is that we were in the anchorage so we are not stuck inside the marina. There's other good news (for us) as well. If this thing does hit hard here, we are in about the best possible situation. Since we have been preparing to leave on our long trip, we are loaded to the gills with food and fresh water. We can be completely self sufficient for at least a month and, since I just finished installing our ham radio two days ago, we will be able to communicate (but not email or post on this blog) even if normal communication infrastructure were to get hosed.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say here is that there is no need for friends and family to worry even if Mexico gets clobbered by this thing (and it probably won't - the coast is pretty mountainous here), we will be fine. The tsunami is supposed to hit sometime a bit after noon and we are going to make sure we are in deep water when it does. (Just in case you don't know it already - tsunamis are long low swells before they hit shallow water so, if you're in deep enough water, they are almost imperceptible.)

...Now hopefully we'll be able to pick up an internet signal and post this before we head offshore so that our people back home don't have to freak out at all... ...If you're reading this, we found one.

Architeuthis the Movie

We've taken a decent amount of video footage on the trip so far and, until I run out of hard drive space, we'll keep shooting more. This is our first attempt and editing our footage into something. I've found that it takes a long time to edit video on a laptop. I spent the better part of a whole day putting this together and it could certainly use some more editing but, for now, this will have to do. My plan from now on is just to store the video and then worry about editing once we get to New Zealand and I can get my hands on a faster computer. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the first ever S/V Architeuthis video:

Squib Had a Rough Night

My grandpa used to refer to squid as 'squib'. We were never able to determine if he thought the word was spelled with a 'b' at the end or if it was some sort of strange California central valley pronunciation deal but I eventually decided I liked the word squib. Since Architeuthis is named after the giant squid, we decided that Squib would be a good name for the little inflatable boat that we use to get to shore and back when Architeuthis is anchored. We've come to depend on squib quite a bit and we use her just about every day. When we're anchored out near the point (Punta Mita) Squib ferries us back and forth to the surf spots and he takes us shopping when we're anchored at La Cruz. Despite how useful he is, we tend to take Squib for granted.

We were anchored out at Punta Mita last weekend and after a fun afternoon of surfing with our new friend Cori (a recent UCSC graduate - go banana slugs!) we went over to her parents' boat Rutea to visit after dark. After about 2 and 1/2 hours of swapping life stories, drinking beer, and depleting their candy stocks, we mosied out onto the back deck to hop into squib and go home. Squib was not there! She had run off into the night and left us feeling like we had just lost our only child. Our hearts sank and our stomachs gurlged as we quickly came to grips with what this could mean for us. We all sprang into action, lowering Rutea's dingy into the water and fueling her up to start the initial reconnaissance mission under a moonless night sky. There was no real wind to speak of so we tried to remember which way it had been blowing when we arrived on the boat a few hours earlier. We searched in the direction we thought was most likely the path that squib had taken, but with no moon and a spotlight that lasted a whopping 3 or 4 minutes before it died, we were unable to see anything other than what was directly under our bow. We made increasingly bigger circles around Rutea for about and hour before we called it quits due to the extremely poor visibility. After Neal, Rutea's captain, dropped us off on Architeuthis, we flipped the radar on and saw a blip that we decided we had to check out. We pulled anchor and motored towards the blip. It promptly disappeared but we tried for a little while anyway out of shear desperation. After our fruitless search we finally re-anchored and tried to get some sleep.

At first light the next morning, Neal came over to take us out searching again. We followed the edge of the beach first because the wind had been blowing slightly onshore. The light was still dim since the sun hadn't yet made it above the horizon and we struggled to differentiate rocks from not rocks. Not seeing it, we headed offshore and covered a lot of ground for the next hour or so. We talked to a couple local fishermen and asked them to keep an eye out for us. We checked the beach again, this time yelling out to some gringos walking out to the point for a surf. We asked if they had seen any sign of a dingy on the beach. They hadn't but said they would keep an eye out. We thanked them and moved on. We took a break on Rutea and Ruthie, Neal's wife, made us some tea while Neal conducted drift experiments in his dingy. He and the cushion Ruthie threw moved about a meter during the the 20-30 minute break. Then we went out looking one last time. Neal stayed behind on Rutea, but was kind enough to let us use his super fast dingy to keep searching. We headed towards the point to check around the other side. We passed by some surfers in the water and what looked like an anchored dingy nearby. The dingy had not been there before and it looked like it had a white outboard cover, so we did not get close enough to investigate. We searched all over for another hour with near perfect conditions making it a perfect day for finding a stray dingy. If it was out there we should have seen it. We had gone pretty far and we were about to turn around and head back and Christine started crying. I stopped the dingy and we consoled each other for a few minutes. We had given up. We thought Squib was gone forever.

Back on Rutea, Ruthie fed us and Neal insisted that we borrow their two-man inflatable kayak until we replaced Squib. Neal and I were up on the fore-deck setting up the kayak and Christine was looking contemplatively out to sea. All of sudden she started shouting, "Is that a dingy towing a dingy? That's a dingy towing a dingy! That's a dingy towing a dingy!" We jumped back into Rutea's dingy and motored over to the dingy towing the dingy. It was Squib! We were elated and relieved beyond belief. The kid in the other dingy was Nick from the sailboat Scout. He informed us that Christian from the sailboat Altair had been one of the surfers we had yelled to on the beach and had found the dingy shortly after speaking with us. It had been upside-down in the shallow rocky area near-shore. Since we had secured the bitter end of Squib's anchor rhode, the anchor was holding it there and not letting it get pushed all the way up onto the beach. Christian somehow manage to right Squib in the shallow surgy waters and he pulled her out to deeper water using the anchor line. Then he tossed the anchor out further and further until squib was out of harm's way, and left her there while he went surfing. The dingy we had seen on our last search mission, anchored near the surf break, had been Squib! What had looked like a white engine cover had been Squib's internal gas tank which sits on top of the engine. The dark blue cover had come off of course! Christian had found it and put it back in the dingy, and the external gas tank that we just bought a few weeks ago managed to stay with the dingy as well. All that was missing were the oars, the bench seat, and the manual bilge pumps. We were so overjoyed and grateful that we told the definitely underage Nick that we owed him a beer or three. We promptly realized that his parents would probably not appreciate our encouragement of juvenile delinquency and switched our offer to root beer. He laughed and drove back to his boat while we inspected the damage to Squib.

The inflatable itself looked practically untouched. It showed no signs of leaking air and minimal scuff marks. The outboard had taken the brunt of the beating since the dingy had been upside-down the whole time it was in the shallow rocky area. The fuel pump was clearly broken and salt water had gotten into everything. I have revived other completely submerged outboards in the past though, so I was optimistic about bringing Squib's outboard back to life. We decided to take a quick walk along the beach to look for the missing items before I delved into fixing the outboard. As we neared the point, Christine spotted all of our missing stuff in a neat little pile under a tree. Nearby, a spear fisher was cleaning his gear and we quickly realized that he had found our things. We communicated with him as best we could since our spanish is still very bad, but he eventually understood the gist of what had happened and that the oars and dingy seat he had found were ours. We walked with him back to the dingy landing and gave him a little money in gratitude for finding our stuff for us. Along the way we made fast friends with him. Truz is a life-long Punta Mita resident who hunts the sea for a living. On that day he had a bag full of freshly caught octopus and I showed him my squid tattoo which he seemed to like a lot. He used to live further out on the point where the Four Seasons resort and golf course are now, but was one of the many residents who were forced off their land by the government. The money for the land went mostly into the hands of the Presidente, with a small amount being given to those who agreed to leave their land peacefully. Now he lives above the restaurant he sells his catch to on the beach at El Anclote.

With everything recovered, and now working (after a few days of parts shopping and engine fixing), we feel like the luckiest unlucky people ever! Best of all, we made some great new friends. The crew of Rutea feels almost like family to us now. Christian and Nick will always be welcome aboard Architeuthis and we hope to cross paths with them both again and again. Truz will never be forgotten either and we hope to get back out to Punta Mita one last time to thank him and maybe even learn some hunting tricks. We also learned some valuable lessons. We will never take Squib for granted again and we will always double check the cleat hitch! What exactly happened will always be a mystery, but we like to think that Squib just really wanted to go surfing... at night. Hopefully she got it out of her system.

Chainplate Repair and Ham Radio License Test.

Sorry we haven't posted in a while. We are bad bloggers. (Christine just told me that I should stop apologizing. She said, "They're lucky we post anything at all".) Anyway, we had fun surfing out at Punta Mita for a few days. We even filmed a few short clips of us surfing. I'm going to try to edit together some of the video clips (sailing, working on stuff, wandering around, etc) we've filmed so far into a little movie I can post on here. Unfortunately, video editing on a laptop takes a long time so we'll have to see when I can fit that stuff in. We've been back in La Cruz for a while but we've been too busy to get around to posting.


We just finished one repair that's been nagging at us for a while. We had a problem with our bobstay chainplate. (The bobstay is the bit of rigging (wire cable) that attaches to the bottom of the bowsprit (pointy wooden thing on the bow) and the chainplate is the bronze piece that attaches that cable to the hull). If this chainplate were to break while we were sailing, it would probably cause both masts to break off boat and fall in the water. That would be unfortunate. The chainplate wasn't in immediate danger of breaking but it was bent and that's not the kind of thing I like to see going on up there before crossing the Pacific.

We decided that the best way to fix the problem was to add another bolt to the chainplate to hold it to the hull. This would require drilling a hole through bronze and fiberglass at an angle that would put the drill underwater. Electric drills don't work so good underwater and, at first, I didn't think my hand operated "egg beater" drill would be powerful enough to do the job. We resigned ourselves to having to go to the boatyard in Puerto Vallarta and pay around $700 to haul out and make the repair out of the water. Then I had to drill a hole in a piece of bronze for another minor project so I decided to give it a try with the egg beater drill. It worked fine so I decided to rethink the haul-out requirement for the repair.

There was a bit of bus travel required to round up all the necessary parts and tools but once that was all taken care of, we were able to do the repair in the marina in a single day! As you can see from the photos, it was a bit awkward to drill a hole in the boat from under the water but it worked out fine and was way better than forking over that much cash. We also had to move all 200 feet of anchor chain (and the anchor) to the stern to get our bow high enough but, again, that's way easier that spending $700.




Once that project was all wrapped up, we had to jump into cramming for the ham radio license test. The yacht club down in Nuevo Vallarta hosted the test. We had wanted to get our licenses before we left the US but ended up running out of time. The stuff we want to do requires the general license and, in order to get that license, you have to get the technician license first so we had to study for both tests. We got up early, spent about an hour on the bus getting down there and took the tests. I took the technician test and failed it by two questions. Damn. However, they give you the option to pay the $16 fee again and retake it (with a different set of questions). I was feeling lucky so I decided to give it a try. Besides, I'd spent more time studying for the general license and felt like I'd have a better chance with that test if I could just make it past the technician test. Meanwhile, Christine finished her technician test and failed it by just one question. She didn't feel at all prepared for the general license test so she decided not to retake the first level.

It turned out that the second version of the technician test they gave me was quite a bit easier than the first and I passed by two questions. Having passed that one, it was free to take a crack at the general license. I took it and found myself guessing at far more of the answers than I would have liked. Apparently, I guessed well though because I passed. ...just barely - if I missed one more question, I would have failed - but I passed. It was quite a relief to finally get that taken care of. Now I will be able to use all the capabilities of our fancy HF radio. Well, I'll be able too once we finish installing it anyway. I think we have all the parts we need. It should be just a matter of bolting everything in place and wiring it all up. We intend to have that all taken care of by the end of the month. It might be sooner except that we just bought a used wind vane self steering system. We got a great deal on it and it will mean that we won't have to run our electronic autopilot across the whole Pacific. That, in turn, means that our solar panels should be able to easily take care of all our electricity needs and we won't have to run the engine to keep our batteries charged. On the down side, this thing isn't going to install itself. More on that process later.

There's swell coming!

The forecast says there's some swell coming so we're probably going to leave La Cruz this morning and head over to Punta Mita where the good surf spots are. We'll probably be over there for a few days and we have a hard time getting the internet connection out there so we may be a bit out of touch. In the mean time, check out the pictures I posted below of our trip to Los Arcos marine park.

Los Arcos

We got a chance to go across the bay on Jeff and Dory's boat Journey and visit the Los Arcos National Marine Park. Check out the pictures below and their captions. I'm too lazy right now to write much more. Sorry, I'm a bad blogger.

Surfing our brains out

We spent about a week anchored out at Punta Mita at the northwest end of Banderas Bay.  We only went ashore once the whole time.  The general routine was to load the boards into our dinghy in the morning and  go around the point to a really exposed surf spot and surf until about noon or so.  Then after lunch and a siesta, we'd take the dinghy to a different break or sometimes just paddle over to the break close to the anchorage.  We ended up seeing a lot of the same surfers every day and made friends with a few of them. We surfed with a guy named Jeff the most.  He's also from Ventura and he's on a sailboat called Journey (http://www.sailblogs.com/member/beller/).  We visited him and his wife Dory on their really nice Passport 40 to get some more information about the surf breaks to the south of us.  We ended up having a bit of boat envy after seeing all the space available on their newer, larger, and more expensive boat.  Jeff told us they have an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of what is located in the over 100 storage locations on the boat.  Oh well, that boat would cost about six times what ours cost so there's no way that we could be cruising on something like that at this point.

We kept up our twice a day surfing routine until Christine's birthday on the 8th.  Then we decided to head back to La Cruz to have some birthday dinner and get some shore based chores done. We ended up at Philo's for dinner due to our gringo craving for pizza. Had the pleasure of some more live entertainment while there since Philo's band was playing. Leon was the highlight of the night, with his washboard, cow bell, and charismatic disposition. There was a belly dance performance during the band's break to change it up a little. Barb would have loved it! Some old fart with a sweater tied over his shoulders got up to dance with her for a while. Very entertaining to say the least.





Yesterday we went on a mission to Bucerias to find some spare surf stuff. When none could be found, we wandered around and ended up at a bar on the beach called Sunset drinking delicious 2 for 1 margaritas. A live band started up shortly thereafter playing covers of the Dead and the Band to name a few. Wish the rest of the Donahues could have been there with us! They would have loved it. As I type right now, a band is playing across the street at Ana Banana's covering every famous classic rock song there ever was. Are you seeing the trend? With the overwhelming majority of gringos in town being over  50, it really isn't all that surprising I guess.

(Please note that all comments that might, in any way, appear at all complementary towards the Grateful Dead were written by Christine, not Jared)

We've been out surfing

Sorry we haven't updated for a while.  We spent about a week anchored out at Punta Mita, the point at the north end of Bahia Banderas (the bay that Puerto Vallarta is in the center of).  We surfed twice a day most of the time and only went ashore once.  We had a great time and we're back in La Cruz right now.  We found another repair that we'll need to make to the boat but we'll write more about that later.  I'll also post more pictures later. We'll be dating the blog entries to the relevant dates so they'll show up before this one.

New Year's and a Move from La Cruz to Punta Mita

We spent New Year's Eve hanging out with our new friends Kevin and Gio on Kevin's boat, Tuatara.  They are in there twenties and, like us, cruising on a budget.  Tuatara is a really cool but rather spartan Ingrid 38.  I'd guess that Tuatara and Architeuthis would be worth about the same amount if they were for sale right now.  Architeuthis is quite a bit smaller and, arguably, not quite as stoutly built but has a lot fancier electronics and other systems and equipment.  It was cool to see what might have been and I'm still not sure which is the better strategy.  More importantly, we had a good time watching the fireworks from Tuatara and hanging out with those guys.  It was nice to get a break from the typical cruiser scene and spend time with people a little closer to our demographic.

In the morning we picked up the anchor and sailed out to the anchorage at Punta Mita to spend some time closer to the surf.  We saw a bunch of whales, dolphins, and sea birds again.  I keep hoping the whales will do their jumping out of the water stunts close enough that I can get some good pictures with my not-so-telephoto lens but no luck so far.  Other than waiting for that, we're getting so acclimated to humpback whales that we don't even pay that much attention to them any more.  "Hey Christine, there's another whale over there."  "Whatever."  Okay, we're still not that jaded but we're getting close.

More Pictures from La Cruz

Here are some more pictures from La Cruz that we didn't upload before.  There's a market in the plaza every Sunday where you can buy all kinds of stuff that you don't need on a boat.  Once we figure out how to ship stuff back to the US we're going to be buying gifts at these markets.  You've been warned.

Islas Tres Marietas day trip.

We loaded Christine's mother, father, and three brothers onto Architeuthis and headed out to these little uninhabited islands near Punta Mita to try and see some wildlife and go snorkeling.  The wildlife did not disappoint. There were dolphins, humpback whales, and manta rays all jumping out of the water at various points. There were also tuna or something of that sort flailing around so close to the surface that we could see their tail fins sticking out of the water.






We got out to the islands a bit later than we had intended to (probably around 2pm or so) but that turned out to be a good thing because the tour boats were just leaving.  When we dropped anchor there were only three other sailboats in the area and, as far as I could tell, those people all stayed aboard the whole time.  We, on the other hand, jumped in the water to snorkel up close to the island except for Christine's parents who manned the dingy and rowed over to take a look. It was a volcanic rock bottom with some corals here and there and a bunch of cool looking tropical fish. We took some pictures with Christine's little camera in its underwater housing but we haven't downloaded them yet.

After BBQing some burgers on Architeuthis' grill, we sailed back to La Cruz and got into the harbor a little after sunset. It was a great trip and we hope to spend a little more time out at the islands looking around soon.

Beach Day in La Cruz with the Donahues

We've been having a lot of fun hanging out with Christine's family and doing stuff.  We've been so busy having fun that it's been hard to keep up with posting stuff to the blog.  We went to to the beach and hung out there for a while then drove up to Sayulita.  Rather than trying to describe the whole thing, I'll just post pictures:

We Made it.

We are now at anchor in La Cruz, Mexico. I've uploaded some blog entries without pictures. I'll be adding that stuff to those posts in a day or two. We had a great time and we're really happy to be somewhere we can rest for a while.

Windy, Warm, Icky, and Windy Again.

As we approached Cabo San Lucas from the northwest, it got windier and windier until it was blowing in the 18 – 25 kts range. We started out the day with the genoa poled out to windward and both the mizzen and the main up. Then we dropped the mizzen. Then we dropped the main. Then we rolled in to the first reef point on the genoa. We finally rounded the cape enough to get out of the wind and it was really warm and, as we approached the famous rocks near the harbor entrance, Cabo San Lucas looked lovely. Then we got closer and saw the swarms of tourists. What a circus. There were glass bottom boats pulling within inches of the rocks, a fake submarine thingy, parachutes being towed behind boats, water taxis, kayaks and dozens of jet skis weaving in and out of everything. These are all things one might rightly expect to see in a resort town but the shear numbers of them was overwhelming. Cabo was starting to look pretty bad and it was about to get worse.

We motored into the harbor and up to the fuel dock. There was more boat traffic than I've seen anywhere and there were these really frightening party barge things everywhere blaring awful pop music while pasty and/or sunburned gringos gyrated drunkenly. If modern day Las Vegas had a harbor it would look just like this place. There was a Hooters restaurant right across from the fuel dock and nothing in view anywhere that wasn't designed for the sole purpose of separating tourists from their money. We bought our fuel and couple five gallon jugs of drinking water. I made a few adjustments to the rigging (the headstay had been looking a bit floppy on the way in), and then we got out of there as quickly as possible.

We motored for an hour or so south of Cabo headed across to mainland Mexico near Puerto Vallarta until the wind picked up. Man, did it ever pick up. Within a couple of hours it must have been blowing at least 25 kts with gusts to 30 or more. We were running under just our double reefed genoa. Before we reefed it, I got the opportunity to feel what an overpowered boat is like. It doesn't handle too well. The seas got up to around 8 feet or more and were really steep and uncomfortable. It made for a pretty crappy and restless night but Architeuthis behaved herself quite well and things calmed down by early morning.