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.

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.