Susan, Sequoia, and Todd go sailing

On Wednesday, my brother Bob and family flew home. We were sad to see them go! We sure enjoyed hanging out with them. Now we’re back in La Cruz, getting ready to make the overnight sail south to Tenacatita.

Just a couple of things I forgot to mention in my last post. For entertainment on passages, I bought Koiya a set of 5th Grade Brain Quest trivia cards. The other day I was quizzing her. The question: Who was the leader of the Nazi party during WWII? Her response: “Wait, wait, I know his name… it was… Arnold Schwarzenegger?” (more…)

We left San Blas on Wednesday, Feb 6, for the little town of Chacala. We had a nice sail down, and saw plenty of humpback whales. Chacala is in a beautiful little cove, but it is not very protected from the swell. Unfortunately, Capn Sloth was too lazy to set a stern anchor, so during the night we went beam-to the swell, rolling so much that it was hard to sleep. The one upside was that it was easy to get an early start for Punta Mita the next morning!

Punta Mita is on the northern-most edge of Banderas Bay, a huge resort area that includes Puerto Vallarta. We had another good sail, with even more whales, including one that surfaced about 50 feet from the boat! Further away, we also saw a whale repeatedly doing tail splashes, sending huge plumes of spray into the air.

“I wonder which house is his?” mused Todd. “Whose?” I asked. “Well, duh, Antonio Banderas?” he replied snidely. “Um, Antonio Banderas is Spanish,” I said. As Todd only stared at me blankly, I added, “You know, from Spain?” I searched Todd’s face but saw no sign of comprehension. Finally Todd broke the silence with “He was great in Desperado!” (more…)

We left Isla Isabel on Friday, Jan. 25, bound for San Blas, a coastal town on the mainland. Not far from Isabel we saw whales spouting and diving, and one surfaced about 30 yards off our stern! They looked like small humpbacks.

We arrived outside the entrance to the San Blas estuary that afternoon. We noticed that waves were breaking across the channel- not a good sign! We watched and waited a bit, and it seemed that there were periods of flat water, so we slowly made our way in. The depth sounder read 14 ft, then 12, and then as we neared the channel entrance, we saw 8 feet! Capn TurnTail yelled, “I’m bailing!” and took us back out to deeper water.

We tried again… and this time, we saw 7 feet! San Blas would just have to wait; instead, we anchored in nearby Mantanchen Bay, which is famous for two things: the lovely coconut trees surrounding it, and the biting no-see-ums at dusk. Luckily the bugs weren’t too bad, and it was so relaxing there that we decided to stay for a day. We took the dinghy to the beach, which was full of Mexican families enjoying the sun, water, and restaurants. (more…)

Susan and I agreed early on that it would be good to apply sarcasm and humor to our blog to make for more entertaining reading. Every sailor knows a yarn isn’t a yarn if you don’t take some liberties with the truth. Little did I realize the humor would largely be at my expense, but as First Mate Mischief Maker keeps the ship’s log, I should have seen it coming a minute of latitude away! So I decided to pick up my marlin-spike and do what any formerly hard-working executive turned Capn would do: I delegated to Susan the task of writing a witty rebuttal in my defense that would restore my good name and that I would then ultimately take credit for.
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We had a wonderfully relaxing week in Altata, but it was a bit on the cool side, so we decided to bypass Mazatlan in search of warmer water. We figure we’ll hit Mazatlan on the way back up to the Sea of Cortez. We plotted a course for Isla Isabel, a nesting place for frigate birds and boobies, about 200 nautical miles southeast of Altata.

The bottlenose dolphins in the Altata channel gave us a grand send-off, riding our bow and cavorting about our boat. Koiya was beside herself with excitement, because she spotted a mother dolphin with a baby! The calf was about 4 -5 ft long, so it wasn’t tiny, but we were thrilled to see it. As Koiya said, “Not many people get to see dolphins, and even fewer get to see dolphins in the wild, and even fewer get to see a calf!”

We had no problems with depth in the channel itself, but by the time we were making our way out to sea, the tide was going out and there were breaking waves directly in the path indicated by our GPS waypoints! “Yee-haw!” yelled Todd, “Let’s see what this baby can do!” (more…)