Un-Believable Water

The ocean is un-believable out here. Today has been fantastically smooth, a long, low swell with O sea. Nice!!! This is day two, no actually it is into day three now, it is 2:00 am, of our trip from Marquises to the Tuamotos. We are at 12 44.834 S and 143 46.666 W and we haven't seen anything on the 12 mile radar screen but rain clouds since we left yesterday morning and we've only run into a bit of rain so far. Today and yesterday were sunny and blue and the nights both moon lit. We are missing John, he is good company, but he was so anxious to get back to Prince Rupert and it's cool rainy spring (why?). We are managing the night shifts between the three of us, no problem and spent the day lounging in the fly bridge after our heavy work schedule. You know things are slack when it becomes fun to polish the stainless!

We received an email from a good friend, still in the work world trying to make his "90th million" and I quote, "I read your blog you guys still suck! I'm starting a blog about my day at work..." and he goes on to whine about his personnel/work problems to a tune much the same as a sad country song where the truck broke, the dog ran away and so on. We had a good laugh, he made our day.

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Moving On

We came back to Taiohae early Sunday morning from our jaunt to Daniel's Bay (English Name). We had rain overnight so mopped the boat all down and when we got all anchored up again, it rained some more, so we mopped some more. It is so hot here that it would probably evaporate quickly, but we are needing something to do for activity sake. Russell and John headed into town early afternoon, something about building courage to get tattoos done. Marquises is the prime location for tattooing here in the South Pacific and we have been admiring the exotic tattoos that many of the other boaters here have had done. It makes us feel a little left out not to have a permanent souvenir, Oh well, I did get a nice bone bracelet and a carved wooden bowl. Glen and I puttered on the boat a bit then went to shore to see if we could get internet service and find out what the rest of the world is up too. We succeeded on the internet, but it was so slow that we only got a bit of banking done and caught up on the recent news before we got fed up. Nice to see our dollar is over par right now. With beer at $7.00 equivalent here we need a good exchange. Only one restaurant/bar is open in town on Sunday and nothing else. Russell arranged for a ride for us to meet he and John for dinner (20 min walk otherwise). Luckily or un-luckily for our two guys, the tattoo artist is also closed on Sundays, so they just spent a nice afternoon chatting with all of the other boaters that came in and out of the bar. Dinner was good, because I didn't have to cook it or do the dishes. Russell offered to free the dingy from the fray at the bottom of the ladder at the dingy quay on our way back to the boat. It is quite the system, a large concrete wall with one ladder and one tie ring with a minimum of 10 rubber dingys floating out from the wall like a cluster of balloons. Anyway complications arose and Russell up ended our dingy earning himself an evening bath in salt water. Fortunately his final action before descending the ladder was to give John his camera, also fortunate is that Russell can swim as we were all too busy laughing to save him. It will take a few days for him to live that one down.

Today, Monday, we had to get up early to make it in to the bank, it opens at 7:30 am. We all need cash, the cash machines ran out of money on Friday, nobody here takes credit cards and we have to head out to places even more remote than this, so cash is essential. Early out also gets you a nice loaf of fresh French bread and the pick of the fresh fruit and vegis. We also had to have John on the dock for his ride to the airport, he starts his way back to his real world today. He looked a little reluctant to leave. After our farewells, Glen, Russell and I headed back out to the big boat, pulled in all of our gear and headed out. We are now on our way to the Tuamotos, 550 miles away. Piece of Cake, only three night shifts and we are there. The water is great, the sky is clear, the temperature perfect and light winds. We are driving from the fly bridge with a full moon over our shoulders. Yes, still in paradise.

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Taioa Bay

Today started very early. We needed to run the dingy over to the local market for 4:30 am, this in order to get the best selection of fresh vegetables and fruits. We have another long run ahead of us in a few days, so we need to stock up a bit. The fruit here is heavenly..... Everything is ripened on the tree (or nearly so) and actually tastes like what it is supposed too (and more). We can't seem to get enough of any of it. So this was our opportunity and we scored big. Once back to the boat, in the still darkness, we went back to bed for a bit before our next adventure. O.K., up and ready to go, we finished our gigantic fresh donuts and coffee, loaded the dingy, hauled in the single flopper, upped the anchor and headed out of Taiohae Bay for Taioa Bay. There were three sail boats anchored in the Hakatea Anse (small lobe on the main bay) when we arrived, but we snuggled in nicely. By the end of the day there will be seven sail boats, one power boat and ourselves all squished in here. We reversed the leaving pack up, down with the anchor, out with the flopper and un-loaded the dingy. The white sandy beach was calling our names, so with our cooler of beverages on ice, we headed in to shore, beached the dingy and began our well deserved swim in the warm ocean water. It is so salty that swimming is very easy, even I can float and for that matter swim! Talked to a young man on the beach, he has a copra business, which is drying coconuts for the purposes of making oils for perfumes. He looked pretty content with his small house on the beautiful beach, the palm trees waving over head and the rugged volcanic mountains in the background. He had several horses tethered on the beach grasses, he loads his finished product on the horses to haul to the nearest village, a four hour journey (return) for him. There are a lot of horses on these islands, you will see them tethered all over the place, the people use them for transportation because of the rough terrain and because they like to ride too.

Yesterday was very interesting, we hired a 4x4 and driver to tour us around the island. Richard our guide spoke very good English and there wasn't a question about his home/country that he could not answer for us. The tour was roughly seven hours long, we started at 8:00 am. The road system here is pretty good, nice concrete roads with nothing but switch back after switch back to get a vehicle up one side of a mountain and down the other side, they are narrow, but there isn't much traffic and you really can't get up any speed so they are not overly dangerous. (remember, we weren't driving). Nearly every tree or plant that grows here produces fruit, food or spice. It is very lush here, even though they are in a drought period. All of the flowers are beautiful, copious amounts of bogenvielia and hibiscus. Glen was thrilled to find chili peppers growing wild. We stopped at a local carver's house for some souvenirs and another house for a mango break. Richard took the ever present long pole with the small net on the end and pulled down several mangos which he cut on the spot for us to slurp and gobble down. We toured three other very small villages on beautiful bays on the north side of the island and had lunch at a small restaurant. Then we hiked over an archeological site and Richard explained some of the early Marquisan culture. There was lots of human sacrifice (literally) in their past. This would be a recommended "Thing to Do", we all had a really good time and the vehicle was a very comfortable suburban, so lots of room for the four of us (five with Richard).

Our evening was spent at Happy Hour at the Pearl Lodge, with pizza to sustain us. On our dingy ride home, we stopped at Oso Blanco for a night cap. They had just arrived in Taiohae in the morning from Fatu Oa. So we swapped tails of the high seas. Thus ends another perfect day in paradise.

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Fueling

Today we replenished our fuel supply. We used an agent here in French Polynesia and pre-purchased our estimated fuel needs in advance (a month ago) as the station here needed to be sure to have enough fuel on hand for us, Oso Blanco and the usual other boats/vehicles that need fuel here. The fuel dock is a large concrete slab, much like a commercial ship tie up, and we had to go stern in, anchor the bow and tie lines from each corner of the stern to the concrete slab to steady the boat. The swell was pretty large this morning and the wind was very stiff. The fuel hose was passed to us by a rope and the process began. The fuel guys were very nice and in no time we were finished - 3 hours and 8600 liters later. Feels good to be full.

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Nuku Hiva

We have moved on from Hiva Oa to the island of Nuku Hiva. We wanted to move anchorage from the main bay at Atuona on Hiva Oa to the north side of the island, and the bays did look inviting, if you were on land, but the white caps breaking on the shore lead us to believe that it would be pretty rough to anchor, so we moved on. We motored on to Nuku Hiva and arrived last evening at 10:00 pm in the dark. It is a nice large bay and the sea conditions are very calm compared to where we have been so far. We gave the boat a quick splash this morning then headed into town to explore. Nice little town and we will be back again for more adventures tomorrow. It is so nice not to be wobbling back and forth at anchor.

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We're Here!!

We arrived at the island of Hiva Oa in the Marquises the morning of April 17, 2010. We caught the fragrance of the trees just as the land began to loom from the clouds at dawn. We were chasing rain clouds in along our route but couldn't catch them, we were hoping for a fresh water wash before we anchored up - No luck. The harbor here is very small and was full of sail boats, so Oso Blanco and ourselves planted anchor just outside the breakwater in good holding mud. A good hold is necessary as the swell comes right on in. Oso B. has a stern anchor out with their flopper stoppers and is fairing better in the rocking than we are without a stern anchor(have to get one A.S.A.P.). Our floppers have suffered too as the first night both retrieval lines jumped off of the blades, hummm? wonder how we will pull them back in? then we lost the port blade on the second night and fouled the starboard one. No problem, we straightened out the foul and we will dive down and find the lost one, we are only in 40 feet of water. We sent John and Russell off to do a tour of the island and Glen and I did the dive. Long story short - the visibility was absolutely zero, minus zero in fact so we cannot find the flopper blade. We are single floppered now, which helps, but not much, with the swell. So we will fall out of bed again tonight and hopefully future anchorages will prove smoother. Enough whinning.

Anchors down and both boat's crews raced to put dingys in the water to finally feel solid ground under their feet. And how sweet it was. We met Sandra on land, she is our customs representative here, the main office opened on Monday. Sandra filled us in on some of the sights and gave us a ride into town, about 3 km, so we could have a look around. We all enjoyed stretching our legs so much, that after a brief look around - all shops closed at noon and a lovely lunch that somebody else cooked for us, we all walked back to the dingy dock and our boats. Sandra made a reservation for all of us at a family run restaurant named Alex's (his home)for dinner. So 6:00 pm found us all back on the dingy dock waiting for Alex to pick us up and take us for dinner. He and his family provided a lovely meal of traditional dishes and we boat people soaked up the attention and pampering. French is very necessary for smooth communication, but we are getting by with our high school versions and a Fr/Eng dictionary. We constantly find ourselves saying Si when we should be saying Oui, but slowly we will work out of Spanish mode and into French mode. The town is quaint and clean, everything a person needs is just an "ask" away. Glen and I and John went to Mass on Sunday morning. Of course we couldn't understand the service, but the singing was absolutely stunning, like attending the finest concert. We just had to thank God for getting us here safely.
We washed the boat Sunday. Whew, what a job! Salt and soot all over and bobbing back and forth in the swell, but we all put on our sun tanning attitudes and enjoyed splashing ourselves as well as the boat with water. Can't ask for a nicer place to have to do a bit of hard labor. We had a leisurely meal on the boat in order to enjoy the results of our hard work, not to mention the refreshments that we used to congratulate ourselves with, for the crossing and the job well done.

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Destination Count Down

We only have 300 miles left!! Woo Hoo! We are all starting to plan like little kids what we are going to do once we get off of the boat on to solid ground. The last two days have been pretty sloppy seas and we've all been ping ponging off of the walls in the passageways and doing fancy dance steps to keep up right in the open spaces. Cooking requires octopus arms as everything has to be held on to so it doesn't slide across the counter tops on to the floor. Yes this includes cooking pots - and yes that built in pot holder that I said I didn't need would be very handy right now. Who Knew?? The winds have been 15 to 20 knots. Our Airmar weather station thinks the winds are 7 knots, but the flag is right sideways, so we are assuming the Airmar is mistaken. With the winds so high and the seas so big, we can't keep the doors open to the cabin as we fill the interior of the boat with salt spray - too much fun to clean up. So the doors are closed and the air con is on until we get landed. This decision was aided by the fact that we calculate we will have an abundance of fuel on our arrival so can spare the extra needed to run the generator 24 hr/day. We are expecting to arrive in Hiva Oa on the morning of April 17 and if that is the case, then the trip will have taken us 16 days as initially planned. Our position is 6 15.220 S and 134 59.721 W, we are slogging along at 7.6 knots, the sun is shinning - it's 29.7 degrees. Time for me to head out for my umbrella drink holding practice (I'll use a beer as my prop) and my "total relaxation pose" workout.

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Equator Party

We are in the Southern Hemisphere now!!! Yesterday at roughly 7:30 pm by the clocks we are running on, we crossed 0 latitude. Traditionally you are to have a celebration of this - it is as good an excuse as any - so we did. We had costumes for all of the crew, we were Tahitians - all of the same tribe. We cracked open a bottle of Champagne to share between ourselves and with King Neptune. We asked him to grant us continued good passage. And we had a photo shoot of ourselves (of course) and of the GPS screen to show the 0 00.000 latitude read out. We actually crossed the equator three times in a effort to get the photo as close to all zeros as possible. but the water was too full of swell and the best we got from all three cameras was 0 00.002 N . Our champagne bottle wouldn't cooperate for the photo shoot either, the cork would not pop, all three men trying to do the honors, so Russell finally had to pull out his pocket pliers and yank the cork out.

For the last 48 hrs we have had great current push from behind sending us up to 8.5 knots speed. The fuel burn has subsided such that we should have enough to reach our destination and have a 25% reserve. The weather is cooperating very nicely with temps of 28 deg and high humidity day and night requiring us to run the air conditioning in order to sleep. The seas are very nice, a long spaced 6-8 ft swell with a 2-3 ft sea on top. Looks like we will have these nice conditions right into Hiva Oa. We have 710 miles left to go and should arrive on the morning of Apr 17. We could however use one of those squalls to wash off the boat right now as it is totally covered with salt. Our current position is 01 34.370 S and 129 59.520 W. All of the fresh vegis and fruit have hung in there nicely, and we have been able to cook great meals with the nice sea conditions. It is good that we are well stocked with beer and wine and we will leave it at that!

We have had an electronics glitch. Our auto pilot lost heading information, causing our boat to make a hard right, as it turned back to the start point. This in turn caused our partner boat Oso Blanco to freak out as we came on to collision course with the only other boat in the near vicinity. Not to mention the craziness going on inside our boat while we tried to get the boat back on track. Happily this all happened during the day light. Oso Blanco called wanting to know if they should put the bumpers out! It seems that it was only a temp. satellite loss as everything has been operating fine since.

John and Russell are currently arguing over a card game and their friendship seems to be coming to an end!

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Day Number Nine

We had a pretty lumpy night last night as we had swell coming from the south and the north, creating very confused seas, as well we had 20 or better knots of wind from another direction, for more effect. Our seasoned crew members sleeping in the front of the boat both came up whining about uncomfortable sleeps(I guess we need to make them more margaritas before bed time!). One of our crew guys is mimicking a lobster now as he did not heed warnings about how strong the sun is out here. But we are finding these guys from B.C. tend to not listen very well. We celebrated our half way mark last night with a bottle of wine after our fine dinner of curried prawns and grilled mushrooms. Our speed is down a bit right now as we are pushing into a pretty stiff current, but in one more day it will have turned around and will be pushing from behind. Our position is 4.51.384 N and 123.09.701 W We have been running in and out of rain, this is because of un-organized squalls creating high winds for brief periods and then creates bigger waves. There is a zone that is called the ITCZ zone that roughly runs 4 to 6 deg either side of the equator and can be quite unstable with these squalls. But surprisingly, all in all the seas have been quite smooth being that we are in the middle of the ocean.. Our amusement has turned to watching for floating debris - and as you might expect there is a fair bit. We did spot a fishing boat out here last night- and almost missed the fact because of all the squalls on the radar, good thing he had his lights on!

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Half way Point

Today we will reach our half way point - 1350 miles. Luckily things are pretty boring out here. We prayed for a non event and so far it is working out that way. Got up to 22 knots of wind yesterday and we have been running in and out of little rain squalls, this is actually nice as it has rinsed all of the salt off of the boat so we feel pretty clean again. The humidity is crazy out here, like being in a constant steam shower, everything is wet. Our location is 6.22.730 N and 121.32.105 W , in a few more days we will be at the equator - another exciting moment in time. Yesterday, the sun was shinning so nicely in the morning, that we all went out and sat on the front of the boat - soaking it up. The boat is on auto pilot and drives itself, we just have to make sure that nothing gets in it's way and we had pretty good visibility from our front row seats. Another diversion to fill time is to put electonic marks on the squalls as they show up on the radar - this tells us the direction they are traveling and the speed - some of them travel at 50 plus knots/hr - thought you would like to know. Lots of books are being read and movies watched - life is very relaxed. I'll report next on equator day. TTFN

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Day 6 - Ocean to Marquises

We ran the generator all of last night in order to run the air conditioning so we could all get decent rest in our off shift times. Running the generator costs 1 gallon of fuel per hour and we really have to be stingy with the fuel as we want to make our destination with at least 10% reserve - this is saved incase of very adverse conditions that we may have to drive out of our charted way to avoid. We are nearing our 1000 mile marker, quite exciting, only 1730 miles to go! It was pretty lumpy last night and into this morning. I am afraid that our first few steps on solid ground are going to land us on our noses as we try to compensate for wave movement that won't be there. The conditions have calmed down some now at 5:00 pm. We are at 9.58.952 N and 117.36.528 W, winds are 5 knots, down from 21.8 earlier and the sea is a 2 ft chop on a moderate swell, the temp has shot up to 30 degrees and the humidity has to be 100%, everything is sticky. I have my own "Hot Yoga Studio" just plug in my DVD and go. Tough to balance though (doing yoga). We have had a number of squalls today (quick little rain showers). Our hi-light today was coming along side Oso Blanco to take pictures as we both wallowed in the heavy waters. These boats are amazing. All of us are well and happy, counting the small things as big achievements.

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Today is John Day

So as the title implies, John is our other crew member. Today is in honor of him.
We are no longer a bird friendly zone. Our single hitch-hiker must have let his buddies know about his free ride, by yesterday afternoon we had three birds perched on our front bow rail. Two of these guys seemed to be young fellows. We all went forward to have a photo op with the birds and these young guys looked at us with such quizzical expressions. None of the birds were particularly afraid of us. By this morning there were five birds perched on the rail and inspection of the area showed that they were not cleaning up after themselves. So we pushed them all off with the broom and put a flag in the front flag holder to flap and scare them away.

The water was a bit lumpy this morning, pushing us around a bit more than usual, about a 3 foot chop on a 6 ft swell. It is much warmer now, 27 degrees and we have 16 to 18 knots of wind. Our location is 12.09.935 N and 115.09.144 W Our partner boat had a stabilizer issue during the night, but luckily for them, it returned to normal function. Stabilizers are like the side fins on a fish and work to keep the boat from rolling side to side. In my experience, a very vital piece of equipment for comfortable travel. Oso Blanco also caught a large Marlin fish that they did photos of and video of before releasing him. We will save our fishing activities until after the equator. We did have a freighter pass through our 12 mile radar range yesterday. Kind of a thrill to see another boat. We have been running from the upper fly bridge during the afternoons, it's pretty comfortable. The tricky part now is to make sure that we check where we are going and what the boat is doing on occasion as it is easy to just leave the operations to the auto pilot.

Back track time. So when we got the boat back to La Cruz (Puerto Vallarta) we went home to Calgary for 12 days. When we got back to P.V. we started provisioning. Taxi fares are outrageous in this area so we rented a car. Glen makes a very convincing Mexican driver. La Cruz is a very traditional little town with a big new marina. There a handful of restaurants, some of them very good - Black Forest and Friscati's. We met up with Oso Blanco people. Glen and I had met Eric previously in Taiwan when we were there to see our boat being built, so it was now very nice to meet his wife Anne and their son Bear. We had a couple of strategy meetings with them, trading boat info and shopping info, all in an effort to both be ready for take-off. By Mar 29, both boats had been moved to the Paradise Village Marina in preparation for clearing out of Mexico. There is one tiny problem - it is Holy Week here in Mexico and the day we want to leave the Port Captain's office is closed and our boat cannot clear the day before as John come in on the late afternoon flight, after closing hours for the day. Now the Port Captain will not be open until Tuesday April 6th (which if it had played that way, we would be leaving today!!!!!) Anyway, the very good thing about Mexico is that where there is a will, there is a way, this is where Juan the "Paper Guy" comes in and he got us cleared on Apr 1 in the morning for our departure later that afternoon. Now we are current with all events, unless I choose to remember interesting snippets.

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Today is Russell Day

We took a vote on what to title today's blog. Today is Russell Day in honor of our crew member Russell. Russell is suffering the effects of a cold, rough on a person when you are doing night shifts and all you want to do is curl up and sleep. So we are cheering him up. Dawn came a little bit later this morning as we are entering/entered a new time zone. We are on B.C. time now. The total time change is 2.5 hrs less than Alberta time when we reach the Marquises. We have traveled a grand total of 550 miles, ave speed 6.93 knots ( a knot is 1.15 miles) our position is 14.09.545 N and 112.54.143 W , the water is blue, blue, blue and is a little choppy today on top of a medium swell, 12.7 knots of wind and 25.9 degrees. Our resident bird nested on the front deck again last night and so far, he hasn't departed to do his bird thing of catching fish. I think he is getting lazy. Everything is working well on our boat and on Oso Blanco, which is a very good thing.

Continuation of the historical Mexican journey. We left Barra de Navidad and travelled north a short distance to a bay called Tenacatita. This is a very popular anchorage, many boats stop over here. One of the boats that we met in Barra had pulled in here for a few days too. Cedar Spirit, Glen and Mimi from Vancouver. Glen and I did a dive on the boat in the morning to check how the bottom cleanliness was doing and spent our dive time cleaning barnicles off of it. The water was too cloudy to see much because of the surge and swell, so no use to try an exploratory dive. In the afternoon, we just kicked back on the deck and enjoyed the sun. Our next day at Bay Ten. was a jungle river tour on our own dingy, we stopped at Cedar Spirit and pick up Glen and Mimi. the jungle river is an estuary off of the main bay, it is all grown over with mangroves and you can see crocodiles (we didn't) and iguanas and many types of birds. It is a nice little trip of 1 hour in at which point you leave your dingy at the end point, pay 20 pesos to the guys to look after it then walk a short distance over to the small village on the beach. We had a long walk on the beautiful beach then had a cool drink at one cantina and a nice local lunch at a cute little restaurant on the beach. Then our little jungle tour back to our boat. We had Glen and Mimi over to our boat for dinner. Good company and a fun experience. The next day, we headed out for an overnight trip up to La Cruz Marina in the Banderas Bay, where Puerto Vallarta is. Our exploration time is now done, the balance of our time in Mexico will be spent getting the boat and ourselves ready for our crossing.

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Happy Easter from the Mystery Ship

Good morning. Happy Easter.
Traveling at night is a series of feelings, you can't really see. You feel the boat go up and down and sway side to side and you can look over the side rail into the blackness of the water and marvel at the little creatures (plankton) that light up like fireworks as the boat's wake stirs the water. Looks like Vegas or the most star filled sky you can imagine. Oh and the sky out here is completely full of stars - amazing. But as daylight dawns and you begin to see the movement of the water, the feeling of the boat going up and down is accompanied by the visual of the long, gentle, high, swell that it is riding on. Our "weather router" labels the sea conditions as 9 to 12 ft. swell at 17 sec. The good thing about this is that the water is basically flat with very large hills and valleys. In the early dimness, I was seeing an object in the blackness ahead of me - nothing showed on the radar screens, so a closer inspection of the window forward showed me that we have a seagull hitching a ride on the bow rail. He's been here with me now for 1 1/2 hrs and who knows how long before in the total darkness. It is funny to see birds out here, so far from land. Things are going well, boat wise and people wise. We are currently at 16.15.537 N and 110.31.940 W, have 11.4 knots of wind and we are chugging along at 6.7 knots of speed.

Back track time. So when we reached Barra de Navidad for the second time, we had a full social calander as most of the boats/people that we had met the first time and some that we had met at other locations were all there. I didn't have to cook for three whole days. We were fortunate enough to be invited to another couple's boat to watch the Gold Medal hockey game and it was particularily sweet as we were the only Canadians with 6 Americans. So lots of lively trash talk over our margaritas and appys. Barra has a couple of unique features, the main hotel/resort/marina is on one side of the lagoon and the town is on the other side. In order to have people visit the town they have established a water taxi service that runs 24 hrs and we can call from our boat radio and have them pick us up and drop us off at the boat. Another convenient novelty is a real French baker packs his little panga boat with fresh goodies every morning and brings them right to your swimgrid (boat door step) and if you are organized, you can order what you would like for the next day's delivery. Some very tastey restaurants in Barra and the adjoining Melaque. Our favorite place of our Mexican travels would have to be Barra de Navidad and would recommend it to non boaters too.

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Day 2 Pacific Crossing

Dawn has just broken on the second day of our crossing. The ocean is still coming on our starboard side (right) in a long easy swell, the wind fluctuates between 12 to 18 knots and it is a steady 21 degrees - cooler than I imagined, though very comfortable. Our speed is between 6.5 and 7 knots. Imagine driving your car 2700 miles at a speed of 9 mph!!!!! This is all in an effort to assure that we have enough fuel reserves to make it from point A to point B and when we are at the half way point, we will review our supply and bump our speed up - how does 8 knots sound? (warp-speed). So since leaving Puerto Vallarta, we have encountered 4 other vessels, all bent on a collision course with our vessel. Oh well, that is why we keep watches. There have been dolphins playing beside us on a regular basis and the odd sea bird, but otherwise the horizon is as open as a Saskatchewan wheat field. As the day was breaking this morning, a bank of clouds to the south gave the impression that we were running beside a mountainous coast. If anybody is interested in google earthing our location, we are at 18 04 631 N and 108 26 579 W right now! Things are good.

Now for a bit of back tracking. I flew home from Ixtapa for a few days in Feb and Glen stayed on the boat to re-seal the back deck. He wasn't bored though as one of the couples that we had met on our stay at Barra de Navidad pulled into the marina as well and the three of them spent three days exploring Ixtapa/Zihua and catching Olympic events in sports bars when they could. In their explorations, they discovered a Mexican Jewel - a beautiful boutique hotel - 4 rooms - set high on a hill overlooking the Zihuatanajo Bay. Glen surprised me with a dinner on their stunning patio - surrounded on two sides with infinity pools onto the bay - 5 dinning tables all facing the bay - a pre-set 5 course gourmet menu and a waiter for each table, all of your needs are met before you can think them. We arrived early so that we could enjoy the blazing sun set in colors so brilliant - my words do not begin to describe the effect. Just lovely.

Ixtapa is as far south as we traveled in Mexico, we began then to make our way back north. Now we know what we have along the coast, we can pick and choose where we want to stop. We do an overnight run from Ixtapa back to Barra. This particular stretch of ocean is full of sea turtles and dolphins. We seriously had to watch for the turtles sunning themselves on the water surface so as not to run them over. We counted 60 by the time we got tired of the game. The dolphins are our puppy-dogs of the sea, they love to race the boat, streaking through the water criss-crossing in front of our bow (boat pointy part) and arching into the air over our wake. They are such show-offs. I'll recount from Barra north tomorrow.

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Day 1 Mexico to Marquesas

Well here we are...this is the longest open water crossing, point to point, in the world. (or so "They" say) We departed from Puerto Vallarta, Paradise Village Marina, at roughly 7:00 pm local time - April 1, 2010, after a "Departure Dinner" at the yacht club hosted by our partner boat "Oso Blanco". We have two very experienced crew members on board with Glen and I, Russell and John, both of whom have extensive job related ocean experience. "Oso Blanco" is another Nordhavn 64 like our own boat with their own experienced crew of 5 members. So I lucked out and got the 6:00 am to 9:00 am shift, supposedly I had a full night's sleep, but the first night out is always had to sleep on. Right now we are 50 miles off shore heading south west at a speed of 7 knots in a long easy swell that is slapping the boat broad side, 15.7 knots of wind and it is full day light. No big deal. Oh, Happy Good Friday, by the way. I don't know how things were on the other guy's watches, but I started mine with a big freighter traveling at us from the south at 16-18 knots of speed and all indications were that he would intersect our path at our mid ship, so being the chicken that I am I got Captain Glen to radio the freighter and ask his intentions, thus alerting him to our presence. The freighter altered course slightly to miss us, I was happy and Glen got to go back to bed. Currently the horizon is clear and empty as we bob along, me listening to classic rock on XM radio. I wonder how far offshore the radio signal will follow us?

I know that I own you all a month's worth of travel notes as I believe I left off with the boat being in Ixtapa/Zihuatanajo and we have done lots of neat things since then, but I have to refresh my memory on places and names and I'll start filling in the blank tomorrow when I am on watch again. I think it is time for a coffee now, talk to you tomorrow.

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