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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Captain's Log - Star Date February 21, 2010

Hi Everyone. We recently watched a Star Trek movie, hence the silly title.

After our home stint we flew first to Phoenix for the Barret Jackson Sale at the request of some racing friends. Lovely weather in Phoenix that weekend, rainy, windy, really cold. Our two days there really made us appreciate the 30 degree sunshine we encountered upon arrival in Puerto Vallarta again. We over-nighted at the boat, made sure everything was O.K. then flew to Guadalajara the next day to join our Mexican friends, David and Sandra and Pedro and Olga. We couldn't have planned a more special trip. Both couples have lived in this beautiful city and were very eager to show us everything they possibly could. We day tripped to Lake Chapala, a beautiful resort community, had a snack of local goodies and were serenaded by the best Mariachi band ever (if you like Mariachi), then we toured over to a village also on the lake called Ajijic (aheeheek) where many Canadians have second homes. We had a late lunch at a very quaint, very lovely hotel owned by an ex-Victoria family. Fantastic food and romantic history for both of our sets of friends - Pedro and Olga were engaged here. The next day we were shown and shopped through the prime shopping districts of Mexico, all things artsy come from Guadalajara no matter where you buy it. And finally we toured through the city center with it's stately Cathedral, Governor's Palace and a historic orphanage, all with beautiful architecture and important historical value. Guadalajara has a huge public market, of Granville Island BC quality. Our mission here was to purchase a molecajete for our boat (large stone dish with Stone pestle) lots of fun searching through the labyrinth of shops to find it. Of course through out our time in Guad. we ate superb food and drank copious amounts of good wine. There is a sandwich in Guad. that is a local specialty (can't be found anywhere else) called a drowned sandwich. It is tender bbq pork in a salty crusty roll smothered in tomatoe-y red sauce and topped with hot sauce. Pedro knew the best little hole in the wall shop to get these at. Yummy. We are very grateful to our friends for insisting that we visit them in Guadalajara, it was a must see.

Back in Puerto Vallarta, we are back on the dock no more than a half an hour when Glen hears somebody calling his name. It is a friend from Calgary, he and his wife and two other couples are staying at the Paradise Village Resort. Just by fluke this friend had walked by the marina on his way for food and saw Glen. So we spent the next two evenings enjoying this group's company. What a small world.

Now it's time to be boaters again and we leave the comforts of the marina and head out into the vast Pacific waters on our way further south. Our next destination will be Barra de Navidad. The plan is to do this trip in two or three days as there are a couple of supposedly nice anchorages along the way. After 10 hr of travel we pull into Chamela Bay just before dark, set the anchor well and snuggle in for dinner and a movie on board, our first night on our own for many days. At 10:00pm the wind starts to pick up, blowing right into the anchorage and by 11:00pm we have 6 ft swells coming into the bay from the ocean. The boat will not point into the waves, it insists on laying sideways to them causing huge sideways roll of the boat. As you may imagine this is not very comfortable and we rush to buckle everything down before it crashes from one side of the boat to the other. It becomes so extreme that we finally start the engines and use the bow and stern thrusters to keep the boat pointed into the waves while still on anchor. Will the anchor hold?????? By midnight we have decided that this is not a passing squall and it will be better to travel in it than to be anchored in it so since we will be up all night anyway, we haul anchor and head out, we should reach the next anchorage by dawn. Running in this weather is easy as the waves are coming right at our nose, it pours rain, the wind blows and our good old Mystery Ship plows along. Life is comfortable again. Dawn arrives and we are approaching the next anchorage. There is some chatter on the VHF radio and it is between two boaters that are on opposite sides of this large bay. The gist of the conversation is that both parties have had a rough night, neither is happy with their location and both are contemplating pulling up and heading to Barra de Navidad. So this basically decides what we are going to do so we keep on chugging and arrive at Barra about noon. This is bar none the most deluxe boat facility/resort along this coast. The majestic Grand Bay Hotel climbs up the hillside in architectural layers reminiscent of Morocco and Spain, it has two large pools, fitness areas - indoor and out, several restaurants and bars and views like no other. The marina is first class. A 24 hr water taxi service joins the resort to the small village of Barra de Navidad. The village is a collection of small hotels, multitudes of tourist shops, neat little restaurants and a couple of night clubs (glorified bars with music - very rustic but fun). This is the primo boating destination for most of the south cruisers and we run into many old acquaintances and make several more. This type of boating is very social. Happy hour is mandatory. We stayed at the Grand Bay Hotel last year when we were checking out places to go in Mexico, so we are quite familiar with this place. By now we are pretty much shopped out and the weather is so nice that we spend our days at the pool. I did yoga on the beach one morning (slept too late for every other class). Glen and I attended mass at the local church on Sunday - can't understand, but know the general program.
While we were in Guadalajara, we met Pedro and Olga's good friend Kiko and his girlfriend Miriam. Kiko has a resort house in Manzanillo, 40 mins from Barra. He picked us up from the boat, drove us through Manzanillo and up the winding road to his exclusive neighborhood and cliff side home. The property, home, views...are all stunning. We are definitely seeing how the upper class are living in Mexico. Kiko's resort home is great, but Glen and I really want to convince his cook - Pancha - that she should come on the boat with us. She prepared us lobster, octopus, dorado fish and abalone, all to perfection. Her breakfast a traditional breakfast of chiliquiles (spelling???) with eggs and bacon was good to the last crumb. Very nice people and so excited to share their lives with us. We Canadians have a long way to go in the friendly to strangers game. On the way back to Barra, Kiko stops us into the local fruit stands and helps us select the best specimens. We head out the next day.

Our next destination will be Ixtapa/Zihuatinejo. Again we plan on doing it in a couple over night anchor stops. We are ready for the rolly stuff this time. Our boat is equipped with things called "flopper stoppers" and they are big plates that hang into the water from big poles that swing out from the side of the boat and are held in place by a series of guy ropes. Mucho time consuming to set up but effective in limiting the rolling action of the boat in the ocean swells. Thankfully we don't have any storms happening and both of our anchor out nights are restful. We dive under the boat one day to replace worn zincs (long story as to what they are), but the water is too cloudy from the surging water to be able to drop down to the ocean floor and explore the sea life.
Next stop is Ixtapa. The marina is here and there are some hotels (not beach side) and apartment buildings, some restaurants, but the main attractions are all in Zihua which is a 15 min. cab ride away. Interesting little town, there is a very nice bay to anchor in and would probably be the best anchorage along the coast, but I am going home for a few days and Glen will be on his own so the marina will be the safest place to be. Well, as long as he stays clear of the alligator - Pedro. There is a sign on the dock, to watch small pets at all times, as Pedro has been know to snatch them for lunch. He is a big guy too - about 12 feet. He came by to check our boat out the first night of our stay. We do know he doesn't like tortillas - yes I know we aren't supposed to feed the wild life, but he didn't eat it so we didn't feed him - right?

Hasta Luego! See you later.

Finally I'm on line again!

Merry Christmas and Happy 2010!

Well it has been a while hasn't it. Sorry, but poor internet service is my first excuse and we've been very busy for the balance of the time. I thought that we were supposed to be relaxing!

From La Paz on the Baja, we toured a bit north in the Sea of Cortez and stopped at some wonderful anchorages. The first was at Isla Espirutu, it was so lovely and tropical looking as we pulled to the shallow turquoise water surrounded by shining sandy beaches. I could actually see the anchor set in the sand as we let it down. Mexican anchorages we have since learned are not nearly as snug and calm as what we are used to on the west coast of Canada. There is always a prevailing wind and most often there are swells in the water. But we have learned that our anchor has a powerful hold and we don't worry as it bumps and grinds during the night. The vegitation on the surrounding islands is predominatly desert varieties, but a casual hike across one island educated us to the fact that there are literally hundreds of different cacti and succulents. Everything was green and blooming from the rains in October. Very beautiful. So one day was spent wahing the boat of it's travel salt another day was the island hike and the next day was a scuba dive off of one of the points. We were only in about 20 feet of water, but were amazed at the quantity and quality of marine life. Our new dive compressor works very well and we always have fresh tanks. We traveled to two other anchorages each with their own special points of interest and we never had more than one or two other boats in the same place at one time.

Our next leg took us to the small village of Topolobampo on the west coast of the mainland Mexico. It is very out of the way for recreational boaters so we were the only yacht there. There is an amazing sandspit at the entrance to the main harbour and we anchored here for our first night. There is a national park at the head of the spit that is made up of sand dune like one would see in the largest of deserts. We took our rubber dingy to the head and beached it so we could walk through these awesome dunes. As beautiful as any National Geograph photo, these dunes held the stories of all the creatures living there by the footprints/tracks in the sand. Of course I forgot to take the camera for this jaunt. We moved from this anchorage into the town site and overnighted so we could take a day trip in to Los Mochis about twenty minutes east. Arranging for a taxi ride was fun as the cabbies didn't speak English and our Spanish is very bad but with the help of a young fellow who spoke a bit of English we set everything up. He would accompany us and the cab driver to Los Mochis the next day. Turns out that as I am frantically looking up things in my dictionary to ask as we travel, this young fellow is also looking things up in his dictionary to reply. Still in the Topo area, we next move to an anchorage in a large but very shallow bay on the other side of the town. Shrimping is a very large industry here and the season is open. We of load the whaler as the bay is 7 miles long and head out for a day of exploration. We discover several fishing villages on the perimiter and an island that is home to every sea bird on the coast. Mexico has an abundance of sea birds and they are very entertaining to watch as the fish for their food. This bay is extremely shallow, 2 ft deep for the most part.

From Topo we head south down the coast to another obscure little town on a large bay, Altata. It is a 14 hr trip and we choose to do it overnight as there isn't enough daytime hrs to arrive in daylight. So we dodge large shrimping vessels in the darkness, all inconveniently fishing on our plotted course, and arrive at the mouth of the harbour as dawn is breaking. This entrance is a lot shallower than is recorded (Mexican charts are useless for navigation as they date from the 1700's - no lie!) only 10 ft below our bottom - too close for comfort. We wave down a passing panga (small wooden boat with motor) with a couple of fisherman on board and through our two words of Spanish and lots of sign language we convey that we would like them to show us the best way to get into the harbour and they did. All of the people we have encountered thus far have been extremely friendly and graciously accepting of our inability to comunicate. Once safely on our own again and heading up harbour to the town, 7 miles in, we are met with the colorful site of about 100 pangas fishing for shrimp being pulled along by their billowing sails. At first glance we thought there was a sail boat race going on. It is already a lovely sunny day by the time we have set anchor in front of the rows of resort houses and rinsed off the travel salt from the boat, so we decide to drop the dingy down and go explore the town. As we are doing this a boat load of people come by and after a few opening remarks, invite us to a birthday party. Why not? It has proved to be a very good move as David and Sandra who are very proud of their Mexico, have taken it upon them selves to show us all that they can. We met a bunch of lovely people at the party. Through David and Sandra, we have seen Culican (drug capital of Mexico), we have seen a vegitable farm - employs 400 people, this is where our Canadian super markets get their vegis from (we were presented with a box full of fabulous fresh vegis), we have seen Altata and the surrounding farm land, they introduced us to the finer art of eating in Mexico, have toured us through El Quelite - a magic village (it truly is), they showed us all of the good stuff in Mazatlan and when we retrun to Puerto Vallarta, they and another couple Pedro and Olga will tour us through Guadalajara. We will see a lot more of Mexico than we ever could have on our own.

So from Altata, we again did an overnighter to Mazatlan. Dodging fishing boats all night and arriving at dawn to the mouth of the Marina El Cid. This is our first stay in a marina since leaving La Paz. We have the use of the resort pools, concierge, private beach etc. It is a very nice resort, a short taxi ride from Old Mazatlan which is very picturesque. Cassie and Georgia join us here for Christmas and New Years and since David and Sandra have shown us all of the good stuff in Maztlan, we are able to show all of these wonderful things to our girls. Honestly a good time was had by all. Georgia's wish list included riding horses on the beach and we managed to find an outfit that did that and - wonders never cease - Glen rode with us. Quite fun and nice little horses to ride among all of the sun bathers with the waves curling around the horses' hooves. We met a nice family from Lethbridge who did the ride with us and later came to have happy hour on the boat with us. Sunsets from Mazatlan look amazing, so we spent a couple of evenings getting perfect photos from land points and one day took the whaler out to show the girls Mazatlan from the water ending with a photo session for the sunset from the water perspective. The girls flew home on Jan 3 and on Jan 4 our friends Keith an Trish joined us on the boat. Again we got to show off Mazatlan and then we thrilled them with a night trip down to Puerto Vallarta.

The Puerto Vallarta trip held a couple of suprises on my shift, a squall showing on radar that had me calling Glen up from sleep as I was concerned that there may be rough weather attached - happily only rain. Then I nearly toast a panga as he is out fishing in the blackness without lights and only flips them on as I am on top of him so I have to rapidly pull back the trottles and change direction to miss him, thus drawing Glen up from his sleep again. Now we are into a bit of rough water - slapping on the hull and Keith comes up. All in all, nothing really serious, but it gave us all lots to talk about the next day. We are docked at the Paradise Village Marina in Nuevo Vallarta. Again a lovely resort that we have the use of all facilities. We had a fun few days exploring P.V. with Keith and Trish and then we all flew home to Calgary on Jan 12. We are now into the parts of Mexico where we are encountering boaters that we have met along the way from San Diego down. Amazingly there are a good percentage of Canadian boaters. So we have no fear of getting bored with only ourselves to talk to. I should also have better wi fi access so I can update more often (unless we're too busy exploring!) Talk to you all soon.