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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