Bahia de Banderas: The Last Stop in Mexico

Despite our affinity for the place and the fact that I could continue indefinitely describing its charms, we eventually had to depart from La Paz. It was more than a few times I considered following in the footsteps of those meandering before us and holing up there for a year or so. I suppose, in the end, the drive to complete a crossing was greater than that to post up as a cruiser and explore the Sea of Cortez for the summer. In any case, Mexico seems so accessible to us by boat that by now we're confident we can return here in the future more easily and on a greater variety of vessels than can we cross to the South Pacific. So we pressed on, slightly heartbroken. The day before we left, though, I bought a little outboard for our dinghy. It's a seventies-era Johnson two-stroke- a whopping four horsepower- and it dominates the road. Really, it runs perfectly and the release from paddling from anchor has been revolutionary.

Becalmed in the middle of the Sea, we shot the
 first in a new series of throwback
'Me and My Johnson' photos.

The crossing to Bahia de Banderas, home of Puerto Vallarta et. al, was exceedingly slow. It took us four and a half days to cover the 350 nm passage. We were totally becalmed a great deal of the time and barely moving for much of the remainder. And it was hot out. We did enjoy a swim in the middle of the Sea of Cortez, which was pretty cool. Motoring along one day, we decided to shut the engine down and jump in to cool off. The sea was perfectly glassy, not a drop of wind and not a semblance of swell. Dana stood on the cabin top declaring Shark Watch, before we all dove in. It can be pretty disorienting to be out of site of land on a boat, but this effect is amplified significantly when you dive in the water and are surrounded by a totally three dimensional environment with the sun as the only reference point anywhere. The water was the bluest blue and it felt fantastic to dive deep and look around at total uniformity, but it's hard not to find the immensity at least a bit irksome. All the shark talk didn't help, either.

There were few highlights of the passage. We caught and ate a bonito, which was nice but by now is considered a lesser of the potential fish we might take out there, so it didn't quite come with the pure joy we experience with our first bonito, back near Bahia Tortugas, when we were there a thousand years ago. We almost had a highlight experience fishing on the passage, but it turned to disappointment. We hooked a short-fin mako shark, maybe four feet long, on a squid plug with some cut bait (a bit of the aforementioned bonito). It had a pretty good set of teeth, so we wanted to make sure it was good and dead before we brought it onto our little boat. Thus we set forth rigging snatch blocks to our mizzen so we could hoist the shark out of the water to suffocate. That made it pretty mad, so we got out the bow and our only two arrows and shot it to accelerate the process. Dana took the first shot and got him in the gills. I took the second and got him in the top of the head. We thought we were sitting on Easy Street with shark burgers as good as grilled, but our severely incapacitated friend gave one last fight for life and managed to break the lines tied to the arrows and pull the fishing line attached to the hook still securely in his mouth in between the roller and the snatch block housing so it pinched and snapped. It was an impressive effort, but the shark was too far gone to have survived. We swung the boat around and tried our best to find him so we might get him back with the gaff, but, like I said, it's incredibly difficult to orient offshore and the shark got enough below the surface that we couldn't find him again. It's still a fairly sore subject and I probably wouldn't have shared it if I weren't so compelled to post a picture of the guy. Hopefully we'll catch another later. We're still working on making up lost karma having killed a fish only to lose it in such poor fashion.

The one that got away.

Here he is getting angrier.

After arriving at La Cruz, a bit north of Puerto Vallarta, we attended the last of the Puddle Jump seminars organized by Latitude 38 magazine. The topic was weather routing- different sources for weather information were discussed as well as interpretation of offshore patterns, mainly from looking at pressure systems. We also talked about strategies for getting across the ITCZ (Inter-tropical convergence zone, also known as the doldrums), namely finding and using squall systems to get to the southern hemisphere trade winds. It was definitely worthwhile and we all feel we learned something.

Still eating pretty well...

The rest of our stay here is a bit of a whirlwind. My parents came down for a visit for four days. We had a blast with them up in Sayulita, only a 20 minute or so drive from La Cruz. We managed to tour about Puerto Vallarta, get out for a little sail, and get some solid relaxation time during their stay. I must say, too, that it was quite nice to get off the boat for a few days.

A little daysail with the rents.

Dana and I had to find something to do while
my Mom perused the trinkets in PV.

Dana, Chittick, Anna, David, Camille, Connor

Anna also came down for a visit followed by Robin, so we were pretty busy touring about for a while. Chittick and I managed to get a couple kite-boarding sessions in, which were fantastic. It was pretty cool to be kiting in warm water again, and this time with sea turtles and dolphins splashing about only a few feet away. We did have a propensity to stay out a bit long, so had more than one slow swim to the beach when the wind shut down. The breeze here is a solid thermal like San Francisco Bay, though it hasn't been as strong as at home. Still though, it kicks up in the early afternoon just about every day.

Two night herons being friends in PV.

We also had a great trip out to Las Islas de Las Tres Marietas, which are a group of small islands at the western end of Banderas Bay. Robin came along and, though we didn't manage to catch any monsters on the way, we did discover a cool cave and had fun wandering around the island looking at boobies and enjoying a very sheltered beach.

Our own private beach. Connor's mad dinghy driving skills and our sweet
Johnson got us through that cave- it was a bit of a tight fit.

Ardea sits off the island. Boobies whistle and mob in the foreground.

Dana and Robin scrambling on the rocks.

Blue-footed boobie.

Robin's fishing!

Our last week here has been full of preparations. We're busily trying to get ready to push off as a positive weather window is coming upon us. More on our final projects and provisioning soon!