Children In Paradise

Jan. 11 - 20, 2008: Okay, children in Paradise Village Marina, Puerto Vallarta.

The year started with our daughter, Elyse, her husband Greg, and our grandson, Hayden joining us at Paradise Village Marina in Puerto Vallarta. Oh to be 4 years old and the world your oyster! Hayden quickly made friends with many folks, including the captain of a 120' motoryacht who invited all of us aboard for tour. Wirewalker is a nice boat and all, but it doesn't compare to a yacht of this caliber.

And the title of this email is "Children in Paradise". Elyse and Greg are pregnant with another child (given that it has taken me 10 months to complete this, I now know the "who" is "Calyn Louise Foley"!).

Anyways, it was Hayden who did most of the playing:

Leaving Mazatlan; Maz to Puerto Vallarta

Dec. 8th: While we were planning on leaving on the 5th, Bill got a bit of a cold and we delayed departure until Saturday, the 8th. Diane made sure we were well provisioned, managing to purchase some of the biggest shrimp we'd ever seen!

First stop was Stone Island, on the south side of Mazatlan. With the first segment being the 85 miles to Isla Isabela and requiring a 1:00 am departure to make it during daylight, we figured to position ourselves in an "easy out" location. Stone Island is fun, with gentle waves and palapas on shore selling great Mexican food. We kayaked ashore and enjoyed a feast.

When we woke up at midnight, the "exit" was full of shrimp boats. Oops. After an hour, we'd weighed anchor and weaved through the crowd and were under way. Nice to be moving again.

We arrived at Isabela at 2:30 pm. Bill was still fighting off the tiredness from the cold/flu, so asked Diane about 'holding off going ashore until the next day'. No problem since we planned on being there a few days. Well ...

On Monday morning the wind clocked around so that it was a south wind, a dangerous direction for the anchorage there at Isabela. At 9:00 am we decided it wasn't safe, and lifted the anchor for Matanchen Bay, about 45 miles to the ESE. You'll have to look at our Isabela pictures from April '07 to get a sense of Isabela; we didn't take any because Bill thought we'd have time on Monday ...

We arrived at Matanchen Bay about 4:00 pm. It is a gorgeous tropical bay about 3 miles east of the historic port town of San Blas. San Blas used to be the Pacific Ocean headquarters for the Spanish fleet (400 years ago).

The pictures of the sunset here don't do justice. It's beautiful and the town of San Blas is a quaint, historic town. Only watch out are no-see-ums (jejenes). They enjoyed the new meat in town!

We spent 2 days before leaving for Chacala, about 22 miles south. Chacala is just a small bight in an otherwise cliff lined coast, but is beautiful. It is very tropical in appearance and very friendly. No more than a couple hundred folks live there. We spent 2 very rocky, rolly nights (lots of swell) before casting off. We will return here.

Friday morning we were off to La Cruz, by way of Punta de Mita, a 40 mile trip. Like clockwork, the winds at Punta Mita piped up about 8 miles off shore making the reach/run into La Cruz wonderful!

While very short, our stay in La Cruz was great. Drinks at Ana Banana's, then on to Black Forest restaurant for dinner and music by "Latcho and Andrea", two gypsy flaminco guitarists. Cool.

Saturday morning we hauled up the anchor and moved into Paradise Village marina where Wirewalker is spending the holidays while Diane and Bill go home to visit family.

Marina Mazatlan - Boat Projects

Nov. 5th - Dec. 8th, 2007: Mazatlan may be our favorite town on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. While it isn't far enough south to be the year round tropical paradise, it's still warm and beautiful and has a culture of its own, apart from tourism. The "old town" has a 150 year old theater and some of the best classical and contemporary musicians in Mexico. The malecon (beach walkway) is just terrific.

So, within a day of arriving, Bill's favorite haircutter, Luis, showed up on the docks offering hair cuts. A very proper Mexican gentleman who provides a shoulder and scalp massage as part of the haircut, all for a very pricey $5! Gotta love it.

Bill had planned on doing a lot of project work in Mazatlan. Way back in Gonzaga (Sept.) we met our KJ friends who, along with their good friendship, brought Bill massive quantities of boat parts, etc. with the plan that Mazatlan would be where they'd be installed.

The project list was daunting, 26 projects and only 30 days. Cutting to the finish line, he got 16 of the projects done (a record percentage completion)! This may have been a direct result of the local priest blessing the fleet, including Wirewalker. We'll take all the blessings we can get.

The good news was there was still time for playing in the evenings and weekends, where Bill and Diane saw the National Ballet Company of Mexico perform "Sleeping Beauty", the Mazatlan Symphony perform Requiem for Mozart (see the fancy duds we're wearing ... our friends couldn't believe we could actually dress up!), Rafael Rodriguez (Bill's favorite Mexican guitarist), along with competing in the Mazatlan 10k race. Diane did really, really well!

Ultimately, it was time to leave so we tossed off the docklines and set a course south!

Agua Verde, Puerto El Gato and San Evaristo

Oct 31st - Nov. 3rd: Yes, too many places and too little time. Our Baja adventures started last season (April '07) when we sailed from Puerto Vallarta to Agua Verde. Agua Verde is one of those post card settings that finds it's way onto the covers of many Baja books and articles. This picture again doesn't do justice.

This time, we arrived from Isla Carmen, requiring only 25 miles of sailing vs. 500. Much nicer. The anchorage was as beautiful as ever with the only challenge being swell that was coming in strong into the harbor askew of the wind direction. That puts the boat at an odd angle to the waves and can make for an uncomfortable stay. We still enjoyed ourselves, kayaked around, went for a run ashore, before heading out.

Puerto El Gato, named after a puma family that supposedly lived there many years ago, has some of the most spectucular rock formations on the Baja peninsula. It looks like melting strawberry and vanilla swirl ice cream! And the water, likewise, is clear an beautiful.

At El Gato, we met a local fisherman, Manuel, who caught us lobster (yum!) and had some shrimp from a shrimper who had spent the night at his village. We slept well after a great meal that night. Next morning Manuel returned asking for change for a large denomination mexican bill, which we helped him out with. Seems we found out later it was counterfeit! Live and learn. We don't believe he was printing the stuff, but likely got stuck with it and could ill afford to keep it. Net, we have the old maid!

Last stop on the Baja peninsula was San Evaristo, a small town about 65 miles north of La Paz. We swam, snorkled, ran and hiked. Too much to do there and not enough time. Humm. A familiar story.

At 12:30 pm, Saturday the 3rd, we hoisted the anchor and pointed towards Mazatlan, 255 miles away. Can't wait to get there!

San Juanico and Isla Carmen/Bahia Salina

Oct. 29 - 30, 2007: Okay, we're clearly moving too fast. We have reservations in Mazatlan from the 5th of November on and we have a lot of coastline to see before then.

With an early morning start, we headed out of Concepcion Bay to San Juanico, one of our favorite anchorages. It's about 55 miles of sailing so you start early and arrive late. We got the hook set about 5:00 pm and quickly dropped the kayak over the side to do some clamming. Chocolate clams are the best! Bill showed Diane how to find them and in short order, Diane was pulling them up right and left while Bill was lucky to find one or two. Diane's the best dive/snorkle partner there is, she doesn't miss much! Needless to say, clams were on the menu for that evening's meal.

Early the next morning we went for a run through the hills around San Juanico. This is an out-of-the-way place so there's not much but coyotes, etc. Well sort of. Someone got the notion to build a couple of very nice homes up on a hill overlooking the bay. How they got the supplies to that location amazes me.

From there, we sailed the 30 miles or so to the east side of Isla Carmen. Most people go to the west side, which is directly across and only 7 miles away from Loreto. We chose to go to the back side where there's an abandoned salt mining town and a spectacular bay. We had to anchor about 3/4th of a mile out to keep 12' feet below us and take a major dinghy ride to shore. We met the "guard" of the island who gave us permission to explore and run. Very nice.

The water was amazingly clear. The sand dollar in this picture is in about 16' of water and the picture doesn't do justice to how clear the water was. We'll go back.

Concepcion Bay

October 26th - October 28th: Not enough time!

No other way to say it; Concepcion Bay is beautiful! We sailed from Punta Chivato into Concepcion Bay with 12 - 17 knots of wind of the port beam. Gorgeous. Speed readings went to 9 knots where it stayed for a good long time. Gotta love it!

Entering Concepcion requires hanging towards the east side of the bay for 5 or 6 miles. Bill misread the guidebooks, so was favoring the the west side. Once the depth dropped below 12', it was time to recheck the books. Oops ... let's head to port a bit! All good.

Our first anchorage was El Burro cove, about 8 miles in on the west side. Beautiful! Only challenge there was Bill took a major spill while anchoring and lost the use of his left leg for a fair bit of time. Once the hook was set, major medicine was required. Margaritas and Rum & Cokes are great medicine!

We went for a hike the next day up the local mountain, looking at petroglyphs, etc. Nice place. That afternoon, they were predicting a norther and El Burro is not the place to anchor with stronger north winds so we moved to Santispac, north about 3 miles, but still on the west side.

We spent two days there, Diane fishing, clamming, etc. and Bill working on boat projects. Diane managed to "catch" something she didn't intend to; she got stabbed by a sting ray! The pain was amazing. Her description was like a hot knife coming up out of the sand and driving into the bottom of her foot. Fortunately, very hot water and the rum and coke medicine did the trick.

Concepcion is on our "must return" list, where we need to plan on several weeks in that bay. It's that beautiful.

Punta Chivato

October 25, 26, 2007: Finally the winds settled down in Santa Rosalia, giving us time to dig layer after layer of fine dirt out of the boat. Bill had to go to the top of the mast with a hose and scrub brush, washing from the top to bottom. Diane, to Bill's comfort, controlled the halyard and therefore Bill's safety. All went well and we were under way!

Here's a picture of the Santa Rosalia harbor as we were leaving. Two things to note: The diagonal pipe going up the hill is a "chimney" from the old smelter which took the fumes away from the town before going up the vertical riser, shown in the background. The second thing to note is that it is calm! What a treat!

Okay, we only spent 18 hours in Punta Chivato but the scenery was spectacular. Here are pictures of both the moon rise, followed 10 hours later by the sun rise. Life is good!