White Christmas of a Different Kind!!

Greetings from Banderas Bay/Puerto Vallarta!  Yesterday we celebrated the holiday with a bit of body surfing on the white sandy beach.  No snow, but Santa landed by para sail down the beach from us.  A white Christmas for sure!   Good fun...

We arrived in Banderas Bay +/- one week ago.  It felt really great to complete the 300 mile crossing from Cabo...very light breezes saw us motoring perhaps 1/2 the way.  Sailing past Punta del Mita we were greeted by a flock of blue footed booby's...great fisher-birds, we really enjoyed their acrobatic dives.  Spent the first couple of days anchored out at La Cruz, a pretty little fishing village around 8 miles from PV.  Really enjoyed walking around, shopping at the little tiendas (tortilleria for fresh tortillas, mercado de pescados where the fisherman were unloading the freshest shrimp ever (except for those we catch ourselves in the Pacific NW!!!)  Nice little taco stands as well, with incredible marlin tacos for $1.00!!

After weighing anchor in La Cruz, we headed to Nuevo Vallarta, and checked into Paradise Village Marina to await the arrival of friends from Seattle, Rich, Laura, and Zach.  We took the bus to the airport (serenaded by a couple of entrepreneurial 13 year old kids singing for pesos.  The guys actually had pretty good sets o' pipes, and all on the bus seemed to enjoy the musical ride).  The bus is fun, and for 13 pesos, a great way to get around.

We packed a lot into the 3 day visit with R, L, and Z.  One day we went up into the mountains above PV for a fun zip line adventure.  Zach is a zip line guide on a course in Ketchikan during the summers, so he had a great rapport with their guides. 

R, Z, and Adam hired a local fishing boat for a day of fishing....let's see how the pro's do it!  The big difference from trolling off Bravo was the use of live bait.  We used small sardines that we bought, and also fished with small lures to catch larger bait fish, perhaps 8" long.  Trolled these without any luck, and finally decided to put some meat in the cooler...bottom fishing out by Los Marietas, at the mouth of Banderas Bay.  Like bottom fishing everywhere, it's always fun, and you never know what will be at the end of the line.  Caught a great variety of fish...pompano, trigger fish, spanish mackeral, snapper, grouper, and sea bass. 

Had a bet on the most fish and the largest....Adam ended up buying the "fru fru drink" of choice for Rich for most, and Zach for largest (nice pompano).  All in all, a fun day of fishing for the three of us, while Cindi and Laura had a relaxing day with a massage and beach time ashore.

Zach catching some zzzz's in the hammock on Bravo's foredeck

One night walking the beach, we saw some little turtles hatching, way up beach near the sidewalk.  They were walking away from the water, and their tracks showed that they had come a long way (in the wrong direction).  Before they hit the sidewalk and got squished, we decided to stage a bit of a turtle rescue, and scooped up a few of the little critters to help down to the ocean...god speed, lil' guys...you'll need it!!!

Now that our visitors have headed back to the soggy Pacific NW, it's time for us to start working on "the List", the list of projects that have been accumulating over the past 1500 miles coming down from San Diego.  Every cruising boat has such a List, and we definitely need to start to whittle it down.  The first one is to deal with is our electrical system.  Running both refer and freezer uses a fair bit of power, slightly more than the solar panels can keep up with.  Especially the freezer (we enjoy ice in our rum sundowners!!!)  When we're at anchor (typical), we just run the generator for an hour or 2 every few days.  Here in the marina, we have shore power available, so I plugged in.  The marina AC voltage read 131, a lot more than we typically see (110-115).  Can't see if that was the the cause, but we fried our inverter/battery charger.  Parts are no longer available to repair, and new ones are a big ticket item.  Happily, we have spare circuit boards in our spares department.  Will roll up our sleeves and dig into it later today.  With a lot of luck, one of the spare boards will have the burned out component(s), and we'll be able to charge the batteries again.  Also will be working on some rigging and sail repairs while here in PV. 

Plan is to spend two more days here at Paradise Village, then head out to explore other places in Banderas Bay for perhaps a couple of more weeks.  Probably spend New Years in La Cruz.

We're using the wifi at the local Starbucks (still no wifi aboard the boat, and our Banda Ancha card continues to stubbornly refuse to cooperate), so will put up a few photos from the past weeks sailing down from San Diego. 

FELIZ NAVIDAD to all!!!

Passage down to Cabo was mostly mellow...here we're going very "cruizy", southing under spinnaker alone!!!

Fruits and veges here are fantastic....Here's a typical breakfast, including monster payaya and banana fruit salad.

Anchored in Turtle Bay, we took on fuel by barge...easy!!!

Turtle Bay was a sleepy little fishing town...I think this guy has caught his last fish!!!

The shrine of the sacred power meter...

Emily and Cindi, enjoying life at Bahia Santa Maria, a beautiful spot.

Swimming in Bahia Santa Maria, Bravo in the background.....(only thing missing is a couple of Corona's in the foreground!!)

A nice hike along the Bahia beach...outside of Baja is a true desert landscape

Emily enjoying hammock time at sea.

Somehow this pix just seemed to pair nicely with the previous one!!!