Category: Animals

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Attack of the boobies!

Ladies and gentlemen, today I am here to talk to you about the perils of boobies.  (no, we are not about to talk about pre-marital sex here.  It’s the name of a bird dude.  As in blue-footed boobies (or orange-footed, whatever)).

Don’t let the cuteness fool you.  These little warm weather aviary ambassadors of the devil himself have been with us since our departure.   My friends, as the crewmember with the most seaborne combat experience (hey, I am a trained boarding officer) I have led our valiant efforts to repel these determined air pirates for several days now.  Though our first attempts were admittedly crude and pathetically unsuccessful.

We only suffered a minimum of self-inflicted casualties …

… and have recently upgraded our techniques.   The scales of victory slowly tipped in our direction and our safe voyage appeared assured…until the enemy, under the cover of darkness, marshaled their forces and without warning staged their own personal Tet Offensive…

The enemy struck without warning, on all fronts and we were initially clearly overwhelmed.  Pressing the advantage one of our foes grew so brave as to land in our cockpit and make a dive for the hatch below decks! Allan had to literally tackle this squawking, flapping Captain Jack Sparrow-wanna-be with a rug while Alison pelted them both with a fruit basket (more friendly fire) and cast the beast from our vessel into the murky darkness. (sorry, no video on that one, happened a little too fast.)

The battle rages on…

– Greg

(On another booby note, we ran into someone with a t-shirt that said “I love boobies” and a cartoon of 2 little blue booby feet on it 🙂 – Tiff)

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Still Walking on the Wild Side

Though the great indoors has its fair share of wildlife, the great out of doors in La Cruz is also not to be missed.

One of the greatest things about having your own means of water transportation (or at least the ability to hop on someone else’s) is the freedom to go whale watching! La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, the Mexican town we’ve been spending so much time in, is on the Banderas Bay (along with Puerto Vallarta). The Banderas Bay is one of the places Humpback Whales like to hang out during the late winter/early spring. It’s interesting – seeing a whale from a Coast Guard cutter elicits an entirely different response than seeing one from a sailboat. In the Coast Guard we almost hated whales, because we had to call the Captain, stop our engines and wait for them to get themselves sorted so we didn’t run them over. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want to hit a whale with a 210 foot ship, but man were they frustrating – when you’re a junior officer you never want to have to call the Captain! Being on a sailboat is way less stressful and you just get to enjoy the wonder of seeing these amazing animals.

Oh, and here’s Greg first experience fishing with a net:

(I would like to point out that I have caught several fish at this point, albeit not with this particular method. Also, did anyone else catch Tiffany’s comment about no one driving the boat!? – Greg)

And just when you thought it was safe to eat calamari, think about this:

We’re still doing swimmingly out here in the wild! How’s life in civilization?

~ Tiffany

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Walking on the Wild Side

Wandering around town, sailing on the ocean, heck, even sitting in the bar or the coffee shop – all of these are great opportunities for communing with the local wildlife (and the not-so-wild also). We’ll start this off with the town segment.

When strolling through town, which of these animals do you expect to see? A – Cats, B – Dogs, C – Iguanas? Well, if you guessed Iguana, you’re right!

(Why? Because the cats are in the bars hustling drinks, of course! –Greg)

Also expected viewing while in a Mexican town of any size are chickens, pigs, horses and…children?

(Oh and now I finally understand why they started enacting those spitting in public laws back in the US. –Greg)

There was a cool restaurant/coffee shop in La Cruz that had free internet (yay!) at a decent speed (double yay!) and as a side entertainment factor they had a fountain with turtles in it – I know, not that interesting. What made it interesting was when the dog would come by and jump in the fountain with the turtles 🙂

~ Tiffany

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Mazatlan, MX – 3rd

Mazatlan, MX

With the help of Mary-Ann on s/v OLD MOON we found another Mexican wine.

For my last entry on Mazatlan, I’ll focus on our transportation options. Yes, I realize that the topic of transportation would not typically be notable. Here it is.

Getting around presents some interesting alternatives. There are a lot of options for taxis but all of them are a little short on the safety department.

You could take the bus but be warned, you aren’t getting anywhere quickly on the Mazatlan bus system.

You’ll be happy to know that we made it to the local English speaking church on time (they have English speaking churches here…it’s a tourist city). The other transportation option is to rent a car; however, be forewarned that mode of transportation comes with its own inherent additional risks in this town thanks to the unique layout of the curbside parking. Gotta wonder what someone was thinking when they planned this out:

How about horses? Horses are safe, reliable, even fun and in Mexico apparently they are bilingual…

Ultimately though, it is the call of the sea that eventually reaches all of us. Well, all of us that sail on boats at least. I found a ride with Jake on s/v MALOOSE on an overnight transit down to San Blas. For those of you who have been keeping up with this blog, you will know of my long standing battle with Tiffany over the existence of the “supposed” green flash. This battle came to head under a beautiful sunset leaving the port.

Naturally, Tiffany was in another country when this happened.

– Greg

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Dominique, FVI

Dominique, FVI

I got a report from Tiffany who is dealing with the many challenges of teaching a sailing class on a luxury sailing yacht in the middle of the French Caribbean.

Sailing teaching supplies are in short supply. Fortunately, Tiffany knows how to improvise.

Also, class disruptions are frequent. Some are welcome, for example, dolphins dancing and leaping around the boat in crystal clear water is always a good time.

Other distractions are well, not so welcome. Remember kids, this is a French colony we’re talking about here. (And it wasn’t the cute ones who were naked! It was the dirty old men! ~ Tiffany)

So naked men are just prancing around my wife while she gets paid to work in a tropical paradise and I’m 500 miles away. Yeah, great. Just great.

Despite the distractions, the upside is that the field trips through tropical rivers seem pretty interesting

…and the immigration procedures are, to say the least, apparently a touch more relaxed than what we Americans are accustomed to from our Customs officials.

That’s probably because the local government is attempting to rebuild after a mild natural disturbance caused a slight population decrease a few years back.

I asked Tiffany the question that was on your mind. Well, on my mind at least. “Honey, after the guy in prison survived a night of being encased in his cell by a tidal wave of molten lava…after he survived who knows how long in his cell without food and water before rescue crews made it to this remote little island, and somehow managed to find him…after all that, did they put him back in prison or was he considered ‘rehabilitated’?”

She said the brochure didn’t say. How do you not include a detail like that?

Anyway, so my wife is surrounded by naked prancing men and the land might just decide to explode and randomly kill everyone without notice. Neat place.

– Greg

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Mazatlan, MX – 2

Mazatlan, MX

So I thought I was doing OK with the fishing thing…then I met this guy,

Yeah, my biggest fish so far is about 15 lbs. My first question to Marcus was “So what do you do with it!?” Being as Mexican Airlines has a weight limit of about 50 lbs, they might charge a slight overage for a 500 lbs fish and that’s a lot of fish to eat in a week. Marcus’ answer is that the sport fishing guides allow him to take as much as he can eat, then they donate the remainder to a local orphanage. So everyone wins, except for the fish. He pretty much lost when he upchucked his lungs. Which, interesting side note, is apparently normal for them when they are suffocating or so I’m told.

On less disgusting note, we went out for a little Mexican baseball. We stopped for some tacos on the way and John showed us an example of cruiser technology at its finest.

Now as for the baseball game. Look, baseball is baseball. People throw balls, people hit balls, bases are stolen, you know the drill. What makes baseball interesting (at least to me) is what goes on around the games and in Mexico, a lot goes on around the games.

Does the local dodge dealership need their own cheerleaders? Really?
The highlight of the evening though were the fans. The drunk fans. The drunk, very spirited, extremely supportive of the home team, CANADIAN fans.

Notice that guy in the back wearing the blue polo? We started cheering “fear the deer” a few minutes before the video and he called out to us

“en espanol!”

To which I replied

“but then it won’t rhyme!”

He nodded sagely as if this argument made any form of legitimate sense…or maybe he just had no idea what I said. Either way, between guacamole hot dogs, the Pacifico girls, and drunk Canadians, good times were had by all.

– Greg

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