The Interislander Ferry is located in Wellington, the national capital of New Zealand which is situated on the southernmost tip of the North Island. No, we hadn’t ever heard of it either. Mostly because, aside from being conveniently located in the geographic center of the country to make it as accessible as possible to all citizens (see, again, Kiwis are just nice people, even to each other) and being the seat of the national government, Auckland trumps Wellington as the international city of New Zealand. Simply put, there’s no rude nickname for Wellington-ers, like there is for the JAFAs up north.
It’s in the interest of education and making you look important that we use the slur, bro. Don’t get mad.
Remember when we discussed how sailors spend their 90 days in French Polynesia? If you wanted to spend a month each on 3 of the islands or spread out to more remote places to spend a week here and a week there? Though we joked about it at the time, we never flat out asked the question, “What if a week in French Polynesia is all you got?”
After a cubic butt load of work on Tiffany’s part and a few weeks of strangling the wordpress though island internet servers until it gave us what we wanted,
We can now present to you,
In all it’s oceanographic glory,
Along with geo-locational hyperlinks for all our entries,
(Ooooooo how completely awesome does that sound!?!)
THE MAP
(no, not the chart. It’s not to be used for navigational purposes. Who in their right mind uses google maps to navigate?)
The quest for sustenance is more complex than you might imagine.
First off, you may not recall that Greg is the ship’s only French speaker (and by “speaker” we mean a vocab of about 100 words…and about 7 verbs.) So when he’s not around and often even when he is, obtaining food requires our fellow crewmembers to overcome certain linguistic hurdles. Even on the few occasions where there is some level of reasonable verbal communications, cultural obstacles also seek to derail us. Our attempts to surmount these challenges are met with varying degrees of success:
When repeated communications attempts fail or what happens more often is that our wallets can not bear the strain of eating out more than once a week without mortgaging a first born child (which, oddly enough, no one on this ship actually has) we must instead resort to our own dwindling Mexican shipboard supplies to sustain our appetites. Which, after months of isolation from the necessities of life (like Trader Joe’s) those precious stores are beginning to run “a little thin” by our fellow crewmember’s standards.
Ok, you know, we have no idea how many cartons of rice milk they had onboard when we left Mexico. We also never actually even saw where they stored all of this milk on the 44 foot boat that we have all been living on together for several months now. Think about that for a second, we never saw the rice milk on the boat, and it’s not like it doesn’t take up some space. This ship has more secret storage compartments than the Millennium Falcon.
We do alright though. Mostly based on these meager and vastly depleted supplies we manage to cobble together rudimentary meals that we share with our fellow cruisers:
Alright, in all seriousness, for those of you planning on plying the seas of the South Pacific, cheap Mexican beer (Pacifico mostly) is a viable form of forex currency out here and the exchange rate is through the roof! Those yellow cans are greeted with sighs of satisfaction and envious looks when a captain brings out a drink at dinner. A sign of true friendship between cruisers is to share one’s “Mexican beer stash.” Being as Hinano, the local brew, comes in at least $5 US per can at the grocery store, spending a few pesos on some Mexican beer is one of the smartest investments in ensuring popularity with your fellow cruisers that you can make before departing.
As for us? Suppose we’ll just have to muddle through on Tahitian wine and French baguette pizza.
Ah the happy crew of the good ship FLY AWEIGH, decked out in their 2010 puddle jump regalia. We figured we should get the pictures handled before the scurvy set in.
For those of you who don’t know, the term “puddle jump” is the name people use to describe the trip we are undertaking by sailing from Mexico to Tahiti in French Polynesia.
Our first 30 minutes underway we received an interesting omen of things to come.
At least we got our man overboard drill out of the way first thing…is it a bad sign if the mop sank to the bottom before we recovered it?
Having made our sacrifice to King Neptune’s housekeeping staff, we rapidly shifted gears into that most critical of all getting underway rituals: Calling everyone you know for the obligatory rushed goodbye call
It’s great to finally be underway and heading somewhere new. Now, don’t get me wrong, Mexico has been a blast and La Cruz has earned a special place in my heart. I mean between bar cats taking my sodas, swarms of butterflies covering mountaintops, all the great people we met, and lets not forget Mexican car horns or my breakout role in the made for Sci-fi movie SHARKTOPUS (this October kids, mark your calendars!) Mexico has most assuredly been a good time. (PS, for if you missed any of the above, check the previous posts.) However, I would hate to come back to the states and have the following conversation:
Friend: “Where you been?”
Me: “Oh, I’ve been traveling around the world.”
Friend: “Wow cool! Where did you go?”
Me: “Mexico.”
A drastically unfair prejudice formerly held by myself is that Mexico is “right next door.” SOME of Mexico (read Tijuana and some desert) is in fact next door and a lot of Mexico is freaking far, far away. Tiff and I sailed for weeks straight and I would say we got about half way down one coast. A lot of cruisers sail Mexican waters for years and never get bored or move on…and I can see why.
I feel that Tiff and I are becoming well known here in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle. We have friends, the owner of the local British pub doesn’t even need to ask me what I’ll be having when I come in, a Guinness and fish & chips just show up (which is awesome, by the way). I think Tiff and I stopped being tourists here a few weeks ago and actually started living here. This is great feeling and we either need to buy a house or move on. Since there is a lot more world out there and the idea was to go around it, its time to move on. I am nervous though that Allan’s prediction may be closer to the mark than any of us are willing to admit.
Besides the idea of crossing the largest expanse of nothing on the planet in what my friend Michael describes as, “a glorified bathtub with a big bedsheet on front” intrigues me. Though I would also like to point out this “glorified bathtub” comes decked out with basically every electromechanical toy you could possible want, not to mention private guest quarters with attached bathrooms and showers! If you don’t know boats too well, allow me to assure you, this is the lap of luxury when it comes to crewing.
Whelp, here we go…
(Imagine that video was your last sight of solid ground for a month straight…)
Tiffany and I got ourselves a ship for the trip to Tahiti! Our friends Allan & Alison on FLY AWEIGH have decided to change their plans from sailing to Florida to sailing instead to Australia. Those of you following the blog for a while now will remember Allan and Alison from our many adventures in Baja Mexico, in Cabo San Lucas, La Paz, Mazatlan and now Puerto Vallarta. They have asked Tiffany and I to accompany them over the first leg of the journey, basically to help them sail their boat over 3000 miles of open ocean … one of the largest expanses on the planet.
To give you an idea of what we have signed on for here, imagine driving from New York City to San Diego in a camper. Now reduce the camper’s speed to 10 miles per hour max, make it impossible to get off or stop the camper at any point during the voyage, remove all signs of life, habitation, fuel or help for your journey and put 4 people in the camper, one of whom must be driving at all times and two of which are vegetarians. Sprinkle in the potential for a few natural disasters and add a dab of motion sickness. Oh yeah, no cell phones, wifi or FM radio either. That’s not quite it, but it’s at least close to what we’re doing.
(Ok, this time Greg made a comparison to a camper van. Last time, he said we were “crossing the ocean in a bathtub powered by a bedsheet”…)
Naturally, prepping for this trip was a major project for the four of us and took us about a month to get FLY AWEIGH, an already well equipped and well maintained ship, ready for the journey.
How do I describe to you what we did to prepare our ship and ourselves for this undertaking? I mean, how many bottles of bleach does one need to cross an ocean?
And how many hours a day should you devote to the important task of de-moisturizing your mushrooms for storage?
We also got 2 new sails for the trip: a storm trysail in case of hurricanes and a spinnaker in case of light winds. Thanks go out to Mike of PV sailing who got the sails down to Mexico and took the time to do some training with us on them.
Overall it was a lot of work and the four of us all pitched in and made it a good time. This video gives you an idea of what it is like to prepare a ship to cross an ocean:
Another important factor in our preparation was mentally preparing ourselves for what I estimated would be 30 days living in a constantly moving 400 sq foot apartment with no means of leaving. Now the idea of unplugging for a month may sound rather appealing at first but, as I learned from my patrols in the Coast Guard, you have to keep busy or you’ll go bonkers after a while. To that end I had Tiffany bring back a few things for me from the states: a French review program (because in French Polynesia, that’s what they speak! – Tiff), an audio Bible and a ukulele. In our final month in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle here in Banderas Bay, I’ve managed to learn one song on this thing.
So either I’ll get better or they’ll kill me and dump my body in the ocean. Nothing like a little motivation to begin one’s musical career. Anyone know what song I was playing?
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?
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 🙂
As I said, Tiffany and I spent a lot of time working on the docks in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle and Paradise Village in Puerto Vallarta getting involved in the local cruising community and looking for ships looking for crew. The La Cruz marina was an interesting place to be. First off, the marina was still undergoing construction so that meant we had some unusual ships to maneuver around while sailing.
They also had a major boat show while we were there that the president of Mexico attended. I didn’t get any footage of the “El Presidente” mostly because I also didn’t get any pictures of the military snipers hanging out on the rooftops of all the buildings or the multiple hummers that drove around pointing their .50 cal machine guns at my head for no apparent reason. Let’s simply leave it at I didn’t want to give them any additional motivation to point their high powered weapons at me for longer than they already were. I did get some footage of how the Mexican government throws a party:
The weather over the months we were there was unusual, to put it mildly. Hurricane force winds, “weather bombs” (what the heck is that supposed to even mean!?) hot rain, freezing sunny days, tornados ripping through the bay…it keeps you on your toes.
Aside from when the weather was trying to kill by ripping your ship apart it was actually quite pleasant.
What Greg has completely neglected to mention was the town of Patzcuarto (uh, I totally forgot how to spell this place…) where we could supposedly find those yummy coconut piles. No such luck. We spent a day bussing around and seeing the town and nearby area. I did have a delicious cup of yummy stuff that Greg totally did not appreciate.
We finally found the local cuisine that they’re famous for are their white fish, or Pescado Blanco. And, uh, we had it…
In order to get this questionable delicacy, we had to go to an island with a big statue in the center of it that looked like he was the main character from the movie “Undercover Brother”.
And we had to CLIMB ALL OVER! It was a crazy steep island! There weren’t any streets, just paths, and they ALL HAD STAIRS!
On our way to this mythical island, not only did we get lost (how hard can it be to find an island in the middle of a lake! An island you can see!), we got to make new friends!
I was telling Greg about why burros have a cross on their back (donkeys don’t, just burros, they’re special). These little animals were honored by God because one of them carried Jesus as he entered a town, forever earning them their special mark.
We finally got to where the ferry was, and were serenaded by a mariachi band on our way to the island. Definitely a unique experience.
In summary, here’s what I thought of Patzcuarto, the island and it’s lake:
~ Tiffany
(Two final notes we learned from our road trip into central Mexico.
1) Public bathrooms in Mexico require a certain degree of pre planning to ensure a user friendly experience.
2) Not all of Mexico is tropical, especially the parts 8 hours inland through mountains.
And now let us turn our attention to the world of cruisers. La Cruz is an interesting place. A quiet little town that depended on sailing ships anchoring off the beach and the fishing industry, the town is currently going through a massive shift as condos are going up all over, a new multi-million dollar marina has recently opened its doors with over 100 slips and the quaint little town is becoming a tourist Mecca for people looking for a…quaint little town. Sound like an oxymoron? It is. The amusing part is it seems that the only people who are really miffed about the situation are the cruisers. Local business is booming, jobs abound – however all the sailors who came here are watching their little piece of Mexico become an industrialized tourist machine. So far, La Cruz has maintained some balance between old and new, but I’m not sure that will last, and who’s to say whether that’s bad or good?
La Cruz may be going big time but the spirit of the little town that was can still be found when you look in the right places. For example, the marina security system, while completely effective, also adds a certain local flair to the marina.
Needless to say Tiffany’s revived interest in water sports was hastily reevaluated. You’ll also never know what you’ll see while you’re walking the docks.
Have I mentioned most people go to bed on their boats with the hatch to the main part of the boat wide open? Seemed an appropriate time to let you know.
In addition to the wild safari adventures, La Cruz has an interesting announcement system.
These guys drive around all day broadcasting everything from political announcements to local radio to announcements that the propane truck is on its way. The propane trucks have the best music. Don’t ask me why this is.
I would be remiss to talk about La Cruz and not mention Philo’s. Pizza maker, local philanthropist, musician and former cruiser, Philo is a local deity in the cruising world, a heck of a nice guy, and his bar, named “Philo’s” is one of the main hang outs for cruisers in La Cruz. Cheep beer, friendly staff and good music make it a great time. Here is what a night a Philo’s is like when he brings in his band to play.
Leon’s up first on the washboard (he’s a retired school principal!), we’re not sure who’s playing the other stuff, and Philo’s sitting center stage with the electric guitar.
Not every night is out partying though, sometimes we stay in and cook a meal onboard. Here is Tiffany preparing a lunch and doing her best iron chef impression.
The Banderas bay is also one of the main areas that the sailing community gathers throughout the year so naturally they do races, events and what not. I could give you an introduction to this video on the race Tiffany and I participated in, but really, I think it speaks for itself.
Finally, for those of you who are jonesing for your dolphin fix, or wondering what dolphin poop looks like in the wild, we manage to meet both of your needs in this final video
The Great Kiwi Roadtrip continues!!
