I want to convey to you our daily life. Have you ever had a personal montage? The underway life is a daily existence of extreme ritual, when you allow it to be, and that ritual allows you to focus on whatever you want with unprecedented clarity. For 30 days of my life I have the opportunity to dramatically increase any skill set I want to study. I describe it best to my mother when I emailed her:
I am spending my time sewing zippers on clothes and reading the Bible
(I feel like a monk)
…and learning French
(a Franciscan monk)
…and learning the ukulele
(a Franciscan monk with a toy guitar)
…and talking to Tiffany
(a Franciscan monk with a toy guitar and a wife….ok, fine, bad example)
This is my life for the next month…no Gregorian chanting though.
Allan spends his time developing his at sea tech support business …
… and getting an “A” for effort in his many attempts to land “the big one”.
Tiffany and Alison spend most of their personal time focused on the inspection of our cookie stores …
… and the restocking of our cookie stores (a chore in which I am sometimes impressed into service).
Our last communication ended with our loyal crew recovering from a blitzkrieg-style home invasion from the booby birds.
Tiffany, Allan and I quickly devised a counter-strike offensive. Luckily, between Tiff’s years of nautical experience, Allan’s fighter-jock skills (no, really – F-16s!…these birds seriously picked the wrong boat to mess with…) and my supremeknowledge of the multiple uses of sailing line we routed the enemy and chased him squawking into the night.
With the main thrust of their attacked repelled, their forces routed and in shambles, the enemy made a final, desperate play for a beachhead on our extremely delicate solar panels, which our reserve forces quickly repelled.
Unfortunately they kept coming back, growing so bold as to land on the boat hook as we attempted to poke them with it! Eventually, with both sides weary from literally hours of intense non-stop action, our side proposed a truce: One bird on the dingy, as long as no one poops. Of course he defecated easily twice his own body weight onto our small boat and at first light his fellow bombers attempted to join him, so we rejoined the battle this time determined to offer no quarter…
Though we survived the brutal hand-to-halyard combat of that night, our boat still carries the scars of the battle …
… and, as you can see from that video, we must remain constantly vigilant for skirmisher forces lying in wait to catch us unawares. For we are alone, cut off from other allied units, hundreds of miles from shore and should our efforts fail, we would be overtaken before help could arrive. There is no truce, no peace. That is the lesson the “night of the attack of the boobies” taught us. A lesson we pass to you, my friends, from the front lines. Pray for us as we battle on…
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)
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.
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.
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.
