Sail Cutthroat

1 December 2006

Since Monday morning when Carol and Pat returned to Tampa, we have spent the week cleaning the boat up, discovering the local area, and basically not doing much at all. Wednesday we took the buses to old town.

We walked along the boardwalk - PV is really a beautiful town especially along the coast with many hotels, restaurants and beach. There is a boardwalk that goes on for miles home to numerous brass statues along the way. Some of the local artists create gorgeous sand sculptures and the para-sailing boats are ready and more than willing to get you high in the sky. The shops range from the very upscale to the local flea-market variety.

So what do we do all day in our little paradise marina? Some of you have asked. Great question by the way. The short answer is that our days here are similar to those in San Diego…post retirement anyway. Since it’s still dark much later in the morning we don’t get the coffee going until almost 7AM…I know, that’s pretty much unheard of in our past life. Then sometimes we get up, other days we don’t for awhile. The cruisers’ net comes on the VHF radio at 0830 - don’t want to miss that. That’s where you find out what all is happening. For example, this weekend J-24 sailboats have the world championship races right here in Banderas Bay. In racing sailboat speak, this is a very big deal. Tomorrow night is a Chili Cook-off at the Yacht Club to benefit one of the local schools, and Sunday we have some good friends from San Diego, Joe and Nemira who are here on vacation dropping by. I think we may get to go sailing with them. Oh yeah, that’s pretty much why we’re here.

Roger is going to the gym (they have a great gym/spa here at the resort) and I am swimming laps pretty much every day. That’s our healthy living attempt. We are also benefiting here from not knowing too many people yet. That means, there isn’t the daily happy hour - we’re trying to remedy that though. We do have sociable boat neighbors. The folks next door are also from California, at least Walt is. Gail is from Louisiana. They have a 65 foot Mason and spend 6 months here on the sailboat and the other 6 months on their 85 foot barge in France. That is sounding very cool! It sounds like a lot of fun - you eat great French food (and the wine) and you don’t have much of an investment in electronics which is a huge cost savings!

The marina is full to capacity. As a matter of fact the VHF is alive with calls from cruisers trying to get a slip here. Unfortunately there is “no room at the inn” as they say. The place is booked through the end of January. This is a very popular locale. The marina consists of about 260 boats varying in size but ours is on the small end of the spectrum. While there are many in the 40 - 50 foot variety, there are many more in the mega-yacht category. About half of the boats have people staying aboard with many more arriving daily. It is common for people to leave their boats here through the summer rather than making the much more difficult trip back up the coast. The ride down is easy with the wind behind you most of the way but the return trip is something again. You buck the wind and seas the entire way making for a “muy” uncomfortable ride.

So the cruising group is split into factions. There are those who bring their boats down and back each year, those who bring them down and leave them for many years, and then those who are here to jump off to points beyond…like us.

We’ll talk about the points beyond in another update.

Having fun in Paradise from the Cutthroat Crew…