A Bad Case of Dockitis

Valentine's Day dinner at La Cava Martinez with Wendy and Mark of Sol Mate

I'm sitting in the yacht club lounge at Marina Nayarit in La Cruz, enjoying the first reliable Internet service I've had in over a week. We have now been here almost three weeks, and the plan (written in sand at low tide, remember) is to head south late next week. The Capt is first going to drive the VW Westfalia down to Barra de Navidad where he'll park it at our friend Fred's house, then he's going to try to get us a slip at our secret marina, catch a bus back here and we'll set sail. If all goes well, we'll buddy-boat with two other vessels, Far Country and Sol Mate. Although they'll probably leave us far behind, being bigger and faster boats.

I'm hoping the first night to stop at Yelapa, the last anchorage to the south in Banderas Bay, so we can spend a few hours in that unique village that can only be accessed by boat, even though it's not on an island. Imagine, no auto traffic. Maybe I'll even meet Maria, whose Yelapa blog has provided me with so much information about that interesting place.

I have photos, but not on the laptop, so I'll have to plug them in later after I've transferred them from my other 'puter. Yes, we are traveling with four computers, three of which actually work. Don't ask why.

So far I've seen the back of one whale and a whole flock (pod? flock? school?) of stingrays about the size of an 8x11" sheet of paper, which we were able to capture on video. My friend Juliet, who's now in Santiago, says that's where the whales are.

I still love La Cruz, but we're finding ourselves doing a lot of repairs, provisioning and socializing, and no cruising. In fact, we've only been out in Banderas Bay once. And the marina, as the Capt remarked this morning, is starting to feel like a trailer park.