Two of my sons, Sean (21) and Duncan (20), came down for a week of hanging with Dad. We stayed on the boat in Paradise Village Marina, ( http://www.paradisevillagemarina.com/ ) which caused a certain amount of struggling with extra sail bags, the life jacket bag, the abandon ship bag and various other large bulky objects that have no place other than the aft stateroom to call home. Its funny that it's called an aft "stateroom". On a 40 foot sailboat the aft stateroom is a long skinny compartment that you can slide into feet first and sleep in. If your girl friend is not too large she can climb into the long skinny compartment, too, but since there were none on this trip, the size of the GF wasn't an issue. All those sail bags and gear had to come out every night, and let me tell you, it was hard to get the boys to put them away during the day. The just climbed over and around them, the house was really a mess for the week they were here.
Neither of them had ever sailed before, but both had spent some time over the years on the Titan Star with me in Puget Sound so were accustomed to water, docks, waves, wind, steering and my peculiar captaining technique, which involves frequent reminders of what to do next. You know: "Okay, now we are going to turn right. Grab the wheel with both hands. move the left hand up, the right hand down. The wheel should move clockwise. Because we are going to turn right. Are you ready? Okay, grab the wheel the way I told you and get ready to turn right .... etc., etc., etc." Important stuff, I thought. I'm sure that when the astronauts are getting ready to detach from the space station there is somebody reading checklists to the guy putting his hands on the controls, and just can't understand why it bugged Sean, especially, but oh well. He is a college boy and pretty smart, so maybe had it figured out already.
The new bit was all of the multicolored "ropes" laying about in the cockpit and on the deck and the big white pieces of cloth up in the air. Being smart kids, though, they caught on quickly and after the first sail were doing just fine. Oh, maybe things like steering for a tack, or hoisting or dousing the sails, were a bit tricky for the helmsman, but we got it done.
Banderas Bay lived up to its reputation of being nice and breezy during the winter months, and gave us 15 to 20 knot winds during the two days we sailed to Punta Mita and the Islas Mariettas. Spent the night at Punta Mita, with only a tiny bit of swell and not much wind to disturb our sleep, had breakfast in a nice little palapa restaurant, walked about the two or three blocks of town, and then headed to the Mariettas for some whale watching and dingy riding and hiking and swimming.
Had a couple of more day sails. The first day it was blowing 20 knots of wind all day, was very satisfying. The boat was really moving and they got the feel of 28 or 30,000 pounds of wind driven boat powering through the water .... I liked it, too! The last day, the wind wasn't doing much, maybe 10 to 12, trickling down to 5, so we just had a nice relaxing day watching whales and trying to catch a fish on the handline, baited with a plastic squid and a hunk of smelly chicken that had gone off in the frig because we didn't cook it in time. My new frig is really neat, SeaFrost, air cooled, no sea water pumps, uses about 1/3 of the amps that my old 1983 Alder Barbour seawater system that didn't work would have used if it did work. And guess what! You absolutely can't hear it running, which is very very cool. Nice to have things be quiet on a sail boat. Doesn't matter so much when you are running a noisy fishing boat while wearing ear plugs.....
The whales are in. No real jumping or giant tail wagging in evidence yet, but lots of rolling and blowing. It was pretty exciting. Also saw a lot of little rays hopping up out of the water frantically flapping their wings and, I suppose, hoping that whatever was trying to eat them was gone when they came down. Will be heading back out next week to look for some more of that beautiful wind and for leaping and jumping and snorting whales. They do make a lot of nose when they snort. Saying "THAR SHE BLOWS!" is a lot of fun, let me tell ya!
Sean and Duncan motored the dingy out to within maybe 30 to 50 years of a big whale that was coasting along on the surface breathing and getting ready for its next dive. I think they liked it. Then they motored over to the middle Marietta and hiked up onto the top of it - I saw them up there waving at me from afar. I stayed on the boat, being nervous about the anchor's holding power and all. New to me boat and anchor, not familiar with the weather or the currents around the Mariettas, so stayed home while they played. A tough job, but somebody had to do it.
The boat has turned out really well. Everything important is still working. Like all boats it needs some updating and some routine maintenance. It sails nicely and is comfortable, though another 10 or 20 feet would make it even more comfortable. I'm happy with it, and it's pretty much what I hoped for and expected for the price and with what I'd read about these Passport 40s before I bought it.
Had dinner one night in El Aryan, voted best Mexican restaurant in PV 3 years in a row. Back in a neighborhood three or four blocks off the beach near the northern end of the Malecon. The food was great and the wait staff were a lot of fun. The place is unpretentious and the prices really reasonable. Five stars, I say!
Check out the English language Banderas Bay newspaper, which is surprisingly (because it is in English and that's a lot of work for the limited number of English language readers here) interesting, fact filled and readable. Food, politics, what's happening, news, commentary. It's at http://banderasnews.com/index.htm
It was a lot of fun hanging with my boys. Don't see Sean much as he has been in school in New Hampshire for 3.5 years, so we did some catching up. Duncan is moving to Bellingham to snowboard and go to school, in that order I suspect, so it was a little poignant, knowing that my last kid was moving out..... Very satisfying to have them down here and to get to bond up with them. Wish the rest of them could have made it, but will enjoy anticipating their visits!
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