A few more days on Malulani (Feb 16-21)

We sailed on to the little town of La Cruz, on the north shore of the Bay of Banderas where we anchored a night. Dirk rowed us all ashore the next day to we could take a REAL shower (not a boat shower) and reprovision. I bought some nice avocados and tomatoes from the guys in the produce truck. Back on he boat Dirk asked me to teach him how to make guacamole. This paid dividends, as he made a tasty batch of guacamole every day after that.

We sailed on to Puerto Vallarta, where we spent the night of Feb 16 in Marina Vallarta with the BIG power boats and the little power boat dogs. We all three decided to go downtown together for dinner. Floyd was the first onto the crowded bus. Which pulled away while he was standing on the bottom step leaving Dirk and I watching on the curb. Huh.

We managed to reunite downtown and had a nice stroll and photo session on the malecon and a fine dinner. There is a “pirate ship” that sails around the city front and fires a cannon at sunset. That was cool. Even if they weren’t really sailing.



The art along this shoreline stroll is quite memorable. Here is Dirk sitting on the lap of a creature who seems like he belongs in the Star Wars bar. Check out the laces on the tentacles peeking out from under the hem of his clothes (see pic at left).


This sculpture below carries a very moving message… I just don’t know what it is. The mama-pillow-headed thingie is crying after the children-pillow-headed-thingies who are climbing to the top of the ladder. Theories?



Dirk had a great line that he’d use when bargaining over a taxi or for something from the market. He would emphatically say, “I am not an American tourist. I am Dutch. I am not going to pay this inflated price that the American tourists pay.” It was pretty effective. This had the unintended consequence of tying him to the agricultural product so popular in Mexico and legal in Amsterdam. Once, after getting a good price on something, someone offered him some hash.

Floyd demonstrated his lack of understanding of “velocity made good” as we sailed from PV, planning to sail turn left (south out of Banderas Bay) around the dreaded Cabo Corrientes. He had the sails sheeted in as tight as he could get them and was trying to aim to the searward side of the point… but not quite making it. He wanted to keep poking along and hope that the wind would shift so we wouldn’t have to tack and could maybe just barely clear the point. Hmm… not such a good plan. We were doing three knots with 15 knots of breeze. The baggy sail just won’t point that close to the wind. When it was my turn to take the wheel, I fell off 10 degrees and the boatspeed doubled. We had to tack to get some more room to clear the point, but we would have had to do that anyway. Floyd griped that he didn’t think we were in a hurry, and wasn’t it much more comfortable when we were [underpowered] and not heeled over so far. Um… 1) Yes, we are in a hurry to get to the very small, rocky, and unfamiliar anchorage before dark, and 2) We’re close hauled. The boat is going to heel some. We`re sailing. It happens.

Anyway… we did not make it to the anchorage before dark. Floyd had insisted when he named our departure time as 10am (which I considered late), that he didn’t mind anchoring after dark, and that there would be a nearly full moon to provide some light. Of course, the moon hadn’t risen when we got there, which he hadn’t considered. He had never seen this anchorage before. I had. It was where Dan and I nearly crunched the keel on the hidden rock in broad daylight. I was white knuckled during the whole anchoring procedure and really mad at Floyd for taking such unnecessary risks. Actually, I don’t know that he even acknowledged the risk. A blissfully ignorant skipper. Great.

As we sailed and motored (when the motor worked -- it conked out a few times) south to Barra de Navidad we saw many turtles and some whales. This picture of Dirk pointing at the whales shows a little more of the excitement and fascination that accompanies a whale sighting than the blurry picture of the far-off whale spout that I took. That night I cooked spaghetti and meatballs. None of us felt so good the next day, and I was not back on solid food for two days. Stay away from the ground meat!!

We arrived at Barra, and Floyd sprang for a slip at the Grand Bay Hotel Marina. I know I already said this when Dan and I arrived here, but this place is gorgeous. Lush tropical landscaping. A string of pools connected by waterslides. A gorgeous view from the spacious and well-appointed lobby bar. Frank Sinatra reonrdings and other standard play throughout the cool interior giving the impression that it has been a stylish place to excape from it all since the 50’s, though it was only completed in the 80’s.


We can’t afford to eat here, so we went out to have a last dinner together in town. The next day I left to meet another boat. Floyd and Malulani planned to stay in the marina for a month to fix things, before heading an easy 20 miles down to Manzanillo to put the boat on a ship to Florida.

It was great sailing with Dirk. He has kindly offered to let me stay with he and his wife if I ever find myself in Holland. I hope to be able to take him up on the offer sometime.

I hope Floyd finally gets where he is going...