Sailing on Pelagic with John (March 15 - 21)

On the morning of Wednesday March 15, John picked me up from Che Bella in his dinghy to get out to where his boat, Pelagic, was anchored in the nearby lagoon. We set sail later that morning. The wind was coming from the south and we had the unexpected pleasure of being able to turn off the motor and sail north for 15 miles, to Tenacatita Bay. This is a lovely bay that I’d visited by boat a couple of times already. The eastern shore of the bay happens to be where La Manzanilla, the town I’m building a house in, is located.

We had looked forward to doing some snorkeling, or maybe even some SCUBA diving (John is a SCUBA instructor), but the visibility was terrible. The water was very green. Darn! I thought I was finally going to be able to do a dive down here. The next day we took the dinghy two miles across the bay from where we were anchored to La Manzanilla to buy some groceries. We wanted some chicken, but the chicken lady was not at her chicken-selling table on the main street. One of the shop keepers nearby explained that she had sold out and was out killing a couple of more chickens right now. Twenty minutes later, we ha purchased some fresh yard bird. I saw the construction worker I had hired the previous week to do some utility work on the lot. In two days he had aquired the permit to put my water vault in the street and said the land would be cleaned of brush by tomorrow afternoon. Progress!

John is a nice guy. From a distance he looks like a real tough guy, tall, muscled, usually wearing a bandana on his head and dark glasses, a couple tattoos, a dark tan, and generally a serious expression. But then you look closer and notice that the tattoo on his shoulder is a friendly little dolphin and the one on his calf is a pretty butterfly. Art that you might expect to find on the lower back of a twenty-something girl. He is also the only man I have ever seen wear a toe ring. He likes to cook. And bake. And he listens. Very surprising. A very nice change from the last two skippers I had been with, Jerry and Floyd.

We had a great adventure involving high winds, tall seas, and engine trouble... That story is locked up on my computer that won't start. When I get back to the states and CompUSA fixes my warrantied laptop, I'll post the story and pics.

Back in Barra de Navidad (March 9-14)

At the end of a long bus ride, I was back in Barra de Navidad. This is the marina Dan and I had sailed to in December, and also where I had left Floyd a few weeks earlier. It felt a little weird being on Dan's boat without Dan, but after the chaos of living with 5 people, a little solitude was welcome. I love this boat and I love this marina… or really the hotel, it's gorgeous, plenty of roads winding through the hills to go running on, pools connected by waterslides, lush tropical vegetation, free towels, and decent books at book exchange. Its located across the channel from the town of Barra, and you need to take a water taxi or dinghy to get back and forth from town. A bit inconvienent, but makes for a more relaxed atmosphere than if it was connected to town.

The Grand Bay Hotel, as seen from the water taxi.

And its the only place in Mexico I know of where a French Baker comes around to the docks by panga with sweet treats and fresh bread every morning. My new plan was to stay on Che Bella, when Dan gets back at the end of the month, I will crew for him up to the Sea of Cortez. Until then, I'll get some work going on the house in La Manzanilla, start looking for housing in SF on Craig's list for the summer, finalize my summer job, sample the local selection of pirated DVDs, and put in some time by the pool.

The boat had been "put away" and I needed to do some things to make it more livable. As I was changing the prop on the outboard and assembling the porta-bote so that I could get to town without taking the water taxi, I fully appreciated how much harder it is to do this stuff alone. I don't know how singlehanders do it. But I managed. After getting the dinghy up and running, I did a victory lap into town to pick up laundry and check email. While at the internet cafe, John of the sailboat Pelagic walked in and sat at the computer next to me. We had been emailing since November about me possibly crewing for him and we had met down in Zihuatenejo, but the timing had never worked out quite right. He was planning to head north to Puerto Vallarta in the next week, and wanted to know if I'd like to crew for him. A week sailing north sounded good, and I told him I'd join him.

John wasn't the only familiar face I saw in the marina. Rita was there for a couple days. Guess she didn't make it to Costa Rica. Floyd was still there, also. Someone had told me that after looking for and not finding crew to help him go to PV, that he'd taken off on his own after refueling. But somehow he damaged his rudder at the fuel dock, and had no steerage, so he was sitting in the marina until that got fixed. He was gone before we ran into each other to say hi and catch up... just as well.

On Sumatra in Puerto Escondido (Feb 28 - Mar 2)

I came to realize that part of what Jerry likes about being skipper is making people jump whenever it suits him. This is different then making people jump to get something accomplished. As a result being on Sumatra was like a constant fire drill. The one time we put up the main, he sent all four of us to the mast (instead of one or two) and then stayed at the wheel and didn't say anything when he was ready for us to pull the halyard. I called back for him to put it into the wind and release the main sheet. To signify that he had put it to the wind, he crossed his arms and sulked, letting the boat steer off of where it should have been. Instead of having one crew stay behind to work the main sheet, he forgot about it. There was much yelling and confusion and was about the least coorinated putting up of a sail I'd seen since I'd been down here.

But the most disturbing thing was his odd attitude toward safety equipment. He all but flatly refused to make sure there was a lifejacket available for everyone on board during the overnight passage to Puerto Escondido. There was one for John burried under 50 pounds of sail in a hatch on deck, and he thought that was a good place for it to stay. He didn't want it in the cabin, because it "takes up too much room". Then he was very snappish when we had questions about how the life raft worked, though this was probably more because he couldn't remember how it worked than an aversion to talking about safety equipment. Nevertheless, after an infuriating conversation and having him yell at me for asking a reasonable question about safety equipment, I had pretty much made up my mind to leave. His ignoranance and arroganance reminded me of Ricky Gervais' character in the British series "The Office".

When the wind picked up to ideal conditions, 15 knots on the beam, we did get a bit of sailing in before dinner. Jerry assigned the night watches, taking the easiest 7-10 pm one for himself. As he had never taught the crew how to use the GPS, and hadn't bothered to wake up to check on things until 7 am, Libby steered us right on past the waypoint for about 20 miles, before he got up to correct the course. Anyway... when the wind was ideal again in the morning, he didn't want to sail. So we motored into Puerto Escondido. The anchorage area was surprisingly deep -- 50 feet in the shallow areas. He headed so close to the breakers looking for shallower water I really thought he was going to roll the boat. I was not having any second thoughts about my decision to leave.

I started sending out emails, trying to piece together a backup plan. Jerry wouldn't tell us how long Sumatra was going to stay in P.E., but I figured I had a few days and could tolerate him a bit longer rather than opting for a hotel. His treatment of the crew got worse when there were other people around. While he was showing some other cruisers around the boat he and yelled to Libby to “Fetch me a margarita!” And then got a litte huffy when she said, "No, I'm busy making dinner, why don't you make yourself a margarita." The only way to get to shore was in the dingy, which only he was allowed to use, and despite my request for some notice of when we might go to shore, he would never tell me more than 10 minutes in advance. The fire drill continues.

Jerry decided to hire a panga (small fishing boat) to go fishing one day, and invited us all to chip in $25 each to go along. I declined as I thought it was a bit silly as we could have done this on our own since we have a boat and fishing poles… and didn’t want to spend time with Jerry in smaller boat. They had great success, catching 2 sailfish which each weighed at least 100 pounds and also 2 smallish dorado!! Audrey cleaned the dorado and I was happy to make some ceviche out of it. The sailfish went ashore with the fishermen to get cleaned. We met it later at a restaurant, where delicious filets of it had been prepared in a couple of different styles. Yum!

Martin the fisherman, an excellent example of Mexican machismo, driving his boat by sitting on the outboard engine.

After dinner, the fisherman, Martin, who was a little sweet on me, took us all out to a rodeo. The opening event was cowgirls arm wrestling. Awesome. We arrived too late to get seats, but Mexicans are short. So its not to hard, even for me, to see over their heads. It was quite an event, lasting all night. The main event was this cowboy named Joan Sebastain (yup, a guy named Joan) who has a bunch of pretty horses that dance around. And he has a band, too, which was blaring banda music on its own on a side stage before joining him on the mainstage. Leading up to the main event were a bunch of guys riding bulls. At one point we were perched up above the chute that they run through when one got loose. I think it made it out to the parking lot before they got it under control again. Only in Mexico. This place was packed, there were Mexican cowboys all over the place, perched on every wall and every rail. Audrey climbed up on the rail of the chute as a bull went by and nearly caugh a horn in the leg. She's pretty bold. We didn't actually stay long enough to see Joan play, by 11 pm we were tired of standing and decided to leave.

I bought a bus ticket out of town for March 7. On my final dinghy ride into shore, with my bags and computer loaded in, Jerry stalled the boat in the surf, allowing a wave to break over the transom and get my stuff wet. Its hard to say if it was incompetence or malice, but at that point I stopped caring, and was glad to be done with him. I was glad I had protected my stuff in garbage bags, which seemed unnecessary at the time. With great sense of relief I caught the 8 pm bus headed north. 27 hours and 2 bus transfers later, I arrived back at Che Bella, Dan’s boat. Before he left for the states for a month, he offered to let me stay on it in case things didn’t work out with Jerry. I didn’t think I’d find myself back here, but was very happy to be somewhere familiar and quiet and comfortable.