At Anchor in Ipala

Hi Everyone!

We're on the move again after a wonderful stay in Puerto Vallarta.

Right now we're anchored in Ipala, just about 14 nautical miles South of Cabo Corrientes - just South of Banderas Bay. We left Paradise Village this morning at 630 AM and arrived just at 2 PM.

We launched our dingy and had a lovely lobster early dinner. Very tasty and very inexpensive. Just over $30 total for a 5 pound lobster grilled with garlic butter, which we split between us.

We delayed our departure a few days to see our very good friends, Lani Spund, June Lundstrom and Paul Rosenthal (we hadn't seen Paul in over 20 years!). They all were in town for a day on a cruise ship on a 7 day cruise from LA.

Tomorrow morning we're off to the Bahia de Chamela (Chamela Bay) - 50 nautical miles south of here. We'll meet up with Holly and Denis on their Perry 46 Catamaran "Tango" for Christmas. Two years ago, we were the only cruisers in Chamela for Christmas and it was wonderful with all the Mexican families, kids and Grandmas with home made tequila!

We'll give a full report in a few days.

Warmest Holiday Wishes to All!

Bill and Mary

Adventures in Puerto Vallarta

Hi Everyone!

We've been remiss at sending out an update as we've been so busy since we arrived here in Puerto Vallarta on November 14th.

The passage from Cabo San Lucas was quite uneventful. We cast off at 11 AM on Nov 12th, filled up at the fuel dock and headed out.

The remains of a tropical storm had left unsettled weather along our route, but nothing worrisome. We had no winds to speak of, with a few scattered rain clouds with distant thunder and lightning. Seas weren't too bad either. The second day all that cleared out. Unlike two years ago, we didn't have enough wind to sail so we had to motor sail the whole way.

We arrived in Paradise Village at 8 AM on the Nov 14th and pulled right into our assigned slip, E-44. This is way out at the end of the Resort and Marina (which ends at E-60). This is so far out, that locally it's referred to as "Tepic", after a town that's about 100 miles North of here.

It's actually quite pleasant down here - It's well protected, quiet, with no surge from the harbor entrance. The only disadvantages are that it's a quarter mile or more walk up the dock to the Yacht Club and the Cable TV signal mostly poops out before it get's here. We only get about a dozen, snowy channels of the 70 or so available (this is supposed to be fixed soon).

It is a good place to spot the alligators while sitting on the boat or exploring the canals beyond our dock. The mangrove trees make it look like a jungle, interspersed with lovely homes.

What is really eerie is going up the canal at night to to the "Fajita Republic" restaurant. It is totally dark except for maybe a distant light until reaching the restaurant. Just up from a dilapidated dock is the open air rustic dinning deck strung with cords of welcoming hanging lights. Good food and interesting ambiance.

The first week here was consumed with errands, boat chores and catching up with friends that we haven't seen in a while. Then off on Nov 20th, by plane, to Harrisburg PA to spend Thanksgiving with Mary's family. We had a great time visiting the family and cooking Thanksgiving dinner. The time went too fast though and soon we found ourselves back in PV.

Upon our return on Tuesday the November 28th, we joined Alice's Spanish class over at Estudio Cafe. We took the first 6 (of 10) lessons from her 2 years ago and were delighted to find that they were up to lesson 6 when we were able to rejoin. We've not missed a one since. The 10th and final lesson of her beginner series is tomorrow, Dec 13th.

Before we left for Thanksgiving, we were already organizing a trip to El Eden for a canopy tour on Nov 30th: Flying through the tree tops over a river on zip lines. So many other friends wanted to come too that we ended up with a group of 20. We had a blast zipping, eating and then sipping tequila at a local distillery. This was constructed using the old site of Schwarzenegger's Terminator movie.

The following Saturday, Dec 2nd, was the Chili Cook-off, one of our favorite events. We joined the team organized by Heidi and John on Raven. We did most of the cooking as Heidi was busy coordinating the decorations too. The team made a pirate ship out of cardboard as the team theme was "Queen Anne's Revenge - Blackbeard's favorite Chili". We re-used our pirate costumes that we had onboard for the event. I guess we were quite a site. Some of the local Mexicans were asking to pose with Bill and I and have their picture taken.

It was a great success! The team won both for best decoration and best Chili! Mary is already thinking of a possible theme for next year.

The following week we relaxed as Bill had come down with a scratchy throat. That means Bill on the computer and Mary making jewelry.

Last Saturday Nov 11th, we went over to the El Farol Restaurant in Jarretaderas (the village about 2 miles from here) with Anne and Charlie from Sunseeker to enjoy a classic Mexican holiday dish: Chiles en Nogada (Chilies in Walnut Sauce) see http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/000114print.php for a picture and recipe. It was quite delicious!

The feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is today, the 12th of December. The celebration of her day started on the Dec 1st and is continuing thru today.

There have been parades every day in the evening with floats, music, great costumes, dancing, and the locals families marching with candles. Plus all along the parade route to the church are street vendors selling all sorts of foods that we love to sample.

Hopefully we can get some of our pictures posted soon!

Warmest Regards to all for a Happy Holidays!

Bill and Mary

Ha-ha to Puerto Vallarta

Greetings everyone,

Let us just give you a wrap up of the Ha Ha. It was great fun, making new friend and seeing some old friends. There were over 600 Ha Ha participants so we never did meet everyone. But with Bill and I circulating separately we did meet a large number. In Turtle Bay we had a major pot luck and a good time to meet other cruisers. imagine a pot luck with 160 dishes.

One dramatic moment came when the crew of one boat attempted a beach landing in their dingy. It was instructional in how NOT to do a beach landing. The boat actually went vertical end over front with arms and legs flying. They were fine and even the salad for the pot luck survived. You can see a picture of this on 'Lectronic Latitude at:
http://www.latitude38.com/LectronicLat/2006/1106/Nov15/Nov15.html

Bahia Santa Maria was especially nice. The water was perfect for swimming. The surf was not too bad for landing the dingy. And the party was great. There's no village, just some fisherman's shacks. A super band from La Paz showed up with their amplifiers and a generator to power it. They were just asking for tips. They did well.

Also cooks and helpers arrived with lobster, shrimp, fish and all the trimmings, including lots of beer and ice for the party. They had to wait for low tide to be able to drive their trucks across the hard sand. We liked this bay so much that we were tempted to stay for a few more days. Some people did.

But we did push off for the last leg of the Ha Ha, to Cabo San Lucas. The wind was quite light so we motored the entire way, getting in just after dawn, as all the fishing boats came rushing out of the marina. Last time it was very noisy in the marina as the fishing boats left each morning. This time we were well positioned and did not have any of the noise. The same agricultural inspector as in 2004 came and was much more pleasant. She was only looking for beef. So we were fine. She didn't take any meat and I was able to keep the racks of lamb that we had. Hooray!

Cabo is very built up, and not a favorite of ours. Some call it Mexifornia. But we still had a good time. We had been getting lots of calls for information (which was fine) but by this time it was getting to be a bit too much. One morning we were getting ready to go up to the dock for breakfast and Bill hardly had time to get his pants on. Calls were coming in one after another. Our favorite restaurant in Cabo is NikSan (Japanese). We had excellent meals there. The first night it was a big gathering at Squid Row, lots of music and dancing. They even have the tables built extra strong for all the dancing done on top of tables. Somewhere around 11PM it just got too crowded so we returned to out floating home. All the other folks in our age group agreed that, while fun, we did not need to repeat that for several years.

The next day was another gathering at the beach with music, food drink and games. At this point we were saying good byes to some new friend and making arrangements to keep in touch or figure out where our paths would cross in the next few months.

It was all winding down now. The only thing left was the awards ceremony. Bill, along with Debbie from Sailor's Run, took a prize by popular demand for being on the radio the most. Bill also got a really great bottle of Tequila for running the radio net during the Ha-ha since the organizer's radio broke down. We came in third for our division. That may sound good but you must know the truth. For each division there is a first, a second and everyone else gets third.

The way to win is to sail all or most of the way but this was not so much a race as a rally.
The very next day we were ready ready ready to be on our way to Puerto Vallarta. To be continued...

Have a great weekend ya all,

Mary and Bill

Fish on!

Hi Everyone!

We're almost to Bahia Santa Maria and we caught our first fish! Actually two.

Just as we sat down for lunch we started across a seamount and caught 2 Dorado in 5 minutes. These are our first fish on this trip (we didn't really try until today).

The bigger was 42 inches and 18 pounds, the small 25 inches and about 12 pounds.

Fish in the freezer for dinner ;-}

Regards to all,
Mary and Bill

Bahia de Tortugas - Turtle Bay

Hola,

We are happy boaters, smiling broadly with the sun shinning down on us in Turtle Bay.

When we left San Diego we were still bundled up. We also had a nice breeze once we past the Point Loma lighthouse. At the start we were only doing 4 to 5 knots with our spinnaker up. Past the light house it got to be more fun as we passed one boat after another...not that we are racers by any means...but that is still too much fun. Soon we found ourselves looking back at most of the fleet. We are the smallest boat in our division, so we figured the larger boats were far ahead.

We were moving right along with the spinnaker until after dark. Then the winds lightened so we choose to start the motor. We also planned to sleep (3 hours for Mary, then 3 for Bill) and we did not want to fly the spinnaker single handed. But as soon as possible in the morning we had the spinnaker flying again. Yahoo! As the wind shifted to directly behind us we changed our sail plan to wing on wing. This means having the main out as far as possible on one side and the jib on a pole out on the other side.

Wow! This was great. We were flying right along over 8 knots. That's good. We stayed with that through the night and into the morning. Only when we were ready to pass between Isla Cedros and Isla Benito did we pull the main in and drop the jib. This made it possible for us to change course as needed more easily. To our surprise, this was the only place where we could see other Ha Ha boats on our radar. During the night we did cross paths with cruise ships and fishing boats.

Night sailing is special in it's own way, the moon on the water and the brilliant starts (particularly after the moon sets) are majestic sights that most of us urban dwellers don't usually see. Sailing along with the phosphorescent glow of the boat's wake are simply fantastic.

As we approached Turtle Bay the sun came out and we could shed our coats. Ah. After we passed the finish line we still had more than an hour to go to the anchorage. There were only a handful of boats in the bay at this time. It certainly felt good once we were anchored, even if we were a little short on sleep. We actually managed the night shifts better this time. We tried to get a little nap during the day, which helped. Also the seas were more gentle than when we did the Ha Ha in 2004.

The beach and the palapas called to us. So did all the children on the dock vying for our attention to "watch" our dinghy. They watched and we went to the nearest little restaurant for a lunch of pesce con mojo de ajo y cerveza fria (fish in garlic sauce and cold beer). Yum! There we met and joined the folks from a couple of other boats who arrived before us.

We got right into the swing of things, seeing friends, meeting new boaters, checking out the town. Once Bill's expertise was know, we were swamped with calls for help with radios and VHF etc. Luckily there was another boater that actually fixes radios for a living. So he helped some folks too. Last night the folks on Salt Whistle shared margaritas and their fresh catch of tuna with us, after Bill helped them with their radio. They were the Cave Clan at the "kick off" party.

Interestingly Profligate's Marine Radio was acting up, so Bill volunteered (or got drafted, depending on how you look at it) into being net control for the HaHa Fleet. All the expertise available was not able to fix their radio in Turtle Bay, so Bill is now officially net control for the Marine SSB net for the rest of the Haha. If you have a radio and are interested in listening in, it's at 4.146 Mhz (Marine 4A) at 730AM PST.

This will be our last day in Turtle Bay. The plan is for a pot luck beach party. Can you picture over 700 people on this beach, lots of food tables, music and local Mexican beer concesiones.

Warmest Regards to all,
Mary and Bill

Start of the Ha-ha

Hi Everyone!

What a wonderful day.

It's a bit cooler today than it's been for a while, but we got off to a great start this morning at 11:00 AM PST on the Baja Ha-ha. Next Stop, Bahia de Tortugas - Turtle Bay. At the present rate of progress, we should arrive around the middle of the day on Wednesday.

We left the Silver Gate Yacht Club Guest Dock this morning at 9:15 AM and made our way out to the start area. We arrived a bit early, so we motored around as the fleet gathered. There were 183 sign ups for this years rally and around 160 started. We'll have a better number tomorrow or so.

The start with this many boats is always a little hectic, so we held back from the crowd until after the start. After all it's a cruisers' rally and not really a race.

We were better prepared today than ever before and got our spinnaker up just at the start. The winds were light so we only were doing 5 knots or so for the first hour. Then the winds picked up (to around 15 knots maximum) and our speed picked up to. We have consistently averaged around 7.5 knots. We've even had periods in excess of 8!

It's now approaching sunset and winds are starting to diminish and move aft, so we're slowing down to under 7. We'll see how this holds and figure out what to do as we approach nightfall.

During the day we worked our way by most of the fleet and are now among the front 10% of the boats. We think, it's hard to figure as the boats have spread out all over the place.

We've had an occasional dolphin playing around the boat and have had an overall wonderful day.

That's the news from Raptor Dance - off the coast of Baja just off Ensenada.

Warmest Regards,
Bill and Mary

Ha-Ha Tomorrow!

Hi Everyone!

We just posted pictures of some of our highlights for the month of October on our website at http://raptordance.com

It's been a very busy 2 1/2 weeks since we got to San Diego. We ran innumerable boat errands, shopped till we dropped and generally got everything ship shape.

We had a lovely stay on the guest dock of the Silver Gate Yacht Club on Shelter Island. http://www.sgyc.org The members and staff were extremely friendly and the food in their dining room was outstanding.

Also, on October 21st we drove up to Upland California for Bill's 40th high school reunion. We saw lots of old friends. Six of the folks at the reunion went to the same elementary, middle and high schools. 5 of them were even with Bill in Kindergarten!

Today was the kickoff party for the rally to Mexico, the Baja Ha-ha see http://www.baja-haha.com and we leave the dock tomorrow at 9AM for Mexico!

We'll post position reports a few times a day, so you can follow our progress via the position reporter link on our website or directly at:
http://www.winlink.org/positions/PosReportsDetail.aspx?callsign=WB6JAO

We won't be able to check our "raptordance.com" email for the next few weeks, so use this, our winlink.org address to contact us.

Remember, please don't REPLY to this address. Send us a NEW Message!

Warmest Regards,
Bill and Mary

Dolphins at Dawn!

Hi Everyone!

Just a quick update on the news from Raptor Dance.

We had a great time the last two weeks over on Catalina Island. We met many new friends who will be going on the Ha-ha and had an interesting time at Buccaneer days. We'll report more fully in a later post.

We left Avalon Harbor just before midnight for the run over to San Diego. It was a quiet night with a just past full moon. It was a beautiful passage.

Then at dawn, we were greeted with many Dolphins playing around the boat. They've been coming and going for over an hour.

We'll be arriving at the Silver Gate Yacht Club in San Diego on Shelter Island around 10:30 AM this morning and are looking forward to seeing all our local family and friends.

Warmest Regards,
Bill and Mary

Catalina Island - Cat Harbor

Hi Everyone!

We had a wonderful week in Marina del Rey visiting with my Dad, Sam; Brother, Bob and Sister-in-law, Stephanie. We stayed at my old stomping ground, the California Yacht Club. We saw a few of my old friends, but there are a lot of new faces at the club. It was 1992 when I moved North and stopped being a club regular.

We left Marina del Rey on Friday the 29th at 10:15 AM and motored out of Santa Monica Bay in Fog and 1 to 2 mile visibility and light winds. After we passed Palos Verdes the skies cleared and we had a wonderful close reach over to the Catalina Isthmus. Again, as on our 2004 trip, this was one of the best "sails" of our trip down the coast.

We tied up at mooring G2 at the Isthmus, got out the dingy and went in to Doug's for a famous "Buffalo Milk". They're much richer than I remembered (from 15 years ago!) so we switched to beer.

The anchorage was so rolly all night that we got up at 11 PM and rigged the "Flopper Stopper". This is the first time we've used it in all our cruising so it took about an hour to figure out, rig up and deploy.

Our Flopper Stopper is an aluminum contraption 2' x 3' consisting of a frame and one way flaps. Hung off the end of our spinnaker pole, off the side of our boat, completely submerged, it acts like a one way valve. When we roll to that side of the boat, the flaps open and the water flows through. When the boat starts to roll the other way, the flaps shut and the whole think acts like a sea anchor, damping the roll. It works pretty well, we were able to sleep the rest of the night.

Enough with this nonsense! Saturday morning we talked with the Harbor Patrol and switched to mooring N1 in Cat Harbor. We're less than a mile from our original mooring, but it's absolutely flat water.

Oh, for those not familiar with Catalina Island, we did have to motor around to the other side of Catalina as Cat Harbor is on the South side of the Island and Isthmus Harbor is on the North. We left at 9:15 AM from the Isthmus and were moored in Cat Harbor by 1130. We went around the West End of Catalina for short passage of 15 nautical miles.

Cat Harbor is wonderful and quiet as it's on the "back side" of Catalina. It gets very little traffic as most folks stay on the side closest to the mainland. It's only about a 1/2 mile walk from the Cat Harbor dingy dock to Isthmus Harbor, so we can still easily get to the little store, restaurant and Doug's Harbor Reef Bar.

We're going to stay here until Monday the Oct 9th, when we'll move to Avalon, then on to San Diego the morning of the 12th. We plan to do a lot of hiking up in the hills and go diving while we're here.

This coming weekend (Oct 7th) is buccaneer days at the Isthmus. It should be very interesting... We have our "2nd string" pirate costumes at the ready (we're saving our best ones for the Ha-ha kickoff party).

That's the latest from Raptor Dance!

Warmest Regards to all,
Bill and Mary

Santa Barbara and Channel Islands Harbor

Hi everyone!

After arriving safely in Santa Barbara on Monday, Sept 11th, we got caught up in the social whirlwind, meeting some of this year's Ha-Ha cruisers.

Our trip down was uneventful. The most difficult part was at 10PM, trying to see all the channel markers as we left Morro Bay. We had fog almost the entire way. Going around Point Conception was remarkable only because the sun was shinning brightly as it rose. That did not last long. The fog retuned.

I managed to sleep some on the way down. Bill did not do as well. It was rather amusing seeing him later in the day in that "fun stage" of sleep deprivation. Being an expert in sleep deprivation from my years in the OR, I recognized what was going on with him and let him enjoy it.

Santa Barbara was an enjoyable place for us. The town is so accessible from the marina. We mainly walked but shuttles were available to the marina and up and down State Street, the main street through old town.

There is a wonderful farmers' market on Tuesdays with all sorts of vegetables and fruits, even Dragon fruit, flowers and grass-fed beef. The aromas of the basil, mint, cilantro, etc. mingled with the Spanish guitar being played in the background.

State Street is lined with restaurants and shops. These feet stop at all the interesting shops. But that's not where I made my purchases. That I reserved for Sarah's gems. Sarah and Darrell, our dock neighbor's from Alameda, were in Santa Barbara too. Sarah makes beautiful one of a kind jewelry. See http://www.saraherickson.com for just some of her work.

We even had a little fun trying out the Segways at the local dealership see http://www.segway.com/ We have seen some power boats with them ready to go on the stern. But they are still to big for our boat. Fun and easy though. What a great way to get around if you lived in town!

The best part was all the people we met. The last time we saw Pat, a single hander, was in Port Angeles, Washington. Stan, who we met in Monterey, arrived before us. Carl, Yvette, Joel and Kyle on Liberty came in the next day. Sarah and Darrell unfortunately were not continuing south with us yet. We spent some time getting to know Richard and Andrea, Flamenco dancers on Saete. They are planning on performing to finance their journey to Spain.

Then Richard, Karen and Richard (their son), on Chessie, arrived and docked by us just in time for us to convince them to do the Baja Ha-ha with us. No sooner had they pulled out than Chere with Charles and Cathy pulled in...friends made in last month in Alameda.

Now my memory is being challenged with all the names. I know I am forgetting some of them already. And to think there are 182 boats signed up for the Ha-ha all with at least 2 folks on board and many with 4 or more!

Down the road we'll get to spend more time with Mark, his wife and little 2 year old girl on Southern Star. Same with Mike Moorehouse and his wife who were busy with boat projects. We had been expecting Robyn and Chris with their boat Robyn's Nest (nice cozy name)for a couple of days. So we were happy to see them pull in.

The biggest surprise came from some buddies that we met on the 2004 Ha Ha. We kept extending our time in Santa Barbara for a couple more days. We were having too good of a time. It was a good thing. Rob and Shannon were bringing their new 1990 Angel 56 Pilot House Motor Yacht down to Mexico in a hurry. So they were not making many stops in order to get Rob back to work on Sunday. So into Santa Barbara they come with Rob and Shannon, Craig and Barbara (who sold their boat Capella) and Roger and Mona (who also sold their boat Cherokee Eagle). What a sight for sore eyes! They looked jubilant but a little tired as they/we all toasted to "cheating death again" done on arrival to each destination. John and Kay Semon of Semonship (their boat is docked in Santa Barbara) drove down to make our group complete.

Santa Barbara held one more surprise for us...a wind shift that brought fine ash down on us and the entire area. It came from the fires roaring away up near Magic Mountain. That lasted for two days. Then the wind shifted again to blow it in the opposite direction. It was a pain to be scrubbing it off the boat. At least we could hose down and scrub the boat. It's not so easy for the home owners.

We finally broke our ties to Santa Barbara and moved on a short distance to the Pacific Corinthian Yacht Club, Channel Island Harbor, Oxnard. It's a nice club, complete with pool, Jacuzzi, bar and restaurant. Here we met up with Len and Norma, also friends from the 2004 Ha-ha. What a kick! We definitely had some laughs getting together.

Tonight we are having dinner with Don Anderson and his wife, Joan, from Summer Passage, a Valiant 47 see:
http://www.csus.edu/indiv/f/foxs/Summer%20Passage/sumpas_index1.html

Don is the famous and most helpful weatherman for cruisers, especially in Mexico. He not only gives the weather projections but helps all the cruisers learn what to expect and how to anticipate the weather. We'll report back on this later.
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Our next stops:

Sept 22 - arrive in Marina del Rey - California Yacht Club

Sept 28 - leave Marina del Rey for Catalina

Oct 16 - arrive in San Diego - Silver Gate Yacht Club

Let us know if you would like to come visit us or go day sailing!
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That's all for now from Raptor Dance!

Warmest Regards,
Mary and Bill