Marina Riviera Nayarit - beautiful!
Billy returned! The next day was his birthday! But he didn’t want to celebrate (he is feeling old 
) and he had a list of chores to do. He pulled apart my perfectly clean boat and pulled out a nasty, rusty muffler that needed to be welded or rebuilt. We rode our folding bikes to the bus stop, folded them up and rode into downtown Puerto Vallarta to the stainless steel welding shop. Closed! What? It’s Tuesday. Apparently it was Labor Day. They have too many holidays here or maybe the problem is everything really shuts down for all these silly holidays. We decided they were celebrating Billy’s birthday!! So Billy had carried this 20 pound muffler down and we had no where to put it. We felt discouraged and stopped down the street at a small hole in the wall restaurant with 5 things on the menu. The food was amazing! A beef dish called birria and quesadilla with mushrooms and squash blossoms. Delicious! Fortunately the very friendly owner offered to watch it for us that night. We came back in the morning and it was still there!
After returning to Firefly in La Cruz we watched a movie and then headed into La Cruz for the festival. We played the best game EVER! Throw rocks at beer bottles, if you break a bottle you get a beer. Awesome! Billy went and was missed all 3 shots. Then another young cruising couple came. He missed and she nicked one! I decided I should take a shot! Why not? I nailed one! Shattering it into a million pieces! It was awesome. The guys were joking about us girls being better
Throwing rocks at beer bottles!!!
The next few days were filled with more Firefly projects, including replacing the broken wind generator blades. I think I forgot to mention this story. While crossing the Thuantepec we caught a large tuna, Billy got excited, grabbed the gaff and stuck it straight into the spinning wind generator. Whoops! Expensive mistake!
Fixing the wind generator blades...
In the afternoons we would kiteboard. Our first day, Wednesday, we went back to the kiteboard hangout in Bucerias. It was windy. Most other girls were on 7m and 8m. Our smallest is a 10! Yikes! Also there are large waves and many other kiters. I talked with a few and got some hints for getting through the waves while body dragging with the board. I was terrible at it! After a half hour of swallowing salt water I was exhausted and feeling defeated. I came in, tried to land the kite, puff caught my kite, I got drug down the beach head first, almost crashing into two people, and was able to turn the kite and stop just a few feet before a barb wire fence. Wow! Billy ran over and released my safety, which I should have done when I first lost control. I was not thinking clearly. It was really scary. But I was unscathed because I had a thick wetsuit on. That’s when I decided I needed a lesson before I killed someone, or myself. I talked to the instructors, who had busy schedules and they said they would work something out.
Billy kiting
The next day, Thursday, Billy was doing a downwind with the group from La Cruz to Bucerias (about 3 miles.) It was really windy! 20-25! The most Billy had ever kited in. I went to help him launch and one of the instructors was there. He, Gonzo, said that his student cancelled because of the big breeze and he could teach me right then! Nice! I ran back, grabbed my stuff and hopped in the car with him. It was a great lesson!! I learned so much! It was the first time I actually got moving! The hard part with kiting here is the breeze is directly on the beach so unless you are good and can go upwind through waves you have to body drag while laying on the board. Not easy! And very tiring! Gonzo told me some great tricks and I soon got it! I would kite down the beach, because I could only go on a broad reach, the Gonzo would take the kite and board from me and kite back up the beach while I walked. It was perfect! But when we decided to end the lesson he went out to practice a few tricks and ended up crashing hard, twisting his kite and lines in a huge mess! There was no way he could relaunch so he had to wait for the kite to drag him into shore (one good thing with onshore breeze!) A friend of his got his board and eventually he made it to shore. I asked him what happened and he responded, “something you never want to have happen when you have a student.” He was very embarrassed and gave me an extremely discounted price on the lesson. It was actually good. I learned that even the really good kiters crash – I don’t need to be afraid or embarrassed about crashing!
I'm a REAL KITER NOW!!!!!
The next day, Friday, we decided to go check on our muffler because the guy at the shop is terrible at communicating! We had no idea what was going on! We had never met him (only his mom in the shop and him on the phone) and the night before he was supposed to meet us at our boat 6:30pm and kept leading us on until nearly 9:00. We walked into the shop and there he was working on our muffler! We were surprised and pleased! That afternoon we worked on the boat. There was water in the bilge that we assumed was coming from a leaking water bladder. We are soooo sick of these things! Then we also found there was a leak in a fitting underneath the bathroom sink. We were one leaky Firefly!
As Billy and I were getting on the bus to downtown on Thursday a man came running down the street saying, “Bill! Mandi! Unbelievable!” It was a friend of Bill’s from Chicago, Mike Reagan. He was down here with his friend who owned the Sig45, the fancy, fast catamaran that Billy and every guy in the marina has been gaga over. He invited us to go sailing with them on Saturday and Billy and I were ecstatic! It was an awesome day! It blew over 20knots, like it does every day here, and we were going nearly 25knots! It was awesome!!! Also, the man who owned the boat had an interesting story. He was attacked and trampled by an elephant and left for dead in Sumatra nearly three years ago. They are still trying to reattach his foot to his leg. Crazy!
Vamonos! The Sig45
Billy and I sailing the Sig45 Vamonos!
Billy and I on the Sig45 Vamonos!
Another annoying thing is our VHF antenna. It hasn’t been working. We got new cable and replaced the thin old cable in the boat. The cable in the mast was thicker and looked in better shape. Then we began testing it. The AIS was working which was good but we couldn’t get any radio checks back on channel 22. We then pulled out the handhelds but we couldn’t get them to communicate on 22 and a few other channels either. What is going on? We kept trying radio checks, nothing. We noticed the channels that weren’t working said duplex on them. Whats that? Internet search: duplex channels don’t communicate radio to radio, they go through a radio tower and are transmitted back on a different frequency. Unfortunately there are no towers here. So how do all these boats communicate on 22? And we just listened to the net on 22 last week. What the heck is going on?? After hours of messing with this and lots of failed radio checks we decided to take a break and get a beer in the bar. We got up there and started talking to the other cruisers. Did any of you hear our radio checks? They all responded, “oh my god! That was you!! You have been pissing off all of Banderas Bay for the past few hours! Everyone has been responding to your radio checks and telling you to fuck off and and leave the radio alone, it works!” Whoops! Well why couldn’t we hear anything?? One of the ladies at the marina asked us if we were on channel 22 US or Canada. No, we’re aren’t in the US or Canada why would we be on those channels? We are on international 22. Oh you can’t be on international, it transmits but does not receive. What? Why would it do that? Internet research: US 22 is not duplex but international 22 is and it transmits on the same frequency as US 22 but receives on a different frequency. How complicated! Wow! Sorry everyone listening on channel 22 in Banderas Bay!
Tearing apart poor Firefly
Sent from my iPhone
We got to Sauza just as the last tour (in Spanish) was leaving. They were apologetic and let us join the tour for free! It was a great tour! The guide spoke English and answered any questions we had. And after the tour we got a seriously delicious mango margarita and a shot of the nice stuff! Still free! WOW do they treat people right at Sauza! Then we hurried back to Cuervo for our tour which was very nice as well! We were the only English speakers so we had a private tour, including a trip to the family reserves and a lesson on tasting tequila (similar to wine with different smells, it was quite interesting!) By then it was already 4pm and we had a 4 hour drive home. I wish we could have visited some of the smaller distilleries but we still had a great time! And we really enjoyed driving through the Mexican mountains – very beautiful!
