Puerto Vallarta to Isla Isabel:
Our stop in Nuevo Puerto Vallarta, Paradise Village Marina, was in the end for almost a week. We did some small jobs on the boat; cleaning of salt, varnishing some wood and added a new top lift for the spinnaker pole. We thought we had enough rope in front of the mast but no.. Now we have 2 spinnaker halyards, one Code 0 2:1 purchase, one genoa halyard, one heavy weather halyard 2:1 purchase and now the new top lift. We came also in to a good routine with morning exercise, running for Maren and roller skis for Karl Otto. We went over to the old city one evening for a little sightseeing, came first to a pub with a million different types of Mexican beer, and as the Norwegians we are, we had to start at the top and work through. We ended at a very good local fish restaurant – the food here is great!
Vallarta sightseeing
Resort life!
The trip from Puerto Vallarta to Isla Isabel was in no wind. Karl Otto saw some giant animals (enormous rays or whales) in the bioluminescense (morild). We have often spotted the dolphins when they look like torpedos around the boat in the night, but these three giants were slow and different than that.
When we got to Isla Isabel and had anchored we swam in to the shore. It was not a very dinghy friendly beach and with our two last pretty hazardous landings we thought swimming was safer. The water is the clearest we have seen in the Pacific since we came out of the Panama Canal.
The bird life on this remote island is extraordinary. Pelicans, seagulls, and gannets off course, but it is the frigate birds that “own” the island, and the bluefooted Boobies that caught most of our attention. There was also a lot of the green Iguanas here. At the beach we met a lot of bird researchers. One of them had found that the bluefooted boobie couples with one juvenile and one older parent manages to raise the kids best. Apparently it does not matter who is the oldest.
Bluefooted Boobies
Frigate birds
Iguanatime
Pelicans and other birds
We sailed from Isla Isabel in the afternoon and are going for a good weather window starting on Sunday for the Bahia Bash. It is going to be light headwind and now in May it is the best we can hope for. On the way over South of Sea of Cortez Maren had the comment of the day; it`s getting colder! I agreed and had to put on the shorts and t-shirt after an hour.. In the evening and second night it actually got to be quite nasty weather, especially the seas. From three directions 2-4 m high. The wind was as usually on the nose, 20-30 kts. Now we are in San Jose, 20 miles from Cabo San Lucas, and we will start from here tomorrow afternoon.
