Into Barra De Navidad

So first off i would like to say sorry for not posting for the last 2 weeks. Barra has been a whirlwind of entertainment, food, friends, waves, and smiles. To give you all an idea, ill try and explain what has happened to us the last couple of weeks.
We left san blas and headed south, to Punta Mita, rode a "chicken" bus around to la cruz gave ourselves a good scare with the bus driver on those roads and enjoyed some shopping. We left Punta Mita and headed around cabo corrientes and anchored off of Ipala. The anchorage was a little rough there, but we still managed to cook up a tempura feast of fresh red snapper, and all sorts of veggies. We used the leftover tempura and rolled a bunch of suhi rolls as well, which made for great meals on our trip down to Chemela the next day.
At Chemela we braved the dingy landing and got to shore through the waves, no problem. too easy it seemed.  we enjoyed a meal under a palapa, as well as a bucket of beers and watched the sun set. When it came time to get back out through the waves... well the waves won when the motor didn;t want to start when it was supposed to. We completely swamped the dink. 3 years ago while at Chemela we had done with same thing.... Chemela 2, us 0.
The trip from Chemela to the laguna in Barra de nadivad was great, we even hit 11 knots! we managed to get into the lagoon with only a minor running aground on the prevalent sand bars. Finally we are in barra again!
Barra greated us with a bang. We made it in time for Super bowl sunday and the semi famous PK's pig roast. we grilled a 85 kilo pig for 12 hours, and then opened up the bar to 70 happy superbol waters. all was free, and everything in the fully stocked bar was consumed by the end of the game. 20 cases of beer, and more or less 3 bottles of every kind of booze you can imagine, it made for a happening party and some wicked hangovers the next day. and so began the trip down the rabbit hole that is barra. we have reunited with old friends, made many more new friends and spend our days, walking the quiet pleasant streets, eating the amazing food, laying in the sun on the beach, or laying on our surfboards catching rides that take you all the way to the beach. So i have to go into the food here. It is the best. it is cheap and delicious. We have Liquados (fresh fruit smoothies) in the mornings when we get to town. Some mornings the French baker, who makes rounds of all the boats in the marina and laguna every day with fresh baguettes, chocolate croissants key lime pies etc, comes by to deliver anything we want and we happily hand over our pesos for breakfast delivered to the boat. when we are not at the beach, eating meals, or walking up and down the main drag, we go to the Sands Hotel and Pool where we keep our surfboards and tie up the dingy and lay around the pool, chat with friends, and use the internet. Barra comes alive at night. this daytime sleepy surf town has a nightlife that basically rocks! taco stands open up to serves food from 10-2 some earlier and some later. For those of you who have ever had taco bell after or during a night of drinking... then you might undersantd when i say that the food here is like having 15 different styled taco bells but cheaper and 100x better. and that just covers the taco stands! we have eaten so many $1 quessadillas and tacos cooked on bbqs made out of tire rims, many of which are hands down the best tacos we have all ever had. one place in particular, mariams.com as its called is worth mentioning as we have all agreed it is the best of the best.
Things are niot always good, and we finnally hit a bump when we woke up one morning and found our dingy floating off in the mangroves. we recovered the dink, but not our motor... someone decided to cut our painter and make off with our kicker.... @$$!0!$. what a bummer. Thankfully they have a great water taxi service here, so we can poay our 25 pesos for round trip tickets to the lagoon and back.
Our friend Tokkie on ata Marie came into town, and we have spent a bunch of time having afternoon cocktails aboard their boat in the marina. he has been kind enough to loan us passes to use the grand bay facilities. He went above and beyond on valentines day and took us all out for a group valentines day dinner at the grand bay restaurant, where we enjoyed a most excellent 8 course meal. Thanks Tokkie!
The day before valentines day we met another group of young cruisers, 5 seasonal firefighters from cal poly who are all on a 36 foot boat. We enjoyed spending a day out surfing with them, and sharing some stories and experiences, and really enjoying the fact that there were other young boaters out there! We all agreed to meet up on their boat fro drinks that night, and as it happened to be, there were 10 Norwegian girls in town visiting from the reality TV that they are filming in chemela. So it ended up that there were 20 people on board this 36 foot boat, all drinking and dancing and in general having the best party on the water the laguna has ever seen. I have never seen a better performance of 20 people from all over singing Coolios gangster paradise. What a fun time everyone had! We hope all the dudes from three sheets have a safe and surf filled journey northward. They were super cool and sold us a spare outboard motor, which after some TLC we got running and it is sooo good to have "wheels" again. We are looking forward to the next week, as we are taking friends out for a day sail, then throwing a rib dinner party for a fundraiser for the new motor.
On a different note, Luke and Jacqui will be departing the Gadfly II crew soon. They woke up one morning with the calling to go to Tailand, and so bought tickets and will be leaving to the other side of the world at then end of this month. We have all really enjoyed our time together, and it will be sad to see them go, but I wont lie, tailand sure does sound amazing. so that catches us up a bit here, and I will try to post more stories and tell you all about the water slide parks and other fun things we find ourselves doing here, as well as add more pictures. The internet is always on then off, so hopefully it will come back on so I can actually post this!

Isla Isabella - San Blas

We left La Paz on monday a little after noon headed south, south east on course to Isla Isabella. We had beautiful seas, steady winds around 10-14 and a wonderful sail to cover the 300 miles. We stood our watches, slept, read books, watched huge pods of dolphins, and ate light meals, watching our miles to destination meter tick off. We arrived at isla isabella around 3 am early thursday morning. The moon had just came up to help light the way in, but it didn;t reveal what our spotlight did once we turned it on. A crazy maze of fishing nets everywhere! We had to weave and dodge the floating buoys, ( old milk jugs and soda bottles holing the nets) to get into the anchorage. It was a little stressful to say the least. We hooked up real nice in the rocks on our second attempt, in about 15 feet of water with the sound of waves breaking on the beach. We opened a beer to enjoy and after, satisfied that we were holding went to bed. The next day we did some snorkeling around, and then loaded up in the dingy and headed to the beach. This island is full of birds, and that understates it. There are birds everywhere, circling in the air, nesting on ground, roosting in trees, and dead. we found the education center? where they have a visitor guest book. we looked back a dozen pages and found our names from 3 years ago, pretty cool. We went for a nice walk, attempting to go around the whole island, but the trails had been overgrown, and we settled for a shorter hike. Plus we had ben invited for drinks aboard a very nice expensive looking motorsailer, and we had wings to cook up for dinner! Well our afternoon aboard our new friends boats is a story in itself, but for now lets just say we, had some drinks, ate some great food, and made new friends. We left happy and got a great nights sleep, and woke up to shakira waka waka in the morning for some sunrise dancing before we pulled up our anchor and headed the 37 miles to San Blas, and the promise of even warmer water and coconuts! Along the way we saw a bunch of wales, playing around, breaching out of the water. Whale watching never gets old. :)
We made San blas in the Afternoon, and set our hook. The water temop was now reading 72 degrees, getting nicer. We all decided to hope in and go for a paddle over to SV Lady Hawk and say hello. We knew Lady Hawk from 3 years before when we had been sailing and it was nice to see them again. With the surf not happing, we improvised and started towing us behind the dink on the longboard. It was great to stand up and get to wake surf. our motor was a little underpowered, but then Mike from Lady Hawk got in his dink with the 15 horse outboard, and with that pulling us, we could really fly around on the boards. We spent the rest of the evening towing ourselves around the bay, and then enjoyed a fabulous completion dinner of giant tacos, fresh salad and spicy chinese noodle dish. It seems that every day gets better then the next. We are eagerly looking forward to our prawn cook tonight, 2 kilos of camarones, here we come!

Hasta Luego La Paz!

    After having a blast in La Paz and Kite Boarding in La Ventana it is time for Gadfly to continue on to Isla Isabella.  It will be a roughly 300 mile passage back across the Sea of Cortez and should take about 3 days.  Wind forcasts are very favorable and we anticipate smooth sailing.  We want to put a shout out to Nates Uncle Irl, Aunt Barbara, and Roy Greening who had a huge hand in making this dream come true.  Just a little history of Gadfly II for you.  She is a Kaiulani 38' designed by Ted Brewer and built in Maine by John Yohe for Roy and Barbara Greening in 1986.  You can check specs here:   http://www.tedbrewer.com/sail_steel/kaiulani38.htm
     After traveling much of the east coast, and Great Lakes, she was hauled out and trucked to the West Coast where Roy and Barb travelled north through the inside passage until reaching Juneau where they worked in the medical field and settled.  Roy developed cancer and passed away leaving Barb, Gadfly, and their beautiful home on the southern Alaska coast behind.  Years later, Nate's uncle Irl developed a strong friendship with Barb and they eventually fell in love.   In 2005 Nate and his father Steve hiked the Chilkoot Trail with Irl and Barb.  During the excursion there was much discussion about the future of Gadfly II.  Barb was reluctantly attempting to sell her as she was in need of serious maintenance and becoming a burden.  Nate and Steve offered to take her over and maintain her.  They both had a lot of sailing experience and wanted to do some world traveling.  Gadfly II would be the perfect vessel.  Thinking she would be sold soon they never expected what happened next.  Barb had some people lined up to purchase but the deal fell threw.  She called them and asked if they were serious about wanting Gadfly.  They said "Of Course!"  and she responded with "Well come get her!"  7 months later all 4 of them were headed south through the inside passage together.  Barb and Irl said goodbye to Gadfly II in Port Townsend Washington.  Steve and Nate continued south to Ventura California where Gadfly was hauled out and underwent a major 2 1/2 month overhaul.  Nate designed a new stainless tower with davits and solar panels and a new paint scheme honoring her Alaskan roots.  Lots of time and $$ was invested to get her up to date and pretty once again.  After splashing her, Nate and Steve continued south to Mexico where they met many fellow cruisers and developed friendships with people from all walks of life.  Sean Schesinger and Luke Bishop were some of those people.  Then aboard SV Cloud Dancer they had just finished college and were on a cruising vacation of Mexico.  Gadfly and Cloud Dancer met up in Cabo San Lucas during New Years of '07/'08.  Continued buddy boating south creating many memories and having lots of laughs.  Eventually anchoring in Barra de Navidad where they spent almost 3 months with lots of new friends.  They left Barra de Navidad in late March and travelled back North to San Carlos where Luke's parents have a beautiful house overlooking the bay.  Gadfly II was hauled out and put in Marina Seca (Dry Storage) awaiting it's crew for the next season.  Things didn't work out completely according to plan due to the economy and took a couple of years before we could get back to Mexico.
     But here we are 2011 and settting sail once again!  The current crew of Gadfly II includes:
Nathan Palmer
Jacqui Bishop
Sean Schesinger
Luke Bishop
     We are a crew of young, adventurous persons with similar interests and varied skills.  Very key to the success and over all enjoyment of our voyage. We are trying to figure out ways to extend our voyage through sponsorships and donations.  We are capturing lots of great video footage and and pictures.  If anyone out there has friends in the "Industry" we are very interested in any help that they may be able to provide.  Thanks for subscribing to our blog and please be patient as we will have some edited video up for your enjoyment soon!
    May you be smiling down on us Roy!  And another BIG thanks again to Irl and Barb up in Juneau, AK.  We love you lots!

San Carlos to La Paz

we set our sails a little after noon and left San Carlos with winds blowing 10-14. Auto pilot wasn't cooperating, so we began 2 hour shifts steering in the following seas. it was an amazing sail from San Carlos to La Paz. we topped out at 9.3 knots, and spent most of our second day in flat seas, doing a peaceful 3-5 knots. We arrived in La Paz and dropped anchor a little after 9 in the morning on the 18th. Its warmer here, we are happy to be soaking up the sun. Last night we put our BBQ to use and enjoyed a feast to celebrate our first crossing. We plan on going to swim with whale sharks this afternoon and then meeting with new friends for dinner, drinks and a pink floyd show.

Anchors Away

Ready, set, wait! Gadfly II and the crew are ready to set sail but alas the weather is less than accommodating. A strong wind system has been blowing down the Sea of Cortez creating high seas and unfavorable winds, as such our departure date has been pushed back to Sunday. It will be nice having the extra day to say good-byes and run to the mercado for those last minute provisions. The crew also likes the idea of smooth seas for our maiden voyage.

The mooring lines will be released at 12 noon and we will set sail, waiving to friends and admirers, our course will be south and our adventure will begin the next chapter. La Paz here we come!

                          

In the Water

3 days in the yard at the marina seca, and we had Gadfly II ready for the water. We put her in yesterday around noon, and all is well. We are hooked on a mooring in bahia san carlos, thanks to our friends Chuck and Linda. its calm and wonderful to be floating again! Now we must stow everything to make ready for our trip, with our first passage being to La Paz.