Last days in San Carlos

12/20/13

Closing in on our departure date, we took Chuck and Judi out to a nice Italian place to show them how much we appreciated their hospitality. It was wonderful food, the owner was from Italy, so you know the food was authentic. Marcus chose the best dish, a garlic mushroom spinach pasta that was delicious!

Soon the work we needed to do while the boat was out of the water was complete and we put her back in the water and took a slip for a couple of days. We moved out of our friends house and onto the boat, it was good to be home.

Pretty sunrises and beautiful views from friends lovely home

Since it was so close to Christmas, I suggested we have Christmas in San Carlos. We went to a Saturday night Church service and sang Christmas carols. On Christmas day, we went to the church again for more music, then to a cruisers Christmas dinner. By then we had moved the boat to a mooring out in the Bahia which was pretty nice, and was much less expensive than a slip in a marina. The down side was that when the wind picked up in the afternoon, the ride back to the boat was slow, wet, and uncomfortable. We tried to always get back to the boat by 1pm! The cruisers Christmas dinner didn't end till around 3pm and by the time we got back to the boat we were both pretty wet puppies!

sewing sail cover

Wherever cruisers gather, there is a morning net on the radio. Boaters in the area tune in to the VHF radio at a specific time, in San Carlos it is 8am on channel 78. Emergencies, people looking for rides, people heading the the US or Canada that can mail letters for others, local information, happenings, weather, sea conditions, things people want to sell or buy, kind of a craigslist on the radio.

The wet dinghy ride inspired me anew to find a little bigger, therefore dryer, dingy. One morning, we heard of a dinghy for sale, and went over to look at it on our way to go hiking. The seller was working on his boat and didn't want to show it just then, so we continued our plan to go hiking, and would look at in on our return. When we returned, he had sold it, bummer! The next day, just before we were leaving San Carlos, Marcus announced on the net that he had a solar charger controller available, and we were looking for a dinghy. A guy named Mike, on Firefly (name of the boat) responded that he needed a solar charger controller and would trade a dinghy he had for it. That was a good deal for us!! It did need some gluing, which he would do, but it wouldn't be ready for maybe a week. Lucky us, another friend agreed to bring the dinghy down to us in Puerto Vallarta in about 2 weeks. You need to be pretty self reliant cruising on a boat, so other cruisers are always ready to lend a hand when one is needed. It is an awesome network of friends, some of whom you have yet to meet!