Pictures! finally...

After a very uncomfortable five hours, we made it into Nuku Hiva yesterday afternoon.  That means we have internet...... We've got the HP up and running and protected now with the various security programs so I'm going to attempt to post some pictures. There are tons of them so I'm going to spread it out over a few posts and give you guys a break from our day by day account of our trip.

First up...Potluck on the beach in Tahuata.  Forgive me if I don't give all the boat names and people names...we met so many people, I'm still learning.







Next up... underwater photos from our dive last week...

 

 

 

 

Enjoy for now...we're headed off to town to see what we can see.  I'll post more pictures tonight or tomorrow.  I hope everyone is enjoying their end of the week (yes, I do know what day it is)!

12/11/2010 - Continuing South

That's a Limonada in Jake's hand that is NOT his beer :)

After leaving the estuary at San Blas, we only went around the corner to Ensenada de Matanchen, a little bay right outside San Blas.  There, we had the best fish either of us has ever eaten.  It was smoked with salt, pepper, lime, hot sauce and worcestershire sauce and of course, butter.  We ate so much we made ourselves sick.

From there we went about 8 miles south to a place called Chacala.  This was a very pretty cove with palapas up and down the beach and lots of restaurants.  As we were pulling up the anchor to leave, we saw a whale right by our boat.  Incredible.  Little did we know, we would spend the next few days watching whales!

The Beach at Chacala

Downtown Chacala

Whale right by the boat!

Another close encounter with a Shrimp boat.  This was underway.

We found this little guy attached to our anchor.

Bahia de Jaltemba

Our next stop was Bahia de Jaltemba.  Here we started to get the feeling we were getting close to Puerto Vallarta.  More hotels, more restaurants and more vendors.  We anchored one night off of a little island in the bay.  The next day we moved closer to the beach so we could explore there a little.  While eating dinner we met a very nice couple from Arizona, Earl and Marge, and enjoyed their conversation very much.  It’s people like this that make cruising fun.  They were down here on vacation for four months, just relaxing and having fun.

Today we dropped our anchor at Punta Mita, the first stop in Banderas Bay.  On our way here we saw many whales and even saw a few breech!  We tried to go ashore for dinner but the swell was too much and Jake had forgotten his life jacket so we didn’t want to chance it.  So tonight we’ll eat a few steaks (our last in the freezer) and shrimp while watching the sun set over a very large golf course belonging to a very expensive Four Seasons hotel.  It looks like we have arrived in the Mexican Rivera for sure.

Jake playing more Star Wars on the front of the boat.

4/28/10 - Swimming with the seals on a Happy Anniversary!

Today is our anniversary.  I can´t think of a better way to celebrate nine years of marriage.  We took the dinghy out for Andy to dive and take some pictures.  He ran into a bunch of seals. 

Enjoy!

4/24/10 - Finally Gone.

We finally did it. We finally set sail. It turned out to be a beautiful day. We left the Police Dock in San Diego around 8:45. We pulled up the sails around Coronado Islands. At first there wasn’t much wind but by mid morning we had 6 or 7 knots and lots of sunshine. Jake got his first taste of seasickness. Literally. This is the first time he’s ever thrown up so imagine his surprise. Yuck. Poor kid. But luckily, that would be the only time on this maiden voyage. We caught three Bonita. We threw two back and had the biggest one for supper the next few days. While I was cooking dinner we had dolphins swimming on our bow. Very cool. I’ve burned dinner for lots of different reasons but never because I got distracted by the dolphins!

I had my first night watch. I’ll write more about that later, but it went ok. The next day was not quite as sunny, but the wind picked up and we made good time. On track to make it to Isla Guadalupe on Monday.