As time passed and we realized how late in the season it was getting, we started to get a bit antsy.   In reality, the weather windows were opening late this year and we just had not been ready for the first one (and as it turned out, that first one was a bit of a bust with a fair bit of light air).   The second window was opening and we were eyeballing it to decide if we were ready – we were not, but it was a good push to get ready for the next one!!

We finally headed out for the big provisioning trips.   We decided to start with Costco, not something we were really excited about!   We were able to make the day much better when we started with lunch with my Aunt and her partner, who had been staying in Puerto Vallarta for a few months.   After that wonderful lunch and visit, we headed off to Costco – Owen was adamant that we would not exceed one cart – he forgets how good I am at Tetris!!!    We slowly made our way through the aisles, adding all the essentials to our cart – trying to reasonably decide how much we needed and what items would be hard to get as we moved along.   When we finally approached the till, our one cart was overflowing – by the time the Costco employee had gotten through with it, we had two carts  – apparently she did subscribe to my Tetris philosophy!!    We called an uber and after stuffing her trunk with bags and boxes, we were off to La Cruz – arriving back at the dock after dark and quickly realizing that we were not going to be able to get everything back to the boat in one load!!  Instead, we loaded everything down to the dinghy dock, loaded the dinghy with all the items that would be easy for Owen to toss up onto the deck himself, and he headed off to the boat.   I perched myself on the case of milk, and awaited his return.   Once we got back to the boat I realized that I now had to do something with 2 dinghy loads of items!   My first plan was to put all perishables in the fridge and leave everything for morning.   Unfortunately, I quickly realized that the giant bags of cheese were not going to fit in the fridge in their current state and had to spend an hour separating them and vacuum sealing portions.   The next day saw me portioning out bacon and canning hamburger.   Slowly, I managed to stash most everything that we had brought back with us into nooks and crannies all over the boat – the amount of packaging garbage that I got rid of is somewhat astonishing!!  

And so, feeling rather proud of myself for getting that load packed away, I decided that we had better head off on the next round.   We headed off to Soriana for what I thought wouldn’t be a terribly huge shop – I knew I wanted to stock up on a bunch of canned items but somehow ignored the size of the list still to be bought – we again left the store with two carts!!!   This one was a bit more compact and we were actually able to get everything back to the dinghy in one load – with several items on my lap!   And as it goes, I again had to figure out how to stash everything away.   I had a couple of collapsible crates already and bought a third, larger, one at Costco.  I also had a couple of soft sided baskets.   My plan was to load all of the “overstock” into these crates and baskets and to line them up along the back end of the v-berth.   The paper towels, toilet paper, etc. could be stacked further forward.   After another day of hard work I had everything packed away in a fairly organized fashion.    I then realized that I actually needed to get several items out of the abyss – the storage that is under the v-berth – and of course at that time, under all of my organized provisioning!!!  Ugggh. 

We had been pondering whether to go to a dock for a couple of days and finally decided that, with the relentless rolling in the anchorage, we would need to be at a dock in order to send Owen up the mast to do a rig check.   We finally headed into the marina on a Sunday morning and jumped right into the jobs that needed doing,   I spent the day scrubbing Solstice Tide from bow to stern, getting layers of salt and grime off of her.    Owen spent the day futzing with projects below deck.   Once the sun had started to set, I hauled Owen up the mast – he checked all the rigging fittings, changed out the lashings for the spreader boots and cleaned and greased the VHF antennae connection.  

In an example of our excellent planning, rather than spend the Monday getting more jobs done, we realized that we needed to head to Puerto Vallarta – we had to get pieces of acrylic plexiglass cut to replace our salon windows.   Owen had reached out to the only contact we had been able to obtain a couple of weeks previously, only to be told he was on holiday until this Monday.  And so, fairly early Monday morning we jumped on the bus headed to PV – we intended to get the windows and then stop in Nueva Vallarta on our way back to La Cruz in order to begin the check out process and then continue on with our job list.   Instead, as we were nearing PV, Owen got a message from the window guy to indicate that he would not be at his shop until 3pm!!   Well drat!   By this time, we were rolling into PV so we got off the bus, grabbed a coffee and decided to do the day in reverse.  Our first challenge was getting out PV – it only occurred to us at that point that we had only taken the bus to PV – never from it – we had no idea how to get on a bus going north- they just kept flying by us in the other lane.   Finally, too frustrated by the day already, I ordered an Uber.     When Owen had asked one of the local bus drivers about heading to Nueva he had said that we had to get to Walmart and get a bus from there – as the Uber headed around the corner from where we were picked up, we spotted the Walmart – and the bus exchange!  Oh well – we know for next time.  

We took the Uber to the Port Captain – thankful to have done so when we realized they actually closed at 2pm – we may not actually have made it if we had waited on the windows!   It was April 8 – the day of the eclipse and, though PV was only a partial eclipse, it was still causing some excitement.   We strolled up to the Port Captains’ office only to find a good chunk of their staff standing on the steps watching the eclipse through welding lenses.   Not wanting to rush them back in, we hung back to wait.   They quickly offered up one of the lenses so that we could also watch some of the eclipse – the eclipse was a bit anticlimactic, but the friendliness of the staff made our day!!   We did finally go in and start the process to check out of Mexico – the initial paperwork was done and we were given an appointment for Thursday morning to bring the boat down to the marina and to finish the immigration side of the check out.

Finished there, we grabbed a bus back to Puerto Vallarta.   We were still early and conveniently the window place was near to the malacon so we did the requisite tourist thing, walking the length of the malacon and then enjoying pina coladas at a wonderful Mexican restaurant overlooking the ocean.   We made it to the window place a few minutes before him and about an hour and a half later were on bus headed to the Walmart.   We ran in to Walmart to grab a few things and then headed back to PV.

Tuesday was spent doing more jobs and Owen decided to add another night at the dock so that we could finish a few more projects.  We went for dinner Tuesday night at a local “club” with our friends on Cosmic Debris.   We had really only planned on dinner but the band was wonderful and we ended up staying until the band shut down!!   Wednesday night we had a visit from Tera and Gentry on Freia.   We were sitting in the cockpit when Tera decided to get off on the dock for a smoke – in the dark – I hadn’t even thought of our black folding dock cart that Owen had not yet put away – Tera took a step back, fell over the cart and soon both of them were in the water!!!!    We fished her out and tried to fish around for the cart with no luck at that point.   The next morning Owen grabbed our dinghy grapple anchor and tried to fish around for the cart – I did not have much hope and busied myself disconnecting power, putting away hoses and generally getting ourselves ready to leave the dock.  Suddenly Owen was calling for me and I looked over to see him bringing up the cart, with the anchor wrapped around one of the wheels – what a miracle!!!!   I hosed the cart off, evicting a few small crabs that had already moved in, and we were soon underway and headed for Nueva Vallarta to do our final check out.   The check out was quick and we were soon on our way back to La Cruz to wait for the weather window.   

One of the items that was still to be done was lee cloths – we had made it all the way from Canada without them – and only fell out of the salon beds a couple of times, but we figured we should probably have lee cloths for this long voyage.   We picked up some meshy cotton and I set to work forming panels to make the lee cloths.   I had decided that I needed them to be attached in a manner that would be easy for me to undo while all tucked in behind them – the idea of having them lace up to the ceiling or something like that would not work for me – being crazy claustrophobic, the idea of being “trapped” did not work for me.    I made them so that they would clip at each end, making it easy to get out.   I put grommets along the bottom to allow it to be laced down and the end result is actually pretty effective!  We also needed to install those windows that we had bought – Owen got to work pulling out the old windows and fixing the rust that had formed.   I applied a first coat of epoxy primer that day, putting on a second the next morning.   The windows were finally reinstalled Saturday.  We also did one final Walmart trip on Saturday, stocking up on some fresh items and grabbing even more toilet paper (you really cannot have too much!)

We had decided that we wanted to get away Sunday morning – as would be expected from us, on Sunday morning we could not have been less ready to head out!!!   We frantically worked at getting more jobs done, stowing everything that we could and trying to clean up the mess caused by the frantic last days of work.   We watched as several boats pulled up anchor and headed out.  We headed into the marina to get fuel and to get rid of final bags of garbage.   We headed back to the anchorage, lifted our dinghy up and deflated and stowed it.   Finally, about 5:30, we realized that we had to leave then or we were not going to be able to leave!    We put up the mainsail, and slowly motor sailed past Freia, Cosmic Debris and Spy – shouting quick goodbyes to friends that were going to be so missed!!   Tera took some great pictures as we headed out, marking our departure from cruising Mexico.    We slowly, slowly sailed out of Banderas Bay, headed first for the Revillagigedo Islands, an island chain starting about 300 miles west of the tip of Cabo and spreading out over about 200 miles.

We had a slow first few days of sailing – we were sailing into headwinds, waves and current and it felt like we were pulling a trailer behind us.     Those days were challenging in every regard – our tummies were doing backflips, the motion was relentless – my bruises have bruises, and on the first full day out I decided to take advantage of the light winds and a period of relatively calm conditions and prepare the fixings for a frittata – I was frying up the bacon and the grease in the pan just exploded – my hand was deep fried, there was bacon grease all over the stove top, down the front of the cupboard, on the floor and even down the hall to our berth – it was not a promising start!!!   

One of our first mornings I came on deck and was informed we had some stowaways – an entire flock of brown footed boobies had taken up residence on our bow pulpit – at one point there were 10 of them – we let them hitch a ride for about 24 hours and then – seeing the state of poop on our deck, we decided they should go!!   We now find ourselves having to scare them off as they look to come in for a landing – a few of them snuck onto the rear solar panel our last night – and were not so easy to scare off – the mess is just not worth the entertainment!

We finally started to get into a bit more steady pressure and were happily settling into a routine and enjoying the higher speeds when our weather router sent a message that the wind was going to die out completely in a few days and he strongly recommended that we stop at the last of the islands, Clarion.   I was really quite upset by this idea – I absolutely did not want to get out of our routine – we were finally settled into our sleep schedules and the sailing was so good!!!    We also did not want to bob around in no wind, rolling in the swell if we could avoid it, so we grudgingly agreed we should stop.  

Of course, the boat had other ideas – that entire last day she screamed along (at a whole 5-6 knots, but for Solstice, that is screaming along!) and we knew we were going to get to the Island too early.   We were leery to slow down too early – but also didn’t want to arrive at Clarion before sun up.   Finally, at 9pm, we only had about 25 miles to go and we were doing 5.5 – 6 knots – we had to slow down!!    We furled most of the headsail and slacked the main – we were still going too fast but managed to slow down to about 3.5.   We finally ended up nearly heaving too – as the head and mainsails weren’t balanced we did not completely stop but were able to keep speeds under 2 knots – until about 3am, when the winds starting building and even in that configuration we were still doing 3 – 3.5 knots.   Our last three hours had us basically drifting around about 3 miles off shore until the sun came up and we were able to call for permission to anchor.

We slowly entered the bay, not trusting the charts as depths were not lining up and, even though we were in deeper water than we wanted to be, we dropped the hook just behind a huge surf break.   We were finally able to take a breath, and take a look around – what a stunning spot!!!   The water in a shade of blue that I cannot describe – it is absolutely heavenly.   There is a constant surf breaking on shore and once I got over the fear of being so close to the break, the sound is amazing.   The swells come in long and big, we can hardly feel them – until we get one where the surf drops out suddenly and it feels like our tummies are in an elevator – Owen watched one coming and decided to keep and eye on the depth sounder – we went up 7 feet as it passed under us!! 

Clarion Island is a Navy base, and we were visited shortly after we arrived by six of the guys posted here – if we didn’t know it was a Navy base, I would have thought they were local fishermen – they were all in board shorts and rash guards.  They came by to confirm we were welcome and then headed off.   Later that day, a few of them came back – this time they were in uniform and two members boarded our boat – one stood on the rail while the other sat on the edge of the cockpit and filled out some paperwork.   They were so nice and respectful of the boat.     The paperwork was done quickly and they were off again.    I had been a bit nervous about the stop here – worried that perhaps we would get some power tripping Navy guy who wanted to make our lives difficult, but everyone here is so spectacularly friendly it just added to the magic of the place!!

We spent Sunday and Monday getting some more jobs done – multiple loads of bucket laundry, filed our income taxes (nothing like leaving it to the last minute!), set up the preventer system that Owen has been planning.   We had a pizza night and I was able to dig some stuff out of the “overstock” to save myself from having to crawl around while the boat is moving.

Our plan now is to leave tomorrow mid-afternoon and start to slowly make our way to the magic 10 – 120 position, where we will finally be able to start dropping south.   The wind is to fill as the day goes on and into Wednesday so hopefully, we will back in good steady trades by end of day Wednesday!    We will likely start with a couple of buddy boats as they are also anchored here right now waiting for the same window – though who knows how long we will be able to keep up with them!!

It has been a hectic few weeks and we still likely have more than 3 weeks until we make it to the South Pacific but we are excited about seeing new places and experiencing new cultures.   My Aunt asked why we wanted to do this – we really couldn’t come up with any better answer than “to say we have”.   And so, I look forward to letting you know that we have!!!