There’s a decent anchorage right outside the marina entrance, but dragging seems to be fairly standard.  We saw several boats get rescued after grounding during our time.

There are a few other marinas around: Marina Vallarta was a dump.  Didn’t even feel comfortable walking there and there are no services (or stores) anywhere near.  Marina Nuevo Vallarta was better than regular Vallarta, but not close to anything.  It was about the same price as La Cruz and not as nice, albeit closer to PV proper.  Paradise Village was my idea of Hell, but some folks really liked it.  This is where the large power yachts call home.  It’s the closest marina to the town of PV.

We hitchhiked into town as the bus apparently never came by.  Nice little town.

We visited the town of Tenacatita itself by finishing the jungle tour in the dinghy.  It’s a cool little place with great views.  We’d probably anchor in front if it next time if the swells permitted.

We drove straight through to one of our favorite campgrounds in the world: Middle Fork in the Bighorns.  It’s a very small Forest Service campground a few miles SW of Buffalo.  It’s got 10 campsites and all of them are next to the Middle Fork of Clear Creek.  As we set up our tent, Conrad began his shift on Squirrel/Chipmunk Patrol.  He’s fairly adamant that the campsite not be overrun with the little rodents.  He’s good at his job.  I was Jonesin’ for a hike with my girl and my dog…unfortunately Nancy called BS and Bogarted the tent for an afternoon nap. Three hours later we finally began our hike but a mile down the trail the afternoon thunderstorms began and Conrad hot-tailed it back to the tent, where we shared a loaf of bread, sodas, and a wet dog as it proceeded to rain through the night.

A few hours later we were awakened by the sound of ATV’s roaring through the campground. 10 years ago there weren’t any of these awful things.  Now, apparently, every single person who lives in Montana or Wyoming must be required to own one.  And they all congregate at campgrounds on weekends.  We broke camp, threw the wet gear in the trunk, and headed on down the road beneath an amazingly blue sky littered with fluffy clouds.

I hate to air my dirty laundry here on this site, in this way, but I’ve got to get this out: Nancy’s a junkie.  She’s addicted to Starbucks Mochas.  So we stopped in Sheridan and picked up a mocha, an Americano, and learned that her precious Starbucks Gold Card was out of money.  It was gut wrenching to watch as $7 passed from the dirty Ick’s window to the girl in the retractable window.  (I’d been under the impression for the past 7 years that Starbucks was just refilling her Gold Card because they liked her-she came clean that I’d been misled) As our Land Yacht bashed through potholes, over pronghorns, and around construction workers we approached Little Bighorn, a place Conrad (and Ruth) had never been.  So we flashed ‘em our National Park Pass and headed through the gate.  It’s beautiful country out there.  If I were going to make a critical military mis-judgement and end up scalped, I’d like it to be in a place like The Little Bighorn.  And I love the fact there there’s a casino there, too.  Nancy drove over a few curbs and benches while we were there, but no real damage to the yacht, so we didn’t bother reporting it and drove on…through Billings, Bozeman, Belgrade, Three Forks, and finally to Whitehall, where we turned off to find Gerd and Bonnie.

It’s really pretty country out there and they have a beautiful home, built all under one roof. It’s got two residences, horse barns, and parking for a private army all under the same roof.  Conrad met their dog, Gus, a Rottweiler pup who, at 12 weeks, was already bigger than our little fatty.  He was not impressed by the horses.  Two of them tried (and nearly succeeded) to kill him. Horses are dead to him now.  It’s amazing that we didn’t invent the car sooner than we did.  Seems like having to ride a horse to work would be plenty of incentive to design alternate transportation.

We visited nearby Butte, which must have been one helluva town 50 years ago.  Butte is the home of copper mining in the US and has been for a very long time.  There was a lot of money in that area, at one time.  Now it’s mostly abandoned or in disrepair.  But with a little imagination you can see what it must have been like.  One part of the mining history that hasn’t left and isn’t likely to is the Berkeley Pit. It’s a gigantic reservoir full of the heavy metal remnants of decades of mining.  And it’s quite pretty, too.  We don’t recommend drinking from it.

After eating Gerd and Bonnie out of food we headed on down the road towards our Sweet Spot, Jackson  Hole and the Teton range.  We hoped to camp at Jenny Lake, but the unusually heavy traffic through Yellowstone impeded our progress and we arrived too late in the day to secure a primo site.  So we moved on to the Gros Ventre campground, pitched the tent, and rolled into Jackson to survey the town and pick up ingredients for chili.  Nothing like eating a giant bowl of chili and sleeping in a tent, eh? On the way back from town we made a little detour and headed to Dornan’s for a beer on their rooftop.  There’s nothing quite like that place.  It’s located in Moose, near Jackson (one of the wealthiest cities in the world) and offers quite literally the best view in the world.  But they keep it real.  Stand in line at a little window and order your food.  If you want wine, visit our wine shop, buy what you want, and we’ll loan you a couple of glasses. They don’t cater to Richie Rich, so Richie Rich doesn’t hang there and folks like us do.  Score one for the little man.  We sipped our beer and headed back to the campground to make chili.

We got back to site 221 and got to work on the chili.  Midway through our meal, the ground started to shake.  Nancy thought I had farted, which made me kind of proud.  As things turn out, it was a 5.1 earthquake centered about 10 miles from where we were. I’d never experienced an earthquake before and it took a few seconds to figure out what was happening.  It was an odd experience…a low grade rumble and the ground literally moving and jumping around.  At least we were 40 miles from the Yellowstone Caldera…so we were safe, right?

We hopped in Ick in the morning, loaded up on Pearl Street Bagels, and headed up the pass for Dubois, Thermopolis, Buffalo, and eventually back home.  2,400 miles, 5 days, 1 earthquake and countless more memories.

Jeff

Grounding at Oyster Point Marina: It was a full moon night and Bryan H. was in town to visit us.  Nancy and I had arrived a couple of days ago to continue the work aboard and Bryan arrived on a Saturday morning.  We were planning on taking Oblivion out for an afternoon sail around the bay (the winds always kick ass in the afternoons there).  I’d spent the day on deck working on several projects and watching Al, the professional captain of our neighbor’s boat called Giant Feet, haul jerry jugs of diesel fuel all day to load up the 50′ foot power cruiser for it’s night-time cruise around SF Bay.  Al hauled about 200 gallons of fuel during that day, taking occasional breaks to tell me about his days of flying secret helicopter missions during the early days of the Vietnam War.  We went out sailing about noon, knowing it was an extreme tide/current day on the bay that that due to our 6′ draft we’d need to be back in the slip by about 6pm.  After a great day of sailing we headed South to OPM a little behind schedule.  Fortunately the winds freshened, we sped up,  and soon we could see the entrance to the channel ahead in the darkening skies. Then the engine died.  I still don’t know what caused it.   Some kind of blockage I guess.  Knowing we were running out of time to get in the shallow channel we immediately radioed Vessel Assist, who promised us they’d be there in 10 minutes.  30 minutes later, in pitch black, we saw no sign of them.  They eventually did show up and tied their super-beefy rubber boat up to the port side of Oblivion and began pushing us into the marina.  We grounded slightly as we passed the breakwater, but their 600HP engines soon got us free.  A couple more turns and we’d be home free in slip 13-22.  The plan was to ram us forward into the slip and run the rubber boat up on the dock, then back it off and hopefully we’d be home free.  As it turns out, the mud in our slip had been growing and we stuck hard about half in and half out of our slip.  We were grounded in about 2′ of mud and dirt and even the powerful motors couldn’t move us.  So we tied off and decided to wait for the tide to begin coming in around 2am.  In the meantime, Giant Feet (owned by two Japanese guys) was busy loading up a crew of 26 for a birthday party/karoake night cruise around the bay. Captain Al was watching as we came in under tow and gave me a stern look…then approached me to tell me that I needed to understand the currents and tides of the bay and that I was essentially being irresponsible.  (I counter-argued that I HAD known of the tide issue but that the engine had died)  A couple of hours later Giant Feet shoved off into the bay full of Japanese speaking party goers.  We woke up around 9am and immediately noticed that Giant Feet had not returned from their night of sailing/karoake.  Then another neighbor asked if it was Giant Feet that was the subject of the rescue…we said we didn’t know.  Nancy was returning from the bathroom and happened to notice a city bus full of Asians dropping off in the parking lot.  Hmmm…weird.  As details became clear during the next couple of days, it turns out that Giant Feet had run aground on at Coyote Point on a man-made breakwater under a full moon.  And to top things off, they floundered there for a long time because all of the equipment aboard GF failed and Captain Al couldn’t even direct the Coast Guard to where he was at as he couldn’t come up with a GPS location.  Finally, one of the passengers used their I-Phone and the CG rescued everyone by helicopter.  And all that fuel spilled out into the bay.  Perhaps Al should be aware of obstacles in the bay before heading out for a nighttime cruise?

The Curious Incident of the Linseed Oil-I flew out to SF one weekend to work on Oblivion and had finished my list for the day. I was looking through a cabinet and ran across a quart of Linseed Oil that Tim had used to oil the wood plugs attached to all of our through-hulls.  For some reason it caught my eye that the marketing on the can said “Woods Best Friend” and it got me thinking…this boat has a lot of wood on it and shouldn’t it have a best friend, too? So I cautiously took some out and began cleaning a section of the floor to see what it looked like. It looked great, and I continued.  I ended up cleaning and polishing the entire floor, threw the rags in the garbage can, ate some Ramen, and went to sleep around 8pm exhausted.  I remember laying there in our small cabin and thinking that there was something wrong…that my throat was burning and something smelled like acrid smoke. But I was too tired and wrote it off as a figment of my imagination. Surely it was the linseed oil curing, right? Right? It continued to get worse as I continued to get groggier.  Finally, and miraculously if you know how I sleep, I pulled out of the slumber to check and see what was happening.  To my surprise, there was thick black smoke coming from the trash can! I threw a couple of glasses of water on it and it didn’t seem to help…I could see embers in the bottom of the can and a fire couldn’t be far behind.  So I grabbed the can and ran topside where I could hose it out with our dock hose.  I filled the can with water, put it on the dock and went back to sleep.  Crisis averted.  A few more minutes and Oblivion would no doubt have been engulfed in flames.  I told this story to a few people…who all said “you idiot! of course linseed oil is combustible! Haven’t you heard of spontaneous combustion?” Now I have.

We drank all that?: One night in November Tim, Thane, and I decided to take Oblivion out sailing. It was an exceptionally warm night and we were planning on anchoring or mooring somewhere else in the bay…had to get our girl out of the dreaded Oyster Point Marina if not just for one night.  So we loaded up with cheese, wine, and beer and headed out around 5pm.  We sailed and drank and drank and sailed.  Not a good combination.  We sailed around Angel Island and around Alcatraz.  The moon came up late that night and we literally had the bay to ourselves.  It was amazing and it felt like we were sailing 20 knots, though I know we weren’t doing 5.  Tim’s all about efficiency and he’d decided that it wasn’t efficient to waste effort pouring wine into glasses, so he started uncorking and drinking whole bottles, directly from the bottle.  Thane was now drinking rum.  It’s about 11 pm and probably 80 degrees-unheard of on the Bay.  I went below for some cheese and came back to find Thane and Tim sans-pants (they’re both budding nudists) and dancing crazily in the aptly named cockpit.  Thank goodness they both had long shirts on.  We ended up deciding that the Maritime Park would be a good place for us to anchor.  It’s right at the heart of the city. Only problem was that it’s a no-engine zone, so we’d need to sail in under sail power and anchor the old fashioned way. (in the end we just cheated and hoped we didn’t get caught) We inflated Robin1 and, against all good judgement, headed into the city for more  drinks.  We hit Golden Boy Pizza, then drank all the Scotch in town.  On the way back to the boat around 2:30am I walked into a convenience store and grabbed a case of beers…you never know, right? I carried the case about a mile back to the dinghy, we rowed back to Oblivion, we crawled aboard and finally dropped the case of beers, smashing glass everywhere in the cockpit.  Oh well…we’ll clean it up tomorrow before we head out under the Golden Gate Bridge for some ocean sailing, right? (BTW, using a toilet on a boat in rough waters hung over on beer, wine, Scotch, and rum isn’t that much fun)

Marina del Rey-This was the first real trip that Nancy and I did together.  After a fantastic time in Santa Barbara we left at 10:30 at night (we love night sailing) and headed South to Los Angeles.  As it turns out we just motored all night in cold, cold weather (32 degrees at one point) and arrived in Los Angeles the following afternoon.  We pulled into Marina del Rey and motored up the huge channel, looking for the harbormaster (where we thought you ALWAYS had to check in).  I finally pulled into and tied off on a dock labeles Harbormaster/Sheriff and went looking for the office, proud as a peacock that we’d managed to make it 90 miles by our lonesomes.  That ended quickly as the Sheriff basically told me I had 60 seconds to get my boat off his dock and get moving! (we had to find the fabled mariner statue?) We finally did and tied off on the proper dock.  Not perfect but not bad for our first time.  (we had a similar experience at the police dock in San Diego)

La Cruz near-sinking-when you tell someone that you nearly sank your boat they seem disappointed to learn that it happened in the slip and not out at sea somewhere.  Well, prepare to be disappointed.   Thane and Brenda had headed off to Puerto Vallarta to spend a night in a hotel, sleep on a good bed, and experience air conditioning.  We were alone onboard Oblivion for the first time maybe ever.  We had spent the morning working on varnish, the afternoon swimming at a nearby beach, and we were exhausted when we got home.  We cooked dinner, Nancy took a shower, and we went to sleep around 9:30.  About 4:30am  Nancy started shaking me and screaming to “get up, get up! We’re sinking!”  I awoke to find that we had water about 2″ above our floorboards.  We had probably taken in 800 gallons of water in the few hours since we went to bed.  We had no idea how the water was getting in, but the bilge pump must have malfunctioned.  Crap.  I grabbed the handle for the main manual bilge and went topside, underneath a clear sky full of stars.  I removed the protective plate, inserted the handle, and pumped once.  The mechanism on the pump broke on the first pump! Damn! We eventually got the electric bilge pump working and within a few minutes the water level was receding.  After about 45 minutes the bilge was ‘dry’ and we were assessing the damages.  What had caused it? Why had it stopped coming in?  We dried everything out and then began worrying about the engine…it had been partially submerged in saltwater while connected to the electrical system.  That couldn’t be good..and to top it all off there was oil residue everywhere.  The dipstick was below the water level and it appeared that saltwater had displaced the engine oil…our newly rebuilt 30 year old engine was surely done for.  We had found a business card for “Teapot Tony, Master Mechanic British Merchant Marine” and called him. Within literally 9 minutes Tony arrived aboard to assess the damages.  I could tell he was very concerned but, like a good doctor, he tried to calm us with his good demeanor.  He advised us on what to do and removed the alternator and starter to have them rebuilt.  All’s well that ends well and it turns out that the engine works perfectly…only a small portion of the oil had been displaced, he rebuilt the starter and alternator better than before, and all we really needed was some new wiring and a new regulator.  It took us months to figure out what caused the near sinking: a reverse siphon created by running our refrigerator on ‘turbo’ mode and the bilge at the same time.  Someone hadn’t plumbed it correctly years ago and it had finally reared its ugly head.  Oh well….now we know!

Espiritu Santo/Isla Partida: These islands, along with many others, are part of the San Lorenzo Marine Archepeligo, a national preserve in Mexico.  We’ve been there several times now…with the Paulsens, with Bryan H., and by ourselves.  It’s absolutely amazing.  The water here is so clear you can easily see your anchor sitting on the bottom in 30 feet of water.  You can swim with the Sea Lions (highly recommended, if not slightly scary).  There’s snorkeling everywhere.  You can (and we did) sleep on the beach.  You can camp and hike the islands.  And you’ll mostly have the place to yourself.  A person could spend a month or two there poking around in the sand, staring at the scenery, or imagining that you’re sitting on a deserted island in the middle of the South Pacific.  It’s a natural wonder that’s rarely visited-which means it’ll likely continue to be a natural wonder.

Nights on the Ocean: I’ve written about this a little bit before.  It’s one of those things that I think you’ve got to experience to understand, but I’ll try.  If we need to cover 50-100 miles to our next anchorage we normally prefer to depart at sunset and sail through the night.  It’s a surreal experience to be under a starry sky, sailing silently through glowing waters.  I for one can’t get enough of it.  On the way down from San Fran to Santa Barbara I finally got to see constellations-not just parts of them, but the whole thing.  I used to ’see’ Orion’s belt, for instance, and think “wow.  three stars in a line.  you’d have to be kinda drunk to imagine a hunter up there”  But now I know.  He IS up there.  So are lots of others that I’d only read about on the horoscope page.  And if you could get bored looking at the stars all you have to do is look down at the water going by.  It glows an eerie, Scooby Doo-ish green.  (the monsters on SD always had that glow, right?) The waves going by glow, and within the waves are flecks of light, like stars in the water.  Whales and dolphins create a greenish wake when they go by…once we thought we were under torpedo attack as we watched the dolphins race at our stern in the middle of the night.  Even the toilet takes on a magical appearance at night. Flush it and it glows in the dark.  I remember sitting on Seaward in Drake’s Bay in the middle of a cold night with Tim, splashing deck lines in the water in order to see the glow…the Sea of Cortez made those times look very pedestrian.

Last night I watched the move Inception.  In it they talk about how 10 minutes of real time equates to something like 5 hours in dream time.  We spent 7 months in Mexico.  It feels like we spent 10 years.  And we’ve got the memories to prove it.

A ton of people have asked me what I loved about our brief albeit exciting sailing experience from San Diego to Land’s End, Baja  last Holiday season.  I’ve gotta admit that I didn’t expect to love it as much as I did.  I loved crashing a dinghy and getting sand and seashells jammed in every orifice of my body.  I love walking around town covered in sea salt, with broken sandals and sans my favorite sunglasses, lost in the crash.  I love paying for stuff with soggy money.

I love night watches on a chilly night in the middle of a storm.  Nothing to look up at…just low slung grey clouds and ominous waves as far as the eye can see.  I love getting the feeling back in my hands and feet after a night watch…and I love watching the rest of the crew puke all over everything.  (I’m immune to such behavior) I miss cooking Ramen noodles on a heaving stove in the middle of hte night just so I can hold and sip something warm.  And I love the sound Spicy Oriental Ramen makes when it’s puked up into the sea.

I miss watching Viggo Mortenson movies (the kind where he’s almost constantly naked) aboard an anchored boat that’s suffering through 5′ swells while eating Trader Joe’s Indian food (Thanks, Debbie!) And I miss watching Jeff and Tim aboard Robin 1 try to paddle back to Oblivion through a squall, against a 3 knot current, and all with just one paddle (the other was broken during our dinghy crash).  That was some good shit. (they didn’t make it and had to be rescued by a fishing boat, FYI)

Of course, the thing that I like most about Mexico is Cabo San Lucas.  I miss the guys selling cigars and weed everywhere…the kids selling whistles shaped like turtles (I have a collection of my own now) the guys selling fishing trips…marina slips that cost $200 a night…I miss hearing “Come on Ladies! Show us the Twins! Nobody knows you and nobody cares” all day, every day.  And most ofall I miss the jetski’s buzzing around all the boats in the anchorage.  And above all else, I miss the smell of Tim’s rubber (yes, rubber) pants that he wore every single day from Ensenada to Cabo.  Thankfully, it’s a smell that I won’t soon forget.

I get kind of dreamy-eyed when I start thinking about those days…sorry it’s taken me so long to post. I’ve been in therapy for the past 8 months to deal with those rigors, but it’s finally working and I’m making plans to join Oblivion again for another Blessed Holiday Season in El Salvador.

Brandi

http://www.sailblogs.com/member/ramer/ this is a family we met first while in Mexico.  Their writing is very good and meaningful and their photography is great, too.  Unfortunately, they’re Canadian.

http://sailingendurance.blogspot.com/ We met these guys and their daughters Christmas Eve in Turtle Bay, Baja.  They’ve covered a lot of ground and written extensively about it.

http://www.aboardio.blogspot.com/ We met this couple in La Cruz, Mexico and have been following their website ever since.  They are sailing across the South Pacific as I write this and have lots of good video and pic’s to show for it.

http://www.passageweather.com/ We check this site most every day for weather updates.

http://www.buoyweather.com/index2.jsp another great weather site.

http://www.bumfuzzle.com/ These guys checked out a few years ago and have never returned.  They are about the only cruisers out there who were less experienced than us starting out.  They’ve circumnavigated and are at it again.

http://www.projectbluesphere.com/ This guys got some excellent video about his sailing adventures.  Very entertaining site.

http://www.yachtworld.com/ No list would be complete w/o this site. You can gawk at thousands of boats for sale and daydream that they’re all perfect if you want.

http://www.noonsite.com/ There’s nothing like this site for tons of pertinent information. Unfortunately, their most-visited section is on piracy.

http://www.furledsails.com/ has free podcasts on all kinds of sailing subjects.

http://www.ocscsailing.com/ Where it all started. Can’t recommend their classes enough.

http://www.defender.com/ When you’re in the middle of nowhere and something breaks, it’s comforting to know that Defender has what you need…even if you can’t get it shipped to you.

http://www.tourdeguts.org/ My kick-ass brother and his kick-ass wife rode their bikes across the country a while back and wrote about it.

http://www.howephoto.us/ My brother-in-law’s photo website.  If you’re ever in Torrey, Utah stop in and say ‘hey’. And buy a picture.

http://www.brandibrooks.com/ Check out her art…she lives in San Francisco and is awesome.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Conrad-Messner/103986686322011?ref=ts Our dog’s website. Check it out.

http://www.oimarine.com/ If you need a website built, call OI Marine.  Awesome. And they built our website.

http://www.hanschristian.org/index.shtml If you want info on Hans Christians, look no further.

http://www.hallberg-rassy.com/ The finest sailboat in the world? I believe so.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/ We can’t get enough of their podcasts.  Waiting for them to do one on cruisers…it’s totally ripe.

http://www.jacksonholenet.com/webcams/ When you’ve had too much saltwater, click on thie beauty and feast your eyes on Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  It smells much better now that Dick CHeney moved back to Texas.

http://www.fupenguin.com/ I get a kick out of this one every time.

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/ Good stuff.  Oddly, sailing isn’t on the list yet.

-tim