A tradition created by Ralph and Helen on SV MoonDrifter has been continued with the new owners (jaja since 2020) Bill, Ally, and Corey, which is to host French Toast the last day of the rally. And wow did they hit it out of the park this year. Tons of bacon, every possible topping for your French toast, and a potato dish to boot. It was a feeding frenzy and another fun chance to socialize. Our plan on Gato Loco had been to sail north to Puerto Escondido for water and to make tomorrow an easy day for the crew change in Loreto. However, Kurt (West Coast Multihulls) had other ideas and convinced us to hang around another day and leave at “Oh dark thirty” the next day. What pushed us over the edge was his offer to fill our water tanks from the large charter boats saving us a stop in Puerto Escondido.
After breakfast had settled a bit, I started the water filling process, we had two five-gallon jugs so 10 gallons at a time I would transfer the water. It took the better part of two hours but we had basically full tanks and it was time to play!
Kim on SV Salt offered up her boat and spinnaker to make a swing. The idea was to stern tie to her anchor and rig up her Asymm to the bow of the boat with a bosun chair attached. The wind was very light with some occasional puffs. Somehow, Bill was convinced to go first and quickly we realized how risky this setup was, thankfully with the lack of big winds it didn’t end in catastrophe. We switched up the rigging to make it less likely someone would get pulled up into the anchor and kept at it. With not much success Kim gave it a try and other than getting cooled off in the water, we failed to launch her too. Still a fun, silly afternoon.
Next up was foiling behind Kurt’s skiff. Kim made it look easy floating around the bay and once my turn came I demonstrated how to fail. Her foil board is quite small and with my poor skills I was unable to balance on the board while is submarined under the water for a few moments before the speed brought it to the surface. Blerg. I gave it a number of tries before throwing in the towel. Mike, the captain on one of the charter boats, was next up and after an impressive quick pop up out of the water, he gave us all a scare when he fell head first towards the sharp foil. A collective relief after he came up safe and more instruction followed… It took him a few tries to get up a second time but after those attempts he had a nice run to close out the session.
Pushing our play time into beach party time we headed in to clean up a bit. It was a massive feast with Marcia making an catering worthy Hawaiian chicken, roasted pineapple, and Hawaiian pasta salad to share. Along with that were hot dogs, BBQ ribs, and bacon wrapped filet mignon. I filled up on Marcia’s delicious food before the filet mignon arrived. Oh well.
Kim made a bonfire after dank and smores were eaten and high sea stories and yarns exchanged. There was supposed to be a Starlink launch which we eagerly awaited but the time past with nothing in the sky. We waited some more, nada. Someone found news that it was delayed an hour and with our early departure sadly the Gato Loco crew had to call it a night, saying our goodbyes and heading for bed. It turned out to be a super fun day with new friends and we owe Kurt for convincing us to stay another day.
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