August 12, 2024
Port Vila was a great stopover/provisioning spot. Plus due to the wind we had extra time for some fun. After cleaning up the boat with fresh water we relaxed a bit. Alex from SV Blue Beryl swung by as he headed to Customs. Our plan had been to skip Customs here as we had a cruising permit from Port Resolution,…
August 5, 2024
Roxy and I started the day with a forty-five minute cab ride to the GCC currency exchange in Nadi. There is always some challenge, today it was finding the shop. Google was no help, their Facebook page no help, hell even their website was no help. Luckily, I dialed the phone and someone answered who could give the driver directions.…
August 4, 2024
One night’s slip is included with the checkout fees at Vuda Marina. Wanting to make the most of it, we moved onto a slip as soon as we could. Then it was go time, cleaning the boat, storing the paddle boards and dinghy, along with blue water preparing the boat. Oh plus a pain in the butt job of tightening…
August 3, 2024
The weather gods smiled on us, instead of the normal SE trades (the direction we were headed), we had a north wind. With provisioning to get done it was still a motorsail giving us a very nice 7.5 knot average. The anchor was no more than set before Roxy and I headed to the dinghy dock to grab a cab…
August 1, 2024
After a quickly breakfast everyone headed to shore separately. Adrian and I had plans to help Mon fix his solar/battery issue. After doing research overnight we both came to the conclusion that the panel wiring was exceeding the solar controller maximum voltage. In a divide and conquer, Adrian took on rewiring the panels while I cleaned up the dirty connections…
May 9, 2024
With winds overnight I had turned on the anchor alarm around midnight and kept an eye on it until morning. My 4:45am alarm got us up and moving and with just a tinge of light, the anchor was pulled and we motored north. The forecast was winds for the first 12nm from wind pouring in from the Pacific. The possibility…
May 8, 2024
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…
May 5, 2024
Holy wetness, the boat was covered in dew. Yesterday we had some scout bees so my day started swabbing the deck of water. It was really nice to get a free boat wash knocking off the salt and dirt we had accumulated over the past number of days. A pod of dolphins had been out chasing the baitball we saw…
May 1, 2024
The rigging on Gato Loco was just replaced and the rig tensioning was way off at the start of the trip. We went very conservative to this point and had only tightening the inner and outer shrouds. Funny enough, last time in Santa Rosalia I went up the mast too, that time to clean the contacts on the Windex. Up…
April 30, 2024
Not thrilled about the 5:00am departure after three hours sleep but what are you going to do. Around 5:15am we motored our way into the sunrise. Soon we found 15 knots of wind (unfortunately 25 degrees to port) and with the Main at Reef 1 and Jib the engines were pulled way back. As the morning progressed, we lost our…
April 26, 2024
It was an interesting start to the sailing season… We hustled to leave Puerto Penasco and probably should have listened to the locals who asked, in a questioning way, if we were leaving the next day. We had a narrow window to beat three days of strong southern wind and waves so Wednesday morning at 5:30am we motored out of…
December 2, 2023
We pulled up the anchor at headed for Vuda Point marina. The passage was longer than we thought but still an easy motor. Fueled up we headed for our slip for the night and got cracking on the boat work. It was super hot but that didn’t stop us from getting a lot done. The following morning we hauled out…