"StarPlath" 40-60 - Lance and Stephanie Leuthesser
StarPlath Adventures – Chapter 3
March 27, 2008
When I last wrote we were in a new marina in the Puerto Vallarta area. We are now in Bara Navidad so I will bring you up to date. I thought we were past the exciting times but never fear, we managed to have some excitement after all (in my opinion, I thought I was going to die – obviously I didn’t or I wouldn’t be writing so the story ends well).
Despite all my dramatic stories, we are really enjoying ourselves. We lose track of what day it is and the only other time we keep track of is whether it’s daylight or night - that’s about as accurate as our “clock” gets. We’ve been gone almost 6 weeks and it seems like we just left on the trip. Our goal is 100 days and we’re at 41 right now.
The marina we were in near Puerto Vallarta was called La Cruz and it has only been open two months. It was the nicest marina we’ve ever been in. The fairways (the lanes you drive the boat down to get to your slip) were huge so they could handle the mega yachts. There were very few boats considering the size of the marina. Here is a little blow fish that adopted us when we first arrived. He hung around that first day.
There was another Nordhavn (a 57’ which makes us look tiny) named Senjero two slips away where we met Neil, Elaine and Cody, their beagle. What a nice couple and they were so helpful in telling us about the places they had been since they had already been south. We look forward to seeing them again when we go north.
Here’s a shot of StarPlath from the palapa restaurant in the marina.
On the second day the wind was blowing at gusts around 30 knots. Here’s a picture on a stormy looking morning in an anchorage right outside the marina. The captain on one of the sailboats that moved into the marina said she had been thrown out of her bunk twice the night before so decided to move into the marina.
It was now time to explore Puerto Vallarta. I had not had time to research all the places we were going so we just hopped a bus that said “PV” and figured we’d find the main tourist zone since PV is the second most visited place in Mexico according to one account. When we got into the PV area, we saw three cruise ships, right across the street from a beautiful new mall (looked expensive) and the Wal-Mart and Sam’s. Soon you will not know if you are in Mexico or the US based on the stores. We kept riding past this area and then we were the last people on the bus so the bus driver was saying something in Spanish (some day we will learn Spanish) and basically he was telling us to get off. We thought we were at the end of the line so we started walking – and did not pass a single restaurant or curio shop. Finally after a mile I said we needed to ask someone where the tourista zone was. WELL, that started one of our classic arguments. As my grandmother would have said, Lance is a hard-headed mule!!!! He said the area around the cruise ships must have been the tourist zone. I said there is not a tourist place in Mexico that does not have a zone of curio shops, markets, restaurants, etc. He said that wasn’t necessarily so! So by now we aren’t speaking so I’m scanning everyone that’s walking by hoping to find someone who can speak English. Finally I saw an elderly gentleman who I accosted with “Do you speak English?” I think he thought I was going to rob him because he looked like he wanted to run from me. Finally I convinced him that I was simply looking for the tourista zone. After that he was incredibly helpful and he had us follow him to the local bus and told us exactly where to get off. It was the biggest tourista zone we had seen (so there Lance).
Found a great local restaurant and Lance had the whole fish. We loved the whole day.
There were sand sculptors on the beach who do these incredible artworks for donations.
Here are the requisite churches – I enjoy the architecture.
And a little colorful side street.
Now it was time to get the bus back so we looked for the local bus back to where we could get the bus that would take us back to the marina. Look in the picture and read backwards – it’s funny to us how they mark the buses!
We met one other very interesting person in the marina. A young man who sails solo on a 45’ sailboat. He was leaving for the Marquesas (our ultimate goal which is in the south seas) by himself. I felt so wimpy. He has already sailed to Alaska and Hawaii by himself. I considered him a very brave soul, especially on a sailboat with all the rigging, etc. He said he had special electronics that alerted him when the wind died because that caused him more problems that too much wind. Can you imagine if you had a problem with rigging in the middle of the ocean by yourself and you had to climb a 30’ foot mast at sea?????
As I had mentioned earlier, Neil and Elaine were very helpful. Elaine is like me and she doesn’t like overnighters so Neil has scoped out all the anchorages that help you avoid the overnighters. We were originally planning several overnighters to get to Tenacatita but with his help we didn’t have to do a single overnighter. We stopped in two small anchorages on the way to Tenacatita and they were very pleasant. We spent Easter Sunday in Chemala and had a ball watching the local panga’s pull the kids on a banana shaped float. The children here are such happy children and get pleasure from simple things.
Finally we made it to Tenacatita – here’s Tavie on the trip. She can really zonk out.
We ran into friends we had met at the marina in Ensenada, Jim and Jan. Jan’s a quilter and Jim is like Lance, very technical and he’s also very knowledgeable about boating. They live aboard and have been doing cruising a lot longer than us. They invited us to dinner on their boat which was delightful. I took a Caesar salad and a tin of anchovies in case they liked them (I don’t think there is anything I don’t have in the way of food on this boat). Jim’s eyes lit up when he saw those!!! They’ve been at sea in Mexico since late November so I know this was a treat. When we finished dinner it was dark and guess what, Lance and I didn’t think to turn on any lights on our boat. Jim and Jan had a real chuckle over watching us try to find our boat in the dark (this was a big bay). Fortunately, Jim had a search light and he knew approximately where our boat was so he guided us home. Sometimes we are such morons!
But Tenacatita was where we had our first dinghy adventure. Everyone said there was this benign beach with no break where everyone took their dog. We knew Tavie would love to get off the boat so we headed in. The first sign of trouble should have been me falling into the dinghy – only slightly bruised. Several guides said there was no beach break so unfortunately, we took that literally so as we’re heading in waves are starting to break on us. In the meantime, Lance can’t remember how to lift the motor so it doesn’t dig into the shore. He’s putzing with that and I’m trying to get Tavie off the dinghy before we capsize. I got her to the beach and she takes off running as far from the dinghy as is possible. In the meantime, Lance is wrestling with the dinghy in the surf and it’s getting filled with sand and water so we had to get it on the beach (keep in mind this thing weighs 300 pounds with water in it). But I needed to keep Tavie from running away so I put her leash under a rock to go help Lance. Finally we wrestled it enough on the beach that we could bail it out. Poor Tavie was melting in the sun while this was going on. As soon as we got the dinghy empty of water, we went back to the boat. So much for Dog Beach as it was called. Here’s a picture of our clothes after a dinghy ride.
And here’s Lance after the dinghy ride…
One of the best parts of Tenacatita was a ride up a mangrove covered river to a popular beach area with lots of local restaurants. So now we are into the Dinghy Death Wish Adventure since the day before had not been exciting enough. We made it to the mouth of the river through the surf with no problem. I’m loving this dinghy now. The trip took two hours and was so peaceful. It was like the Jungle Cruise at Disney but for real.
We had lunch at a great restaurant (3 beers each makes anything good).
Now it’s time to return. So peaceful again and we were having a ball UNTIL……
You have to go over a sandbar to get out of the river – no problem but now it’s still too shallow to put the engine down. So Lance is pulling the dinghy into the surf with me in the dinghy. I thought we were going to capsize with every wave that hit us. Finally we think we’re in deep enough water with time before the next wave hits but we could not have timed it any worse. Lance jumped in the dinghy and tried to gun it over the wave but we went vertical – I thought the thing would flip over on us for sure and we would both drown in 3 feet of water. Lance is mad because I am so hysterical but when we finally came down from our airborne ride over the wave, I hit the fiberglass seat so hard I broke it in half (I always knew I had a big butt and I guess this proves it). I would include a picture of the bruise “butt” it was gross… Anyway, afterwards, Lance agreed that it was a pretty hairy ride since we hit the water so hard. Now he has a new chore – fix the dinghy seat! Then to add insult to injury we had to put the dinghy back on top of the boat – we were rocking which makes it even harder and by the time we wrestled the 300 pound gorilla back in place, I was ready to get rid of it!!! It may not get used again on this trip…
Now we’re in Bara Navidad – it is considered one of the poshest marinas in Mexico so I will let you know how we like it in the next email.
Safe journeys to all and no more dinghy rides for any of us!!!
StarPlath Adventures – Chapter 2
March 19, 2008
We are at last at a marina with wi-fi. Unfortunately, my first email was sad news about a very dear friend’s passing. Dale, one our dear “trailer trash” friends (when they called they would identify themselves as TT81 and we were TT87) had a massive heart attack on March 6th. She always had a smile and was always elated about life. She and her husband Nick were in the peace corps back in the 60’s and led a very adventurous life. They were inspirations to us to be adventuresome and we will all miss her dearly. One of my last fondest memories was the day we closed on the sale of our trailer. It just so happened that they closed the sale of theirs on the same day. As we were coming back into the trailer park, she and Nick and their new owner were standing in front of their trailer and when she saw us she broke out into her wonderful smile and stopped us with “high fives” over our closings – the new owner was standing there with a “what have we gotten ourselves into” look because we were all so elated on getting out. Again, we will miss her dearly and send our condolences to Nick and their children. It makes us all realize how short these days on earth are and we need to take advantage of them… so on we sail!!!
I left our last chapter with a few hanging issues. I want to first thank James Leishman of Nordhavn for jumping on the electrical problem. He had their resident electrical guru Nick call with some helpful hints – more on that later. He also said they had guys coming to Puerto Vallarta at the end of March if we needed anything. They are a great company and I feel they are very concerned for our safety. I also want to thank Inez, Libby’s mom. She had just suffered a broken wrist right before we left and had to have surgery. In the meantime, she’s expanded her prayers for us after Chapter 1 when I should have been saying prayers for her recovery. But they have definitely worked so thanks Inez – things are much better. And I hear she is healing and feeling a little better.
Before we left Puerto Los Cabos in the Cabo area (San Jose del Cabo was the town), we met some really nice sailboaters next to us – Sally and Brad. They had rented a car and took us all around for shopping. They had us to dinner on their boat the night before we left. They make me feel like such a whiner when it comes to boating. They are leaving (maybe have left) for the South Seas on a 39’ sailboat with 4 people on board. They have no freezer, very little water capacity (12 gallons a day) and due to the lack of water capacity, they use the shower for storage so that means bathing is very limited. It will take them 3-4 weeks to cross. When Sally came to dinner on our boat, she almost fainted when she watched me wash dishes because I run the water almost continually, knowing we can make tons of water at will. They were so fun to get to know and I envy their resiliency!!! As she says, they’re camping and as I now say, I’m at the Four Seasons!
We left on a beautiful morning for an anchorage north of Cabo and it was great to see lots of whales. But then the pitching started. When we had such a rough crossing from Mag Bay to Cabo, we were rolling and the water was slapping the boat so hard, I started calling it a real “bitch slap” and so when we got into the pitch and the water was once again slapping us silly, I named it the “pitch slap” but we made it through it and anchored for the night.
Made it to Mazatlan with very calm seas. The marina in Mazatlan (see it at night in the pic below) was nice except for their wi-fi which was awful. There were lots of “dock queens” in this marina. That’s what we call boats that never leave the harbor. Here’s a shot of one – I think you can tell it never leaves by the lighted palm tree on the bow!!!
Tavie enjoyed walks on the ground and we enjoyed exploring Mazatlan – a very clean, nice city with 4 miles of a new promenade along a very beautiful sandy beach. We took the local buses – lots of other Americans and a bunch of Canadians were on the buses. They had two grades of buses – simply labeled “old” and “new” on the schedule. Most of the gringos take the new ones because they were air-conditioned but we took whichever came first. Fun to mingle. The first day we went to the old part of the city to see the market and the old church.
The only reason I didn’t buy the pig’s head for dinner was I didn’t have a big enough pot to cook it in – JUST KIDDING! I was so grossed out and making my usual loud comments, that some man came over to tell me where I could see even more of them. He and his wife followed us around for the next two hours – I guess they thought I was entertaining. Turns out they were Canadians and visit lots of places in Mexico so they filled us in on some of the places we are going. We finally ditched them and walked 8 miles – they have 4 miles of a beautiful promenade on a great sandy beach. Back at the marina, Lance was able to work on a lingering problem of our “packing glands” (and I thought Tavie was the only one on board that could suffer from that!).. I forgot to mention in all our other trials and tribulations that when Lance ran the wing engine (only our BACKUP engine), it was running too hot and the glands needed to be less tight and drip more. I’m not making this terminology up!!! Anyway, he got that fixed so now we have backup which is good since we came 1,000 miles without it!!! I actually think it would have worked but it might have damaged it.
The electrical problem continued to plague us and the night before we were to leave for Puerto Vallarta, the burning rubber smell returned while we were getting ready to go to bed. The radar was not on so now we were really perplexed. In my usual calm manner, I said “we are turning around, going to Dana Point and were going to let Nordhavn fix the problem. I am not going one nautical mile further south.” Fortunately, Lance had bought this handy heat-reading gizmo so we kept pointing it at all the wires under the “dashboard.”
 
As you can see there are a ton of them. Suddenly it registered 375 degrees on one contact point. OOPS! And as we’re sitting there in wonder, the thing started glowing red!!! So Lance ran and shut off the batteries (it was in the 12-volt system which is what runs our radar, plotter, and every other important gizmo on the boat). All he had to do was tighten the nut and it was fixed. Neil, the Nordhavn guru I mentioned earlier had said to check for this and we thought we had but obviously not. So now we don’t smell like we’re on fire anymore! As I also said earlier, Inez’s prayers are working (and all the others that are being said on our behalf). It was so lucky that it finally happened in a marina where it’s calm and you have fewer systems working and the boat is not bouncing, etc.
Guilty screw right above the heavy red wire!!
Next morning we left for Puerto Vallarta. We had hitchhikers all night!!! The interesting thing was that all 3 were different.
We found a safe harbor before we got to PV called San Blas and we stayed for several days. As you can see Lance tried out his new hooka diving gear for cleaning the bottom of the boat. In an hour he got about 100th of the bottom cleaned. He hasn’t had the energy to go back at it again. That’s the beauty of Mexico – there’s always ma?ana!!!
I have forgotten to mention food and everyone knows I’m a foodalolic. It turns out that I have brought enough food for at least 6 months at sea. We’ve been gone three weeks and I still can only chill two cans of beer at a time in the freezer – but we do have our beer. At the CostCo in Mazatlan I found an American product I had never seen in the US… canned pancake batter called “Batter Blaster” – couldn’t resist since Lance and Tavie like pancakes so much. Here’s Tavie after a breakfast of them – notice the eyes at half-mast. And the pancakes are not bad.
Now we’re in a brand new marina a little north of the city of Puerto Vallarta and once again I don’t want to leave. We found a great little hole in the wall not far from the marina and had a great lunch of “fish stick” – it was actually a shish kabob but that was the menu description. They need some marketing help…
We’re going to take a bus to Puerto Vallarta (about 25 KM) and see the sights. We will leave here in a day or two and head to our next anchorage. Until then…
StarPlath Adventures – Chapter 1
March 6th
As we sit in this incredibly beautiful harbor, I'm finally connected to the world. Eight days with no internet is a first for me. I will try to keep this short but I do want you to get a feel for life at sea...
Thanks to our Club Marena friends, Susie, Vaugh and Miles, we were able to leave on Sunday, Feb. 24th at noon. They drove us from Club Marena in Rosarito to the boat in Ensenada so we didn't have to leave our car at the marina for 3 months.
I'd also like to thank my brother Jay for being our "weather router" and Libby, my sister-in-law, who is tracking our progress and reporting to my mother. We call them on our satellite phone to get updates and keep them posted as to our whereabouts.
The first two days were rather boring - let's see. We take two hour shifts on the overnight runs and our first night out was to get us to San Quentin. Lance woke me up at 6:00 am to say we were in deep trouble as there was a twenty foot swell going into this bay. Lance actually was a little scared which is very unusual for him. He figured if we kept going into the bay, we might get swamped. The fact that we couldn't anchor there meant we have to go for a second night in a row to find the next safe bay. So we trekked on...
Then after another of Lance's watches, he wakes me up with the words "we have an electrical fire on the boat!" And sure enough, there is the distinct smell of burning rubber up on the bridge. We could never find the source so we just kept on going... when we turned off the radar the smell went away so we were suspicious that might be the problem but the radar was still working. It happened again this morning so we're still trying to locate the problem.
We spent a couple of restful days in Tortas Bay - not another boat in sight. Then we needed to move on to Magdalena Bay and it was also an overnighter. That night I did not awaken but Lance heard an alarm go off because of a leaky propane tank. He shut down the tank but the next morning when we tried to cook, it went off again. The thought of only having the microwave for 3 months was not very appealing. So thanks to Lance McGyver, he used his Teflon tape to try to seal the fitting and it worked. So we're cooking with gas as the old ads say...
Then we spent a couple of days at Magdalena Bay, again by ourselves, and started off for Cabo San Lucas at the tip of southern Baja. I'd like to say it went smoothly but it was the worst ride on the boat so far. Then Lance noticed that one of our stabilizers (which helps immensely in keeping the boat from rolling too much) was about to fall off - why he decided to look at the shackle through the binoculars for the first time ever at that moment meant the gods were watching out for us. The shackle at the end of the boom which you cannot reach without dismantling the boat was coming undone. So we had to pull in that stabilizer and the rock and roll was horrendous. We had secured the regular stuff that tends to fly in rough seas but this rough sea sent everything to the floor - just one crash after another. I finally asked King Neptune to calm it down - I was about to throw some Pepto into the brink like the ad shows. Poor Tavie was as scared as I was. After 6 hours of this, it finally did calm down and we arrived at this brand new, gorgeous marina. We did get to see a few whales at a distance – a small one breeched several times near us. I hope they will come closer on our next leg.
Lance spent the first day at the marina fixing the stabilizer. He is so clever - he had to climb up the mast and disconnect a cable and then he used the boom to lower the outrigger pole so he could fix the shackle. Fixing the shackle was easy but getting the outrigger pole up and down was quite the feat. Here he is at the top of the center pole, detaching a cable.
And here he is fixing the little screw that is a critical part of the stabilizing system…
We met a really nice couple, Sally and Brad, in a sailboat next to us in the marina. Sally took me to Costco in Cabo yesterday to re-stock. They are leaving for the Marquesas and plan to be gone 10 months or so.
We’re leaving for Mazatlan on Saturday and should be there by Monday sometime. We’re anchoring at Los Freillas on Saturday night and then we will start across the Sea of Cortez on Sunday.
Keep those prayers coming. I don't know when we will be at our next Wi-Fi stop but I will write when I get to one.
So long for now,
StarPlath Crew - Lance, Stephanie and Tavie
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