Banderas Bay - Two Years Later

Exactly two years ago Tom and I flew to Puerto Vallarta to join our friends Torben and Judy aboard their beautiful boat Tivoli to participate in the Banderas Bay Regatta. We had the best time ever and joked that someday we would sail our own boat down to Banderas Bay. In fact I am enjoying my morning cup of Trader Joe's Irish Breakfast Tea reading Tivoli's old blog posts from the Banderas Bay Regatta HERE. 

We are finally here!! We are anchored in the peaceful bay of La Cruz just north of Puerto Vallarta.

We spent the last couple of days in Cabo trying to drink the town dry of their most excellent margaritas and microbrews...

The Margaritas are huge!

...doing last-minute boat chores such as splicing 150' of anchor chain onto the 3-strand nylon rode (thanks Spinnaker Shop for teaching me some useful boat skills!) and saying goodbye to our Cabo friends. It was especially sad to say adios to our neighbor Stoli (Miniature Schnauzer), whom we had adopted as our ersatz "Walter", our French Bulldog buddy who owns our friends Dina and Dom back in Alameda. Adios Stoli, terror of G-Dock!!

Stoli glares at a bird on the dock.

After enjoying our last couple of days in Cabo San Lucas, one extra day in fact since the Port Captain closed the port on our intended departure date due to high winds (yay!) and bad seas (boo!), we left Cabo on Sunday March 3, on calm seas and warm, light winds.

It was another pleasant passage, except this time nights were filled with much more ocean traffic; cruise ships (easy to see) and lots of fishing boats, some lit and some unlit, so we didn't get as much nighttime rest as when we sailed down the uncivilized Baja peninsula. It was an especially rough passage for Tom.

Tom taking one for the team

There seemed to be lots of sea life in the water, but unfortunately never on our fishing lines. Drat! Sunsets and sunrises generally brought pods of dolphins to play in our bow wake. In fact, at our last sunset we passed through a huge pod of spinner dolphins leaping out of the water, sometimes as high as 10 feet, in an amazing display of acrobatic prowess. Even the baby dolphins did their best to leap with the adults. How cool!

The warmer water brought more squid suicides on Cinnabar's deck. Final Tally: Cinnabar 5 - Squids 0.

Squids are oddly beautiful creatures

Our approach to Banderas Bay was a bit of a nail biter. The two navigational lights that showed the entrance to the bay, between the mainland and some islands about 5 miles offshore, were not functioning! So we slowed the boat down and waited until sunrise so we could identify our passage. Good thing as I had us headed between two towns on the mainland, which didn't quite line up with what our Raymarine was telling us. As all aviators say, you have to trust your instruments.

We dropped anchor off of La Cruz the morning of March 5, about 45 hours and 330 nm after leaving Cabo San Lucas (31% sailing, 69% motoring). There are about 50 other sailboats at the anchorage; seems to be popular place.

We are here.

And since the water is 74 degrees F., my official "acceptable" water temp, I went for a nice snorkel around the boat that first evening.

We spent the last couple of days putting Cinnabar into true cruising mode with sunshades, mosquito nets, etc. and doing some boat tasks such as trying to get the watermaker to function and assembling the dinghy for the first time (success!). Today we contend with the outboard and hopefully head over to the town of La Cruz to register with the port captain and see the Margaritas, er...town.

We have a few more pictures of our last couple of days in Cabo and our trip across to Banderas Bay HERE.