Here is our first journal/blog entry from our new boat (currently named Whisper, soon to be renamed to Tupo). After a great road trip, which hopefully we will chronicle at a later date. Some of you may be wondering what the heck Tupo means. A description of this and many other interesting facts will eventually show up on the Boat Specs page. On to what happened to us today. Our good friend Mike Park drove us to the airport, he was super excited because he got to use LA's car pool lanes and we zoomed along. Checking in was pretty uneventful. We checked four bags and the limit was 50lbs per bag. Two of our bags were overweight, one by 0.6lbs and the other by 2lbs and fortunately for our pocketbook the woman at the counter was sympathetic. She asked "What do you have in those bags?" to which Janet replied "We're moving to Mexico". Which seemed to be a satisfactory answer as we were not charged.
On the flight over, we met this very nice ex-pat American woman named Patty who gave us some of the ins and outs of PV (that's what everyone here calls Puerto Vallarta) and gave us her card with an invitation to call anytime. Surprisingly, getting all our luggage through customs and into a taxi was practically effortless and the taxi driver took us right to the marina next to our slip. While Eric was taking half the luggage to the boat, Janet waited with the rest.
Funny enough, is that when I (Eric) got to the slip, it was EMPTY! We ended up piling the luggage up at the empty slip and Eric went exploring. While on my way to the marina office, I met Kathy from Out of Africa, a sweet catamaran, who introduced me to her partner named Rich (?). They informed me that sometimes boats get moved and that I should walk the docks looking for Whisper. While I was walking the docks, Janet met two women - Cici (see-see, no idea on the spelling) and Reenee (ree-nee, again I'm guessing on the spelling) who are on the sailboat TenTen (I think). Reenee told me that she had seen Whisper in her own slip just this morning. Long story short (too late, I know) we found her all the way at the other end of the marina. What a relief to see her floating there!!! We opened her up and saw our future for the next few days - we'd be on mold duty! There is mold everywhere, one of the berth cushions is soaked (must be a leak during the rains?), but I'm sure we'll manage. We cleaned up enough to sleep (found some diluted bleach solution that should do the trick, though a woman we met later, Kim, suggested a 50:50 vinegar: water solution for the job.
Unfortunately it's late in the day for everything to get a good airing out and some sunshine to dry things out, but we opened everything up in the boat and started the fans going. There are three small DC fans that move the air around a bit. Speaking of the fans, we got the house batteries turned on, they appear to be fully charged (we're plugged into AC here at the marina), so that all seems well. The CD player works, so we'll have some music for our clean up job, etc. Janet went and got us dinner - can anyone guess what our first meal on the boat was? I'll put in the next entry - for suspense! She also picked up a couple of beers which are tasting delicious as I write this. We got the small fridge cleaned out and running too so we have cold drinks - sweet!
We also met someone down here with less sailing experience than us! His name is Al, from Canada somewhere (Alberta we think), and claims to only have 20hrs sailing experience. All of a sudden we don't feel so amateur! We also met Byron, goes by Boomer, who was also very nice. Actually, everyone we met has been very friendly and helpful and this is only our first few hours here at the Paradise Village Marina in Nuevo Vallarta (20mins north of PV). Okay, there is a radio show tomorrow morning at 8:30 am and new arrivals are supposed to announce their arrival so we'll have to figure out the radio by then. Until tomorrow. . .