A NEW YEAR BRINGS NEW FOCUS

Hello 2025! Our crossing to La Cruz from Baja was a study in contrasting conditions. We departed Los Frailes on New Year’s Day with 20-25 kts of northerly wind on the beam, and flew eastward through the day and following night at over 8 knots. The wind diminished through day two and we sailed increasingly slowly through the evening, as we made a more southward course around the Marietta islands, when it died completely.

The most exciting moment of the passage came on that second day when we “caught” a Blue Footed Booby on our fishing line! Thankfully it hadn’t swallowed the hook, but had got tangled up in the line while checking it out. We carefully reeled it in, and wrapped it in a towel while untangling the line. Happily we were able to release it unharmed and sat it on our solar panels, where it took a moment before flying away.

Motoring through our second night out in calm conditions, we passed Punta Mita and entered Banderas Bay a couple of hours after dawn. We enjoyed dawdling through the bay towards La Cruz as there were plenty of Humpback whales around to watch, and we dropped anchor 52 hours after departing Baja. We spent a relaxed night in the anchorage and moved into a slip in the marina the next morning, our home for the next few weeks at least, as we set up our plans and timing for French Polynesia.

The first job was to set up an appointment to get our French Polynesia Long Stay visas in San Francisco. We had to wait until we were within 90 days of our earliest possible arrival to make the appointment, and after a some frustrating website machinations we set our appointments for 14th January. We were off to the States!

First though, we had some fun and some work. The fun part was a visit from Alan and Joan Teed, friends and our longtime sailing mentors and cheerleaders. We’d met them while on our first bareboat charter in Croatia, and subsequently crewed on their lovely Hylas “Moonstruck” in a both fun and educational part of our path in sailing. It was lovely to catch up as we get ready to cross our first ocean, and have them see how far we’ve come.

On the work front we had to remove our old water maker, going with us for service in the US while we sorted the visas, and complete the boat survey we’d started back in Puerto Escondido. Happily our surveyor Marga on Dogfish was in La Cruz and available to go over Tino Pai before we left for the US. We had a busy day moving gear around to give her access to every nook and cranny, and she gave the boat a good going over. We will have a few things to sort out before we cross the Pacific, identifying these is exactly why we’d arrived early into La Cruz and arranged the survey. More on those as we address them in the future.

We flew to Oakland on January 12th and (as always) enjoyed staying with Lambert and Esme while we prepped for our visa appointment. We had a few papers to print out, and the water maker to send off for servicing, so we spent the next day sorting through that, and catching up with Zach and Leanne for lunch.

The appointment itself went well, though as it was with a visa processing center rather than the French Consulate we have no real feel for how it went. We successfully submitted all of the required paperwork and our passports, and now we’ll have to wait until our passports are returned to know if we are awarded long stay visas. It will be a much quicker journey to NZ if not!

We’d been invited to dinner that night with Christian and Sydney in the city, so spent a few hours wandering around San Francisco for the last time for quite a while in sunny but chilly weather. We were joined by Lambert and Esme and had a lovely dinner with Christian, Sydney and baby Otto. It’s very special to catch up with our good friends, not knowing how long it’ll be before we see them again once we set out across the ocean. It’s one of the challenges of our cruising life.

We were due to fly out the evening of the next day which gave us time to spend with Kent and Sarah on their Valiant 42 “Metanoia”. They’d kindly loaned us a car while we ran around getting ready for the visa appointment, making the process much easier. They’re berthed in our old slip at Marina Village in Alameda, and plan to sail to Mexico in coming months. It was really nice to see their progress and share some of our experiences. We hope to see them in La Cruz before we depart!

We’ve spent the last week staying with Shan’s Mom in Carson City spending time with her, Jen and Ron as we wait for the water maker to be ready. Despite both catching nasty colds, we had a nice day exploring the watershed around Dayton in Ron’s Polaris 4x4, played a round of simulated golf with Jen and Judy, ordered a bunch of parcels of things to take back to Tino Pai, and in various stages managed to catch up with most of the Tahoe crew; Alex & Morgan, Aly & TJ, and Jeff & Rhonda. We’re hoping to see everyone next time somewhere in the South Pacific - fingers crossed!

At the time of writing this we’re getting ready to fly to San Diego tomorrow. We’ll have a full day there, collecting the water maker and visiting a couple of chandleries before crossing into Tijuana the following day for our flight back to Puerto Vallarta (as it’s a land crossing we can use our passport cards). It’s been a busy but successful visit so far, and poignant in its way as we don’t know exactly when we might be back…

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