<![CDATA[DOVKA.COM - Ship Blog]]>Sat, 11 May 2024 22:08:53 -0400Weebly<![CDATA[Swim Time]]>Tue, 26 Mar 2024 04:00:00 GMThttp://dovka.com/ship-blog/swim-timeWhen you’re a kid on a cruising boat, there’s only one thing better than pulling into a beautiful anchorage and seeing other kids playing in the water.... seeing kids you know and like playing in the water, on a boat that’s been turned into an all out water jungle gym. (CONTINUED BELOW...)
When we sailed into Chacala, just north of La Cruz, we spotted Dream Reach, a bright yellow Compass 47 with two girls, 8-year-old Eva and 5-year-old Rauni aboard. The kids were swinging off poles, ropes and hammocks strung from the rigging and plopping into the water. Seconds after dropping our own anchor next to Dream Reach, our girls were in the water swimming over to join their neighbors.

For the next week, we lazed about Chacala - a quintessential beach town that was hopping with Mexicans on vacation for the Semana Santa holiday.

As our own kids splashed about, a dozen local kids swam by as part of an official swimming club, chaperoned by a woman and toddler on a paddle board and closely followed by a dog who looked like he too was used to regular long swims.

A panga zoomed past towing a banana - a long inflatable raft straddled by 14 people being towed around the harbor. (After being buzzed repeatedly by reckless, high-speed jet skis in Cabo, this disturbance seemed quaint.)

We quickly met the other cruisers in the anchorage, including a couple from Paris with their two girls, and were invited on a group hike up to the local hilltop overlook. We spent a lovely week, swimming, hiking, getting the occasional meal or ice cream ashore, and generally practicing the art of doing very little while the kids enjoyed the company of other kids.

Our stay culminated with the celebration of Alexandra's 7th birthday. We baked a chocolate cake topped with chocolate frosting and maraschino cherries, carefully rowed it ashore, decorated a palm fringed cabana with a "Feliz Cumpleaños" banner, then were joined on the beach by Dream Reach for a lovely party.
]]><![CDATA[Flat Iguana Song - (Inspired by Real Life Events)]]>Fri, 15 Mar 2024 04:00:00 GMThttp://dovka.com/ship-blog/flat-iguana-song-inspired-by-real-life-events
]]><![CDATA[Unintended Consequences]]>Fri, 08 Mar 2024 05:00:00 GMThttp://dovka.com/ship-blog/unintended-consequences
Part of the beauty of cruising is the flexibility that comes with carrying your home with you. When you like a place, you can stay put. When you feel like moving on, you move on.
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But it’s not always that simple. Sometimes you get stuck - and that’s not always a bad thing.

In late February, we sailed into to La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, a small town with a good anchorage and a large marina just north of Puerto Vallarta on Banderas Bay. We planned to spend a couple weeks there.

The day we arrived in La Cruz, someone jokingly told me he called it La Stuck. I laughed that off. But sure enough, our intended two week visit ballooned into a six week stay.

Mainly, that was because we decided to take advantage of the talented labor in the marina and get the caulking on our teak decks redone. It was a long overdue job.
But La Cruz is also a Mexican Mecca for cruisers with an active community of sailors headed in all directions from that one port. This meant not only services for boat work, but lots of information being shared, activities such as outdoor movie nights, weekly markets, and many friends new and old for both the adults and the kids. In short, a great place to spend some time - especially for the kids who could (once school was done) run down the dock to play with friends, swim in the pool, or take the pesos from their allowance up to the store to buy chips and soda.

Six weeks passed quickly and it was time for us to head north. So we were soon saying goodbyes, getting our final ice cream and agua fresca from our favorite sweet shop, getting propane and fuel filled, paying marina bills, and hosting one last sleep over for the kids’ friends… then another last sleepover.

La Cruz ended up being the perfect place to spend six weeks, even though we never intended to.
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]]><![CDATA[The Galapagos of Mexico]]>Tue, 20 Feb 2024 05:00:00 GMThttp://dovka.com/ship-blog/the-galapagos-of-mexico
In February, my cousin Mitch joined us to sail south from Cabo towards Puerto Vallarta. The passage was highlighted by a brief but memorable stop at a tiny, astonishing island called Isla Isabela.

Called the Galapagos of Mexico, Isla Isabela is a nesting ground for blue-footed boobies and frigate birds. Ashore, trails wind past a dormant volcanic crater lake and under and around thousands of nesting birds with eggs and chicks. Iguanas follow visitors looking for dropped crumbs. It feels like a land straight out of Jurassic Park.

We arrived in the morning and dropped anchor in the southern bay of the island, a notoriously rocky spot with poor holding. Because of this, I dove on the anchor in 25 feet of water to ensure it was well dug into the sandy spot we’d found. There were four other boats in the cove, one with kids. So our girls were soon in the water swimming with Canadian children.

After drying off and eating lunch, we decided to head ashore to hike to the other side of the island. An easy dinghy landing led us to a path up the hillside. We’d only taken a few steps when we saw enormous, fluffy frigate bird chicks sitting in the low scrub trees, above, below and all around us. The adult males sat near them with huge, red pouches extended to attract mates. Others soared above our heads, drifting higher and higher in lazy circles on the afternoon thermals - with the longest wingspan-to-body-weight ratio of any bird, frigates can perform aeronautical acrobatics that would put any barn stormer to shame.

A little further on, we spotted blue footed boobies. It wasn’t hard to find them, as they’d made nests smack dab in the middle of the trail and they hooted at us as we approached, warning us away from their nests and protected eggs. As their name suggest, these are funny looking birds with bright blue feet. Some sat alone, some danced in pairs in a mating ritual that includes pointing their beaks skyward and whistling.

As we reached the other side of the island and stopped for a snack, brown iguanas came out of the underbrush and began converging on us, clearly interested in any food we might have to offer. We shooed them away, but missed a sneaky one who managed to hop onto Alexandra’s lap while she was enjoying a granola bar, giving her quite a fright.

But that excitement paled in comparison to what happened next.

As we readied to retrace our steps back across the island, we spotted a panga - a local fishing boat - zooming towards us. Not only were they clearly in a hurry, but they were waving orange life jackets and yelling at us. As they got closer they motioned for us to come with them and yelled that our boat had gotten loose and was drifting out to sea.

I was frightened and confused, but the two locals in the panga, a father and son, seemed sincere. So, as the father expertly positioned the panga alongside the jagged lava shoreline, with swell pulsing in and out, we scrambled into the boat and zoomed toward the horizon.

“There, out there! That’s your boat!,” he said in Spanish. I looked but it was too far away to identify. I found it curious that the headsail was out, because it would have had to have blown free to unfurl itself.

As we zoomed along, the anchorage where we’d left Dovka came into view. I pointed and said to the captain, “That’s my boat is anchored right there!”

A huge wave of relief washed over me, but I was still confused as to what had happened. Our dinghy was still on the beach so the panga driver, apologizing profusely, took us back to the beach and dropped us off.

Once ashore, the couple off the kid boat approached us and told us they’d been looking for us to tell us our boat was dragging. They mentioned that they’d notified the local fishermen. Apparently, something had been lost in translation and they had assumed our boat was drifting out to sea and kindly had come to alert us.

We returned to Dovka, and while she may have dragged slightly, I didn’t bother taking additional bearings to find out. We simply upped the anchor and moved to the eastern, more secure anchorage.

Glad to be safely aboard, we decided to stick close and spent the next day snorkeling amidst the fish schooling in large groups around the two rock pinnacles shadowing the anchorage.

In another day, were soon on our way southeast, enjoying a lovely sail southeast towards Puerto Vallarta from where Mitch would fly home after a memorable week aboard Dovka.
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