One of the things that has taken hold in the last few days is that the Puddle Jump group is well into getting ready to head to the Marquesas. There has been a flurry of car rentals and mass shopping and last minute boat repairs over on 3 dock. We have many friends getting into the long distance mode and it has been interesting to watch since this IS something I would like to do sometime. There have already been a couple of boats that slipped the ties and turned west but thus far they are reporting little or no wind and are only a couple of hundred miles out of Banderas Bay. In looking at the weather reports it seems to me that it will be at least a week before conditions are such that, if I were going, I would choose to follow them. In any case, it is interesting to watch the collective progress being made over on 3 dock.
This morning I joined Dietmar and Susanne (Carinthia) going to the swap meet in Nuevo Vallarta along with Alan and Rena (Follow You Follow Me). We had a good time at the brief event and then managed to slip in a shopping trip to fill their last minute needs for the Jump. I think that Dietmar has finally hit stride and has started to relax again. His last few weeks have been all about the preparations but now he seems to have come to that point where he has done all he can and it's time to go as soon as conditions are correct. I recall this turning point from earlier in our trip when, even though the work was not done in Portland we had to stick to the leave-the-dock plan or be there for another year!! It is a wonderful thing to reach that place where you just can't get yourself past a certain state of Ready.
If you have a shortwave radio you can hear them chatter at around 9:00 am (CST) on 8.188 USB as they get organized around their new net. It's not clear to me what they will do about daylight savings time so it would be at the top of the hour, based on what they decide on that, and if you want to follow their progress you might have to hunt for them an hour or two either side of that time.
2 comments:
do tell....what is the puddle jump group all about? i am clueless.
Puddle Jumpers are the folks who leave Mexico headed across the Pacific for the South Seas island-nations. The voyage takes roughly a month and the boat has to be seriously prepared for anything and everything!! Water, power, food, spare parts... etc. are a big planning consideration for this. As they start to leave Mexico they stay in touch on shortwave radios.
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