Tres Marietas

Just a quick posting, as it's been verrrrry busy around here (which I'll elaborate on in my next post-- stay tuned).

But last weekend, our buddy Roger had a bunch of his buddies in town, including Chad (who once took a panga all the way down the coast to Panama) as well as Steve, Travis, and Scott (who are the harbor masters at Catalina in SoCal).

These guys party hard, and in one of their on-shore excursions, they found and shang-hai'd a very nice Aussie gal named Ali who is a (paid) crew member on a 114-foot sailboat called the Beagle. It was interesting to hear her tales of life as a professional sailor.

Anyway, we sailed up and anchored off Punta Mita for a night, which is a great little town at the northwest corner of Banderas Bay. The boys and Ali kept the festivities running late into the night-- think full-volume midnight Neil Diamond sing-alongs, with occasional air-horn accompaniment-- but fortunately I'd had the good sense to tell Naomi "don't anchor too close to Palapa" earlier in the day.

The following day we sailed over to some islands called Tres Marietas which is a marine sanctuary. Very cool place-- and we had the island to ourselves.

We filled the day with swimming, snorkeling, and hermit crab races (see the circular pit we dug). Unfortunately, our crab, Pedro, did not win, but he put up a valiant effort. That night, we returned to our previous habits of docking in the dark, successfully. Overall a very fun weekend!