Make Me Laugh Again

Up at 7 am and breakfast on left over pastries from yesterday and apples we brought with us. Our room faces east so, we get a sunrise every morning. 

Breakfasts at the resort left a lot to be desired, expensive (for Mexico) cold when they should have been hot, poor ingredients when eating at a 4 star resort, etc.

Lunches were as bad, the restaurants open at noon for lunch, but that doesn’t mean they are serving lunch anytime soon. Our experience was we sat down at noon and ordered as soon as possible, one of the people in our group ordered a very light lunch, (Nacho’s) they were the last one served at 12:55. This is only an issue if you have a schedule like a seminar that you are leading at 1pm. Which was the case for the leader, his lunch was served at 12:50.  The problem here is that there really is not an option as the nearest restaurant to the resort that is outside is probably a 20 minute walk out the front of the place. 

The rooms, views and pools were very nice. The first session was held outside as there was an issue with the room we were scheduled to be meeting in. It was ready by the afternoon session, and we met there for the rest of the sessions. 

The Panama Posse has only been going for about 5 years. This year they have had 266 boats sign up. They have arranged discounts at 60 marinas between San Diego and Florida, Home Depot, and many other places. They also have a very well designed web page, with lots of information about the route, weather, and anchorages. They have quite a bit of information on “must see” locations. They also have a weekly phone call via an app called LINE that is handled sort of like a net without the checkins. During the week between the calls, the app can be used to text a question to the group, anyone can respond and everyone gets to see it. You can also use it to contact someone directly in a private text. 

Saturday morning was a swap meet, and the session in the afternoon was a tech support session to get OPENCPN working and charts, this is important as there are many issues with the available marine software packages and the more charts of an area you get teh more likely you are to see the problems. There were at least two examples shown that Navionics and another commercial map package showed as being clear with no obstructions, but Google Earth satellite pictures clearly showed that there was a reef there. OpenCPN allows adding tiles from a variety of sources to better address these issues. There was one example shown where someone had tried to go around a reef by using the chart and ran aground and lost the boat. (He was a single handed vessel and had been up too long etc. as well). We needed hard disk space of 250 GB, and did not have it. A couple of us ran into town (the advantage of having a car) and bought a couple of hard drives. 

Sunday morning Reneé and I went to church in Melaque about a 4 miles north of the resort and about a half hour drive to go around the lagoon. The last time we were there, the building was a palapa (poles for supports and palm fronds for a roof, no walls, and clean and neat, pretty impressive. This time, we found that the “building” had apparently suffered in a hurricane (maybe?) and was in the process of being rebuilt, so we had the same floor but the roof was basically tarps stretched overhead. After church and lunch we went back for a session on provisioning and a recap with a Q&A session. 

There were a couple of get togethers with drinks and food, one was a photo session and the other was a potluck. Both fairly typical cruiser type affairs. 

We got up around 7 am, the plan for the day is attend seminars before lunch and after lunch. Breakfast was included with our reservation, and was among the worst I have ever had. I asked for an omelet with out cheese or cream, the omelet had cheese. I asked for a replacement, and the stuff inside was cold, this one of the best resorts in Mexico (supposedly) they used canned mushrooms in the omelet, hash browns were the freezer variety (triangular).  All of the breakfast stuff would have been acceptable, except breakfast for the two of us was $38 per day. We immediately changed our stay to breakfast not included.

The first seminar was an introduction of the Panama Posse and then an introduction of each of the boats represented at the seminars today. There are a lot of power boaters here, many of them are on Nordhavens (BIG expensive power yachts) I think 1 was a 40 foot and the rest were 55 up to over 80 foot. The guy on the biggest had a specific problem he was looking for help with, apparently Panama requires any boat over 80’ to have a dedicated captain, this guy is an owner operator and has found that even getting his captains license is not enough for Panama. Truly a 1st world problem.

The second seminar was an overview of the route from San Diego to Panama and then to the east coast of the US. We learned some interesting things about where we are going, like we need to be out of the band between Costa Rica and Panama between March and October as there is a real threat of lightening. We also learned the best route on the east side of the canal to avoid the trade winds and pirates. Most importantly, we found out that the Panama Posse is associated with Good Nautical which is a 501.c.3 organization dedicated to charting where it is safe to sail/motor. Why this is really important is that means with proper coordination and paperwork Cuba is NOT off limits. So, getting from the Yucatán peninsula to Florida is much easier than I thought!

Lunch was had at a different restaurant in the hotel, with Dan a boat broker from San Diego, and then dinner was in town with Kristen and Joe and their three kids Levi, Rachel & Meghan and their dog Rio. We met them in La Cruz last spring.

Then back to the hotel and bed.

Up and around slowly. Today is haul out day, but not until 3:30, in the meantime, we are going to walk up to the market and hang out. We have to move our kayak off the rail and a couple of other things to make it easier to get the lifting straps around the boat but we are pretty much ready to haul out.

We had a quick trip to the market and then back to the boat. With final preparations and packing for the rest of the week. Where we hung out until about 1 pm, internet is really weak here, the phone signal is about 1 to 2 bars most of the time, and the WiFi from the marina is about nothing. So, around 1 pm, we called the yard to let them know that we were ready anytime they were.

They said that they had an issue with the brake on the boat lift, and were unsure about picking our boat up since it is pretty heavy. Having just gotten the picture from Wednesdays boat lift issue in Guaymas, we were ok with delaying pulling our boat out of the water before they were ready.

We took a hike over to the yard to go over details and when it could happen etc. then back to the boat. By this time we had a car reserved for Thursday morning, and a room at the resort starting Thursday night. So, we got on the phone and moved the car up to Wednesday night at 4, and a room for tonight. We got the car and packed and on the road by about 5, it is supposed to be about a 4 hour drive to Barra, but that assumes you don’t leave from the north end of Puerto Vallarta at 5 pm and go straight south. It took about 2 and half hours to go 27 miles across PV. Total drive time about 6 hours. In the dark, virtually no street lights, lots of speed bumps, a couple of detours to repair the road, not much advance warning etc. all in all a very interesting drive. We arrived about 11 pm, and got checked in.

This is a very nice hotel. We have stayed at the marina, but this was the first time in the resort.