Renee flew in yesterday and reunited with me and Intermezzo. It is great to have her back.
Renee spent the morning unpacking and stowing all the stuff she carried back. I cleared us out of the marina and the Capitania de Puerto. We slipped our lines just after lunch and left Nuevo Vallarta and headed to the fuel dock in La Cruz to fill up on diesel. We're now anchored off La Cruz until Wednesday morning when we begin a leisurely sail south to Manzanillo.
I was mostly ecstatic about leaving the Paradise Village marina. It's a pretty nice place, but I was sooooo ready to move on, get out on the ocean and anchor out instead of being "parked" between other boats. I did feel a little pang of "goodbye sadness" though; it's funny how after you spend a few weeks in a place, it starts to feel a bit like home. I didn't socialize too much with other boaters but made friends with a few of the local guys who worked or crewed on boats. We would greet each other every day with a cheerful buenos dias and chat in "Spanglish" to each other for a little while, very friendly and relaxed small talk mostly about our families, work, "life on the dock". I guess it was saying goodbye to these guys that made me feel a just little heavy-hearted as Intermezzo pulled away from her slip, but this feeling was eclipsed by my excitement and happiness to be moving again and resuming our voyage.
We'll take about two weeks to sail to Manzanillo, a distance of only about 160 nautical miles. Our friends Marc and Marci will be joining us for this leg of the trip. We're planning on stopping at five anchorages along the way and then taking a road trip inland to the area surrounding Colima once we get to Maznanillo. Along the way there will be a lot of good snorkeling spots, a jungle estuary dinghy trek, sea caves and, of course, beautiful beaches. We'll get some "town time" when we stop for a few days in Barra de Navidad. It should be a great trip and the boat is packed full with good food and wine. We leave Wednesday morning to get around Cabo Corrientes and then sail through the day and night to reach Bahia Chamela, our only overnight sail on this leg. All the other passages are short day sails. The weather is looking good and I think it's going to be a great trip to introduce Marc and Marci to the sailing life.
