November 2, 2012, Friday, Bahia de las Tortugas

It is so nice to sleep a whole night straight through. I was up about 7 to catch up with my blog entries.  7:30, turned on the SSB radio to listen to the morning net.   Nothing.  Tried again at 8, thinking maybe they were letting people sleep in.  Still nothing.  Sometime after 9 I realized that I could hear radio chatter coming from the other boats.  I went out to the cockpit and turned on the VHF radio and there they were, half way through the roll call.  Apparently someone had reported in for us because we were not among the missing.  Only one boat was unaccounted for.   We were all told in no uncertain terms to always check in when we arrive.  While this was going on I got out the iPad with the telcel sim card that was supposed to let us communicate in Mexico.  It worked, abeit very slowly.  There was facebook and I was able to get off a quick post to let everyone know where we are. 

The party is at noon on the beach, potluck.  I had not really thought ahead about potluck dishes but I had some cheese that was not going to keep much longer and some crackers that had not yet been unwrapped and so were presumable still fresh.  Looks like there will not be time to unfold the dingy and explore the village.  Time to get Alan up.  Breakfast.  Put on the solar panels.  The frapping on the rope holding the main sheet is wearing thin and Alan wants to fix it before we go to the party since we leave at 8am tomorrow.  The bay is full of pongas going from boat to boat offering rides to the party site so as soon as we were ready we flagged one down and climbed aboard.  After several stops at other boats to collect more passengers, we were off for the beach, racing along with the spray flying. 

The people from the village had set up tents, tables and chairs and were selling beer, tacos, ceveche and jewelry.  As the afternoon went on more and more of the local people arrived in their pick ups.  Soon there was a long row of trucks lined up along the road full of people from the village just watching the crazy boat people as if they were at a soccer match.  I could not help but wonder what they thought about all of this.

The beach party was like all beach parties; music, food, beer, silly games.  The grill was loaded with all of the extra fish that had been caught on the way down, huge slabs of really fresh tuna.  The best part was meeting and talking to people from other boats.  I had been hearing their radio chatter for 3 days, now I could put faces to names and boat names.  Gradually I came to realize that everyone had had the same problems that we had; no wind, wind from the wrong direction, etc.  We were not the last ones in and we definitely were not the only ones to use the motor.  Only 5-6 of 130 boats had actually managed to sail the whole way. 

As the party was winding down a small group of us gathered on the sand for a quick yoga session, then it was time to pack up and climb aboard a ponga for a ride back.  The boat we chose was carrying a trumpet player from one of the other boats who serenaded us all the way back.