Tales from Heidi's Visit

Heidi’s Visit

My sister Heidi came for a visit a few weeks ago. After successfully navigating her way through a foreign country not known for their traffic safety record and taking a few minor “scenic routes” she arrived at the J World office just as I was finishing up a test review with a sailing student. Our visit was somewhat postponed when I discovered money missing from our office drawer, money which had been set aside for a document translation. I gave Heidi a quick tour of the resort pool, grabbed a palapa on the beach, ordered food and I went back to the office to give a statement to the security guards. Finally, I was free to go (after watching one of the security guards open the locked door with a credit card.) I joined Heidi at the each, polished off the remaining quesodillas and made our way to the boat. After settling in (and getting all the contraband items Heidi had smuggled into her bag: several items from Trader Joe’s, a Victoria Secret bra, Pirates of the Caribbean DVD and shopvac filters ) we went into town for dinner.

Since I hadn’t been working much, I haven’t been treating myself to meals out. Every year the local cruisers publish a cruiser’s guide to help new boaters to the area find their way around. Along with map of Puerto Vallarta and surrounding towns, there are listings of recommended restaurants. We choose “Ernesto’s Good Grub”. I won’t bore you with the details of what we ordered (me: tortilla soup and a BLT, Heidi: orange chicken plate) but I will tell you it was delicious. Ernesto's is known for their incredible tortilla soup. Near the end of the meal, the owner (probably Ernesto) surprised us by giving us the receipe! I'm sure it won't taste the same, but it was a nice to know we could get close!

Friday morning we went for a walk. Heidi got a kick out all the pickup trucks filled with workers going to work. It looks like a movie seen depicting the “sketchy” part of Mexico, 50 guys standing in the back of a beat-up truck. Apparently there is no law prohibiting passengers in the bed of a pickup truck. You cannot go a day in Mexico without seeing men, women, children, and babies riding in the back of a truck. We wanted to get a picture, but we couldn’t do it without being inconspicuous or looking like dim-witted, disrespectful gringos. By the end of the week, we had no such shame and took a video of one of the trucks passing, while we pretended to be filming something else.

We had breakfast on the boat and headed to the J World office. Dustin, a fellow gringo working in Mexico, agreed to dog sit for the two days Heidi and I would be in Mismoloya. We decided to seize the day and sign up for the canopy tour. For those of you who don’t know, a canopy tour is flying through the jungle on a zip line. We made reservations online and went downtown to find the El Eden Canopy Tour office. To be continued...

MEXORC

MEXORC is a week long regatta in Bahia de Banderas. The participating boats ranged in length from the J 80s (26 feet) to 80 footers! Many of the big boats had recently competed in the San Diego to Puerto Vallarta race, sponsored by the San Diego Yacht Club. J World combined MEXORC with an advanced racing clinic. Eugenie, Roy, and I switched roles from sail instructors to race coaches. We had three teams from “all over the world”. Yes, I know it’s a bit dramatic to say "all over the world" but it was true: Team New York, Team Canada and Team Tasmania! How many of you can find Tasmania on a map?

Each day started with lectures discussing strategies and tactics. The “race coaches” switched boats each day to insure equality and discourage bragging rights among the instructors. The regatta consisted of five race days with a total of seven races. Tuesday’s race course was to the Tres Marietas islands and back, but since the J 80s were the smallest boats in the fleet and likely to take a long time to finish the 35 mile race, we had the day “off”. I don’t think the race committee wanted to wait all day for us to finish, and as a former race committee chair person I can’t blame them a bit. Instead, J World put on a mini regatta. Our “off” day consisted of about 10 short races. Wayne (el jefe) served as the committee and photo boat.

In tribute to my competitive nature, I’m only posting the pictures with my team in the lead.

I can’t recreate any of the races since my memory is a blurr of numerous spinnaker sets and douses, frequent place changes, wind shifts, salt-coated sunglasses, soggy sandwiches, a couple instances of bumper boats, and several post race cervezas. But a good time was had by all. Although the student’s claimed their objective was to have “fun and increase their racing skills,” Team New York was all smiles when they picked up the first place trophy. . Team Canada signed their names on the second place trophy and donated it to J World. Missing second by only one point was Team Tasmania: who I’m sure had a long flight home. You know I couldn’t resist that last comment.