October in Paradise Village

NEOS LOG
October, 2010

We continued to enjoy the Remaleys; they came to the yacht club a couple of times a week and we journeyed over to the Mayan village a couple of times a week. George got tired of winning at 64, so we eventually reverted to Hearts. He’s even better at Hearts, but he found a kindred competitive soul in me. It was fun.

The first Wednesday of October, we took them out on Neos and Nick and his wife, Carol, joined us for a day in Banderas Bay. We started early and had banana walnut pancakes on our way out of the marina. There was very little wind, but we managed to drift along lazily, enjoying the day. Rog was able to dive on the props at slack tide and said they were absolutely packed with gunk. We increased our motoring speed by 2 knots when he was done! We swam, relaxed, chatted and generally lazed the day away and brought Neos back in about 4pm. We all headed to the Yacht Club for a cold one (and a game of cards!). Nick and Carol learned 64 and finished the game we had started when George and Kathy headed back to the Luxxe. A good time was had by all!

Before Kathy left, she told us about the Turtle Sanctuary about a mile down the beach from Paradise Village. We took a hike to find it, but when we got there, we could not figure out any way to get into it. Our understanding is that they take donations and organize groups to collect the eggs for incubation and then have organized releases. With no clear way of joining in the sanctuary’s efforts, we decided to make a trip to the beach early in the morning to see if we could find some babies on our own.

The first morning, we headed to the beach at sunrise. We didn’t find any, but met a gal who had “saved” five earlier in the morning. So the next morning, we headed out at about 6am, an hour and a half before sunrise. We ran into Rick and Karen of Eyes of the World, and with the four of us looking, we found about 6 baby turtles and took them out to the surf. It was a pretty cool experience!! The ones we found had started pretty late and would never have made it far with the sun coming up. The birds were already working the beach.

We actually also found a few tracks of mama turtles who had come up to lay eggs during the night. So about a week later, we decided to try again. We went out about an hour before sunrise and the guard on duty said he had not seen anything all night. Just at sunrise, we saw a crowd of about 10 people down the beach. When we went to investigate, it was a mama turtle laying her eggs. And then about 100 feet away, another mama was just starting to dig her nest. As we walked back towards the hotel, we also came across a nest of eggs hatching. The little guys were literally pouring out of the two inch hole they had made towards daylight and were scrambling over each other to get up and out. I think they have learned to wait until sunrise so that the tourists can carry them the 50 feet to the surf. If we didn’t, the birds would have them for breakfast. We tried hard to help them bond to the beach by rubbing sand into our hands before we touched them. All in all, it was a fabulous experience.

With Dick and Gina back from vacation, we were able to make an appointment with Dick’s orthopedist to look at Rog’s back. We met with him in the emergency room of San Javier Hospital where he works. After an exam and some x-rays, he decided he would really like an MRI. Their machine is down, so it was another 2 weeks before we returned for follow-up MRI and dynamic x-rays. We returned for the summation a few days later and Rog was impressed with the doc and the procedures. He now has a much clearer understanding of his back and what options he has. We are both continually impressed with medical care down here.

The Paradise Village Yacht Club hosted the Pan American pregames with the hopes of winning the actual Pan Am games next Fall. We were members of the Beachmeister’s Crew, headed by the VERY well organized Dick of Tanoshii. Our first job was to get the buoys ready for the race courses. That took us all Tues afternoon and most of Wednesday morning. We used a pump to blow up the 5 ft tall buoys, then cut chain and rope and made tackle for each one.

Then from Oct 20-24, we manned the launch ramp with Rick and Karen of Eyes of the World. Our job was to raise the launch flag and then help 24 small Laser boats get their trailers to/from the ramp and head off to the race course out in the Bay. We were able to get them all launched within 20 minutes, even with the occasional sailboarder clogging up the launch ramp.

It was actually a lot of fun and we were able to join in the parties during the week. The Mexican Sailing Federation actually gave the volunteers coupons to use for drinks and food at the yacht club. Totally unexpected and quite nice! The great news at the end of the games was that the Vallarta Yacht Club will be hosting the games next November. So I guess we impressed whoever we needed to impress.

Bob and Judy of Lyon Around came back this month, as well as the Nordstrums. Folks are gradually heading back to PV now that the hot summer months are over and the cold weather is starting up north. That brings with it a lot more social activities and get togethers. We tried to finish up all of our outstanding projects before heading out of our slip November 1. Rog started the new hatch for the window over the helm and I reworked the seams on the dodger and bimini. I also managed to finish Max’s book, “Max’s Exciting Summer”. Unfortunately, with all of that attention on his back, Rog’s back went out Oct 29; so the hatch went unfinished.

Jim helped us line up some dock space to put Neos on during December when we fly back to California and we did one last Costco run to provision for the next month. Our last day in Paradise Village was el Noche de Brujas: Halloween and we got to give out candy to the few trick or treaters that hit the docks. Time to move out of the marina and anchor out!