Home, Sweet Floating Home By Michael

The girls messing about in Eleanor's half of their cozy cabin.

I’m lying on my back in my v-berth on my boat for the first time. One of the new fans I installed is quietly (and using few amps) pushing the night air over my body. Wood planks line the walls of this cabin, a warm nautical touch from the days when hulls were constructed of wood. Above me, a strip of teak curves around the underside of the cabin top profile. The large wood hatch is wide open, the overcast sky a pitch black.

Behind me I sense and hear the girls tucked away in their aft cabin, cozy nooks stuffed with stuffed animals. They’ve made a couple of forays forward with their new, personal flashlights, assuring themselves. This is their first night sleeping aboard their new home.

Eleanor is drunk on excitement and may not sleep for a while, having made a new, fast friend. Abigayle lives aboard Andiamo III, a lovely Hans Christian three or four slips down from us. We hadn’t yet secured the dock lines when Tami, Abi’s mom, greeted us and said another mother in the clubhouse thought we may be a kid boat. Were we? She graciously swept our kids away, down the dock and through the drizzle and up to the club house. A birthday party was in full swing, a movie on the big screen, cake. Our two kids increased the total number of kids in the marina by 50%, now there are six.

Windy and I stayed back, picking up the detritus from our first passage. From slip to slip it was about two-and-a-half hours, under power the whole way, moderate swells and rain. We were both sopping wet and chilled for the first time since arriving in Mexico.

Tonight we are at Marina Riviera Nayarit in La Cruz. We escaped Paradise when we visited La Cruz on the recommendation of Diane from Ceidylh. There is a gentle, small-wave beach nearby for the girls and if the lack of a pool proves a problem for the girls, we can buy a sprinkler for the dock. Windy and I like that we are not surrounded by high rises as we would be in Paradise or Marina Vallarta. Marina Riviera Nayarit extends out from the shore, surrounded only by breakwater. Too, the mountains here at the northern end of Banderas Bay meet the sea, without a valley or plateau in between. The perspective looking ashore or out to sea is refreshing.

For the two months we are here we have big boat projects on tap, including replacing seven port lights, fixing the refrigeration, replacing the standing rigging, fixing the leaking water tank, cleaning the non-leaking tank, installing another solar panel, and cleaning and bleeding the engine’s fuel system. Tomorrow I will start by taking the bus into Puerto Vallarta to retrieve the car we left behind, and stopping at the upholstery shop to pick up the rest of our main cabin cushions.

Maybe I’m as excited as Eleanor, because I may have trouble sleeping too. Going to sleep in a new home for the first time means that tomorrow I wake for the first time in a new home. Woo hoo!

--MR

Immediately after returning home from his visit with us in Puerto Vallarta, cousin Eoin (6)
reconstructed our memorable dinghy rides in Legos, and sent this picture.