Angelic Sleep

A bit more for you before we turn in for the night here in Puerto Angel. I had not paid attention to the scale of the diagrams I have in my cruising guide and was completely unprepared for just how small this bay is but it truly lives up to its name and I'm just loving it!  AS you can see from the pictures we are the only "gringos" in the small bay and are surrounded by all the pangas of every shape, size and description which are used by all the local families to earn a living fishing.  You need to officially check in to every port you enter and so I splashed the dingy and went ashore and found that even though he was only supposed to work Monday to Friday from 8-3, the very friendly Captain de Puerto was in fact in his office after 5pm on Sunday!  He spoke quite a bit of English and was extremely friendly and helpful.  I go back first thing in the morning to pick up my papers and hopefully we can continue on without any of the common delays in processing paperwork.

 

While ashore I walked up the beach and into the small town and along the way snapped off these two shots, one postcard one of Learnativity at anchor through the palms and the other showing how we are anchored amongst all the small (by comparison) pangas or fishing boats.  My walk was quite a treat, though I'm sure many other would have found it a bit depressing as this is a very poor fishing village.  But as I walked along the beach I was struck by how I was surrounded by entire families who were making a living off the sea and how much everyone was involved.  Women, children and men, mostly all in family groups were all busy getting things ready for morning, tending nets, catching bait, repairing boats.  The kids were busy working and learning much of the time but also being kids, splashing and swimming and their laughter and shrieks of joy engulfed the whole scene and beat out even the sound of the crashing surf. 

 

Work at 7 Nautical Miles per Hour

Oh, and we, well OK me, get some"real work" done along the way as well.  Here you can see that I have a pretty great office even when traveling at over 8nm/hour and have a pretty great "executive assistant" and First Mate, complete with her own PFD (Puppy Floatation Device) to help keep me on task, which in this case is typing up some new postings for my other professional blog with my amazing company Autodesk.  If you're interested you can check out this professional side of my life at Off Course - On Target

 

 

 

 

Turtles all the Way!

One last quick note I just have to get in is that this morning we sailed through what seemed like an entire sea full of large green turtles!  At first I was very concerned to see this bird standing on something floating in the water as I worried that it was some large formidable sunken object that we could run into.  But after passing quite a few of these we got closer and next I thought it was a sleeping seal or something but that didn't make sense.  And then finally we got close enough and one rolled a bit, got rid of the bird and waved at us going by.  It was a large green turtle!  My pictures are pretty poor as I really need to get a decent camera and lens for such shots, but you can get the idea I hope.  For the next hour or more we passed a stead stream of these turtles and birds, floating as you can see on a glass smooth sea at the time.  Quite an amazing experience.

 

On to the next, ................ maybe:

And so we are just about to leave Mexico.  Tomorrow morning we hopefully get our exit papers and a weather update that will help us decide if we push off right away to cross the Gulf of Tehuantepec bound for San Jose Guatemala, or if we will need to stay here in this area to wait out the storms brewing down that way.  Stay tuned to see what the decision is and we'll bring you the next installment from the good ship Learnativity.

Follow us Live!

If you'd like to follow us more precisely and "live" you can check out our SPOT satellite messaging system that tracks our location every 10 minutes.  To see this map as it is updated just click on this link or paste this very long URL into your browser and you will get a map with each of our "bread crumb" tracks every 10 minutes. 

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?&glId=0JxZaH4vhrtAZDhKpWWjqaSXJp2xWpKxU

You may want to create a bookmark for this and anytime you're wondering just where we are and where we've been you can find out with a single click.  Enjoy!