Coco’s beach 12.29.08

As today was our play day, Pacific Jade & Lady Hawke suggested we go over to the golf course for brunch and then to the beach. Cool! We’re up for that…

We met in our dinghies around 10am on Monday and headed over to the Colimia side of the lagoon to the golf course. There is an exclusive hotel here called The Grand Bay Resort by Wyndham that also operates an amazing golf course here on the Isla, across the bay from the city of Barra de Navidad. So we dinghied over, tied our dinghies to a tree and, dressed in our beach clothes with soft sided coolers on our back, began to walk through the golf course. We first came to the clubhouse where we stopped and ate brunch. They had a good breakfast, complete with fresh squeezed orange juice, and we wondered if they were either irritated with us for being there or grateful as we were the only ones in the entire building! After lunch, we walked through the golf course, following the golf cart route directly to the ocean. Imagine a golf course that is right on the ocean in the U.S. allowing a bunch of non-golfers to walk through to get to the ocean! Once we made it to the beach, we walked down the beach until it dead-ended right into a large hill of rock. On the edge of the rock there was a walkway that went up & over the rock and took you to a beautiful beach with two coves separated by another large rock and a tunnel rock where the waves came rushing in and sometimes joined with the surf of the main beach. It was spectacular! I posted some pictures of the beach and will upload a video soon as well.

We spent the day just hanging out – swimming, combing the beach for shells, chatting, etc. We even found an old trashed volleyball that looked just like “Wilson” from the movie and we helped him out & posed him for some photos. There were very few people on the beach, only two or three at a time, and most came and stayed for only a few minutes and left so we were spoiled with a beautiful, hidden beach, all by ourselves. The water felt spectacular and it was a turquoise blue with white surf. We didn’t realize we had spent 7 hours until we got back to the boat so late! But it’s nice when you’re with friends and the time flies…that’s how you know you’re with good friends.

Unfortunately, I didn’t plan on 7 hours in the sun and got a little sunburned that I’m still nursing but it was so worth it. It was absolutely spectacular. A great hidden gem that we’re thrilled to have been shown.

Tuesday morning we arranged for another generator technician to come out to the boat & take a look. His name was John and his company is Johnco. He is an expat and has been working & living in Puerta Vallarta for several years. Anyway, he came over and wouldn’t you know it….the generator performed spectacularly. No problem whatsoever. Of course! We discussed the problem with him and he agreed though, we have a problem not with the generator, but with the inverter/charger. I’ll attempt to explain it.

- We have a 3.5KW generator which translates to 3500 watts. Divide 3500 watts by the volt output, which is 140 and you get a maximum 25 amp output.
- Now, we have a Xantrex Freedom 30 Inverter/Charger that when the batteries are low, requires 28 amps in the ‘Charge’mode.

So we’re bringing the generator ‘to it’s knees’ when it’s attempting to charge the batteries. Not a good thing. We need to figure out if we can change the amp requirements of our Xantrex unit or if we need to get a separate charger. We would have to re-wire a separate charger and finding one down here will be very difficult and it will cost a fortune to have one shipped down here. We’ll see. We’re able to keep up with it as long as we do not let the batteries go down below 20%. We’re running the generator a lot more than I like – I don’t like the ‘noise maker’ running so much but that’s the way it is right now and we’re still out here so what am I complaining about! But our Christmas list for next year is getting HUGE! Haha… Additional solar panels, re-insulate the fridge, maybe a new TV (ours is giving us fits now & then), jeez, it’s expensive to go cruising! Haha… With two additional solar panels and a re-insulated fridge we will be able to reduce the ‘noise maker’ significantly. Woohoo!

Once we finished with Johnco, we packed up the computer and went into The Sands Hotel for some more time on the internet for more job applications. Mike & Marylyn and Joe & Deb as was Ryan, an RV’er currently in Tenacatita who came down to Barra to lend us a frequency meter, were also at The Sands Hotel and we all decided to go in town & watch the sunset. Ryan had beenin touch with Kim & Linda on Endeavor and they were at a hotel in town called the Alondra. So we went there & joined an already large group of boaters for a fantastic sunset. The boats represented were Effie, Aquarius (who had just arrived earlier that day), Over Heated, Endeavor, Lady Hawke, Ryan & us. We had a wonderful evening chatting away. After the sunset, we went to eat dinner with Kim & Linda from Endeavor at Pepe’s Mexican again – did I mention the fantastic burritos for only 25 pesos! After dinner we all went back to The Sands Hotel and participated in a dart tournament. There were approx 8 teams and two dart boards and well, Marylyn & I were a team and didn’t do so hot. So who cares who won?! The groups were made up of both locals and us boaters and we had a wonderful time playing. We made it back to the boat around 1am. Fun!!

New Year’s Eve is next!!
Rene