Sculpture tour of PV

 The tour started with the Milennia Statue which was donated to the city of Puerto Vallata in 2001 by the sculptor Fernado Banos. He was actually there to explain the meaning behind the the work. The tour continued along the Paseo diaz Ordaz which is also known as the malecon.  All but two of the statues have been donated by artists who raise the funds themselves just to share their work with everyone.  They also must maintain their art as the city does not have the funds in the budget.



Sand sculptures are also a big attraction at this time of the year.



There are many different themes for the sculptures

Even a Christmas tree!!!

This is the original sculpture on the Malecon and was purchased by the city of Puerto Vallarta during the late 1970s.  It was not damaged by the huricane in 2002 but has been repaired and given a much larger seafront  to better protect it moving forward.  This statue has become the symbol of Puerto Vallarta

Named the Angel of Hope this statue faces the beautiful Church of Guadalupe as he prays for peace and everlasting hope for mankind.

Jim Damento is the artist that donated Valarta Dancers.  It is a very beautiful peace and depicts the local dance group Xiutia who performs twice a week on the local square.  Jim was there to share with us stories of how he came to be an American living in PV who wanted to sculpt this beautiful statue and how it was done.  Quite a long process!!!

 The Friendship Fountain is right off the central square and there is s twinned sculpture in the sister city of Santa Barbara.  It is a tribute to the local indigenous people called the "Chumash" and by legend tells the story of them leaving the Channel Island on a rainbow bridge.  Some natives looked down as they crossed the bridge and they fell but as legend goes they turned into dolphins before they hit the water.





More Tail

Monday we had another opportunity to take Di's Dream out for a day of whale watching with friends Jay and Laurie Ailworth. They live right here near Paradise Village and love to take advantage of any opportunity to get out on the bay. It does not hurt that Jay is a fabulous photographer who is always looking for that one amazing photo. I did not even bother to pull out my little point and shoot camera for this trip so all picture are courtesy of Jay. I have posted the rest of the shots on my slideshow on the left side of this page.

Merry Christmas

Rog and I would like to wish all our friends and family a very Merry Christmas. We are having a fantastic time on the beach, Rog is out riding the waves on a boggy board and I am waiting for my massage appointment! It does not get much better than this

I did take a picture of us sitting on the beach this morning however, my camera is too old to upload the picture to the iPad so we will have to use a shot of us taken at Yelapa. You will just have to take my word that our day will be spent calling everyone while drinking margaritas here at the beach in Paradise Village.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a warm, rain free day

Whale of a day

Michael and Sylvia Fitzgelard are dear friends of ours who now live in the Puerto Vallarta area whenever the weather is bad back home. Lets see, San Francisco rain, New York snow or PV where you get the same weather this time of year day in and day out.

Last week they asked us if we would like to go whale watching, sure why not. Any excuse to go sailing is fine by us!!! So we took Di's Dream out of the slip one again. We have now used the boat more in one month that we did the entire last year in San Francisco.

My whale pictures did not turn out too well but I invite all my friends to take a look at the youtube video that Michael produced. We had a fantastic time and saw so many whales. Now I want to learn more about their habits so I can better understand what we witnessed. The shot of the whale coming out of the water tail first is reportably a mother trying to give birth. I need to research this a bit more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RnGey8C1nI

Dine and Dash

Rog decided to try his luck at racing Di's Dream again yesterday and had a wonderful time. We had Rob from the beautiful sailboat Sea Diamond to handle the spinnaker lines, Liz Barrow was the official spotter, Jane was button pusher, Di did a little bit of everything and Rog was upwind tactician and helmsman on spinnaker leg. Thirteen boats started with staggered times and raced up to La Cruz where slips were waiting so we could all disembark and run up to Philo's for pizza.

We were entertained by Philo and his band of misfits while sailing trash talk flew around the room until with no fanfare the homeward start times were announced. We had just 14 minuets to get to the start line so we all dashed off to our boats.

Now we understood the "dine and dash" theme.

With Di at the helm the main went up and spinnaker was readied,

but no. The wind was right on our nose so we could not pop the spinnaker

so it was hauled back down. With a bit of luck and a strong desire to

stay away from everyone else, Di headed to port while everyone else

headed starboard and struggled to find the wind. We sailed through the anchorage successfully and found the wind once we cleared the

headlands. Once again the jib was pulled in and the big sail went up

with no problems and Di continued to drive until Rog finally had

everything dialed in and he could take over. Now it was a race to the finish!

We fought off the two J80s which was no small task as Eugine had a boat crewed by all the crackerjack youth skippers from the yacht club. We later learned that one young lady has been the national campion the past years running! Sure glad we were not match racing her. The only other boat that headed to port was Bright Star, a Jeaneau 40 with a handicap of 72 that is a very competitive boat. Unfortunately we could not hold off Bright Star at the very end and she finished just one boat length ahead

Another great day out on Banderas Bay!

Pictures provided by our great friends on

Full Shell, Marilyn and Eric.

Early Christmas

Tuesday is beading here in Paradise Village, great fun. I went off with all the girls this morning with little expectations of what Rog would do while I was gone, he has been reading quite a bit lately and not boat chores. Little did I know but he had plans to jump into the washer/dryer and see if he could get it running again. With a great deal of effort he took out cabinets, cut holes in walls, and cleaned all electrical connections and now it works!! I came back back and found him doing a load of darks, wonders of wonders. I am now a happy camper. Just wish the inverter could have been repaired so easily.

No coffee-no way

After anchoring at Yelapa overnight where it was a bit rolly, Rog new he would have to get the coffee pot going before anything else happened on the boat. Grumpy would not get out of bed without that wonderful aroma to intice her.

We may not have mention but out inverter blew up when we plugged into the docks over in La Cruz, not a good thing when you smell smoke on the boat. They had wired the ground to a hot wire at the dockside power source so the moment we plugged in--pop!! Ok, we have a genset and a spare charger on the boat so no worries.

Fast forward to Yelapa. Rog gets up, turns on the genset and it has a high pitch alarm sounding!! No power on the boat. That means we have to take the forward berth apart to get to the genset and replace the relay switches. We have plenty on the boat--right?? Yes we do but where are they and where do we install them?? Better get the manuel out and start reading.

Using the snake that had been a gift from a customer Rog located the source of the problem and was able to take care of it. Yes the genset would run and we were back in business.

HOWEVER, grumpy has gotten up and pulled out another gift that had been given to her when we had the original Di's Dream--- A stainless perculator !! We still have propane so coffee is made.

We have just found out that for a price we can have a new inverter walked across the boarder and put on a plane headed to Puerta Vallarta. There is even a service that will deliver right to our marina!! I did mention that this will all be done for a price, maybe I should have flown home and picked it up myself.

As posted in lectronic Latitude

The third race in the Blast is the Pirates for Pupils Spinnaker Run for Charity from Punta Mita to Paradise Marina. It's a great course that usually starts with a tight spinnaker reach on port, a gybe to starboard at the radio tower toward the middle of the bay, after which the fleet gets increasingly knocked so they end up on a very tight spinnaker or white sails reach to the finish. To the left is Piko, Lauren and Lauren Buchholtz's Seattle-based Pretorien 35 and another Ha-Ha boat, Roger and Diana Frizzelle's Richmond-based Catalina 470 Di's Dream. Both boats were able to carry all the way to the finish. Photo Latitude / Richard© 2010 Latitude 38 Publishing Co., Inc.

Another view of the luxurious Di's Dream, as she just barely lays the finish line. Once across, there was no time to waste in getting the chute down, as the heavy summer rains have greatly extended how far out the shoals come from the Rio Ameca. By the way, the main highway bridge over the Rio Ameca that collapsed during 23 inches of rain in 24 hours in September is expected to reopen before Christmas -- more than 50% ahead of schedule. Photo Latitude / Richard© 2010 Latitude 38 Publishing Co., Inc.

Rog and I are having the time of our life down here in Banderas Bay and as you can tell by the above article we are actually sailing our boat. Weather has been lovely for swim suit and t shirt sailing.

Picture album Cabo To Mazatlan

http://picasaweb.google.com/disdreamadventure/CaboToMazatlan?feat=directlink

Here are some of our pictures from our trip after we left Cabo. There are pictures of friends, fish and beautiful sunsets.

Please check them out!

What have we been doing

I keep thinking I will have time to sit down and get caught up with the blog but another day goes by and I still have not posted pictures that need to be shared. The Banderas Bay Blast is over, the Chili Cook Off winner has been decided and Rog has had a run over to an emergancy room doctor. He unexpectedly sat on a bee or wasp on the final leg of the race that has left him with a very painful welt about 4 inches across on the back of his leg!!! By this morning it became very obvious that he needed stronger meds before this got completely out of hand. After a shot and oral meds he is still not getting any relief but I have time to do a blog. No beach for us this afternoon.

We had a fabulous third leg of the Blast that started in Punta Mita with the spinnaker flying. Andy Barrow offered to crew for us and you know Di was more than willing to have another pair of hands with help with the spinnaker. We were running deep in 19 knts of wind pursuing Circ and barely ahead of the Catalina 42 Destiny. We followed Circe to the radio towers where we had to jibe over to starboard to run back and try to lay the finish line at Paradise Village. The wind started to lift us and it was a real challenge to keep the spinnaker flying so close to the wind. At the finish the water was getting very shallow, down to 14 feet, and another boat named Pico was right on our stern trying to drive us up. Maybe a little more exciting than Di bargained for and certain more for Rog once he got stung in the but!!

At the awards party we were extremly surprised to find that Di's Dream had pulled it out and finished first by just five seconds over Circ who is an incredably fast boat. Di's Dream was in a real dog fight for all three days and now needs to be rewarded with a good scrub and polish. She will come back out of the marina latter this week when we go over to Yalapa.

For more information on the Banderas Bay Blast go to this site

http://www.latitude38.com/lectronic/lectronicday.lasso?date=2010-12-03&dayid=512

Banderas Bay Blast

We had two beautiful days in Banderas Bay before we checked into Paradise Village. We arrived wednesday morning around 11 am and turned around by 12:30 to go out and participate in the Banderas Bay Blast. It is a wonderful three day race around the bay with the first leg going from paradise to La Cruz, second leg is from La Cruz to Punta Mita and the final leg is a spinnaker run back to Paradise Village.

Even though we are very tired we just completed the first two legs of the race still smiling and even speaking to one another! The first leg was a close reach on a long starboard tack and Di's Dream got off to a fabulous start and was able to hold off Destiny, a Catalina 42, and Circe, a Beneteau First. They had an incredible finish with just seconds between them.

Once we finished and headed up into the wind all sorts of alarms started sounding. Someone, maybe Rog, had said this would be a very mild day and no need to close the sink through hulls. That proved to be only the beginning of problems for the boat. Once we got into a slip an plugged the boat in we heard a very loud pop and immediately smelled smoke. After much searching and the help of a great electrician we figured out that the dock power had fried the inverter. With the help of West Marine and the fabulous John Platt we will soon be able to make coffee once more.

We arrived late at the start line after spending the morning removing the inverter and re wiring the second backup charger we had on the boat. We crossed the start just two minutes behind and quickly got into the fray. We had a great race with Destiny up to Punta Mita and thought we had made a bad tactical error when we held a port tack a bit too long however, once we ducked below them we had a better point on the finish and just edged them out by less than a minute. What fun we had for charity!

Today is leg three and we have enlisted Andy Burrow to help with the spinnaker run. It should make it easier on Di who just gets a bit anxious with all that sail up!

By 5pm we will be back in our slip and ready to sit still for a few days. No more races until next Wednesday.