After two nights at sea, we made our arrival into Bahia Tortuga mid-afternoon, and dropped the anchor. We were surprised to see only a dozen or so Ha-Ha boats had arrived already, and felt pretty good about our sail. We promptly jumped off the boat into 75 degree water for a swim and took "sun showers" on the swim step afterwards so we'd be clean for dinner, then off to bed early.
The following morning, we followed what would become our routine for the rally; beautiful sunrise, coffee, breakfast, Ha-Ha Fleet radio net (and discussing thereof), and getting ready for the day's entertainment and party. Pretty difficult stuff indeed :-). That's not to say we didn't did a ittle work as well. We had a serious spinnaker halyard chafe issue, so Gerry donned the bosun's chair and went up the mast. Of course, you never have the rights parts, design or tools on the first trip, so I came down to re-group. After an hour fabricating a dyneema fairlead, up I went again. Don't feel too bad for the poor guy working the maneuvering winch to pull me up - it's electric!

While I was up the mast, I captured a few pictures like the one here.


After a lazy afternoon aboard, Rosalie & Jody prepared another amazing dinner by (they make it look so easy), before we settled in for evening, chatting in the cockpit.
Next day, we went into a dusty little town in a Panga boat for lunch. The town welcomes the Ha-Ha fleet with a baseball game in their jewel of a stadium. A few sailors forget their age and get hurt, but they all seem to have fun. Gerry didn't need to play ball to get injured however. He had a heal injury flair up that had him dragging his right leg around town until a ER Physician saw him and prescribed 5 days of "Prednisona", which my Pharmacist friend and crew Don was able to get at a local pharmacy...thanks again Don!

The final event of this stay was a BBQ on the beach outside town. Since a few intrepid sailors had flipped their dinghies in the surf, we (wisely) took a Panga in. Fortunately, we all returned to Huzzah safely.