Today was parade day on the Z-wat Sailfest calendar. Up early to swab the decks before 8 guests arrive to join us for the parade and a sil after. They are each paying at least 300 pesos (about $25US) to go for a ride. All the monies go to support underprivileged school children in the Zihuatanejo area. Before we can receive our guest from the pangas hired especially for the event, we have to put up our signal and other flags to do what is called "Dress Ship" in the navy. We get all our flags out including, of course, a Tweety flag and we are ready.

Our guests were wonderful company for the 3+ hour cruise around Z-wat bay and then over to Ixtapa bay and finally past the Port Capitanna's boat where we executed the "queen's wave". Sue had met all our guests down below and they had decided that this was the proper form of salute for our ragtag group. Good fun. We had people from Canada (there are a lot of Canadians in Z-wat), we had visitors from Mn and one young lady who was on vacation from her job in Homer Alaska. Sue and I had never met anyone from Homer other than the Homerians that we met when we were doing oceanography in Cook Inlet over 35 years ago. To stretch belief a bit further, one of the other sailboats in the parade, Northern Passage, was home-ported in Seldovia, AK. which is just across a small inlet from Homer. Craig flew into Seldovia from Homer in a small airplane in 1976 to set up a remote testing site while he as working for the CODAR (Coastal Offshore Doppler Array Radar) group in Boulder CO. If was such an exciting (think short runway) landing that Craig decided to take a boat back to Homer that evening!

The Sailfest events were orchestrated by an industrious and determined single-hander named Patricia on the S/V Precious Metal Patricia made everyone feel at home and seemed to have the knack of getting people to help do the work without it seeming like work. Thanks again Patricia for a wonderful week. Sorry we couldn't stay for the awards party to tell you in person.