We sailed from La Paz to Puerto Vallarta over the last few days.

Most folks seem to head to the mainland by sailing from La Paz to Bahia de los Muertos (Bahia de la Suenos now) or Los Frailes for the overnight then on to Mazatlan and heading for points south from there.

Not us- 400 miles of downwind sailing was an irresistible temptation and thus we decided for the run straight to Puerto Vallarta.

The North winds were forecast to run 10-12 kts with an occasional gust higher. "Occasional" and "gust" were undefined terms and this lack of definition let the wind gods get away with just a little spanking for us,

15 kts in the Sea of Cortez leads to some really awful sea conditions- really awful and our winds were not limited by 15. So a reefed main and the Genoa poled to leeward and we started sailing just to the East of Cerralvo Isle and didn't change anything about the set other than to roll up some jib and open it up later.

Imagine a roller coaster ride on the old school wood units along with a Niagara Falls barrel ride, combined with a washing machine. Fun stuff indeed.

That lasted about 30 hours, and while it tested the two of us, our boat is so very much more prepared for those conditions than we ever could be. She brought us through safe and sound.

Other than that- great sail! And we both are very happy we did it the way we did. We didn't change the sail set until we dropped them, The wind shifted as we wanted to rotate around the Tres Marietas Islands outside of Banderas Bay and that kept us booking along just fine.
We ended up with a 12 hour motor the last bit as the wind just shut off.

Found Paradise Village Marine and Nuevo Vallarta just dandy and we were moored in time for the Oscars and a good nights sleep.

More on the place here next.