Sequitur

Michael & Edi have headed out on a slow, thorough exploration of the globe.

Vessel Name: Sequitur and Zonder Zorg
Vessel Make/Model: 2007 Hunter 49 and 1908 Wildschut Skûtsje
Hailing Port: Vancouver, Canada
Crew: Michael Walsh & Edi Gelin
About: For our current location click, on Map & Tracking, then on the Google Earth logo.
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13 January 2014
26 April 2013
24 April 2013
27 October 2012 | Harlingen, Friesland
29 September 2012 | Sneek, Netherlands
19 September 2012 | Hoorn, Netherlands
13 September 2012 | Aalsmeer, Netherlands
20 August 2012 | Sequitur: St Augustine, USA - Michael & Edi: Vancouver, Canada - Nieuwe Zorg: Aalsmeer, Netherlands
11 August 2012 | Sequitur: St Augustine, USA - Michael & Edi: Vancouver, Canada - Nieuwe Zorg: Aalsmeer, Netherlands
10 August 2012 | Sequitur: St Augustine, USA - Michael & Edi: Vancouver, Canada - Nieuwe Zorg: Aalsmeer, Netherlands
08 August 2012 | Nieuwe Zorg: Aalmmeer, Michael & Edi: Vancouver
28 July 2012 | Nieuwe Zorg in Aalsmeer - Michael & Edi in Vancouver
26 July 2012 | Nieuwe Zorg in Aalsmeer - Michael & Edi in Volendam
17 July 2012 | Michael & Edi in Leeuwarden, Netherlands
07 July 2012 | Edi & Michael in Vancouver, Sequitur in Saint Augustine
27 June 2012 | Saint Augustine, USA
07 June 2012 | Saint Augustine, Florida, USA
20 May 2012 | Fajardo, Puerto Rico
11 May 2012 | Terre Le Haut, Les Saintes, Guadeloupe
01 May 2012 | Carlisle Bay, Barbados
Recent Blog Posts
13 January 2014

Another New Book Released

I am delighted to announce that my new book: Carefree on the European Canals is now in print and is available on Amazon.com, Amazon.ca [...]

26 April 2013

New Book Released

The proof copy of my new book arrived by courier today. I have approved it and it is now listed on Amazon for pre-order, with a publication date of 30 April. It is a rather large book at 680 pages in an 8.5 by 11 inch format with 315,000 words illustrated by over 2400 colour photos, charts and maps. [...]

24 April 2013

One Year Out of Brazil

One year ago today we sailed Sequitur out of Brazil after enduring more than six weeks in the least-friendly country that we had experienced during our three-year voyage. In the early evening of 24 April 2012 we crossed the line on the chart dividing Brazil from French Guyana and breathed a huge sigh [...]

27 October 2012 | Harlingen, Friesland

Planing a Metamorphosis

We have added a new post to the Zonder Zorg blog at: Planing a Metamorphosis.

29 September 2012 | Sneek, Netherlands

Onward to Friesland

We have arrived in Friesland and have added a new post to the skûtsje's blog at: Onward to Friesland

19 September 2012 | Hoorn, Netherlands

North From Aalsmeer

We have moved northward from Aalsmeer and I have added two new posts: Heading North From Aalsmeer and North From Amsterdam

13 September 2012 | Aalsmeer, Netherlands

Taking Possession

We are back in the Netherlands, and I have added some new posts to the ZonderZorg blog at: Taking Possession and Settling-In and Making Plans

20 August 2012 | Sequitur: St Augustine, USA - Michael & Edi: Vancouver, Canada - Nieuwe Zorg: Aalsmeer, Netherlands

Added a New Website

We have added a new website: Skûtsje ZonderZorg. Zonder zorg in Dutch means without worry. Our intention with the site is to provide a place to share some of the history, geography and culture of the skûtsje as we discover it. We will also use this place to document [...]

11 August 2012 | Sequitur: St Augustine, USA - Michael & Edi: Vancouver, Canada - Nieuwe Zorg: Aalsmeer, Netherlands

Still More Skûtsje History

We continued to attempt to track-down Douwe Albert Visser, who was the owner of Nieuwe Zorg in 1941 when she was re-registered. One of the problems we repeatedly encountered in our online searches was the effect of currently having Albert Visser and two Douwe Vissers as very competitive skûtsje racers, [...]

10 August 2012 | Sequitur: St Augustine, USA - Michael & Edi: Vancouver, Canada - Nieuwe Zorg: Aalsmeer, Netherlands

Some More Skûtsje History

While I was researching the history of Nieuwe Zorg, I finally found her first registration details obscured by an apparent typographical error in a transcribed online spreadsheet. She was listed as having been built in 1901 instead of 1908. I emailed the webmaster of the [...]

To Puerto Vallarta

09 March 2010 | Marina Vallarta
Michael
Edi had accepted an offer on her house on Vancouver Island, and the deal was closing, so she decided to fly back to Canada to make sure everything fell properly into place. Thankfully, the Olympics were over; our loft is adjacent to Vancouver's Olympic Village, and had she gone a week or two earlier, getting around would have been nearly impossible. She planned on spending a few days there and to run a lot of errands.

There is over five months of mail in the box, and to augment that stack, I had ordered some parts for Sequitur and a new battery for my computer. Edi had ordered another bunch of books from Amazon and she needed to buy a new battery for her computer. We had also been compiling a list of foods to buy that we cannot reasonably get down here, such as BC smoked salmon, Japanese rice crackers, extra-dark chocolate, real cheese that doesn't feel and taste like plastic.

We took the bus from La Cruz, which is in the state of Nayarit, down the twenty or so kilometres to the airport in Puerto Vallarta, which is in the state of Jalisco. We discovered that there is a time zone change between the states of Nayrit and Jalisco, the boundary between which is less than two kilometres north of the airport. This discovery took us quite a while; unbelievably, there are no clocks in the airport. There are no clocks in the ticketing area, nor any in the check-in area, nor in the departure lounges. There are no current time indications on any of the screens showing departures and arrivals. The lack of line-up for the flight, the early boarding announcements and other subtle clues eventually led us to believe our watches were wrong. Edi got on her flight and I bussed back to La Cruz.

Our water tanks were getting low, so I started making some water. I quickly discovered that the water in the anchorage off the beach in La Cruz is full of sediment. This entire corner of Banderas Bay is quite shallow, and the prevailing winds keep a rather steady surf breaking on the beaches and shoals along its northern side, churning-up sediment, which very quickly clogged the pre-filters on our watermaker. I got just under an hour on a re-cycled pair, so I replaced them with new filters, and these lasted only an hour and a half. Having made less than two-and-a-half hours of water since topping-up in Mazatlan on the 21st of February, the tanks were getting low. It was time to move.

At 0945 on Thursday the 4th of March I weighed anchor and headed southeast toward Puerto Vallarta. It was near calm, with the 2 to 3 knot airs barely rippling the surface of slow westerly swells. There were bands of cirrus making their way across from the west, foretelling a change in the weather.


It was easy to find the entrance to the port, I simply headed toward the cruise ship that was alongside. Easy, that is once I had distinguished the ship from yet another condo block. The entrance was narrow, but well-marked with buoys, and the chart was perfectly gridded to the actual lay of the land.


The entrance was straight forward for me, but apparently not for others. What appeared to be a catamaran and a sloop lay on the bottom just inside the entrance buoys. Once inside the small harbour, I turned and ran slowly northward up a long, narrow passage between boats on both sides, which were secured to a wide variety of piers, wharves and floats. There were some haul-out and repair facilities, and some moorage for pangas and the low-end charter trade. There was also a Dogpatch-like collection of liveaboards, many of which appeared to be well beyond their best-before dates.


I called Marina Vallarta several times on VHF, but they apparently weren't monitoring, so I secured temporarily to the T-end of E float, and walked up to the office to arrange for a slip. Then I moved Sequitur along a couple of rows to G float, headed down the alley and backed into a five-and-a-half meter wide slip, which took her with half-a-metre to spare on each side. The floats are wood-faced concrete with robust cleats well spaced and well fastened. My overall impression is of a clean, well-equipped and well-maintained marina. I connected to shore power and filled the water tanks.


Standing guard over the marina are large iguanas, like this fellow, which is close to a metre in length. Of course Puerto Vallarta was made famous by the iguana. In 1963 when "The Night of the Iguana" was being filmed in this area, the star of the movie, Richard Burton was having a torrid and very public affair with Elizabeth Taylor. The couple attracted large numbers of paparazzi to Puerto Vallarta, made international headlines and this soon made the sleepy little town of Puerto Vallarta world-famous. A real estate boom began and has continued with few interruptions. It has for the last several years been the fastest developing tourist area in Mexico.


Surrounding the marina is a broad malecon onto which open many restaurant patios and bars, plus the standard mix of shops offering such things as souvenirs, jewellery and women's clothing. But added to the mix here are many fishing charter operators, resort timeshare hucksters, real estate agencies and condominium sales offices. Above the shops are stacks of condominiums.

I settled-in to a routine of working on maintenance items onboard, taking strolls ashore and feeling somewhat at a loss without Edi to share my days.
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