Yelapa

20'29.800n 105'27.000w
Yelapa

Greetings all,

Well, we finally made it out of PV. It was a bit sad leaving since we were there for so long, and met lots of great people. We had every tradesman in PV come to our boat and check something out. Radio Rob (sail mail,computer), Teapot Tony (motor mounts, shaft brush), Scarlet O'Hara John (electrician), SunSeeker Annie (sewed all the flags that we are going to need crossing the Pacific), and of course Yacht Works Canvas (Lucy and Ray) for our beautiful new bimini top.

I think this should make us all set for our South Pacific journey. Also a shout out to "Team Chatanya" for our official "Team Sandpiper" shirts that the crew of Sandpiper wears whenever on shore leave.

After saying Happy Birthday to Heidi off Chatanya, and washing down the boat, we headed for Yelapa. It's only 14 miles south of PV, but everyone says 'A palapa in Yelapa is better than a condo in Redondo'. It is only excisable by boat, so we went to check it out.

We arrived around 2pm, did a tour through the anchorage, which is extremely deep, and finally decided on a place to call home for the next two nights. We set our stern anchor and thought we were golden for the rest of the time. So we started happy hour. Then around 5pm the winds changed, and the pangas swung around right in our direction. We had a panga about 5 feet from our boat with its propellers threatening to scratch up Sandpiper's new wax job. So we needed to decide what to do and quickly, since the sun was setting and soon to become real dark. We pulled up both anchors, not easy to do, and moved up a bit. It's quite difficult since it's so deep, good gusts of wind, and rocks. We decided on a spot, but I thought we were way to close to the rocks, so I was nervous all night long. I even told Tom that I was staying up all night. He said "It's fine. We won't go anywhere. We have the stern anchor out."

Famous last words! The stern anchor didn't catch, and we started drifting into the boat behind us. Needless to say, we picked up both anchors. The stern was easy, since it had never caught. We set off to the next anchorage, at sunrise, a day early.