SailingKnitter

Forgive me knitting goddess for I have sinned...it's been 2 days now since I have knit. We're just way too busy playing in all of the Zihua Sail Fest 2008 events!

Today was the Sail Parade event and we took the Niki Wiki out with 9 guests aboard! What fun! Perfect weather: sunny, 85 degrees, gentle sea breezes at first, then real wind for sailing in the early afternoon. We left Zihuatanejo Bay and sailed out towards Ixtapa along the coast. I'm sure we had the nicest guests in the fleet!!

Our guests each donated $250 pesos/$25 US to the Sail Fest organization for the ride today. Sail Fest raises money for Netzahualcoyotl Multilingual Primary School and Kokoyotzin Kindergarten for Indigenous and Other Children - very poor kids, some of whom speak only indian dialects, no spanish. Because these kids cannot afford shoes or school uniforms and do not speak spanish, they can't attend the public schools.

Because the kids live so far away, up in the remote areas, this special school has dormitories for them to stay the 4-days a week of school

The cruising community partners with local businesses, local ex-pats, and tourists to have fun while raising money for the schools. Another event we attended was one of the seminars that was held at Rick's Bar, aka "Cruiser Central".

The "Southbounders" seminar was led by two cruisers who talked about their experiences traveling along the Pacific coast of Central America. As you can see from the photo this lecture was well attended. See? We're not the only ones planning to cruise our sailboat to this part of the world.

As we are planning to do this next season, we were all ears for what they had to say. Jonesy took along our cruising guide book for the area so that we could follow along and look at the charts of the different anchorages.

Earlier in the week, Sail Fest had the traditional Chili Cook Off and Street Fair. At most of the events there is a raffle drawing and ya gotta be there to win. So far...no wins for us. What is so hard about picking the ticket with Niki Wiki written on the back??? Geeez guys.

I guess the excitement of the raffle was a bit too much for old Pirate - the little crew dog of the sailing vessel Enchantress as this little doggie fell fast asleep in Dick's arms. Cruising dogs have early bedtimes too.



Tomorrow is the grand finale Bar-B-Que on the beach. Of course we're going to attend - ya gotta be present to win the prizes!!! This is a photo taken from the beach looking out into the anchorage. Yep, we're one of those boats there - yep, the white one, you know, the one with the mast...