Who flies to meet a hurricaine? That’s exactly what I tried to do on October 10. I would have flown into Puerto Vallart just before Lidia made landfall and I was standing at the boarding gate in Everett when they told me they’d cancelled my flight. Honestly, I was kind of excited to see what the hurricaine would be like, but I had to reschedule my trip for Oct 15. Happily Lidia staged a near miss south of Puerto Vallarta and the mountains around Banderas Bay protected the Puerto Vallarta area from wind damage. There was some flooding that came out of the mountains over the next couple days however. When I arrived almost a week later there was no visible damage that I could see other than some palm tree clean-up and very muddy rivers. Puerto Vallarta lived up to it’s reputation as a good hurricaine-hole! My trip down was to deliver some supplies to the boat: things that are harder to get in Mexico like a new spinnaker halyard and random things for our coming winter in Mexico. I also needed to service the water-maker with new storage chemicals and correct some minor electrical issues with the solar charge system. Even with a list of mostly non-essential ‘stuff’, I had to weigh my suitcase to make sure it was only 49 pounds. Over the 4 days I was there I reconnected with boating friends there and checked off all the issues on my things-to-do list. As I left Puerto Vallarta everyone was watching Hurricaine Norma work it’s way North on it’s way to Cabo San Lucas and La Paz. We are keeping those areas in our thoughts today as they experience some high winds and are already seeing significant damage to boats in the anchorage near La Paz.
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