Sundowners

There are places that you hear about from other cruisers, special places. Perhaps the first time will be over sundowners in someone’s cockpit, and then again online, or through the coconut telegraph. After a while, a few of these places rise to the top, they become legendary. We have had the incredible good fortune of having visited many of them, but this one, we almost missed. We had originally planned to take the North Indian Ocean route, which would have shown us Sri Lanka, Maldives, Chagos (another storied cruiser destination) and possibly Seychelles. The wind died early for that route, this year, and we missed our chance. Then we decided to go from Padang, Sumatra, directly to Madagascar, but the winds weren’t really blowing that way and we didn’t have the fuel to motor to the wind. So we lucked out. ...

Is this even a term that non-cruisers know? If so, does it even mean the same thing? We went for sundowners on Condessa del Mar tonight. The last time we did that we were in a deserted island with 6 other boats, all of whom were sharing this quintessential cruiser experience. A sundowner is, technically speaking, a drink shared with friends as the sun sets. It’s misleading though because, more often than not, sundowners last until late in the evening. When the bugs have come and gone and things are finally starting to get cool; the stars are out and the milky way fills the sky, that’s when we start to notice that maybe we’ve stretched the event a little long. That’s when we start to realized that the crackers and special recipe popcorn we brought doesn’t necessarily constitute dinner, and maybe the kids should get to bed soon. ...

It’s autumn here. I know that may not seem like it deserves its own line but you know what, it does! The year here starts in Summertime and then goes to Fall. Fall comes before Spring in the southern hemisphere. You can get all intellectual about this but until you feel it, you’re not going to understand why those three words get their very own line. The weather has been getting cooler but I foolishly keep pretending that everything is “normal.” So when Ceilydh asked us if we wanted to do a little mini-cruise over Easter weekend, my mis-calibrated brain thought “it should be getting warmer every day, why not.” The day before we left the forecast was for four days of solid rain. Lucky for us we got nearly perfect weather for the whole trip and had enough sun that we could almost maintain the illusion of the season our bodies were expecting. ...

Oh man. We had such an awesome time in Chacala. We sailed straight from Mantanchen Bay in pretty light and variable winds but the day was beautiful and we were all excited to see what was next. Chacala had been recommended by more cruisers and friends than pretty much any other harbor, so the bar was set pretty high. Truth be told, I was expecting a let down but that never materialized. From the moment we sailed around the point I was smitten. ...