Author Archives : Chris French

What’s next? Hmfp, I don’t know, build an airplane?


I am someone who always needs to have a project in my life. With my time with SV Strikhedonia coming to an end, ideas had been bouncing around in my head. For years the idea of building an airplane popped up but the commitment and idea of pounding tens of thousands of rivets after drilling, deburring, and dimpling seemed daunting.…

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The end of the line


The night that Anna and Jessica left PV I talked to my wife. She was greatly concerned as the shelves were bare at the grocery stores in Minnesota. So the next day I headed to Walmart where I stocked up on all the dry good staples, just in case I was stuck for months in Mexico. My plan was to…

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The time slips by much too fast


After a couple high intensity days, we slowed down a bit. We enjoyed relaxing meals in town, walks on the beach, and the ladies did some shopping. Unfortunately the micro-brewery was closed but there are so many beach bars to choose from, it wasn’t missed. As so frequently happens the days slipped by quickly and before we knew it we…

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Hustle to Banderas bay


Back aboard I wasted no time getting Strikhedonia ready for the passage to Banderas bay. I had Jean and our friends coming in about a week and finding a good weather window meant getting to Perula as quickly as possible. After checking out of the marina, getting a good night’s sleep, at the crack of dawn it was time to…

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Back to Barra for a quick trip home


My business partner had a vacation scheduled and needed me to head back to Minnesota while he was gone. So a few days before, I returned to the Barra lagoon and the day before I moved to the marina. I was lucky enough to find another cruiser heading home the a week so we could share a driver both to…

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Private beach hike in Tenacatita


Last year some friends (Mike (SV Shanti) and Damon (SV Gia)) worked for days in hot, humid conditions with biting and stinging insects to clear a trail from “dog” beach in the Tenacatita anchorage over to a private beach on the opposite side of the peninsula. My schedule didn’t allow me check out their work last season so it was…

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Taking a break in Tenacatita


A reset was needed from the non-stop party atmosphere in Barra and with Tenacatita just a short hop away I peeled out for a few days. Every day I’d get in a beach walk all the way past the resort. And every time there seemed to be something that made me chuckle or shake my head. In addition, I took…

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Pulling into Barra with a plan


Back in Perula, Ralph and Helen had talked to a couple on a monohull named Cadenza, the owners Jay and Terri had been over for dinner and mentioned they had some friends who were looking at buying a catamaran. They had been impressed with the layout on Moon Drifter, and knowing that we planned to sell Strikhedonia Ralph mentioned that…

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Provisioning in La Manzanilla


With supplies getting low on Sky Pond and plan was hatched to join them on a trip to La Manzanilla for provision. In the morning there was a pretty good surge, so the revised plan was to take Strikhedonia over in the morning and use the kayaks to get to shore rather than risk flipping a dinghy. We made the…

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