December 19th, 2016

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4th Sunday of Advent December 18. Digging in for a hot winter’s night.

Monday, December 19th, 2016

Since I am here for Christmas, I dug out the canvas boat cover from underneath my sail storage, to give me some protection from the hot blazing sun. Today it got up to nearly 100 degree Fahrenheit, 35 Centigrade. In a mail from a stateside friend I learned that people paid to sit through a football game played today in Chicago at 30 minus F. The evenings and mornings are very pleasant with a refreshing ocean breeze. I rode my shiny stainless steel folding bike into the town of Crucecita, about two miles from the marina to the town center where I attended 10 a.m. mass at the church of Santa Maria Virgen de Guadeloupe y Santa Cruz. I first rode through a very attractive suburban bungalow sub division. The town, in contrast to what I have seen so far in Mexico, does not have any run down squalor, no unfinished skeleton buildings. Very clean and prosperous, wide boulevards, tree lines, parks. The town center, overlooked by the church, is a park with big shade trees. Lots of small attractive hotels. I checked the rate where I had lunch and it was 800 pesos for a one bedroom double. About $42. The Canadians have discovered this years ago and they will kill me if they read this. The other contrast here is that you see few obese women here. Hard to explain. My guess is that they are happier. On the way back I stopped in at this huge Wall Mart like super market, Selecto. The Canadians were doing their Christmas shopping. For a town/area, not even a tenth of the size of Puerto Vallarta it seems to have equivalent conveniences. Maybe I’ll retire here when you buy enough Soloman and The Mastmakers’ Daughters, so that I can afford air conditioning in my boat. Remember, these books will be much appreciated Christmas gifts….But it will take some time getting used to the interior of the church. A combination of Hieronymus Bosch and the murals in the Engelen Bewaarders church in Badhoevedorp.

I finally managed to upload the You Tube video of my fast sail from La Cruz to Melaque on December 5th. https://youtu.be/XTN4FS-0yvo 

You can find any additional successful uploads of all my videos of this trip on youtu.be by just searching under Jack van Ommen. I am hoping to get my video of how I set, fly and take the spinaker down singlehanded in the next days.