How to Fly Home When Your Home Moves

I flew out of Zihuatanejo about a week ago. I had to fly to Iowa and meet up with my siblings for some family business. I knew when I left that I would not be flying back into Zihuatanejo. We need to be on the Baja in La Paz by the first week of April and time is running out. While I've been in Iowa, Patrick, Jack and Rudy started heading the 180 miles north from Zihuatanejo to Santiago Bay. We are all supposed to meet up in Santiago Bay on Monday. There's an international airport in nearby Manzanillo. It all sounds reasonable until you find out the rest of the story.

The rest of the story involves these facts: there is no marina in Santiago Bay, so there is no clear location where I can reach JaM on foot; there is no way for Patrick and I to communicate with each other once I leave my sister's house - I am traveling without a computer, a phone or a radio transmitter; and last of all, Santiago Bay is huge with any number of places to land your dinghy.

I am currently out of communication with Patrick now since he is boating up to Santiago Bay.

The big concerns are this - if JaM is delayed by weather, breakdown or accident I won't know what happened. I will just be in Santiago Bay frantically looking for JaM and trying to find a hotel. If my travel is delayed by weather, missed connections and the like, Patrick will have no way to find out what happened to me. He will have no way of finding out when to meet me. Even if I make it there and can see JaM at anchor, I won't have a way of getting their attention since I don't have a computer, phone, VHF radio, or a dinghy.

The whole thing makes me nervous. Especially since the agreed upon plan was for me to present myself at a particular, tiny beach-side restaurant on Playa Boquita a couple hours after my flight is scheduled to arrive. It sounds sort of romantic, doesn't it? It's not really. The closer I get to my departure time, the more I think this plan has more holes than Swiss cheese. If this is the last blog posting you see for the next couple weeks, you will know I am wandering around somewhere in the Manzanillo area, looking for JaM. But you can bet on this - I will be staying in the nicest hotel I can find!

One more thing, if you DO see me wandering around the beaches of Santiago Bay dragging my enormous, heavy luggage loaded with State-side goodies through the sand, please don't look at me strangely when I ask if you have a VHF radio on you, or a computer, or if you would mind driving me out to my boat.