Cruisers’ Full Moon Parties

Early in the summer, Jake, from sailboat Jake, announced the dates for the BLA full moon parties.  However, since he was spending the summer in the Puerto Escondido area this year rather than coming up north, he was looking for someone to be the coordinator for the parties.  These are an annual thing, so it seemed appropriate that a BLA summer veteran would step up to do the coordinating, and that’s just what happened.  Dazzler was interested, so I emailed Jake to get more details, printed out the response, and handed it off to Dazzler.  Unfortunately, they weren’t able to make it up to BLA after all, so the job of coordinating fell, by default, to Lady Carolina.  Dazzler had given him the print out, which when he saw the email was addressed to me he was floored.  He kept pointing it out to me as if I should actually be the one coordinating, however, I try very hard to not let myself be the default anything. 

The first full moon party was in August at La Gringa and entailed a “floatie” contest and a beach potluck.  Steve found all kinds of creative ways to announce the party on the various radio nets, but here’s the quick version of the floatie contest.  Basically, there would be prizes for each of 3 categories: 1) Best store bought floatie, 2) best floatie made out of noodles, and 3) best floatie you could throw together with whatever you have in your boat (the prize for this 3rd category was clearly the most coveted, at least by Steve.)  The concept was that we would get to the estuary just after high tide and ride the “rapids” out as the current gets stronger and stronger.  It was actually a lot of fun! 

Tim gave the boys the job of building a floatie out of water jugs (the big 5 gal size), boat fenders, and thermarests.  They had a lot of fun and put one together, and they were actually quite proud of it.  But Tim made them dismantle it since it only fit one person, and he wanted something all of them could ride (can anyone say requirements creep?)  So, they ended up making 3 small floaties so they each had one, but in the end, Lady Carolina kicked butt in the floatie contest by using wood planks, fenders, a wind scoop as a spinnaker, and a very large Canadian flag.  All the boys enjoyed riding that raft, even Tim.  There was one hysterical moment where Alex was holding his soda up and then he fell off, was dunked under water, but managed to keep his soda right side up and out of the water.  Get that kid a beer!

There were a lot of very creative rafts including a throne raft made of Pacifico beer cans by True Companion.  I was one of the judges along with Sue of Mai Tai Roa and Trisha of Interabang.  It’s kind of a known joke that the judges for this event will take any and all bribes.  However, Team Canada (aka Lady Carolina) was the only one who really took advantage.  Joel gave us bags of cookies and big hugs.  I swear that had nothing to do with them winning, though.

After the rapids died down we all retreated to our boats for some relaxing, and then reconvened on the beach for a potluck.  Steve marked the potluck site with one of his many bright orange shirts, and Tim set up our surfboards on water jugs to use as tables for the food.  Once everyone started arriving and the food was being spread out we all noticed something a little peculiar.  The food was heavily, and I mean heavily, skewed towards desserts.  Somthing like half the dishes there were dessert dishes.  At one point Brenden came up to me and told me there was the best bread here, the best he’s ever had, and he’s had about 4 pieces.  So, I had to go try it, and it turns out it was cake.  Very delicious and not too sweet peach cack, but definetly cake.  Brendedn ended up getting sick and spending most of the night bent over one of the back swim steps. 

Overall, it was a fantastic day.  We got to meet most of the fleet that was staying in the BLA area for the summer, and Lady Carolina got bragging rights for winning the floatie contest.

The second full moon party was in September at La Mona. There was no floatie contest for this one, and although there was an estuary, the choke point wasn’t as tight so when the tide was going out it was more like a whirlpool to sit and relax in than rapids to ride floaties down.  The full moon fortuatously fell on “talk like a pirate day” so that was good for lots of fun and jokes.  This party was slightly more sparsely attended than the La Gringa party, but fun was still had by all relaxing in the whirlpool and getting our competitive juices flowing with games of bocce ball.  We had a fantastic potluck, but suprisingly, this time, no one brought any desserts.  Having flashbacks from the last potlulck, Brenden respectfully asked me to make something that he would definitley know what it was, so I just made pasta in red sauce, and he scarfed it down.

The day after the full moon party we tried to organize an appetizer and drink “progressive” where everyone visits each boat for a short period to eat and drink.  The wind didn’t cooperate, though, so our “progressive” turned into an appetizer potluck on the motor vessel Mai Tai Roa.  Thanks to Alex and Sue, we all still had a great time.