Dry Storage Available Power and Sail LETTERS

rendering of Windward Passage winning the Barn Door in '71 is from a photo by Dick Cleveland of Santa Barbara, whose business "Fotoboat" specialized in Transpac finish photos. The reason the mainsail panels are narrow is we'd just taken delivery of a Hood main, whose sail cloth was woven on looms intended to weave cloth for pillow cases. If you look closely at the '73 Transpac Handbook photo, I'm the kid in red shorts up by the mast.

Skip Allan Capitola

⇑⇓ HAVE YOU EVER LOST YOUR DINGHY?

After the 2006 Baja Ha-Ha, we were anchored in La Cruz, almost due north of Yelapa. We had taken our dinghy ashore to go to some local food markets and then catch some music at Philo's. We left our dinghy on the beach in the care of local kids, whom we tipped with a few pesos. This was back when the marina breakwater was under construction. Late at night, in the dark, we returned to our dinghy on the beach and it was clear the kids had been playing all over it (lots of sand). The painter was sprawled out from the boat across the sand.

That was to be expected; we were just glad everything was there. We went back to our boat and I secured the painter to the bow cleat so our dink wouldn't bump against our aft cabin. I got up in the night to check the anchor and such — I was shocked to see our painter hanging straight down into the dark water, and no dinghy. I'm sure my heart rate, BP, and sweat glands all went hyperactive.

I walked back to our center cockpit, but saw something out of the corner of my eye at the stern. I went back to the poop deck and there was our dinghy, tied to our stern pulpit with the plastic covered wire (with loops and a lock) that we used when we wanted to lock our boat to a dock. We surmised that fishermen — who regularly went out of La Cruz in the wee hours of the morning in their pangas — had come across our drifting dinghy and grabbed it. They must have looked for the only boat in the anchorage that didn't have a dinghy, which was us, and returned our dink.

Amazing!

We also figured that the kids had untied my bowline on the painter to play with the line and then probably retied it with a granny knot that we failed to check. Our dinghy was new just before our trip, as was the 8hp Yamaha outboard. It was worth many thousands of dollars and yet it was returned by the kind and ethical locals. A great testament to