Feliz Ano Nuevo!!

The crew of Masquerade all want to wish all our friends and family a very Happy New Year!!!

The salvage of Melody

The morning of the day before Thanksgiving we received a call on the VHF from one of the other boats on the dock saying that a fellow boater needed help. We learned that Melody had run aground the previous evening in the high winds.  After a night of strong winds and waves the hull had been holed. David the owner/captain was OK, but needed help to salvage his personal belongings and items of worth from the wreck.  The sailboat melody was on a point a few miles south of Santa Rosalia, near a small estuary.

The crews of Topaz, Sea Change, Little Fawn, Episode II, Tequila Mockingbird, Pear D, Amaranth, and Masquerade gathered at the marina and we drove down in a couple of trucks to the bluff overlooking the boat. We had two choices to recover the items; either a long walk down the cobble beach and then up a steep hill, or ferry across the estuary to a location the trucks could get to. Unfortunately the strong Norther was still blowing and the estuary had breaking waves across it. We decided that the long walk was the only viable option. The Mexican navy was very helpful and had sent out a few soldiers to guard the boat since early that morning to insure that the wreck was not looted. They stayed on site and even helped move some of the items from the boat onto the beach.  We all quickly got to work, some packing up and removing items from the boat, a few people carrying the items down the beach, and a few of us carting the stuff up the hill to the trucks. We spent the next 4-5 hours collecting and moving any items that could be salvaged. Once we were done we told the navy thank you and that they no longer needed to guard the boat. We brought David and all his gear back to Marina Santa Rosalia, and moved the gear into the palapa/office. Dodie offered David her boat Topaz as a place to stay while he was in Santa Rosalia, getting himself organized and going through the salvaged gear.  Everyone helped David set up an impromptu yard sale to sell the gear that he no longer needed and to help recover at least a bit from the financial loss.

When all of us were together the next day for a Thanksgiving dinner, David told us that he was touched by all the help he received. While it was very sad to see David lose his boat, it was heartening to see the boating community come together to help someone in need.