Here is a summary of our trip to San evaristo. It was great, all around, and will be a highlight in my memory. Here are some pictures to go along with the story.

We started asking for donations of school supplies in October and by the beginning of December we had a stateroom filled and a reason to go sailing. Our first real obstacle was finding enough crew(who we could live with) who were willing to head out on a glorious camping trip all inclusive, except for the dirt. Finding crew ended up being easy so all that was left was to provision and haul water and diesel. We left early Wednesday morning with the help of all of our neighbors at anchor at the Mogote. Our first stop was Partida cove on Espiratu Santo Island to clean our fuzzy bottom. Everyone participated and with the loan of a hookah from Flying Fish we were able to get the bottom somewhat clean in only a day. This is a big boat with a very big bottom!!!! Our next stop was San Evaristo and our initial plans were to only stay the night and then head out early for Agua Verde the next morning. Wouldn’t you know it but the wind gods had other plans. We ended up staying in San Evaristo for 5 days, waiting and hoping for calmer winds but actually seeing, at times, winds gusting to 40! None of us wanted to head out against that. We entertained ourselves by watching movies and walking in town. We had made arrangements to meet at the school Tuesday morning so we had a few days to wait. We had a potluck on board and invited all the boats in the bay over. Everyone showed up and really enjoyed the new Indiana Jones movie on the big screen. We fished everyday and managed to feed ourselves regularly with what we caught. At one point we had a fish fry on Vltava and barbecued 44 filets and had three extra boats for dinner! The big day came when we could finally take all the stuff we brought to the kids at the school. My family and I have been doing this for the past 4 years but never with this much stuff or on such a cool boat! The schooner is 90 feet, over all, and, with a crew of seven, looks very impressive arriving or leaving any port. It took 4 dingy loads to get all the people and supplies ashore. We had arranged a friend from town to drive the stuff to the school, while I walked around town handing out things we had collected for the kids who were either too young or too old for the school. The school goes from about 5 years to 13 years and currently has 12 kids enrolled , all children of fishermen in the village. When I finally made it too the school I found all the kids, including mine, in a very active game of soccer. There were 2-3 other boats cruising with us and a few other people on boats in the bay who came to watch the festivities. After everyone was exhausted from soccer we headed into the classroom to start handing out the goodies. Each child received a personal bag filled with everything they would need over a school year , like glue, crayons, scissors, rulers, paper , and a lot of other good stuff. The rest of the things we placed on the tables to the side of the room. Pricilla, on Serenity, toughed it through a small science class on dinosaurs and then handed each kid a dinosaur puzzle. They turned out to be a real challenge and we all decided that the Spanish word for puzzle(rompecabeza-broken head) was an appropriate name. After mastering the puzzles I headed over to the table to show the kids some of the cool stuff we brought along. We had about 15 library books, everything from beautifully illustrated kids books to books on science and dinosaurs. There was a huge box of craft supplies and they were already thinking of Christmas and decorations they could make. I picked through the whole box to squeals of “Mira, mira!”(look, look) and then they got down to business. They realized we needed to head out But I had promised to show them the big boat and they weren’t going to let me forget it. I also had to promise to come back in February and host a pirate party with a movie on board, since I HAD promised the last time I was there and they WERE letting me off easy today. So we ferried all the kids and the teacher, Reyner, through the 40 knot wind gusts to Vltava and let them loose. We managed to scrounge up enough hot dogs and popcorn to feed the whole crew and they had a blast checking every inch of the schooner and reading about San Evaristo in the chart books. We said goodbye that day with only one minor catastrophe of an older girl falling in off of the ladder. It was very funny when she came up smiling and complaining about the cold water. By the time she was in the dingy everyone was laughing and handing her their sweatshirts. It will definitely be the story of the week in the village. We had a great sail to San Francisco island and spent the next few days cruising the islands and exploring the beaches. We managed to get the schooner moving at 7.7 knots on our way back to town and even sailed into the channel from the bay. This trip was a real highlight in our already highlighted trip to the school. The kid’s enthusiasum was inspiring and the schooner Is a great classroom for all of us.