During breakfast I realized that I hadn't brought my contact lenses on the ship, so I wasn't going to be able to see much on our snorkel today, plus, we were concerned that the "tall ship" that we were going to sail on was just going to be a poor motorized imitation. So, right after breakfast we went down to the shore excursion office and managed to catch them just before they closed. We exchanged our tall sail and snorkel tickets for America's Cup Challenge tickets.
The same company that runs the Outdoor Adventure in Puerto Vallarta also has some tours in Cabo, and this was one of them. They have purchased 4 obsolete America's Cup racing boats and run tours where you get to crew during a race between 2 of the boats. The world of racing sailboats changes quickly, so in this case, obsolete meant that they were built in 2002 - not exactly ancient! Pleased that we had been able to get on the tour, we went back to our cabin to relax for a while (we didn't need to be off the ship until about 12:45).
We had a light early lunch on the Lido, and noticed that the ship was slowly rotating. We wondered if maybe they were doing a barbecue roll to even out the heating from the sun, but later found out that they were repositioning the ship with respect to the swells so that boarding the tenders would be easier. After lunch we headed down to get on the tender. Earlier in the day, you needed to take a number to get on a tender, but by now most of the passengers who wanted to get off had done so, and we showed up at the tender dock on deck A and had just a short wait while the next tender tied up. The seas had gotten considerably calmer since this morning, and the tender ride was not bad at all.
When we got off the tender at the pier, there was an amazingly long line for tenders to get back onto the Sapphire Princess that was also anchored in Cabo. I was hoping that we wouldn't see the same thing for our ship when the time came. We checked in with the tour representative and waited for the rest of the group to assemble. When everyone was there, they took us around to the other side of the marina to their version of base camp. Here we met some of the crew and divided into 2 teams - one for each boat. We were also given one last chance to use the restrooms since these boats were built for racing and didn't have any facilities on board.
We then headed back to the marina, met the rest of the crew and boarded the boats. We were on the New Zealand boat NZL 82 and would be racing against NZL 81. These boats are pretty amazing - built for speed and nothing else. They look very much like an oversized daysailer - completely open with an enclosed sail locker up front. The wheel is in the middle of the boat, and there are 4 "grinders" or cranks spaced throughout the boat. Each grinder is cranked by 2 people and can be connected alone or in concert with other grinders to any of the 5 winches on board. This allows muscle power to be directed where it's needed at any given time. One can choose to be as active or passive as you want on the tour, and I chose to be one of the 8 grinders. We first connected all 4 grinders together and the 8 of us raised the mainsail. It's got a big sail area and it was really tough to crank it all the way up. After that, the 2 front grinders were connected together to trim the jib, and the 2 rear grinders were connected together to trim the main.

Back at the marina, we skipped the gift shop and photo buying and went right back to the Oosterdam. Fortunately there was no line to board our tender even though we were within 45 minutes of the last tender back. It was a fun time, but probably our least favorite of the 3 shore excursions. We later saw the tall ship that we would have been on, and as we feared, it didn't actually have any sails up and just motored around. We had chosen wisely.


After dinner we posed Rachel and Sami for the pictures - they were both dressed in red and black, but opposite top and bottom.

With a warm feeling inside, we made our way back to our cabin. At 12:03, the Men In Black (Josh and Tim) knocked on our door and mentioned that technically, it *was* Christmas. They had been out snacking and wanted to see if any presents were to be had. None were, and we sent them back to their cabin and went to sleep.
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