On Monday, we challenged our Facebook fans to not let a few days of rain and gloom dampen their sailing spirit. "Aw, rain for the next three days. If you brave the elements for a daysail, send us your photos," we wrote. Dale Angus and his crew stepped up to the challenge and sent the photographic evidence.

"We were out there, and it was just us!" wrote Dale. "We chartered the Hunter 31 Blue Honu from Club Nautique in Alameda on Wednesday. It was sunny in the morning but we knew it wouldn’t last so we were prepared for the rain and robust winds that arrived as forecasted around 1 p.m. We caught the instruments clocking the wind at 20+ knots."

Big props to Dale and his friends for proving that they’re not fair weather sailors!

One of the Bay’s truly special spectacles is back this weekend when the U.S. Navy’s Fleet Week celebration comes to town. While that means there’ll be cool stuff like air shows by the Blue Angels, and war ship parades and tours, it also means that the Coast Guard has set aside some space for all this to take place. Unfortunately, they didn’t actually release that info until after Wednesday’s ‘Lectronic Latitude, which is why you’re getting it so late.

The Coast Guard has established a "safety and security zone" 500 yards ahead, 200 yards astern, and 200 yards on either side of the parade of ships between 10 a.m. and noon tomorrow. This is in addition to the 500-yard security zone that will be enforced around each Navy vessel at all times during the the remainder of their stay on the Bay. The penalty for violating the security zones is steep — try $8,000! So, make sure to be alert, and don’t argue with anyone with a 50-caliber machine gun mounted to their boat. There’s also an additional restricted area between the Cityfront and Alcatraz, reserved — but hopefully not needed — as a ditch zone for the Blue Angels through the rest of the weekend. Consult the Fleet Week link above for the air show’s full schedule.

If you’ve never been out on the water during Fleet Week, be prepared to see a whole lot of boats. Remember to have your registration and a sufficient number of PFDs aboard, don’t overload your boat, save the beer and wine for when you’ve returned to the dock, and enjoy the show. There’ll likely be plenty of boardings by the Coast Guard security patrols this weekend, so make sure to leave anything you don’t want confiscated — or that might result in the confiscation of your boat — at home.

According to various hurricane forecasting services, Tropical Storms Jova and Irwin were expected to develop into hurricanes, then make beelines for Banderas Bay / Puerto Vallarta, making landfall on late Monday night and Thursday respectively. The vast majority of Mexican hurricanes travel to the northwest, paralleling the coast and then heading offshore. These two storms are unique in that they are many hundreds of miles offshore already, and would be heading toward Puerto Vallarta from the WSW! Late season hurricanes can be weird like that.

Before anybody gets too worked up, the National Weather Service cautions that the margin of error for the landfall of storms four days out is, in the Eastern Pacific, 175 to 225 miles. So it’s entirely possible the storms could make landfall as far north as Mazatlan or further south than Manzanillo. Indeed, this morning’s forecast shows that Irwin, the second of the two storms, is now a Category 1 hurricane and is projected to take a path several hundred miles to the south of Puerto Vallarta.

Jova, which is closer and more worrisome to land, has a new track that suggests the eye will hit about 20 miles south of Cabo Corrientes, which is on the southern tip of Banderas Bay. Any landfall south of Banderas Bay would be a great thing for mariners at Puerto Vallarta, Nuevo Vallarta and La Cruz, as the mountains on or near the coast tower from a few thousand feet to 8,000 feet. Mountains like that really sap the power of hurricanes.

While it’s still too early for hurricane watches or warnings to have been posted along the coast of Mexico, both of these storms obviously need close monitoring. If you have a boat or property in the general target areas, get ready to make preparations. There are a number of weather factors that could dramatically affect both Jova and Irwin, so be prepared for possible major changes in direction and strength.

In other weather news, we’re told that the extreme summer heat of Mexico has been broken. While the daytime highs in places such as Loreto, La Paz and Mazatlan are still hitting the mid-90s, they’ve had nights where the temps have even dropped below 70 degrees. After another sizzling summer, these folks are having to put on their winter ski gear to make it through the nearly frozen nights.

These colder temperatures give hope that Jova and Irwin might well be the last tropical storms of the season.