From: John Barbie [jbarbie11@yahoo.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2004 12:18 PM To: rutharras@yahoo.com Subject: Still alive Greetings from Barrio Navidad, somewhere along Mexico's Gold Coast. We are slowly making our way south, and slowly should be stressed. We managed to cross the sea of Cortez and find shetler in Mazatlan where we quickly acquainted ourselves with the local culture or more specifically local bar culture. We actually were so accommodated at one locale that people started putting beers on our tab and renaming our dog to Papayo Macho or male papaya tree for obvious reasons. We felt inclined to shift our focus back to sea after a week but the weather would have nothing to do with it and we were hunkered down in 47 kt winds. The advantage to being in an anchorage for 2 weeks is that you have time to recover from food poisoning and you meet fellow cruisers. John and I found ourselves in the company of two other couples younger than us which was a first. Our only wound from the nightly winds was a lost dinghy which our Danish friends retrieved and a few headaches from enjoying ourselves too much. We finally set sail again first stopping at Isla Isabella which John said looked like every other island he's ever seen. When I pointed out it was a refuge for boobie birds which swarmed the island, he said it just reminded him of a dump. I'll have to work on broadening his view of nature. I think he resigned to liking the place after spotting the dozenth whale 100 ft away. We also discovered that a Sport Illustrated bikini calendar can be exchanged for very large fresh fish (in the rare event that John can't catch one himself). We continued short passages of no more than 2 days all the way down here. On one of them the current was so strong we were floating backwards which had me nervous but our trusty engine pulled through. Actually that same trusty engine got air in it while we were heeling as we were entering a bay and refused to start without being primed. John and I pulled out the useless manuals and did our best to bleed the lines. Eventually we resorted to hiring a mechanic who got sea sick within minutes of being on our boat. All part of the adventure I guess. We also reunited with our Irish friends and their dog Rufus. On the last leg we raced down wind to the next port and despite our smaller boat, we had them by 30 minutes. We quickly learned the disadvantage of arriving first. Upon entering the harbor, we followed the marker buoys until I was stumped by a white one. I took it on the inside and quickly noticed that up ahead a bird was standing, not sitting, on the water. Seconds later we thumped onto a sand spit. Again in minutes we had waved down a fishing boat and were hauled off the bank in exchange for 3 swimsuit calendars (which are worth their weight in gold). I just hope that we don't end up heeled over when the tide goes out this afternoon. We've rigged a weight on a string (not yet available in boating stores) to keep tabs on our depth. John has mastered our anchoring technique and when asked the other day how deep it was, John shrugged and said 'dunno.' A second boat came by and asked how much anchor rhode we had out and John again shrugged and said 'dunno.' That should be enough insight to how we are doing. So far grounding our boat and stalling our engine in high winds coming into an anchorage hasn't phased us as dire situations but always justifies a cold beer at sundown. Spot is as happy as can be though maybe a little tired after hanging out in the local disco while we played pool. We hope you are all well. Regards, Ruth and John PS internet cafes are becoming more difficult to come by in the remote anchorages we´ve attended. apologies since its been so long to write. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it! http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/