We left La Cruz de Huanacaxtle yesterday morning (Monday, April 25th), upping anchor around 10:30 a.m. The wind gods favored us with not much wind at all until we were nearly to the outside of Banderas Bay, a good thing as we had a few unfinished items on 'The List'. (We still do, but they're not critical to passage making -- I hope!) The wind filled in, we hoisted sail around 2 or 2:30 and we've been sailing ever since. Last night the wind was up a bit and we were making 6's and 7's (not on my watch), but it calmed down a bit today and we're mostly doing in the 4.5 to 6.5 knot range. The GPS and the speedometer don't agree; sometimes one is faster, sometimes the other, so for now we'll track the difference and assume it's due to current.

The weather has been good enough that the kids have spent the days in the cockpit, using the kitchen timer help them remember to scan the horizon every 10 minutes. Once it's dusk, though, it's only grownups on watch. We've been fortunate that no one has felt really seasick (with a bit of help from modern medicine for all but Bill); I think spending the last two months in a rolly anchorage really helped us get our sea legs.

Karryn

We are currently at 17 26 N, 108 11 W. Good news on the weather front: strong NW winds on the outside of Baja California might be around long enough to carry us all the way to the NE trades. The wind has started to shift more to the northwest (from WNW), so we're getting closer to the rhumb line. I still need to figure out how to note where the seamounts are here, probably with waypoints on the GPS. There's nothing anywhere near the surface enough to run aground on, just places where underwater mountains come up from 1800 feet deep to 50 feet, which can affect the swells.

It was another lovely night with the added benefit of no boats showing up on radar. And there were no little squid or flying fish to clean up today, unlike yesterday's 30-40 squid and one flying fish on the deck. It's amazing how cold I get sitting in the dark with dew and breeze after living in the tropics; I wore two layers of polartech, top and bottom, and actually put shoes on. At one point I put on my raincoat so I could keep my ears warm. I guess I'll have to dig out my polartech hat. Days, however, are nice and warm.

We have a hitchhiker -- a booby is sitting on one of the aft solar panels. The first time he was sitting where he would make a mess, so I chased him off with on of Bill's hiking sticks (he bit it before deciding to go). Now he's got his tail hanging off in a more appropriate fashion, so we're letting him take a break here.

I've been up since just after 3:30 a.m., so it's time for me to send this and head myself off to bed.

Karryn

Karryn

Which puts us about halfway between the islands of Clipperton and Clarion. The good weather continues; supposedly we should have wind to take us all the way to the NE trades, courtesy of a high-pressure system somewhere off the shore of Baja, around halfway down. It's supposed to stay there for another 6 days, and Don, the amateur weather expert for cruisers in Mexico, says that this is an excellent time to be taking off for the Marquesas. We had decided to go unless there was a really good reason not to, so the weather is just a nice coincidence.

Nothing new here. We continue to enjoy the weather, we're continuing to work on projects and life is just about settled enough that the kids will be doing homework tomorrow or Sunday. They don't know that yet, and I suspect we'll have a bout of seasickness once they know it.

This morning, just at sunrise, many dolphins (at least 50, maybe over 100) came by to play with the boat. They were smaller ones than we've normally seen in the past, perhaps three feet long. Actually, there were sea birds as well, and I saw a fish jumping, so they were here to eat. The dolphins surf in the waves, and when some came over to see what the others were doing near the boat, they would travel so fast that when they came up to breathe their entire bodies would come out of the water. Then they spent several hours around us; some would be playing in the bow wake, others were nearby, there were a lot of them continually changing places... a very neat way to start the day.