Day 2 Pacific Crossing

Dawn has just broken on the second day of our crossing. The ocean is still coming on our starboard side (right) in a long easy swell, the wind fluctuates between 12 to 18 knots and it is a steady 21 degrees - cooler than I imagined, though very comfortable. Our speed is between 6.5 and 7 knots. Imagine driving your car 2700 miles at a speed of 9 mph!!!!! This is all in an effort to assure that we have enough fuel reserves to make it from point A to point B and when we are at the half way point, we will review our supply and bump our speed up - how does 8 knots sound? (warp-speed). So since leaving Puerto Vallarta, we have encountered 4 other vessels, all bent on a collision course with our vessel. Oh well, that is why we keep watches. There have been dolphins playing beside us on a regular basis and the odd sea bird, but otherwise the horizon is as open as a Saskatchewan wheat field. As the day was breaking this morning, a bank of clouds to the south gave the impression that we were running beside a mountainous coast. If anybody is interested in google earthing our location, we are at 18 04 631 N and 108 26 579 W right now! Things are good.

Now for a bit of back tracking. I flew home from Ixtapa for a few days in Feb and Glen stayed on the boat to re-seal the back deck. He wasn't bored though as one of the couples that we had met on our stay at Barra de Navidad pulled into the marina as well and the three of them spent three days exploring Ixtapa/Zihua and catching Olympic events in sports bars when they could. In their explorations, they discovered a Mexican Jewel - a beautiful boutique hotel - 4 rooms - set high on a hill overlooking the Zihuatanajo Bay. Glen surprised me with a dinner on their stunning patio - surrounded on two sides with infinity pools onto the bay - 5 dinning tables all facing the bay - a pre-set 5 course gourmet menu and a waiter for each table, all of your needs are met before you can think them. We arrived early so that we could enjoy the blazing sun set in colors so brilliant - my words do not begin to describe the effect. Just lovely.

Ixtapa is as far south as we traveled in Mexico, we began then to make our way back north. Now we know what we have along the coast, we can pick and choose where we want to stop. We do an overnight run from Ixtapa back to Barra. This particular stretch of ocean is full of sea turtles and dolphins. We seriously had to watch for the turtles sunning themselves on the water surface so as not to run them over. We counted 60 by the time we got tired of the game. The dolphins are our puppy-dogs of the sea, they love to race the boat, streaking through the water criss-crossing in front of our bow (boat pointy part) and arching into the air over our wake. They are such show-offs. I'll recount from Barra north tomorrow.

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