birthday on the sea

"Put all these pawns on this line", Tod says. Tessa had asked "let's play chess", and she gets our chess board out. She puts the king, queen and bishops in line on the table, and says " papa, mama, petra, alice" (she clearly remembers you gals, and many of our friends in Berkeley, and at the most odd times names of friends come up). So fun, how the brain of an almost 3 yr old works. Well, most of the time, the fun part. The chess game lasts 5 minutes, (Tod was frustrated that she refused to follow the rules!), now we are back on playing with the balloons. It is Tod's birthday, and we do a mini celebration during our 220 nautical miles/40 hr passage from Mazatlan to Espiritu Santo Island near La Paz. 

Crossing the Sea of Cortez can be a challenge, but we can't complain. The seas are flat, not much wind though, so our iron lady and autopilot do the work. We left Mazatlan around 4 PM, and we actually had both sails out for a bit. I finally got to see the repair Tod had done to the jib 2 months ago. That tells you how much we sail in mexico. Tod was rather disappointed when I told him the rolling motion down below wasn't so comfortable when we sailed compared to the motion when we run the engine. Yes, I admit, a bit strange coming from the mouth of a former US sailing instructor. Give me lots of wind and not much swell, and I love sailing... This passage started with thunder and lightening closer by than what we had expected. We put our back-up handheld GPS in the oven, just in case, got all our fire extinguishers close by and added finishing the lightening grounding to our #1 on the project list. In the end, all the drama was gone in 10 minutes, and we got to enjoy a great rainbow.

helm position, with sun shade sides Tod added to his bimini, super helpful!

We left La Cruz early Wednesday morning, after a fun get together on the boat of our friends s/v Let It Be the afternoon before. We decided to bash up non stop to Mazatlan, instead of stopping along the way during the 180 miles passage. It was the right decision as it was an easy overnite trip, and the nice pool of El Cid marina was a welcome reward for us all.

about 180 miles from La Cruz to Mazatlan El Cid

and then about 220 miles to Espiritu Santu

This is our last long passage of the season. We will put Bliss on the hard in a yard during hurricane season by the end of May, and will fly back to the US. For the next 2.5 months, we get to enjoy the beauty of the Sea of Cortez again. And enjoy we will! We arrived at 8 AM at Ensenada el Cordinal on Isla Espiritu Santo, and it's at places like this why we know traveling by boat can be amazing. Sure, we enjoyed the Pacific Coast of Mexico, but you can go there by any means of transport, and enjoy it the same (and hey, you don't even have to do unpleasant overnite trips). But places like the Sea of Cortez are made for exploring by boat, and a fair amount of remote places can only be reached by boat. Exploring this beauty above and below the water with the comfort of you home close by is for sure hard to beat. And doing that in company of friends is even better. Thanks to Sherilyn and George aboard s/v Believe, Tod and I even got to snorkel together, while Tessa played on their boat.

yikes, that ebb got us by surprise, our muscles got some exercise