No Whining

Yes, this is fun. I realize that the last e-mail might have been a little too much whining. Yes, we broke some boat, had some mishaps and learned some things we might not have wanted, but the trip has been a great experience overall.   We were less than 45 minutes into the voyage when the first pod of dolphins found us and entertained us for 30 minutes or so. Another school of dolphins found us on a calm evening about 500 miles later, 50 miles off shore, and we estimated there were well over 1000 dolphins around us. Lots of leaping and diving.

   
We fished off the back of the boat and ate what we caught. We have only a short drag line for trolling, but we managed to catch Wahoo, Bonita and Yellowtail.  I filleted the tuna, and we had a sushi lunch that was still swimming 30 minutes before we ate him. That’s fresh. The picture below is a Dorado we caught on this trip.

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The stars on this voyage were so bright and distinct that we marveled at the constellations we could identify. With absolutely no ambient light from shore we were able to see the Milky Way almost every night. I hadn’t seen the Milky Way in many years. Glad to know it’s still there. I’ve attached a picture of sunrise approaching Bahia Santa Maria. Spectacular. But the moonrise the night before was even more dramatic. We got a bright orange crescent, low in the sky that exactly resembled the grin on Alice’s Cheshire Cat (not pictured).

Light? I should have mentioned the cruise ship that passed less than ½ mile behind us at 2 AM. This small city looked like the Las Vegas Strip come to meet us in the middle of the ocean. We saw her coming from 15 miles back (a glow on the horizon) and we could have read a book by her lights when she passed.

And finally, Cabo. Everyone warned us that this tourist/cruise ship city would be best left in the rearview mirror. On the contrary, we thoroughly enjoyed the bars, restaurants and night life and while it is supposed to be very expensive for Mexico we thought $2 beers were perfectly reasonable. The cruise ships loaded up and headed off each evening at 5PM so they were not much of a problem. We spent 4 nights in Cabo much to our delight. We took a night in a marina and shared a slip with Nicholas Cage on his yacht Weston (Lisa Marie once threw a $65,000 engagement ring off of Weston).

I’m putting this e-mail together as we sail on calm seas under sunny skies. The crew has headed home, and our next two anchorages promise to be small, remote, warm and peaceful. We just had to get past the excitement to get here.

Life is good.