Pictures from December 2005 and January 2006

Christmas was spent in Tucson with Carrie's parents and brother.  Santa was way too good to all of us as you can tell.  Along with every Christmas comes another birthday for Carrie.  This one was the big Four-Oh.  Mom and Dad treated us to a very fancy and delicious Birthday dinner.   Thanks Mom and Dad!

We had red skies at night prior to leaving for Turtle Bay from Ensenada.  This is usually a good thing.  We left on the morning of December 28th and beat out of the bay in ~15kts of wind.  Once out of the bay, the wind picked up to 20 then 25 then 30+kts.  Too late to turn back!  The boat and crew did really well.  As always with a new experience, we learned things.  We learned that we are not immune to sleep deprivation, the boat handles large seas in 30+kts very well and weather forecasts should always be taken with a grain of salt.  We escaped the onslaught behind Cedros Island and got some much needed sleep with the boat hove-to (basically parked under sail).  The next morning we continued to Turtle Bay.

Turtle Bay was a welcome stop.  It is a very small and quiet town, even on New Year's Eve.  It is amazing how dark it can be when there is no light pollution.  The number of stars we could see was mind boggling. We spent 2 nights in Turtle Bay to catch up on sleep, clean up ourselves and the boat and stow things that weren't stowed so well initially. This is the view from our galley portal.

Holy mackerel!  Well... we hope it was just a run-of-the-mill mackerel.  This unlucky fella was 17" long before he became lunch.  Yummm ... it doesn't get any fresher than that! The sail from Turtle Bay to Bahia Santa Maria was quite enjoyable.  Our good fortune was due to the good luck brought by a pod of dolphin that swam off our bow for over a half an hour.We sailed quite a bit and used every sail in our inventory on multiple occassions.  We are still trying to figure out how some cruisers gain weight.  We have been working our butts off! Bahia Santa Maria is approximately 223 miles from Turtle Bay.  That takes about 1.5 days for us.  Not quite a Lear jet, but it's better than first class!

Here are a couple of whales that greeted us as we neared Cabo San Lucas.  They were just off our starboard beam and boy were they big!  We also were greeted by dolphin who took time out of their busy days to play on our bow wake.  The water temperature has increased from 58F just a couple of days ago to a nearly tolerable 73F.  I'm still holding out for the 80F+ water!