Traveling again lat N 14 deg 21 min, long W 106 deg 58 min 9:40AM 3/25/07 (Ginger)

It's been great so far to travel fast and have some longer stops along the way. We've had some great sailing weather and enjoyed our time spent with friends. Our stay in Zihua was the longest of the trip and we look forward to visiting there again. We found the bakery thanks to an email from Margie on Hoptoad, and we loved to visit with the storekeepers (Sylvia and her almost twin sister) even more than we liked the fantastic pastries. We enjoyed our time with Delfino who was a gracious host
and spent some Sundays with us. Nathaniel was always happy to give a spanish lesson and his wife was a great cook who shared her recipes with me. Carlos and Marissa were kind enough to take us to his family's restaurant and also invited us to the school fund raiser Mexican fiesta. Salma won the fund raising for her class and was crowned queen during the first day of spring parade (La Festival de Animales). We were so pleased to meet Hilda and Ismael who kept our boat supplied with water, diesel,
gas and beverages. Hilda always waved on her trips around the bay and was fun to see in her festive hats and dresses, perched on the seat or standing as their launcha cruised the yachts making deliveries. We are so glad that we finished our visit with scuba lessons as we got to meet our instructor Thierry, another fantastic host and a great guy. We really loved the people of Zihua.
As far as the passage goes we've gone almost 400 miles now. We're thrilled we got the bottom thoroughly cleaned right before we left. We only needed to motor a couple of hours to clear the land. This is very nice, because we'd been warned that many boats have to motor for days to escape the Mexican coast, and we don't carry much fuel. Of course, it's not an accident, we listened to Don (the cruiser's weatherman) and left when he said would be the optimum time for travel. The forcast is for building
wind by Tuesday - the gale off Oregon and California is expected to extend all the way south to 06 degrees North so it could be a wild ride in the next couple of days. We have been checking into the Pacific Seafarer's Net and they are posting our position updates on the Yotreps site. Somewhere there is a way to track to whole fleet in addition to our boat so if you're interested click on our Yotreps position link and then search their site for the pacific fleet report. We heard a net controller
from Pitcairn island last night on the net.
Our second night out there was almost no wildlife and I was beginning to think this was how the rest of the trip would be. The occasional booby and not much else. Coming on watch this morning at 2 AM Peter told me there were some lights to port that he was watching. It turns out we were converging on a shipping lane and I watched both ships for most of my watch as they slowly crossed our bow. About 4:00, just after the first ship crossed our path the dolphins arrived. There were at least 10
of them cruising along with us. We had some great wind then and were traveling at about 7 kts. Shortly after the dolphins arrived a flying fish flopped on the deck and started thrashing around leaving it's smelly scales on our spinnaker bag. After I pushed him back (too small to eat) the watch calmed down. Never a dull moment out here!
It's another sunny and hot (93 deg F on deck) day and I'm on watch now (10A) so I'll sign off.
Ginger