Holy crap…I missed it by a day. On May 11th last year CB and I cut our dock lines and set sail. We have travelled around 3500 miles up and around Vancouver island with M/V Andante and S/V Hello World, we set sail….errr motor from Port Angeles with Mikey Bamboo and headed to San Francisco sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge, traveled the coast of California and held out our worst storm yet at anchor off Santa Cruz Island in 50 knots of wind and we spent some time in San Diego visiting with family before heading across our second border into Mexico. 6 months of this year at float were spent in Mexico checking out all the amazing towns and keeping the economy stable by eating more than our fair share of street tacos. We first started on the Baja Sur Penninsula and then crossed to the mainland (Bay of Banderas…PV to all you land based folks) with Jason & Julia from S/V Danika…who were hijacked for that crossing :-) We upped our surfing skills at Punta de Mita where we surfed usually two times per day for almost a month. In late February we set off to explore the Gold Coast of Mexico and made numerous stops…Barra de Navidad, Z-waaaat and Puerto Escondido being some of the highlights. We checked out of Mexico in Hualtuco and crossed the treacherous Tehuanapec zone (we basically motored), got attacked by bees off Guatemala (I’m still recovering mentally from that ;-)) and floated across a very tame bar into Bahia Del Sur, El Salvador, and notched up our 3rd country of this trip. We are spending the summer in El Salvador then will continue our travels south to Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama beofre crossing to the Galapagos and then on to the next adventure…CROSSING THE PACIFIC to the south pacific islands.
We have sailed far less than we thought, used way more diesel than expected…but it has all been worth it. This adventure is so amazing and it will only get better and better as we travel on. We have met amazing cruisers that have become fast friends. We have also had to say goodbye to many of those friends…knowing we may never see them again. That has become the hardest part of cruising. You make such quick and solid friendships out here and when the seasons change you loose those friendships to different plans and directions of travel. We sailed down most of the Pacific coast and Mexico mainland with Brad & Joanne on S/V Loukia…we thought we would be going the same way, until Panama, but they got an opportunity to work for the summer and headed back to Canada…we miss them terribly. Erlin on S/V Ventured is from Seattle and we met up with him in Ensenada…we spent 6 months cruising with him and he is now in Chiapis, Mexico where he will leave his boat for the summer…we may see him again if he crosses to the South Paciific next year…hint hint hint! S/V Unleashed left with us from Seattle…same dock…they are now back in the states for the summer while their boat gets a facelift in Mazatlan. We had to say goodbye to them in Tenacatita Mexico.There are so many others that we met and then went our seperate ways…we wish you all safe travels where ever you may be. On the other hand people do catch up to you from your past…two boats we knew from earlier travels will be coming into Bahia Del Sur in the next week and we will have fun reuniting with them. This is the circle of cruising!
We may come up with a numbers blog soon…but that sounds like a lot of work :-)