La Cruz
December 30th, 2010
20 44.922'N:105 22.810'W
We were able to Skype the family on Christmas Eve and it was great to see everyone, this is the first Christmas apart from the family. The grandkids were all excited and couldn't wait to open presents. We miss everyone and hope everyone had a great Christmas. The "Dock 4" group had a Christmas Dinner in the Sky Bar in the marina. This started out as a group of three boats who decided to get together for Christmas dinner. As they sailed south they each met cruisers they liked and invited them to join in the dinner. By the time they got to La Cruz there was 20 boats and they had to start turning people away. The original group of three cooked two turkeys and three hams, we all contributed a side dish and a dessert. The food was great and the dessert bar looked like the midnight buffet on a cruise ship. They also had a gift exchange that is the same one we do at work. We draw names and you get to choose a gift and unwrap it. The next person can either "steal" that gift or choose a new one. And this goes on until all gifts have a home. We ended up with a gift certificate for a pencil and ink rendering of our boat that is done by Robert on Blue Dolphin. It was the most sought after gift that was stolen 10 times!
We are having "chaps" made for the dingy to protect the tubes from the sun and give us some additional life in our 10 year old dingy. We also had Mike at PV Sails come over to look at our mainsail that we should have replaced before we left. We had tried to make some minor repairs to the sail in Turtle Bay on our way down but there are other issues in the sail that need to be addressed. We thought that we had broken one of the battens and as it turns out we broke 4 of them, so we took the sail down and took it to Mike's loft for some work. We hope to have both the sail and the chaps back tomorrow so we can head south at the first of the week. We plan on stopping at Paradise Village Marina for a day or two to visit with Ralph and Helen on Moon Drifter and Dan and Carol on Caprice, both friends and owners of Seawind 1160s.
Yesterday I made my second attempt to make bread on the boat. I had been given a sourdough starter from Doug and Carla on Moondance. My first attempt resulted in what I called an "artisan" bread as it was unrecognizable as "bread". This second try resulted in some improvement and I made a regular loaf and a tasty offering that had onions, jalapenos and cheese baked into the loaf. Now all I have to do is catch some fish!