Well, it's time to leave La Paz and start our journey to Mazatlan on the mainland. It's been busy week getting as much done as we could. Not having a car has made it a bit tougher and slower with every task. The shuttle controls our schedules as to when we can go anywhere unless we want to shell out for a taxi and that can get expensive.

We arrived last Thursday and took the rest of the day to get settled and just look at the other boats and take a nice LONG, HOT shower not having to worry about how much and how long we stood under the water. On Zephyr, you stand in a room a bit smaller than an old phone booth and turn on the water and wet as much as you can and then turn the water off. Soap up(don't forget to shampoo at the same time)and then turn the water back on(careful--don't get scaled because you got the mix wrong)and rinse as quick as possible. You can forget about the shampoo mantra of"rinse and repeat". That just isn't going to happen. The joys of a nice long shower are truly one of the perks of coming back to civilization.

Friday was off and running. Tracy did the laundry as I hiked all over town trying to round up parts and equipment. The rest of the week just sort of blended together with odd jobs and errands to and from town. We made it to City Club(like Costco) on Monday to stock up on bulk items. Surprisingly, we didn't really buy a tremendous amount of food as we still have quite a bit left even though we had been gone for the better part of 2 1/2 months. Yeah, we had bought a few things in Loreto, but not that much. Zephyr is a big boat and can hold a lot of food. We had really stocked up well before we left the US.

I actually made my first phone call in over 4 month yesterday. I had to buy a phone card to get it done(actually several) as I had several companies that I had to discuss problems with. Being off the internet, we found that we had gotten well over 1,000 emails. I had to look at most and delete those we didn't need and place phone calls to some that we had to make urgent contact with that an email wouldn't take care of. It takes a long time to go through that many emails. I took a few hundred a day and slowly plowed through them. Gee, what fun!?!

So tomorrow, we take off for Mazatlan with a stop at Los Muertos on the way. We had stopped there on our way North back in late December and will probably spend one night there before the big crossing. Leaving from there, it's only 193 miles. If we leave from the islands(Los Santos) just Northeast of La Paz, it's 226 miles. Either way, it will take us an over night passage to get there. We expect a full moon in a few days so we will have plenty of light to allow us to see all that is around us as we cross the Sea of Cortez.

We'll be filling up with diesel and gasoline(for the generator and out board) as we leave La Paz. We're about half full of diesel so it's not really that big a deal, but it's always better to play it safe. Several other cruisers are leaving in a day or so so we expect to have some company during our crossing. I guess time will tell if we are alone out there.

Stay tuned, more to come as we set off on the next part of the journey.