Ahhhh.....We welcome 2009 with open arms and adventure still in our blood....We down loaded one more grib weather file to confirm our plan to leave on January 1st to head northward. Spent a very nice morning having brunch at the Sunrise Hotel with "South of Reality", "Kaija's Song" and "Dragonfly" and celebrating Kaija's birthday. Then by 12:05 we had our anchors pulled and headed out the channel...just infront of alittle rain sqaull.. Once out of the channel heading north we were in some pretty bumpy seas (8-10 foot swells) and with 15-18 knot winds that were only 30 degrees off our nose. Since we were making water anyway we didn't mind motor sailing that day and hopefully it kept the rolling action to a minimum. It wasn't until 6:30am and we made the turn more NW that we were able to cut the engine and sail the whole next day! 10-13 knot winds, much better seas (4-6 ft swells) it was a VERY GOOD sailing day. About 1:45am, just BEFORE my shift was over the wind popped up from 9-10 knots to 15 and then to 18 and to 20 in 5 minutes! It woke Rob up only seconds before I was going to wake him up, so we could get the sails reefed in and then it POURED! That squall lasted almost 2 hours (longer than usual) but finally subsided and the rest of the way we motored because the wind clocked around to our stern.... It took us only about 46 hours to arrive at Cayo Vivorillos which is a very nice rest place out in the middle of no where, only 45 miles off the coast of Nicaragua. It was a little weird anchoring behind just a long reef that was just below the water surface and half a mile from any island as it looked like we were anchoring in the middle of no where in 15 feet of water! It 10:30am we dropped anchor, swam around the boat, in refreshing 80 degree water and saw a stingray, several starfish and one with 6 points right away! We were told by another boater that was GOOD LUCK! Rob is just thinking mutant, but we'll go with the good luck theory....kind of like a 4 leaf clover! We snorkeled on the anchor...we are in sand, thankfully and came back to the boat, showered and crashed into bed. 3:30pm we woke up....had alittle breakfast for dinner and settled in for the evening...After a 2 night passage, I am just wiped! Today....it was pretty cloudy in the am but after lunch the sun came out so we went for a little dinghy excursion and a little snorkeling. Just a few islands around this reef, where some "shark fisherman" have set up camp on one of the islands and are alittle short of water and food, we took them some fresh water and sans cles with some canned meat we went to check out the island. Quite a little meg-shift shark fillet drying operation! Hundreds of shark fillets, coated in salt, laying on the grass in the tropical sun that takes about 4 days to dry and cure! The fishermen were proud to show us the fruits of their labors and grateful for the things we brought offered us a lobster! Having Italian Sausage & peppers & potatoes (a great little Italian place we found on San Andres for the sausage) for dinner tonight on board Triple Stars with Terri & Lyman and Trish & Dan from Eventyr. a few morsels "Caribbean fruits of the sea" was a nice little addition. Dan even hand caught several lobsters while snorkeling today and brought a couple for our freezer! As we are abit on a schedule now with Kristen and Chris coming to Belize City on January 20th to spend a little time with us, we will be leaving this great little resting spot Monday morning...headed for Guanaja, where we will officially check into Honduras. We are also having alittle computer issues so sometimes these blogs will be alittle jumbled as the computer "looses" the cursor periodically and then sometimes just freezes up...so...hopefully you can make alittle sense of our adventures! More to come, once in Guanaja in a couple of days.....