Wow, what a great couple of days we had, setting our own world record! Yes, our OWN world record...this means a whopping 33 hours fully under sail, without running the engine! In the end, the winds -- along with our impatience - conspired to get the better of us. Around 1 a.m., the winds died and kept clocking around part of the dial. Our mainsail was making too much racket...sleeping -- and getting into port to make some business calls-- won priority over sailing the whole Topolobampo to Mazatlan route.

The last two days were just super duper nice, the "what it's all about" kind of sailing, beam reaches almost the entire way down, and both mornings I had exciting marine mammal sitings. Day one, dolphins. Day two....spouts gave way to dorsal fins which then gave way to a HUMPBACK BREACHING! Yowzaa! From our distance it looked like a younger (smaller) whale and a larger one together. We had a brief fluke view too.

The moon and stars put on great shows, I saw many shooting stars on my watch, and phosporescence in the water too.

Leaving Topolobampo was hard, a sailing family pulled into port with a painful medical situation. Several doctor visits later it was determined that the patient was in the midst of dealing with a kidney stone. While the process is totally un-fun, we voiced collective sighs of relief that this situation had occurred when the cruising family was close enough to a port to get the needed medical help. And we had an unexpected bright side to all of this - one of the way-laid crewmembers was a fun and smart seven year old who enjoyed listening to Christmas music and making decorations as much as me and Zig Zag! Hopefully, her Dad is almost done with the ordeal, and we'll meet up with the family and other sailing friends again soon. They have their mast decorated fantabulously for the holidays!

While underway, I had round two of trying out one of my new boat toys, a pressure cooker. Stone Family legends of exploding baby food aside, these days, the pressure cooker is supposed to be every galley's best tool. But, I have to conceed that so far, I haven't been the best at using this miraculous one-pot wonder. Think Oliver: "Please sir, may I have some more?" ... minus the maggots (I hope). Cruel gruel....cruel gruel indeed.

We've been watching a lot of Miss Marple dvd's during this trip. So, as she would say: "Ohh Myyiiiihh, tsk tsk tsk..."

Hasta luego,
Pamela