The photo above is of us and three other boats after successfully navigating the maze of Mexican Immigration at Zihuatanejo airport yesterday and getting our clearance papers to leave the country. We checked out with the Port Captain today so as far as the authorities are concerned we are no longer in Mexico.

The reality is that we will go into a marina tomorrow and do our last bit of fresh food shopping and give the boat a thorough wash down and leave on Saturday.

It's hard to believe we are nearly finally on our way. The weather forecast for the weekend is looking promising and we could actually see some wind to help us get out to the trades.

It's amazing... for the weeks leading up to departure you always have a nagging thought in the back of you head wondering what can go wrong at the last moment. So far everything on the boat seems to be working as it should so I was starting to think everything would be OK.

I was going ashore this afternoon to pick up our propane bottle.... it was to be the last trip into Zihua, and you wouldn't believ it I lost my wallet overboard. By the time I turned the dinghy around it had sunk, complete with all my credit cards, driving licence, Yacht Club membership cards and a swag of US dollars I was taking to the Marquessas. Amazing! I just hope it coesn't wash up on a beach between now and the time I can cancel the cards and get new ones.

Anyway, onto more positive things. We'll leave in company with about 6 other boats from here and I imagine quite a few from Puerto Vallarta will take advantage of the favourable forecast and get away at the same time, so it may be pretty crowded out there.

This will be the last internet blog posting (ie. with a picture) for some time. We will try and update our position each day at noon during the passage (depending on radio propagation). For those of you who are interested you will be able to follow our progress via the little map on the blog site.

We would love to hear from people to break up the monotomy so don't hesitate to drop us an email (NO ATTACHMENTS!) to vjn3067@sailmail.com.