While we were doing some cleaning around the nav station, Jim found some pictures of Sunshine being built back in the early 70's. That was a pretty cool find. We are only the 3rd owners of her, but we're still surprised to find some "old" pictures that have managed to be on her after all these years.

Jim has part of our new dining table cut out and in place. The table that was here was only a 24x26, kinda small to fit our family around it, someone was usually standing while another one of us would sit on the sofa on the opposite side across from the walkway, while 3 others huddled around the table. Now we have a 36x26, then the rest of it which still needs to be cut and installed will have an 18" gap, and then another18x24 table next to that. This is all along a 7' sofa seating area, where there used to be an upright piano that the original owners had put in place with the remainder of the boat built around her. When they decided to take the piano out several years ago, they had to disassemble it. He has also been working on getting our stanchions put up all around the perimeter of the boat. I was hoping these would have been put in a LONG time ago, just for my piece of mind with the kids. But we've just kept them off the deck, and only in the wheelhouse/cockpit area, and if they go past the step up to the outer cockpit, they have to have their life jacket on. Again, this is one of those situations that, we had new stanchions for the boat, but not the right size bolts to fit them. He bough some way back our second/third week here, but didn't get them all the proper size, and never was able to make it to the hardware store again in San Salvador until his trip earlier this week.

I had a tough job last Friday. The papagallo winds were really blowing hard here both Wed. & Thurs., there was no way possible we could chance doing laundry and risking them blowing off the lines. Friday was calmer at times, but there were still times the wind machine would kick in fierce, so after washing the clothes, I had the daunting task of sitting up on deck in the sunshine, eating a fresh orange, and my lunch while watching the laundry to make sure they don't escape. Rough, but somebody had to do it!

Jim started working on our new dinghy Monday, then needed to go to Zacata Tues., and then to San Salvador Wednesday to get some remaining parts and supplies needed. Things are happening, just slow, but we're still not really behind schedule. We will have to short cut some of the stops we wanted to make along the way, to make it home by beginning of June, but we actually were generous with our original schedule we first laid out, staying a whole month in Costa Rica and Mexico each. That will probably be narrowed down to 2 weeks, and 10 days respectively, now that we actually sat down and went through where we really want to visit, and for how long. We're all ready to start moving and seeing some of this beautiful world that's out there. Getting closer.

We have some new "neighbors". Another sailboat came in last Saturday and are also moored on Santos' mooring. They have an 8 yr. old daughter. Santos asked Jim to go with him to escort their boat through the bar entrance from the Ocean into the estuary, that was good experience for him to actually go out through the bar and back. It's an opening you should only pass through during high tide and an escort for larger boats not familiar with the area, and it was good for Jim to see where the channel is, although before we leave we will go out a few times to get a better perspective on where the channel is, it changes often with the tide and winds.

We had our first "party" on our boat yesterday. The three of us mom's who hang out together, decided it was time for a book swap. Wouldn't you know it, since our boat has the largest deck space and interior space, our boat got nominated to host it! But that's okay, was a good excuse to get our boat picked up. We had 10 people plus our family on board. We had a potluck lunch and the book/video swap. It was fun, and got to test out our boats party ability! Which can only get better as we get more work completed and improvements made.