Living on a sailboat in Mexico sounds great (and it is) but there are a few drawbacks. We can't be experts on the subject yet, having only been doing this for a couple weeks, but some problems have, ahhh, raised their ugly head (see above). Bad hair is an unavoidable part of this adventure. Especially for people like me who don't much care! Poor Melanie has had to figure out how to wash her hair in the sink using an aboslute minimum of water, since water is our most precious commodity. But she's very good at it now.

Bathing in salt water with dishsoap (yup, strange but true) is surprisingly effective, but my hair still ends up like straw. So I'm not smelly, just funny looking and that's not so unusual for me.

Bruises are also inevitable. I used to think that my Mom was just clumsy when she's always came back from sailing covered in bruises (just kidding Mom!). But Melanie and I are both covered in them ourselves. She has a nice big purple one from banging into the stove when the boat rocked violently. Sorry, she wouldn't let me take a photo of it.

One news item that needs to be clarified is that it was reported that a boat in the Baja Ha Ha sank after being repeatedly rammed by a Humpback whale. That is not correct. The skipper of that boat was at the Ha Ha's awards ceremony and she was interviewed for the Latitude 32 magazine as well. She said that they accidentally sailed into a pod of whales (there were large waves and it's difficult to see low lying objects, especially fast moving ones). As they came off a wave they saw that they were on a collision course with a whale. It dove down but hit their keel and then cut itself on their prop (they saw blood in the water). In what was probably a reflexive move the whale flicked its tail to get out of there and the tail knocked the rudder off the boat. That left a big hole and down she went. That makes a lot more sense because although getting rammed by whales isn't completely unknown, it is very rare, and Humpbacks are considered to be one of the more curious and friendly variety.

That's all for now. We're off to La Paz with a few stops in between.