Welcome the the Iron Chef, Baja edition. Todays secrete ingreadiant is Blow Fish. How do you cook one of these, we can even figure out how to get it off the hook. The only spice you will be using to prepare todays 6 dishes and dersert is salt. That's because Diamond Girl is covered in salt. It is everywhere. Yesterdays bashing up North has left a coating on everything simmilar to an ice storm in the Northeast. Everything and I mean everything outside the cabin is covererd in salt. Now I know how a margaritta feels. I know I remember seeing an Iorn Chef show that used blow fish now I wish I had paid closer attention. Yesterday was a looooog day. It wasn't particularly challenging as we did no sailing. The sea did get big and we did have water over the bow all day but it was the incessent wave action that was so taxing. On the good side we have a full moon right now and the weather is great. Highs in the mid 70's and lows in the mid 70's. Today (we) as in Nelda is washing down Diamond Girl. I offered to help but she said it was easier for her to just do it that for me to wast fresh water and they have her redo it. How can I disagree. Diamond Girl is allot more boat that we gave her credit for at the start of our adventure and she deserves a bath. We have pushed her and ourselves well beyond anything we could have imagined just three weeks ago. Even with big swells crashing over the bow and nights with too much sail up in too much wind there has never been a time where she fell unsteady or that something might break. She has been very forgiving and we are much more appricative and working on being better sailors so we don't don't take advatage of her kind nature Next on the agenda today is fresh Dorado fish tacos! Yummmmmm. Then a plesant day sail around the bay. We have been on such demanding schedule and trying to cross such long distances that sailing just for fun has taken a back seat. We want to go out and work with the self stearing vane and just have a relaxing sail. Unfortunatly doing both these things at the same time rairly results in anything close to an enjoyable xperience. I am determand to get the thing to work and that mean the boat swings wildly from one couse to another while I am ajusting the thing. Maybe to day will be the magic day! Tonight is dinner and drinks at the El Card'on Tequila Bar and Grill. It is the first sign of civilazation we have seen in almost a week. It is very unusual to see any type of airplane and we saw automobiles for the first time in a week last night. It's kind of wierd. So back to the blow fish. When we got up this moring there were about six pangas casting nets in the bay. We are not sure what they were catching so I got out my small fishing pole. The first fishs we caught was a black skip jack. This is a real delacacy, not! We kept it and gave it to one of the panga drivers. They really didn't want it either but took it for bait. we also caught a needle fish that was cool and two blow fish. All of these went back in the water to fight another day. We have Dorado comming out our ears and Nelda has been busy freezing it for those times we are not as lucky but don't forget the fresh fish tacos.