Ahhhh, Nelda just cooked up a pepper steak, well I did the steak on the BBQ, Nelda made fresh green bean in lemon juice and white rice with parsley. She is a magician in the kitchen. You eat what you have at this point. Tomorrow we plan to reprovission in La Paz. But back to last nihgt; When I left you it is 4 am and Nelda and I have spent all but 2 hours in the cockit. For anyone that hasn't tried staying awake all night since they since they were 20 it sucks! We have boats on three sides of us, in front, and on the port and starbooard sides. Everybody is holding for the time being except "Good News" that got some bad news when its snubber/anchor chain control line broke causing all sorts of havick. It starts getting light about 6 am here. We really arn't sure what time it really is down here because of the chage in day light savings time in the states. We don't know if that aplies down here or not? So about 5,6 or 7 we are into the teeth of the situation. The waves are tossing the boats sided to side and front to back. The wind is howling and guess what, we have three boats that want to leave as soon as it get light, actually they want to leave when it is barely light. That means that several other boats in front of them may have to move and heaven help th e boats behind them as we found out. It still amazes me why a man crawles on his hands and knees on to the pitching bow of a boat with his wife at the helm steering a 20,000 pound boat and then trys to direct her in with way to go to pull the anchor with hnd signels or a flashlight. For those of you that are not sailors and some of you that are; the device that pulls up an anchor is called a windlass. It is electric and it can pull a chain straight up but it can't pull a 20,000 pound boat to the anchor in calm conditions and this is anything but calm. So the person at the helm or the driver has to make the boat go forward and at the same time right or left based on the hand signals that are being given by the person on the bow that can actually see where the chain is. But they can 't go forward too fast or they run over the anchor and that is B.A.D. If or mor correctly when the hand signels or flashlight fails as it almst always does in thes conditions, the person on the bow YELLS at the person driving the boat wihich never works as the person driving the boat simply starts crying. The only option is to crawl back to the cockpit, have a conversation with the person at the helm and crawl back to the bow and continue the process. In short doing this sucks big time! But when you want to leave that is what you do. A couple of boats are sucsessfull at this dance and one just gives up and lets the chain back out to where it was in the first place. The boat riding right next to us all night was named "Ventured". They were one of the ones that were determined to get out at the crack of dawn. As Nelda and I watch from our cockpit they do the dance and just as the achor starts to let go the person at the helm looses control and Ventured starts drifting sided ways directly at us. I don't know how they managed to escape ourt anchor chain as they came with in ten feet of our bow!!! We had another boat named "Do Bee" on the other side. We taked to them on the radio and I shared a weather report form Don Anderson who provides free weather forcasts for cruisers. The winds were suposed to calm down about noon and Do Bee thought staying in place, like Nelda and I were doing, was the best stratigy. One thing you maybe haven't thought of is "where are these people going after they leave the anchorage"? Well I will tell you, They are going out into the very swells, waves and howlng wind that they were sitting in at anchor only know they are sideways to the waves if they want to go to La Paz which everyone is. The ride is ten times worse! Back to Do Bee, at 7:30 his snubber breaks as well and he is forced to pull up his anchor as if he doesn't he will damage the windlass. Nelda and I watch all this happen right in front of us all morning. At noon we are one of three boats in the cove. The waves have gone down as has the wind and the sun is shining. We have no pr oblem raising the anchor. We did discover that our anchor snuber had also worn almost all the way though even with the extra chaff protection we had put on it. It was just a bad bad situation period. Tonight as I write this we are in La Paz. Yes it is back to civilization. We are anchored about three football fields off the main street along the beach and I can see a Burger King and an Applebees. We are here for just a couple days to pick up supplies and then it is back to explore more remote parts of Mexico.