With Turtle Bay behind us, we moved on to Bahia Magdalena on Tuesday, Nov 22. With another long leg in store for us I'm now wondering if these overnight trips will ever stop. I would love to get to a point where we get somewhere, drop the anchor and stay for a while because we like it there. Oh well, I guess that is just part of the journey. From the beginning of this leg the wind was blowing so for the first time so far we started sailing from the onset. After one turn out of the bay we had a long and very straight shot to our next stop--270 miles away, that's another two nights out for us. The good part of a straight course like that is that we can set the sails if there is wind and put Wilber and Orville to work only adjusting the autopilot and/or sails occasionally as the wind shifts. The bad part is that it gets fairly boring to stay on the same course for hours on end but makes me happy as it means no fuel is burned...unfortunately, saving fuel was not in the cards for us.

Unlike the leg before the wind only lasted for a few hours and so we wound up giving the engine another work out. If only we were working out as much as the engine, we'd be in tip-top shape. It is hard to figure out how to exercise while out on the ocean. The boat moves around a lot and I am not overly coordinated even on nonmoving surfaces. To keep awake I do stretches while holding on with one hand, walk in place while holding on with one hand, and do a few (very few) lunges, of course, while holding on with one hand. That's between trying to learn Spanish, moving from one corner in the cockpit to the other everything fifteen minutes, oh and eating and then eating some more when my eyes just don't want to stay open any longer. That might be why I need to figure out how to get some exercise that doesn't require me to hold on with one hand.

Kevin decided he wanted to try his hand at fishing which requires fishing licenses for anyone on board the boat. I don't want to fish but need a license anyway--seems odd but one of a few rules in Mexico so we bought the two licenses. If you are picturing poles with reels off the back of the boat replace that image with shock cord and clothes pins. Poles necessary for the size fish out here are very expensive. Kevin talked to some fishing folks and read up on ocean fishing and learned that many people can fish using hand lines so he decided to go that route. The first day he set the lines the only things that seemed interested in what he was offering where two seagulls. He had them out for most of the day and decided to bring them in at night fall as we didn't want to deal with some great big fish in the dark. He then set the lines out the following morning and while I was off shift and sleeping soundly, he caught two fish. They weren't big fish and we don't even know what kind of fish they are but now I have to figure out how to prepare them and being Thanksgiving don't want to have unknown fish for dinner so will wait until tomorrow.

We both are really missing the family and tradition. For some reason Thanksgiving and 85 degrees just don't go hand-in-hand for me. I tried to find a small turkey before we left San Diego to prepare but they were more expensive than a big one (which wouldn't fit in our freezer anyway) so I bought a chicken instead. We decided to call it a churkey just so I could pretend we were having turkey and a traditional meal. As luck would have it just as we pulling in to anchor at Magdalena Bay one of the other cruisers dinghyed over to let us know there would be a Thanksgiving feast on the beach in a few hours with all the fixings. I volunteered to make sweet potatoes and an apple crunch. I'd been wanting to try an apple crunch recipe for the pressure cooker anyway so this was a good excuse and Kevin really likes sweet potatoes as part of Thanksgiving so I wanted to make those as well. I didn't want to turn the oven on to cook the sweet potatoes because we finally found the sun and it is hot (in my opinion) so I tried using the BBQ as an oven. The potatoes went on the BBQ in a bread loaf pan as that was the only thing I had that would fit but because I was busy making the apple crisp I neglected to check on the potatoes and they burned or rather were scorched to the point that they were not edible. The pressure cooker apple crunch turned out okay though and someone else brought sweet potatoes so all was good. It was nice to be greeted with such warmth and share Thanksgiving with others in the same boat (pun intended). As expected we learned that indeed it is Miguel's birthday everyday from the others who stopped in Turtle Bay ;-).

Picture is of Kevin's Thanksgiving Day catch which I was thankful wasn't larger or that we had to eat it for our Thanksgiving dinner!