The crew (Marj and Dave) have returned to Mazatlan after a great Christmas and New Year Holiday with our kids and grandkids in Colorado. Kievit is still in the boatyard and will probably stay there until next week. We plan to finish up boat cleaning, odd jobs on the boat and provisioning in the next week. We will likely go into the water next Tuesday or Wednesday, and hope to head south to Puerto Vallarta by the following weekend. Kievit looks great after new bottom paint and a good wax job on the hull. However, boatyards are dusty and dirty due to lots of sanding and painting going on every day. And, birds love to sit on boat rigging and leave their deposits behind. So, anyone who knows boats and boatyards will understand why it will take a good week to get Kievit cleaned up and provisioned. We still have sails to clean up and put on. We have a decal CN-43 from two years ago to put on the new mainsail. There is good space here to lay out the sails, wash them down, make any minor repairs, put on new telltales, decals, etc.
We are excited about this year's sail plans. We will leave Mazatlan and take 3=4 days, with stops along the way, to get to Puerto Vallarta (actually to the town of La Cruz on the north side of Bandaras Bay). There we will meet up with some old and new friends and head south down the Pacific Coast of Mexico. We will take about a month to reach the southern-most Mexican port of Chiapas. Then, we will take a two day sail to El Salvador for the Cruisers Rally to El Salvador. There are at least 20 boats that will show up there for some serious fun and inland touring. Check it out if you are interested. Just Google El Salvador Rally and look through the website.
We plan to hang out in and around El Salvador for 2-3 weeks then sail south to Costa Rica. We will have maybe a month in Costa Rica before flying back to the States in early June for Dave's 50 year high school reunion in VA, followed by our oldest granddaughter's high school graduation in Havertown PA. We promise to keep a good blog posted along our way. Kievit will be moored somewhere in Central America next summer and we will rejoin her in Fall 2013 for the next leg of our retirement adventure.