Well despite outboard woes, things can't be that bad when you have the "French Baker" delivering fresh baguettes to your boat every morning. And the Barre de Navidad area is quite lovely.

The town of Barre is at the southern end of Bahia de la Navidad. From there a shallow channel leads past the marina and into a lagoon. A shallow lagoon, particularly at low tide. When we arrived we were fortunate to have a series of waypoints- provided by another cruiser- that outlined the channel to the lagoon. The channel is about 20 feet deep. Outside the channel you'll most likely run aground. (In fact we witnessed two boats who did.) Once in the lagoon we navigated to a spot with our eyes glued to the depth meter. It was a fairly crowded anchorage so we couldn't be picky, as a result we had only about 2 feet under our keel when we dropped our anchor.

Shortly after setting the anchor we noticed a gentleman on his boat Bon Vent a short distance from ours. After exchanging pleasantries ("How's the holding? How much scope do you have out? Is it all chain?") we asked Richard if he knew of a place to get our outboard repaired. He did know and volunteered to run John over in his dinghy. He even stayed with John to help translate the situation with the mechanic. That was nice, but THEN he offered us his spare outboard to use until ours could be fixed. How nice is that?

The next day we received the good news that the mechanic had been able to fix the outboard. Joy! So we are once again mobile. However, at this point we have some concerns about the long-term reliability of the motor. And coincidentally while strolling through the town of Barre we bumped into the local Yamaha outboard dealer. Did I mention John has always coveted the Yamaha Enduro 15hp? So, we're staying in Navidad until the new outboard arrives. In the meantime the girls are enjoying the beach and the local pool... and I'm enjoying those morning baguettes!