Aaron, looking out over the lagoon behind Barra Navidad, Photo by Joe

We are back in Barra de Navidad, near Manzanillo, after going south to Ixtapa/Zijuantenajo and meeting Doug, Lisa and Aaron for Christmas. Aaron is still with us, and will go home later this month when we all go Alaska for ten days.

Our Christmas, Joe's birthday (17), and New Years were fun and we enjoyed getting to know Zihuatenajo and meeting people there. We did two overnight trips to Isla Ixtapa for snorkeling while Doug and Lisa were here.

Our trips between Barra and Ixtapa were both good weather-wise, but we didn't get much wind. We had to do a lot of maneuvering to avoid long-line fishing sets, which are placed out to 30 miles form shore and can be several miles long. We saw many sea turtles and dolphins, and a whale on the northwest-bound return leg.

Barra de Navidad is the best of both worlds, a lot of open lagoon and bay areas, and a small town with an adjacent marina that is part of a five star hotel. The hotel and marina are a short panga or dinghy trip across the channel from the town. The marina is really reasonably priced, and you get to hang out around the hotel, which has three swimming areas, beaches, and is beautifully designed and landscaped.

Aaron and Kelley have been busy doing school work part of each day, and we have done a lot of swimming, wandered Barra de Navidad, and used our kayak to explore the large lagoon inland from the marina.

Kelley is staying on the boat spring semester, rather than going back to Alaska for school, as originally planned. She will continue doing correspondence studies, and will travel to Alaska in March with Jackie for the state-mandated high school testing.

Our boat is working well for us, and we are doing some maintenance and repair projects while here. We had a mishap with our single-side band radio and exposed it to saltwater (oops, not a recommended best practice), so Doug took it back to Alaska and sent it out to be fixed.

We are working on plans for the next leg of our travels. After we return from Alaska, we will go back up to La Cruz in the Puerto Vallarta area for February. We will do some engine maintenance there, possibly add some lightning protection, and get help with re-configuring the SSB if we don't get that right ourselves. We will visit friends Sandra and Helen in La Cruz, and hope to meet up with Marcia and Jack on Tracen J., our "buddy boat" again. In March, Lisa and Aaron, and then Claire and Connor will be coming down for their spring breaks. We will head back to Barra de Navidad and meet them here.

In April, we are planning on heading south again, toward Central America, below the hurricane belt for the hurricane season, which runs from June through November. At this point, we are planning to transit the canal and head toward the Caribbean next, though that is still tentative at this point.

Thanks for keeping in touch with us with this blog and you e-mails!