Saturday, December 22, 2007

Most excellent winter solstice

The winter solstice found us in transit this year from Manzanillo to Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo. We spent the night before dodging freighters and being dumped on by rain showers, but dawn brought dolphins cavorting around the boat, clear skies, and not another boat in sight. Even better, by early afternoon we had wind! What a relief to shut off the engine, no matter how glad we are to have it working again. We celebrated with cockpit showers.

We flew the spinnaker all afternoon and switched to wing-on-wing with the jib poled out at sunset. And what a gorgeous sunset it was. Although the morning’s dolphins were far behind us, we found more in the late afternoon. With the moon nearly full, we could see them jumping all night long. That certainly made the night watches more fun, but there was still plenty of commercial traffic to contend with.

This morning early we anchored at Isla Ixtapa, right in front of Casteele. The palapas and snorkeling are supposed to be excellent here, and there’s even wi-fi when we swing the right way. We’ll spend the night and go on to Zihuatanejo in the morning.

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