Publishing today's email...

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The last time you heard from us we were enjoying Tenacatita Bay for the second time before heading back to Puerto Vallarta. During this stay there were large swells coming through the anchorage and crashing onto the beach with an almost deafening roar. Because of this, dinghy landings on the beach were all but impossible so we were sequestered on the boat until the swells eased up a bit which finally happened after 3 days. We were ready to get off the boat for a walk along the beach and a tall cool one at the local palapa restaurant so we bravely took off and landed the dinghy without any problems. Embolded by our success in landing, John thought getting out would be a "piece of cake" since we could see what was coming at us even though Gilly did not show the same degree of optimism. As we stood on the beach getting ready to go we saw another dinghy going out and literally flying over four large and very steep waves. The trick (we're told) is to wait for a calm period as the waves come in sets so that's what we did. We got in the dinghy and took off as fast as we could but all of a sudden a big wave was on us and we got tossed out into the water. John had not fastened on the "Kill switch" to his wrist so the outboard kept going, but fortunately at slow speed and the dinghy came back to John who was able to reach up and stop the engine. He jumped in and made it out through the surf but had to leave Gilly who soon after swam out through the surf and got into the dinghy. With most of the anchorage watching us we provided the afternoon's entertainment, but fortunately no one was hurt and we'll try it again with hopefully better results next time.

We departed Tenacatita with calm seas in the early morning of March 1st headed for Chemela 44 miles to the northwest. Our plan was to stay there for a few days before making it the rest of the way back to Puerto Vallarta. The large swells were once again running and we found out from other cruisers that the anchorage was very rolly and dinghy landings impossble so we decided to continue on to Cabo Corrientes (Cape of Currents), another 50 odd miles further north, which is the entrance to Banderas Bay and Puerto Vallarta. The weather forecast was for little or no wind so we felt confident in continuing on through the night. Unfortunately forecasts are not always accurate and we got slamed with 24 knot+ winds and steep seas. The boat handled it very well and we got some good experience taking only 1 hour watches throughout the night. We arrived off our Punta Mita condo at 6:00 AM dropped the anchor and slept until 10:00.

We've since being doing more work to the condo which has turned out better than we ever anticipated and had a wonderful 9 day visit from Scott, Hillary and the grandkids as well as Nick making it down for a few days.

This weekend we are heading to La Paz with our condo neighbors Richard Spindler and Dona
aboard their 63' catamaran where we'll do something called La Paz Race Week. Should be a lot of fun and we're very much looking forward to it. We'll then take the ferry from La Paz to Mazatlan and then a bus back to Puerto Vallarta.

We'll soon be posting some new photos to our blog later today.