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Greetings,

Today I am in Mahahual, Mexico. Gary worked the boat here for four months last spring, so there are many friends.

We left Cozumel Sunday night around 6pm and sailed through the night to arrive here around 3 pm yesterday. There is a tricky reef here that Gary has expert knowledge of. He actually set up a buoy system here before he left, but now it is gone. We had to slowly pick our way through with me on the bow and him at the helm. Very tricky. There was actually a brand new nice catamaran that was just purchased in Cancun stuck here with some front end dame caused when they tried to leave. Gary went on to their boat this morning and guided them through and then they brought him back in on their dingy. And that boat was only 80% of the size of ours. There are probably only a handful of people that can take a big boat through, and Gary is one of them.

On the way down, Gary and Jen were on watch from 6-2am. After a short nap, I took over the helm until a little after sunrise. Ido the Israely was with me keeping me awake. The sea was pretty rough, raining hard with no visability, and cold. I had my rain gear on. We were tossed around so much that Ido got seasick about 4am and there was nothing I could do to help the poor guy. I had to pretty much stay focused on what I was doing. Seeing practically nothing, I had to rely on the radar and the depth gauge. The big hazzard is the cruise ships, but they are impossible to miss on either the radar or visually, being lit up like cities. The last hour was very hard for me with Ido out of it. It takes a lot of effort to hold a course when the wind, waves, and seas are all different directions. Some times I was sailing a 55′ cat sideways and on a 20 degree list. By the time Gary came up at Sunrise, I was happy to let him take over for a while. As he steered, I laid in the hammock a few feet away and helped keep him awake. Jen came up a while later, and I crawled back into bed. I got up a few hours later, took the helm back from Gary and brought us all the way to the reef, then gave it to Gary to get us through.

Matahual is a pretty little town. We had it all to ourselves last night, visiting all of Gary’s old friends. There was a lot of drunken hilarity, mostly at the expense of Ido. He is only 22 years old, but already put in several years as an Israeli commando. He got sick of the whole thing, left Israel, and has not been back for six months. The rest of us spend a lot of time laughing at him,which is pretty strange since he could probably kill us with his bare hands if he chose to.

This morning was nice as well, but the first cruise ship just unloaded a short while ago, so the whole town has already gone tourist. I hate tourists, but the town sure needs the business.

We are hoping that Gary’s friend, the port captain can clear us to leave the country this evening. If so, this will be our final stop in Mexico. The next stop is Utilla, an island on the north side of Honduras. We will leave this afternoon for that, another sail through the night, being there late tomorrow.
After that is Roatan.

I think that is all for now. The tourists are now crawling all over me, so I’m ready to go back to the boat.

Waiting to hear back from Hal if I have a job and a start date.  Talk to you all again in a few days.

Sunrise in Mahahual with Bill P

This morning I am in Cozumel. We are expecting to pick up another person today. The crew has progressed beyond just Gary and me. We are now five, including a Canadian, a young guy from Israel, and a gal from Alaska.

We had a good sail down from Isla Mujeres yesterday. We are running with a ¨Norte¨which although producing a confused sea, has good wind for us. We were able to maintain about 9 or 10 knots all day. I spent most of the time at the helm, and at some times, the back of the boat was as much as 20ft above the front of the boat. I may have some pictures of the view. I also got some pretty good hits where it turned the boat so hard I had trouble keeping the helm and the sails full. Every so often we would get a pretty good wave catch us from the stern, and I would surf the boat for maybe ten seconds or so. It may all sound a little dangerous, but not really. This boat was designed for and has seen much more. Remember that is is 55 ft long and about 30 feet wide. If things go well, and we find our 6th person today, we will sail out this evening for a tomorrow afternoon arrival at our next stop. I´m looking forward to getting at least part of the time at the helm tonight and sail with the moon.

There is also a friend of ours who decided to hop a few ferrys and buses and come down from Isla supposedly in town, but we have not found him yet. We hear from some other guys we ran into here, that he had a couple of fishing rods and wanted to hang along with us for  a while. If we find him, a couple of the guys will have to hot bunk. I still have the largest cabin on the boat, having been the first one on. The new guys think I´m some sort of sailing veteran because I am instructing them. It´s good to have more people on the boat because that means more money. If I have to bail out for some reason, I want to at least make sure that Gary has the money to get through the canal. After that, he can just sail home.

As far as tourist stuff, the whole front of Cozumel is cruise ship tourist zone. Once you get away from that, it is a pretty nice island. We all went to the central market today for ¨Cochinitas ¨which are pork sandwiches. The problem is, all of Mexico eats them on Sunday, so it was just too crowded, so we had traditional food. When we were sailing down here, I could not believe how many hotels are in Cancun.

So, once again, this may be my last email for a few days.