We are still hunkered down in Bahia Santa Maria, awaiting the arrival and passage of a Northwesterly gale that should move in to the area in the next several hours. It's the smallest bit claustrophobic to face not getting off the boat for a week or so; imagine not leaving your house (or in terms of size a more apt comparison might be not leaving your hallway) for over a week while a cold wind whistles outside. However, over the last several hours 10 large tuna fishing boats have joined us in the bay, and we figure if they are coming in to hide from the weather, we are definitely making the right choice.

Along with the fishing boats there are four other sailboats here, two Southbound and two Northbound. Greg & Loraine on Swamp Angel have been cruising Mexico for two seasons, and are now headed headed all the way back to British Columbia to be with family. The distance upwind ahead of them is enough to make your head hurt just thinking about it, but luckily they are not on any schedule. Erik is a young guy single-handing an Ericson 29 back to Half Moon Bay to work and build up some money for more long distance cruising of Central America. Unfortunately, he is on a schedule, and I can imagine that the prospect of spending a whole week here is driving him crazy.

The other two boats are Southbound like us, and it's been interesting to dinghy over and talk with them. As new cruisers ourselves we've been going through a period of adjustment as the realities (good and bad) of cruising become clear. As I think you can pick up from some of our earlier blogs, we've had our moments of feeling tired, scared, overwhelmed, and just plain beaten. The folks on the other two boats that are Southbound seem to be solidly in the middle of that same type of adjustment period. One couple is pinned down with engine trouble, tearing apart their heat exchange system for the second time in as many days, another couple is concerned about their water supplies and are dealing with some cuts and infection on the husbands leg and foot. When we stopped by this morning one of them commented, �this just isn't fun.� Our hopes are with them that they can persevere long enough that the good starts outweighing the bad.

As for us, we've been having a great time here, relaxing, cooking great food, enjoying the wildlife and rugged beauty of this remote bay. We're now using up the last remains of our fresh goods, so we're going to have to start getting creative with the canned and packaged goods. Luckily we have plenty of time to consider the menu, after all you can only read so many books per day (feel free to take that as a hint to write to our satellite email address and tell us all about what's going on with you!). We'll leave you with some highlights of the past few days:

A few nights ago when all the Marina Del Ray to Puerto Vallarta racing boats were here we decided to crash their onshore party/trophy presentation. So, we caught a high-speed panga ride ashore through the breaking surf along with the crew of Defiance (a Swan forty something). They were all super cool, adopting us as part of their crew (ie. sharing drink tickets), which was especially nice as it turned out they had won not only the leg but also were the overall leaders! Julia was a big hit, and I shared some of the glory of having somehow convinced a pretty girl to go off sailing with me (just for the record it was the other way around). They are probably on their way from Cabo to Puerto Vallarta right now, I'm sure that they are hauling ass in the big wind and seas. Go Defiance!

Last night around sunset we sat down in the cockpit for the Wenegrat de-stress happy hour when suddenly a whale spouted, only about 60 feet from the boat. We ran forward, and about thirty seconds later a grey whale, probably about 30 feet long, surfaced within 20 feet of the boat, sliding the length of it's entire back out of the water all the way to it's tail fin, which it lifted about a foot clear of the water and then disappeared. Absolutely incredible.

Lat 24 Degrees 46' N, Long 112 Degrees 15' W