Tonight's sunset

It’s been a busy week with diving, visiting, boat projects, and everything that goes with living on a boat… now it’s time for some serious prep mode for crossing to Mazatlan: waiting for a weather window before we make the 2-night crossing, trying to apply 10 coats of varnish to all exterior wood surfaces (Jon — not me!!!), working to install our autopilot (we got the windvane working a few weeks back, but truthfully have hand-steered nearly all of our sailing) and searching to seal up all our leaks (what leaks on the boat? try every stanchion, a couple of the chainplates, and a few suspect areas in the toe rail… damn boats).

As we add projects to the list we get to cross a few off too — our newly installed cheap-o Jabsco toilet is the greatest thing since sliced bread, our 6v golf-cart batteries are happily pumping along (pumping?? is that what batteries do??), and Jon’s spent the last week sanding all the old varnish bits off the exterior teak…

Looking down one of the many pretty streets in La Paz... I never realised how much more tropical it would be down here

I have to say, working, playing and living in La Paz makes it pretty easy to see how cruisers might get a little stuck here; it’s beautiful every day, there are 15 marine stores in town (with decent prices) and the tacos are 10 pesos ($0.80). But more on those tacos later 🙂