Isla Rocqueta in Acapulco

We spent a couple nights in Acapulco anchored at the outside island where during the day boatloads of Mexican tourists come to swim and stand in line. We guessed that because they live in Mexico City where they stand in line for busses and such, the crowds and lines they experience on vacation is to be expected. Not for us! We left for quiter places.

On to Barre de Navidad

After a couple days swimming and playing volleyball in Tenecatita, we traveled the 14 miles to a very sheltered lagoon where we could sail our kayak. There we met Tom and Ann on Leonidas, a santa Cruz couple with a very distinctive sailing canoe. Tom had cut an old Grumman canoe in half so it could nest on his 32 ft Dreadnought, and made his unique sailing rig. Ron and I are on the left in our klepper.

Mexican Riveria

Much time has passed and we are finally at a place where we can actually work on our blog and upload pictures. We are presently anchored in San Juan del Sur, a picturesque bay in southern Nicaragua. but let us backtrack to Mexico where we quickly traveled down the coast south of Puerto Vallarta. The first picture is of the Jungle river trip we took in Tenecatita, a lovely bay southeast of PV. We may not be able to get the pictures published so we apologize if they don't get up immediately.

Erica, Diane and Ron in Baja

Here we are at the beginning of our trip with Erica in February. This photo ws taken by our friend Dennis Meredith.

We have moved our sailing blog---Temporarily!

Dear Friends, we have decided to detour our blog to a new location for the summer of 2006 only:

http://www.sailblogs.com/member/batwingchronicles


See you there! Then come back as the problems we were having have been resolved enough to be able to use this site again.

What have we been doing? Spring/Summer 2006

One word to describe us--BUSY! Back in May we again put Batwing on the hard so that we could escape the heat of summer in Mexico. We traveled north through California Oregon and WA visiting friends along the way. Check out the pics--Wayne and Tanya, Hubba, Dan, Ramone and Lew, Cindy and John, Judy and Bob, Nicole.
We even visited a couple national parks--JoshuaTree and Yosemite. Having had enough, we beelined it to Bellingham where we reunited with Erica and spent as much time as we could visiting with her between her studies and friends. This summer was the summer to attend both of Erica's college graduations--one for the College--Huxley and one for the University of Western Washington. She received the Thomas Huxley Award and was the student speaker at the Huxley graduation then went on to graduate cum laude with honors in
Environmental Science at the official Western Washington graduation. We are very proud of her! Check out her graduation gift from us (it is a Kahuna, made by the Feathercraft folding kayak company in Granville Island, Vancouver BC) which she plans to bring with her when she joins us in Jan for an"open ended" trip on Batwing.
Meanwhile, we are both working till Nov 1 earning more "cruising chips" for the coming sailing season. We hope to travel down the Mexican coast to Central America and Ecuador once we complete the work on Batwing that we started last year. That means we hope to go back in the water by Jan 2007--cross you fingers for us --we hope this last bit of work goes smoothly. Of course, we will inform you of what transpires.
There is still a bit of time to receive guests, Howard and Ann hope to make it out here end of September, and Brad just left after spending the Labor Day weekend with us. Being boatless, we have to enjoy the myriad of other activities that one can do here--kayak, hike, bike, and of course, pick berries! We have made it through salmon berries, thimble berries, raspberries, blueberries and now the end of backberry season is upon us. :( check out the pics of our wonderful cottage where we stay, formerly a chicken coop)--Ron even had a dream that a chicken pooped on his head while sleeping. We thank the Ellsworths, Joan and Steve for this great place--8 acres of lush tree covered property bordering the southern outlet of Lake Samish.

Circumnavigating Islas Carmen and Danzante

After a brief stay, hooking up with friends Dennis and Dan (both of whom we met during the year we kayaked for 2.5 months in Baja), we left Marjean, so that she could visit with friends. We then sailed south to establish ourselves in Puerto Escondido and get ready to kayak with our friends Jill and Bob Stecker from Colorado. You will see some pics of Punta Pulpito. (This is a point halfway, and our anchorage for one night) Jill and Bob had been in Puerto Escondido a day ahead of us, so we had timed our arrival rather well. We even had a greeter and escort, Elvin of Western Sea, and commodore of the Hidden Port yacht club. He led us to our mooring buoy and even offered to take care of Kitty Kira while we were gone.

Working for 3 months on Batwing, had captured our attention so thoroughly that we had to shift gears to get into expedition mode. We searched for our kayaking gear, spent a few days getting organized, paddling a bit to get loosened up and ready for 10 mile per day activity. Ron and I were terribly out of shape from being in the boatyard for so long, we hoped it was not going to be too hard on us to paddle day after day this distance. As you will see by these pictures, we saw incredible scenery and geological features. The weather was beautiful, only one day where the wind blew us off the water, we were blessed. And yes, we completed the circumnavigation of Islas Carmen, and Danzante.

Nine days of sharing our love of Baja with Jill and Bob and we managed to survive the activity! We had lots of fun!