You guys have waited quite a while to find out what’s up with Ravenswing now in Mexico. After that sprint to La Paz, the boat was left for two months while we did family stuff and started in to a backyard makeover. Don’t ask me about hitting the septic tank and water main lines with my rental Bobcat, and getting it bogged down in the winter rains’ mud…

I got to the boat last Saturday, and immediately removed the boom to install the new reefing clew-lines sheave box and upgrade the way the mainsail headboard interfaces with the mast track. Also got the prior rudder repairs faired and primer painted. These new padeyes are obviously a big improvement for barber hauling and other float-deck tweaking tasks. Numerous other little tasks over two days, and we were ready to receive crew extraordinaire Cosbey. Yes, the Sierra Buttes mountain man also has a long history of seven Americas Cup campaigns across three decades as shore crew, boat builder and ocean crossing sailor. But his primary Baja challenge was to be this boat’s first Fish Slayer. In our travels from La Paz to Espírito Santo and on to Los Cabos, we fished many days and threw back a lot of wrong species. (Both too lazy to marinate skipjack!). On the last possible fishing hour, just off the Pulmo reef, Cozmo caught us an amazing dinner fish and we taco’d up like kings. We caught the SuperBowl in a palapa bar at Bahia de Los Muertos, and the nice people found us an English broadcast that wasn’t Joe Buck! That plus Shakira shaking her stuff for the Mexican waitresses was pretty funny.

In the end I had to put Coz on the plane because I couldn’t afford the cerveza bill anymore. I figured 4 twelve packs was plenty for six days, but we made it to Cabo by the skin of our aluminum teeth. All good fun, and now with yesterday’s arrival of Rick and Carlos, Ravenswing is fueled, watered and provisioned to cast off towards Puerto Vallarta as soon as I hit send on this post. Go to our tracking page on Cartersboat.com to follow the Iridium tracker map.

Also click through to the Videos page and grab the first YouTube link to see our exit from LaPaz. I’m still learning how to get video uploaded from the new GoPro. If anyone can comment back to help me make the file sizes smaller, please do so. I can’t upload 1gig+ video files in these remote spots. Need a way of compressing / lower rez video on the computer before attempting the YouTube load. It’s easy from the iPhone but can’t figure out GoPro yet. So you guys will have to wait a bit more for coming stories.

Be well and wish us luck today. Strong winds off our port stern quarter should mean a good ride to Isla Isabel…