Ravenswing started her long trip home with a 120 mile run from Loreto to Isla Partida off LaPaz on Sunday. It was Colin’s (our elder son) first overnight sea sail and the heavens treated him to an amazing meteor shower thru the Milky Way as I slept around 2am or so. This was hours after we tried out those pink squid lures made in the last video. Ten mins in the water and the kid pulls in a Mahi for dinner!!!

Colin filleted and we ate like Kong’s; Fish tacos on night one, and lovely pan seared fillets over rice last night.

LaPaz was our first trip goal, to meet up with Brizo and do our repairs / prep / provisioning. This was the first time I’ve been too early, meaning I slowed the boat down to 3 knots from 5-6am so we could pull in to an anchorage at Partida Cove for daybreak. We anchored in 8 feet of turquoise sand and went to sleep. The afternoon was an amazing long paddleboard exploration. A sea turtle visited Colin on his board. Then we did boat underwater scrubbing – the divers last Wednesday did a decent but not thorough job. Sadly Colin found a big gouge in the daggerboard, which has me worried for the trip. Finished the day with a mast climb to install better (ie finctioning!) lazyjacks turning blocks, while looking at a desert/sea paradise

Got up this morn after a peaceful night and motorsailed in to LaPaz. Damien and Beth drove us around to various shops and we got everything on the list, including underwater epoxy that I plan to dive and fill the board hole tomorrow morn. Yikes.

Great dinner tonight with our Brizo heroes, having made their dream come true and are living a new lifestyle on the boat in LaPaz. Their playground is the Sea of Cortez. They are on to something here…

Back on Saturday we finished up the mainsheet base strengthening project, and it worked just right on the journey’s first leg. The mobile workshop:

Here are the reinforcements laid inside, and the new carbon compression-resistance bridges on deck.

The bird theme continued as we uncovered the main for the first time in five months to find a bird nest at the outer end.

Tomorrow morning we’ll hit it hard with a new brace to better anchor the autopilot, the dagger patch, resealing a leaking saloon window, installing a new windlass circuit breaker and some minor stuff. We broke a tiny trip lever on the breaker, which surprisingly rendered the windlass dead as we tried to drop the hook in AguaVerde. But it got me to open up the electrical area and learn about manual free-falling the windlass (which doesn’t seem to work on ours).

After work we’ll hopefully get in a visit to see Brizo’s fancy new dinghy and in-boat air conditioning. That’s a must for living aboard and still working a remote business job during the summer down here! We’ll try to pry them away for a little beach time and Mexican Independence Day tomorrow before we have to shove off.

Feeling better about the journey prep, and keeping our eye on the tropical storm that has thankfully taken the expected left turn out deeper into the Pacific.

Leave you tonight with our feet at the pool of Puerto Escondido, minutes before departure, sucking up the courage to start this trip…