What have we been up to lately. Okay, since we have got here I was hauled up the mast to get the stuck spinnaker halyard that we lost, repaired the drain that was dripping on my bunk (this involved, re caulking it, cutting it and refastening it) climbed up behind the radar arch to try and figure out what is happening with the ham radio, undoing and reattaching the antenna, put another coat of varnish on pull of the hatchway, fix the auto-pilot, polished the stainless steel on deck, scrubbed the deck down with fresh water, laundry, grocery shopping, washed the floors and cleaned the bathroom, put anti-chafing on the life lines, hauled up the spinnaker to sort out the sock so it won't get stuck again, folded and stowed the stay sail and today we re insulated the refrigerator.

We called a refrigeration guy to come and look at the fridge. Barry wanted to replace it, the guy basically said that we needed a new box for the fridge with better insulation and the unit was fine. He suggested rather than ripping the whole unit out and having it rebuilt that we try and upgrade the insulation . He gave us a ride to the wonderful Home Depot here and we bought supplies. Back at the boat we cut Styrofoam to fit on one side of the box and then sealed it with aluminum tape. Then we put a vapour barrier of plastic on top of that. I had to beg the guy to get the plastic. At Home Depot we found some plastic that they put on the ground to keep out weeds but they didn't have a price so wouldn't sell us any. There was some old used plastic sitting around and I convinced the young fellow to just give it to us since it was just garbage and not for sale. It was hard doing it in Spanish, I beg much better in English!!

I guess the old saying that cruising is just repairing your boat in exotic places is really quite true!!

Note: Dancing with Carole's red hat on

We did manage to go out to dinner twice while we were her and the margaritas were REALLY GOOD at the last place we visited. There was a musician from Saltspring Island playing, and Barry must have been feeling no pain because we danced a couple of dances, fun, fun. I bought my good friend Carole,, on Espiritu, a red hat so we could be twins and promptly had it blown off when we taxied home in the back of a little red truck. Yes, they actually let you sit in the back of a truck, and you pay them good money to do it.

Note: In the little red truck, NO RED HAT!

We are headed further south tomorrow, making our way to Manzanillo where we will meet Bruce, Marg and family. Mungo with Steve, Sandi and their daughter Katherine will be at an anchorage just north of there so we are hoping to stay a few days with them before Christmas. The time is just flying by, I had not idea that it is only a week until Christmas tomorrow. YIKES, we had better get sailing.