Rich and I have been enjoying Zihuatanejo. We like the ambience in this laid back Mexican town. The anchorage near Playa la Ropa is fine, provided you have a stern anchor. We have been experimenting with setting ours, some experiments have been good, others not so good. We were using a Quickline floating, flat line but the shackle on the anchor chafed through. We enlisted the help of Black Tuna II diving and were able to retrieve the errant anchor. Our other rode of triple braid is what we are using now and works much better.

We went to Isla Grande, just north of Ixtapa for a few nights. During the day, this is a popular place for tourists to come and sit at palapas on the beach or ride jet skis rand the boats at anchor. At 6:00 pm, the palapas close and everyone heads back to the mainland, leaving peace and quiet behind.

On January 26, we picked up our son, Jesse and our daughter-in-law, Rae, at the airport at Zihuatanejo. They came down to visit us for a week and graciously brought down some boat parts, some new DVDs and our mail. Their time here was split between the marina at Ixtapa and the anchorage at Playa la Ropa and it included time at the beach, kayaking, swimming, walking around town, shopping plus plenty of time just doing nothing much at all. We got a chance to hear about their jobs, their cats (Aesir and Vanir), Rae's applications to graduate school and life in general. The week went by all too quickly and we were sad to see them go.

Now we are preparing to head south again. Rich installed a new gasket in the vberth hatch which we hope will stop it from leaking when we have a boarding wave. We are also de tuning and re tuning the standing rigging, adding stainless steel washers so that the Navtek fitting sit evenly on the pins. A few more chores then back to Zihuatanejo to fill our propane tank, checkout with the port captain and then we will head out.