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We're leaving tomorrow for Toronto.  We will be back on May 9, a few days before we head to Ensenada, Mexico.

There won't be any posts for a while.....

Sailing with The Dolphins

Yesterday we sailed out into the ocean again.  The waters were calmer than the first time and it was a pretty leisurely sail.

At one point, we noticed a lot of birds, mostly pelicans, hanging around one particular spot, flying around and diving a lot.  The captain confirmed that it meant there was probably a school of fish below the surface there.

Neil noticed a dolphin!  It was pretty close to the boat, just swimming along side.  Then we saw another and another.  There were probably at least 30 of them.  They must have also been chasing that school of fish.  We’ve heard of dolphins playing in the bow wave of boats before, but this was the first time we’d seen it ourselves.  What fun to watch them coming close and riding along with us.

Sorry, we couldn’t find the video camera fast enough to get any shots, but we’re pretty sure there’ll be other opportunities.

Here are a few photos we’ve taken recently:

Our new name.

We just thought this was cute.

They have this neat wave thingie down by the beach.

Sharon calls this the "ugly shell house".  Whatever would possess a person????

Neil doing the engine check.

Sealions hanging around on a buoy.

Everywhere a Cat, Cat

We continue to work on the boat and go sailing with the Captain.  Yesterday we purchased new carpet for the boat.  Today, we’ll probably install it.  We’re learning a lot about where to buy things and how to do them.  We saved lots of money when we bought our own wall-to-wall carpet from Home Depot.  We had them cut it (they don’t normally do that) into 3 smaller pieces for us to fit almost perfectly into the salon.  We’ll have to do a bit of trimming, but not too much.  All that for less than $100.  We had to cut the carpet to allow for the floors to be opened, for example, to get into the engine room, or to pump out the bilge.

The cats have been getting braver.  Piggy is still a big chicken, but he likes to sit in the cockpit now.  Archie, on the otherhand, is up to no good all the time.  He jumped through the galley hatch the other night and we found him on the dock in the early morning.  We didn’t even know he was gone.  He was making friends with our neighbours’ cats.  Orlando and Vivian, also becoming friends of ours, have 3 cats.  And their cats have been paying our cats visits during the night. 

The night Archie got out, he jumped through the galley hatch by jumping onto the counter/shelf and out from there.  So that night we closed the galley hatch and opened the one over the dinette.  There was no high spot there from which he could jump out.  However, during the night we heard some strange sounds.  There was a loud bang – it sounded like a hatch falling shut.  Sharon got up and lo and behold, one of Orlando’s cats was in our boat.  Poor thing was scared to death (and stupid too!).  Sharon picked him up and put him out through the cockpit.  He apparently jumped in through the dinette hatch.  All that banging around must have been him trying to find his way out.  He probably tried to jump back out through the hatch and knocked it shut.  He also tried to exit via the companionway doors, but they were locked.  Poor thing.

We’ve been thinking about how to handle the cats.  We’ve gotten collars for them so that, should they get off the boat somehow, people can find their home (phone number, name of the boat, etc.).  They have bells on so we can track them easier.  We’ve also ordered some netting.  You can buy this netting at a marine store for $400 or more, or do like we did and buy it on-line from a sports netting place.  Only cost us about $75.  It should be here any day now.  Trouble with the netting is that it won’t work if the cats decide they can jump over it.  But if they do, we’ll figure out something else.  We’re able to keep them in the cockpit by closing it all up.  If we have to, we’ll get some of the plastic sides replaced with screens, for the summer.  Talk about summer, it hit 29 celcius here yesterday.

Our new name is half-installed now.  The transom (back) and most of the work on the starboard side is done.  Pretty soon, we’ll be christening her and performing the mandatory renaming rituals.

We have to have her new name and numbers installed before we go to Mexico.  Since we’re going to Toronto in a few weeks, for a few weeks, we don’t have all that much time.  We have to arrange with a broker to have the boat exported to Mexico.  Even though we’re not going very far away, it IS Mexico.  We’re trying to decide if we should come back to get the car or leave it here for the month or so we’ll be gone.   And, of course, if we take it with us, we’ll have to do everything backwards again to get the car back here.

We went sailing yesterday.  It was a gorgeous day.  We got to witness homeland security chasing down a rogue boater.  The police had their guns out cause the boat refused to slow down.  Eventually, though, the boaters stopped.  It was just two young guys with no shirts on probably just doing what they do at that age.   Dumb!

We’re going to take today off and go sight seeing.