It seemed particularly appropriate to pick this title because of the glorious full moon we've just experienced.
Another chapter begins. After our sweaty Ivan adventures, we arrived safely to our floating home, unpacked and began packing for our travels to our home in Mexico. Pura Vida awaited and boat projects beckoned. I know, I know – more boat projects? But a 1976 vintage boat needs love just like we all do.
This year’s plans include installation of our new windlass – the wonderful and huge device that auto-magically brings our anchor and chain up to the bow rather than Mike manually hauling up the 50# anchor and 3/8” chain to the locker. Our West Marine discount served us well for the purchase of yet another piece of equipment. All the hours of working retail pay off. Well, somewhat.
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| The old dodger before dismantling |
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| Mike removing hardware for the upcoming project. Pretty impressive gymnastics. |
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| All hardware removed for the new install |
The other project, now underway, is building a new hard dodger. We’ve had a Sunbrella dodger with stainless steel frame for 10 years (!) since Pura Vida became part of our lives. This project has been ‘on the list’ since 2011, and finally rose to the top with the failure of the Sunbrella. We hired our previous vendors, Frank & Pepe (aka Pancho y Pepe), to do the work. Discussions over the last year led to a design we are all comfortable with. Work officially began on 24 November with the promise of completion on December 24th – this would be an amazing Christmas gift for us – especially considering we bought Pura Vida as our Christmas gift in 2010.
We officially moved off the boat for the next month on the morning of Thanksgiving since the construction will be dusty, dirty and besides, the mosquitos are killing us. With no real plans in mind, we are free agents for December. Our friends are graciously offering their home for 3 days until it rents, then December 1, we have a few ideas of how we’ll spend our month but no firm plans. We just know that adventures await.
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with good friends in the boat yard, then ended the day with a margarita overlooking the sea at our favorite waterfront hotel in Guaymas.
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| Northern Italian cuisine Ragazzi, Nogales AZ |
Early Friday, we drove to Nogales AZ to pick up a warranty replacement water pump and other supplies. We dined at our fave northern Italian restaurant and departed the restaurant after another amazing meal, with Dean Martin singing “When the Moon hits your eye…” That’s amore and we couldn’t agree more.
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| Buckets of fun, self serve |
And it's holiday season here, so the lard displays are constructed along with buckets o' nacho makings and Cueritos (That translates to "little horns" but I just don't know what they are).
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| How much lard do you need for holiday baking? |
I want to end with a special tribute to a wonderful friend who passed away in July. Kay was beautiful, graceful, thoughtful - and a great poet to boot. She wrote this poem for us in December 2019. We love her and her husband, OJ. Blessings to them both.
A reminder to us all to live every moment to the fullest. And with that, Happy Holidays to all.
