Merry Christmas & Happy New Year. We are going to sea until about January 2.

All Rhea wants for her birthday and Christmas is a couple of weeks at sea or in anchorages, and by the way a new autopilot would be nice.

We are enjoying Puerto Vallarta with all the advantages of a big city. But it’s hard to keep them on the farm after they have been in the beautiful anchorages of the West coast of Mexico. So its time to hit the waves.

Before we started looking at boats to cruise in, Rhea made it clear that we needed two autopilots on any boat we purchased. She is a very capable driver but driving is very taxing after an hour or two and diminishes the enjoyment of sailing. Vagari had only one autopilot. It was broken when we tried to use it last summer. We had it fixed and were assured it was everything we needed.

We did get it to work this cruise under certain conditions but when we really needed an autopilot it didn’t work. So I had a cruiser who sells and installs autopilots look at our setup. He gave me a quick course in Vagari’s brand of autopilots. When we are out this time we will work on learning to use this autopilot, which is completely different than the three autopilots I have used on other sailboats.

We are also ordering a new unit, which should be installed by late January. The two units will be completely independent of each other.

Banderas Bay is one of the great cruising areas on this coast of Mexico with predictable wind speed and direction. Puerto Vallarta is at the head of the Bay. The North side of bay has several cruiser friendly anchorages. The south side of the bay is beautiful with the jungle coming right down to the ocean. However, there are no really safe anchorages on this side because the mountains come right out of the water. The water is very deep just 100 feet from the shore. The south shore is a great place for lunch but not to spend the night.

It’s time to enjoy this bay and get some relaxed fun sailing time without having to get to a distant anchorage before nightfall. We will have occasional access to the Internet and will keep you updated.

So the crew of Vagari wishes you Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.