La Cruz … Let’s prepare to cross to French Polynesia
The last two months have been crazy and busy but it's now looking up!
We arrived Puerto Vallarta in late January and attended a open water diving certification course, which turned into a nightmare with Marie’s both ears getting injured with ear barotrauma. This reminded us that this life is not constant highs, sunshine and paradise, far from it, the highs are high but the lows are very low.
Following many visits to local ENTs, a myringotomy, medication and lots of frustration from not being able to fly home, we’re now happy to report that Marie is doing much better.
After getting cleared for flying at end of February, we hopped on a flight to Phoenix, took the Nena shuttle down to Puerto Penasco and "rescued" our beloved Vivan (Travato Van) which we had stored when we left sailing down the sea of Cortez last October. The drive back north to Portland was treacherous, we hit snow storms in CA/OR and even had to put the chains twice! Pierre stayed a week in Portland, enough to see family, hug our grandson Felix and bring back more boat parts, Marie stayed a week longer but she's now back in La Cruz to get final preparations completed.
February and March were full of projects preparing Viva for the big Pacific crossing and also preparing ourselves with knowledge and skills…weather, rigging, comms, safety, medical, etc. We were able to complete several "Make her pretty" projects that we had never been able to do. Re-doing deck stripes, re-doing interior floors, redoing enclosure, new hatch covers, etc. Also several safety/seaworthiness projects like refreshing the ditch bags, upgrading running rigging, installing new preventers, tuning the standing rigging, adding 2 bilge pumps (1 automatic, 1 mobile), learning to rig and fly the ballooner.
