The last few days before the big departure!

Monday 1 April - Friday 5 April - PHOTOS TO COME!

The last few days in La Cruz were very hectic to get everything completed: enclosure, provisioning, final projects, checkout. We knew we had to be ready to leave by end of week based on the next upcoming window.

On Monday, it was time for Pierre to kick-off the check-out process. Paperwork, copies all organized and in-hand, he, Kevin (Andante) and Wakeem (Sylvia de Wasa) went to the Port Captain (Nuevo Vallarta) in early morning and Pierre was assigned a Thursday 9:30AM appointment for the final check-out with Viva and everyone on board. Did a final trip at Zaragoza for last minute boating essentials, this was the last opportunity before leaving!

On Tuesday, Ivett came back for the final install of our new enclosure, she installed the sunbrella and mesh panels. We were very happy with the final product, after a while we uncovered a few things we wish we would have seen and had time to get corrected but we were on a tight schedule!

Still on Tuesday, Marie continued her provisioning of fresh items, she went to Costco with Ariel after Ivett was done installing the enclosure, Marie and Ariel left at 1:00PM and came back at 7pm. This was a busy afternoon!

On Wednesday, Marie went back to Chedraui in Bucerias for another load of produce and.. surprise! she bumped into Ariel who was also doing last minute shopping at Chedraui! Those are two are meant to grocery shop together!!!

Also Wednesday, our crew, Brigitte and Martin came back from their short Mexico City trip on Wednesday, and did a quick tour in PV while Marie was still putting away the provisioning puzzle on Viva. That evening we went for our last dinner in Mexico at our one of our favorite spot in La Cruz, the shrimp burger place.

On Thursday we were up early and ready to leave the dock at 7:30. Friends Kevin, Roger, Ariel were present to send us off, this was quite an emotional moment.

We went on our way to Nuevo Vallarta for the final port captain check-out. The entrance channel was very shallow, we saw 0.3ft under the keel. The tide was at +1.3ft and going out so we had to quick and be back out ASAP to avoid running aground. Th check-oput process was fairly painless, 30mins of someone from immigration filling-out his own paperwork on the dock box while we watch, they stamped our passports gave our papers including the famous Zarpe, one agent from the navy came aboard and walked inside for 5mins, and we were on our way. Exiting the channel was again stressful, took a bit of a different course and came out without any problem, although it still showed 0.3ft under the keel. We were now free!!!

We went at anchor on Thursday at the La Cruz anchorage net to Arvonna (Kevin and Deb Moore). We had dinner on board and started getting anxious for the departure.

On Friday, based on weather updates from Mike (PV Sailing ) and Chris Parker (our router) we decided we would leave Saturday AM at first light. So we sailed across Banderas bay one last time on Friday afternoon and dropped anchor at Punta de Mita around 5PM near Analogue (Roger, Ariel, Oscar and Robin) who had checked out Friday AM and were also getting ready to leave Mexico, their destination: Hawaii.