A change in plans

Our sailing plans for next spring have changed. Instead of sailing exclusively in the waters off Panama, we're going to be sailing from Panama to Key West, Florida. When John Kretschmer contacted me last week with updates for his website (http://www.yayablues.com), the number of berths available for the "Caribbean Circumnavigation Leg 3" had increased from one to three. This was the trip I had been hoping to go on originally, so I asked if he would consider a "two-fer" as part of our trade arrangement. He agreed. So next year, from May 1 to 15, we will join John and the rest of his crew on Quetzal, his Kaufman 47, to sail from Bocas del Toro, Panama to Key West by way of Nicaragua, the Bay Islands of Honduras, the reef and offshore atolls of Belize, and one of our favorite places, Isla Mujeres, a small island off the Yucatan peninsula across from Cancun.

In fact, Nan and I are getting ready to spend a month on Isla Mujeres starting September 12. We'll be staying in the same penthouse apartment we stayed in last October, and the owners are letting our dog, Scout, stay there with us. It will be Scout's first flight, and we're hoping it goes well because there could be many similar trips in his future. We have already gotten him a "puppy cut" to keep him cool and paid a visit to the veterinarian to get his rabies and bordetella boosters. In addition, he'll need vaccinations for hepatitis, pip and leptospirosis, which we will get on the Thursday before we leave since we will also need to get a health certificate signed by the veterinarian not more than 72 hours before we enter Mexico. There is a permit to purchase when we get there but no required quarantine period. When he gets off the plane, Scout will be just another happy tourist.

While we're on Isla Mujeres, we'll be volunteering at an English school, tutoring children four days a week. This should help us with our Spanish, but we'll also be getting tutored ourselves three days a week. Nan came up with the idea to help our friends on the island, Juan and Paula, to write a cookbook, something like Tastes of Isla Mujeres, so we'll be working on that as well. By the end of our four weeks there, we will have a good idea of what it's like to live in a foreign country, which should be useful to us in our future adventures.