Merry Christmas from San Carlos

Merry Christmas from San Carlos. Gosling has been alongside at Marina San Carlos for the past 2 days. We decided to come in to get the remainder of the work done before leaving for the Baja side.
After arriving from Guaymas we had a busy week working on a number of items but life at the buoy was tedious. Trips ashore invariably turned into half-day events where little progress was being made onboard but, on the other hand, were socially rewarding. After all, this is Christmas week. The main event of the week was the Christmas dinner given at the Yacht Club. For 80 pesos (approx $8 Can) we had a great lunch and lots of Christmas atmosphere, almost as good as we would have had at CFSA but without the white stuff outside..... We teamed up with Doug and Trish (Ka-Em-Te), Gil and Lexie (Sunday) , a British couple off of Fantasia and our old friends Lin and Lee from Royal Exchange who have arrived to complete the preps on their boat after an 18 month delay.
It was nice to see Lin and Lee again and recall our adventures together for the four months we sailed in Royal Exchange 2 years ago and which were the incentive that caused us to take the big step of doing it on our own.
The cruising population here is very transient at the moment with new people arriving daily to rejoin their boats, and others leaving their boats and heading north to be with family for the holidays. A few are heading south already but the majority prefer to remain here enjoying a much chillier San Carlos for a few more days or weeks. Although we still have nice sunny and warm days the nights are quite cool dipping into the mid 40’s F.
The main reason we have come into the marina is to have our batteries changed out. They were ordered on Saturday and are supposed to arrive on Monday. Trish has been helping us install the windlass and if all goes well that should be completed on Monday as well. The installation of the windlass has not been as easy as the instructions make it out to be. There had to be a few modifications made to accept the components and we found out that the 2/0 cables were too stiff to be wired directly to the windlass. Luckily Trish has some smaller, more flexible cables that we will be able to complete the job.
With any luck we should be good to go by Tuesday or Wednesday. We are still experiencing Northerly winds so it should be a good sail to the other side. During the past few days it has been quite blustery with Northwest winds gusting to 30 kts in the anchorage. We managed to get to the dock before the wind developed on Friday and Fran did a nice job of driving Gosling alongside. Keith Hanna would have been proud.
Rosie has been very thankful for the opportunity to go ashore anytime she wants to and do her business and play ball. She has another puppy pal, Cortez, a Peekapom, the same age actually that belongs to Greg and Julie of Seafire, a boat from Nanaimo. It is really cute to see the 2 of them playing in the parking lot.
Tuesday, 30/Dec
This will be a late post as we are now dependent on a few local bars for our internet.
The Windlass is in and working and the batteries have arrived and are onboard. They will be installed tomorrow. We had planned to leave tomorrow but after considering that we would be far away from anyone on New Year’s Eve we decided to stay another day and enjoy the festivities. Our revised departure date is now New Year’s Day so Happy New Years all.