Adventures with S/V Milou

My 10th birthday We have had many ups and downs, laughter, and yelling, but here we are with the season rolling to an end.  We have swam with the largest fish in the world, the whale shark. It made me nervous at first, but when I got in the water a trance came over me. I made a friend with a spotted dolphin, his name was spotty, the pod he was with swam with us for over an hour. He loved turning on his side and looking at me and sometimes tail splashing.  That night was a very magical crossing.  Spotty's little cousin Our last anchorage was full of kids we had met earlier. We celebrated my 10th birthday with a bonfire and a potluck. I got a really cool mobile of the ocean that all the boat kids made.  It made me full to the brim with joy.  A couple of days later we did a drop everything and run practice. We hopped in the dingy and chased a pod of Fin whales. They were eating in pairs, lunge feeding. It was the closest we have ever been to whales. Oh, I almost for

       Sailing into Banderas Bay with a fresh breeze          The southern crossing is a crossing from Baja to mainland Mexico in the Pacific Ocean.  It is almost 300 nautical miles ( nm).  It took us 2 nights and 3 days, but it felt longer.  We had really good wind the whole time; and it was fun not to see land.  At first you can see land; then you can't really see land. Finally, you can't see land at all, then land comes back into sight.  I totally recommend crossing.  The water was the bluest blue I have ever seen.  Because it is the open ocean.  First sight of land Beautiful sunrises       We almost had to turn back. Now I don't really now why so ask my mom or dad.  But I think we had a leaking engine fitting.  They put a tin cup on a string under it to see how much was leaking.  I woke to dad calling some friends to tell them we may have to turn back.  Lucky for us we didn't  have to turn back.     To keep you sane on the crossing here are s

Whale..., it's been a long time. Right now we are buddy boating with a boat named Ubi, I really like them. They are a French family with three 3 kids on board 10, 8 and 6. Natalie and Micheal are the parents, Noah, Bastian and Naomi are the kids. Before cruising they were living in Portland. How crazy is that! We are in La Paz it's a neat place and I like the people here. We went and swam with Whale Sharks. It was the best thing in my life, they are giant! It was grey with white spots and 20 feet long at least. There was seven fish on each side of the 4 foot tail. It felt so good to be in the water, and you could feel the current going by you. You could tell by it's eyes it was gentle. It was actually cute! If you don't believe me check out the video on Instagram at sailingmilou, we swam with it 4 times. I named it Keke, because it seemed to fit her. Well, I think it was a female. Dad, Noah and I went right to her side and she swam right by. We swam backwards b

We finally crossed to Baja. We left at 2:00 am in the dark. It was 73 nautical miles. When we left there was dolphins waving us off. I don't really know what happened when we left, because I was sleeping,  just ask my parents. But I had to get up. I was kinda excited. I told my mom that I was going to wear this, this and this on my top. This, this and this on my bottom. And this, this and this on my feet. I was afraid I was going to be freezing, but Dad came below and laughed his head off. I do remember waking up from my sleep and my Mom was dreaming about clamshells, so many glorious clamshells. Weird!! Then I went up above, wearing less then I thought about. I clipped into our safety harnesses, two actually and I sucked up Dad's warmth. Finally, the sun rose, it was beautiful. I loved it! It was so pretty. I could have bathed in that moment forever. We were able to sail for a bit, but motor sailed for most of the time. So far we have seen a bunch of sea turtles,

Well... we have had friends here for two weeks, but I'm going to do a recap of the last month. Last time I wrote was right before Thanksgiving, so I have a lot to catch up on. For Thanksgiving we went to a restaurant called El Mar. It was really good with a large buffet for Thanksgiving dinner. What was really cool was about half way through dinner a Marachi band came and played for us. I would say it was Thanksgiving Mexican style. But dad missed out since they were out of pumpkin pie. After Thanksgiving we sailed and worked on boat projects.  Oh my, I forgot to mention I made two good friends. I'm going to use code names, one is Av and the other is Jilly. Av has lived here since she was three and Jilly is on a trawler named Shilo. We all became really good friends; one big threesome. We have had two slumber parties; one on our boat and one on Jilly's. We have also rode horses on the beach and in the desert.  Christmas was very busy here. We celebrated both h