Barra de Navidad for Christmas. Fitting. My mom arrives tomorrow, brother the day after, and Ali’s parents a day after that.

We left Tenacatita early this morning and motored the short fifteen miles around the corner in calm seas to Barra. The Barra entrance is a little nerve wracking. There are about five buoys marking the channel, red and green presumably, though you can’t distinguish the colors until you are right on top of them. One slightly wrong turn in the narrow channel and you are hard aground. At the end of the marked channel is the lagoon which is completely unmarked. We inched our way in without hitting bottom, and dropped anchor in eight muddy feet of water.

Our families rented a house on one of the nearby canals so we were able to load up the dinghy and cruise right on over to where we’ll be spending our Christmas.