Well, about the time we were ready to depart, El Nino started impacting winter weather conditions in the southeast U.S. and the Gulf of Mexico, including the first ice storm in 10 years. So our departure and Gulf crossing was delayed a couple of weeks, but we finally thought we saw a reasonable weather window to cross the Gulf to Isla Mujeres. It can be a challenging crossing because the rhumb line course is directly into the prevailing southeast breeze. Our strategy was to use a frontal passage to back the wind around to the north for as long as possible. We cleared the Galveston jetties on a Saturday at 1:30 a.m. in morning arriving in Isla Mujeres 109 hours later on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m. in the afternoon. We had very nice sailing conditions for the first two days of the trip and made 380 miles in the first 48 hours. For the first 100 miles or so after leaving, we passed through and dodged the minefield of oil and gas rigs and commercial tankers off Galveston, but after that we did not see another ship until we reached the Yucatan. The last two days of the trip were quite rough. We were north and west of the Yucatan peninsula and the winds built to about 30 knots from the east northeast (the direction we needed to go) and the seas increased to 10 to 13 feet. We had slow, lumpy, and very wet conditions for 2 days. But we arrived in Isla Mujeres mostly intact and with no major damage to the boat. We then spent the next couple of days recovering, cleaning up the boat, and clearing Mexican customs and immigration, which is a very formal and time consuming process. We are going to spend a few days seeing Isla Mujeres and the Yucatan and then determine where we are headed next.