Paradise Found

Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico

We left the dock in San Diego around noon on Tuesday, with a lengthy stop at the incredibly expensive fuel dock at the head of Shelter island (would you believe $4.29US per gallon for diesel).  After topping up our fuel and propane and disposing of our used oil (I did an oil change while here in San Diego), we managed to head out of the harbour around 1 PM.

We motored for the first 2 hours, heading directly out to sea to get completely out of the busy San Diego harbour area and into deep water.  Because of the possible threat of lobster traps (of which we have never seen a single one as yet), we decided to stay well off shore where no-one would ever put such a trap.

We had raised our mainsail for the first time since leaving Neah Bay, double reefed in anticipation of a forecasted south wind.  Indeed, the promised wind arrived (around 7 knots initially), and we shut off the engine and sailed close hauled into the fading daylight.  We were actually in Mexican waters by around 3 PM.  As night fell, Susanne took these pictures of our first Mexican sunset - note the completely different range of hues from the sunset pictures we have taken north of the border.

Because we were sailing so far off shore, and having to tack back and forth into the south wind, we managed to turn the 65 mile journey into something closer to 83 miles overall.  This was ok, as we wanted to go slow so we did not arrive in Ensenada in the dark - we hate approaching any unfamiliar port at night.  With the double reefed mainsail and a full Genoa, and winds that were mostly in the 8 to 10 knot range, we were mostly sailing at around 3.5 to 4 knots.  When the wind freshened up to around 10 to 12, we managed closer to 5 knots, and actually saw 6 knots once (so Susanne tells me as it supposedly happened on her watch).  In all, we sailed for about 15-1/2 hours non-stop, some kind of record for us.

As morning broke, I was treated to a spectacular display by a pod of dolphins playing in our bow wave.  We have seen dolphins on pretty much every passage we have made down the west coast, but these stayed with us for the longest time, more than an hour.  There were probably 30 or 40 of them altogether, at times swimming in neat formations - a pretty cool welcome to Mexico.

We managed to stay ahead of a quick-moving winter storm that was threatening us from the north.  By the time we were approaching Ensenada, San Diego was reporting heavy rainfall and high winds.  It arrived in Ensenada about the same time we coasted into the marina.

During the night, we saw no ship traffic except for a Carnival cruise ship that was motoring slowly by us (missed us by about a mile), also heading for Ensenada.  When we arrived in the harbour, they were already there ahead of us, seemingly welcoming us to Paradise.  We tied up at the dock in the Cruiseport Village marina around 10 AM and then spent the bulk of the rest of the day (in the pouring rain), getting all of our paperwork done.  We had to get visas from immigration, entry clearance from the port captain, customs clearance (pushed the button and came up as "Passed", so no inspection necessary), and get a Temporary Import certificate for the boat.  This was all made much easier by the fact that all of these offices, and a banking outlet where you pay for everything, are all housed in the same one-storey building here in town, and also by the extremely friendly service of the marina staff (Jonathon), who lead us through the entire process, free of charge.  By the time we got back to the boat in the late afternoon, we were exhausted (a combination of the sleepless overnight passage and the stress of clearing into a new country), and we collapsed into bed early while the storm raged on outside for most of the night.

Today, our first any only task has been to find the Telcel office and purchase a 3G cellphone stick to allow us to get internet access so I could do this post.  If you are seeing this on the blog, you know it worked.  If there are lots of spelling errors, it is because the spell-checker now seems to be stuck in spanish.

{GMST}31|51.303|N|116|37.315|W|Ensenada, BC, Mexico|Ensenada, BC, Mexico{GEND}

Checking Out

San Diego, California, USA

Christmas is over.  We are already tired of turkey sandwiches.  BTW, the turkey breast was great - it turned out it was already cooked (must read those labels more closely), so it made our Christmas dinner that much simpler to prepare.

Boxing day (not a big deal here in the USA) was a quiet day for us.  With all of the government offices closed from Friday thru Sunday, we had no choice but to wait till Monday to get our clearance out of the country, so we spent our time taking some long walks in the sunshine, enjoying the nice weather here on Shelter island.  We did go to Starbucks for coffee although we did not need to go there for our Internet - since we have moved back to the public docks, our connection has been much better.

Today, we had to take the bus downtown to visit CBP (Customs and Border Protection) to get our clearance out of the USA.  We gave up our "cruising license"  that we obtained back in Friday harbor some 3 months ago and are now officially able to leave the country - in fact, once they stamp your exit papers, you have only 48 hours to get out of Dodge.  So tomorrow we will be gone!

In anticipation of leaving, we have already obtained our Mexican fishing licenses and Mexican liability insurance - things that you can get locally here in San Diego.  The rest will have to wait untill we get to Ensenada.

As for tonight, we may make a final visit to our favorite spot on Shelter island - Humphreys.  This is a popular resort that has some sort of live music every night, on an outdoor stage in the summer and in the lounge in the winter.  They have a happy hour from 5 till 7 PM every day (1/2 price food and drinks), with the entertainment usually starting at 7 PM.  We have been there for the last two Mondays in a row because it is "Blues" night on Mondays.  Where else can you go and have a decent meal, a few drinks and some great entertainment for under $20 for the two of us - hard to beat.

This view is looking south from Shelter island, through the shipping lane entrance to the harbour.  The islands you can see in the distance are in Mexico.  We will be leaving in the late afternoon from San Diego, in order to do a slow overnight passage to Ensenada.  It is only about 70 miles, but this is further than we can hope to go during the daylight hours (the days are short here too) and we would like to arrive in the morning sometime to give ourselves the best part of the day to clear into Mexico.  That is the theory - we will see how well this all works in practice.

{GMST}32|42.6|N|117|14.055|W|San Diego, California|San Diego, California{GEND}

Merry foggy Christmas

San Diego, California, USA

Christmas morning at the public (police) docks in San Diego.

We have moved back to the public docks in anticipation of leaving for Mexico after Christmas, probably next Monday or Tuesday, whenever we can get our check-out with customs done.  We spent a busy week at the Kona Kai marina, trekking back and forth from the local chandlers, installing equipment, etc.  We rented a car for a couple of days so we could travel further to exotic places like Costco and Walmart.  This is the first major re-provisioning we have done since leaving Nanaimo 3 months ago and it has been quite a challenge to stow everything - we definitely need a bigger boat.

Last week was quite a treat.  The locals keep telling us it never rains in San Diego, but it must have made up for many years of drought with last week's storm.  Lots of rain and strong winds and apparently lots of flooding in some areas as well.  We did not see many problems; only once did we have to divert for a street closure in our travels around the city.  Everything was very busy of course, with Christmas shopping and such but everyone seemed to be in a good mood in spite of the weather.  Now the rains have stopped, the sun has come out and we have glorious warm weather for Christmas.

Sue is preparing a sumptuous feast, including roasting a huge turkey breast in our small oven, so we will no doubt be eating turkey sandwiches on our passage to Mexico.  Looking forward to getting on the move again.

Thank you to everyone for your supportive emails and phone calls.  We really do appreciate hearing from you all, even though we are not always the best at prompt replies.  We wish all of you the happiest Christmas and all the best for the new year.

Here are a couple of our colorful neighbors.

{GMST}32|42.6|N|117|14.055|W|San Diego, California, USA|San Diego, California, USA{GEND}

SD Blues

San Diego, California, USA

The weather has turned somewhat nasty. Although it is not what we would call cold, it has cooled off quite a bit from when we arrived, and every day sees some light (occasionally heavy) rain. Highs are typically around 17C, with lows between 12 and 15.

The real problem for us is that this large, slow-moving warm front brings with it some moderate South winds, and accompanying bigger seas. Many of the boaters that we met last week, who had been here from a couple of weeks to a couple of months already, left a couple of days ago for Ensenada, where they are no doubt now waiting out the storm.

For now, we are settled into the Kona Kai marina for a few days, venturing out into the drizzle only when we really have to. We have decided to stay put here in San Diego for Christmas, most likely moving on a couple of days later. We are still waiting for a couple of parts, and need to re-fuel and re-provision before we leave - a nice sunny day or two would help a lot. The weather forecast is calling for some improvement around Christmas day.

Note: The wireless internet here continues to be horrible, even though we are no longer surrounded by a steel wall. The only place we seem to get a good connection is at Starbucks, which is about a mile away. I guess we should have sprung for a cell phone (3G) connection - that is most likely what we will do when we get to Mexico.

{GMST}32|42.7357|N|117|13.8272|W|Kona Kai Marina|Kona Kai Marina{GEND}

The wall

San Diego, California, USA

A quick update.

Staying at the police dock here in San Diego has found us finally being immersed in the cruising community.  There were 6 other Canadian boats at the docks over the last few days, so we were pleased to find that we are no longer alone in this southerly quest.  It appears that there were several boats wandering down the coast about 1 week in front of us, hitting most of the same spots - we were arriving in ports just after they had left.  Of course, they are all ready to move on further south now, and we are not quite there yet.

We have been working on a list of boat projects and purchases from a list that we had compiled during our trip down the coast.  Most of these are going well, but we have a boarding ladder and an autopilot remote control that are on order and not due to arrive till next week, coming from some frozen northerly community known as Canada.  So at this point in time, we are thinking we might be here till after Christmas.  With that in mind, we have taken a moorage at one of the Shelter island marinas for a few day - you can only stay at the police docks for a total of 10 days in any 30 day period.

I'm sorry for the lack of postings here.  As soon as we arrived, I found some really good Internet access and even paid $20 to get a months worth of a faster, more reliable connection.  This worked real good for one day, then a big, steel behemoth of a boat pulled into the slip next to us and completely killed any and all Internet access for us.  It is like having a wall between us and the world.  Hopefully tomorrow, with our move to a private marina, we will get our access back again.
This posting is courtesy of our friendly neighborhood Starbucks.

{GMST}32|42.6|N|117|14.055|W|Police Docks|Police Docks{GEND}

SD Heat

San Diego, California, USA

Just a quick note to let everyone know we made it to San Diego.

Real nice, uneventful overnight passage from Marina del Rey, leaving about 11 AM on Saturday, arriving at around 10 AM Sunday.  Had to motor real slow to make sure we did not get in too early.  Some fog for the first part of the trip, then clear for the rest - no wind to speak of.  Sunday was very warm, with a temperature around 27C (81F).

During the passage, we were accompanied by a pod of dolphins all around the boat, around 2AM.  You could see their luminous trails in the water as they zoomed around - quite a sight.

Sunset over Catalina

Sunday was the day of the Christmas parade of boats in San Diego harbor.  Spectacular.
We have been real busy here with getting boat stuff arranged.  Will post more details soon.

 

{GMST}32|42.6|N|117|14.055|W|San Diego, California, USA|San Diego, California, USA{GEND}

More delays

Venice, California, USA

Every time we make a firm plan, something always seems to come up to ruin it.

This morning, we woke up to a heavy fog.  By noon, it had still not lifted.  Although it is not the worst fog we have ever seen and we are fully able to navigate in such conditions, it just does not seem prudent to temp fate by leaving a nice safe moorage in the hopes that it is better out there on the open water.  The crew on one of the other boats here have been telling us about the thousands of lobster traps that we will have to negotiate our way through before we can get to deeper water - not a great prospect in the fog either.

So here we sit, for at least another day.

{GMST}33|58.5632|N|118|26.7567|W|Venice, California|Venice, California{GEND}

Free Medical Checkup

Venice, California, USA

We have spent a couple of very nice days in and around Marina del Rey.  Lots of boats; reportedly over 6000 slips here in the marina, some of which are available - apparently the economy is suffering here like everywhere else.  Just walking one-way around the perimeter took us over 2 hours.  There are a few good restaurants along the way, but they are mostly a bit pricey for us, so we settled on a local pizza place not far from our boat.

A walk into Venice proper, and along the beach-front was very entertaining.  Lots of local businesses selling touristy stuff like sun glasses and T-shirts, roller-blades and skateboards galore, and, strangely enough, free medical evaluations to see if you are eligible to receive medicinal marijuana.  Pretty tempting but somehow we resisted.  We visited a huge West Marine store here and picked up very little; a new canvas bag for carrying groceries and a new cookbook.  It seems we will have to wait untill we get to San Diego before we can get charts and stuff for Mexico.

Our current plan is to be out of here tomorrow and make an overnight passage direct to SD.

{GMST}33|58.5632|N|118|26.7567|W|Marina Del Ray|Marina Del Ray{GEND}

Marina del Rey

Venice, California. USA

Yes, we are really in Marina del Rey!

For some reason, staying in this place has always been a dream of mine - I guess I equated staying in Marina del Rey with being one of the chosen people, rich and successful. Goes to show you how wrong a person can be - but please, let me have my illusions for just a little bit longer.

We left the Channel Islands Harbor at first light this morning, motored all the way to Venice, through sunshine, dense fog, smog and back into sunshine, with very light winds and flat seas throughout. We were tied up at the guest docks in Marina del Rey by 2:30 PM. The weather is much improved, the people are friendly, and we found a nearby pizza joint for supper. Life is good.

My only complaint right now is that I am having a hard time finding any free internet that I can access from the boat. For the first time in ages, I may have to resort to updating this blog via the SSB radio or, even worse, spend time at a Starbucks. Could this be a sign of things to come?

We had originally intended to just stop for the night here, but this is just too cool a place to not spend a few days, especially as the moorage rates are the same deal as in Oxnard. They do however have a strict 7-day maximum stay at the guest docks, just in case we get too comfortable.

Did I mention we are in Marina del Rey?

{GMST}33|58.5632|N|118|26.7567|W|Venice, California, USA|Venice, California, USA{GEND}

Rainy weekend in Oxnard

Oxnard, California, USA

Because the weather turned cool and rainy, we decided to just stay put here until this latest front passes through.  Most of the time it was fine, but it did rain fairly hard for a while yesterday evening.  We were able to make use of the nearby Ralph's grocery store and West Marine, to do a bit of resupplying, not that we really needed much.

This morning, the clouds were swept away and the sun came out, and it is actually warm for a change.  We went for a walk down to the beach, about a mile away, to see how the other half lives.  We found a couple of real estate offices down there; beach-front homes appear to be pretty consistently priced between 2 and 2.5 million, just a bit more than we are willing to pay.  Not sure we would like to live here anyway, as it is still not quite a warm enough climate in the winter, and with global warming (rising ocean levels) I suspect these homes are all doomed.

Just inland a ways is the Channel Islands Harbor, where we are currently tied up.  At the inner end of the harbor are a couple of bridges that separate the marina areas (room for a reported 2400 yachts) from the residential canals, where everyone has their own docks.  We did not check out the prices for property here but we assume it is also out of our reach.

As for our current situation, you can see that almost everyone else at the guest docks has left, so we are pretty much on our own again.  Time to move on tomorrow.  BTW, as expected, the marina prices are going up a bit as we go south - here they charge $1.00 per foot for transient moorage, although they are basing it on our "hull" length instead of our overall length, so we are only paying $39 per night, and there is no tax or extra charges for power or showers and such - still a bargain compared to what we thought we would be paying by now.

{GMST}34|10.3868|N|119|13.4096|W|Oxnard, California|Oxnard, California{GEND}
 

Oil's Well in So Cal

Oxnard, California, USA

After only a single night in Morro Bay, we were ready to move on, especially as the weather forecast looked very good for rounding Point Conception, called the "Cape Horn of the Pacific" because of the heavy NW gales frequently encountered off it.

Before we left, I spent the morning replacing our port (red) navigation light.  This is the second of our horribly expensive OGM LED navigation lights that have failed us, with very few hours of use.  The first, our starboard (green) light was replaced just before we left Nanaimo; we had previously bumped this one on a pole in the marina and had assumed that this had compromised it's watertight seal, leading to the condensation that eventually appeared under it's glass front, and it's subsequent failure.  The port side light however has no such excuse and has exhibited the same symptom (condensation) before this failure.  Since we had hardly used them before this trip, I figure that it cost us about $5 per hour for the time they actually were turned on - not a very good pay-back for the investment in LED technology boasting of their 50,000 hour service life.  We are now using a much less expensive set of LED lights produced by a different manufacturer.  I don't think we will be going back to OGM in the future.  NOTE: We still have a working OGM stern (white) light which we only got installed this year - so far it is still working.
OK, enough about my current pet peeve.

We left Morro Bay just after noon and motored for a couple of hours before a light NW wind came up.  We sailed for about 3 hours, past San Luis Obispo, before we restarted the engine to make some better time towards Pt. Conception.  We rounded Pt. Arguello around midnight, actually under sail for about an hour as the wind did pick up a bit between Pt. Arguello and Conception, maybe 10 or 11 knots for about 20 minutes.  After that, the winds died.  We rounded Pt. Conception with flat seas and no more than 1 knot of wind.  These conditions persisted for the rest of the night and the next day, so we motored along at a leisurely 6 knots or so, past Santa Barbara and Ventura, to our current location here in Channel Islands Harbor, in Oxnard, California.

We were forced to take a bit of a longer route around the headlands as there are a series of military "Danger Zones" all along the coast from San Luis to Pt. Conception (missile test ranges) that extend from the shoreline to the 3 mile limit.  These zones (1,2,3 and 4) were all active during the night we were passing them, so we had to take a route further out, through the many oil platforms that inhabit this coast.  They are quite easy to avoid as they are lit up like small cities at night (I tried to take a picture but a long exposure on a moving boat does not work so well).  They were actually quite pretty in a way and helped break up the monotony of an otherwise boring passage.  Unfortunately, after passing one of the platforms that was quite near the shore, we encountered a nasty, smelly oil slick for more than 10 miles in the vicinity of Santa Barbara.  This was one of the reasons we decided not to stop there as we did not like the thought of potentially siting in an oily harbor overnight.  As it was only about 8 AM when we got to Santa Barbara, it was no problem to keep going on to Ventura (where the marina I contacted did not have room for us), and on to our current location at Oxnard, where we arrived around 2 PM.

While on route between Santa Barbara and Oxnard, we saw a lot of wild life, a huge pod of dolphins that looked like a tidal wave as it went by, a small whale of some kind (looked a lot like a huge black dolphin), the usual variety of seals and sea-lions and a surprising number of California sea otters.  The most spectacular sighing however, was a smaller pot of dolphins that were herding a bunch of fish right beside us, to the delight of the hovering pelicans.  The dolphins did all the work while the pelicans went into some kind of feeding frenzy, dive-bombing the dolphins and fish in great numbers.  They kept this up for probably half an hour, sometimes on one side of us and sometimes on the other.  It is these types of events that really make your day when you are on a cruising yacht.

One other note:  Passing Pt. Conception means that we are now officially in "Southern California", home of palm trees, warm breezes and movie stars.  Well, there are palm trees, but the weather is still a little cool and we have not spotted any celebrities yet.  Maybe tomorrow.

{GMST}34|10.3868|N|119|13.4096|W|Oxnard, California, USA|Oxnard, California, USA{GEND}

Morro Rocks

Morro Bay, California, USA

With a terrific sounding weather window, we left Monterey around noon yesterday.  We had 104 miles to go, too long to do in daylight and too short to leave any earlier if we wanted to arrive in daylight.  So an overnight passage was called for.

Shortly after leaving Monterey, we passed Carmel and the Pebble Beach golf course, seen here from the ocean point of view

The weather was perfect.  A little light on wind for much of the time, but more than made up for with little or no swell and/or wind waves.  We did manage to sail for some of the time, especially at night - 5 hours straight on one stretch.  Again we used only the Genoa, going directly down-wind and us not in a particular hurry.  We actually saw another sailboat on the water, just as the sun was setting - going much faster than us of course.  Later, we passed him when we were motoring along, after the wind dropped to about 3 knots.  The only winds over 9 knots we saw for the entire 23 hours, was the last hour, crossing Morro Bay.  We had a good 15 to 20 knot wind on the beam.  We flew about half of the Genoa on a beam reach, achieving a steady 6.3 knots, with almost no heeling at all - a great way to end the day.

This also marks the first overnight passage we have done properly, alternating 2-hour watches and actually getting some sleep in between.  Susanne has no sea sickness problems when the conditions are this good.

Coming into the town of Morro Bay was a bit exciting, as this is another of those infamous "bars", that can be very treacherous in heavy seas.  The seas were pretty good though, and in spite of entering on a maximum ebb current and a rather stiff breeze (our timing really stinks sometimes), it was not a problem.  We did have to fight about a knot of current all the way to the yacht club, where we are currently tied up for the night.  Here are pictures of both sides of Morro Rock, from the approach, and from the dock.  NOTE: If you want to see live pictures of our boat, navigate to http://www.mbyc.net/ and check out their web cam - it is pointed right at us!

{GMST}35|21.762|N|120|51.1655|W|Morro Bay, California, USA|Morro Bay, California, USA{GEND}