Oh, Ensenada

Ensenada, BC, Mexico

Those sharp readers will have noted that Ensenada is located in the Mexican state of Baja California, or "BC" as they abbreviate it here, not to be confused with our other BC in Canada.

After our first day of dealing with the numerous officials, we have spent our time exploring the town on foot, dining in eateries ranging from local taco emporiums to Starbucks (yes, they are here too).  We would never have any problem surviving in Mexico as long as there is Mexican food around and, of course, there is plenty of that.

The marina we are staying in is very nice, good facilities and great staff, although fairly expensive (around $50US per day for us).  We don't mind the expense too much since we will not have an opportunity to stay in such a place again until we get to Cabo, so it will all average out.  There is a very strong cruiser community here at the harbour.  They have a daily VHF net in the mornings around 8 AM where boats from all of the local marinas check in to discuss their needs and concerns, swap equipment and hear a weather report.  Then there is a sort of informal gathering near the marina office where they talk about these same issues over coffee and snacks.  A lot of the boats here appear to be semi-permanent - Ensenada has been described as a "vortex" into which many boats enter but few leave.  I am afraid we are not very good joiners and have not frequented these groups other than to say hello occasionally.

Ensenada, or at least the part in our immediate vicinity, is quite touristy, with endless restaurants and bars and, oddly enough, not a lot of tourists.  We are far enough from the US border to mean that this is not a tacky border town, but it is still only a couple of hours away by car - it appears that there are quite a few US citizens that make their home here.  The climate is good, the living is fairly cheap, and the town itself seems quite friendly and laid back, and they have everything including big box stores like Walmart and Costco.  I can see why some of the people here end up staying a while.  New Years eve here was quite exciting, with fireworks going off everywhere around us from about 8 PM until well after midnight.  Lots of police presence and checkpoints on the main roads, just like back home.

We originally thought we would be out of here by last Friday.  As soon as we got checked in, the port captain closed the port, so no boats could leave - big storm brewing in the north.  Indeed, the weather was very rainy and windy on Wednesday (the day we arrived) and Thursday and the port was not opened again till sometime on Friday morning.  We might have been tempted to leave at that time but we had discovered a few boat issues that needed to be addressed before we left civilization.  The port office is not open on the weekends or holidays, so the next opportunity to check out was today (Monday).

Our first, and potentially worst issue, was with our water supply.  We have been noticing a bad taste in our water ever since before we left Nanaimo.  At first we assumed it was all the crud that was lying in the bottom of the tank for so many years, finally getting stirred up in the bigger seas we encountered in our shakedown trip up north.  Before we left Nanaimo, we completely drained, filled, bleached, drained and re-filled the tanks until the water tasted good.  When we got to Newport in Oregon, we were again noticing an odd taste.  We again drained and refilled the tanks with fresh water.

The problem seemed to stay away until we got here to Ensenada, where we found that the water from our manual foot pump was very, very salty - not a good sign.  If we pumped for a little while, it started to taste OK again but if left alone for a day, it turned salty again.  I finally tracked the problem down to the complicated system of gate valves that are installed on this boat to allow us to use fresh or salt water in our galley sink.  We have never used the salt water choice and the gate valve was completely seized shut as a result of years of disuse, apparently still allowing a trickle of salt water to get by, into the line via a syphon effect, because our water tanks are below our water line.

The reason why this had not been a problem up until this year is that the thtu-hull ball valve that supplies the salt water had always been turned off until I teed off of that line to feed the new water maker and wash down pump.  Most of the time this valve was still kept closed (we pickled the water maker when it became obvious we were going to be spending a lot of our time in marinas on the way down the US coast), but I had opened it before leaving San Diego in anticipation of using the water maker as we make our way further south.  Needless to say I have now completely eliminated the salt water feed to the galley foot pump and our water supply appears to be OK again.  Good thing too, as we cannot use the water here in the marina for drinking.

The other serious issue was with our solar panel controller.  It had stopped working temporarily during our dramatic transit of Cape Medocino, but appeared to work OK after it was reset.  The last few days however, it had become less and less reliable, working for a few hours, then going into a self-test failure mode more and more often, until it finally just stayed like that permanently.  We did not feel we could leave without this valuable asset working properly and figured we would have to order a new one from San Diego after the weekend.  Fortunately, I was able to take the unit apart and clean up the salt water damaged circuits, and it is working fine now.  You may remember that our Magnum inverter/charger that was also damaged on that same passage never did work again - we replaced it with a new unit in San Diego.  I have since repositioned these units so they should be less vulnerable to boarding seas in the future.

There have been numerous other projects as well (replacing the rusty anchor swivel on our primary anchor, servicing the main winches, sewing up a broken and fraying strap that holds the mainsail cover on, etc.), but this will perhaps give you some sense of what the phrase "fixing things in exotic places" is all about.

Today, we got our clearance out of the port from both immigration and the port captain and we should be on our way tomorrow morning.  The most likely next stop is Bahia Tortugas (Turtle Bay), about 300 miles further south.  With any luck, it will be warmer there.  The weather here has been cooler than we would like - as low as 8C at night and rarely getting up to 20C during the day.

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