11/05/2009, Ensenada
The fog we encountered when leaving San Diego stuck with us for most of the trip to Ensenada, but lightened up mid morning giving us good visibility to enter the harbor.
We tied up to the dock at Baja Naval Marina a little before 2 in the afternoon, got settled in and enjoyed a nice dinner aboard Galetea then a good nights sleep.
Today's big event was to clear into the country. The beauty of doing it here in Ensenada is they have incorporated all the offices you must visit into 1 building, saving you from walking all over town as we had to last time in Cabo San Lucas. You must go to Customs, Immigration and the Port Captain. All went well and we are good to go!
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11/04/2009, Mexico
We're off !
We left the public dock on Shelter Island at 1 am and carefully picked our way out of San Diego in the thickest fog we've had since Newport, Oregon.
Just crossing the border into Mexico! Still in fog, but the big bright nearly full moon makes it better than pitch dark fog.
Next stop: Ensenada!
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11/03/2009, Shelter Island, San Diego
Jim and Ellen have left Ventura and should be passing by San Diego about 4 am! They'll give us a call when they're about 2 hours away and we'll slip out of the harbor to meet up with them. Now it's getting exciting!
Tomorrow's trip will only be about 12 hours, but we need to get such an early start because the sun sets so early -- about 5 pm -- and we don't want to take a chance on getting there after dark.
Most of my time today has been spent with food. First we made one last trip to the grocery store for fresh fruits, vegetables, milk and bread. Then I started preparing what we call our "passage food".
It's always nice to have a warm meal when you're out traveling so long. But it's not so nice to have to try and fix that meal on a rocking boat. So I've taken to preparing meals and wrapping them in foil then all I have to do is warm the oven and toss them in when we're ready to eat.
For breakfast I do either breakfast sandwiches on English muffins or breakfast burritos. For a dinner I'll throw some meat and veggies in foil, sometimes with potato or rice. It's always a treat to have a good meal -- with no dirty dishes to clean up!
I also will have a thermos of hot water ready that we can make cocoa or tea or a cup of soup. And our must have food on any passage is popcorn! I also baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies for the occaisional treat as we head down the Baja coast.
So now we're all set to go!
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11/01/2009, Shelter Island
We got up at the crack of dawn to travel the nearly 10 miles from Chula Vista at the bottom of San Diego Bay up to Shelter Island near the entrance to the harbor. This will position us for an easy departure when we head south to Mexico in a few short days.
We had reservations at the Silver Gate Yacht Club for 4 days beginning today, but at the last minute (yesterday) they found they were over booked! Yes, they can take a reservation, but they can't hold a reservation..... Luckily with the Baja Ha Ha fleet out of town, the municipal or public dock had some vacancies. It's a first come first serve situation, so we wanted to be here early enough to hopefully get a spot -- and we needed to stop for fuel on the way. The public dock is a great deal -- there's power and showers all for only $10.50 a day! You can stay a maximum of 10 days in any 40 day period.
So we'll be here for a couple days doing last minute preparations as we wait for a call from our friends Jim and Ellen on Galetea. They've spent the past month in Ventura and will leave from there for Ensenada. Once they leave we'll plan our departure to coincide with when they will be passing San Diego and we will harbor hop down the Baja coast with them. So we're here at the starting line just waiting for the gun!
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10/25/2009, waiting in San Diego
When we first started planning this trip, long long ago, we made up a "rough" itinerary. I call it rough, because any number of things could change our plans as time went on. As it turns out, so far we are right on schedule with that original time line which was:
1. San Juans/Gulf Islands June - July (well, we didn't go beyond the San Juans)
2. Neah Bay and down the coast in August
3. San Francisco and down the coast in September
4. San Diego all of October
5. Leave San Diego 1st week of November
So as October is coming to a rapid close we have made our final lists of things to accomplish each day to be ready for our departure sometime that 1st week of November!
This next step, Phase 5, is the biggest step of all because we'll be leaving all the familiarity that traveling in the US provides. Communications will change -- we won't have the nearly constant cell phone and internet coverage we've come to enjoy on our trip down the US coast. We won't have the luxuries we've enjoyed at the Yacht Clubs and marinas here in the states with swimming pools, showers and laundry. Sure, those can all be found in Mexico in the larger cities, but at a greater price than we would want to spend on a regular basis.
But as we leave the familiarity and the conveniences behind we gain the enjoyment of remote anchorages teeming with wildlife and the great sense of accomplishment that comes with being totally self sufficient. We'll grow from the challenge of making our way in a foreign country and learning the language.
So as departure day draws near, it is with the same bittersweet emotion that accompanies any passage -- sadness at leaving friends, family and familiarity behind mixed with the excitement of a new adventure.
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10/20/2009, Disneyland!
Our daughter, Carly, got to come down and visit for another mini vacation! Her last visit was in September when we were in San Francisco.
She flew in Friday night and we had a nice dinner at the Galley Restaurant here at the marina, then the next day was a relaxing "beach day". We crossed the bay in our dinghy and spent the afternoon on the Silver Strand reading and watching a surfing class. The fog rolled in that day (it finally caught back up with us! We thought we'd lost it back at Point Conception!), but it was a "warm" fog, so it was still a nice day.
We got up early Sunday and made the 2 hour drive to Disneyland for a fun family day. We've never managed to be in California for any length of time without squeezing in a Disney trip -- and since Terry used to spend so much time working in California there weren't many years that we didn't make it to Disneyland -- it's a Kotas Family Favorite. After a full day going from park to park (We really enjoy California Adventure, too) and doing all the rides and eating all our favorite treats, we headed home for a good nights sleep.
Carly flew out Monday afternoon and we are back to preparations for Mexico. Things are wrapping up quite well. Terry completed the installation of the new motor for the autopilot, our Mexican insurance is in process and provisioning is basically done (just fresh foods to pick up at the last minute).
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We toasted our arrival into San Diego with orange juice at 7 am on September 30th as it was another major milestone on this adventure. We had made it safely down the entire West Coast of the United States!
We had reservations to stay at the Chula Vista Marina for the month of October because we wanted that time to re-provision and make preparations for the next phase of our journey: Mexico.
We also needed to make decisions about how much time we would spend in Mexico -- and where we would spend that time. Since a major goal of this cruise is to see the Galapagos Islands, and the best time to leave Mexico to head there would be the month of March (due to hurricane seasons), we would either stay in Mexico 5 months (and go to the Galapagos in 2010) or a year and 5 months (to leave March 2011).
10 years ago on our last voyage to Mexico we spent most of our time on the Mainland coast and only had about a month in the Sea of Cortez before it was time to haul the boat out of the water in La Paz and go back home to work. What we saw we enjoyed and we knew we wanted to spend more time there. Our desire to explore the Sea of Cortez was further fueled looking through the beautiful guidebook we bought at the Seattle boat show: Sea of Cortez: A Cruiser's Guidebook by Shawn Breeding and Heather Bansmer (check it out on our links to the right).
Since the "best" months to visit the sea are spring and early summer we would miss those days if we left for the Galapagos next March, so we have decided to stay in Mexico until 2011. Now the next decision was whether we go straight up to the Sea, or spend time on the Mainland coast 1st? We've had mixed reviews from cruising friends that have spent the winter months in the Sea of Cortez. One couple enjoyed it and one thought they made a mistake in doing it. The winter months are relatively cold in the Sea (but like Shawn and Heather pointed out when I asked their opinion, cold in the Sea of Cortez is nothing like cold in Seattle), the water is cooler (enough that a wet suit would be needed to spend much time in the water) and the dreaded "Norther's" can blow. But with reassurance that there are many anchorages to snug into during the well forecast Norther's (I guess they can blow 20 to 30 knots for 2 to 5 days) and the lure of the beauty of remote anchorages with great hiking and bountiful sea life, we are heading for the Sea of Cortez!
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10/08/2009, Chula Vista California
We arrived in Chula Vista Marina a little over a week ago and when we realized it had already been that long we're again asking ourselves "Where does the time go?"
We came here armed with lists of things we wanted and/or needed to accomplish while here and we were happy we'd have a whole month to do everything.
So every day is busy. Terry's had a major boat project in repairing our autopilot that has had problems with the old motor. He actually put his great McGuiver skills to work in Monterey and repaired the old failing motor that 2 guys had looked at there and said it was unrepairable. It has worked great since, but he wanted a new motor for it in case his fix gives out someday. Better to deal with it here than in some remote atoll down the line. This is no simple fix to find a replacement and get it going, so it consumes a lot of time but hopefully we'll have it all taken care of next week.
In between working on that he has been doing all of his normal cleaning and polishing and is now striping the teak dock ladder so he can put new Cetol on it. He's always working on something!
My main focus has been to get all the paperwork (Visas, Insurance and Fishing Licenses) ready for Mexico and to restock the boat with the provisions we'll need for the next phase of this trip.
It doesn't sound like much, but without a car, everything takes much longer than it does with that convenience. But I'm not complaining -- I really like doing things this way. We get our daily exercise in while doing our errands!
We needed to get passport photos taken to take to the Mexican Consulate tomorrow to get our FM3's (Visas), and found that they take them at the Costco we go to, so that made for a nice one stop shop experience -- and a great walk since the Costco is 3 miles each way.
Tomorrow when we go into San Diego to the Consulate, we'll also go to the Mexican Fisheries department (they're about a mile apart). Mexico requires that everyone on a boat with any fishing equipment on it has a fishing license.
Luckily, San Diego has a great Trolly (light rail) system to get us the long distances and the $5 daily pass lets you get on and off that and any of the buses you need to get to where the Trolly doesn't go. It will be a full day tomorrow.
Don't get me wrong -- life isn't all work and no play -- it's really a nice balance. We get out in the dinghy, still enjoy beautiful sunsets and have had fun listening to and dancing to the music of Gary Seiler at the Galley Bar & Grill here in the marina. He's a great entertainer that Dave Calhoun told us about and we actually saw for the 1st time the day we pulled in. He plays a couple days a week -- check out his website at the link to the right.
This morning as we were walking some errands and talking about how busy our days are, it had me pondering what it will be like when we're off to Mexico and all the preparations are behind us and we're in a remote anchorage -- what will we do all day?
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Check out the October issue of Blue Water Sailing to read Terry's humorous and informative article on replacing our engine in Tahiti!
Also look at the noonsite link to the right for the latest information from the cruisers that were in Pago Pago American Samoa when the terrible tsunami hit. It's a chilling account.
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09/30/2009, Off the Southern California Coast
We left Marina del Rey with a bit of unease Tuesday morning because of some somewhat disturbing and conflicting weather reports. The area we would be traveling thru starts in one of NOAA's districts, but before the day was over we'd be in a new area with a different forecast. Near Marina del Rey the weather would be getting rougher as the day went on (with the worst of it by point Conception: 40 knot gusts and 12 foot seas!), but the forecast for the San Diego area looked pretty benign. Then there was the inland report of the strong gusty Santa Ana winds piping up -- would that effect us?
So we gambled that the weather wouldn't move south faster than predicted and this time we won!
Then a strange turn of events. It started with a message from some cruising friends in the Cook Islands sending out a note that they were fine despite the earthquake and tsunami that hit the Samoan islands. Then as I checked a weather report I saw a tsunami advisory for the California Coast!
I knew we were safe out deep as we were -- they aren't even felt. So we were VERY glad we'd left the marina that morning after all!
We were also very concerned for anyone that might be waiting in Port San Luis for weather to round Pt. Conception (as we had), because San Luis was one of the Bays they mentioned as a possible threat. If we were anchored in San Luis and heard there "might be" a tsunami type surge coming in would we go out to sea when the winds were gusting to 40 and the seas were 12 feet high? That would be a tough gamble to make.
So we listened to the updates on the advisories and I searched the internet looking for more info on the Samoan tsunami and word on the California prediction. I never did hear if any areas had any problem on our coast and am assuming there wasn't. But it's very sad how much destruction occurred on those islands.
Other than that it was a very uneventful passage with very light winds that forced us to keep the engine on the whole time -- we were afraid if we didn't move fast enough that weather system might catch us before we got far enough south. We did have great visibility well lit by a 3/4 moon -- it was the 1st passage since leaving the San Juans that we didn't have ANY fog! And we were treated to some outstanding shows by traveling dolphin, too.
We pulled into the dock here in Chula Vista exactly 24 hours after leaving the dock in Marina del Rey, and since we plan to stay here a month (we don't want to go into Mexico until November -- the "official" end of hurricane season) we're at home now.
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We left Channel Islands Harbor (Oxnard) very early Saturday morning with clear skies and enjoyed another beautiful sunrise on the Santa Barbara Channel -- then the fog returned! But the Southern California fog is a bit nicer than the fog we've had to this point -- warmer and dryer if you can imagine that. It also hasn't been near so dense.
We pulled into the reciprocal moorage at PMYC at two in the afternoon and have had a delightful stay. It's a casual club with great hospitality. We've even talked with members that we remember from when we were here 10 years ago! We'd planned to just stay 2 nights and then head to Newport Beach, but now have decided to stay here one more night and then forgo Newport Beach and do an overnight trip to San Diego. After checking the weather forecast, however, that one more night might extend to a few more nights as it looks like some weather will be passing through Tuesday night through Wednesday night.
Yesterday we walked down Venice Beach and saw all the sights -- it's like a circus! We're off exploring more today and then we'll watch Monday Night Football up at the clubhouse -- complete with a turkey dinner for $8 per person! What a hoot!
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09/25/2009, Channel Islands Harbor
We got up early and took a walk around the harbor enjoying a beautiful sunrise behind sailboat masts and palm trees. After breakfast and a couple boat projects we walked to the nearby grocery store and West Marine -- where we were finally able to find a copy of Blue Water Cruising with Terry's article "Re-powering in Paradise"!
Then we walked about 3 blocks to a beautiful ocean beach and just sat in the sun with our feet in the sand and luxuriated in the sights, sounds and smells of the ocean.
We went back to the yacht club for a swim in the pool followed by a shower then up to the upper deck overlooking the harbor for dinner and drinks.
Now we're back on the boat reminiscing about the past 4 months since leaving Gig Harbor and preparing for another adventure tomorrow. Next stop is Marina del Rey where we'll spend two nights at the Pacific Mariners Yacht Club. Gotta love the free reciprocal moorage!
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We had a fantastic sail around Point Conception last night!
We pulled up our anchor in San Luis about 2 in the afternoon and we were able to sail as soon as we left the harbor, even though there was light fog cover. As night drew near, the fog settled in pretty heavy and the winds lightened so that we were motor sailing for several hours until we closed in on Conception. The winds picked up (as we knew they would from the buoy reports I was getting on my cell phone) and soon we were sailing again.
There was still a lingering fog and Terry was startled when he looked up and could see stars! Something we've only seen on one other night passage of this entire trip. It wasn't long before the fog disappeared completely and we were sailing under starry skies in 20 - 25 knots of wind! What a rush!
Even before we rounded the Point, we could see the big brilliantly lit oil platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel. Turning that corner was like entering another world as the seas smoothed and the wind calmed. Once again we were motor sailing, but this time with clear skies and great visibility -- simply beautiful.
Early this morning we were able to take turns getting a few hours sleep as we continued on our trip to Oxnard. We should be docked by about 3 this afternoon and then will spend a couple days at the reciprocal dock for the Channel Islands Yacht Club -- and we'll enjoy the Southern California sunshine!
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