Chris Mays
01/16/2008, Ensenada, Mexico

We anchored for the night in the harbor at Ensenada despite the buoys prohibiting it. In the morning we called all of the marinas in the area to find a berth. Marina Baja Naval had a slip available which we took.

I had misplaced my tourist card which is a big no no. Supposedly immigration can fine you for each day you are in the country with out one. Also we did not have temporary import paper from customs. This was not our oversight. Regardless the marina manager informed us that we might have some trouble. He was going over there to check in another boat, a service the marina provides, and offered to talk with the officials. Fortunately he smoothed everything over and our final clearance (international zarpe) is complete. We gave the marina manager a bottle of Argentinian wine for his troubles and he was delighted.

We put up some pictures up from our recent stop in the Islas San Benitos on our Picassa web gallery at Islas San Benitos Pictures

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Chris Mays
01/16/2008, Ensenada, Mexico

We made it to Ensenada this evening and anchored in the harbor. The Baja Bash is over. Not nearly as difficult as one might expect with all the hype but perhaps we just got lucky.

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Julie
01/14/2008, Sacramento Reef, Baja California

We had a nice day of sailing since leaving San Benitos this morning. The wind was variable, but we were able to sail most of the day and the seas have stayed fairly calm. I am now on my first watch of the night and we are motoring as there is very little wind (although it seems to be building as I type). We are 130 miles from Ensenada and if we are able to hold our current speed, we should be in before nightfall tomorrow. This just made it occur to me that this is quite possibly our last night at sea of this voyage. There have been points in this trip where this would have been music to my ears, but I am actually finding myself kind of sad.

To think of all the nights we have spent sailing in the last three years, I have a lot of fond memories. In the beginning, I will admit, I was terrified on my night watches, but over time, I have come to enjoy them, almost more than I do my day watches a lot of times. Of course there are good and bad nights - and invariably, if anything is going to go wrong, especially with the sails or weather, it happens at about 2am in the pitch black. But for the most part, I find sailing at night to be very peaceful and almost therapeutic. It's time that I have all to myself (and that is a valuable commodity living on a small boat with three people) and while I have to actually sail the boat and keep a close lookout for other boats, this still leaves a lot of time to read, listen to music, books, and podcasts, or simply sit and think. And for some reason, even when we are out in the middle of nowhere, it does not feel lonely or scary to me. I know that will sound corny, especially coming from me, but I really feel like the stars the sea and someone above are all watching out for us. Like I said, corny, but it gives me a sense of peace.

What is sad is that I am sure that once we get home, I will never have this type of time ever again. I have to remind myself of that on rare occasions when I have had just about enough and think to myself - I will give anything for this amount of free time one of these days. I also jokingly think that being in the habit of waking up every two to four hours has prepared me for the day I have kids, as for the last few years, sleeping through the night has been a rare luxury. Maybe I'll have to start setting an alarm every few hours once we get home so I don't get out of practice!

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