Steve
01/08/2011, Coronado mooring anchorage

With a March departure date fast approaching....the heat is on (not weather wise) to get the last few things done before leaving. Many potential cruisers will put off leaving until those "last few things" are all done, then one thing leads to another and they never end up cruising, it seems that there are always going to be those "last few things" to do.
From the beginning I wanted to get my main systems figured out and make any kind of adjustments that I felt were needed...and I wanted to get the improved systems in place early so I knew what I had. My biggest improvement has been Si Bon's electrical system including the addition of the solar panels. As I sit here pondering my "last few things" list I am thinking that there is nothing on the list which would prevent me from leaving tomorrow if I wanted to.
So I will move ahead with the "last few things" list...I'll buy some spare parts, go to the dentist, get my taxes done (uuggg), sell my truck, think about upgrading a couple more things and dream about warm weather, but I won't let the list get in my way.
It's funny how no one ever loses the excitement of dolphins playing in your wake. This pic is looking south across Bahia De Todos Santos (Ensenada) the background is the Pacific coast of Baja and it's many points and islands.

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Steve
01/07/2011, Pacific coast

If you are a blog follower than you already know that we had a great trip to Ensenada. As is typical here we did less sailing than we would have liked to, but we were able to sail about half way back before motor sailing the rest of the way. It was cool to finally be in Mexican waters and realize that they are pretty much the same as the US waters. I was able to meet a great new potential crew member in Lee, who is a hard core, old school sailor guy who has been living on his boat...on a ball, for the past 10 years. Since Lee is an easy going (important) dude ready for adventure, it looks good for future sailing adventures together.
This pic is looking south from Ensenada, it reminds me of the gateway to cruising adventures, as I will be sailing between the point on the left and the island on the right as I make my south in March.

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Steve
01/05/2011, Pacific coast

We left the Marina Coral on Monday morning at about 1145 and as planned we started sailing soon after we got out of the narrow marina entrance. Si Bon is a fantastic light air boat, we had about 7-8 knots of wind, sailing between a reach and a broad reach doing about 5-6 knots, to a non sailor that means that the wind was coming towards us from an angle (using the clock) of about 8:00 -10:00. As is typical in this area the wind gradually decreased as the afternoon turned into evening, I had set a threshold of about 3 knots boat speed, meaning anything below that and we start motor sailing, we hung in there until about 1800,when we were down to 2 knots and Rich pointed out that someone could walk faster than what we were sailing, I knew it was time to suck it up and fire up the massive 42 horsepower Westerbeke. As you might know I love sailing at night, it's funny how small things can keep you occupied, as you are constantly on the lookout. As we approached the coast off of Rosarito Beach we came across a VERY large tanker which was about 10 NM ahead of us, we spent about 2-3 hours trying to figure out if he was underway and if so which way was he going, or was he just sitting off the coast waiting to load/unload at the Rosarito Premix facility? Turns out, after unsuccessfully trying to hail him on 16, that he was just sitting there going no where.
We pulled into Shelter Island Police dock to clear customs at about 0130 Tuesday morning, we cleared in with the littlest of effort (a story I don't want to tell on the blog). As the Skipper and crew were all tired and there were no Harbor Police around I decided we would go to sleep illegally at the dock until someone kicked us out, we were able to get about 4 hours of shut eye, got up made coffee and pulled away from the dock as the morning shift was arriving for work....sweet.
It seems that my adventures just keep getting better and better and this was one of the best trips yet...I'll be doing a recap blog in the next couple of days.

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Steve
01/03/2011, Ensenada, Mexico

Our stay here at the Marina Coral has been amazing, Marina Coral is a new resort just north of downtown Ensenada, it has a 4 star hotel with full amenities which as a marina guest we are able to take advantage of....and we all have. The people here, both employees and the marina residents have been super friendly and very accommodating to us, I definitely plan to return here even if it is only for a brief stop on my way south.
Our plan is to leave the Coral sometime around noon today and sail (not motor sail) back to San Diego, right now the weather guess is calling for the wind to be in our favor until Tuesday afternoon and we should be back by then.....we'll see how that comes together.
This is the sunset last night over the beautiful Marina Coral.

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Steve
01/02/2011, Ensenada, Mexico

Congratulations to the US government and the US media....you've now managed to scare the piss out of the american public and for the most part they now avoid coming to Mexico. The current drug cartel problems occur mostly along a narrow strip of the US Mexico border and unless you are a drug cartel member or a Mexican police officer you have nothing to worry about, and in my opinion are as safe here as you are are in the US....go pick up a newspaper and see how many innocent americans were killed in your city yesterday.
Last night as we strolled downtown Ensenada we were the only americans (gringos) to be seen, the mexican people were VERY happy to see us, we were given happy hour drink deals (2 for 1) without being happy hour, we were given good advice about a great mexican beer (Indio), and every time we started to cross a street the drivers would slam on their brakes and wave us across.
As we were standing in Hussongs last night and I was looking around at all the friendly mexican people I thought to myself....you know this place is actually a lot nicer WITHOUT all the obnoxious americans messing it up....in my opinion.

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Steve
01/01/2011, Ensenada, Mexico

Finally made it to Mexico, what a beautiful sail (motor sail) we had down the coast, Rich, Lee and myself dropped my mooring line in Coronado at 0200 (2AM) yesterday and we were tied up at our slip at the Marina Coral at 1430 (2:30 PM). The Marina Coral is a really cool little marina, we were greeted by a local lady, Alice, who invited us over to her boat to start our New Years celebrating, we had some nice Hors d'oeuvres, I stepped on her cat (sorry) and we headed off to Hussongs Cantina (pic) to continue our New Years celebrating. OK so when you've been up since 2 in the morning your New Years celebrating doesn't last very long.....we were back on Si Bon by 2100 (9 PM) and fast asleep soon after. Today we will continue our exploring of Ensenada and hopefully can stay awake past dinner time.

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