Day 2
19 November 2010 | 2 hundred miles north of Turtle Bay
Ellen
Yesterday we had an interesting day. We left Ensenada at 8:30am and motored out into calm conditions. Out went the fishing rods and we settled in for a long motor unles the winds pick up. Around 11am, we decided to start cooking some lunch. At about this same time, there was a Mexican Navy boat that seemed to have taken an interest in us. He was going back and forth around us. Pat was down below cooking and Les and I were in the cockpit and Ian had just gone forward to rig the new lightwind sail we just bought in San Diego. Then we get a call on the VHF radio from the Navy boat to cease navigation as they were going to come aboard. So for over half an hour we sat there getting rocked around in the swells as we waited for them to launch there small boat and come and board us. We decided to hold off on our lunch as we thought it would be rude to be sitting there eating when they arrived. Finally they got to the boat with about 10 guys 5 of which were carrying big guns. These five came on board and 4 of them stayed up on deck and the head guy came below with Ian and I. We gave him our documents for the boat our check in and check out papers for Ensenada, and our passports of course. He was a very soft spoken and very polite man who looked to be in his early 20's. He asked us a few questions and had us sign a form that they had boarded us and then they were on there way. We don't really know the reason for the visit but they didn't look around or anything. Maybe they thought we were drug runners until they saw the 4 of us and realized we were just 4 ordinary people and didn't fit the profile. Anyhow it was somewhat interesting and I never felt at all threatened or worried. So we carried on from that episode using our new sail and were doing about 3 to 4 knots. Later the winds got stronger and we pulled the new sail down and out came the jib. Just around sunset while Les was on watch, he noticed a line on the radar screen which seemed to be approaching us. We figured it must be a front or a squall or something. We decided to wait before serving dinner in case all hands were needed on deck if something was coming through. Well when it finally go to us it turned out to be fog. I didn't know that the radar would pick up fog. It wasn't even heavy fog. So we settled in for the night, and by 8pm we were motoring again as the winds had died to almost nothing and what there was was moving around and coming and going. By this morning it had switched to on the nose. We have seen a few dolphins, a couple of whales off in the distance, several fishing boats and one sailboat. That is about it for now. We hope to arrive in Turtle Bay on Sunday.