The Further Adventures of Fly Aweigh (II)

Back on a boat after a 10-year working break, we're off on another adventure! This time, with two hulls, no timeline, and no particular agenda. And sometimes, I’ll use this forum for non-sailing adventures.

06 February 2025 | Punta Tosca, Isla Socorro
26 January 2025 | South Anchorage, Isla San Benedicto
18 January 2025 | South of Cabo
10 January 2025
02 January 2025 | La Ventana, Baja California
18 December 2024 | Los Frailes
07 December 2024 | South of Ensenada, México
12 November 2024 | Baja Naval Boat Yard, Ensenada
28 October 2024 | Baja Naval Boat Yard, Ensenada
15 October 2024 | Catalina Island
04 September 2024 | Santa Cruz Island
31 May 2023 | France
24 May 2023 | Tunis Medina, Tunisia
20 May 2023 | Bizerte, Tunisia
18 May 2023 | Carthage
16 May 2023 | Tunis, Tunisia
14 May 2023 | Tunis, Tunisia
05 February 2023 | Barra de Navidad, Mexico
31 January 2023 | Tenacatita, Mexico
29 January 2023 | Ipala, Mexico

Xquisite Blurb

14 January 2023
Alison Gabel
In 2018, on the front end of our urge to buy a catamaran, Allan and I attended the Miami Boat Show. As all shoppers do at such shows, we climbed on and off a bunch of the catamarans we thought we could actually afford, and just for fun, another 5 in the dream-on category. We oohed and aahed and offered our own whispered critiques based on what little we knew about cats at the time, and although we weren't really actually shopping to buy, we narrowed it down to the Fountaine Pajot 44. It was perfect. We virtually moved aboard in our minds right there at the boat show. I even took a languid nap in the cockpit while Allan fell into a lengthy conversation with the salesman. And then, we took one last lap around the show docks ... and there it was ... the Xquisite X5 - a 50-foot South African-built beauty. With only 4 completed boats at the time, it was new on the market, and proved to be a gorgeous compilation of everything wonderful in a boat/home. It was solid, gracious, creative, sensible, and smart. And we were in love. From the giant galley drawer, to the beautiful wood interior, to the spacious and sensible layout, to the sweeping, curvaceous lines of the boat, topped off with the teak wood cockpit table with an inlaid map of the world, it was just gob-smacking. But, it was dear - and I mean, pricey. Quite out of our range. We allowed ourselves to dream for awhile, even being invited back later in the early evening for an invitation-only wine and cheese gathering aboard the show boat, where we learned so much more about the X5. But we knew it wasn't to be - not then, so we thanked them all for their hospitality, and with a sigh of wistful regret, we moved on. We let the Xquisite rest in that place in your mind where you hold dreams alive, but not necessarily active. A few months later, we almost bought a used Fountaine Pajot from a charter fleet in the Caribbean, but luckily the deal fell through, and that made space, a few years later, for us to find our wonderful Seawind 1160.

We love the Seawind, she's an amazing boat and wears her 38 feet extremely well. But we still found ourselves guiltily ogling the Xquisite whenever she crossed our path. And then, last Wednesday, she crossed it and stopped long enough to let us on. We got a call from our friend Jeff who, with his wife Paula, owns Sea Larks, the third X5 built in about 2017, with a request for crew to help relocate Sea Larks from Ensenada to her home port in Ventura, California. There was a short weather window between storms, and the crew he'd lined up had to back out. We checked the calendar and happily, it was blank, so we packed our bags and headed for the border near San Diego in a rental car.

That wasn't the original plan. The original plan was for Jeff's friend to fly us in his airplane to Brown Field in San Diego. We'd Uber to the border, walk across, catch a bus or hire a car to Ensenada, and be aboard Sea Larks by dinnertime. As the weather forecast in the Los Angeles area deteriorated a bit, the pilot backed out, so Jeff rented a car and we changed the plan to driving to the border and staying in a hotel, which, once we were underway, changed again to the final plan of pushing through to Ensenada that night. We had a 5-hour drive with evening traffic in LA to deal with, plus a quick stop at Whole Foods for dinner and a leg stretch. We got to the border by 9pm, returned the car, Uber'ed with a very nice Ethiopian driver who dropped us at the "back entrance" of the foot path to the Border Crossing. We walked into Mexico with a little help from some savvy travelers who knew the way from this seemingly secret back entrance, met the driver Jeff had arranged at the last minute, had an uneventful drive down the Mexican coast past Rosarito Beach, and were sitting on Sea Larks by 11pm. It was a long, high-energy day, but we were all glad to be aboard rather than in a hotel at the border.

We had a surgy night in the marina, with the boat lurching around in the slip, stretching and yanking the lines, but with all the weather we've had in So Cal lately, Fly Aweigh has been pretty animated as waves and wind slap us from the south and strain our squeaking dock lines, so we were used to the activity.

We got a good nights' sleep, ate breakfast aboard, washed the boat, went to the Port Captain's office (officially, the "Administración del Sistema Portuario Nacional") to check out of the country, did some route and weather planning, got Jeff's thorough briefing on the boat, her safety equipment and procedures, had a late lunch, repositioned the boat in the slip and cleaned up the dock lines, and as the sun neared it's last hour, we pulled out of the slip, down the narrow channel where we squeezed between two mega yachts, and out to sea.

The sunset was lovely and it felt so great to be back on the water, but I was feeling deep fatigue. It had been a pretty high-adrenaline start and a short nap was all I could ponder. I left the boys in the cockpit discussing the route and fell into the luxurious bed for a dead nap. I'm always amazed at what a 20 or 40-minute nap can do for me! Fully restored, I joined Allan and Jeff in the main salon where we put a watch schedule together and posted it on the wall, then tackled the pizza's we ordered at lunch.

Friday was our one full day at sea. I made bacon and scrambled eggs, not something I usually conjure up in a galley and I'm not sure how my eggs measured up, but it helped to have pre-cooked Costco bacon and some amazing bread for toast with Paula's homemade strawberry jam. We took turns at watch throughout the day, napping, writing, Allan catching up on his movies (what am I saying? Nobody ever "catches up" on a perpetually produced product like the movies!) When dinner rolled around I'd planned a combo soup from things we had aboard - we didn't provision for fresh food in Ensenada since it was such a short trip, so I pawed through Paula's freezer and found some leftover chicken and rice soup, and enhanced it with a myriad of canned things - beans, corn, mushroom soup, a sausage of some sort, and served it with some fabulous olive bread. After dinner we nibbled on chocolate, then slid into our longer watch schedules. Things in the salon grew quiet in the darkness, with just the glow of the red solar light on the dining table to save our night vision. Most of the time, we were inside, since Sea Larks has an excellent view on three sides from inside the main salon, and is fully controllable from Jeff's desk - the only reason we need to go out to the helm station is to adjust the throttles or get a second-story view ahead.

As I now write, it's almost 6am on Saturday. After 36 hours, we're hovering just outside Ventura Harbor awaiting the sunrise. The boys are sleeping, I'm sipping coffee and tinkering with the boat's heading and power to minimize forward progress for another half hour. The rain has just started - we're in for a wet day. I can hear it tapping on the rooftop. My instructions from Captain Jeff before he went down for a short nap was to keep offshore in the deeper water until the sun came up and we had all hands on deck. We'd pulled the power way back and were creeping along on one engine in near silence at a mere 3 knots for the previous few hours, but I slowed us even a teeny bit more, as we were still getting there too soon. Can't go too slow, or you lose steerage, so I just took off a smidge. Still, I had to go into a modified holding pattern about an hour out, over the deeper contour lines on the map. The reason for this had to do with the weather - I'm sure a lot of people around the country have watched the news about California's recent deluges, and with this weather came some horrendous waves and surf. With a storm coming in behind us and seas already around 3 meters (9 feet) it seemed wise to stay farther out in deeper water until we could see what things looked like closer to shore.

At 6:30 the guys got up, I made more coffee, the inflatable fenders were inflated, the dock lines distributed, final approach plans were made, headset batteries installed, rain jackets donned, and after a call to the Ventura Harbor Patrol to check the safety of the harbor entrance, in we went. This was the funnest part of the whole trip - surfing down the steep side of the 9 foot waves going straight in toward shore. They were "long period swells" which means they were the fun kind, not the uncomfortable kind, at least while you're out a ways. But we could see they were wreaking havoc on the beach and the rocky breakwater - some serious white foam was splashing high in the air. As it turned out, other than a lot of foam from a recent set of waves near the breakwater, our timing was excellent and we slid right through the entrance in flat water, no drama, easy-peasy. Inside the harbor it was eerily calm. No boats were moving, the sky was gray, the air crisp and wet. I felt like we'd just been I Dream of Jeannie'd to somewhere on the English coast. I'm sort of craving fish and chips ...

We tied her all up with lines and fenders everywhere and then cleaned up aboard, changed sheets, vacuumed, packed up our belongings, took a few pictures, and - it was a wrap! 72 total hours - about 600 miles start to finish. It was a wonderful trip. The 80hp Yanmar engines on the boat are very well insulated, so even though the seas and winds were calm and we had to motor most of the way, it was very comfortable and quiet. The boat rides like a weighty, wide vessel and is comfortable inside. In fact, it's almost too nice - I had to remind myself we were on a boat! A classy, well-made and well-loved boat. I'm happy we had this chance on our dream boat - and Jeff is a great Captain - experienced at the details of passage making, boat handling and excellent in crew communication. I felt like I was back at work on the 747 as First Officer - night passages, crew coordination, on-watch vigilance, short naps - all on a solid, capable craft. And a great landing at the end!

Thanks, Jeff, Paula, and Sea Larks!

(Check out photos in the new photo album in our Gallery.)
Comments
Vessel Name: Fly Aweigh II
Vessel Make/Model: Seawind 1160 Deluxe
Hailing Port: Channel Islands, California
Crew: Allan and Alison Gabel
About:
Retired airline pilots exploring the world at a slower pace. in 2009 we took two-year leaves of absence from our jobs and sailed across the Pacific on a Catalina Morgan 440, which we sold in Australia so we could go back to work. [...]
Fly Aweigh II's Photos - Main
25 Photos
Created 10 January 2025
From Ensenada to Cabo San Lucas
14 Photos
Created 18 December 2024
Plus a few pics from Thanksgiving!
19 Photos
Created 7 December 2024
Random Pictures from Our First Month
23 Photos
Created 12 November 2024
Our trip to Tunisia to join friends Michael and Gloria on their Beneteau Custom 50 sailboat for a trip to Menorca, Spain. And then - a visit to see my brother Chris and his wife Sophie in France!
71 Photos
Created 9 June 2023
7 Photos
Created 14 January 2023
Pictures of our trip northbound from Cabo San Lucas to Ensenada
9 Photos
Created 19 June 2022
From Santa Rosalia south.
16 Photos
Created 4 June 2022
From Puerto Escondido to Santa Rosalia - May 2022
22 Photos
Created 24 May 2022
7 Photos
Created 13 May 2022
From La Paz to Puerto Escondido in the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California)
17 Photos
Created 27 April 2022
13 Photos
Created 17 April 2022
14 Photos
Created 25 March 2022
Life in Barra and environs in the month of February.
18 Photos
Created 27 February 2022
9 Photos
Created 17 February 2022
14 Photos
Created 2 February 2022
Week 2 of our time in Ensenada and the Baja Naval Boatyard.
9 Photos
Created 20 December 2021
Our first week in the Baja Naval Boatyard
12 Photos
Created 11 December 2021
The last, last minute things and our final departure for San Diego.
4 Photos
Created 1 December 2021
Stuff we're doing in the prepping-to-go-sailing phase of our lives.
5 Photos
Created 20 November 2021
21 Photos
Created 9 March 2011
22 Photos
Created 9 March 2011
24 Photos
Created 9 March 2011
49 Photos
Created 24 February 2011
30 Photos | 1 Sub-Album
Created 24 February 2011
29 Photos
Created 15 January 2011
51 Photos
Created 15 January 2011
20 Photos
Created 16 October 2010
28 Photos
Created 16 September 2010
20 Photos
Created 31 August 2010
23 Photos
Created 16 August 2010
29 Photos
Created 1 August 2010
21 Photos
Created 8 July 2010
And other things ...
25 Photos
Created 25 June 2010
28 Photos
Created 11 June 2010
34 Photos
Created 21 May 2010
34 Photos
Created 3 May 2010
28 Photos
Created 17 April 2010
39 Photos
Created 19 January 2010
Train trip to Mexico's Copper Canyon in Chihuahua.
11 Photos | 1 Sub-Album
Created 28 December 2009
28 Photos
Created 16 December 2009
Visit with Grant & Phyllis Gabel; Fly Aweigh's Christmas decorations
13 Photos
Created 12 December 2009
15 Photos
Created 7 December 2009
8 Photos
Created 6 December 2009
11 Photos
Created 22 November 2009
The 11-day adventure from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas
12 Photos
Created 7 November 2009
Pre-Ha-Ha days in San Deigo harbor
No Photos
Created 25 October 2009
10 Photos
Created 14 October 2009
Commissioning and Provisioning in Marina del rey
9 Photos
Created 8 September 2009