Leaving Ensenada
07 December 2024 | South of Ensenada, México
Alison Gabel

We've left Ensenada, México and are southbound at last, and now the cruising season officially starts for Fly Aweigh. She's been scrubbed and spruced by the capable team at Baja Naval Boat Yard in Ensenada, with touched-up CopperCoat on the bottom, newly re-bedded windows all around the main cabin, fresh black paint on the outside of those windows, and a shiny, polished hull. The engines and saildrives have been serviced, the props painted with Prop Speed, a few chunks of missing fiberglass repaired, anchor chain inspected and re-marked, and the inside cleaned with vinegar water from top to toe. Allan installed a new starter motor on the port engine, and replaced the inverter-charger and control panel with newfangled stuff that gets the whole system talking better. And the new control panel is slick, although Allan points out that the old one was easier to read - the new one has smaller letters! We blame GenZ, but we're glad to have the cool tech. We were in the yard a total of 6 weeks with a few days in the marina after we splashed last Tuesday, but spent 10 of those days in Southern California for the Thanksgiving holiday.
I have to admit, I like being in the boat yard. I enjoy the challenge of everyday life (up to a point) and adore hearing all the whistles and whoops the guys give each other, the banter, the volleyball game at lunch. I like waking up on the boat and hearing the sound of early projects getting underway. I enjoy meeting other people also stuck "on the hard" while their boats get spruced, and the camaraderie we all develop in our common plights. I enjoy finding fun little places to eat locally since cooking and doing dishes aboard gets tiring with no easy way to dump the water. But all of that is good for about the 6 weeks we had, and then it's time to go, and thank all the folks at the yard for their help. I can only imagine how good, and weird, it must have felt for our friends Behan and Jamie on s/v Totem after their total refit, during Covid, for years. Right now, I'm doing a little dance for them as they continue across the Pacific, facing new challenges that only being on a voyage can present.
Our day so far: we had a similar start leaving Ensenada this morning as we did leaving Oxnard a few months back - a thick fog has been dominating the early mornings for the last few days and we were ready to plow through a damp morning today, but awoke to a gorgeous, clear day, with calm seas, no wind. So we're motoring along placidly, in the company of another boat, s/v Eos. At 49 feet, she's got a longer water line than Fly Aweigh does, which directly translates to more speed (but I bet we'd catch her with our sails up!), so she's blasted on ahead of us. We plan to catch up to them in Bahia Asunción Monday evening, unless they choose to peel off sooner and explore another anchorage.
We left the dock at 6am, with mugs of tea/coffee and nibbles of a South African biscotti sort of thing that Louise on Eos made, delicious! At 8am we had a Face Time call with our Canadian friends Michael and Gloria, who's boat, Paikea Mist, is currently in Valencia, Spain. It was perfect to start this day with them, as our early cruising days in 2010 were spent in their company as we crossed the Pacific Ocean, and we've shared many adventures with them on Paikea Mist in the last 15 years. Breakfast was the usual - big bowls of Allan's special oatmeal, laden with fruit and flax and walnuts and cinnamon.
Then I took a nap. Why not? We have another 48 hours to go, and there's not much happening. Our biggest task is to avoid the bull kelp and those diabolical long lines the Mexican fisherman tend to set. We've seen lots of kelp, but so far no lines. So I settled into a nice nap while the boat slid over the calm sea, the engine murmuring gently. Just as I was starting to wake up I heard the unmistakable sound of our prop getting jammed. Rope? Kelp? I leapt out of bed to help Allan in the next step, something we've done many times in our cruising years - suit up and jump into the water to clear the prop. It's almost a right of passage, so quite fitting it happened on the first day out.
He pulled on his brand-new wet suit and I grabbed the mask, fins and snorkel and down he went into the chilly water, he was back on board in a few seconds, the big ball of kelp floating away from the boat. We're keeping our eye out for more - next time it'll be my turn to jump in, so I'm waiting on my shower a little bit longer just in case.
Later, for dinner, I've defrosted the tomato sauce my friend Joy made a few months back and plan to make a veggie pasta with a little salad. Then we move into our night watch schedule, which we revise all the time, trying to find the perfect rhythm. This time of year at this latitude, the night is almost 13 hours long, so with 3-hour watches we divide the dark into 2 watches each. We try to match our natural biorhythms, which used to be me for the 9pm-midnight and then the 3am-6am watch, but as we age our patterns are changing, and lately I'm up until 1 or 2 and he's awake early, so we're trading. We'll see how that goes - it's never perfect.
Too bad the wind has decided to sleep this day out, but it looks like she'll be here tomorrow afternoon and then we'll get a good offshore kick on Monday. This calm start to our trip is appreciated, actually, a nice way to get back into movement on the water without too much drama. The kelp jam was just enough drama to remind us we're out on the planet's biggest ocean and we'd best be on our toes.
¡Ándele sur!
Cut and paste this link to track, and enjoy more cool tech:
https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/SV_FlyAweigh/
Cut and paste this link for the latest photos in the Photo Gallery:
https://www.sailblogs.com/member/flyaweigh/gallery/46385/