For some reason I wasn't able to get on to my blog while we were in Ensenada..so I have a lot to catch up on, I'm sending this out from an internet cafe in beautiful (NOT) Turtle Bay and not able to post pictures..hopefully Manana.
We left San Diego at around 0200 on Wednesday morning, my friend Brian Brown got up and brought us donuts and saw us off...thanks Brian. We made excellent time and were at the Marina Coral in under 11 hours. On Thursday we cleared into Mexico with the Capitan de Puerto (port captain) and as luck would have it Canaval was starting, so Peter and I headed into town to check it out while Catherine finished up a few work related things. It was really cool to see how all of the Mexican families enjoy all of the festivities with their families and friends...it made us realize that all of the material things that we seem to not be able to live without in the US....don't necessarily equal happiness.
I was orginally planning on leaving Ensenada at 0530 on Friday morning..I had figured that that would put us into our next port (Turtle Bay) at around mid-day Sunday, after thinking about it I decided that trying to time a 275 mile trip was next to impossible, and part of the joy of the cruising lifestyle is to relax and not always be rushing around....so I broke the news to my crew that we would leave sometime Friday morning and they could get up whenever their little hearts desired...this brought great joy to both Catherine and Peter...and the skipper didn't mind it a whole lot either.
We ended pulling out of Ensenada at about 1000 on Friday morning and had our sails up within minutes of getting out of the harbor, as we headed south the wind continued to build off our stern, we deployed the whisker pole and were sailing along at a steady 7-8 knots going wing on wing, that's where you have your main sail on one side of the boat and your head sail on the other. As the morning turned into afternoon the wind continued to pick up force...Si Bon was flying along...8-9 knots..I grabbed my camera to get a picture on my SOG (speed over ground) from my GPS, I took a pic at 9.3....all of a sudden we hit 10.2...i had to get another pic...I snapped one at 10.3 (will post on blog) and decided it was time to reef (reduce the sail area) the sails before things got out of hand. Even after we took in the main sail about half way and the Genoa several feet, we were still hitting 8-9 knots.
Friday night the wind died out and finally about 1900 we turned on the iron sail.
On Saturday we were treated to pea soup fog, however once again the wind came up early and strong as we sailed south at a great clip, everyone had that look of a little kid at Christmas as Si Bon cruised easily along. We sailed all day and well into the night before turning on the engine for a few hours as we past Isla Cedros towards Turtle Bay, we ended up dropping the hook in Turtle Bay at about 1430....which was about when I thought we would arrive before I decided to let everyone sleep in Friday morning.
I will try to post pictures tomorrow and tell you about lovely Turtle Bay...we plan on being here until at least Thursday...subject to change.