Bahia San Quintin

Arrived yesterday afternoon at Bahia San Quintin, a lovely bay and lagoon ~100 mi south of Ensenada. We are the only boat here on this side of the bay and there is only one other here about 4 miles across the bay.

Today was a layover day so we could explore the lagoon and adjacent sand dunes. We started the day with home made pancakes and breakfast sausage from Tip Top Meats, our favorite German Butcher. After cleaning up we put the dink in the water and headed in although it was not immediately clear where "there" was as the lagoon entrance was a little hard to see but we made it.

Our initial thought was to head to town at the top of the lagoon which we could see in the distance. Elaine waved Hi to a passing boat and some nice Gringo fishermen and women came by thinking we were in distress. After assuring them we were OK, we asked how far to town and they said 10 mi. Not wanting to spend all our time motoring we turned around and found a nice beach backed by sand dunes and wet lands. We walked around barefoot for an hour and a half exploring. We saw vultures, several types of ducks and sea birds, crabs, a long billed curlew, millions of snails and more. Although there was some garbage here and there, we had miles and miles of empty area to explore that looked like it did hundreds of years ago. It is days like this of totally disconnecting from the world (except for this blogging :) ) that are the reason we chose to go slow on the Baja.

Here are a couple of pics of our day today :

Passage to Colnett

It feels great to finally be underway - and to have no where to spend any money !!

It took us about 11 hours to reach our first anchorage, Cabo Colnett. The seas were a bit on the big side but shaped well and from behind so it was a reasonably comfortable ride. The wind was light so unfortunately we motored the entire way. The anchorage is behind a beautiful table flat headland that looks like a 2 layer cake. The headland forms a large bay with few signs of life. We were the only boat there. It was a tad rolly overnight but we all decided spending the night was preferable to motoring all night.

Cabo Colnett is pretty interesting because a joint Chinese/Mexican Company has plans to turn the entire bay into a port that eventually will equal LA/Long Beach in size !! The plans were put on hold due to the economic downturn and there are no signs of any work on the project. It is hard to visualize a mega port in the beautiful, tranquil bay we just spent the night. Luckily we had the opportunity to be there before the project gets underway.

Currently, we are underway to our second anchorage in Bahia San Quintin. It is a beautiful bay with a lagoon and several volcanic cinder cones to explore. Our plan is to spend 2 night. More on San Quintin later.

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Happy Thankgiving !!

Heading up to the Thanksgiving Buffet at the hotel with Barry, Elaine and Frank and Rachel to have our "Last Supper" before heading south tomorrow at 5:30am. Elaine and I have so very much to be thankful for and our friends and family are at the top of that list. We hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

 

By the way, start checking in on our SPOT Tracker page as we will be on the move. We will post blog updates as time and internet permit.

 

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Chores and Awesome Lunch !!

Our friend Barry arrived yesterday and the preparations for our departure from Ensenada are accelerating. While Elaine stayed on the boat today and did chores, Barry and I headed downtown to get his immigration paperwork, have the boat checked out of Ensenada and to do some provisioning.

Of course we had to get some lunch and today's stop was at one of the fresh seafood carts on the side of the road. They specialize seafood cocktails and in cevice which is raw seafood (usually fish) "cooked" in lime juice and mixed with onions, cilantro and tomato. It is typically served on a tostada with hot sauce. We had a traditional ceviche, a mixed mussel and scallop ceviche, a clam ceviche and a mixed seafood cocktail (squid, mussel, scallop, clam and shrimp). It was all incredibly fresh and amazingly tasty. And the best part was it all cost $14 !! Below are some pics. Sorry about the quality, they don't so the experience justice. The food was so good, we were 3/4 finished before we remembered to take pics.

Tomorrow, we will do our final boat prep then head up to the hotel for their Thanksgiving Buffet with our friends Frank and Rachael then its off into the wild blue on Friday morning. We have a Mexican Cellular Internet Dongle so hopefully we will able to make quick posts but if the cell service is too sparse or too poor, don't worry if you don't see and posts or e mails until the 28th or 29th when we get to our first "major" stop at Isla Cedros.

Hanging Out With Frank and Rachael

Our old friends from Alameda, Frank and Rachael, arrived in Ensenada today to spend a week on their boat.

F&R left Alameda about 7 years ago to cruise the South Pacific. After that adventure they settled down in Arizona and we stayed in touch via e mail, Facebook, etc. until their identity was stolen, they lost their address book and went dark.

Fast forward to this summer. Elaine and I were in Marina Del Rey to take our nephews to Catalina. Due to a botched project in my part, I made an unscheduled stop at West Marine and who should I bump into but F&R!! Turns out Frank had just been transferred by his company to LA and with the move they decided to buy a new to them boat thus the trip to West Marine. What a great coincidence.

Today we all headed downtown for fish tacos and cervezas (at Hussongs). On the way home we stopped at the fish market and picked up 1.5 kg (3.3 lb) of fresh halibut and 24 oysters for dinner - all for less than $17 !!! The only reason it cost THAT much is we had the fish filleted for us which cost extra !!

Nothing like hanging out and catching up with old friends before heading out on an adventure to make new ones.

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One More Project Before All the Projects In La Paz

They say "cruising" is really just taking your boat to exotic places and fixing it. Well yesterday and today we got our first taste of  "cruising".

Technically, we were not fixing the boat as much as doing an upgrade. During our last weeks in San Diego, we met a bunch of out of town boats getting ready to head south. One couple I met was from Seattle where they lived aboard. As happens when two sailors start chatting, the discussion quickly turns to boats and boat projects. One project they did was to insulate the deck of their boat. In their case it was primarily done for winters in the NW. They said it worked really well in the cold and they were told to expect it to work just as well for the heat of the tropics. That definitely got my attention.

Neither Elaine nor I sleep well when it is hot. On TARDIS, the blue hull combined with the relatively poor air flow in the aft cabin make our boat warmer than most. We decided that the project would be worth doing but the material arrived too late for us to get it done in San Diego. Now while we won't be seeing any major heat for several months, the material took up quite a bit of space and we need the room in the V Berth for our friend Barry who is joining us for our first leg to La Paz. So while strolling around Ensenada and eating lobster sounded good, we buckled down and knocked the project out. It was not the worst project we have done but it was still pretty dirty and involved taking the entire aft section of the boat apart. One thing Elaine did like is that the boat was too messed up to spend the night aboard after the first day so we got a room at the adjacent hotel - can you say long hot shower ???

Hopefully our two days of work will be rewarded with many cool restful evenings. Somewhere down the road we will report on how it worked.

With that done, it is on to the fun stuff!! Tomorrow (Sat.) our friends Frank and Rachael are coming down to Ensenada to spend a week. They recently bought a new to them boat and they are keeping the boat in Ensenada to get some work done. We haven't spent quality time with them for quite a while so it is a bit of a reunion. We are really looking forward to it.

As of now, the 23rd is our "scheduled" departure date for La Paz but it is still too far out to get a sense of the weather so our plan is shall we say flexible.

Pictures from the San Diego to Ensenada Trip

 Sunrise over San Diego

Point Loma - Leaving San Diego

 Dolphins !!

Ensenada

 Sunset Over the Todos Santos Islands

Arrived safe and sound in Ensenada after a really nice although a bit chilly sail. Seas were flat and we saw lots of whales and dolphins. We are now at one of our favorite places, the Hotel/Marina Coral ( //www.hotelcoral.com/). We received a super warm welcome from the great folks in the office and our slip is right across from our friends Frank and Rachael's boat.

The saying goes that "Cutting the dock lines is the hardest part of cruising". I certainly understand the idea behind the saying as the last several months was a whirlwind. That said, nothing worth doing comes without effort (another pithy saying) and in the grand scheme of things we really did have it pretty easy so if we really did just knock off the hard part of cruising, then we are in for a ton of big fun going forward.

The internet seems pretty decent so I'll try and post some pics in the next couple of days.

Blast Off Aborted !!

Got up at 4:10am to shove off for Ensenada but it was raining !! With a storm coming in this weekend, it looks like we are stayin' in San Diego until Sun. or Mon. First lesson of cruising emphasized on Day 0 - stuff happens and you need to adjust. We have no schedule and we are sticking to it !!