Sail Cutthroat

First stop is Ensenada, Mexico.  Now you might ask why are we only going on such a short leg of 60 miles when we have almost 1200 to go???  Answer – we need to check into the county of Mexico to process through customs and get visas for our extended stay and Ensenada is the closest port of entry.  Many people wait until they get to Cabo San Lucas which is the next port of entry, but when they anchor along the way in various towns you’re not really legal.  So, we’ll stay on the legal side.  Besides, Ensenada is a neat little town and a great place to have our first Margarita.   In addition, it’s been a very hectic week getting all of the last minute tasks accomplished.  I think that no matter how long we had to do this, the last week would have been busy.  The list(s) kept growing the longer we were in San Diego.  So the time in Ensenada is really a time to rest up for the rest of this passage.  Enough of the preliminaries.

 Carol (our beloved crew) showed up at 0600 hrs with Pat.  Daughters, Sara and Rebecca, and grandson Aiden, came along to drive the cars home.  They were generous enough to loan us one of their cars for the past month since we returned from Florida in late September.  So we had a first class send-off leaving the dock at 0640.  We went all the way to the fuel dock to top off the engine and of course, Pat was there for the final farewell.  It’s hard to imagine that our slip at Sunroad Marina will not longer be ours and that we are leaving all of our friends in San Diego.   We have lived in San Diego the longest period of time since we’ve been married and we have many fond memories and great relationships.  We’ll miss all of this. The weather began with some fog (marine layer) and of course no wind – your typical San Diego weather.  We expected that scenario most of the way down, but to our surprise by 1100 hours we had 15 knots of wind out of the NW and building.  It actually was a steady breeze settling in at 20-25 knots most of the trip allowing us to sail most of the way.  Since we needed to get to Ensenada before close of business, we kept the motor on as well kicking in a couple of extra knots of boat speed (yes, we are still on too much of a schedule – but that changes once we leave Ensenada).The wind gods were very supportive along the way giving us great wind down here and kindly settling down to 5 kn. as we approached our destination, Cruiseport Marina. We settled into a slip at 4:30 PM just as planned.  Unfortunately, the Mexicans aren’t on a plan either and there was nobody in the office to check us in (what a surprise…).  So we just found our own slip and made a command decision – we’ll probably have to move today because we stick out about 10 feet into the fairway…not cool.

Today’s challenge is to get the paperwork accomplished so we can depart tomorrow.  We’ll let you know how that goes in tomorrow’s update.  Until then, we’ll assimilate into the Western Latino Time Zone – very similar to Eastern Latino Time.