Sunday, November 18, 2007

Bahia San Carlos

Daily dolphin sightings haven't lost their delight
yet! We are anchored in Bahia San Carlos, roughly
100miles south of Ensenada. We pulled in and were
anchored by about 8am today. In fact, we could have
been here earlier except that we slowed down in the
night so we could have daylight for the anchoring
process. On shore are a few campers/belonging to
windsurfers/surfers/kiters, one building belionging to
a windsurf camp, and then further in a group of pink,
light blue and plywood colored fish camp shacks.
Steve, we are totally thinking about you right now
since you were just here!! Wish we could see you now.
We landed our dinghy below the fish camp near the
fishermen's launches. Our first touch of Mexican
sand! It's cool except we haven't gotten to meet any
locals yet unless the windsurfers that spend half the
year here count. Let's see, it took us 3 nights and 2
days to get here from Newport and it's a relief to be
off duty for the next day or two. We are in the
process of figuring out the next hop down the coast,
depending on weather and Ron's schedule. The nights
are broken up in to 3 hour shifts which means We each
get at least get at least 6 hour shifts. Having
Deyess on board has been a huge help and makes our
job less exhausting. Night shift has been beautiful (
except for the one foggy night) and quiet which has
meant I've gotten in reading in between checking the
radar and our position. This is no easy thing we've
undertaken and it's actually nice to get some quiet
time.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Mexican Waters

Well, we entered Mexican waters at 6:03 am today. To our port and about 3 miles away was a navy warship patrolling and 3ish miles further south was a Mexican Navy boat. Both pacing back and forth on parallel tacks. Very interesting to be playing at war on a morning like this one. The water was as smooth as glass and the engine purring at 1000 rpms pushed waves out of the way that reflected the stars. I was on the 4am till morning shift and I have to say it was the nicest one. The weather was warm enough that I didn't have to be thickly bundled and I sat by our navigation equipment writing in my journal to their glow. After the brown orange to the east wore off, "Los Coronados" a small group of jagged islands were silhouetted in front of the sun. Around the same time a group of 5-7 dolphins started playing in front of our bow. The water was clear enough to see them dive deep after splashing just under our bowsprit. They visited for at least half an hour.

After breakfast of waffles and bacon I got a hot shower (since the engine ran all night);Deyess and Brian changed the head sail and our day looks warm and a little too light on wind to sail without the engine. But very comfortable.

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Friday, November 9, 2007

Newport beach and beyond

November 6, 2007 Nomad has travelled from Monterey to
San Simeon (with a view of Hearst Castle)around Point
Conception in Southern California. There, we met
another cruising couple, had tea and nibbles. The
most important thing about meeting these guys, Linda
and Steve, is that they solved my problem of getting
sea sick! Stugeron (a non-prescription med sold
anywhere but the US)has made my sailing days more than
just keeping still and keeping my eyes shut. I've
been cooking, cleaning, reading, navigating, studying
charts all while we're moving. Let's just say that
this stuff has worked better than any of the various
things I've tried in the US. I could use that great
segue to rant about the evil of large insurance
companies running the FDA with their lobby groups
but...
We also met up with an old friend Chris and another
friend Deyess who sailed on Chris' boat to the Channel
Islands at the same time we did. It's buddy boating
at its best. Brian has had guys to surf with and we
keep learning little things from each other about
boats.
We have spent the last 2 nights (tonight will be 3) at
anchor on the Channel Islands. For two nights we
heard the grunting of male elephant seals from the
beach. We were anchored right in front of a colony
and walked around them when we took a hike on shore.
My favorite thing was seeing their large tracks in the
sand. It looked like dead bodies had been drug up and
down the sand dunes. Actually it was the large-eyed
baby elephant seals looking for just the right spots
to hang out. Speaking of dead bodies. Chris and
Deyess sawtwo human skulls and leg bones on top of one
of the sand dunes. They also saw an old stone bowl
that had been used for grinding grain, etc. Yup,
these islands used to be inhabited by Indians (don't
remember the name of the tribe). No worries, they
left the items as they found them and just took
pictures.

Tomorrow we leave the south side of Santa Cruz island
and head back to "civilization" in Southern Cal. for a
few days and then onward to Baja California. I'm
already practicing my Spanish in my head!


November 9
We're snugly in Newport Beach on a 5$ per night
mooring ball directly next to Balboa Island where
houses range from 2-3 million each. I find it ironic
that we share the exact same landscape. The only real
difference is they have cute golf carts to drive
around and we have a skateboard and rusty bike when we
get to shore.

We've got Deyess coming down to join us in a few days
so that the trip from here to Mexico will be more
doable and less exhausting.

Our tasks here in Newport are to finalize insurance,
figure out our customs procedure for entering Mexico
by boat, figure out where to do laundry, run the
electrical for our new solar panels and the wind
generator. We're still trying to find places for
things we crammed onto the boat before we left and
oddly enough, just the other day I found two cabinets
that had hardly anything in them! So, the organizing
goes on.
I'm continually amazed at how God has provided for us.
We're on a tight budget; the 5$ mooring balls,
reimbursements from insurance companies!!, hearing
about Minney's a Marine Surplus store close to us,
etc. are all reminders that we are being taken care of
just when we need it.

another awesome sunset



This one was taken on November 6 as we sailed from Santa Cruz Island to Santa Catalina Island. The island you see is San Nicolas. I think it is off limits because it's used by the military. This is the same day we did the sewing under sail.

Pfaff



This was our first time pulling out our awesome 1940s Pfaff 130 sewing machine while sailing! Since we were sewing through about 5 layers of webbing, Brian turned the handcrank and I guided the fabric through. Very satisfying!... and all at 6 knots of speed.

Surf buddies


Here are the Happy guys off to find surf. From Boat to board in just a few seconds!

Coho




This is a picture of a surfer at Coho (just east of Point Conception). Directly behind you can see Nomad and Metaphor ( our friend Chris's boat). The guys have been stoked on the large South swell that came through this past week. They got to surf in this spot, also.