sailing casita

Since our last post from Avalon we have been to San Diego, Ensenada, Turtle Bay, and we just arrived in Bahia Asuncion. This will be a fairly long post as I try to bring the blog up to date.

San Diego

From Avalon we went directly to San Diego and tied up at the municipal guest dock where we spent 2 days. In addition to the municipal dock (not free) the port of San Diego also manages a few anchorages which are free, the anchorages and the guest dock all require reservations and all have various time restrictions. The Baja Haha fleet was in town so space at the dock and in the anchorages was pretty limited so we bounced from place to place taking what was available. While in San Diego we did a lot of walking, it was about 1.5 miles from the dock to the area with the marine supply stores and we did that walk several times, plus walked to some more outlying areas for groceries. We bought several things for the boat including some line (rope), shorter battens for the mainsail, and Starlink (satellite communication device). We also bought a few things on Amazon and had them delivered to Whole Foods, which was not within a reasonable walking distance so we took a Lyft both ways for that.

From one of the anchorages we loaded up our laundry and dinghied to shore, then carted it about a mile to a laundromat. When we got back to the dinghy dock another dinghy was just tying up next to ours, Devon recognized it right away, it was our previous dinghy. We had sold it to a guy in San Francisco who was planning to do the Haha, so not entirely unlikely but still a surprise to see it.

The last anchorage (called La Playa Cove) we used before leaving San Diego was very crowded, the area is quite small for the number of permits they issue so boats have no choice but to anchor fairly close to each other. Everyone tries to find a spot not too close to other boats, how close is too close is hard to define and it is something we are still figuring out. Boats move around differently at anchor and people put out different amounts of anchor chain so distance to other boats is not static and sometimes you just need to re-anchor if swinging too close. Boaters also seem to have different comfort zones, kind of like personal space, what is too close for one person might seem perfectly reasonable to someone else.

At La Playa we witnessed the most blatant example of anchoring too close that we’ve ever seen. A fairly large ketch (type of sailboat with 2 masts) pulled into the anchorage and headed to an open area between us and a couple of other boats. It wasn’t a big opening but it might have been okay, if the ketch hadn’t been towing a powerboat behind it (which had another smaller powerboat rafted to it). This put the powerboat right next to one of the already anchored sailboats, which the powerboat then drifted into. The person on the ketch then proceeded to try to pull the powerboat along side it (by pulling on the tow line) while the person on the powerboat used one hand to try to push away from the anchored sailboat while using the other hand to hitch up his saggy shorts that kept trying to fall down. There was a lot of discussion and tossing of lines and the guy on the powerboat kept going back and forth between the boats, it seemed a bit chaotic. They eventually got the powerboat rafted to the ketch and thankfully decided to move to a roomier spot.

Overall impressions of San Diego are that it is a pretty boater friendly town but not so much pedestrian friendly. Crosswalks were very far apart and often (and for no obvious reason) one side of an intersection would not have a crosswalk. No big deal I suppose but when you’ve already walked a mile and a half lugging a bunch of stuff it is annoying to basically go straight, left, left, right instead of just going left.

Once you are in VHF range of San Diego it is very obvious that it is a Navy town. It seemed they were constantly doing various war games, including some live fire exercises, so the radio was full of various hales advising boats to avoid certain areas. There were also lots of calls between the military ships on channel 16 (the hailing/distress channel used by all boats). It was strange to hear a warship (how they identified themselves) hailing a submarine advising them to change course or whatever. Don’t they have some sort of secure military channel they use?

Ensenada

The trip from San Diego to Ensenada was uneventful, though we left well before dawn and maneuvering close to land and other boats in the dark is not the funnest thing ever. Pretty eerie actually, we were very glad to have radar.

For me the highlight of the trip down was raising our “Q” flag when we crossed into Mexican territorial waters! The “Q” flag is a yellow flag used to signify that you are a foreign vessel that has not yet completed the formalities to officially enter the country. Raising the flag felt like a big moment, kind of like getting the first stamp on your passport. There is no anchorage in Ensenada so we had reservations at a marina for 2 nights. The marina provides free assistance with the clearing in process, which was very nice. We did some of the paperwork at the marina office the afternoon of our arrival and the next morning we were driven to the offices of customs, immigration, and port captain to complete the process. In most places these offices are completely separate and may be across town, but in Ensenada they have conveniently put them all in the same building, simplifying the check in process.

The most memorable experience from our time in Ensenada was our trip to a gas station for diesel. The gas station was about a mile from the marina, we strapped two 5 gallon jerry cans onto our little luggage cart and walked to the station. Our poor cart would be grossly overloaded with 2 full jerry cans (and the sidewalks were in pretty rough shape so even with 1 can it would have been tough going) so we decided to Uber back to the marina. My phone had okay reception at the marina, but at the gas station I had only 1 bar of 3g so the Uber app wouldn’t load. We were considering lugging the diesel a block or 2 in search of better reception when a motorized tricycle came pulling into the gas station tooting its horn. I figured it was a taxi so I waved him over, but it turned out he was selling tamales. When I explained (in broken Spanglish) that we didn’t need tamales, we needed a ride, he offered to drive us to the marina. The passenger area was full of tamale coolers but he managed to find space in the back for one of them so we negotiated a fare, loaded up our diesel, squeezed in next to the tamales and off we went. The ride was short but a little wild, he was a pretty aggressive driver weaving in and out of traffic, accelerating up to stopped traffic, etc. I was hanging onto the tamale cooler trying to keep it from falling out, Devon was simultaneously trying to keep himself from falling out and using his foot to keep the diesel can in the front from taking a tumble on the hard turns.

Passage to Turtle Bay and Bahía Asunción

On the map at the top of this post the long leg that starts just south of the “Highway 1” sign is our trip from Ensenada to Turtle Bay. This trip took 67 hours, or 5 hours shy of 3 days. The trip is mostly a blur, I have to look at my journal to remember most of the details. For the most part we had good sailing conditions, the first day out we had almost no wind but what we had was from the south and there was a current trying to take us north. The forecast was for no improvement in that area for the next 24 hours so we ended up motoring for a few hours to get to where the wind was. If you click the map it will take you to a live map where you can zoom in and see our futile efforts to make progress.

One moment that stands out is being surrounded by a pod of feeding dolphins, it looked at first like there were lots of whitecaps, but it was all dolphins for almost as far as we could see!

Then there was the wave that randomly came up and smacked Casita on the side, knocking Devon off of the settee where he was sleeping (or trying to anyway). I was in the cockpit and got knocked off of the helm seat and soaked with seawater. This was in the middle of the night of course, so I didn’t see the wave and have no idea how big it was. Even though we had our enclosure up somehow enough water made it in to wash a bunch of neatly coiled lines and a rug into the footwell and wash a cushion up onto the helmseat I had been sitting on. It also shorted out a light switch, so suddenly the cockpit was bathed in bright light, then the light starting blinking on and off. It was all rather surreal.

But top honors for most memorable moment have to go to Devon getting hit in the eyeball by a flying squid! This happened a few hours after the wave, still the middle of the night. Devon was on watch standing in the companionway looking out through an open dodger window when he felt something that felt more solid than seawater hit his eye. He looked around with his flashlight and found this poor little guy looking back at him!

A short time later another squid hit the windscreen and after the sun came up Devon found 4 more on deck. We must have gone through a school of them feeding at the surface and they got kicked up in the spray as we went through the waves. Poor guys!

We finally arrived at Turtle Bay at about 2am the next day and it was 3:30 by the time we were anchored. We try to avoid entering anchorages at night, but this one is big enough and the entry is wide enough that we felt it was safe to do so. Again, we were very glad to have radar because it was pitch black, the moon having set a few hours before. The Haha fleet was anchored in the bay and left early the next morning so when we arrived there were literally over 100 anchor lights, but in the morning there was only one other boat.

We spent an uneventful day anchored in Turtle Bay. I think the highlight of the day was finally getting to take a shower! The next day we departed for Bahía Asunción, which is were we are right now. This was a day trip, so no night watches. We spotted a whale (too brief for photos), and we did a little fishing but we we lost 2 fishing lures and caught zero fish. Argh! Today we took the dinghy ashore to get some groceries, there isn’t a dock here so we had to land the dinghy on the beach. There wasn’t a whole lot of surf, but enough to make it a little stressful getting onto and off of the beach. This is something that we have very little experience with, we definitely need more practice!