The month of October went by like a flash, with us moving south through California, leaving little time for blog updating. We left San Francisco on September 30th and got to San Diego on November 7th. This was probably faster than we would have liked, but weather and other factors rule the day, even if we don’t care about time as much.

A bit about our trip south from my perspective. The first leg of our route took us from Sausalito to Pilar Point, the main harbor north of Half Moon Bay. This is primarily a fishing “village” which gets many land visitors from The Valley over the ridge. You should read Rachel’s post about Pillar Point, if you haven’t. We found it a nice place to hang out and explore. It has easy access to all sorts of facilities, cheap moorage, easy anchoring, lots of good food and plenty of things to do. It was also the only place we’ve been where they had tandem showers (a big room with two shower heads). I guess one could describe them as prison showers, but there was beautiful tile-work so I prefer to think of it as tandem (sorry no pictures of that).

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From Half Moon bay we travelled to Santa Cruz. This hop was a relatively quick day trip, which was mostly in light winds and fog, sailed and motored with our friends on s/v Priya nearby. We decided to moor in the Santa Cruz harbor, and we got to a visit a friend, do laundry, and explore the city from the water point of view. After a few days we hopped over to Monterey, which was a highlight of the central coast. We got “stuck” in Monterey a little longer than planned because of the weather systems, and we quickly realized that from here the hops would be longer, overnight legs.

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“After a few days in Santa Cruz we hopped down to Monterey, which was a highlight of the Central coast (along with Morro Bay).”

We made the overnight jump to Morro bay where we found plenty of sea otters and sailing friends to keep us occupied until the next hop to Santa Barbara. We timed that hop perfectly and arrived in Santa Barbara to beautiful warm weather that kept us busy for a week. We got to experience so much in S.B., and it was really hard to leave. Point Conception was nice to us, and we managed to avoid getting tangled up in Kelp, or South Bound Baja-ha-ha’ers.

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The next hop took us to Oxnard, to break up the trip to Long Beach. In L.B. we got to connect with an old friend and do a lot of exploring. We took a sail to Catalina Island from Long Beach, with our friend aboard, and had a wonderful long weekend exploring the island. The sail over was fantastic, in perfect breeze and sea state.

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And then we made the long hop to San Diego where we had a flurry of friends, family, and Mexico preparations.  All of that made the two weeks fly by as well. 

We have a bunch of blog posts either as ideas or in draft form about the portions in Southern California, including an interesting post Rachel has put together on the oil rigs off the coast. There’s lot of pictures of otters, dolphins and more, and I guess you should really follow Rachel on Instagram as she’s been much better about posting pictures (rohunter40 on the ‘gram).

“San Diego was a flurry of activity, friends, family, and preparation.”

On-ward to Mexico, that’s what this blog post was about right? The good news is we got into Mexico quite easily, paperwork wise. We completed our Check-in procedures on day one and we had a solid plan to hop down the Baja coast.  The bad news, as we were making the transit to our check-in port of Ensenada (about 70 miles away from San Diego bay) we developed a strange noise in our propellor, shaft or something in the aft part of the boat, making it really questionable to proceed the next 700 miles without addressing the issue. More on that in a bit.

First a bit about our trip out of San Diego. This departure was interesting in two ways, the timing and the military action around San Diego. With the short days now and the distance we needed to cover, there was no way to leave and arrive during daylight without slowing down quite a bit, so we timed it to leave a couple of hours before sunset and arrive at sunrise, making a plan to go no more than 3.5 to 4 knots.

You see, from here on in slowing down is the main theme. First off, Baja is big, the winds are light, and we don’t want, nor can we, motor the whole way.  So even sailing in light winds, with 3 to 4 knots of boat sped would see us making 75 miles a day and we could cover the whole distance in 10 days of sailing (not counting rest breaks at the few anchorages that are viable). That’s really not bad, throw in some motoring, and we have a good mental handle on how to manage the Baja coast. So our first leg from S.D. to Ensenada was the perfect chance to practice slowing down.

With those slow down themes, and all the timing considerations, we left San Diego Monday afternoon, November 22nd, about 2 hours before sunset with the goal of having a pleasant overnight sail and arriving around 6am.

“All right with the world, and the navy didn’t have to shoo us out of their way.”

As we left San Diego, there was the most phenomenal chatter on the VHF radio, what amounted to a series of code words, it was all very strange, but definitely military and certainly serious.  As we made our way out of the bay, I started stitching the pieces together, there was probably a submarine heading out under extreme Navy escort.  Fighters were scrambling, helicopters were circling, and smaller boats were running all over the place.  It was all quite amazing. About two dozen sailboats were out in the ocean, kind of odd for a Monday, maybe a regatta, who knows, and they were being held up by the Navy from coming back. But somehow our timing was pretty perfect (unintentionally of course) and we just sort of drifted out of the channel, put up our sails in 8 to 10 knots of northerly breeze and headed for Ensenada.  All right with the world, the Navy never had to shoo us out of their way.

Of course, around sunset the wind started moderating and by 6pm it was completely dead. I haven’t even seen such calm conditions on Lake Washington, much less the Pacific Ocean. The motor went on and we dialed it in just above idle, about 1200 rpms and tried to make as little forward way as possible in completely flat seas with a current pushing us south. Our calculations showed an arrival of about 6 am, right at sunrise, and the boat computer agreed, so we settled in for the next 12 hours of slow speed motoring down the coast. And then the vibrations started from the back of the boat…

The trip down was otherwise unremarkable save for one fishing boat that almost hit us.  This large power boat had lights on all around. No navigation lights that could be seen, just extremely bright, white, lights. Four on each sector, fore, aft, starboard and port.  To boot, there was no AIS and I received no radar reflection from the boat. It’s difficult to tell such an object is stationary, moving towards us or away from us at night. Navigation lights have been invented for a reason. I understand that fishing boats don’t run AIS in their fishing grounds, but transiting from point A to point B?? Hmph.

“We were on a direct collision course.”

Suddenly, and as if by magic, the lights got bigger. This _thing_ was coming towards us! And at high speed. It was eerie how quickly this object that looked like no issue became a serious threat.  I turned to starboard, perpendicular to his path and accelerated. The lights continued to get bigger.  We were on a direct collision course, his ship aimed directly for us amid-ship. He was moving at least 15 knots, probably more. I accelerated more as he approached and finally passed within about 50 feet.  We would have made a direct collision had I not changed course. Behind us, the boat presented a great radar reflection, by the way.  

With those crazy lights, the driver of the boat (if at the helm all) would be completely blind and I’m sure he had no idea we were there or that he nearly plowed over us.  Quite irresponsible and really bad form on his part, but this is why we keep watch. I guess his idea is just to present as super bright a target as possible and hope everyone else stays out of his way.

Anyway, that was pretty much it for crazy stuff, minus the vibration from the boat that had both of us concerned, and once we got into port in Ensenada (right at 6am as calculated), we found our slip, previously reserved, and docked and went to sleep.

We were awakened about two hours later by the dock master who welcomed us and explained the procedures.  Next, a doctor arrived to check our medical history, note down our vaccination status, take our temperatures and give us the medical ok. About one hour after this the dock master escorted us to the Ensenada Port Captain’s office (about a 10 minutes walk). There we received our Mexican Temporary Import Permit (TIP), our immigration paperwork, and the port entry paperwork. We also received instructions on how to get our fishing licenses for Mexico, which we completed online a little later in the day. All told, we spent about an hour and half and we were all done. It was all painless, super easy and quite efficient.  Back at the boat we took down our Q flag, put up our courtesy flag, we had some lunch on the boat and went to sleep.

On Wednesday it was time to face reality. We performed some diagnostics on the boat.  Then we went to see if the boat yard could help us and they seemed hopeful that they could, They told us they would schedule a haul out or help us find a diver. We had a chance to get some incredible lunch at a local restaurant, one of the best meals I’ve had,  and we started to relax into the new country.  Unfortunately by Thursday we found out the yard has no mechanic available until January and they couldn’t help in any other way. A diver was available but we couldn’t see much point in hiring him at that point, with no access to repair services.

“The main boat yard in town is fully booked until January . . . But they might be able to haul us out to eliminate the propeller as an issue.”

On Friday we found another local mechanic who kindly agreed to take a ride with us and help us troubleshoot the issue.  We did a few tours around the bay, and we were pleased that they ruled out the engine, motor mounts and transmission and helped us narrow down the problem to either the prop shaft, cutlass bearing, or our MaxProp feathering propeller. 

These knowledgeable mechanics have a small yard of their own, but it has very little space, a very small travel lift for hauling out, and not a lot of space to dock up, so our only plan of action as of Friday was to order all the parts that we may need and see where we can get a haul out.  With the Thanksgiving holiday, that meant waiting for Monday, November 29th to procure parts.

It’s been quite a week of ordering parts, and shepherding them towards us. Crossing our fingers, all of the parts will be in San Diego by today, Friday the 3rd.

It’s been a miracle of parts ordering. The new cutlass bearing had to come from Europe, to San Rafael, and then to San Diego. Would you believe it, it’s out for delivery right now. That just blows my mind.

As to the propeller, we do have a fixed blade prop on the boat, but we really don’t want to slow the boat down more if we can help it, and the first owner of the boat recently gifted us a spare MaxProp propeller among a lot of other boating gear, books and supplies. Our friend Elliot shipped it on Tuesday, and wait for it, it’s out for delivery right now. Also mind blowing. Thank you for our shore crew in Seattle!! 

“It’s been a miracle of parts ordering . . . Thanks to our friends, family, and vendors.”

Meanwhile the boat yard may have found an opening to haul us out next week (week of December 6th). With the haul out with can figure out if it’s the cutlass bearing or the prop. If it’s the prop, we slip on the newly reconditioned MaxProp shipped by Elliot, get back in the water and we’ll be ready to leave Ensenada. If it’s the cutlass bearing? Then we might be here until January! Wooo.

In Seattle there are divers that could do the MaxProp work in the water, but that’s not something I’ve been able to find here in Ensenada. We replaced the cutlass and shaft in 2018, and it’s hard to imagine that they’ve failed since that time, but anything could have happened I suppose.

“We are a sailboat and we can just leave if we want and deal with this later, but neither of us think it’s a good idea to put this issue off.”

And that’s how it’s going.  We are spending the days exploring Ensenada, trying not to eat too much of the amazing food here, we’re studying Spanish, trying to communicate with as many locals in Spanish as possible, we are doing a few small projects on the boat, we’re making the best of it as much as we can. We’re a sailboat and we can just leave and head south, but dealing with a prop issue will not really be an option until Cabo or La Paz, and with the light winds down the coast of Baja, we will certainly have to motor at some point. Meanwhile, going back to San Diego will mean a giant immigration hassle, a lot of cost and frustration, including having to throw out so much of the food stocks we have on-board. So even with all the frustrations here, trying to deal with these issues here seems like the best of the options available to us. 

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It’s great to know we are not alone, friends and family are doing their best to help us.  The first owner of the boat jumped to help us with information and more. Our friends at Brion Toss rigging helped us come up with a plan to haul out at the small yard if it comes to that (our back stay has to come off and the forestry may need adjustment to do that), our Volvo dealer (Helmut Marine in San Rafael) got the part from Europe in four days!! Elliot got the the propellor to us in four days!! And Rachel’s uncle has offered to meet us half way to get the parts. 

There’s a lot to be thankful for. A LOT.

We’ve known cruisers that have been stuck for weeks or months in more remote places doing extraordinary bits of boat repair, and they may not have had amazing fish tacos and micro-brewerys within a few hundred yards of their anchorage, so, yes, yes, there are lots of positives.

Maybe we will catch up with some of those fun blog posts, including some pictures of Ensenada foods. Hopefully our Spanish will get better. All for now, from Ensenada, Mexico, adios!