We got to San Diego a little earlier than most cruisers as my family was flying in and meeting up with the rest of the San Diego contingent for a last farewell to us and a much needed family reunion…my mom, dad, aunt and uncle flew in from Chicago. My cousin flew in from New York. We all gathered up at my aunt and uncle’s house outside of San Diego along with my other cousin, her husband and their two kids. It was a great 5 days. We went to the best fish taco place this side of Mexico, had fabulous meals at the local family homes and got to talk for hours on end catching up with each other after years of being apart. We even got to be slave labor by helping my cousin wrap product for her new company. It was great…the most often asked question “what do you eat on the boat?” CB’s response…”astronaut food”:-) On Saturday we got all 13 ppl loaded onto the boat and went out for a sail. It started out a little windy and ended up a little beery. It was a great sail…even my uncle Mike who feared he may chum the waters had a great time…maybe it’s time for a boat Mike?:-) As usual CB pushed the envelope and provided entertainment/butt puckering as we sailed very close to a cruise ship.

CB says “we have right-away…he needs to yield to us:…uhhh okay cappy????

When I say “close”…I mean my uncle Tom could ask the guests where they were going and what they were having for dinner. Overall it was a great sendoff. We even got t-shirts to memorialize the event (thanks Jenny).

Front: “Palarran – San Diego Send Off 2103”
Back: “Where in the World are Tawn & CB…Charts…check, Life Jackets…check, Beer…?”
Funny thing, we had to go to West Marine to buy a bag of life jackets before everyone went out on the boat…and beer?…never an issue:-)

Fiona and Eliza came up with the idea to sign the back of the shirts….great idea girls.

Although we will miss you all, it was good to show everyone our seaworthy boat and share the knowledge we have gained over the years of research for this trip. We will be safe and think of you often. Here are some more photos of the weekend.

This is a first world sweat shop…imagine if you will CB wrapping fanciful little things in tissue paper…I got asked to opt out after my “field testing” the razor handles ended in to many broken razors…hey…you wanted to know if they were strong enough Jillian :O

Catching up on the back porch of my aunt and uncle’s home in Alpine, CA.

Thanks Mom & Dad for making me the sailor I am today…

Between family and a list of projects, we decided to get a dock for 2 weeks. I do not like being tied to a dock…it means no late morning coffee followed by noon breakfast as well as crap load of work. But we buckled down and got to it. Parts were bought, awnings and dinghy chaps were made and provisioning was done. We had to make the best of our time at the dock and the use of a friends car (no amount of thanks can cover how appreciative we were for this and all the other assistance you gave us Dan). After 2 weeks we left the dock and pretty much did nothing for a week before leaving for Ensenada.

The best part of cruising is taking more photos of your boat that anyone would ever care about in weird and out of focus framing options.

San Diego was cool…but much like any large metropolitan city…expensive and hectic. We can’t wait for the bottom job to be done and get back to cruising…let this adventure continue!

P.S.
You may be wondering what this dirty waffle thing is about…our friend Dan Freeman has been trying to get this going for years and we’re just trying to help him out. Here’s the breakdown: San Diego…Sandy Eggo….Dirty waffle….got it? I don’t know Dan…I think that may be second tier stuff:-\

Tawn is writing up an update about our time in San Diego, or as a good friend calls it “Dirty Waffle”. If you think about, it makes perfect sense.

We left San Diego late in the afternoon on the 21st so as to make it to Ensenada, Mexico just after sun rise. We stopped in Ensenada to 1) clear in to the the country, get our visas, and 2) to get our boat hauled out and have a bottom job done.

We were going to get the bottom job done last year in Seattle, but the quote we got from the boatyards up there were ridiculous. Doubly so, due to the fact that me and Tawn do 93% of the work on our boat ourselves. But grinding off bottom paint down the the gel coat is something that boatyards in Seattle will not allow you to do anymore. So they are able to hand you an estimate of $12,000 without batting an eye…..

I batted the shit out of my eyes and pooped my pants a little.

We had a friend or two that had the same work done on there boats here in Ensenada two years ago when they came down. So we followed their lead and waited till we got here.

Tawn emailed the boatyard (Baja Naval Marina) and got an estimate for the work we needed done. The estimate was $2500. That was infinitely more doable, and no need to change my pants afterwards.

We got here a day early and the yard hauled the boat and got it in the stands while we walked down to the Immigration office and got cleared into the country. Clearing customs here in Ensenada is insanely easy by the way. It’s all done in one building (room actually). Took us less than 30 minutes.

By lunch the next day they had the old paint ground off and were cleaning up the mess!

Originally they told us we would be here a week to 10 days, but at the pace they are going, I think it’s going to be shorter than that. Possibly we will splash on Monday.

We’ve been spending time hanging out with our friend Erlin on his boat Ventured. Some other friends of ours (Brad and Joanne, on Loukia) showed up today. So we are showing them around town. Since we’ve been here 48 hours, we are practically locals.

We have found many delicious street tacos and I am now on the hunt for a hammock, and a tortilla press. I’ve also been eyeing the dude selling bacon wrapped hotdogs…..those are really looking tempting.

Picture from the roof of the Marina Naval office roof.

I may or may not have supposed to have gone up there?

Seems like everybody keeping a sail blog does a “numbers” post. You know, miles traveled, money spent, Islands conquered (We totally beat the Maraschky’s)…….

I’m not gonna do one, mainly due to the fact that our chart plotter took a slow shit on us and while it did get replaced under warranty, part of the process to try and fix it involved resetting it back to factory default settings. Unfortunately for me, I forgot to make a back up of my trip log, so I only have a rough guesstimate as to how many miles we have traveled. So doing a numbers post stings a little. I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little pissed about that.

So instead of a numbers post, I’m gonna do a what we have lost and found post.

Since the lost column is longer, I’ll start there.

1) The Plastic cover from our Auto Pilot control box. Lost in Poulsbo. Second day out. Huge gust of wind blew it right out of the cockpit.
2) A white fender. Lost in the Straight of Georgia. Swept overboard.
3) My favorite lock blade knife. Flipped overboard at anchor in Shallow bay on Thurlow Island just before we got to the Broughtons.
4) Fishing reel. Tawn was doing some stunt fishing and the thing popped off the rod and went overboard. Kevin loaned us a spare he had on Andante
5) Seat cushion/flotation device. Went overboard somewhere between San Francisco Bay and Monterey. We don’t really know. It’s just gone.
6) A 7/16 inch socket. Tawn dropped it off the dock here in San Diego. I’ll never forgive her for that.
7) One pair of rusty pliers. I dropped them off the same dock the next day. I now forgive Tawn for dropping the socket.

Now for the plus column. As sad as it is.

1) An odd/old foam spool. Found it on a beach (Shed #4) on the outside of Vancouver Island. I use it for a fishing handline.
2) A fishing reel. We found that we did not return this to Kev at the end of the summer. Thanks Kev!!
3) A sombrero. Found floating it in the water about 3 miles from the coast of Catalina Island.

Ole`

I’ve been told that showing up in Mexico with your own (free range) sombrero is a massive sign of respect and marks you as a seasoned traveler. Not just some sun burnt, gringo tourist. So we totally got that going for us.