The Last Leg Home — Our 8-Month Baja Adventure is Officially Over

(*Sorry for the delay in posting. Life got busy once we got back to San Diego)

On Sunday, March 5, we awoke at 0300 to do the last minute things to get Kosmos ready to go to sea. We untied at 0400. It was about 60-nautical miles from Marina Coral to the mouth of the San Diego Bay. Here was the sunrise

The day was mostly overcast and grey. Had we not done the previous difficult passages to Bahia Tortuga and Ensenada, we would have said that the conditions were rough, but compared to those two, sea conditions weren’t all that bad. We were hobby horsing a lot, but the swells weren’t giant nor the intervals rapid enough to make it a miserable ride. We were all functioning normally (for the most part). Here is a “sail” boat passing us… in 5 knots of head winds.

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Playa Coyote in Bahia Concepcion to Caleta San Juanico

On Wednesday, October 19, at 0730, we pulled up anchor and headed north. As the sun was rising on the west side of the cove, the east side glowed in the early morning light.

Once we reached the mouth Bahia Concepcion, we rounded the corner into the Sea of Cortez, and headed south. The seas were calm. Overall it was a smooth and pleasant trip.

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February 2019 Update on Us

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Our big news is that we have moved back to San Diego! The San Francisco Bay Area was nice, and we did enjoy the boating up there, but we are deeply rooted in San Diego. Eric has returned to work at DivX, and he is excited by the new opportunities there. Keith is back at his former French language immersion school. We have mostly fallen back into our old routine. That includes helping our two remaining parents, who are both in their late 80s, very frail, and need a lot of help.

We returned in early January, when weather windows along the coast are few and far between. We lucked out and got an amazing weather window from San Francisco to San Diego in between two big weather systems. The window lasted three days, and we managed to get back into San Diego in (relatively) blazing fast 70 hours. Here is a photo of sea conditions:

Last year, we did a lot of work to Kosmos. We changed out both refrigerators and the washer/dryer, resealed the main engine keel cooler, installed a new wind sensor and display, installed a new inverter, got new bottom paint, and put Prop Speed on the keel coolers.

We’re hoping that life slows down for us soon so that we can find time to fix the technical issues with the blog site, as well as write posts about the work we’ve done to Kosmos and the places we’ve explored, both via boat and via land travel. Meanwhile, here is a pic from Angel Island, a small island park in the middle of the Bay:

Keith’s First Ocean Adventure: Enjoying Catalina, Then Back to San Diego

This is part three of a three part series. Click on the links for part 1 and part 2

Saturday morning we headed to shore right after breakfast. Keith was again furious about the life jacket, but this time his screams weren’t as hysterical as before. We quickly made our way over to Isthmus Cove, where Richard and Pam were waiting for us at the dock in their 1991 Sea Ray Sundancer 420. We hopped onboard. Here is Eric approaching the boat while holding Keith in the carrier.

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Keith’s First Ocean Adventure: Leg 2 Oceanside to Catalina

This is part two of a three part series. Read part 1 here

On Thursday, June 7, we took off bright and early from Oceanside. Conditions were almost the same as Wednesday, except the wave interval was 8 seconds instead of 10 and they were hitting us on the nose. Eric and Christi were both green almost as soon as we pulled out of the harbor. The good news, though, is that Catalina Island offered some shelter, so the closer we got, the better the sea conditions became.

Keith slept about half the time. While he was up, he seemed unaffected by the seas. We brought his changing pad upstairs, so diaper changing was no longer an issue. We saw the Hover Crafts again, and this time one came up very close to us so we got a good look at it. And a couple pods of dolphins came to visit.

We pulled into Catalina Harbor in the early afternoon and radioed the Harbor Patrol to get a mooring assignment. There were about a dozen boats in the mooring field and at least forty empty moorings. We were assigned a spot with no one around it so it would be easy for us to tie up. Amazingly, as we were motoring towards it, another boat tied to the mooring next to the one we were assigned to. We asked if we could move one over so we would still have plenty of space to maneuver. The Harbor Patrol said no problem.

The moorings at Catalina are a little different than any other mooring we’ve been on. Since it had been so many years since we’d been there, neither of us really remembered the right way to tie up. After some arguing and awkward fidgeting with the muddy lines (that left us both coated in mud), we finally got properly secured. “Ah,” we said to one another “It’s time to relax!”

Literally one minute later, the Harbor Patrol radioed us and let us know the slip we were on had just been reserved and we needed to move one over. Sigh.Now that we knew what we were doing, the second tie up was simple and completed in a few minutes.

That night we stayed onboard and enjoying the peacefulness of the anchorage. Here is a picture looking back at the entrance of Cat Harbor from Kosmos’ deck.

We started Friday off with Continue reading