Christi was up before dawn yesterday. Don’t be too impressed”¦ the sun doesn’t rise until 0800 here. The pre-dawn silence was suddenly shattered by two people talking. One, who sounded like an adolescent boy with a changing voice, said “I like that boat Kosmos”. The other, a deeper adult male voice, said “Yours is much safer than that one. See the poles there? Those are stabilizers. That boat is so unstable that if you don’t put the poles down, then the boat could flip over.” Christi opened the back door to set the people straight that our deep draft full displacement boat was not about to flip over anytime soon, but no one was there. She presumed it was the people on the sport fisher next door talking to one another inside. Their lights were on and they were definitely awake. She considered going over and knocking on their door, but decided not to since there was a chance, though slight, that it wasn’t them talking. The sportfisher took off a few minutes later.

Eric got up shortly thereafter, rising with the first light of the day. Christi was feeling even better, the wind was lighter, and it was coming from a different direction, so she decided she was up for a kayak ride in the lagoon. We hopped into the kayaks and paddled out of the marina, planning to follow the same route Eric had taken yesterday.

As we passed the fuel station, we saw the sportfisher was tied up to the dock. We paddled up to the boat and said hi. There was a couple standing on the dock talking to the people on board. An early adolescent boy was amongst the group on board, so Christi was now 100% sure we had found the right group.

The sportfisher owner didn’t recognize us. Eric said “We are on the trawler next to you. We met a couple days ago”. The other couple on the dock said “Oh, you’re the couple on the Nordhavn? The ones who have almost finished your circumnavigation?” It turns out that this couple had chatted with the Kadey Krogen owner yesterday, who had told them about us. This opened the door for Eric to comment about how great and stable — our boat is. Ah, poetic justice. Eric was able to set them straight without them ever realizing we had overheard their remark.

Anyway, we chatted with them all for a few minutes. The couple also owns a Kadey Krogen located in the marina and invited us to come by after our kayak ride. The paddle was nice. It was a beautiful day. The only bummer is that the tourist boats were out in full force, and we were constantly dodging water taxis, banana boats, sport fishers and other recreational water toys that were flying by at high speeds. They tended to get disconcertingly close and to make huge wakes, apparently oblivious to the fact that wakes can be a problem for kayakers.

We cleaned up and went over to our new friends’ boat. We wound up staying for hours. We are definitely kindred spirits and we had such a good time with them. They have been cruising for 25 years, starting in their early 20’s, and have been pretty much everywhere in the entire world. We want to be like them when we grow up.

For dinner, we went to yet another restaurant in the hotel. This one served Asian food, and we tried a couple unusual sushi rolls. The first had crab, salmon, avocado and macadamia nuts. The best part was it was covered in a Japanese aioli sauce that was just phenomenal. The other one was prawn, coconut and avocado covered in a mango and ginger caramel. That was not as good as the first one, but still tasty.

The forecast for today was nice weather, so it was time to head out. We are making great time up the coast so far and are ahead of schedule, but we still shouldn’t dawdle here. The Cabo to San Diego stretch is notoriously vicious and chances are we will have lots of delays on that run, so by moving now it gives us the luxury of being choosier about the seas we travel in for that leg. We are both very nervous about that leg. A boat sinks just about every year doing that run up the coast.

Anyway, we were up early and immediately went to work on getting the boat ready to go. We had scheduled a bottom cleaning for 0800. Christi isn’t going to get in the cold water. Period. But even if the water were warmer, we may have hired them anyway because the price was reasonable at $1 per foot. Three people were down there working on it at once, so the cleaning went fast.

We untied and pulled out of the marina at 1030. Getting out of the slip proved to be challenging. A 116 foot Azimuth behemoth was tied to an end cap directly across the way. It was so monstrously big that it ate up most of the channel and left us little room to maneuver into. The crew was scrambling to get fenders out, terrified that we were going to ram right into them. But we were able to maneuver out without hitting them, clearing them by a good 2 feet (2/3 of a meter). Nothing bugs the eyes out of mega yacht people than close calls like that.

As we were exiting the channel, we saw at least half dozen boats all anchored in close proximity to one another right at the mouth of the bay. It looked like each boat had a diver down that was picking up shellfish. The people on board were shelling the seafood the divers kept bringing up. Interesting.

When we first left, the wind is coming from the south so the wind waves were with us, though the swell was still coming from northeast. The waves were gentle and the ride was pleasant overall. Our speed was really good, averaging close to 7 knots at 1700 RPM. We were grateful for each and every “easy mile” we did because we knew it wasn’t going to last. Oh, and we also saw two big turtles, which was exciting.

At around 1600, the wind started to shift around towards our nose and the seas picked up. The wind was light, though, and after a few hours the seas calmed back down. We suspect they picked up because the change in wind direction was causing confusion, and once the wind had settled in one spot, the confusion died down. We were both really green during that period of confusion, and as soon as it calmed down, we both felt better.

As of this writing at 2200, our speeds were still good, so Eric decided to speed us up to 1800 RPM’s in the hope we can make it to Cabo in 2.5 days instead of 3. We’re keeping our fingers crossed!