We got up at midnight after a two hour nap. Everything was pretty well ready to go before we took our nap, so all we needed to do was warm up the engine before we pulled out. We untied and took off at around 1230.

At first the seas were ugly. Eric was really sick and Christi was green. It is kind of surprising to us how fast we lose our tolerance to the ocean. The longer we sit in port, the more likely we are to be green when we do finally go out again.

The seas slowly but surely calmed down throughout the night, and by dawn it was pretty darn flat outside. It was foggy out. Not so foggy that there was no visibility, but foggy enough that we couldn’t see the mountainous Mexican coastline at all. And we were running pretty close to shore.

We got to the US border at around 0900. We were expecting a coast guard cutter to be sitting on the border, ready to question us, but nothing was around except a fishing boat. All was quiet. On a clear day, you can see Point Loma from the border, but because of the fog, we couldn’t see it until almost 1100. We couldn’t see downtown until we were almost all the way to Point Loma.

We made a quick detour over to the outermost channel marker buoys. Two years ago we had videotaped ourselves leaving, and took footage of the markers. Now we were taking the same footage, but coming from the other direction. We turned into the channel for San Diego bay. Our San Diego to San Diego world circumnavigation was now officially complete. The journey is now officially over.

We had often wondered exactly how we would feel at this second. Would we be sad, glad, excited? But, surprisingly, we were both pretty mellow and totally unemotional. Maybe it was because we were tired from only 2 hours of sleep. But the lack of emotion was definitely more than just being tired. The glow and euphoria of completing the circumnavigation had faded after a few days in Ensenada.

In all honesty, at that second, it felt more like we had been in Ensenada for a 10 day vacation and that we were heading back to San Diego to go back to the usual work routine, just like we used to do before we left. It felt like we had never done the circumnavigation, that life was still status quo and hadn’t changed for us at all. Everything about this run had felt the same as before. Everything in the bay looked the same as before. It was like we had instantly stepped back into our old life and our old routine. It was kind of surreal.

We pulled in to the channel a little before 1200 and were tied up to the customs dock by 1215. You call the customs office on a phone and give them all your pertinent information, and then they send agents to inspect the boat. It took about an hour for the two customs agents to arrive. When they boarded, they explained that they had already done a background check on us and the boat and had classified us a “low risk”. The paperwork took about 45 minutes. The female agent questioned Christi and the male agent questioned Eric in separate rooms. They asked each of us the same questions separately to make sure we gave the same answers. Then they went through the boat with a little hand held gizmo that detects explosives. We asked what they do for people who aren’t “low risk” and were told they bring dogs and sometimes will confiscate the boat and tear it apart. Lovely.

We can honestly say that these agents were probably the strictest we have encountered in the entire world. They had no sense of humor. They emanated an aura that said “we’re going to find what you are hiding and bust you”. We’ve never had any feeling like that before anywhere else in the world. Even when we have encountered curt officials with no sense of humor (rare), they usually just want to do their job and leave, they aren’t trying to bust you.

Then we went to or slip and tied up. The first thing we did was get lunch from a favorite local sandwich shop and pick up our mail. Next, we went to a car dealership to buy a car. Eric had long ago chosen what he wanted. Since diesel had served us so well around the world, we got a 2009 Jetta turbo diesel.

We went over to Coronado to check out the dock where our “welcoming” was going to be tomorrow. They have been rebuilt in the time we were gone, so we wanted to make sure they were going to work out OK. The new docks are fine. We managed to stay up until 2200, then crashed hard.

Emotionally, our feelings varied throughout the day. One moment we’d feel like we never left and the journey never happened, at another moment we’d feel like we can’t believe we are home for good. Honestly, in a lot of ways we are having a hard time with the concept that we aren’t going to be traveling anymore. It really hasn’t sunk in yet.

We have to admit that being in San Diego feels good, mostly because it is so comfortable here. In Ensenada we felt like we were wearing an old pair of jeans. Here were feel like we are wearing flannel pajamas.