Category Archives: Cruising Guide

Information for other cruising boats. Our experiences finding places to anchor, dealing with officials, provisions, etc.

More About Part 2 of The Unexpected Circumnavigation

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Part 2 of The Unexpected Circumnavigation: Unusual Boat, Unusual People covering Australia to Oman is now on sale! Read the first few pages on Lulu’s “preview” feature and read an excerpt from Chapter 1 here (starts on page 18)!

Jeff Merrill wrote an extensive book review for the Nordhavn.com site.

Many people have asked us why they should buy our book if they can read our blog for free. Just like Part 1, the book is very different from the blog. Here are a few of the differences between the two:

  • Prologue: Picks up where the Prologue of Part 1 left off. It focuses primarily on the research we did as we planned for our journey and addresses the majority of the questions we were most frequently asked.
  • Several new stories from the journey – And there are some really good ones!
  • Many details have been added that were best left undisclosed while we were still on the journey (sometimes we didn’t want our parents worrying about us; sometimes we didn’t want to incriminate ourselves!)
  • In Retrospect sections with great insights — so you can see the situation through the eyes of a newbie as we learn, while simultaneously seeing the same situation through the eyes of experience.
  • Streamlined stories – some complained our posts were too long and detailed, the book is a condensed version they will enjoy more.
  • Formatting is first person, through Christi’s eyes – Some complained they didn’t like the third person format, so they will enjoy the book more.
  • Actual dates on each post. On the blog, the dates are not real time, which is a significant piece of information for anyone hoping to follow in our footsteps.
  • All profits will go to our cruising fund. The more books we sell, the sooner you can start reading about our next journey! So, buy one and get all your friends to buy one, too!

People have also asked us why we broke the series up into four books instead of only three. We had very different experiences in each of the four world regions, so it was best for each region to have its own volume.

  • In the South Pacific, Part 1, we spent most of our time in sparsely populated areas communing with nature. And we did a lot of rough sea time, learning about boating the hard way.
  •  In Asia, Part 2, we were mostly in densely populated areas building cultural bridges. Our sea experiences were also different from the Pacific, with both our best and worst passages occurring in this region.

Book Coming Soon!

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Volume 1, of the yet untitled book covering San Diego to Australia will hopefully be ready to purchase soon. Many people have asked us why they should buy our book if they can read our blog for free. Here are a few good reasons:

  • Prologue: How we formed the dream and the early planning stages.
  • The entire 21 day passage from San Diego to Nuka Hiva has been re-written. At that point, the blog was in real time and we didn’t want people to worry about us. But the truth was that it was tough!
  • Many new stories from the journey – And there are some really good ones!
  • In Retrospect sections with great insights — so you can see the situation through the eyes of a newbie as we learn, while simultaneously seeing the same situation through the eyes of experience.
  • Streamlined stories – some complained our posts were too long and detailed, and the book is a condensed version they will enjoy more.
  • Formatting is first person, through Christi’s eyes – Some complained they didn’t like the third person format, so they will enjoy the book more.
  • Actual dates on each post. On the blog, the dates are not real time, which is a significant piece of information for anyone hoping to follow in our footsteps.
  • All profits will go to our cruising fund. The more books we sell, the sooner you can start reading about our next journey! So, buy one and get all your friends to buy one, too!

The San Diego to San Diego World Circumnavigation is Completed!

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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 Continue reading →

Reflections on How We Have Changed Since We Were Last in Ensenada

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This morning we went out to breakfast as soon as we got up at another favorite restaurant of ours, El Rey del Sol, in downtown Ensenada. It is also just a few blocks from the marina, but in the opposite direction from Los Veleros. The marina is built next to a river, and we noticed a different kind of dredging machine in the river. Eric wants one.

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We walked by the new construction near the marina and were kind of surprised to see that little is done beyond the frame. This project has been planned for several years now, and grading work had begun while we had Kosmos here. And, come to think of it, the sign was gone. There used to be a big sign saying a museum was going to be built here. We wonder if that means the museum project has been abandoned.

Along the rest of the walk, everything else looked much the same. Several buildings were occupied by different businesses than before, but the buildings still look the same. There are a lot of coffee houses now. Coffee houses must be the new rage.

The restaurant was Continue reading →

Welcome Back to Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico

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It turns out that the change in wind direction last reported was part of one of those convergence zones. Around 0100 this morning, the wind had picked up to 18 21 knots and the seas followed suit. It was still coming from the port forward quarter, but we were bouncing around like crazy and getting a lot of sea spray on the windows. Sigh. Then at around 0300, we passed out of the zone and all went back to being status quo. Actually, today may have even been a touch smoother overall than yesterday. We find the windy patches along this coast to be really weird.

The most odd thing that happened today was a private jet flew by so low that it showed up on radar. It was definitely flying at less than 1,000 feet, and maybe was even as low as 500 feet.

We were all in incredibly high spirits all day. Christi and Eric were on cloud nine, really. The stars have to have aligned for us for this run, because everything about this leg has been so perfect in every way (except Trevor being sick, of course). The amazing weather. Completing the Baja run in about 1/3 to 1/4 of the time we had anticipated it would take since we didn’t have to stop. Seeing the whales. And now we were literally counting the minutes until our circumnavigation was complete. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any better, it did. We got word from Eric’s company that a project he has worked on for the last 8 years has finally come to fruition. Wow. His project and our circumnavigation are basically done the same day. That is just unbelievable! It is seriously too good to be true! As you can imagine, after we got that news, we were beyond elated. And Trevor was so excited to be sharing the joy with us.

At 18:29 exactly, we officially reached a point we had been to before. We crossed the circumnavigation line, near the island of Todos Santos at 31- 46N and 116-46W.

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It’s real. We did it.

Our chart plotter numbers each and every waypoint we enter into it. After we got to that mark, we made a course change to follow our previous line back into Ensenada harbor. That was waypoint number 892. Once back on the line, the next course change was at waypoint number 6. Number 6! It seems like a lifetime ago in Continue reading →