Where in the World Are We?

We interrupt “blog time” to bring you a “real time” announcement”¦ Yesterday, April 21st, 2009, at 1730 Pacific time, we officially completed our world wide circumnavigation! No, we aren’t back in San Diego yet. We are in Ensenada, Mexico, but since we have been to Ensenada on Kosmos before, we technically “tied the knot” when we arrived here.

We plan to complete our San Diego to San Diego World Circumnavigation on Saturday, May 2. Several people have said they would like to see us physically pull into San Diego, so we are going to have a “Welcoming” at the public dock on Coronado Island, which is behind the restaurant named Peohe’s at 1210 First Street, Coronado, CA 92118. Our welcoming is not associated with Peohe’s, so don’t wander in there looking for us, come right out to the dock.

We should be arriving to the dock around 10:00 am, depending on how long it takes to clear customs. We plan to stay at the dock about two hours or so. This is not a party there won’t be food or drinks. It is not an open house, either we won’t be giving tours or rides on board Kosmos. But we will visit with everyone who comes out to welcome us home. We are excited to see our friends and family again on that day, and looking forward to meeting any blog readers who may decide to come out.

We know, we know”¦ you probably want to know why the blog says we are in Dominica when we are really in Ensenada. Think about it logically. We write a journal entry every day, but we only post 5 days a week. Over the 2 years, we have fallen progressively farther behind real time.

But wait”¦ now that you are done, will the blog postings stop? No, we’ll continue to post our daily journal in “blog time” through to the end of the trip, so you have several more months worth of posts to look forward to. And there are some good stories coming up! For example our trip through the Panama canal, white water rafting in Costa Rica, anchoring in 40 knot winds in Nicaragua, eating tacos pastor in Huatulco, our trip summary, and many more.

Los Coronados and Paravanes

Departing October 7, 2006 from San Diego, CA arriving October 7, 2006 to Los Coronados, Mexico and returned October 8, 2006 to San Diego. The Los Coronados Islands are just east of Tijuana and are part of Mexico. They are the closest islands to San Diego. It takes about 4 hours for Kosmos to get there from her slip. We were joined by several friends and Eric’s cousin for a total of 6 on board. The islands are a nature preserves and you are not allowed to set foot on them. A decent anchorage is at 32°23’58.13″N 117°14’21.86″W, but watch out for the aqua culture nets just to the south at 32°23’35.36″N 117°14’4.57″W. In fact a boat got caught in some lines near that area. We heard them calling for help and altered course and went to full throttle to help them. Continue reading

Ensenada Recap

Ensenada is about a 2 hour drive from San Diego, and we were fools for not visiting there long before we got Kosmos. Ensenada is safe, easy, and friendly. It is a nice get-a-way with very reasonable prices compared with the USA.

We spent most of our time aboard Kosmos either underway or working on various boat projects, but we were able to venture out a few times and see things. Here are some pictures: Continue reading

Ensenada to San Diego Pictures

There is little to report from our trip from Ensenada to San Diego. But we did take a few pictures we wanted to share.

As we headed north and the sun rose we looked back and saw the loading cranes and a cruise ship heading into the harbor. You can just barely make them out as the shadows in this picture.

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There are actually two cruise ships that arrive about 1 hour apart. Here is the other one we passed. We liked the subtle reflection of the pilot house in this picture. The visability was not too great, and we saw this cruise ship on radar long before we saw her by sight. Have we yet mentioned how awesome radar is? Continue reading

Adios Ensenada, Hello San Diego

Aug 26, 2006 from Ensenada to San Diego – We had easy 10 hour trip from Ensenada to San Diego. Two to four foot swells and only about 8 knots of wind off the port bow. We ran fast at about 1900 rpm at did about 7.2 knots most of the way. For longer passage we would probably go around 1750 rpm and 6.8 knots. We ran fast because we wanted to make it with plenty of time before customs closed, which we did. Once again we are pleased with the smooth, quiet, and leisurely pace of Kosmos.

We plan to use San Diego as our base of operations as we exercise Kosmos as much as possible before we head to the South Pacific in March/April/May of 2007. Between now and then is the time to go on a trial cruise and get approved as crew for a later, more exotic location.