Friday, December 6 — As mentioned in the last post, the sea conditions were not bad when we left Ensenada on Tuesday night. Despite the good conditions, Keith did initially get sick. But within 12-hours, he was feeling good enough to play video games
When dawn finally broke on Wednesday, we saw it was 3 – 5 foot waves with a 10-second swell period + 1 – 2 foot wind chop waves. Thanks to the long enough intervals in between the waves, it wasn’t uncomfortable. The wind was light, came from behind us, and it was overcast all day.
Unfortunately, we were moving very slowly, only averaging 5.7 knots at 1650 RPM. Eric eventually sped us up to 1750 RPM, but our speed only improved to 5.8 knots. He’s concerned that we have a net or kelp or line stuck to our propellor or stabilizer fins that is slowing us down. He was considered stopping in Turtle Bay to dive on the bottom.
Tuesday, December 3, 2024 – It was supposed to be an uneventful day. The plan was to do chores around the boat in preparation for our 6.5-day passage to Puerto Vallarta, then head out at around 1500 (3:00 pm).
Since we weren’t paying for another night, the marina encouraged us to leave earlier since check out is officially 1300. Their nudge turned out to be a giant blessing in disguise. Eric started up the main engine at around 1330. There was an issue with the stabilizers – when turned on, the screen said “server rebooted, call factory.”
Eric has spent the last 1.5 years renovating Kosmos. We plan to write more extensive posts about the renovation, but for the moment we’ll summarize the work with: 1) The boat was 18-years old and many things had reached their life limit and needed to be replaced – including a lot of components on the stabilizers, and 2) We outfitted the boat 18 years ago when there were only two of us. Now that there are three of us; we needed to configure the electrical and water to be better suited for three people.
Eric immediately called John Gumb Yacht Services, the company that did our stabilizer work, to help troubleshoot the problem. John Gumb had no silver-bullet answer, but the initial trouble shooting indicated it may have been electrical in nature. Eric called Weber Marine next, the company that did our electrical work (and more!). Weber also had no silver-bullet answer.
Monday, December 2, 2024 — There were two main reasons why we usually went to Marina Coral instead of Maina Cruiseport whenever we were in Ensenada. The first was that Coral has a fuel dock, and they used to offer a discount on fuel if you stayed in their marina. However, Coral no longer offers this perk. In fact, it is currently cheaper to buy fuel in San Diego than in Ensenada!
The other reason is that Coral will help you with your Mexican check-in paperwork for a nominal fee. This service has paid off in spades for us in the past, especially when we needed help getting a new Temporary Import Permit (TIP) after our first one had expired (note to cruisers: Always make sure to renew your TIP prior to expiring. Getting another new one issued on the same boat can be a nightmare).
Nowadays, Cruiseport offers a check-in service, too. Between the lack of fuel discount and the fact that we can get check-in services at Cruiseport, we may choose to go to Cruiseport in the future. While Coral is very nice, it’s also pricey, has serious surge issues, and is on the outskirts of town. Of course, Cruiseport has issues, too, particularly with soot from the cruise ships, noise and touts. You have to pick your poison.
Yesterday, the marina had told us to be at the marina office at 0930 to do the check-in. After they packaged up all of our paperwork for the authorities, they shuttled us into town, where all three offices (customs, immigration and port captain) are conveniently housed in one building.
This was the busiest we’d ever seen it. We had to wait over an hour for our turn, but once we were served, the paperwork took the typical 45-minutes to process.
Once we were done with that part of the paperwork process, we celebrated by having lunch at our beloved El Rey Sol. As always, the food was wonderful.
Here are a couple of sunset photos, taken on Friday, which was our last night in Chula Vista (southern San Diego Bay)
On Saturday, we moved to the Police Dock, the only overnight public dock in San Diego Bay — and most importantly, the closest dock to the mouth of San Diego Bay.
Overall, I like Baja California, Mexico It has it’s good parts and it’s bad parts. It has beautiful scenery (mostly rock formations… most plants we found were cactus or dead).
Isla Coronados, August 4, 2022
Dans l’ensemble, j’ai aimé Baja California. Mexico a des bons cotés et des moins bons cotés. Il y a de très beaux paysages (plutôt des formations rocheuses…. La plupart des plantes qu’on a trouvé étaient des cactus ou étaient mortes).
San Francisquito, August 26, 2022
As for civilization, La Paz is nice with good food and a beautiful malecon. Loreto is a good town, not too big and too small. Bahia de Los Angeles is super small, but it is a good town nonetheless. But my favorite town is Santa Rosalia. It has good food, especially pastries, and is cute and small.
Santa Rosalia’s waterfront on south end of town, October 10, 2022Continue reading →
