Back in the USA!!

After bashing up the Baja coast for 10 days plus a one week stay in Ensenada just south of the boarder, we are now back in the USA!! We arrived in San Diego on Friday the 5th of August. We cleared customs and spent the night at the transient/police dock at the entrance to San Diego Bay. The trip up was challenging because you are going into the wind and current and the waves are hitting you on the side. Motoring or motor sailing is about all that you can do as sailing would have taken us too far off course. We left Cabo San Lucas with great weather predictions from our internet weather sources. We sailed for 36 hours and anchored in Bahia Santa Maria for the day to rest and have a good meal. We left again at 7pm and headed up to Turtle Bay. Both of these stretches were great but of course we couldn’t sail much. When we got to Turtle Bay we met up with our friend’s Jake and Cindy on Kaunu and spent 3 days with them. I did post some pictures of the town and all of us having a good time a local pool hall so the trip was not all work. We even celebrated a birthday for one of their crew members Jay. We left Turtle Bay at about 1 pm and headed up to Cedros Island. This was a 24 hour stretch of bashing as the wind was 25 knots on our nose and 4-6 foot seas hitting us from the side. It is like being in a washing machine. I did the all night watch and by the time we got to San Quintin I was definitely ready to anchor and get some sleep. This was the first time that during my watch I couldn’t even read as it was too rough, so needless to say I was exhausted. But we anchored in San Quintin and the anchorage was calm and beautiful. We left after a good night’s sleep and headed to a little anchorage called Bahia Colonet which was only about 8 hours from San Quintin. At Colonet we went out at about 12 midnight just to see the stars but when we looked overboard the phosphorus in the water was amazing. The phosphorus makes things that move in the water glow. We could see fish in the water swimming but not just one or two as we have seen before this was thousands swimming below the water traveling in about a 40 foot width like a flowing river. We sat there and watched for a good 30 minutes and they just kept swimming by. One of the things that is so wonderful about this trip is that we see things in nature that one could never see at a zoo. I love it.
We got to Ensenada and treated ourselves to a few days at Marina Coral. The marina and hotel are beautiful with several pools and a wonderful restaurant. We met up with Cindy and Jake again and had a wonderful dinner on their boat and then went out on the town.
We are now in National City, just south of the city of San Diego. It is a new marina with a pool, boaters lounge, and beautiful bathrooms and showers. We will stay here until the 9th of September and then head north either to Long Beach or Newport Beach where we will sail and visit the Channel Islands. We plan to be here in the states until the end of October or first of November. More to come later. Love you all Linda and Jim