Category: 2019 – 2020 Season 1

We anchored here pretty near the location recommended by “Charlies Charts” in a line with the rock off shore and the point in about 25 feet of water. There are a bunch of small fishing boats on mooring here, and a couple of boat ramps. The nearby hills block the cell phone reception, so no internet here, even with a cell phone amplifier. The satellite connection still works, and I chatted with Kyle and Shea (electronics guy in San Diego).

As we have no internet, this is being written as a draft, and won’t be published until sometime tomorrow. This is a little cove, with a fishing village and large steep hills around it. We had one other boat at anchor with us last night, a powered catamaran, I did not see the name, and our only communication was this morning as they were leaving Renee’ exchanged “good morning” with them.

When we arrived yesterday, our battery bank was at 100%, this morning we are down to 73.7%. What we had on last night was lights (inside) and the radio (Sirius), until we went to bed, the anchor light all night, and the refrigerators and freezer. Since we plan to spend the night here again tonight, we will run the generator later in the day, run a load of clothes, heat the water, and charge the battery the rest of the way after the solar does what it can. I would like to get to the point of running the generator every other day, but we will see if I can make that happen. Part of the question is making water, as we have to run the generator to do that, and we don’t want to make water while we are near shore.

One of the purchases we made while we were in port last week was a YETI cooler. We got a small one 20 quarts, it is really well made (better be for the price!) it has a rubber bottom, so it does not slide on the floor, non skit on the top so what you put there stays there, and the ice lasts a really long time. We also bought two of the YETI blue ice blocks for it, this allows us to have frozen food (and one ice block) in the freezer, and refrigerated food in the fridge, beer and condiments in the beer cooler and fruit and veggies in the YETI. For a sailboat, we have an awful lot of cooler space.

Clean solar panels put out about 19 amps, vs dirty 16.5 amps. Dirty is to say covered in salt and a couple of patches of bird poop. The panels are supposed to be 470 watts, which I am sure is if they are correctly aligned to the sun, and new. Ours are fixed on top of our arch, and probably 10 years (or so) old. I will check the current output later in the day when the sun is higher, it is about 09:45 am (today was the day we moved the clocks back). At 470 watts, we should be getting about 36 amps at 13 volts.
11:45 22 amps, 13:15 19.5 amps. Batteries at 82.9%. Very sunny day. Obviously not optimal angle to the sun.

We started out the morning of Nov. 4, headed south, promptly broke the main furling line and decide to go back to Ensenada to get it fixed, and to get some spare fasteners.

Rocks in front of Puerto Santo Thomas 11/2/19

Leaving Puerto Santo Thomas 11/4/19

We did some walking around yesterday, Renee’ bought a fishing pole and some equipment, also got fishing licenses for both of us.

I bought a hose to wash the boat, I have not had much luck with buying hoses, this makes 4. So far all of them leak. Yes, I have changed or made sure they had gaskets. Most of the leaks have been at the fitting not where the spray nozzle screws on. Some have been faulty hoses (holes in them near the fitting). The downside to these small leaks, is that while I am washing the boat I get pretty wet.

We left this morning at about 9 am, we are not going far, just to Peurto Santo Thomas, about 20 miles out and around a point. Today will be a laundry and make water day.

We saw some really good ideas in Ensenada, as there are a lot of cruisers here. The CUBAR (Cruisers Underway to Baja Rally – Power boats) is leaving from Ensenada today. The Baja Ha Ha (Sailing from San Diego to Cabo) is scheduled to leave 11/4 from San Diego, but there are a lot of boats here that are part of this rally.

This is Dinghy Fuel storage (a great idea!)

This is an Eclectic Energy Wind generator (Very Quiet).

Sunset coming into Marina Coral Ensenada 10/31/19

Leaving Marina Coral Ensenada 11/2/19

We left San Diego at 6:35 today 10/31/19, and experience some significant wind (high 30’s) we are still working on getting the sails straightened out. The Jib Sheet is just a little short, this means that it has to have almost no extra in the cockpit when the Jib is furled. Otherwise when we furl the sail we run out of furling before the sail is completely furled. We adjusted it yesterday, and it is closer, but still not quite right. This happened because we replaced the stranding rigging, and took the Jib and the Staysail in to double check the stitching. We had a bunch of work done on the running rigging as well. So, some of the running rigging is not put away like it really needs to be, for example, we have a spare main halyard/topping lift this line comes down from the top of the mast behind the spreaders and is tied off on the pulpit around the mast on the port side. Well this line is a bit loose, and it winds up laying on the mainsail such that when you furl the mainsail it gets tucked in with the sail as it is furled into the mast. This causes problems. So, I need to adjust where it “lives”.

Currently we are off of Tijuana in Mexico, with the Main sail reefed to about 50%, the jib furled and the staysail out. The engine is running and we are doing about 9 knots through the water and about 6 knots speed over ground. We have about 20 knots of wind, and Renee’ is taking a nap. We are about 40 miles from Marina Coral in Ensenada, our planned destination for today. We should get there by 7 pm tonight. Coronado Islands

Sun over Tijuana with a fire to the east.