5/6/10 - Bahia Totuga

Well, it wasn´t as fast of a ride as we thought it was going to be, but we made it here Monday morning about 7:00.  It was a little anti-climatic (It´s not exactly Fantasy Island here) but we´re all excited to finally be able to go ashore after 10 days on the boat.  Boats keep coming and going but there seems to be a steady stream of cruisers here.  Our friends from San Diego, Scott and Terry aboard s/v U La Lena (not sure if I¨m spelling that right or not) pulled in a few nights ago.  We spent the day with them yesterday and they will more than likely be leaving around the same time we do tomorrow.

Things are pretty sparce here.  The people are real friendly and we´re definitely getting to practice our spanish.  Andy and I thought we were doing pretty good until yesterday.  We talked to a man who owns a restuarant here and we could´ve sworn he told us there was to be a party yesterday.  He even talked about there being lots of little boys for Jake to play with, lobster, fish, etc.  They looked as us like we were aliens when we asked them about it yesterday.  May he meant a mother´s day celebration?   Oh well...we´ve done pretty good for our first time I think. 

We took a dinghy ride to a little beach the first day we got here.  I have to say we need to work on our landings!  Aside from bashing his finger with a rock, Jake had a great time building sand castles, finding sand crabs and lots of "pirate treasure."

We´ve found an internet cafe (took me a while to crack the code on this spanish keyboard), a few mini marts and an ice cream parlor.  We´re getting a few groceries today and will be heading south tomorrow.  I probably won´t get to update the blog again until Cabo San Lucas so bear with me (a week or two maybe).  From there we´re going to look for something called a telcel that you can hook up to your computer through the usb port and supposedly get internet. We´ll see! 

The dinghy dock here is a little tricky to say the least. 

The ladder to climb up to the main dock (which we named the "Poop" dock due to the hundreds of birds that have chosen it as their special place to poop).  You can see it´s not actually connected to the dinghy dock.

5/1/10 - Weather

We were finally able to get a good weather fax.  It looks like we´re leaving today.  In an effort to make myself more useful on the boat in areas besides cooking, cleaning and schooling, I decided to read up on weather and ask my extremely knowledgeable husband a few questions about reading weather faxes.  Sometimes he gives a bit too much information.  I never noticed this until we got out here away from everything and into subjects I don´t know very much about.  The exchange went like this...

Me:  What´s a millobar?
Andy: It´s a way of measuring ambient pressure by measuring millimeters of mercury in a vacuum.

Me:  Huh?  Uh... but what is it?  What does it do?
Andy:  There was this guy that developed a way of measuring atomospheric pressure by creating a glass tube that was full of mercury.  He had a vacuum at one end and the other end was open ot the atmosphere.  As a high pressure moved in, it would push the mercury down into the vacuum end and you could see the rise in pressure and vice versa when a low came through.

Me:  (long pause) Well...duuhh.  I new that.  How does it help me read the weather fax?
Andy:  The higher the number, the higher the pressure, the more fair the weather.
Me:  Oh right.  Thanks.
Andy:  Sure ( I think I saw him roll his eyes)

I´ve been accused of a lot of things, but being stupid was never one of them.  For some reason though, just about everything on this boat is in the realm of "I don´t get it."  Weather being one of them.  Next, I think I´ll ask Andy how the watermaker works.

4/30/10 - Another day in Isla Guadalupe

We´re still here in Isla Guadalupe.  The weather seems to have brought a lot of winds.  With the winds switching directions so much, last night seemed like we were in a whirlpool fighting a bunch of elephants!  Every time a wave hit the boat we either rocked or jumped (kind of like the feeling you get when you´re on a roller coaster and it takes your stomach) and we would here a loud bang!  That´s one hazard of an aluminum boat I guess, all the noises are magnified.

We´re having trouble getting a clear weather report over the SSB radio and it appears no one can hear us when we ask for clarification (even though we can see we´re transmitting).  Andy was able to get a weather fax from Alaska which wasn´t extremely helpful except for showing us a high pressure systemthat we believe we´re in right now.  So we´ll download another one in a few hours and see how fast it´s moving.  That will help us decide if we leave tomorrow morning or this afternoon.  Either way, it looks as if it´s going to be a quick ride to Bahia Tortuga.

With all of the winds, we weren´t able to go ashore yesterday so we really haven´t touched land since we left San Diego.  Surprisingly, no one cares.  Jake is fighting his stuff animals on Mars with his four wheeler and alien spaceship right now so he´s keeping busy.  I attempted sewing some mosquito netting for our hatches and discovered several flaws in my design.  I decided to try my hand at bread instead.  Andy is stuck to the computer and radio trying to get weather.  It´s really too cold to hang outside so we´re making the most of our "together" time.  All is good.

My first loaf of bread!

4/28/10 - Swimming with the seals on a Happy Anniversary!

Today is our anniversary.  I can´t think of a better way to celebrate nine years of marriage.  We took the dinghy out for Andy to dive and take some pictures.  He ran into a bunch of seals. 

Enjoy!

Night Watches

I had no idea what to expect for night watches.  I was pretty much terrified that I was going to screw it up.  Turns out it wasn´t that bad.  I´m pretty sure God was on my side as we had perfect weather for all of my watches.  I think in all honesty, I was too tired to be nervous
We decided to go with three hour watches. On the trip to Isla Guadalupe I had the 9:00 - midnight and 3:00-6:00 a.m. watch. I had grand plans to let Andy sleep an extra hour to get myself and extra hour later but it turns out I couldn´t do it. I took the other watches on the trip to Bahia and handled that much better as there was only one "middle of the night" watch
I had read numerous books and even heard from my very knowledgeable husband that night watches were a good time to reflect on things. I fully expected to have some of my deepest thoughts out there under the stars. Turns out, I´m not that deep. I couldn´t get past "It´s super cold, I wonder why these hand warmers aren´t working yet " and "Geesh, it´s only been 10 minutes?" It´s kind of like running on a treadmill. You set your mileage and start running.  After what has got to be an hour and 5 miles later, you look down and you´ve only ran 15 minutes and covered all of a mile and a half. It was like that.
The first night wasn´t so bad as I had a lot of traffic on my watch. The first watch I actually woke Andy up because I thought a cruise ship was coming straight for us. It was lit up like a Christmas tree and I could see both it´s port and starboard lights. As soon as Andy got out there, it changed direction and made me look stupid (I´m sure it was the cruise ship´s fault>). The next three that came through there - I named it cruise ship alley - all followed the same pattern so I became smarter as the night went on. The second watch brought on a huge ship that we later decided was might have been an aircraft carrier. It started as a blip and got bigger and bigger so I finally woke him up again. Turns out that was the right thing to do. They didn´t answer us on the radio so we had to change our course and go behind them. The law of mass tonnage won out. My last watch was great. Stars, Stars, Stars. I´ve never seen anything like it. And lots of bioluminescence. Very cool

A little bird came to rest during one of Andy´s watches.

On some watches, I found myself drifting off many times. I need to find a better method of staying
I tried numerous things to keep me awake, none of which worked
1)Standing directly in the wind to see if making myself cold would keep me awake. Just made me cold, no less sleepy
2) Full on exercise: squats, push ups, leglifts.... I even tried ballet. All this did was make me sore the next day. Although combined with my loss of appetite due to the sea sickness, I may have found a way to shed those extra 10 pounds.
3) Singing. Turns out I don´t know the words to that many songs start to finish. And, "Should´ve been a Cowboy" gets old after a few times.
4) Looking at the stars and trying to match them to my super cool constellation cards I bought. Too cloudy, couldn´t pull it off
5) Slapping myself. Well that never works and just made me feel stupid

All in all, not so bad. But I was really glad to get to the anchorage so I could get a good night´s sleep again.

4/26/10 - Destination: Isla Guadalupe

Winds picked up to 15 knots last night and we made really good time.  We saw the light for Isla Guadalupe around 5:45 a.m.  We pulled into our anchorage a little beforenoon.  The winds shifted, coming out of the south making it not he most ideal situation.  We´ve decided to wait it out and see what happens.  We all took much needed showers and I put hot dogs on the grill.  As I was cooking, a panga (small fishing boat) pulled up and wanted to trade with us.  We had heard about these and were really excited when we saw themcoming.  We traded them three beers, a bottle of wine, and a small bag of oreos for a lobster tail and ten abalone.  Abalone are extremely expensive and considered a delecacy.  I can´t imagine how much this would cost us at a restaurant.  I felt a little bad as the beer and wine together only cost us $5 at Trader Joes.  I guess it´s all relative.  They probably think they got a deal too.  Supplies are brought in by the Mexican Navy and occasionally dropped on a small runway, so this is the only way they have to supplement their goods. 
Immediately following that, Andy and Jake caught tons of fish.   They threwmost back but one was too good to let go.  Tonight shall be a seafood smorgasbord!  It looks like we won´t be dipping into that Costco steak stash I have in the freezer for quite some time.

In case anyone finds themselves with too much abalone, here are a few recipes that turned out to be delicious!

White Fish & Abalone Ceviche
Cut up abalone and fish into bite size pieces.  Add chopped red onion, tomatoes, avacado.  Mix together lime juice, worchestire sauce, rice vinegar and ketchup.  Pour over the fish.  Add salt and pepper as you wish.  I also added garlic powder (but fresh would probably be better).  Mix together and refrigerate for a few hours giving the lime enough time to cook the fish.  Serve with chips.

Abalone & Lobster with butter
Heat up a little olive oil and lots of butter.  Slice up some mushrooms and saute until tender.  Add rosemary.  I couldn´t find my garlic but it would be good here too. Add more butter and lobster.  Cook until lobster is almost done) just a minute or two.  Add more butter and abalone.  Cook another 30 seconds until abalone is heated up.  Don´t overcook or it will be very chewy. 

This anchorage is really beautiful.  We haven´t seen any sharks, but there are dolphins all around us.  Big ones.  As you can read, lots of fish as well.  As soon as the pole hits the bottom, we get a bite.  My only complaint right now is the temperature.  It´s about the same as San Diego, which has always been too cold for my southern blood.  I guess we´ll just have to snuggle up!

4/24/10 - Finally Gone.

We finally did it. We finally set sail. It turned out to be a beautiful day. We left the Police Dock in San Diego around 8:45. We pulled up the sails around Coronado Islands. At first there wasn’t much wind but by mid morning we had 6 or 7 knots and lots of sunshine. Jake got his first taste of seasickness. Literally. This is the first time he’s ever thrown up so imagine his surprise. Yuck. Poor kid. But luckily, that would be the only time on this maiden voyage. We caught three Bonita. We threw two back and had the biggest one for supper the next few days. While I was cooking dinner we had dolphins swimming on our bow. Very cool. I’ve burned dinner for lots of different reasons but never because I got distracted by the dolphins!

I had my first night watch. I’ll write more about that later, but it went ok. The next day was not quite as sunny, but the wind picked up and we made good time. On track to make it to Isla Guadalupe on Monday.