Since our last blog update we have had two weeks of (epic) rainfall and wind storms. For Ensenada we have now had the years worth of rain, about five inches. The first two days and nights of rain managed to cut us off from the hotel, we call the flood lake Coral, the parking lot and the sidewalks were completely under water, it was quite a scene. we stayed mostly dry and warm, fixing those leaks in Ventura really paid off. Today Jan 27 it is starting to get warm sunny again.
On Monday me Manny and Lola went to San Diego to get parts and food, I had no problems at the border. For those of you thinking to come and visit it may be easier than going to Ventura. It should work like this; Make reservation at the marina Coral hotel, we have a discount card so let us know, fly to San Diego and let the hotel shuttle pick you up and drive you to the hotel in Ensenada where we will be waiting. There may be a possibility that we will be able to meet you at the airport if the hotel lets us be on the shuttle when they pickyou up?
Life is getting settled here as we become more aquinted with the town and explore more of it, outside gringo gulch, this is where all the cruise ship passengers go when ashore, and is nothing but a tourist trap. In the last week we have found Walmart, Home depot, Costco and the 7/11, we still have to go to San Diego for West marine and other boat parts, as parts are limited here.
By the way San Diego is about 90 minutes from Ensenada and a very nice drive along the Baja coast.
Some people tell me they have no Idea where we are, so here are some maps to help. Just click and enjoy.
Ventura California
Catalina Island
Ensenada MX
This is my recollection of the trip from Ventura to Ensenada, which is about 200nm and took us about 8 days. This includes 5 days of travel and 3 days in San Diego, it should have taken 3 or 4 days.
Day one; We left Ventura about 4:30am an headed out, it was dark and the swells were about 8ft at 10 seconds which is quite ruff. After about five hours we started having engine problems, to me it seemed like a blocked fuel filter. The engine would run fine for a while then would drop to idle for a couple of minutes then back to full speed. After replacing both of my fuel filters(at sea)and using my 5 gallons of spare fuel the problem got no better and we were getting bounced around quite a bit. We decided to turn back and made it to Channel Island harbor (our first home after San Diego). After reaching safe harbor we decided to fill the tank in case we were really out of gas, it took one gallon, so not out or running low on fuel. After the fuel dock we went to Anchors Way boat yard were we were able to get a marine mechanic. Three hours later and 150.00 dollars poorer the problem was the fuel filter housing, rusted and blocking the vent. A big sye of relief as the mechanic bypassed our fuel filter and the engine ran great, thank, someone, it was not major. So with a full tank and a bypassed fuel filter we stayed overnight at the boatyard preparing for a next day departure.
Day two; We left at 4:30 again, the seas were calmer and the engine ran great. We were able to motor/sail for a couple of hours with good winds and that gave us 2 extra knots and a much soother ride. It took about 10 hours to get to Two coves harbor on Catalina island were we met up with Manny and Lola. The trip was uneventful, but we were a day late.
Day three; We left two harbors about 10:00am and motored to Avalon Harbor on Catalina for Christmas day it only took three hours and we spent the rest of the day exploring Avalon harbor.
Day four; This was another 4:30am departure with 12 hours ahead of us. The day was uneventful except all the wildlife, it is weird to be on the water with no land insight and ahead of us were seagulls standing on kelp, just standing there. We made it to San Diego before dark and got tide up at Harbor island west marina, this is a sister marina to ours at Ventura so no charge to stay as a guest, and this is were we bought our sailboat.
Day 5,6,7; These days we did not do much except replace the fuel filter and clean the boat. Manny and Lola had to turn back to Avalon as there alternator failed, as it was Christmas there was no one to help them. They had to go to another marina on the mainland. We hopped to meet them at San Diego, but no luck. After installing the new filter, a quick trip to the pumpout and the fuel dock we were ready to leave for Ensenada. Each day we though Desire (Manny and Lolas boat)would make it to San Diego, but they were delayed and we were running out of time at the marina.
Day 8; We left for Ensenada about 5:00am and headed out. We learned that Desire also left the same day, so we were heading for Ensenada and Desire was heading for San Diego. We arrived at Ensenada about 4:00pm, got tied up and headed for the Bar.
Desire arrived in Ensenada two days later, they also had no further problems.
The first day was the worst, but we survived and have a better understanding about spare parts.
Well after two weeks in Ensenada the culture shock has subsided a bit. It is a new country and a new language for the most part. We have now been into town a couple times, we took the bus and cab combo, 8 pesos for the bus which almost takes us to the grocery/liquor store and with our supplies we take a cab home for about 80 pesos. The conversion rate is approx 12.50 pesos to the USD. The marina is a great place and it is warmer here and a lot cheaper than Ventura, and I have not seen so much security ever at a marina. We are still exploring our new surroundings, meeting new people, there are also a few other Canadians here and everyone is so helpful and supportive.
Diana got a new broadband wireless stick from TelCel which is the Mexican cell/Internet provider and again it works better than at Ventura, so she is happy and working away as hard as ever.
Manny and Lola made it here a couple days after us, they had an alternator problem which they had to stop and get fixed. They are only a few slips away from us. Manny made a trip back to Ventura to pickup their car and finish with Ventura West Marina. Diana and I made the decision to leave Ventura and give up our slip when we departed. Manny and Lola only decided to give up their slip about half way here, so they had to go back and get all their stuff, we took all ours when we left.
Here are a few pictures of our new temporary home, we are still trying to decide how long to stay, but it will be for a while, then we continue south.
 The sunset from our boat  We are saftley proctected behind this rock breakwater  A picture from inside the breakwater  just another Pic from the outside looking in
We got here at 4:45pm – it took 12 hours. (Why does everything take a minimum of 12 hours?????) Very scenic cruise though and lots of porpoises!
We are at the Marina Coral. The place is gorgeous! We can use the facilities at the hotel – pool and hot tub! Here is the link to the website: http://www.hotelcoral.com/English/html/Marina/Marina.html.
I am very tired and will post more later, I just wanted to you know we arrived safe and sound.
🙂
Diana
We made it to San Diego on Boxing Day. We spent Christmas Day in Avalon on Catalina Island. It was warm enough for shorts! We spent yesterday relaxing trying to recover from the early mornings (extremely early in my opinion) and the long days. Today Mike and I went in different directions, him to Shelter Island to get parts for the engine (a new filter which caused our problems on the way out of Ventura) and also to Vons to get phone minutes and groceries. Me to downtown San Diego to get a new headset for the computer and a web cam. The old headset microphone broke somtime during our voyage to Avalon.
We are looking forward to our next leg of the journey to Ensenada, MX. It should be a shorter journey than it took to get down here! We haven’t charted it out yet, but will be doing so shortly. I think the marina we will stay at is the Hotel Coral and Marina. The other boat we were kind of travelling with is now in Oceanside, CA. I say kind of because they made it to Catalina Island without any problems and so they waited a day for us and then as we were leaving Catalina Island, they had engine problems and had to turn back. We were already about 2 hours away and did not want to turn back so we stayed the course. They ended up leaving Catalina today and went to Oceanside instead of coming all the way here so Manny could go to get parts for their engine. They will hopefully be meeting us here tomorrow.
We had to get a health certificate for Belle to enter Mexico and it is only good until Thursday so we have to be in Mexico by then. We should be though, so hopefully it won’t be a problem – everyone knock on wood for us that we will be in Mexico by Thursday!! 🙂
Sorry for not posting earlier, Mike and I were quite tired! We are not quite in as good a shape as we thought… Not that I thought I was in any kind of shape at all actually but 2:30 am 4 days in a row is a bit of bitch! Okay, we did sleep in a bit on one of the days but overall, 2:30 comes early!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!
The work on the boat was a smallish problem so we headed out to Avalon at 4:30 this morning. It was a filter problem in the engine. We made it to Isthmus Cove which is about 11.9 nautical miles from Avalon. We are debating whether to head to Avalon tomorrow or Dana Point or San Diego. Manny wants to go to the West Marine in Dana Point, but the West Marine is larger in San Diego so hopefully we will head there, either tomorrow or the next day. I would prefer the next day so we can spend Christmas Day relaxing. I will let you know though what we do…
Today went quite well, although the swells were against us for half the day. We had sunshine and very nice seas for the most part. At the end of the day, we put up the genoa sail and added an extra knot (sometimes 2) to our speed. The winds were not in our favour for the most part of the day but it worked at the end.
I guess that’s it for now… I am a little tired, two 3:30am days in a row!!!
Merry Christmas to everyone!!!
Or so we thought… We started our trip by getting up at 3:30AM!! I think that 3:30 AM is an unreasonable time to get up but that is what we did. We wanted to get to Avalon in daylight so I guess we had to but GEEZ!!!
After going through some fairly rough seas (lots of big swells), we finally made it to some calmer seas and then here’s what happened…
We experienced engine problems. The engine would die down and then rev all by its self. It also stalled a couple of times. We decided to turn back to Port Hueneme because we did not want to have the engine die in the middle of the ocean. We are now sitting at Anchors Way Marine Services waiting for a mechanic. So basically, we got up at 3:30 in the morning to get all the way to Port Hueneme! We are just across from the second marina we have stayed at, Vintage Marina.
If it is not a big problem, we will head to Avalon tomorrow. If it is a big problem, we will head back to Ventura…
That’s about all I have to say right now. 🙁
We have finally finished all project and are preparing to leave Wednesday for Ensenada. We are using our new super quite, one flush, electric toilet now and it works great, It was a bit of work to squeeze a full size toilet in the forward head. The new GPS and pod are now completely installed and functioning, this was a big project from picking which GPS, ordering it, and having it installed, but now we have state of the art chartplotting and navigation.
With all our new equipment on-board and functioning we feel mostly prepared to go to Mexico. Our next tentative departure date is Wed December 23 and all things going well we will leave before sunrise and head for Catalina island.
Well after three weeks of work the awning for the stern cockpit is ready, it works and fits fairly well. This is not a sailing awning, it is a at port awning hopefully to give sun shade and to help with rain, if we ever get any. The main canvas is 12ft wide and 9ft long it is supported by three flexible tent poles and held to the vessel by 6 retaining pockets. The three flexible poles fit thru pockets sewn into the canvas, backed by nylon webbing ( something like seat belt material but a little stronger). It was hard work for our Janome sewing machine, but it worked like a charm aside from eating about 5 needles. All this work was done in the main salon of Defiant 08 by me. I am quite proud of this effort because doing it myself cost about 200. and buying one cost about 700. See photos for some details it is hard to see. More to come as a lot of projects are almost done and it take a blog for each.
 canvas Installed  There is even enough headroom  mounting pocket
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