I'm not going to attempt to compete with Skip here. Our trip from San
Francisco to Ensenada was slowish but generally uneventful. We made
the trip in three legs: San Fran to Santa Barbara, Santa Barbra to
Santa Catalina Island, Cat Island to San Diego and then SD to
Ensenada. We had generally fair weather and mostly light NW winds.
The new AIS and watchmate and Seaclear II all worked wonderfully.
What a great technology.

Along the way we had a few casualties. A patch of batten pocket gave
out on the mainsail. I threw some sticky back on it and had a more
proper repair done in SD. The raw water pump on the port side burnt
up its bearings and shaft seal. I put in a new seal in SD and
replaced the bearings here in Ensenada -- I had a spare set of
bearings aboard but found a new set locally as well. While we were in
SD I replaced both ends of the pressure vessel of our Spectra
watermaker. They both had small cracks in them and were the old style
with tapered threads. The new ends have straight threads and O rings
and I trust they will last longer. We had the ends of the Clake pump
changed out when we were in New Zealand last time so there are no
tapered high pressure fittings on the unit now. A hose from the head
to the holding tank split and I replaced in SD. Other than that we
did well.

The wild life was out in force and we saw whales, dolphins, seals, sea
lions giant jellyfish and sundry others. The sailing was slow but
with the exception of landfall at Santa Barbara where it was thick
fog, was in lovely clear weather. Between Cat Is. and Sand Diego the
US Navy was playing war games with two carrier groups and tankers for
underway resupply which made a total mess of the traffic in an area
that already has a lot of shipping. Avoiding all of that was kind of
like work, but again hard to complain given the lovely weather. We
had some issues with Kelp coming down from San Diego. We've never had
to deal with kelp before. I had no idea how tough that stuff is.

Our plan is to head south from here. I am hoping to get in a bit of
exploring on the Pacific side of the Baja but the wx doesn't look
promising. Current reports show a font early in the week and low
moving down the coast late in the week creating S to W winds. Not
only does that make it a beat to go south but it makes most of the
anchorages along the coast untenable. I haven't decided if I will wait
here for better wx or just go south in a big jump either doubling the
cape and going to La Paz or going direct to the mainland...

-- Tom.