Thats the fact of Ensenada

We got here on a Thursday and are starting to fall in love with Ensenada.  First of all, the people are great here.  Lots of people are very welcoming with open arms.  At the marina people are offering lifts, conversations and smiles.  We took a public transportation bus and people were very friendly helping us find our way to Walmart, Home Depot and Costco, all in the same area.We were at Costco and a man wanted us to buy a hot dog for him with his money.  We got him a hot dog and drink with his 21 pesos (less than $2 US).  The reason why he asked that was because you needed a Costco card to buy food and he didn’t have one.  Later on we asked him where we could find a taxi and in return he offered us a ride to where we could find one.  He also talked to the taxi driver on our behalf. 

The marina has everything we could want.  There are indoor and outdoor pools and jacuzzi’s with the use of hotel towels, a snack bar at the pool, a ping pong table, pool tables, a gym, a spa, a sauna, a steam room, tennis courts, a nice restaurant and an amazing view.  We are starting to use our bikes here as the bathrooms are very far to walk when you gotta go.  Staff are very friendly and helpful as well.  They put all of us Canadians together on the same dock.  Apparently mexico has lots of Canadian cruisers, an American we met said he came to Mexico to learn about Canadians. It has a nice bay area where you can sail to several islands.   There are a few boaters we met that came here intending to stay for a day and ended up staying for more than a year. Here is a video of the great view from our boat. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A2sWmj5ojU&feature=youtube_gdata

The downtown area has some great tourist stores and restaurants.  We ate at a place called Pollo Felize (a good BBQ chicken place).  Bought some great souvenirs (cheap leather purses and tshirts) and alcohol.  We purchased absinthe from the Chek Republic, supposedly real strong stuff (140 proof) good for running a car as well as drinking it.  If you don’t know about absinthe, it was banned in North America for a long time.  In the movie “Moulin Rouge” they were drinking it.  The price of this 1 litre bottle is $106 US.  It comes with herbs inside the bottle that when dried can be smoked keeping you high for days.  We also found a great 5% alcoholic cooler for 80 cents a bottle that you buy at the corner store, here the store is called OXXO. The fruit here is very cheap, a large cantaloupe was 60 cents each and looks and tastes good here.

As for projects on the boat, they are still happening.  We just put up a net around the rim of the boat which should be great for keeping the cats on board (we hope it works).  Putting in a water filter soon and other tasks to come, it never stops.

Things to Consider:

1)      Why boat stores don’t use the phrase “ we sell boat shit not bull shit”

2)      Why is tuna considered a fruit in Mexico and Jamaica is a flower

3)      Why does a payphone charge you 6 pesos for making a call to a cell phone and 3 pesos if its to a land line (this also only gives you a minute to talk)

4)      Why does Mexico have such a reputation for being corrupt when it’s the authorities (government) that are, not the citizens

Our Trip to Ensenada

 Well, we made it!  We left San Diego around 11 pm on May 18^th and sailed all night, arriving here at around 11 am May 19^th.

It was a rough trip.  Everything on the boat that was not tightly secured went flying.  At times, the boat was listing over at a 60 degree angle.  If you weren’t sitting on the low side of the boat, you were thrown out of your seat.  This lasted the entire night long.  It was, as the captain said, like being in a washing machine.  Holy cow.  And man was it noisy!  It sounded like World War III down below. 

Luckily we took some Bonine before we left, so we didn’t get seasick.  Though, the second captain we brought along sure did.  Poor guy was so sick, he spent most of the night curled up on the floor of our cabin in a fetal position.  Unfortunately, he barfed all over the boat and made quite a mess!!  Though he did his best to clean everything up the next morning after we arrived.  We took turns steering and sleeping (though Neil slept MOST of the night), but Captain Marty spent the entire night awake and in the cockpit.  Good thing for us, he got us here safely.

The cats survived, though Archie looked pathetic when he first came out after we stopped.   Poor thing was moving very tentatively, and was shaking.  Piggy was probably worse.  But, all is good now and the cats are happy once again and roaming around, they especially like being in the cockpit where they can watch everything. 

The day of our arrival was spent checking into the Marina and clearing customs.  We finished everything around two pm, including getting a bite to eat.  We were so tired, we just went straight to bed.

The next day, May 20, we spent cleaning things up.  We had a lot to do, mostly washing everything and putting things away. 

We got out both of our bikes and have been using them to get back and forth from the marina office and the showers/washrooms.  They are quite far from the boat, so it saves a lot of time.

We still have lots to do.  Today, we’re going to work on putting up the netting so we can let the cats roam around some more.  We also have a water filter to install, which we may do today. 

There is free shuttle service to and from town and we’re thinking of giving that a try, maybe tomorrow.

Its quite beautiful here.  Once we settle down, we’ll get some video up.

An hour to launch

 We are counting down the minutes until we start sailing to Mexico.  It took a great deal of preparation to get here in the last few days.  We had to get import/export papers, US customs to come to the boat and check out the hull number, lots of reshuffling of items to be stowed on the boat and many errands.  We now have two captains who are taking us to Ensenada, Mexico.  It's an exciting time anticipating  the journey and we have heard that we are in for a bumpy ride.  The captain is saying we are going to experience 6-9 foot swells and waves that are close together.  And to top it all off, we're sailing all night, starting around 10pm and going for about 8 hours.  If there is a time when we will get seasick this is it.  Fortunately, we took Bonine so we should be ok.  This is going to be a great test to see how we will fare in the world of cruising. 

Good news as we now have our hats with the boats logo on it.  Our next post will be from Ensenada.

Back in San Diego, Getting Ready for Mexico

Well, we arrived back in San Diego on May 11, well May 12 really, at around 2 am.  We were supposed to get here on May 9, but we were held up by US Customs once again, this time at Pearson Airport.  We were sent off to the side when we got to the airport for additional screening.  The officer we spoke to asked us for return plane tickets.  We tried to explain that we were heading to Mexico via our boat on May 16th, but he didn't care. We insisted that since we didn't have return plane tickets, we had to stay in Canada.
We spoke to an Air Canada agent who explained that it was normal, that they would be fined (Air Canada) for every passenger they deliver to another country who does not have a return ticket.  She said that normally, it was not enforced in the US, but that they were allowed to send us back.  She suggested we purchase fully refundable tickets and just cancel them later.
We didn't buy them on the spot, since there was no flight available anyway, so we went back to Neil's parents.  We checked on-line and got the earliest tickets we could find back to San Diego, along with a couple of expensive tickets back to Canada.
When we returned to the airport, we were once again pulled over for additional screening.  This time, however, we were let through.  The nice officer we spoke to informed us that someone in Detroit (them again!) had flagged us and that we would be pulled over any time we attempted to enter the US.  He also said he could see no reason why we should be flagged and that the only way to get the flag removed was through Homeland Security.  We've already contacted them, but their e-mail to us stated that it would take a minimum of 30 days.  We have some forms to fill out and we're going to follow up as soon as we get the chance.
We ended up on a flight with connections in Denver.  Well, there was a big snow storm when we got there and everything was delayed while the planes were de-iced, etc.    Here's a picture we took from the airport window:

We also found it curious that all the washroom are marked as "Tornado Shelters".  Do you think that is new?

At the moment, we are preparing for our trip to Mexico. We're going to Ensenada for a month, mainly so that we don't have to pay California sales tax on our boat. We will be saving about 7 to 8 thousand dollars.  Yeah, its worth it.
We'll be leaving on Wednesday at around midnight, and will be motor-sailing all night.  That means we'll have our mainsail up, mostly for stability, but will be using the motor, because there isn't enough wind to get there fast enough.  It takes about 8 hours and our captain wants to arrive first thing in the morning.  Apparently, in Mexico, you want to arrive on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday early in the morning, while they are working.  Otherwise, they will claim to be on their weekend or it'll be too late in the day for them to bother with us.  Go figure.
Lots to do however.  We have been in touch with Customs (again) as well as a broker to process the export of the boat to Mexico.
Today, we are working on installing our new depth finder, doing all our laundry (and there's lots extra because the cats were here alone for over 3 weeks, with no one cleaning up after them), defrosting the freezer, stowing gear, including our two bikes and making lists of everything we have to do.  Things like loading up on meat for the freezer, getting extra drinking water, filling the fuel and water tanks, getting examinations and papers for the cats (we need papers no more than 72 hours old.) and so on and so on.
The other day, we found another blue heron walking on the dock. Here's a video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c92_Th2CMog


Next update will be from Mexico.

Home to Canada

We're leaving tomorrow for Toronto.  We will be back on May 9, a few days before we head to Ensenada, Mexico.

There won't be any posts for a while.....

Sailing with The Dolphins

Yesterday we sailed out into the ocean again.  The waters were calmer than the first time and it was a pretty leisurely sail.

At one point, we noticed a lot of birds, mostly pelicans, hanging around one particular spot, flying around and diving a lot.  The captain confirmed that it meant there was probably a school of fish below the surface there.

Neil noticed a dolphin!  It was pretty close to the boat, just swimming along side.  Then we saw another and another.  There were probably at least 30 of them.  They must have also been chasing that school of fish.  We’ve heard of dolphins playing in the bow wave of boats before, but this was the first time we’d seen it ourselves.  What fun to watch them coming close and riding along with us.

Sorry, we couldn’t find the video camera fast enough to get any shots, but we’re pretty sure there’ll be other opportunities.

Here are a few photos we’ve taken recently:

Our new name.

We just thought this was cute.

They have this neat wave thingie down by the beach.

Sharon calls this the "ugly shell house".  Whatever would possess a person????

Neil doing the engine check.

Sealions hanging around on a buoy.

Everywhere a Cat, Cat

We continue to work on the boat and go sailing with the Captain.  Yesterday we purchased new carpet for the boat.  Today, we’ll probably install it.  We’re learning a lot about where to buy things and how to do them.  We saved lots of money when we bought our own wall-to-wall carpet from Home Depot.  We had them cut it (they don’t normally do that) into 3 smaller pieces for us to fit almost perfectly into the salon.  We’ll have to do a bit of trimming, but not too much.  All that for less than $100.  We had to cut the carpet to allow for the floors to be opened, for example, to get into the engine room, or to pump out the bilge.

The cats have been getting braver.  Piggy is still a big chicken, but he likes to sit in the cockpit now.  Archie, on the otherhand, is up to no good all the time.  He jumped through the galley hatch the other night and we found him on the dock in the early morning.  We didn’t even know he was gone.  He was making friends with our neighbours’ cats.  Orlando and Vivian, also becoming friends of ours, have 3 cats.  And their cats have been paying our cats visits during the night. 

The night Archie got out, he jumped through the galley hatch by jumping onto the counter/shelf and out from there.  So that night we closed the galley hatch and opened the one over the dinette.  There was no high spot there from which he could jump out.  However, during the night we heard some strange sounds.  There was a loud bang – it sounded like a hatch falling shut.  Sharon got up and lo and behold, one of Orlando’s cats was in our boat.  Poor thing was scared to death (and stupid too!).  Sharon picked him up and put him out through the cockpit.  He apparently jumped in through the dinette hatch.  All that banging around must have been him trying to find his way out.  He probably tried to jump back out through the hatch and knocked it shut.  He also tried to exit via the companionway doors, but they were locked.  Poor thing.

We’ve been thinking about how to handle the cats.  We’ve gotten collars for them so that, should they get off the boat somehow, people can find their home (phone number, name of the boat, etc.).  They have bells on so we can track them easier.  We’ve also ordered some netting.  You can buy this netting at a marine store for $400 or more, or do like we did and buy it on-line from a sports netting place.  Only cost us about $75.  It should be here any day now.  Trouble with the netting is that it won’t work if the cats decide they can jump over it.  But if they do, we’ll figure out something else.  We’re able to keep them in the cockpit by closing it all up.  If we have to, we’ll get some of the plastic sides replaced with screens, for the summer.  Talk about summer, it hit 29 celcius here yesterday.

Our new name is half-installed now.  The transom (back) and most of the work on the starboard side is done.  Pretty soon, we’ll be christening her and performing the mandatory renaming rituals.

We have to have her new name and numbers installed before we go to Mexico.  Since we’re going to Toronto in a few weeks, for a few weeks, we don’t have all that much time.  We have to arrange with a broker to have the boat exported to Mexico.  Even though we’re not going very far away, it IS Mexico.  We’re trying to decide if we should come back to get the car or leave it here for the month or so we’ll be gone.   And, of course, if we take it with us, we’ll have to do everything backwards again to get the car back here.

We went sailing yesterday.  It was a gorgeous day.  We got to witness homeland security chasing down a rogue boater.  The police had their guns out cause the boat refused to slow down.  Eventually, though, the boaters stopped.  It was just two young guys with no shirts on probably just doing what they do at that age.   Dumb!

We’re going to take today off and go sight seeing.