December 2, 2014 - San Diego - countdown

The weather here has turned much cooler since Thanksgiving when we enjoyed perfect 85 degree weather.  It is now in the upper 50's at night, and in the low 60's during the day.  Today a storm is rolling through and is expected to dump up to an inch of rain and sti up the winds.  We will wait for this system to pass before leaving for Mexico.

We are happy to report that Cindy is back to normal after her concussion of last week.  Phew, that was a scary few hours.

We are counting down now for leaving the USA.  We moved over to the Police dock one last time for final laundry, filling water tanks, and final preparations.  We will have to leave San Diego in the dark to make it to Ensenada during daylight hours. We expect to leave on Wednesday or Thursday night, middle of the night (as of now).  Remember that plans change so if we are sitting here longer than expected then there were probably a few low-priority items we decided to check off the list.

It is nice to be on the Police dock once again.  The A-9 Cruisers Anchorage is a bit rolly with all the boat traffic as well as noisy from the airport and flights all day long. They do not run late at night which is nice.  Finally, when the wind is just right the jet exhaust fumes can be quite noticeable. We were able to meet and spend a few wonderful days with a family sailing the Pacific.  They are a Dutchman, an Englishwoman and their two boys, ages 10 and 7.  They have spent the last two years living land-based lives in England, after spending 12 years on their previous sailboat exploring New Zealand, the South Pacific, and much of Asia.  After two years back in England, they decided land life was not for them and searched the world for a new boat, finding the one they wanted right here in San Diego.  They have been in America for a month now working on their 48' sailboat.  They are anchored in the same anchorage we have been in for the past few weeks (the A9 cruiser's anchorage) where you can stay for free for up to 90 days.  We will see them again in Mexico in a month or two.

We had a few fun days with our new friends.  One day we used our dinghy to let the kids go tubing, kneeboarding, and even a few attempts at water skiing and wake boarding.  Amazingly, our 12' dinghy with 2-stroke 25hp Yamaha was able to get Hons (the father in this sailing family) up waterskiing.  He was on two skis, doing a deep-water start, and it took a while for the boat to get up enough speed to get him up.  But it did it!  Kevin and the boys played Lego's quite a bit, on both boats.  Cindy got out our surfboard and paddled around our boats for a while too.  We got together with our friends for a few onboard movie nights as well.

Dylan and Kevin flying around the bay in the tube

Kevin goes knee boarding.  The other family's 48' boat behind.

Hey, it's my turn!!!

Towing Hons water skiing behind our dinghy

This afternoon we are running some last minute errands, like going to the bank to get some Mexican money, buying our Mexican fishing licenses, and Mexican Liability insurance, and hitting a Starbucks to access the internet.  Somehow, our laptop went berserk trying to synch our pictures to our cloud storage and totally used up our 10GB monthly data limit on our Verizon jetpack in just  one day.  So, we have had no internet on the boat for a few days now.  It's not worth upping our limit with Verizon, as we are likely going to be switching to a Telcel (Mexico's major cell phone company) plan in Mexico, which should be in a couple of days.

We hear that the Baja Naval Marina in Ensenada has free wifi.  If this is true will post an update after we clear customs into Mexico and get settled into the marina.