The Great Pacific Storm 2010!

This is what it looked like behind our South Trail this morning in the fairway. Ensenada has a huge river flowing into the harbor and when it storms like this, just like LA/Long Beach, all the trash from upstream gets dumped right in the harbor. It looked much worse last night, but we’ll see what a few days of storm does with this trash. We may be delayed due to trash in the harbor! We certainly couldn’t run our engine in it! This big storm hitting the Pacific Coast of California churning-up the ocean swells and creating some pretty heavy winds on the coast down here in Baja has forced us to wait it out here in Ensenada before continuing south. All in all, we are pretty happy here, and not shaking our fists at the heavens. We do want to get down to the mainland, but also know that it will happen in due course. If our timing works out, we are hoping to catch a ride south on the NW clearing winds from this storm and not have to burn a lot of diesel. Our departure from Ensenada will be this coming Saturday or Sunday depending on what and when this storm does it’s thing down here and how long it takes for the seas to calm down.
Craig has been attacking our fuel intake issues and has focused his efforts on our Racor fuel filter at the engine. Craig took the whole unit apart and found that someone had removed the ball check valve from the unit. Luckily, we have another Racor on our fuel polishing system, which really doesn’t need that valve, and he switched Racors. After a minor, yet time consuming and annoying, leak on the “new” Racor upon mounting in the engine compartment, Craig thinks it is all good to go. Only time and use will tell… Such is the cruising boat lifestyle. Everything wears and breaks. The only variable is “when”, and even with all the best planning in the world, no one can fortune tell that one!

Meanwhile, while we sit in hospitable Ensenada, we are re-acquainting ourselves with Spanish. Most everyone speaks English to some extent, so it is a great learning environment. We can practice, and many times get a new word or phrase or meaning from the many bi-lingual folks we come into contact with daily. This is certainly a country overall that enjoys it when foreigners try (even as ham-fistedly as we do!) to speak and learn the language. We got a fantastic book “Spanish for Cruisers” by Kathy Parsons. We highly recommend this book for Mexico and beyond. In addition to the basics for travel it also includes navigational, maritime, and most importantly, mechanical Spanish. Any book can tell you where to find a bathroom, but this one allows you to find el foque de capa (stormsail) or el impulsor/impelente (impeller) and bridging that gap for cruisers is invaluable. Craig and I drew a lot of pictures last time here in ’05 with varying degrees of success, and as such we are thrilled to have this book! Kathy also has “French for Cruisers” and we will definitely be purchasing that before heading to French Polynesia or the Caribbean. We are also berthed a whopping 2 blocks from the local Cineplex, and have caught up on some of the new movies that our out. They usually offer both Subtitled in Spanish and Spanish Dubbed. We have seen Avatar (what a visually beautiful film!) Law Abiding Citizen, Sherlock Holmes, and Zombieland (very funny!) I have found that I learn Spanish language usage by reading the subtitles, also at $3 USD per ticket, what a deal to go to the movies!

As I write this, our wind instruments are reading a steady 30 knots with gusts to 35 knots and we are fairly protected in our slip. The City of Ensenada put their beautiful, huge Mexican National Flag up this morning thinking that the rain was over. I got this shot of it through our overhead hatch as it started to blow heavily. Within’ fifteen minutes, the crew came by to wrangle it down.  This picture doesn't do justice to the size of this flag.  Craig and I estimate it is about 40'x 100' minumum. We saw another cruiser trying to row out to his boat on a small skiff, and thanked our lucky stars that we have a slip and don’t have to do that in this huge storm.

Craig did brave the malecon in his old fishing rubbers to get us some fresh pescado at the local fish market. The fisherman recognized the Guy Cotton logo on his bib and asked him if he fished commercially which he was able to reply, “Si!” due to his stint in Ventura Harbor as a crab fisherman. They in turn gave him a smokin’ deal on some black sea bass (not available in the states or even legal to fish) and some huge prawns, he paid about $10 US for a huge filet (2 1/2lbs approx) and approx. 1lb. of prawns.

We may be in a storm, but we are FEASTING!!!... Dover gets some too!!!