The planning and preparing have gone as far as they could. We were ready to begin our journey and start our adventure. As we left Ventura, the marina, and the friends we made, it was strange knowing we would never come back. We hoped to see some of them along the way cruising in some exotic Mexican port, but we also knew, there were some we were just going to have to say goodbye to. One thing about Ventura harbor is there always seems to be huge swells, it doesn’t matter what the weather is like, it doesn’t matter what time of year it is, there are always large swells. What do I define as large, oh, about 10′-15′ high swells. The reason these swells aren’t catastrophic is that they are also spaced 5-10 minutes apart. So the boat just slowly rides the wave up and slowly rides the wave back down and about 5-10 minutes later, you ride another large wave up and down. Our south-bound heading gets us away from the swells pretty quickly and we enjoy the cruise and watching the California shoreline slip by.
We planned to make it to Newport, stay at a marina, and meet up with friends for dinner at their family’s restaurant. Well, we eventually made it, it was just a lot later than we had originally planned. We had planned on arriving around 5-6 pm, and we didn’t get until well after 8 pm. By the time we got into the slip, hooked up to shore power and water, and made it over to the restaurant, they were trying to close but stayed open just for us. We had an excellent meal, got to visit, and wrapped up for an early morning voyage to San Diego.
The trip to San Diego was uneventful, we planned on staying at the “Police Docks” on Shelter Island, that’s what the locals call them, not sure if there is a “real” name for them. We got in welcomed by Captn’ Rich and stayed a couple of nights. This was our last US port and we wanted to make sure that we hadn’t forgotten anything, or needed anything else before leaving the USA. We visited with Rich and plotted and planned our journey. Our first foreign stop, Ensenada. We’d been to and from there before when we bought the boat and joined the “90-Day Yacht Club”. We felt familiar with the journey and the marina we’d spend the night at. Our confidence was pretty high. We checked the weather, and it was all clear, we checked the wave heights, not too bad, so after a little more provisioning, we were ready to head to Ensenada.
As we headed out, we saw seals and dark grey clouds scattered in the sky right where we are going! The pilot in me looked at the looming thunderstorms, and thought, well this will be an interesting ride. However, Mike had to remind me of two things, first we traded 150 knots per hour in an airplane for 8 knots per hour at sea. Second, he already knew that the storm system in front of us is moving faster than we are, so by the time we get there, the storm will be gone. Well, he was right, we watched the storm for hours. As lightning flashed between the clouds, and sheets of rain fell, we never caught up to it, by the time we got to Ensenada we had clear blue skies as the sun began to set.
We decided to stay a couple of nights in Ensenada and take our time crossing all the “T’s” and dotting all the “I’s”. We planned the trip to be in certain ports by certain dates, and be in Texas by June. As you’ll see in the following stories, that plan was abandoned pretty early and the best realization we both came to was, even as cliché’ as it sounds, it wasn’t about getting to our destination, the real adventure is in the journey.
*** I am working on finding the folder with the pictures of the boat trip…they are lost in a technology black hole somewhere. As soon as I find them I will update posts…in the meantime I will try my best to write in a way that you won’t even need pictures.
*** I also have a video of our trip that I’ll post after I finish writing about it…