To Ensenada and beyond!
At the risk of jinxing ourselves, we’re ready to leave San Diego, and set sail for Mexico!
At the start of the week, we got word we could clear customs and enter the country legally. We set out to finish the 100 tasks needed to prep Scooter to be back out at sea day in day out. Task number 1 was to come up with 100 things we need to do, which was surprisingly easy. And once we got to work, every two completed tasks reminded us of at least one more.
know what you’re thinking, how did you have so many tasks left after waiting to go for 5 months…and you’d be absolutely right to think that. We’re wondering also. But many of these jobs are time-sensitive, like filling our spare water tanks, getting all of the fruits, vegetables, and fresh meat off the boat. But still, we probably could’ve spread out some of the jobs over the months.
As of this week Scooter has:
- Functional Navigation lights for night sailing
- A working knot log (speedometer)
- A fixed dinghy motor with ample spares
- Increased diesel capacity for a 600-mile range!
- Baja Charts (if our digital options fail)
- A Spanish-English dictionary
- a whopping 73-gallon freshwater capacity
- spare baseball caps to barter with fishermen for fish.
- dry goods provisoning
- backups on backups on backups of anything we could think of (and fit onboard)
- And 90 other things we chipped off the list.
Other highlights of the week:
Our aft bedroom had developed a small leak and the rain made it a moldy mess.
Round 1 of our sendoff party turned into a fun dinghy ride…no surprise there.
Molly Collins, Taylor’s childhood hero, & friends came to visit and tour the boat.
We had a sushi night sendoff with Chuck and Kitsy. Making sushi in a full-sized kitchen is way more fun than on a small boat, and watching march madness on a big TV is way more fun than on a phone screen.
And Taylor made a badass tote-bag out of some very high-tech sail material!
Assuming departure goes as planned, we’ll leave San Diego harbor Thursday night just before midnight. Sail overnight and arrive in Ensenada mid-afternoon Friday, then begin looking for weather windows to head south.
We want to thank everyone who has made San Diego home. This week of warm sendoffs has made us feel very bittersweet about leaving. We never expected a few family connections and some random contacts to turn into such an incredible community. This is the longest Taylor and I have been in one place since we got married and we could not be more grateful for what everyone has done for us.
Thank you!
Also, if you’ve made it this far you’re a serious reader/supporter so thank you for that. We’re not sure what emails will look like when we’re out of cell service in Baja but our sat phone will work so I may be able to post brief text updates every week. And hopefully when we do return to civilization the pictures can make up for it.