With months to prepare and lots of time to write e-mails I, of course, waited until the last minute to contact all of you. Andrea and I are in Mexico (Ensenada) ready to begin a two month long sail down the Mexican Baja and across to the mainland. We would like to let all of you know where we are and what we are doing during the course of this trip, and we will be trying to drop an e-mail at least once every two weeks along the way. First item: If you DON'T want to hear about our adventures, raucous good times, picturesque anchorages, beautiful sunsets, new friends, etc. you should just click the reply button on your e-mail and say NO WAY, JOSE!! Otherwise you are on our e-mail list for this adventure. Second item: If you are unfamiliar with Mexican geography get down to Triple A and get a Mexican map. We are going to be in some small places, but we would like you to be able to keep up with the trip. If you are really good with the computer Google Earth can supplant those old road maps.
Of course I like to brag about the good parts of the trip but I have to start this one with the minor setbacks. First, we showed up on the boat last week to find sand everywhere on the boat, and I mean "everywhere". The Santa Ana winds that fueled the San Diego fires filled the boat with sand and we spent the first three days of this trip just cleaning. On top of that our totally reliable refrigeration system decided to stop working (coincidence or cause?). Yes, warm beer. Emergencia. Still working on that.
Today (Sunday, October 28) we attended the skippers meeting and crew party in San Diego. We leave tomorrow AM on the 800 mile, 10 day sail to Cabo San Lucas with the Baja Ha Ha group. 150 boats, 600 sailors, free rum at Turtle Bay and Bahia Santa Maria and, hopefully, lots of warm weather and downwind sailing. We have crew on board: Steve Shugart and Conni Butler, friends from Aptos, who will sail with us on this first leg of the trip. Steve and Conni will fly home from Cabo in early November while we continue on.
We expect our next e-mail stop will be Cabo. Until then... no one in the office, Tony is trying to run the fantasy football team, we don't get phone calls, and WE ARE ON VACATION!!! :)
