 |
|
|
First of all, our apologies to those of you who have sent us e-mail and to whom we have not yet replied. We do love to get your news, so please keep them coming. Patricia is much better than I with timely responses, but I resolve to do better. We've been here in San Diego almost a month. My, how time flies. Patricia's Mom, Dad, sister Mary and her husband Jack visited us last week. Dad and Jack rented a minibus and we all had a great time. Mary and Jack's daughter Nicolle and her husband Paul flew down for Nicolle's birthday on Friday, which was a nice surprise. Jack to us to all to lunch at the Hotel Coronado on Coronado Island in San Diego Harbor. Some railroad barons bought the island in the early 1900s for $110,000 and sold it off in lots. They built the hotel from the profits and instructed the architects to design it without regard to costs. It is the largest wooden building on the west coast and is very impressive and luxurious. It has been used as a location for movies and TV dramas and has hosted many heads of state and US presidents. Needless to say, we had a lovely lunch and a nice visit. The weather here has been fantastic, temperatures in the seventies, but getting cooler in the evenings. We are currently in Santa Ana conditions again, which means day temperatures in the upper eighties and warm evenings. Here in San Diego we get the warm weather, but not the high winds. We have been working on the boat, adding solar panels, spares, provisions and doing maintenance and a few of the things on our list that didn't get done in Seattle. The place is full of cruisers, so there is quite a bit of socializing on the dock, at happy hours in various establishments and at parties organized by local businesses looking for our cruising dollars. There are multiple swap meets and a cruiser's net every weekday morning on the VHF. Here information is exchanged and contacts made, followed by a buy, sell or trade session called "Treasures of the Bilge". We didn't leave with the Baja Ha Ha group on October 28th, although we did go to their party and get the burgee and the T-shirts. It would have been a push for us to get everything done, but we could have made it. We couldn't decide whether to go or not. We made out a list of pros and cons and still couldn't decide. The major cons were that is was such a large group (135 to 150 boats actually left, estimates vary) and they were stopping in only two places between here and Cabo San Lucas, while we would like to gunkhole down, taking about a month. We studied our list, had a beer and decided to wait. We have been talking with them on the Single Sideband radio every day. They have had light winds and have had to motor. A few boats turned back for San Diego because of equipment problems, leaks! and illness aboard. They leave Turtle Bay, their first stop, for Magdalena Bay this morning. Then a day's rest and on to Cabo. The boat we talked to, Surge out of San Francisco, told us Turtle Bay is beautiful. It's time to go now and we will leave for the Islas Coronadas and Ensanada tomorrow morning. Ensanada is the last town on the Baja Pacific Coast before Cabo San Lucas, 800 miles to the south east. We will stop at many places in between, either deserted bays and islands or small fishing villages. We expect to take about a month to get to Cabo, but maybe longer or shorter. It all depends on the weather forecasts, how we feel from day to day and whether we run out of beer. We are not sure about e-mail in Ensanada, so we may be in Cabo before we can communicate again. We will be in Ensanada a couple of days at least and will try to do e-mail from there. Our love and best regards to all of you, Colin & Patricia Shannon-Garvey |
|