I've moved!

Hi and thanks for stopping by. I moved over to sailblogs as they have this cool mapping feature. I put in my lat n long, and it appears on the site. Very cool.
The address is:    www.sailblogs.com/member/merkava

See you there!

Cabo San Lucas

Cabo San Lucas....
Where you anchor with Cruise ships!
It's a place that only get quiet on the water after dark. During the day there are pangas, jet skis, fish boats, and tour boats all going through the anchorage at high speeds....

Gerald Pates just happened to be in Cabo when we were there so of course (if you know Gerald!) we went fishing! He took us to the local tackle shop and totally got me set up for catching tuna, dorado and wahoo.

We set out and while dining lightly on goat cheese n crackers, we caught 2 tuna! One Bonito and a Skipjack!

Ryan and I, in complete failure, dragged lines from Ensenada to Cabo and didn't catch a thing..... 2 hours with Gerald, and we're into fish.... frustrating AND cool at the same time....

Down the Baja!

So we left San Diego in the fog.... Anchored in the Coronados Islands for the night, then went to Ensenada the next morning at 4am to get checked in. AND! drink a few margaritas!

The next day, with foggy heads, we departed for Magdelena Bay, 500 miles away down the Baja coast! This photo was leaving the marina in Ensenada....

We motored through the fog for the next 2 1/2 days....

 Keeping ourselves amused any way we could....

Sleeping whenever we felt like it....

And always with someone on watch.

Until on the 3rd morning.... it was clear and we got to see the sky, and the sun come over the horizon! It was awesome and all three of us were up on deck to enjoy it!

It was one of the nicest sunrises I've seen. I think it was simply because we had to wait so long for it!

After the sun came out, it was all about lounging around and enjoying it...

So we dragged two fishing lines for 500 miles down the coast.... For 4 days straight.... and caught NOTHING! When we anchored in Magdelena Bay and saw there was a small fishing camp on the beach, we went in and bought a nice Yellowtail Tuna. We ate sashimi for half an hour before we finally put some on the barbeque.... It was INCREDIBLE

Coming into Mag Bay with a little wind.

Me with the town of Puerta Magdelena in the background.

More to come.....

Life in San Diego

In San Diego and it's time to get all the jobs done, that I didn't get to in Canada.... My list is long because this is the last "really good" place to do any boat work before I get to New Zealand.... about 13 months away....

So I went and piled the boat with gear..... Watermaker, solar panel, regulators, paint, and varnishes...... Power inverter, lightning dissipator.... extra wiring, extra fuel, oil, and water filters, impellers, oil...... Angle grinders, buffing wheels and a huge selection of waxes, cut polishes, and anything else I could find to make things shiny..... Everything I could think of, so I'd be able to fix anything myself, and keep Merkava lookin' good too.....

So I tarped the boat as best I could, and started working....

By the end of the 2 months, she is starting to look pretty darn good.... Actually, better than she ever has.....


Of course, it wasn't all work though.... I've kept up my morning ritual of going to Starbucks for a Chai tea.... This is my view as I walk along the seawall in the morning...

Sportfishing boats dock just down the way from me. They take people out for 1 to 7 day fishing trips.

They all seem to return at first light, so I'm always walking through tons of fresh caught Tuna, Dorado, and Grouper....

I've made some great friends on the dock.... This is my new best friend John.... He makes a mean pot of southern beans, and he's (obviously!) got a great set of legs....

Charlotte and Eric just had a baby girl about 12 weeks ago and I even got to baby sit one day...

Lots of tarps to keep the bird bombs off the new paint and varnish

The new non-skid looks great!

 

My buddy Ryan came for the trip down the Baja Peninsula.

John came to the end of the dock to see us off.....
 

Channel Islands to San Diego

San Miguel Island!

 I arrived here after a long and beautiful day from San Luis Obispo. As I was sitting in the dark, (probably having a rum n coke) I could here this prehistoric sort of croaking and growling coming from the shore. The wind was absolutely howling through the anchorage and coupled with the strange sounds from shore, added to the feeling of "being a long way from Kansas Dorothy!"

I woke up the next day and went to see where all the noise was coming from and met a whole group of very cool Elephant Seals.....

 Hi there.....

This was my first "tropical" island. Sand, sun, and a palm frond! So friggin' cool...

After the rough and fog filled north coast, it feels like I've finally arrived in paradise!

 San Miguel Island is known as the "Queen Charlotte" of the Channel Islands as it's the most isolated and gets the worst weather. You can see the fog to the north and it's finally behind me! Yeah!!!

I left San Miguel Island and headed to Santa Cruz Island, 25 miles south.
I had a perfect 15 knots of wind and sailed on a broad reach the whole way! Awesome!

I ended up in Forney's Cove. A small little nook of paradise at the northwest tip of the island. A rough, lonely, and gorgeous place.

Just before the sunset, an abalone fisherman came into the anchorage and dropped 4 huge mesh bags that were full of his live catch, overboard for the night.

That night I got treated to a fantastic sunset... So the Pelicans and I just hung out and absorbed the beauty of it....

I left Santa Cruz Island in the dark and got this shot of the rising sun.... You can't see them, but I was surrounded by dolphins all the way to Santa Catalina Island.... Awesome!

These are two whales I almost hit!
I saw these two and got this quick shot of them. The next time they surfaced, they were only 30 feet from the bow and heading at right angles to the boat! I thought for sure I'd hit them so I braced my back against the cockpit and waited for the hit. They must have just missed my keel and I was both surprised and relieved to have missed them.....
After a long slow day, that shot of adrenaline woke me right up! haha!

It was a long day.... not enough wind to fill a sail...
Coming into Catalina Island just as the sun is setting.... beautiful....

Coming into the busy center of Avalon Harbor, Catalina Island. It was quite a shock to the system after all the lonely places I'd just been. But cool. I walked around all the shops, then just kept walking! Glad to be able to move again!

I "slipped my mooring" (sailor speak!) the next morning a 4:30 to be able to get into San Diego with some daylight. I spent the day dodging tugs, freighters, and Navel war ships!

The end of my first BIG sailing trip! Yeah!!!!
Point Loma, with San Diego in the background!

South from Santa Cruz

When I think of the stretch of coast from Santa Cruz to Point Conception.... I think of fog..... It was beautiful, wild, windless, and foggy. I saw Orcas, thousands of Sea Lions, hundreds of Dolphins, and Elephant Seals.

I saw hundreds of these jellyfish as I was going along too.... ( I took this pic at the Monterey Bay Aquarium though....)

This is the Monterey Harbor. The place is absolutely chalked full of seals and sea lions....You definitely want to be upwind of these guys.....

Sunrise coming out of Monterey.....

A little friend I found taking a break on a clump of seaweed, about 6 miles off the coast.

My neighbor in San Simeon Bay. It's just below the Hearst Castle. I got in just before dark and it was an unexpectedly gorgeous anchorage.

I dropped the hook, and as I sat outside with a rum n coke, these dolphins came over to say hi... (Actually, they were just swimming around, but I decided it was all about ME!) It was awesome just sitting in this wild place, watching the sun set, and having these dolphins splashing around the boat.... This was my favorite anchorage on the coast....

My other neighbor...

I left San Simeon Bay in the dark, and about 15 minutes after the sun came up, I was engulfed in fog. Visibility was down to 200 feet at times, and never more than 1/4 mile. So I sat looking at a radar screen for the next 12 hours until I got to San Luis Obispo. I came into the anchorage, and all of a sudden - I could see! It was sunny! Wow.... cool..... in the photo above you can see the thick fog just beyond the sail boat.

This was the highlight of my day..... a fog rainbow....

Sunshine Lady was my closest neighbor.... a good ol girl....

So, one of the things that happened on the foggy trip down, was the toilet broke.... The LAST thing I wanted to do once I got to San Luis Obispo, was take apart the toilet.... but no one else was going to do it, so, grumbling away to myself about "the stupid fucking toilet".... I took it apart. Well, what I found was this little guy clogging the intake....and I started laughing.... just when I thought MY day was not so great, I thought of the odds of this little guy, swimming miles offshore, with dolphins, tuna, and sharks the whole way, surviving all of that, to get sucked up a toilet intake! Now that's what you call a bad day!

Leaving San Luis Obispo the next morning was the same. I was ready to go at 5:30am but waited until 6:00 because I literally couldn't see 10 feet in front of the bow to get out of the anchorage.... by 6:00 I could see about 20 feet so crept, very slowly, out. This pic was taken a couple of hours later once the sun was up.

The fog started to lift in the afternoon. This is the first oil platform I came across, just before Point Conception

This is a group of dolphins that came to play in Merkava's bow wave for about 20 minutes. I went and sat on the bow to watch them....

I was pretty happy.....

This is a pic of coming into San Miguel Island. The most northern of the Channel Islands. I was pretty jazzed when I saw there were sand dunes!
The first time Merkava had ever been anywhere where there were sand dunes! How cool is that......