We ended up spending six days in San Diego. Our original intent was to spend maybe three, but we were delayed in visiting the Mexican Consulate by the government holiday and then found ourselves running errands during the following days. We stayed at the San Diego police dock during our visit, which was a great bargain at $10/day for the first 5 days and $20/day for the next 5 days. We met several other cruisers during our stay and even bumped into some old friends, Scotty, Katie and Sarah on Petra, from Tacoma, Washington.
Our days in San Diego were mostly spent figuring out the best ways to get what we needed and hauling it back to the boat. Last July I won a small cooler caddy at my family reunion and it really made hefting laundry, provisions and boat supplies much easier.
In search of a place showing the Sunday football game, we found ourselves at a very nice restaurant called Fiddler’s Green. We were daunted at first by the dinner menu prices, we turned around to go to the lame burger joint across the street when owner/manager stopped us and said “Where are you going?” we said we couldn’t afford to eat there and were gonna go watch the game elsewhere. He said “Well you can go somewhere else and eat crappy food while you watch the game on a small screen but there aren’t any sports bars around here and we have a bar menu.”
The bar menu was very reasonable (the $3 grilled ahi fish taco is killer). While we scarfed fish and shrimp tacos watching the game on the 42” Plasma screens the bartender offered me an extra margarita that he had accidentally made. It was my first alcoholic beverage since we left Portland and really hit the spot! The football game was muted on the televisions in the bar, but it didn’t really matter because we were quickly swept up into conversations with other sailors at the bar. We met a really nice fellow named Dennis, who spends a good deal of his time in El Salvador and he had nothing but good things to say about Central America and us going there. The owner/manager of the restaurant is also a sailor and teased us about how he can get to Cabo in 72 hours on his friend’s 70’ ocean racer (it would take our boat a week).
We had a really nice evening and ended up going back for Monday night football where we again ran into Dennis who tried his best to buy us a drink. Did I mention we really like Dennis? The owner popped by to tell us he really liked our website and was going to bookmark it on the free internet connected computer they have at one end of the bar.
We were going to leave on Tuesday morning but then we realized that Olivia’s rabies vaccine had expired. So we had to excavate the cat carrier from the bottom of the portside lazarette, dinghy the cat ashore and hop on the bus for the nearest Pet Clinic. Three hours and $118 later, kitty had her rabies vaccine and an International Certificate of Health.
On Wednesday morning we untied the dock lines and set off for Mexico. We intended to make straight for Bahia Magdelena if we had a sailing wind, passing up Ensenada and Turtle Bay. There was a nice steady 15 knots blowing out of San Diego and we immediately set the sails for a good reach offshore before heading south. Unfortunately I neglected to take my sea sickness meds until I started feeling a bit woozy. By then it was unfortunately too late and I got sea sick. Poor Adam sent me to bed at 6pm and didn’t wake me until 4am, when he was about to fall over.
To be continued…
