Back in Point Loma!!!!

We arrived back in Point Loma on Thursday afternoon. It was about a 10 hour trip up from Ensenada - with finally some wind out of the south! After clearing customs we headed over to our guest spot at SWYC. As we were docking a bunch of our friends magically appeared and welcomed us home - it was wonderful!! The boys are happy to be back and hanging with their friends again. Rich and I have begun the transition back to a "normal" life. We now both have cell phones and one car.

This picture is of Point Loma as we approached it on Thursday - a nice sight to see!!

Here's what is left of our second Mexican courtesy flag. Guess they don't stand up too well to high 20ish knot winds for very long!!!

Ensenada

We arrived in Ensenada this morning right around 7am. Eleven hours, not too shabby!!! We had to wait for the marina office to open to get a slip, so we tied up to an open dock for two hours. We're all settled in here now, and the marina is processing our exit paperwork from Mexico. We'll be staying at the guest dock at the yacht club until the end of July when our regular slip at the Bay Club opens up. So sometime late Thursday afternoon, we'll be arriving at guest dock #3. We're having drinks and dinner tonight with Manana, whom we've travelled up the coast with since Bahia Santa Maria.

One More Overnight!

We're sitting in Cabo Colonet waiting for it to be 8pm. At that time we're leaving here for Ensenada. We can't leave too early, or we'll get there before the marina opens! We came up 30 miles this morning from Isla San Martin. The weather was cool, and the marine layer was pretty high making for pretty good viability most of the time. We're all looking forward to getting to Ensenada. A nice long shower and dinner out! We'll leave early Thursday morning for SD, so we'll be home for our anniversary
on Friday!

Our current position is: 30 degrees 57.69'N; 116 degrees 17.39'W.

Rich, Deb, Kyle & Ryan

Isla San Martin

We are currently anchored in Hasslers Cove on Isla San Martin. We didn't leave Isla San Geronimo until daylight this morning. The winds didn't really calm down over night, so it would've been a rocky/rolly trip. We will leave here tomorrow morning at 7 (we get to sleep in) and head 30 miles to Punta Colonett. We'll hang out there for the day and then leave at 7PM for Ensenada - that will be about a 13-14 hour trip. We'll arrive in Ensenada early Tuesday morning and pending getting all the paperwork
done, we'll depart early Thursday morning for San Diego. They boys can't wait to get to Ensenada - they are getting anxious to get off the boat. In the past 10 day, they've only been off for a few hours while we were in Turtle Bay (Carson - I made it down the dock without falling in a hole this time!). They've separated all they peso's from their dollars and are ready to hit the town to spend their loot!

Our Current Position Is: 30 degrees 29.16'N; 116 degrees 06.12'W

Rich, Deb, Kyle & Ryan

200 Miles to Go

We left Cedros Island last evening around 8pm and arrived Isla San Jeronimo this afternoon around 12:30. The overnight part of the trip had calm winds and calm seas making for some good time. We were originally headed to San Carlos, but about 5 miles out we (us, Manana, & Brendon) decided to make good use of the flat seas and head on up here to San Jeronimo. The part of the passage that got interesting was the last part. We had to pass inside the "dreaded Sacramento Reef", in fog, with pangas
running all around - we had about 1/4 viability. Good thing for radar and the fancy function called "trail". Brendon was in the lead since one of their crew had run this route before. We were able to follow their trail right into the anchorage. The anchorage at Cedros was very pretty, but very noisy. That part of the shoreline is home to MANY sea lion, seals, and elephant seals. It was really neat to see an elephant seal in the wild - they are really huge!!!

Our current plan puts us in Ensenada on Monday afternoon and back to SD on Thursday. We plan to hit the customs dock around 3-4pm.

Our current position is: 29 degrees 47'N; 115 degrees 47'W.

Rich, Deb, Kyle & Ryan

Turtle Bay

We are currently anchored in Turtle Bay along with Manana and Brendan. We took on fuel today and went ashore to give the kids some running time! We're heading out again tomorrow morning at 4am heading for the north end of Cedros Island. From their we'll either cross to San Carlos or San Quintien - depending on how the winds are. If all goes well, we SHOULD be back in Ensenada by mid next week. On our way to Turtle today we found ourselves in the biggest school of dolphin yet - they're were hundreds
of them!

Our current position is: 27 degrees 41'N; 114 degrees 53.3'W

Rich, Deb, Kyle & Ryan

PS - If you reply to this, please delete the original message and do not include any attachment. They get deleted anyway and it takes a long time for the message to come across...

Bahhia Asuncion

Well we left Bahia Santa Maria yesterday morning just after 9 am. We just dropped our hook here in Bahia Asuncion just around 5:30 pm today. We had every variety of wind you can think of during our trip. We had sustained 22 knots late in the afternoon and dying down to 8 knots in the early morning. We decided (along with Manana) to come in here instead of Turtle Bay since we could arrive here during with daylight and Turtle Bay would be after midnight. Apparently there are alot of lobster pots
near the entrance to Turtle Bay - and you sure can't see them at night! We'll leave here tomorrow morning around 4 am and head the remaining 48 miles up to Turtle Bay. The weather continues to look very favorable for continuing north, so we'll most likely depart Turtle Bay on Friday morning heading for Cedros and then on to San Carlos on Saturday.

Our current position is: 27 degrees 08'N; 114 degrees 17.13'W

Rich, Deb, Kyle & Ryan

PS - If you reply, please delete the original message and do not send any attachments - the attachments don't come through and it takes too long to come across the airwaves...

Bahia Santa Maria

We left Mag Bay early this morning for the quick trip up to Bahia Santa Maria. This is a better location to start our next passage from. We are currently the only boat in this big bay! Way different from when we were here on our way down!!!! The winds in the anchorage this afternoon have been a consistent 20ish with gusts up to 27! We're expecting another boat in later tonight, some friends who are heading back to Orcas Island then up to Alaska. After checking with all our weather sources,
we are currently THINKING of leaving here tomorrow evening (once the wind dies down) and heading straight to Turtle Bay. We should have southerlies thru the night and then westerly to NW during the day - time to make tracks while the weather is good! Stay tuned to see what we really do!!!

Our current position is: 24 degrees 46.4'N; 112 degrees 15.4'W

Rich, Deb, Kyle & Ryan

Anchored in Magdalena Bay

We arrived here in Mag bay almost exactly 36 hours after leaving Los Cabos yesterday morning. We rounded Cabo Falso with about 30 knots on our nose for about 1.5 hours. After that we had 15-18 knots and choppy seas for the remainder of the day making for slow progress. Overnight the chop died down a bit and we were able to make time. Today we again had 15-18 knots out of the NW but better seas. We were able to hold a good tack right on into Mag Bay. Not more than 5 minutes after we dropped
anchor, a guy was here offering to sell us diesel. You got to love the panga drivers!! We THINK we'll leave here on Sunday and head up to Bahia Santa Maria in preparation for heading farther up the coast.

Our current position is: 24 degrees 38'N; 112 degrees 08'W

Rich, Deb, Kyle & Ryan

Update to Departure

After checking with all our weather sources, we've decided to leave early tomorrow morning for Magdalena Bay. We should arrive there sometime around dinner time on Friday. It's about 180 miles from here to the anchorage in Mag Bay.

New Friends

This is Kent and Maria. We met them at the pool in La Paz a few weeks ago. They live here in Cabo and we've been lucky enough to be able to meet up with them and spend some time with them while we're here. They also have two sons - Mark and Christopher. All the boys have a great time together, as do the adults!

Below are Kyle and Mark - two great buddies!!
Now that we're back on the boat we're getting ready for the "bash" north. As of now, it looks like the best time to leave here is on Friday or Saturday - stay tuned!! We've made the Costco run and the grocery store run. Everything is mostly put away, but there are always more things to do to get ready to leave.

Horseback Ride

During our 5 days of R&R at the Royal Solaris - we took a horseback trip. Kyle has been wanting to go for a while now, and I was able to convince Rich to get back on a horse again....

Misc Pictures

These first three are of "The Hook" on Isla San Francisco. We met up with our friend on "A Cappella" there for a few days and shared some great dinners!

This one is aboard "Maitairoa" in Perico on Isla Carmen. Sue and Alex are sure great people!!
These two boats are who we shared the anchorage in Balandra with when we left La Paz. "Utopia" is well over 200 feet and "Atessa" is not quite as big, but she does carry a helicopter!

Oasis is in Los Cabos

Well we finally made to Los Cabos yesterday. We left Frailes around 7:30 and the wind was pretty calm - about an hour later somebody turned on the wind switch. As we finally approached Los Cabos, we had 20-25 on the nose again. It took us 8.5 hours to go about 30 miles!! I guess that was practice for the bash North from here... We will be here until around the 25th of the month. We're getting off the boat on Monday for a few days of R&R at an all inclusive place in the area. We're cleaning up and drying up from yesterday today, so I'll add some more pictures tomorrow...

Stuck in Los Frailes

Well we've heard of people being stuck in Los Frailes waiting for a norther to blow through, but we're stuck waiting for the south winds to ease up. We left Balandra Monday morning and headed for Los Muertos. Our night in Balandra was anything but quiet! This was the first night we had to do an anchor watch. We had winds gusting 25-35; so we kept checking ourselves to make sure we didn't move anywhere. Monday night was a quiet night in Muertos. Yesterday we had southerlies on our nose gusting
20-25, so we ducked into the northern anchorage in Los Frailes. We tried to head to Cabo this morning but again we had 25+ knots on the nose and were making little headway. We turned around and came back to Frailes - we'll try again tomorrow...

Our current position is: 23 degrees 24.67'N; 109 degrees 25.37'W

Rich, Deb, Kyle & Ryan

Out of La Paz - Finally

We finally got out of La Paz today. We are currently anchored in Balandra Cove, just outside of La Paz. We got all our exhaust hose repairs done the other day and set out yesterday for Los Muertos. Just about 5 minutes out, Rich checked on all the repairs and told me to turn around. Apparently the muffler thingy also needed to be fixed. We contacted the mechanic on the way back in and also got a hold of Marina Costa Baja. The marina set us up in a slip that we could have had for over a week
and the mechanic (Dan) went and got some epoxy to fix the crack in the muffler attach point. After setting for the night, Rich re-installed it today and all was good so we got the heck out of La Paz. We will got to Los Muertos tomorrow (in time for dinner at the Giggling Marlin), to Frailes on Tuesday and into San Jose del Cabo on Wednesday. We're actually getting anxious for the "bash" north. We've been meeting a bunch of boats that are doing the bash at the same time, so it will be interesting
to see how the weather all plays out for all of us. We are also lamenting the fact that we are heading north. We all agree that we will definitely do this again sometime later. It just really seems that you need to have resources available to do 1,3 or more years of cruising - 2 years doesn't get you much further than we've already been. We can't say enough about the folks that run Marina Costa Baja. Both times we've been there, they have been more than accommodating with getting us hooked up
with anything we've needed. We will surely re-visit them in the future! We're guessing we should be back in SD around the middle of July. Any of you on your boats, we'll be checking in on the local nets as we head up the coast. Our anticipated date of departure from Cabo is around 6/25. We'll send more messages out once we have a good internet connection in Cabo.

Our Current Position Is: 24 degrees 19.28'N; 110 degrees 19.84'W.

Rich, Deb, Kyle & Ryan

PS - Carolyn - the boys are having an alien making day today!!!

Pictures from Los Gatos

These are some of the pictures we took during our stay in Los Gatos. As always, double click on the pictures to see them better. Oasis at anchor.
Ah, fresh lobster!!
Looking North from the beach.
Looking south from the beach..
Overlooking the beach and anchorage from up on a hill..

Cruisers Tree in San Juanico

Here are some pictures of the cruisers tree/shrine in San Juanico. Rich worked hard to sescure our item in the tree so that it makes in thru any upcoming hurricaines...

We are currently in La Paz. We'll be here until Friday or Thursday getting some exhuast hoses replaced. Boy is it HOT here - 103 in the shade!!!

2nd Grader

We've spent the past two nights in Agua Verde. Yesterday, Kyle successfully completed his last test for 1st grade - making him an official second grader!!! We're going to make brownies tomorrow night to share with some friends to celebrate the end of school. Today we sailed from Agua Verde to Isla San Francisco (about 55 miles). We're meeting up with our friends from A Cappella here. After this we'll work our way back to La Paz where we need to replace a few exhaust hoses before heading towards
Cabo.

Rich, Deb, Kyle & Ryan

Perico South - Isla Carmen

Oasis has started heading south again - towards Cabo. We are now anchored at Perico, South on Isla Carmen. We had a beam swell leaving San Juanico and crossing the north tip of Isla Carmen, but after we rounded the tip and headed more southerly things smoothed out. We are anchored here with our friends from Maitairoa. We'll be joining them tonight for cocktails along with another boat here by the name of "Brandy Wine". While crossing the tip of Isla Carmen we hooked a BIG dorado. Only problem
was is that he didn't want to stay caught and shook himself free just as we were about to pull him in. We were tasting dorado taco's..... we'll keep trying tomorrow...

Our current position is:
25 degrees 58.21'N; 111 degrees 04.43'W