Sunday, September 11, 2011

Offshore

We headed offshore about 5 nautical miles and sailed down the coast with a 10 knot breeze pushing us at about 5 knots.  Wonderful sunset at the Coronado Islands then on into the darkness.  We swapped one hour watches until 21:00 then switched to two hour watches in teams of two.  So Connie and I took the 22:00 to 02:00 shift and Chris and Keith took the graveyard shift from 02:00 to 06:00.

We had to slow the boat down so as not to enter the Bahia Todos Santos til daybreak.  Chris had concerns because he could not see both lights on Islas Todos Santos but later found that our chart was old and the newer chart showed one light inactive.  I took my shift at 06:00 and took us into the bay (Bahia) and around the breakwater at Ensenada harbor.  We went straight to the dock without a problem as I had previously identified Baja Naval marina on Google Earth.

Lessons learned: Since we'd figured that the trip would take about 14 to 16 hours we decided to travel through the night as to arrive early in the morning to approach the harbor in daylight. In retrospect we could have left Mission Bay early in the morning, say at about 04:00 and got in just at sundown. Then we'd just tie up at the marina and wait till the morning to check in. Thus we'd avoid having our sleep patterns disturbed.

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