Happy Birthday!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY E!!

We are thinking of you and hope you are having a fabulous birthday! It is a little warmer here than it was in this picture.

Wish we were there (or even better, you here) so Uncle Darren could play Happy Birthday for you and we could give you hugs in person. 

You would love exploring the beaches and warm water here!
The fish, dolphins, whales and whale sharks are fun to watch.

You could go fishing with Uncle Darren and there is a fort with cannons...








Hope you have a great birthday and we miss you and love you lots!!!

Love,
Uncle Darren and Aunt Jodi

Hasta Luego

The Flotilla of Four Gang

Last night we enjoyed a final happy hour at the wonderful La Marina Restaurant across from the San Jose del Cabo (SJD) marina we are anchored in front of with new and old friends. We shared a plate of fish tacos that were delicious and fortunately they let you share the 2 for 1 margaritas because they are strong! All of the staff at the restaurant are super friendly and one of them even sang with the live band for a few songs! Afterwards, we said hasta luego to the last of our Mag Bay “Flotilla of Four” friends Kim and Arnie from Puna (thanks for the beef!). It’s been about two weeks since we waved to Del Viento sailing away while we savored their parting gift of brownie cupcakes (thank you!) and just over a week since we enjoyed a final evening on Marida (thanks for the phone calls to our folks!) before they left San Carlos for Panama. We hope to see all of these wonderful, talented, generous people again along the way.

 

SJD Town Square

As usual, we have stayed longer in SJD than we intended and enjoyed it more and for different reasons than we expected. Along with meeting new people, we enjoyed the Old Town area and saw some great art (a real treat – been a long time since we’ve been anywhere with art galleries). Darren had been here years ago and it has changed dramatically. On the sad side there are huge developments gouging and gobbling up the hillsides and a mall with McD’s and other such imports. The prices are fairly high. 

 

SJD Organic Saturday Market

 On the up side, there is a cute downtown area with pretty streetlamps, benches and trees, great little places with local food, a French bakery (real bread and chocolatines!!), art (both in the galleries and on the street), an organic farmer’s market (vine ripened tomatoes and mango mint ceviche!! Heaven, I’m in heaven…), arts and crafts and an affordable bus system. The locals were friendly and kindly forgiving of our amateur attempts at speaking Spanish.

San Jose del Cabo murals

We have been tempted to change course and head up the other side of the Baja to see friends in Los Barriles, La Ventana and La Paz but learned that it was 43 – Fahrenheit!!,brrr! – in La Paz yesterday morning so we are headed next for the mainland via Isla Isabel. We hope to make the San Blas area of the mainland near Puerta Vallarta by Jodi’s birthday this Saturday and meet up with friends in Banderas Bay after that. We miss you and wish you were here.

Love,

Jodi and Darren

s/v Gratitouille

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Dia de Los Santos Reyes!

A quick note to say we miss you all so much and hope all is well with you! Our kind neighbors in the anchorage have been trying to get a signal for over a week now so we can send you a message. It is short and without pix as Puna is generously letting us use their signal.

The good news is that we are healthy and happy despite having a completely different Christmas than we had planned. Our plans and dreams of being further south in a town where we could write and Skype you (and perhaps meet you!) were thwarted by lack of wind that started less than 2 days out of Turtle Bay. We are currently anchored off a tiny fishing village (most of whom left for Christmas but many have returned now) called Puerto Magdelena in Man of War Cove on the Pacific coast of the Baja peninsula.

Despite our disappointment at not being able to contact you, we had a wonderful Christmas afternoon with our new friends from Marida, Del Viento and Puna, eating Christmas cookies and enjoying the good company of such fabulous people. We are very grateful to them for embracing us and easing the pain of our first Christmas away from home.

It looks like there will be wind tomorrow but we have all been invited to the New Year’s Eve fiesta in the village, after helping to fix the town generator day before yesterday, so we want to stay to enjoy that opportunity. Hopefully there will be wind after to take us down the coast where we can find an internet café and tell you more.

2 Jan. – Update – Feliz Ano!! Thanks to Del Viento for letting us use their signal to try and get this on the blog since it wouldn’t go the other day and we had to settle for posting to Facebook (took over an hour and that’s with no pix and text ready to cut and paste!).  The New Year’s Eve fiesta was amazing and we will post more about it later. We are back to waiting for wind again and when it does, we will probably head for San Jose del Cabo for food then over to Isla Isabel and San Blas.

Hope your holidays (as all your days) are healthy and happy!
Much love,
Jodi and Darren

s/v Gratitouille

 

 

Bahia de Tortugas

Hi All!

We got into Turtle Bay on Sunday. After leaving Ensenada we had a bit of a scare when we tried to anchor at Islas Todos Santos and found th aquaculture had spread into the anchorage. Fortunately we had Darren on the bow scouting and he saw the submerged lines that we were running over in time for me to throw it into reverse quickly and thread us back out of the cove!!! With adrenalin pumping we decided to just sail south and not anchor that night. After a beautiful sunset and a few more hours of sailing we were both hit with Montezuma´s revenge. Soon, we were both below, weak and vying for the head so we hove to and waited it out.  The wind got so light that at one point we made a whopping 5 miles in 24 hours. Finally we had drifted close enough to Punta Colnett that we decided to put on the motor for a half hour so we could just go anchor and rest. After a few days rest we had recovered and the wind returned so we headed south again in our vain search for WARM.

We had a nice sail down to Bahia de Tortugas with just a bit of gusts and a few steep waves. It´s been nice here and we have met some great people and rumor is that it will be warm at Mag Bay this coming Saturday!!!!!! Hoping to leave tomorrow to head that direction. Probably no internet til Cabo or Puerto Vallerta so no worries if you don´t hear from us for a week or two.

More whales!

Love,
Jodi and Darren

Leaving Ensenada

We just returned from the Christmas Bazaar in the plaza out front of the Marina here where there were lots of good treats, neat crafts and some cute kids doing their dance routines on the stage. Unfortunately my battery ran out for the little couples in their suits and long full dresses doing low bows and curtsies.

We are in the process of packing up to leave Ensenada in a few minutes and it may be 3 weeks or so before we are near wifi again so no worries if you don't hear from us. The rough plan is to head down the Baja coast and probably only make 1 or 2 stops (depending on weather) so we can get to where it's reaaally warm! We had originally planned to make several stops down the coast including San Carlos, but since it is so late it is getting cold and the guys at Solosports are gone for the season anyhow we are probably not going to stop til Turtle Bay or Scorpion Bay where we will take a break and maybe get some surfing in. From there we will head for either Cabo or possibly straight over to Puerto Vallarta and should be able to get wifi in one of those bigger cities.

We miss you and hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

Love,
Jodi and Darren
s/v Gratitouille

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
We have sooo much to be thankful for but the most important are our wonderful friends and families that make our lives not only worthwhile, but amazing. As we recently saw on a greeting card...




Thank you to all of you who make our lives so fabulous!



We finally made it out of the states and arrived this morning in Ensenada, Mexico! Light winds and a determination not to motor meant it took a little more than a day longer than planned to get here from San Diego. So for Thanksgiving we checked in with the marina (no overnight anchoring allowed here) then made our rounds to check into the country. The first 11 are in or just outside the same building but you have to stand in line again every time you go back to a window, 12 is 6 blocks down the street and 13 is on the way back to the marina.

Look! It's Mexico!

1. Migracion for tourist card application
2. Bank to pay for tourist card
3. Migracion for tourist card stamp
4. Port Captain to check the boat and crew into the country

Good morning Ensenada!

5. Port Capitain, next window to pay port entry fee on boat
6. Copy shop outside to make copies
7. Bank to pay for Temporary Import Permit for boat
8. Customs to press the button - green light - yay!!
9.Fisheries to apply for mandatory fishing licenses for everyone on board since we have fishing gear
10. Bank to pay for fishing licenses
11. Fisheries to receive fishing licenses
12. Buy Mexican boat insurance
13. Celebrate by each having a shrimp taco and ceviche for Thanksgiving feast with mariachi band!
14. Back to the boat for a quick nap to catch up on 2 days of watches

Since we can't anchor here we won't stay long but are enjoying our first taste(s) of Mexico!

WOW (Still in the States)

Hi!

Wow, and...um...WOW. Has it really been a month since we last posted?? As you may have noticed we haven't had much luck in finding wifi in southern CA. The few times we have gotten online in the last month we have spent the time doing such fun things as paying bills and spending ridiculous amounts of time dealing with the health reimbursement plan people who don't seem to speak the same language as the equally wonderful health insurance plan people. Needless to say, they are not my favorite (unlike smiling!).

On top of that joy we both got really sick. It started with Jodi waking up one morning with the world spinning (no alcohol involved). We tried some seasick medicine  - even though we weren't in a particularly rolly anchorage we thought we'd give it a try. Two days later and still feeling like I was a kaleidescope where my outer body is the cylinder and my guts were the colorful little bits inside being rolled around by a really rambunctious kid and we looked for other possibilities. Darren asked if my sinuses were hurting. Well, a little, but I always have some sinus thing going on as I haven't cleared out the river nose from leaving Hood River - we've been hoping to get to warm water and have a few surf sessions clean me out. Maybe it did seem a little worse than normal...we tried some decongestant and some saline rinses and a day later I finally stopped spinning! On the up side, I developed some new muscles from clinging to the bed in an effort not to roll off while we were in flat, calm water.

A couple of days later we were in the midst of putting back together the boat as we had torn it apart to rearrange all the lockers just before I was bed-ridden and Darren came down with some awful cold thing that knocked him flat. You know it was a doozy since he just about never gets sick enough that he's flat in bed and can't even read. I was feeling better so I was able to turn the tables and take care of him. A couple of days later he was feeling less miserable and able to get up and about and I was hit with the same thing that he had! Argh!

So, we are still in San Diego despite having planned to be in Mexico by now and we haven't even been able to visit with family in the last two weeks as we didn't want to infect anyone. We are on the mend now so hopefully we will get all our projects done and be able to see the cousins in the next few days.

We are hoping to get back to the library tomorrow to be able to fill you in on all of the FUN stuff we did before we became infected like meeting Tracy at Anacapa and racing him to Newport Beach, visiting with cousin Bill and Lynn and seeing C. at his waterpolo meet! In the meantime, we are still in the states so feel free to call and say hi.

Love,
Jodi and Darren
s/v Gratitouille