Goodbye USA, Hello Mexico!

The journey from San Diego to Ensenada is only 65 miles, but we were filled with apprehension and excitement as we cast off the dock in the early hours of 7th November. We left at 01h00 to catch “good weather” but more importantly, to arrive in Ensenada mid afternoon (when we could figure out all the unknown Mexican complications we had imagined would plague us in bright sunshine, and hopefully with the help of others!)

As often happens, the weather turned out differently to the predictwind model and we sailed much of the way on a beam reach in steep seas and 20 – 25 Kts of wind. The temperatures were ticking upward and so we removed some panels of the cockpit enclosure that had kept us reasonably dry in early parts of our trip. This turned out to be a mistake, as several waves slapped the side of the boat and splashed straight into the cockpit – leaving us with days of work in Ensenda cleaning up the salt residue.

Our arrival in Ensenada turned out to be anticlimatic – other than struggling to make contact with the Port authorities (it was lunchtime) and wondering how many rules we were breaking as we entered the harbour without permission! Turns out it’s pretty typical, so we needn’t have worried.

We found a random slip at the Baja Naval marina (our assigned slip was already taken!), tied up to the dock and stepped ashore to begin the much-discussed paperwork for us and (more importantly) our boat. Bring on the red tape….