San Diego!

So if San Francisco was a big milestone, then San Diego was a major one: our last stop off before hitting Mexican waters, and some 1350 miles from our starting point.

The journey from Catalina Island was a straight shot in good weather, and as we neared San Diego we started hearing radio chatter from the US navy – warning seafarers to stay clear of the battleship conducting live fire training!! We couldn’t see these guys, but were furiously checking GPS coordinates, AIS and radar to convince ourselves that we weren’t going to be shelled by a destroyer! As we closed in on the San Diego Harbour entrance, we started to see these vessels – an aircraft carrier, a submarine and some smaller craft that were all travelling more than twice our speed over the water. We know from experience with BC Ferries around Vancouver Island to stay WELL out of their way as they have a habit of sneaking up on you (at 20 kts).

We had booked a slip at the Shelter Island Harbour Police guest dock Island and at about 40′ found it to be snug fit for our 50′ boat. As we looked at our butt sticking out into the fairway we noticed that most others were too. Our plan was to get a Harbour Police vessel inspection so that we could spend 2 or 3 weeks in the cruisers A9 anchorage (only out of town boats can anchor there) but with the “Baja Haha” on at the same time we were told “Sorry, its already full” – a bit of a shock as we didn’t have a back up plan! An hour of furious online booking and we arranged a handful of 72 hour anchorage spots – Glorietta Bay (A5 anchorage), back to Shelter Island Guest Dock for 2 nights then on to A1 anchorage for 72 hours then back to A5 for 72 hours etc….. Altough we were initially annoyed, this jumping around ended up being great as we got to see several areas of San Diego we wouldn’t have seen if we had just gone straight to A9. One night we had Navy Seal divers all around the boat doing night dive training and another day we motored past small navy vessels with trained dolphins swimming alongside. We really couldnt believe that they were training dolphins, but if you check up you’ll see that the US Navy has teams of trained dolphins (so they have navy seals AND navy dolphins – who’da thunk it?).

On our way to Glorietta Bay we saw 5 aircraft carriers, then once at the anchorage, sat and watched Osprey’s and F18’s doing circuits all day long!

We stocked up on supplies as if Mexico had no shops whatsoever. Lots of US$’s spent at Westmarine as well – they probably noticed their sales figures fall when we left) and we lamented the lousy C$:US$ exchange rate.

As our planned departure date grew closer, we started planning seriously for the Mexican arrival paperwork – including fishing licences, our tourist visas and the infamous “TIP” – the Temporary Import Permit – for Mexican cruising. The TIP is an import permit for the boat – supposedly preventing one from selling the boat whilst cruising long term (up to 10 years). However, if the boat has an existing TIP in the name of a previous owner – i.e. it hasnt been cancelled when the boat left Mexico – then the situation gets VERY complicated. Horror stories everywhere on the cruisers forums for Mexico… We knew that Eos was in Mexico previously (prior to the previous owners), and we had checked just after purchase that all was good. Despite several assurances, we now found out – 2 weeks prior to departure – that Eos’s hull number was actually linked to an old TIP that had not been cancelled!!! Baaahhh….

It gets worse – the Mexican agent we were paying to sort out the TIP problem came up with a plan that involved getting some paperwork from the Customs and Border Patrol people in San Diego. It was going to be tricky, and somewhat unusual (normally one would just phone them to say “we’re leaving”) but we figured it was worth a go. What a mistake!! The CBP officer on duty that day decided that because we had purchased the boat in the USA that we were now EXPORTING the boat and that we needed a slew of export documentation before we could leave, let alone get the stupid form we thought we could use (turns out we couldnt use it anyway!). Now we needed an export broker!!!

Every export broker we spoke to said that this was nonsense and that the CBP guy was wrong – but when the CBP says the sky is pink, what do you do???? Long story short, we spent several very harrowing days trying to sort this out, until a brilliant import/export broker we’d been talking to offered to call the CBP and sort them out. It did the trick, and after a couple of days delay, they apologised for the mix-up and let us leave!!! Bloody hell!

So, with just a few days remaining before our haul out date in Ensenada, we decided to leave and figure out the TIP issues once we were in Ensenada!