IT'S FINALLY TIME TO HEAD SOUTH!

We will be leaving the comfortable confines of Chula Vista Marina on the morning of Wednesday November 13. Our first destination will be the Coronados Islands which are seven miles south of the US-Mexican border, about nine miles southwest of Tijuana. The total distance to Los Coronados is 28 nautical miles, about 1/2 or which is inside San Diego Bay.

We'll leave Los Coronados on Thursday morning. From there south - we have no idea what we'll do. If the weather stays warm and dry we'll probably stop at many of the little anchorages along the west coast of Baja California. If the weather is cool we may just make tracks south until we encounter warm weather. Most of the experienced Baja cruisers recommend a direct route from San Diego to Turtle Bay (320 miles) or even to Cabo San Lucas (740 miles).

The Baja West Coast can be quite cool and damp during November and December. During December 2000 we sailed my brother's boat from San Diego to Cabo and experienced some very cold nights, (well- it was 55 degrees at night which is very cold in Southern California terms), until we rounded Cabo Falso, just west of Cabo San Lucas. It can also get quite foggy every afternoon and evening as the cool, damp Pacific air gets sucked into the warm Baja interior valleys. Last year, sailing south, we suffered several foggy afternoons where the air temperature never exceeded 62 degrees. OH - Whine, Whine!

On the other hand, if the weather stays warm we can make it all the way to Bahia Santa Maria with no overnight trips if we stop in all the Baja anchorages. The final leg otrip from Santa Maria to Cabo is only 34 hours and has to be done non-stop since there are NO anchorages along that stretch of the southwest Baja coast.

We have been working very hard to stow everything on Mirador and get her ready for sea. We have not done any serious sailing since late September 2000 but have tested all the boat systems during the last several weeks. We did sail for several hours in 10 - 20 knots of wind and found that at least the boat still knows how to sail.

We reinstalled the Autohelm masthead wind sensor and think it works OK. Whenever we take Mirador out into South San Diego Bay we find the wind readings on the Autohelm agree exactly with the readings from a very accurate handheld guage. However, after we get back to the slip we see the wind readings slowing increase, even with no change in the true wind speed, until the Autohelm is reading about twice the actual wind speed. The local Raytheon/Autohelm dealer can't find any reason for this problem.

We had the inverter rebuilt and hope that it will now work without failure. Removing the inverter from the starboard engine room bulkhead was a two hour project due to my failure to plan ahead. Two years ago I mounted a very nice automatic Halon fire extinguisher system on the same bulkhead. Unfortunately, I covered the inverter mounting brackets and bolts with the extinguisher mounting brackets. That meant I needed to chisel away 2" of 3" wide mahogany wood so that I could get a wrench on the four bolts that held the inverter to the bulkhead.

I had to remove the four 7/16" nylock nuts from thge 3" long bolts on which the inverter hangs. That would have been easy if I had a 7/16" deep socket but I didn't. So I had to use an open end wrench to take off the nuts. I could only get 1/8 of a turn on each bolt since the extinguisher brakets on one side and the 250 amp fuse on the other side prevented me from getting any more turn on the nuts. And, of course, nylock nuts won't spin off. OH, whine, whine.

JIm rebuilt the fire extinguisher brackets for me so that we could reinstall the inverter with little effort.

Finally, we have been trying to deal with our old problem of a tiny leak in the water heater compartment. We watch the water heater for days at at time and never find a leak. Then we seal up the compartment and leave it for a month or so. When we open the compartment we find a few ounces to a 1/2 cup of water in the bottom of the compartment. We think we have found the leak and have fashioned a not so good solution.

We had to replace the orginal Seaward water heater in August 2000. The new Isortherm heater had a slightly different connection to the diesel engine coolant line than did the Seaward. I used a PVC 1/2" threaded connector to couple the female bronze fitting on the water heater to the male bronze fitting on the engine coolant line. We think that the leak occurs when the hot engine coolant first arrives at the bronze/PVC/bronze connection and causes the components to expand at different rates. After about five minutes all the components have expanded completely and the leak stops. That is why we only occasionally see a leak, normally while at the dock, we don't use the diesel engine to heat the water tank.

Now we have a quart sized drip pan under all the fittings to catch the miniscule drippings. Not elegant - but practical we hope.

Last Friday we had our Mexican Visas stamped in Tijuana so we can stay in Mexico 180 days before getting a new Visa. We also picked up a lot of Mexican Pesos. Since our Visas are stamped and we won't have to check into Mexico at Ensenada as originally planned; we can just cruise along and check in with each Port Captain as necessary.

Our last projects for the next two days are:

- get rid of 20 pounds of cat food and 30 pounds of kitty litter

- get rid of two sets of inline skates

- get rid of a weather fax machine

- fill the propane tanks

- fill the four gasoline tanks for the outboard

- finish stowing the canned goods

- return the rental car

- get our deposit back from the marina

During the last week I purchased a great heavy 6' saltwater trolling rod and a Penn Senator 6/0 reel. You can't bend the rod and the reel holds 350 yards of 100 pound line. We also purchased dozens of beautiful trolling lures, hundreds of lead heads and wigglers, 750 yards of spare 80 pound test line, 100 yards of wire leaders, dozens of hooks and swievels. Jim gave us his 5' rod and Penn GSi 535 reel along with a gaff that is bigger than either of our boat hooks. Now, if we catch 750 pounds of fish in the next two years the fish will have only cost us about $2 a pound.

I've stowed two cases of Nut Brown Ale in the bilge, right next to 18 bottles of wine. We have 50 VCR tapes and 30 DVD movies. We have 10 pounds of popcorn ready to pop while we watch movies and drink beer.

We have enough canned and dried food on board to last three months. We are buying a bunch of chicken, beef, and pork and will have the butcher freeze it for us. We'll put that meat in the freezer Tuesday evening

Arlene purchased a small Krupps IceCream/Sorbet maker so we can even have fresh ice cream as we cruise.

The boat is clean, the tanks are full, the engine is tuned, and the sails are rigged for a nice downwind cruise south so we're outta' here Wednesday morning.

Once we leave Chula Vista we'll be updating this site at least once a week. Stay Tuned.