Cruising Adventures of the Red Witch

October 14, 2022 The beach in Ensenada is quite large.   It runs pretty well the entire width of the bay, and it runs uninterrupted for about 7km.   After 7km there is an estuary area before it continues again on the other side.   We explored all of the 7km on our side of the estuary, but we did not go to the other half of the beach.   It was a 2.6km walk through the city for us to get from the marina to the beach, but it was worth it, as the beach was a beautiful place to walk, and the water was so warm.   We often went to the beach for a long walk, and it was lovely to be able to walk barefoot in the water in shorts and t-shirt in October and not even get cold feet.   The first day that we walked the beach we walked the entire 7km length, and it turned into a 17km day.     The tides are much smaller here than we are used to in BC, but there is still about a 6-foot tidal exchange on the large tides, and because the beach had such a shallow grad...

October 7, 2022   It was interesting exploring a new city in Mexico.   Neither of us had ever been to the west coast of Mexico before, and we had also not been to a Mexican city that was close to the border of the United States.   It was obvious that Ensenada was influenced by how close it was to the US.   It had a large expat community, as well as many tourists who had arrived from the US to go fishing and be on vacation.    We found that it was much more regulated than the cities that we had been to on the Caribbean side of Mexico.   While there were small taco stands, they were run out of little trucks or trailers, more similar to what we would see in Canada.   We did not see any of the open-flame BBQ cooking places that we had found on the main part of Mexico last January.    The food was still delicious, but it had the feeling of being more regulated, with more of a restaurant style, thus less “home cooked” authentic.   ...

September 27-28, 2022 Before dark, on our last evening out at sea, we raised our quarantine flag.   The quarantine flag is a yellow flag that signifies that one has not yet cleared into a country.   We raised it before dark as we were going to be crossing into Mexican waters at about 23:00.     Jason was on watch when we entered Mexican waters and a large drone came and flew over our boat.   After hovering above and watching our boat for some time, and Jason waved up at it, it flew off and performed a continuous grid pattern along the border line.    As Jason slept, I watched the sky brighten on our first day in Mexico, and then we approached the fog bank.   I could see it in the distance at first light, but it was at around 06:30 that we entered it.   At first it was not too thick, but gradually, as we began to enter Bahia de Todos Santos, the bay that Ensenada is in, we came into the thick of the fog.   We had ver...

September 26, 2022 Visits from the dolphins were usually daily, and like I said, nightly.   It was always exciting to see them, and it was always different.   One time, when the swells were large and the water sparkling blue, we saw them coming, rocketing out of the waves coming our way.   As they neared we could see them playing inside the waves, and as the swells passed us at eye level we could look inside and see the dolphins.   Another time we had a massive pod of dolphins come towards us from our port side, but they were not coming to play, they were on the move, and gradually the large pod passed us by, but we could see them, way in the distance, as they leapt from each wave leaving only spray behind them.      We were also visited many times by whales.   We think that they might have been Bryde’s (Pronounced Broodus) Whales, but we cannot be certain.   On two separate occasions a whale decided to come over and ch...

September 22, 2022   The ever-moving motion of a small vessel on the open sea is hard to describe, and hard to picture, I think.   I know that before the trip started I thought to myself, I have been out in the swells, I have been on the open water, I can imagine what it will be like, but I was wrong.   I could have pictured what the first day would be like, even the first night and the second day, even the second night and the third day, but when one is out on the open water for ten whole days, day and night, it is different.   The movement is constant, yet ever changing; it is never predictable.    If one is up in the cockpit during the day things are relatively easy.   One's subconscious is very good at taking in all of the information around and roughly estimating and preparing one's self, subconsciously or consciously, for the next wave.     At night, however, or down below, it’s a whole different world.   Each movement of the boat...

September 20, 2022   Jason and I were not rigid about our watch shifts during the day.   For the most part we were both up in the cockpit and who was “on watch” would depend on how we were feeling, who was more tired, and we pretty much just shared responsibilities.      During the night, however, someone had to remain on watch so we essentially split the night in two. The original plan had been four-hour watches, I would go to bed around 22:00 and get up at 02:00, and then Jason would go to bed until 06:00.   By the end, however, it worked out that I would go to bed when I was tired, so usually before 22:00 and then get up to switch out with Jason at 02:00, and he would then sleep as long as he could, which usually wasn’t past 07:30.   I would then often lie back down after breakfast to catch a few extra hours of sleep, and Jason would try, usually unsuccessfully, to nap a bit in the afternoon.   Overall, it worked out well fo...

September 18-19, 2022   Our first couple of nights at sea were the nicest because we still had a sliver of the waning moon in the sky for part of the night, and the sky was clear, showing us a spectacular starry sky.   With absolutely no light pollution, we got one of the best views of the night sky that I have ever seen, 180 degrees completely uninterrupted.   It was spectacular!     One interesting thing that we noticed was that just after sunset, as all of the stars were coming out, we could see a perfectly straight line of “stars”.   Since there are no stars that we know of or have ever seen in a perfectly straight line, it is our assumption that it was a line of Elon Musk’s satellites.   As we got further south, and as the presence of the moon faded completely from our night sky, we found that it would usually cloud over in the first few hours after dark and remain cloudy with a thick marine cloud layer through the whole night.   We were...

September 17, 2022   On September 16th we decided that, unless things changed by morning, we would leave the following morning.   We had spotted a potential weather window a few days before, and had watched the forecast updates intently.  That afternoon I went up the mast to check things over, Kiki was pulled up on board and lashed down, and all of the last little things were stowed away.   We were ready.      September 17, 2022 was the big day, and at 09:00 we headed out of Matilda Inlet.   We were up early, but we didn’t end up leaving until 09:00 because we just couldn’t quite decide.   The weather looked good, but it also looked like we might have very light winds more frequently than we wanted.   However, the long-range forecast was showing that if we didn’t take this opportunity we might end up waiting a long time, or worse still perhaps this was the last good window.   So, we decided to go!    At...

September 10-15, 2022 We chose to remain anchored in God’s Pocket for a few days after we were finished with my appointments in Tofino.   Each morning we awoke in the sunshine, and each morning a large fog bank loomed over the more outer coast.   We could see it from our anchorage, and the current conditions in Tofino were usually cool with mist or drizzle.   We enjoyed our protected, sunny anchorage and even went swimming off of our swim grid.   Each day we checked the wind forecasts for the whole coast down to Mexico, and as it looked like a potential weather window could be approaching we moved anchorages back to Matilda Inlet on Flores Island.   In order to leave God’s Pocket we had to time the tides and currents, so it was not an ideal place to leave from for Mexico, as we wanted to be able to leave in the morning without having to time the currents.     Back out at Matilda Inlet we had more exploring we could do, and many trails and beaches to ...