The Taco Traveler

Just a quick entry as I'm waiting in Starbucks for a teleconference... It was an easy trip down from Isla Coronado Sur here to Ensenada, but because Rogelio and his crew were likely playing futbol in the yard at their lunchtime break, nobody answered my hail at Baja Naval, so I ended up going into Cruiseport Village Marina, which was more expensive than the $35 at Baja Naval, and they also wanted $50 to fill out all my clearance paperwork for me (which Rogelio does for free for his Baja Naval clients). So... big mistake, and I ended up waiting for about three hours at the ventana unica (single-window check-in place, with the Port Captain, Immigration and Customs all in one building) because of my less-organized paperwork I tried to do myself.

I've decided against trying to get a Mexico Telcel account, as one month just isn't worth it. Instead, I've downloaded Skype for iPhone, so whenever I have wifi I'll be on Skype. So if you want to be in contact with me and you don't have Skype, get it. :-)

Leaving Ensenada in an hour or so, and my next communication will probably be from Cabo San Lucas where I know of an open wifi or two out in the anchorage. There's nothing much between here and there, as Turtle Bay is a technological backwater, and Bahia Santa Maria (a sub-bay off Bahia Magdelena) is just a rest stop without any services at all.

TT

I'm tucked in safely in a very surgey Baja Naval marina, having just returned from the first (non-hotdog, non-fish) meat I've eaten in a couple weeks. I can't write much tonight because I'm beat, and the reason is that Cabo Colonet was horrible. First off, though the wind was from the north and northwest, there was some residual swell from the southeast. So the wind kept my beam to the swells all night. I think I slept one or maybe two hours, at most, rocking crazily back and forth every few minutes and sometimes so intensely I felt like we may have dipped a rail. So I got up about 2am and started working on my web project.

At 4am I pulled the anchor and started out of there, noting that there was a shrimper meandering about. As I started leaving the anchorage, he went in behind me then *turned his lights off* and basically followed me out from the cape, and actually went *inside* of me like he was going to cut me off on my way around the cape. What popped into my mind? "Duel" - one of the first Spielberg movies, of course. I was Dennis Weaver being pursued not by an evil semi but by a psycho shrimper. It was a bit freaky (remember, this is 4am and there is nobody around but us two boats) but the guy backed off as soon as I hailed him on the radio in Spanish:

"Barco de pescando cerca de Cabo Colonet. Este es el velero Chemistry."

... and again. No reply.

Then I started to get mad. I started speaking to myself in Spanish - which I'm sure is a good sign that I'm getting pretty good, conversationally - and it was sort of a ... what you wish you'd said - kinda thing, but I don't wish I 'd said it because he's bigger and faster than me and if he really wanted to run me down he probably could have, eventually.

In my mind, I said: "Cabron! El Armada de Mexico va a oir de esto. Tu barco va a ser mio. Tu vas a trabajar para yo." I don't know how right that is, and I'm too tired to look it up, but the only word I'm not sure of is "oir" - is that "to hear"? That translates as: "Fool! The Mexican Navy is going to hear about this. Your boat is going to be mine. You're going to work for me." Which of course made me laugh out loud thinking "All your barco are belong to us." But you have to be a nerd to understand how funny that is. And "cabron" a tame sort of "ass" - like calling someone a "fool." I think in most versions I called him a "culo," which is more like "asshole." I may have also called him (again, just in my mind) "jota" or a few other things I learned in the restaurant kitchen in college.

Anyway...

 After no response, I hit the gas and got Chemistry up to 7.5 knots and headed for open water. If we were going to have a maneuverability contest, I wanted to be far from shore. He backed off, and I turned the VHF to "scan" and heard him talking a few minutes later with another boat that actually sounded like his boss (dad?) and the other guy said something like "what happened with that sailboat?" ("que onda con esa velero?") I heard what sounded like a younger guy - maybe late 20's - say something like "I got back here and encountered him..." and that's all I could pick up. It was lazy, horrible backwards-ass Spanish - the equivalent of our Appalachian English. Prick. I really do believe that many shrimpers intentionally mess with cruisers down here.

So tomorrow I'll get my exit paperwork in order, then fuel up and stay one more night before leaving early morning Tuesday for San Diego. Time to rejoin modern society for a while.

TT

We're here! And we've already found the best taco shop in town. We were led to this taco shop by a fisherman or a captain or something, named Jesús. We asked him where we could find this repair place, and he said he could fix my outboard. So we talked about that and told him we'd bring my outboard by after we ate, and he had just the place for fish tacos. Malavika put it nicely: "That's a small town for you - not only does he tell us the best place, but he walks us right to it." So after we walked with Jesús for a few blocks, found the taco shop, and gorged on fish tacos for $0.70 apiece and carne asada and shrimp tacos for $1.00 apiece (the whole meal, for all of us, including a beer for me, was $10), we went back and brought my outboard to Jesús. No luck. But he was a good troubleshooter. We narrowed it down to either the ignition core assembly, or the CDI unit. It's just gotta be something electrical. So hopefully I'll be able to buy those pieces tomorrow at the local Yamaha dealer. They're definitely installable myself.
 
Dick Dato on Boundless recommended this marina (Baja Naval) to me. It's cool, but for some reason the boats around here float around like crazy. I mean, like being tied up fairly tightly but still creeping away from the dock and then coming crashing back into the dock with the spring of the lines. It's odd. But Chemistry is protected by four big bumpers amidships. They have free wifi, cheap fuel (it's up to $2.65/gallon) and just very nice people. We'll hang out tonight and get lots of sleep (I'm tired now - it's 6:30), and then check into Mexico tomorrow morning, fill up the fuel tank and jerry jugs, and then head out for Turtle Bay late in the afternoon. It will be nice, now that we've had the daytime arrival we needed, to have the daytime departure we need so we won't be quite as sick out there (or sick at all, one would hope). I'll remember to actually take the ginger tables this time, and not just put them in my pocket.

And oh yeah... there's this application I'll be uploading position reports to. I had trouble sending on the SSB today, but hopefully I'll get it figured out soon. Anyway, the postion of Chemistry will be available occasionally at:
http://pangolin.co.nz/yotreps/tracker.php?ident=WDD9964
Note that the thing is only pretty cool - it does things like make you go over land masses if the two last updates happen to have land between them. For this leg, I swear we went through the Coronado islands, and didn't run up on the beach at Rosarito.

TT

If you've ever sailed or motored into 20+ knot winds, after looking at this weather prediction, you'll appreciate why we're still here in San Diego.