Securite, Securite, Securite (31°51.309'N, 116°37.380'W)

"Securite, Securite, Securite.  This is Warship 6 conducting live fire exercises at 32°xx N and 120°yy'W.  All vehicles are requested to stay 7 nautical miles away from my vessel."  Well, that message certainly caught our attention, even though we started hearing it when we were 240 nmi away from those coordinates.  Now that we are in Ensenada, it's not as surprising.  The traffic on the marine VHF radio channels has been 95% English for the last few days.  We constantly scan multiple channels, so this has been a bit surprising.  Gone are the funny calls and whistles the Mexican fishermen use.  We think the whistles might be pre-determined calls to let their buddies know where the fish are biting.

Our trip north, along the Baja peninsula, varied a bit from our original plan.  After Bahia Santa Maria, we opted to sail to Punta Abreojos ("Point Open eyes", 26°42.585'N, 113°33.772' W) rather than trudge the whole way to Turtle Bay.  We would have liked to have gone ashore at Abreojos, for we could see a cute little town, but the wind was too brisk to inflate the tender that we normally stow for upwind passage making.  At least we rested, pumped out the bilge and had a warm meal or two.  The trip had been too bumpy for me to try to cook.  

We left Punta Abreojos after one night and made good time to Bahia de Tortugas (Turtle Bay, 27°41.223'N, 114°53.441'W), our last stop in the state of Baja California Sur.  We anchored just after noon and then rested.  The following morning Enrique motored out in his panga and offered to bring us fuel and water.  We took on 35 gallons of diesel and 50 of water.  That made me rest easier - even after all this time, I am still paranoid about running out of water.  Dave inflated the tender and we all rode to town to find what groceries we could and to donate the last of the school supplies we had brought with us. We found the elementary school with the kids well-dressed in their uniforms and a police officer outside making sure all was safe as school let out.

Our daughter turned 13 on the 23rd.  She got to choose what we ate for lunch and dinner and we all had "Penguinos" - cream filled chocolate cupcakes - for dessert.  We also spent a couple hours visiting our "neighbors" on Wind Watcher.  Jan and Chuck have been living aboard their boat for several years and were a delight to talk to.  Jan is very creative and showed us the game app she developed for iPad and shared craft ideas with our daughter.

The morning of the 24th, we finally downloaded a new weather file and discovered there would be a 24 hour period of 20-30 knot winds.  While that is great for racing, it is not exactly comfortable for us for a passage.  Therefore, we bypassed the stop we'd planned at Isla Cedros and headed to Bahia San Carlos - there to wait out the wind.  Passing Isla Cedros was a little disappointing.  The southern tip has a salt extraction facility and a well-to-do village with an enclosed harbor for anchoring.  This 21 mile-long island was quite tempting and a place I'd like to visit in the future.  Alas, we kept going for another 80 miles to San Carlos where once anchored, we watched the wind surfers and tallied the wind speed (there were several gusts over 30 knots).  The wind made it a bit rolly, but again we had a couple warm meals.  By this time, we were doing a good job of finishing some of our provisions.  We consolidated food into two of the three bins and put the last two weeks of laundry in one bin.

We next sailed to Bahia San Quintin which the charts led us to believe was a viable anchorage for getting out the tender and motoring to shore.  Alas, we were anchored well off shore to keep away from uncertain shoaling and the waves were more than we wanted to handle just to go for a walk along the beach.  We had a good night's rest as the wind and sea calmed and then left the next morning for Ensenada.  The trip here took us 30 hours to go 108 miles.  We had to do a lot of tacking due to the wind being directly from the northwest.  It's nice to be back in a marina and have a "real" shower.  It had been 5 days since we got off the boat so walking more than 20 feet felt great!

We are definitely out of the tropics.  Dave and I wear our foul weather gear much of the time we're in the cockpit.  This is the view Dave had when he woke from a nap the other day:

I've decided I need a ski mask for colder weather sailing.

This morning, we kept the radar on past sunrise due to fog.  It was cold and surprisingly windy given the fog.

While on a starboard tack the other day, our son thought he would pretend to be Spider-Man. This is the result:

We will be back in the US soon.  Just a few days here in Ensenada to check out of the country, do a little laundry and buy a few groceries.