July 19-21, 2019
Friday morning, I flew from Oakland to San Diego to make a
second attempt at entering the United States on Scrimshaw. I arrived in San Diego at 12:20 and made
my way to city bus #992 after grabbing some lunch in the airport. I didn’t have exact change for the bus, so I
had to buy a Compass card from the ticket machine in the airport, which I
loaded with a day pass for the San Diego MTS system for $5.00. This allowed me to take the bus to the Santa
Fe train depot where I caught the blue line trolley to the border.
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| Pathway to Mexico |
Once at the border, I followed the pedestrian pathway across
the border and through immigration. I
was pleased to be able to use the “Mexicans” line, as I am a legal resident of
Mexico. I flashed my Mexican ID and was
waved through with a smile. Once through
the border, I walked to the right into Tijuana to the ABC bus station and
caught a bus to Ensenada. I had been
told to get off at the first stop in Ensenada, as it was closer to the
harbor. It was closer to the shore, but
probably not any shorter of a walk to the Cruiseport Marina. I was hot and tired and ready for a beer when
I finally arrived.
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| Rick & Arturo at the Port Captain |
Immigration went without a hitch. Arturo knew everyone at the office and
chatted with them about this and that while we kept our mouths shut and tried
not to look nervous. The port captain
was having trouble with his system and was unable to print our exit
documents. He did not, however, seem to
have any concern about our documents, took our fees, and issued us a
receipt. Arturo promised to come back at
noon to pick up the documents and we returned to the boat.
We still had not received the package from Jamaica, so
looked at the FedEx tracking to see where it had gone. It seemed to have been returned to the
local FedEx office. Fortunately, the
office was within walking distance, so we headed over there while we waited for
Arturo to return with our exit documents.
Miraculously, the clerk found our package right away. We breathed a big sigh of relief and returned
to the boat to wait for Arturo.
Just when I had begun to think that Arturo had gone home for
the day without completing our mission, he arrived with the exit
documents. He had not been able to
cancel our Temporary Import Permit but promised to do so on Monday. He seemed confident that he could do it
without our participation. This
concerned me, but we went along with the plan because we had been advised to
leave Mexico as soon as possible.
We wanted to leave on Sunday morning, but the weather was
not conducive to motoring north. We
spent a leisurely day readying the boat for our journey north and went to bed
early, so as to rise at 4:00 on Monday morning.
July 22, 2019
We wanted to get an early start so that we could arrive in
San Diego during business hours. We were
also still a bit nervous about the ten customs agents that had arrived at the
boat on Thursday before I arrived. Rick
had managed to satisfy their inquiries at the time, but we wanted to leave the
country before they returned with more questions and wanted to be clear of the
marina before they came back to work on Monday morning.
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| Leaving Ensenada |
We got ready to leave and then discovered that the running
lights were not operating. It turned out
the connector where the wires passed through the deck had gone bad. Rick worked hard to diagnose the problem, but
the lights still were not working when the sun rose. We pulled out of the marina with the lights
half repaired, intending to complete the repair underway.
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| Pod of Dolphins |
Our passage to San Diego was quite uneventful. There was almost no wind. The fog cleared by noon and the skies were mostly blue. We received notice that Arturo had successfully cancelled our Temporary Import Permit. The paperwork nightmare was finally behind us. We saw several pods of leaping dolphins along our way.
When we finally reached the US border, we
lowered the shredded Mexican courtesy flag and raised the crisp American
one. Then Rick quickly applied the new
hailing port lettering to a metal plate and attached it to the rear of the
davits. We unfurled the Jamaican flag
and headed for San Diego as a Jamaican vessel.
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| Rick Changing the Hailing Port |
When it looked like we might not make it to the customs dock
before dark, Rick resumed the repair of the running lights, running temporary
wires along the outside of the bow pulpit.
We pulled into the customs dock as the sun sank low in the
sky. The customs agents arrived promptly,
inspected the boat, and took our documents to their office. We needed to report to the office in the
morning to acquire our cruising permit and retrieve the documents. Unfortunately, when we tried to obtain a slip
for the night, there were none available.
I had been up since 1:30 in the morning and could barely see straight,
so crawled into my bunk, hoping to get at least a few hours’ sleep before they
threw us off the customs dock.
Unfortunately, no sooner had I crawled into my bunk than the harbor
police arrived to roust us. They were
very rude and had Rick quite rattled. I
got dressed again and we pumped out the holding tank while I talked to the rude harbor
police and finally determined that we could anchor outside the bay behind the
Zuniga jetty.
We were tired and stressed out and it was very dark. We made our way slowly back out the channel
until we saw the light on the end of the jetty.
Then we made a U-turn and motored into the anchorage. Very few of the boats anchored there
displayed anchor lights, so it was somewhat creepy entering the anchorage. We dropped the anchor fairly far from shore
rather than try to wend our way through the field of boats. We were tired and just wanted the day to end.
July 23, 2019
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| Anchored Outside San Diego Bay |
Despite being anchored outside the bay, we spent a restful
night. I was able to make us a slip
reservation online for that night but we had to wait until after check-out time
before we could arrive at the marina. This
was frustrating because we were eager to get to customs and wanted to get into
the slip before the wind came up. We
left the bay by 11:00 on the off chance that the occupant of our slip had left
early.
Our slip was vacant but, unfortunately, the wind had already
risen by the time we arrived. We almost
made it into the slip but weren’t close enough to the dock for me to jump
ashore. By the time Rick backed up to
try again, the wind caught us and we wiped the port running light off on a
piling on the way out of the slip. We
were in tight quarters and couldn’t bring the bow through the wind in the space
available. We blew to the back of the fairway
and fetched up against the red painted side tie. Scrimshaw virtually filled the space. There was no way we could get out of there
with the wind blowing. We were a bit
worried that the harbor police, who had been so rude the night before, might
give us a hard time but the neighbors assured us that people parked there all
the time to wait for the wind to die.
We needed to get to customs to retrieve our documents and
obtain our cruising permit, so I stayed with the boat while Rick went to the
customs office. No one bothered me. Despite being recognized by the customs
agents, Rick had no trouble paying the $19 to acquire a cruising permit. He returned to the boat and we had other
errands to do, but first we needed to get the boat into a slip.
One of our neighbors suggested that we call the office and
arrange for a different slip.
Fortunately, there had been a cancellation and we were able to switch to
a slip on the outside of the finger where we had more room to maneuver. Still, we needed to get Scrimshaw out
of the hole where we were stuck. There
wasn’t enough room ahead of us to turn the boat before running out of space. I
tied a line to the stern cleat on the side away from the dock. Some of our neighbors assisted us by pulling
the starboard side of the boat towards the dock as Rick motored forward. Slowly, the boat rotated into the wind. Once we were pointed towards the exit, I
flipped the line off the cleat and we were away. We easily motored outside and around the
finger where we had plenty of space to line the boat up with the slip and the
wind even helped us by blowing us towards the dock, allowing me to disembark
uneventfully.
We took Uber to West Marine and Home Depot and then ate
dinner at the Olive Garden before walking across acres of parking lot to the
Ralph’s to do our grocery shopping. We
seemed to need everything and, despite buying only one package of meat, managed
to spend over $200 on groceries. Another
Uber deposited us back at the boat where we lugged our bags of groceries to the
boat as the sun dipped in the sky. Rick
patched the running light back together so that we could leave first thing the
next morning.
July 24, 2019
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| Sailing to Catalina |
We had seventy-two miles to cover between San Diego and Avalon,
so we were up and away at first light.
The channel seemed much shorter in the daylight than it had when we had
negotiated it in the dark a couple of days before. Once we were clear of the kelp forest off
Point Loma, we put up sails and charged off towards Catalina. It was a beautiful day and apparently the
first time Rick had really sailed Scrimshaw.
He was very excited. We made
better than seven knots at times. Still,
it took us all day to get to the island.
By the time we wrestled the sails down (always a battle on
Scrimshaw because the battens were missing and there were no lazy jacks) and
approached the harbor it was 21:00 and dark.
We circled just outside the mooring field until the harbor patrol boat
met us and gave us a mooring assignment.
He led us to the mooring but I know Rick was nervous as we threaded our
way through the tightly packed boats. He
did an excellent job and we picked up the mooring and attached it without
incident. We poured a glass of wine and
relaxed in the cockpit, enjoying the lights of Avalon.
July 25, 2019
There was no rush to get up on Thursday morning. I was drinking tea in the cockpit at 9:00
when the harbor patrol arrived to put dye tabs in our holding tank to check for
leaks. This turned out to be a good
thing as we were finally able to verify which of the multitudinous valves
needed to be closed in order to direct all of the waste to the holding tank. Apparently, the Y-valve leaked, so we had to
close the through hull valve, as well, before we had a complete seal. The harbor patrol woke Rick, but he was slow
to get moving. It was noon by the time
we called the shore boat and then Rick wanted to visit the public showers
before we ate breakfast. We barely
managed to get breakfast before the Pancake House closed its doors.
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| Avalon Harbor |
We wanted to take a hike, so trudged up the steep streets to
the trailhead. Unfortunately, we somehow
missed the visitor’s center where we would have obtained a permit. When we arrived at the trailhead, we were
already hot and sweaty, so decided to forego further hiking and just made a loop
back down to the harbor via a different road, stopping to check out the Tower
Chimes. Many van loads of customers for
the zip lines and rented golf carts full of tourists passed us the road. They all looked at us like we were crazy for
walking.
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| Scrimshaw Moored at Avalon |
We stopped for a cold beer after we returned to town and
then walked up to the full fledged Von’s supermarket to buy a few things before
returning to the boat to make dinner.
Avalon was too busy for our tastes and we looked forward to continuing
to Two Harbors in the morning.
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