A Guest, A Birthday and Sailing Plans
We love it when people want to come visit us on our little floating home, so when our dear neighbour from Maple Valley asked if she could head down for a long weekend, we couldn't wait for her to get here!
We had a lovely weekend of being tourists in Ensenada - we jump at any chance to go to the magical Valle de Guadelupe for some delicious food (if Merlot the Las Nubes winery dog didn't sneak it off your table first) and wine tastings, took a drive out to La Bufadora, attended a birthday party at the Marina Grill, went to a few of our favourite restaurants in town, busted out the paddle board and dinghy, had Sunday morning beers....and to top it off, the marina was insanely busy as the Newport to Ensenada Yacht Race finished here on Saturday morning, so there were boats everywhere!
You can read more about the race here, but briefly the race has been sailed for 71 years now, and many famous people have taken part - from actors to professional sailors. This year,Mighty Merloe took line honours in 6 hours, 31 minutes and 46 seconds, closely followed by Orion, both trimarans, and it was amazing to see them tacking around in the bay slowly before taking off back to Newport! All the other boats stayed and there was much in the way of partying at the hotel and on the docks for the next few days.
We thought leaving 5 hours before the flight home would be ample to get us to the airport on time, alas, not so. We were held up at the border for 3 hours which gave us plenty of time to watch the madness of the Mexican side of the border while anxiously watching boarding time rapidly approach with 37 cars ahead of you. You can buy pretty much anything - hats, blankets, tequila, honey, the beating heart of Jesus, copper pans, fruit, taco's, gum, guitars, puppies, portraits of Frida Kahlo - so many things. As amusing as it was to watch the lunacy, unfortunately Sam missed her flight. We left her at a hotel for a much needed alcohol free early bedtime before she made it home the next morning.
Darrin had his 50th birthday. There I said it, and I can hardly believe it. It was somewhat quiet compared to the Maple Valley Party Scale, but I think he had fun. We had a lovely dinner and dock friends over for drinks, which didn't end until 10 hours later so maybe it wasn't so quiet after all - there was more than one sore head the next morning. And come to think of it, there was music and someone got out their flare guns and expired flares so...yeah...maybe disregard the quiet comment. The best gift of all though, was the fabulous video friends and family took the time to make for him, with special thanks to Annabel and Colm for editing it all together! There's also a second video that...well...we'll let you make up your own minds about it but all I can say is we're working on our liver spots and looking up what "ghosting" means. There were no presents as such from me this year but I am taking him on a trip later this week. He doesn't know where we're going, so it'll be interesting to see where we end up!
We've been here in Ensenada for a long time, and truthfully we thought we'd be well on our way south by now. Well I screwed that up completely. You see, hurricane season is about to start. So this aforementioned secret trip I booked for Darrin's birthday has totally messed up the timeline for leaving here and heading into the Sea of Cortez. I never even considered hurricane season when I booked this, so thats been a valuable lesson - you can't just pick a date to go somewhere, so much consideration has to go into so many things to make the passage safe and comfortable. So we've missed our sailing window with hurricane season about to start and the Sea of Cortez unbearably hot in summer, consequently we'll be staying here until probably September or October. We do plan to spend a few weeks in June heading north to Catalina Island just to get off the dock and get some sailing in which will be lovely. All in all though, nothing to complain about, we love it here!
That saying about a sailors plans being written in sand? Spot on!
