(not very) Relaxing Days at the Marina

10-26-12 - Cabrillo Isle Marina - San Diego, CA - Day 116

Marina living is supposed to be so much easier and more relaxing than living on the anchor or being underway.  I can firmly say that this is not what we have been experiencing here at Cabrillo Isle.  The marina is great, with many nice amenities and an incredibly accommodating staff.  Not the least important of which is the hot tub at the Sheraton Hotel next door.  Our time here has been perpetual preparation, and it seems the longer we stay the more preparation is required.  You can never be too prepared to leave it seems.  As more Haha boats arrive every day I am jealous of their lack of time.  There is only so much they can do before departure date.  It is probably simpler and easier to not spend so much time getting ready to leave.


Yea!  A Water Toy

Through all the preparations we have been trying to have some fun and relax.  One nice thing about being tied to the dock is that you can go for a run in the morning without having to dinghy into shore.  Upon arriving 2 weeks ago we searched Craigslist and finally found ourselves a toy.  Conveniently enough, two docks down a lady was selling her stand up paddle board.  So we now officially have a toy!  Elizabeth's parents came to San Diego for a visit.  We felt bad as we spent most of their visit running around San Diego in search of everything from an internal snap ring to new glasses for Elizabeth.  With any luck they had some fun as well; visiting Coronado Island and having way to much ice cream; between rebuilding our spare water pump and making runs to the grocery store. 

New bed topper - What fun!

We should get crew like this
more often!

Our crew mate Laura arrived a few days ago.  She will be helping us with the trip to Cabo, so we can all get a little more sleep on the overnight passages.  We are looking forward to having her and her knowledge with us for the trip South.  Having crew is a new experience for us but it seems to be working out.  Between waxing 1/2 the boat already and making killer tritip tacos it seems to be working out!

New lazy jacks seem to work great

As our time here is winding down our projects are finally ending.  Mostly because time is running out, not because there's not more to do.  As I said when we left Grand Marina two months ago, there will always be more to do, and that is why a departure date is so important.  You could spend another month here preparing for every eventuality that might happen. 



Elizabeth, Laura and me.

We have spare pumps and hoses, we can suck fresh water from our tanks without power, we have paper charts of Mexico (even if they were last updated in 1869.  That's not an exaggeration) we have at least 5 different devices that tell us our location and at least three that send out an emergency signal if needed.  We can invert power, make cookies underway, listen in on the SSB nets, get weather fax downloaded to the Ipad (we think), there are pesos in our pockets, fuel in the tanks, solar panels are sucking up power, and there's two buck chuck in every corner of the boat.  It's time to leave, stop preparing and start doing.  Let's just hope that left handed screw shaft zinc invert-a-thingy doesn't break.  We didn't get a spare of that.






View from the cockpit at Cabrillo Isle Marina