Well, apologies for the blog silence over the past few weeks. We settled into a (scarily comfortable) routine in San Diego. Wake up, do boatwork, take public transit somewhere to provision or get boatwork supplies, back to the boat, walk into Little Italy in the evenings to use the internet at a cafe or get some froyo. The time just slipped away, but in the end it was productive: we finished rigging up a bridle for the sea anchor, changed out our running back blocks to a 2-1 purchase, replaced the masthead backstay toggle, finished mounting some turning blocks for the windvane lines, resealed our deck box, and some other odds and ends. We also took the bus across San Diego after a Costco run carrying 25lb bags of onions, rice, potatoes and more. And, in the best treat of all, my folks came down for a weekend visit to celebrate my birthday!

Productive, fun, relaxing, but we were way overdue to leave. So, even though not every little thing is done, and we could have used the chance to go to one more hardware store, one more supermarket, we said 'enough is enough' and said goodbye to crazy town. The weather is forecast to be light and variable for the foreseeable future, but we couldn't stand the idea of waiting any longer for the ever-elusive 'weather window'.

Perhaps for the first time this trip, the forecast seems to be correct, and we ended up becalmed last night just on the Mexican side of the border, about 10 miles offshore. Turns out this is not a great place to hang out. It was like some sort of bad futuristic apocalyptic movie about a totalitarian state. Military looking helicopters all over the place, they would circle by at low altitude shining their spotlight at us, and then go a few hundred yards away and drop down to maybe 50 feet off the water, kicking up huge storms of water and wind. I don't know what they were doing, and whether it's like that every night, but when we realized we were drifting back over to the U.S. side we decided that one border crossing per night was enough and fired up the trusty engine.

Winds have continued to be light, and we have been averaging under 3 knots. Everything is very comfortable, quiet, and relaxed onboard, so I have been trying not to think too hard about how long it's going to take us to get to Turtle Bay at this rate (over 10 days!!!). We spent all last night and this morning accompanied by grey whales. Back in the Bay we learned a lot about tacking angles, taking advantage of windshifts, and all the rest from racing onboard Fancy, but last night we had to also take into account the fact that there was a pod of whales only a few hundred feet off our beam when deciding if we ought to tack! Well, the fishing lines are out, it's warm, and we are creeping along, as the Kiwi's would say 'not too shabby'.

Lat 31 Degrees 57' N, Long 117 Degrees 15' W