Greetings from MEXICO!!!!

Having spent the last month or so in California, I have to say my first impression is that the people look pretty much the same here, and they sound pretty much the same too. I still don’t understand Spanish.
We’re in Ensenada Mexico, just 65 miles south of San Diego, having left S D in kind of a hurry; we had planned to stay there a few days to rest up, relax, and recreate, but our marina had their showers under reconstruction. Well, anyone who knows Claudia knows that I had to do something. Every other marina I called wanted $2.00 per foot per night- $64 for Sojourner. Well, I choked and did the only thing I could. Leave. We’ll post pics of our departure, but you know how hard it is to get the really great stuff into a camera, so I’ll try and tell you about it while catching some rays, Bud in hand, and Spanish music in the background.
San Diego harbor is kind of busy. It is home to the U S Navy, commercial docks aplenty, and some 9,000 pleasure boats. It was about 4:00 PM when we left the dock with just over an hour of daylight left. About halfway out the 3 or 4 mile long entrance channel, I looked back and saw this monster white cruise ship steaming toward us. Tried to reach him on the radio, but no response. So, we took a hard left and got out of the way. The sunset was brilliant as the big ship passed by. Then, back into the channel, and we hear these two warships talking to each other on the radio about how they’re going to avoid running into each other. So, I look behind again, and this time, I swear, it’s an aircraft carrier climbing up our butt. Well, we know the drill. Hard to port! What a sight!
Then, back into the channel again and we see this other warship bearing down on us from dead ahead about 3 – 4 miles out. But we now know that he must be warship 88 from the earlier radio conversation and we’re able to radio him by name, so we arranged to avoid each other, and off we went. The rest of the night was a piece of cake, though the breeze was on our nose so we motored the whole night, arriving Ensenada about 10:00AM
As I write this, it’s Saturday, and the moon is now rising and looks to be about ¼ full, so, if we leave here on our 300 mile journey to Turtle Bay – the next fuel and services – by Monday or Tuesday, we should have good light at night. We all presently live 14 hours in darkness to get 10 hours of daylight, and while the days here in the upper 60’s are surely warmer than where most of you are, the nights, especially at sea, are still quite cold. Claudia is disappointed to find that she still needs her Carhart insulated pants and her Russian looking furry cap with the earflaps. I really should take a picture, but since she does the pic posting, you’d never see it.
Maxine is in the cockpit with me, and she’s giving me this look. You know the one. “You’ve been ignoring me. People want to know about me too.” Well, the fact is, she has been a good crew. She mostly stays where we put her and she doesn’t eat much, so I promise to include her more in the future. In the meantime, I’m working on my manyana (tomorrow is soon enough) and Margarita attitude. E