The Why!

I've been asked "why" we've taken so long to get here. It's actually a pretty simple answer: We needed to be able to sail. Up until our journey from Avalon to Ensenada, we'd never fully sailed with main and jib. Our entire journey down the coast had been one of motor-sailing, mostly motoring. The boat wasn't ready to move under sail alone. We were, but she wasn't. Not only did we not have her rigged, the ability to store our things was quite limited. The bunk was usually covered with gear and items we didn't want flying about the cabin, the sink was stuffed with kitchenware, and I'm not even sure where we hid the grill as it's not mounted. These have all been addressed and we and the boat are much more ready for he task of navigating the Baja Coast. We might have attempted this earlier, but we are limited on fuel and needed the ability to actually sail to conserve. She is after all a sailboat and there was no need to take her out of the US waters until she lived up to that definition.

Our other concern became apparent shortly into our trip down the coast from Oregon. We needed some sort of self steering. We now have about 1500 miles of hand steering under our belts, but to make this more enjoyable and for us not to come into port drop dead dog tired we needed a self steering system. We'd traded for one in Portland, but never had the chance to mount her. Thirteen months in Newport Beach solved that. He is now proudly mounted and added another 2 feet to our length. We named him Baron VonSteuren, as a reference to the German themed names we have given our boat and dinks (Reisender-Traveler, Komen-Coming, Gehen-Going). Steuren is the German word for Steering. We though it was pretty clever. We'll we christened him and he did a great job. During our 27 hour passage we only had to hand steer for about 8 or 9 hours of it. During the day we could just sit and read in the cockpit and look around every few minutes. Our course took us far enough off shore that we were pretty much alone and in deep enough waters we didn't need to worry about crab pots. It was a relief coming into port a little bit more rested. Our usual routine was check into the marina and sleep. Now we check into the marina, eat, and then sleep. A little better I think!

Fair Winds My Friends!