Sailing Encore

In the first post I wrote that Vernon asked me “What did we do?” as he climbed into our cold birth on Encore. Good question. When we started to plan the encore adventure, I wanted to close my eyes and open them in Lamshur Bay, St. John. Sitting on the hook, drinking a pain killer and looking out at the turquoise sea. It was my favorite spot in all our sailing adventures. Since that wasn’t going to happen, we looked at other options that involved actual travel, time and money. Vernon really wanted to get the boat trucked to the Great Lakes, where we would sail around seeing the American cities then up the St Lawrence Seaway and out to the Atlantic coast.

A couple years ago we flew to Maine, rented a sail boat and spent 7 days dodging lobster traps and bundling up against the cold.

Beautiful landscape and interesting anchorages and towns, but that didn’t seal the deal for an adventure in that area knowing the cost of the boat trucking back East was over $25,000. We figured we could buy a whole lot of Mexico cruising for that.

But Vernon has never really been drawn to the cruising life in Mexico. He loves the sailing part and the wind is usually fairly calm. Motoring really gets on his nerves. And almost every time he has gone to Mexico to race or sail or visit, he gets a case of the tourista stomach. Over the last year we went back and forth on the two plans… and Mexico won. The timing and cost overrode the expense of the East Coast excursion.

Vernon also has a pretty good case of never hitting the ‘easy button’ for anything he does with the boat. When something breaks, he has everything but the right tool or piece needed. And the store just closed as you arrived to get the new part. And you locked your keys in the car when you go to drive to another store. And you left your phone back on the boat so you can’t even call for back up… etc. etc.

I don’t really agree that he is cursed and this makes him even angrier that I don’t see it. Hey, he got me didn’t he? He won the lotto with that one, right!

Anyway, true to this, things haven’t gone so well with our trip so far. Mostly that it is cold. But also little things with the boat work and delivery here to Ensenada have been tough. He is sitting at his computer and instruments working on the tactics for the sail south. The ‘Predict Wind’ software predictions aren’t the best for sailing, but we want to get out of this cold and there are more storms coming in. So tomorrow at first light we will set out south. About 36 hours sailing (through the day and night and more). Hopefully we will make Turtle Bay in daylight and anchor. Or maybe we continue on. But we are headed south tomorrow. And I am putting a scopolamine patch on tonight.