South of the Border

We headed out of San Diego at about 4:30am. Surprisingly the channel was just packed with ship traffic. We even had a tug with a tow tooting his 5 horn blasts at us to tell us to get clear and the Pilot boat come up along side to say they were bringing through a car carrier on that side of the channel. Then the Navy was doing what the Navy does offshore. Amphibious operations and randomly turning bug ships in circles. This makes staying out of their way a tad difficult. The outbound journey was a little more stressful than we expected. We were soon headed south past the Coronado Islands and into Mexico.

The USA/Mexican border at sunrise.





Here’s the official porpoise greeting herd that came by to welcome us to Mexico. There was at least 100 dolphins in this group.



Just when I thought they were all being very friendly, the one in the middle started to laugh at me (click on it to see him larger).


Entering Ensenada harbor, the first thing we run into was a dying Washington State ferry Nisqually. When we headed into our surgy slip at Baja Naval, the skipper off of Maja helped out getting tied up. Turns out he used to be captain on the Nisqually running between Port Townsend and Whidby Is.
 
Just to make sure we knew we were really in Mexico, here’s the world’s largest Mexican flag.



Paul