Perception had reached San Diego at long last. It had been a distant goal for so long that it seemed unreal to actually have arrived. We had been pushing to get here to join the start of the Baja Ha-Ha rally to Cabo San Lucas which was to leave San Diego on October 30th. Our arrival on October 18th gave us just under two weeks to rest, refit, and reprovision the boat before heading out.

Our first landing point in San Diego was at Silver Gate Yacht Club on Shelter Island. Melinda had spent many hours on the phone on our way from Long Beach down to San Diego trying to secure moorage for Perception. She had contacted literally every marina, yacht club, and charter business in the area in hopes of finding dock space. The start of the Baja Ha-Ha had every available spot taken. Through persistence, she was able to find this one spot for us, and even got free reciprocal moorage for some of the nights.

Perhaps Shelter Island was actually an island at some point in the past, but now it is connected to the mainland via a surface street. This gave us convenient walking access to a variety of marine stores and restaurants, and we immediately partook of their offerings. Our first evening in San Diego we had dinner at a Mexican restaurant nearby, then attended a Panama Posse event at the local Downwind Marine store. The Posse event was a first for showing Melinda and Grace some of the cool places we could see on our way south, and we all left really excited about slowing down and seeing the places along the way. 

Later that evening we realized that we could see (and hear!) the performers on stage at Humphrey’s Concerts by the Bay. We enjoyed revisiting the 80’s with a live performance by ZZ Top – we could just make out the beards and double-necked guitars through the binoculars.

To some extent San Diego was lands-end for us as our southernmost point in the US. Beyond this line there be monsters, or at least a lack of speedy Amazon delivery! From here on out we would be in foreign waters and lands until reaching either Florida or Puerto Rico sometime in the far future. As such, we started a frenzy of buying activity, both online and in the brick-and-mortar stores of San Diego. Some of the projects we undertook or started via acquisition of materials:

• Additional solar panels, solar controllers, stainless steel tubing, and wiring in the hope we might eventually run our 1kW watermaker off of solar alone
• A 12V DC air conditioning unit in hopes of keeping the boat temperature comfortable when further south
• A capstan conversion kit for the windlass, since the snap replacement for our failed original windlass didn’t have one
• A 26 pound danforth kedging anchor and chain/rope rode to use for pointing the boat into swell or sunlight when at anchor
• Replacement LED bulb for our intermittent steaming light
• Safety handles for the sides of the boat above the stairs up from the cockpit
• Five gallons of bottom paint for our next haul-out in Mexico (or beyond)
• Replacement of the saloon settee cushions to make them more comfortable

The last point on the list was an especially frenzied undertaking. One of the first days we were in San Diego I happened to notice a “marine upholstery store” nearby, and mentioned it to Melinda. About an hour later I emerged from a meeting to discover a fellow from the upholstery store in our saloon taking measurements! Needless to say, Melinda had successfully replaced the saloon cushions with a major comfort upgrade before we left San Diego Bay – an amazing undertaking given the extreme time pressure!

We took off a weekend day to spend some time exploring San Diego. We spent a pleasant Sunday afternoon touring the USS Midway aircraft carrier which is moored as a museum in the bay. The vast military vessel certainly left an impression on us, our little sailboat is a gnat by comparison!

Before long our time was up at Silver Gate Yacht Club, and we were evicted to the Glorietta Bay anchorage with other Baja Ha-Ha transients. Luckily the Baja group had an agreement with the Harbor Authority to allow participants in the rally to anchor in Glorietta as long as they flew their Ha-Ha burgee. 

On our way to Glorietta Bay we took in the San Diego skyline, the military docks, and passed under the Coronado Bridge. No clearance issues there for Perception as the bridge was constructed to allow aircraft carriers to pass underneath at high tide.

We joined a number of other boats in Glorietta Bay, and enjoyed meeting up with them one evening on the nearby “trashcan beach” for drinks in the sand. Among the other boat crews there were Merlin and Walden, who had come down from Puget Sound in the Coho Ho-Ho as we did. We enjoyed forming the bonds friendship from our common situation with these crews and a number of others newly met.

Some of our most frantic provisioning occurred while we were anchored in Glorietta Bay. We had no further plans to be at a dock since there were none available, so we worked our little dinghy on daily trips to the public dock on Coronado Island. On our busiest day we made 10 round trips between the dock and the boat, including bringing the new saloon cushions and the upholstery salesman to the boat and back. In hindsight it would have been easier to bring Perception to the public dock for a few hours!

Our final weekend in San Diego included a Panama Posse kickoff party Saturday evening at Safe Harbor Marina in the south end of the Bay. It was annoying to consider that we would need to dinghy to shore, Uber down the Bay to the party, and reverse the process (likely in an inebriated state) on the way back. As such I gave the nearby Chula Vista Marina a call to see if there was any chance that some transient moorage had opened up that might accommodate us. As expected, the marina manager actually laughed out loud when I asked – but then said “wait a minute, someone just left!” We had scored a parking spot and motored down the Bay to it later that afternoon. We were starting to learn that even if you couldn’t get reservations, it is often the case that something might open up for you once you are in striking distance.

The Posse kickoff party was a fun event, and Grace scored a bottle of Flor de Cana rum. We chatted with several other Posse members who were doing roughly the same things we are, some who had been part of the Posse for years. We also had the pleasure of chatting with Captain Dietmar, who runs the Posse – quite the character! Honestly I think we are all quite nuts to be doing what we are doing!

It just so happened that Wayfinder, a boat we’d met for the first time in Glorietta Bay, was there in Chula Vista. They have a couple of 20-ish year olds aboard with whom Grace had been spending time ashore. We met up with them at the Posse kickoff and they ended up taking me to the Baja Ha-Ha skipper’s meeting the next morning at the West Marine back near Shelter Island. After checking in at the meeting, we were left to our own devices in front of the West Marine to wait for the meeting to start. 

It turned out that the Wayfinder ride-mooch also gave me a convenient way to haul my $1000 worth of bottom paint back to the boat that I just happened to come across at the West Marine that morning. No nefarious intent at all to let a group of soon-to-be ocean-bound skippers and crew wander around in a West Marine before a meeting with nothing to do but shop!

The Baja Ha-Ha skipper’s meeting was a great way to see and meet many of the captains of the fleet with whom we’d be heading south. It was an introduction to the (common theme here) somewhat quirky leader of the rally, self-titled “Poobah”, Richard Spindler. I was also able to meet Patsy Verhoeven, who has done much of the coordinating work for the rally over the last 20-ish years. Great people, and amazing how much work they do to pull it all off.

Ironically, it wasn’t until nearly the end of our stay in San Diego Bay that we finally figured out how to get into the public dock space on Shelter Island. One of our Coho friend boats – Karma – had been able to stay there for a while and had commented to us that there appeared to be space that would fit us on several nights. Try as we might, we could never successfully book a space online that would be suitable for us. We finally found that by fibbing on our length overall in the online form, we could get space that would still fit us comfortably. As such we were able to secure a spot for our last night in San Diego that was for a maximum 40′ boat, which had been occupied by a 44′ catamaran the night before we got it!

It was good to be back on a dock at Shelter Island. We were able to take a short Uber to the Baja Ha-Ha launch party which was in the West Marine parking lot nearby, joining the other crazy people in their halloween costumes. We also received a new LED bulb for our steaming light, requiring a foray up the mast to replace it. I was at the mercy of the crew as Grace and Melinda used a halyard to hoist me up in our bosun’s chair to replace it. Being tied to a stable dock for this was certainly preferable to a rolly anchrage!

By Sunday evening we were all anxious to get the show on the road. Monday was the launch of the Baja Ha-Ha, and we’d be heading south of the US border for the first time. We looked forward to the adventures ahead of us!