Our time in Ensenada was hectic to say the least! Following a somewhat lazy morning, we jumped in an Uber around 10am for Home Depot. First stop was to buy a Starlink Mini. That acquired, it was on to lunch while Vicki hit the Walmart next door for a fleece top and flip flip – I failed to mention it is COLD here. Those boxes checked we walked a short distance to Costco for more provisions (Jack and Vicki hit Costco, Trader Joe’s, and Von’s for shelf stable goods in San Diego). Escaping the Sunday masses in Costco, the last stop was across the road at Soriana. Jack watched our purchases while Vicki and I filled a cart with the remaining provisions we would need for the next few weeks.
Returning to the boat we found homes for all the purchases, just barely finding room in the freezer (I might have misunderstood our chicken supply…). Then I jumped into getting the Starlink installed, it was super simple and in no time were we were browsing the web. Next up was filling the diesel tanks (we used about 18 liters to get to Ensenada) and attempting to refill the jerry can used to fill the tanks, only to learned that the close gas station didn’t have diesel and one that did was miles away – no worries we have plenty. Last stop of the day was to Tacos Lucero, a spot Allison recommended. Too many great places in Ensenada to eat and sadly not much time this trip.
On Monday at 8:00 sharp it was time to check in to the country – Baja Naval offered a service for $60 to handle the paperwork and provide assistance – in hindsight it was silly to ponder the decision – tons of papers had to be prepared (some sent off to a government office), passports collected, and after two hours we walked over to the port captain with Esteban from Baja Naval. He took care of everything, calling us up to sign this form or pay that bill. A few hours later we had some of our paperwork and a promise of the remainder in a few hours.
The work was far from done – fenders needed to be scrubbed, rubber hose added to the anchor bridle, the deck power washed, the dinghy secured, laundry, and Starlink mounted/wired to the solar arch.
I made installing the Starlink to the solar arch sound more straightforward than it was…after running the Starlink power cable down the arch, through the engine compartment, and into the Starboard aft berth closet – a system test showed a huge voltage drop on the 28 gauge power cable. For the life of me I don’t understand providing a 50 foot power cable with such small wire, it works with the 120V AC power adapter that outputs 30VDC but running a calculation showed about 7 volts would be lost over 30 feet of 28 gauge wire – no bueno. A search of our wire stash found enough single conductor 14 gauge wire to make the run and would result in about 0.5 volt drop – completely acceptable. Next hurdle was a limited supply of solder for the soldering iron, I had looked for more but failed to find any in San Diego. I ecked it out and with much relief at the end we had Starlink running on the batteries with a nice On/Off switch where the Iridium Go was previously mounted behind the SB helm station. It was after 6:00pm and I was beat but things had to be cleaned up, put away, and organized since we were departing early the next day. Finally, I could take a deep breath and we headed to a nearby restaurant for dinner and to watch part of the World Series game (it went 18 innings, glad we didn’t try to stay until the end)!
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