Wed, May 13 - We've Finally Arrived

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009. Long lost friends ho!! We snuck up on Andre and Victor this morning on Easy Breeze to say hello. That was a great hello – for all of us! If we had heard the net, we would have checked in, but we didn’t hear it. And we also saw Frank and Cynthia (s.v. Makani) before they head north in their now completed boat! There are lots of other people to see, and we will get there, one by one.

And there’s more! Apparently Merle has been manifesting for staying at Marina Coral for several weeks now, but I had no druthers about where to keep our boat until this morning. We did our sleuthing for prices and facilities, and ended up here at Marina Coral. It’s fabulous here! Not only can we leave the boat here for several months, plugged in and guarded, but while we are here, we get full use of the facility which includes three swimming pools, hot tub, Jacuzzis, saunas, steam rooms, a gym, games room with pool, foosball, and ping pong, playground, internet, fuel discounts, electricity, running drinkable water, keyed gated entry and security round the clock, free parking, restaurant and bar, hot showers with luxurious towels, and complete spa. And there is a hotel for any guests who’d like to join us here. It’s a great spot. After we moored our boat, we went up to the hotel and as the kids swam and we lounged by the pool this evening, we cautiously made sure they were safe, and we said (again - the other time being at the beautiful Bahia San Fransisco in November, just before Matero fell down the companionway and bumped his head) to ourselves – we have finally arrived! Now, we finally feel like we are on a holiday. That’s funny. Even with all this ‘stuff’, the best parts are the playing with our kids, and that we have good friends right across the dock from us. How are we going to leave this? Might be home later than we thought!

So here we are, safe and sound in Ensenada, with the Baja ‘Bash’ behind us. Amazing. It’s still crazy to think we are here. I am thrilled beyond expression that the trip went so well. It is truly a miracle to me – to us – that we should have experienced that journey in the way we did. I am sure there are other people who have had those conditions coming up the coast. We just never hooked up with anyone who told us a story like that. If we had, maybe we wouldn’t have believed them! Maybe we had to experience it for ourselves to know it could be true. Merle was talking to a delivery captain today who has done more than 30 trips up the coast. He said that he has never strung together a week of good weather like that before, and he doesn’t think it’s that common. Maybe it’s more of a miracle that even I know.