We March Into the New Year
I want to thank all of you who have been reading my blog. Between one and two hundred people are reading this everyday. I'm very gratified. Let's keep the ball rolling. Please send a link to all of your friends, especially if they happen to be editors at a big publishing house.
Speaking of publishing, since I've been on this cruise my book sales have really dropped off. I'm not promoting my book the way I should. If you haven't read it yet, you can get a copy of Blue Water and Me, Tall Tales of Adventures With My Father at Amazon.com.
Blue Water and Me is the tale of my adventures fishing with my father in these very same waters when I was eleven years old. As a matter of fact, that summer was the birthplace of the idea that I had to come cruising down here in a large sailboat. It's a dream I've had for fifty years now.
Don't order a book from my web page right now (www.pennwallace.com). All my copies were destroyed in the sinking and I need to re-order more. I have been so overwhelmed with working on the boat I haven't had time to think about it yet.
I have also been too busy to figure out how to post pictures to my blog. There are new photos of the trip on my Facebook page. Go check them out. And once again, share the links with your friends.
Speaking of publishing, since I've been on this cruise my book sales have really dropped off. I'm not promoting my book the way I should. If you haven't read it yet, you can get a copy of Blue Water and Me, Tall Tales of Adventures With My Father at Amazon.com.
Blue Water and Me is the tale of my adventures fishing with my father in these very same waters when I was eleven years old. As a matter of fact, that summer was the birthplace of the idea that I had to come cruising down here in a large sailboat. It's a dream I've had for fifty years now.
Don't order a book from my web page right now (www.pennwallace.com). All my copies were destroyed in the sinking and I need to re-order more. I have been so overwhelmed with working on the boat I haven't had time to think about it yet.
I have also been too busy to figure out how to post pictures to my blog. There are new photos of the trip on my Facebook page. Go check them out. And once again, share the links with your friends.
The electrical system had to be rewired
Thursday December 27th through Wednesday, January 2nd 2013 – Ensenada
I’m in hell. The Motel America is suitable punishment for my lapse of judgment that led to running up on the rock. I have been in the dumps since we got off the boat in Abreojos and our living arrangements do nothing to make me feel better.
Picture this: a Hollywood movie about a couple that rob banks in the US. (Imagine a 21st Century Bonnie and Clyde.) Things get too hot for them north of the border, so they head to Mexico to lay low. Add a Great Dane to the mix and throw them into a cheap motel in a sleazy little Mexican town and you have the idea.
That’s how I feel. It’s like I’m hiding out from having to face the consequences of what I have done. Except that I face the consequences every day.
I’m supposed to be better than this. I’m supposed to be smart enough to plot a course that would keep us out of danger. I’m supposed to recognize danger and skirt around it when I see it.
As you can tell, I’m not feeling really good about myself lately. The only positive is that there’s so much work to be done on the boat that I don’t have time to dwell on my short comings.
Day after day we report to the boat yard in the morning. We clean and organize until sometime around 4:30 or 5 pm when it is dark and head back to the motel. The only reason we don’t work into the night is that there is no electricity on the boat so we can’t see what we’re doing.
Back at the motel, Dawn manages to produce a dinner out of the ridiculous little kitchenette. We eat sitting on the beds watching one of the few English language channels on the TV. There are several Mexican channels which occasionally show US TV shows in English with Spanish sub-titles. Most of the US TV shows have been dubbed in Spanish. I have to tell you, Mark Harmon in Spanish doesn’t sound anything like Mark Harmon in English.
Washing the dishes in the tiny bar sink is a trial. I’ve pretty much worked out a system now, but it is almost as bad a working in the galley of a small boat.
Things are moving along on the boat. All of the paint has been ground off of the damaged areas. Now we are waiting for the holiday to be over so that the concrete guy can come and apply the patches.
We have a mechanic working on the engine. He thinks it can be saved.
The electrical system is a problem. The batteries and about half of the wiring, including the breaker panel, were under water. Everyone is telling me that the boat must be re-wired. I can’t afford that.
Guillermo, the yard manager, says that we should take the boat back to San Diego for the electrical work. He doesn’t trust the Mexican electricians.
We had a couple of fires on the boat. We sat some kitchen drawers on the electric stovetop to dry. We have never used the stove top since I’ve owned the boat. Somehow, the burners got turned on and caught the drawers on fire.
Then, the electrical outlet over the stove caught on fire. Apparently, it had water in it and when we turned on the electricity, it shorted out. Now the boat smells like smoke.
It seems like just as we get one problem under control, another one breaks out.
I’ve made a momentous decision. I’ve decided to stop punishing myself (and Dawn too) and find a better place to live. We’re paying $35 US a night for this little room. That’s over a thousand dollars a month. For that kind of money we can rent a little apartment or condo with a real kitchen, a bed room and maybe even a dining room table.
I’ve given Dawn the task of researching rentals in Ensenada and she’s going at it with a passion. I don’t expect to be ashore for more than a month, but I think we can at least be comfortable in that time.
We have taken so much off of the boat that our room is stuffed to the gunnels with boat stuff. We can hardly move around. If we can find an apartment with a little more room, we can have places to stow some of that stuff.
New Years came with the same dullness of Christmas. I decided that we should mark the day somehow, so I took Dawn out to dinner.
We were going to go to a nice steak house just down from the motel, but they were closed for a New Year’s party. If it was my mother, she would have invited us in.
I remember several times growing up when we closed the restaurant for our annual Christmas party and customers wandered to the door anyway. Mama invited them in and made them part of the party. They all became regular customers and family friends.
That didn’t happen here. We wandered around town for a while and found a nice restaurant in the tourist part of town. It was an asaderda, a roasting kitchen. They had rotisserie chickens cooking in front of a mesquite fire in the window as we walked by.
Both Dawn and I decided to order beef, even though the restaurant’s specialty was chicken. She had a filet and I ordered brochettes. The meat was good, seared over the mesquite fire, but the meal was mediocre. There was only one server for about a hundred guests.
We sat and sat. We waited an hour to get her attention and get our check. It wasn’t her fault. They were just horribly understaffed for the business that they had.
We really haven’t found a good restaurant in Ensenada yet.
So here we are, in a new year, 2013, stuck in a flea-bag motel room with our poor wounded boat in the boat yard. What will the New Year bring?
I’m not sure if we will be able to repair the Victory and be on our way again or not. We may get her floating and take her to San Diego where we can both get jobs and repair our cruising kitty. I’ve already spent what I had budgeted for two year’s cruising on repairs to the boat.
I truly hope we can repair her. I’m not ready to give up on my dream yet.
I’m in hell. The Motel America is suitable punishment for my lapse of judgment that led to running up on the rock. I have been in the dumps since we got off the boat in Abreojos and our living arrangements do nothing to make me feel better.
Picture this: a Hollywood movie about a couple that rob banks in the US. (Imagine a 21st Century Bonnie and Clyde.) Things get too hot for them north of the border, so they head to Mexico to lay low. Add a Great Dane to the mix and throw them into a cheap motel in a sleazy little Mexican town and you have the idea.
That’s how I feel. It’s like I’m hiding out from having to face the consequences of what I have done. Except that I face the consequences every day.
I’m supposed to be better than this. I’m supposed to be smart enough to plot a course that would keep us out of danger. I’m supposed to recognize danger and skirt around it when I see it.
As you can tell, I’m not feeling really good about myself lately. The only positive is that there’s so much work to be done on the boat that I don’t have time to dwell on my short comings.
Day after day we report to the boat yard in the morning. We clean and organize until sometime around 4:30 or 5 pm when it is dark and head back to the motel. The only reason we don’t work into the night is that there is no electricity on the boat so we can’t see what we’re doing.
Back at the motel, Dawn manages to produce a dinner out of the ridiculous little kitchenette. We eat sitting on the beds watching one of the few English language channels on the TV. There are several Mexican channels which occasionally show US TV shows in English with Spanish sub-titles. Most of the US TV shows have been dubbed in Spanish. I have to tell you, Mark Harmon in Spanish doesn’t sound anything like Mark Harmon in English.
Washing the dishes in the tiny bar sink is a trial. I’ve pretty much worked out a system now, but it is almost as bad a working in the galley of a small boat.
Things are moving along on the boat. All of the paint has been ground off of the damaged areas. Now we are waiting for the holiday to be over so that the concrete guy can come and apply the patches.
We have a mechanic working on the engine. He thinks it can be saved.
The electrical system is a problem. The batteries and about half of the wiring, including the breaker panel, were under water. Everyone is telling me that the boat must be re-wired. I can’t afford that.
Guillermo, the yard manager, says that we should take the boat back to San Diego for the electrical work. He doesn’t trust the Mexican electricians.
We had a couple of fires on the boat. We sat some kitchen drawers on the electric stovetop to dry. We have never used the stove top since I’ve owned the boat. Somehow, the burners got turned on and caught the drawers on fire.
Then, the electrical outlet over the stove caught on fire. Apparently, it had water in it and when we turned on the electricity, it shorted out. Now the boat smells like smoke.
It seems like just as we get one problem under control, another one breaks out.
I’ve made a momentous decision. I’ve decided to stop punishing myself (and Dawn too) and find a better place to live. We’re paying $35 US a night for this little room. That’s over a thousand dollars a month. For that kind of money we can rent a little apartment or condo with a real kitchen, a bed room and maybe even a dining room table.
I’ve given Dawn the task of researching rentals in Ensenada and she’s going at it with a passion. I don’t expect to be ashore for more than a month, but I think we can at least be comfortable in that time.
We have taken so much off of the boat that our room is stuffed to the gunnels with boat stuff. We can hardly move around. If we can find an apartment with a little more room, we can have places to stow some of that stuff.
New Years came with the same dullness of Christmas. I decided that we should mark the day somehow, so I took Dawn out to dinner.
We were going to go to a nice steak house just down from the motel, but they were closed for a New Year’s party. If it was my mother, she would have invited us in.
I remember several times growing up when we closed the restaurant for our annual Christmas party and customers wandered to the door anyway. Mama invited them in and made them part of the party. They all became regular customers and family friends.
That didn’t happen here. We wandered around town for a while and found a nice restaurant in the tourist part of town. It was an asaderda, a roasting kitchen. They had rotisserie chickens cooking in front of a mesquite fire in the window as we walked by.
Both Dawn and I decided to order beef, even though the restaurant’s specialty was chicken. She had a filet and I ordered brochettes. The meat was good, seared over the mesquite fire, but the meal was mediocre. There was only one server for about a hundred guests.
We sat and sat. We waited an hour to get her attention and get our check. It wasn’t her fault. They were just horribly understaffed for the business that they had.
We really haven’t found a good restaurant in Ensenada yet.
So here we are, in a new year, 2013, stuck in a flea-bag motel room with our poor wounded boat in the boat yard. What will the New Year bring?
I’m not sure if we will be able to repair the Victory and be on our way again or not. We may get her floating and take her to San Diego where we can both get jobs and repair our cruising kitty. I’ve already spent what I had budgeted for two year’s cruising on repairs to the boat.
I truly hope we can repair her. I’m not ready to give up on my dream yet.
Penn in our crappy motel room
Dawn’s Perspective
It’s the morning after Christmas. We had to decide if we’re going to spend ridiculous amounts of money to stay at the beach-front condo in San Diego or if we were going to find another place to stay. To my surprise, Penn decided to just head to Ensenada.
He pulled up two hotels on the Internet. One nice hotel had accommodations with a small kitchen at $196 per night. The second one, Motel America, was $35 a night. I joked with him and said “We either have to spend a fortune or live in a dump. Those are our only choices?”
He said, “Don’t look at the bottom of the page.” I scrolled down and there was a picture of a dog. The page said “the best place to stay in Ensenada with a dog.”
Within an hour we were packed and on our way. I didn’t have formal papers for taking Odin across the border, but I’d worry about that later.
Not to sound cliché, but when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. (Penn says “make Tom Collins.”)
As for Penn, I’ve never seen him so down. I can’t figure out what’s going on in his head, so I’ve stopped trying. All the advice from my dear friends from many different parts of my life and around the world all came down to one thing: live in the moment, appreciate the good things in life and stop trying to control the future.
At any rate, you could have sold me the Brooklyn Bridge as long as I had Odin in the car.
The ride across the border was no problem. There is a check point where you can pull over to declare anything, but having no papers for the dog, I was a little nervous. So, we just blew through. Apparently, getting into Mexico is a lot easier than getting out.
Arriving at the boat yard, just for a quick peek, I became a little concerned when we mentioned our cozy hotel and Guillermo hadn’t even heard of it. As we checked in, I remembered reading the reviews: “don’t get one of the rooms on the road side, you’ll hear sirens all night.” And, of course, that was the first room they showed us.
It had one double bed and a small kitchenette. I asked to see another room.
As we walked into the room, it was away from the road and pretty much identical to the other, but my positive thinking was working my way as there was not only a double bed, but a small twin size bed right next to it. Perfect for Odin. It was almost as if it was set up for us.
The room was clean but small. Of course, as usual, I had to rearrange what little furniture there was. Penn says I’m constantly nesting.
We returned to the boat after dark that night surprised to find that there was no electricity. Having no flashlights available, we fumbled around, careful not to fall into the bilges as the floor boards were all torn up. We found a tiny flashlight and started to access the situation.
I thought “Oh, she looks pretty good.”
They had a yard worker gut the boat and spray the entire cabin with fresh water to clean out the salt. However, I smelt smoke and pointed the flash light to a very large fire extinguisher, not one of ours, sitting on the floor. That explained it. There was a fire somewhere on board.
The next morning we got the total assessment. Oh well, what’s another drop in the bucket when it’s raining.
My biggest concern now is Penn. The boat is a boat, it’s a finite thing with a hole in it. It needs some repair, but how do you repair a human brain? A mind set? That’s a tough one.
I want to steer him in the direction of cheering up. Let’s fix the boat and forge forward with our journey. Even I wonder if that’s the right decision.
I guess I’ve learned to deal with tragedies. I’ll jump in and do whatever decision we make, whether it’s polish off my work clothes and go back to the states and get a job, or throw on my casual clothes and commit myself to the life of paint and grime. I guess only time will tell.
It’s the morning after Christmas. We had to decide if we’re going to spend ridiculous amounts of money to stay at the beach-front condo in San Diego or if we were going to find another place to stay. To my surprise, Penn decided to just head to Ensenada.
He pulled up two hotels on the Internet. One nice hotel had accommodations with a small kitchen at $196 per night. The second one, Motel America, was $35 a night. I joked with him and said “We either have to spend a fortune or live in a dump. Those are our only choices?”
He said, “Don’t look at the bottom of the page.” I scrolled down and there was a picture of a dog. The page said “the best place to stay in Ensenada with a dog.”
Within an hour we were packed and on our way. I didn’t have formal papers for taking Odin across the border, but I’d worry about that later.
Not to sound cliché, but when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. (Penn says “make Tom Collins.”)
As for Penn, I’ve never seen him so down. I can’t figure out what’s going on in his head, so I’ve stopped trying. All the advice from my dear friends from many different parts of my life and around the world all came down to one thing: live in the moment, appreciate the good things in life and stop trying to control the future.
At any rate, you could have sold me the Brooklyn Bridge as long as I had Odin in the car.
The ride across the border was no problem. There is a check point where you can pull over to declare anything, but having no papers for the dog, I was a little nervous. So, we just blew through. Apparently, getting into Mexico is a lot easier than getting out.
Arriving at the boat yard, just for a quick peek, I became a little concerned when we mentioned our cozy hotel and Guillermo hadn’t even heard of it. As we checked in, I remembered reading the reviews: “don’t get one of the rooms on the road side, you’ll hear sirens all night.” And, of course, that was the first room they showed us.
It had one double bed and a small kitchenette. I asked to see another room.
As we walked into the room, it was away from the road and pretty much identical to the other, but my positive thinking was working my way as there was not only a double bed, but a small twin size bed right next to it. Perfect for Odin. It was almost as if it was set up for us.
The room was clean but small. Of course, as usual, I had to rearrange what little furniture there was. Penn says I’m constantly nesting.
We returned to the boat after dark that night surprised to find that there was no electricity. Having no flashlights available, we fumbled around, careful not to fall into the bilges as the floor boards were all torn up. We found a tiny flashlight and started to access the situation.
I thought “Oh, she looks pretty good.”
They had a yard worker gut the boat and spray the entire cabin with fresh water to clean out the salt. However, I smelt smoke and pointed the flash light to a very large fire extinguisher, not one of ours, sitting on the floor. That explained it. There was a fire somewhere on board.
The next morning we got the total assessment. Oh well, what’s another drop in the bucket when it’s raining.
My biggest concern now is Penn. The boat is a boat, it’s a finite thing with a hole in it. It needs some repair, but how do you repair a human brain? A mind set? That’s a tough one.
I want to steer him in the direction of cheering up. Let’s fix the boat and forge forward with our journey. Even I wonder if that’s the right decision.
I guess I’ve learned to deal with tragedies. I’ll jump in and do whatever decision we make, whether it’s polish off my work clothes and go back to the states and get a job, or throw on my casual clothes and commit myself to the life of paint and grime. I guess only time will tell.