Hello Friends and Family!
Hope everyone is well and getting off to a good start in the new year! Mikey and I officially departed on our journey January 16, 2021 and are currently in Bahia de Tortuga (Turtle Bay), waiting out a storm, before we continue south. Thank you so much to everyone who helped and encouraged us and for all your well wishes! It is so appreciated! (Thanks, Candice for the delicious cookies you sent us off with. They were a life saver on our first overnight trip to Ensenada!)
We are working on our communications systems and hopefully we’ll be able to get more reliable internet and cell service soon. When we do, we plan on getting a blog / and or Facebook page started, and we’ll let you all know when we have it set up. Currently, while we are at anchor, our internet and cell service are INCREDIBLY slow, so it’s very challenging to get any messages out, however, we do seem to be receiving incoming email, so feel free to shoot us an email. We would LOVE to hear from you and will respond as soon as we can, though there may be a delay.
While we are out further at sea, we have no internet or cell service, but we do have a satellite connection that we’ve been using to communicate back home. We’ve been checking in daily with my mom, Sally, who is looping in my Uncle Bob. If you’re interested, my Uncle Bob has started an email thread providing updates to friends and family by email. Thank you, Uncle Bob! Uncle Bob has made the sailing voyage down Baja himself (about 40 years ago) and is able to add a lot of good information about our locations and sailing conditions. If you want to be removed from the thread, just say so. We don’t want to bug anyone who’s not interested. His original thread is below, if you are interested in getting caught up on our trip so far. It has been a little hectic, to say the least, but also awesome and rewarding. Also, below are two links to tracking services that will let you follow along with detailed maps and weather charts, in real time. This is how my mom and Uncle Bob have been able to follow us and give us weather updates.
1) PredictWind App (free) – When we get our communications straightened out, we’ll be able to add photos and posts to this tracker. This runs on our Satellite system and should be accurate and available all the time.https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/Marissa…
2) Vessel Finder App (free) – Download the app and use the magnifying glass icon at the top of the page to search for “Marissa”. There are a few Marissas. We are the one with a US flag, currently in Baja. This tracks us via our AIS system, and you can see other boats (if they have AIS) around us too.
It was really comforting on our first few nights out to know that we had people watching, in case of emergency and just to check in and say, “everything’s ok”. I’m not going to lie; I was just a tiny bit scared, the first two nights especially. The seas were VERY rough (for me) and we had a couple of hiccups that led to some hairy moments that I don’t want to describe here because my mom is on this thread. (Yes, mom, I always had my harness on and was always clipped to the boat). Add the lack of moonlight and being out so far that you can’t see land and it was a couple of very long, rocky, and dark nights. Fortunately, we made it safely to a well protected harbor, Turtle Bay, where we are provisioning and will wait out the storm that is coming. We’ve heard that you all back home in San Diego are taking a beating right now. We hope you all are staying safe.
In addition to my mom and Uncle Bob, we want to give a HUGE shout out to our friend, Captain Sean, too. We lost communication with my mom and Uncle Bob for a bit, right at a critical point for decision making. We were able to reach Captain Sean by satellite connection (thank you Iridium Go!) and after a few minutes of checking the weather and some calculations, Captain Sean let us know to “get out of there, right now”. We later confirmed that this was the same recommendation Uncle Bob and my mom were trying to send us. We can’t give a big enough thanks to Captain Sean and we are so thankful we have multiple people tracking us and able to help us in a pinch. It really adds a layer of comfort. At this point, we are planning to possibly leave Turtle Bay Thursday, but will keep checking on weather before then. From Turtle Bay, we plan to go about 220 miles south to Santa Maria Cove, just outside and north of Magdalena Bay, which should take about 2 days.
Ok, well bye for now. Best wishes to everyone back home. We hope you are all staying safe and that you have a great 2021. We’ll check in again when we can. Scroll down for Uncle Bob’s updates on our trip so far.
Mike and Shannon
S/V Marissa
