Off to Mexico

Typical day: Morning, install new alternator. Afternoon, put all the alternator tools away. Take out fridge repair gear. Repair fridge and stow gear. Starving, must eat. Walk 2km off Shelter Island a to find Internet café. Spend all evening reading forums, trying to figure out which drivers I need to use all the old, stolen or otherwise hacked GPS, email and weather programs we need to use with our new “ship's computer”. I somehow got it in my mind that buying a PC would help with all the software incompatibility problems I was having with the Mac. But our new computer complete with the new Windows 7 OS ensured that there was no shortage of incompatibility problems. Brutal.
Next day: repeat with a whole new set of problems.
However, the weather is nice and we have met some great and generous people. We have had total strangers either drive us around to get to hard-to-reach places like alternator shops (thanks Jim) or lend us their own vehicle for the day to drive around and get all our groceries (thanks Matt and Teal, awesome). We have also spent a lot of time with our cruising friends Evan, Diane and Maia whom we first met in Coos Bay and who have been exceedingly generous about sharing their plethora of knowledge about where this is and how to do that. We did take one day to see the famous San Diego Zoo. One caged animal after another. I thought it could have made a better attempt to at least be educational. I guess we are coming from a different perspective, on this trip, we have seen a blue whale, the largest animal on the planet, far out to sea. Perhaps the zoo was not the best use of our time.
Our next stop is Ensenada, which is about 60 NM down the coast to clear customs and then on to the Baja. The wind is a bit light but there is a decent swell rolling in from a storm up north. It should be okay weather to get our sea legs back. I am really looking forward to getting back out to sea, doing some snorkeling and spending some time with the gray whales that migrate to the Baja to give birth next month. In short, some quality time outside.