Will taking a turn at the helm on the way from Ensenada to San Diego.

Roxia made it back to the USA for the first time since 2011.  We were able to find a good slip location thanks to John Russell on NordSail One at Point Loma Marina. We learned we would have to leave Mexico because of the existing TIP’s in my last post about a week before Yacht Express arrived. I decided that since we had to be in San Diego I would purchase 12 new Lifeline Batteries at my supplier in Seattle and drive my truck down south.  Because I was driving anyway, we totally loaded my truck with all the gear from our previous boat stashed in my garage. I left my truck at my brother’s house near Dana Point and Devin drove me down to San Diego airport to pick up the Admiral (Emmy), my son Will and nephew Cameron. Going way beyond the salesman relationship Devin drove us to Ensenada to meet Roxia.  We could not take my truck into Mexico or we would have to pay duty on all the batteries.

Now that we were in San Diego we (mostly Will and Cameron) unloaded 2,000 pounds of batteries (old) off and 2,000 pounds of batteries (new) back on Roxia.  I spent most of the time in the battery bay up front cleaning and rewiring everything.  With everything out I could scrub the bilge then apply dielectric grease on all the connections. I hope I don’t have to do this again. The three of us couldn’t move the next day.

I made a wood lever to help move my through hulls and it also worked perfect to tighten the wing nuts on the battery hold downs.

With the tanks now full of water and fuel our waterline is down to the anti-foul. This is almost 8″ lower than when everything was close to empty for transport.

Being in San Diego was also fun because Will had friends from California visit and a friend visiting from Seattle, Mari Rossi also stopped by with friends. Will had to leave back for graduate school and all the visitors left so we are down to three. We used LimeBike electric bikes to tour San Diego and pick up last minute supplies.