Our new addition! 3.28.09

We left Saturday morning with a list of at least 10 vehicles to visit between Ventura and San Diego. We visited a few but nothing caught our attention. Finally, we were in Costa Mesa and drove up to two Westy’s sitting in front of a mechanic’s business. We checked them both out and the man who owned them, Mike, talked with us for quite a while. We talked about our plans for Alaska & what we were looking for. He strongly suggested one he had that was a bit out of our price range. We told him how much we could spend and he lowered his price to meet it! He was such a wonderful man, a ‘good ‘ol boy’ and we enjoyed chatting with him. He was also from Kansas, which I attributed the reason I felt so good about the purchase.

So here she is!



It’s a 1984 Westfalia, with a rebuilt, 1987 watercooled engine in it. It’s in very good shape, there’s a few door dings but nothing significant. It’s a burnt orange color



, has working Air Conditioning (just rebuilt), a stove, refrigerator, & sink.



The top pops up and a bed folds out,



allowing you to sleep either on the bunk downstairs, or the bunk upstairs.



It could technically sleep 4. There is no major rust, it’s built solid. The owner lived in Colorado (his brother) and has it super insulated inside, so we shouldn’t have any problem camping up to Alaska in it. The pop top is a new, 3 window one, it has new shocks, newly rebuilt transmission, and runs well! We’re excited. Now if we could only come up with a name for it…

We have lots more to do this week and hope to leave next weekend sometime for Alaska.
Rene

The Waiter 3.27.09

Sue’s daughter, Erin, is an actress who has a lot of friends who are in the movie business. She has a friend, Jason Konopisos, who had just finished a movie and was holding a premier at a film festival in Burbank and asked us if we would like to come. It sounded like a ton of fun so we said why not?! We went with Sue & Dennis, Erin, and Stephanie & Chas who are Sue’s friends for San Diego. We all met for dinner at PF Chang’s where the cast & director were also eating and had a wonderful dinner – along with some fun movie star sightings! We saw Charles Durning, Glenn Morshower, James Handy & others! It was fun.



Once we finished dinner, we went to the film festival and settled in to watch the movie. It was…interesting! After the movie we went for desert and made the trek back to the house. It was our first premier and was pretty cool! It was great to spend time with friends as well.

Rene

Sold the Jeep, On the hunt for a Westfalia! 3.26.09

Sold the Jeep, On the hunt for a Westfalia! 3.26.09

We arrived in Ventura on Monday after our stay with Michael’s mom. Our friends, Sue & Dennis let us stay with them while we were in the area, which is so incredibly nice. We’re so thankful for them! We had the Jeep up for sale on several websites, as well as listed in the local Auto Trader magazine all while checking out the local Westfalia’s for sale. One evening, we visited two Westy’s that were in our price range but for one reason or another, they weren’t exactly what we wanted. That evening, I came back to the house & was chatting with them and just wasn’t feeling well. I ended up with a version of Michael’s stomach bug but was lucky – it was only a 24 hour bug. The day I was layed up sick, Michael took the Jeep to the local Jeep dealership, where it was originally purchased and they made him an offer to buy it that he couldn’t refuse. Success! Now we had to find a replacement vehicle!

Oh…I forgot to tell you. We have had a rock chip in the Jeep’s windshield for years, ever since we bought it. On our way from Michael’s mom’s house, Michael and I was discussing that we should probably get it fixed so it won’t be a ‘ding’ against the vehicle. Maybe one hour later, we were driving on the freeway and got another one! Doh! I guess it was in the cards to get it repaired, since now we had two of them! I had heard of those places that come out & repair the dings without having to replace the windshield so I called around and found one. It turns out that our insurance covered the rock ding repair and wasn’t considered a claim! Sounds good! So we called a guy out and he started working on the newest one. Michael was down there when he started….and crack! While he was drilling out the chip, it cracked all the way up and down the windshield. CRAP! Michael came up and calmly told me this, and was silently freaking out because it would look horrible now! But he continued to let the guy do his job and we just hoped for the best. I was watching him out of the upstairs window and he was on the phone, and it looked like he was taking pictures of the windshield. Anyway, to make a long story short….Michael went back down and they guy explained that he had talked to his bosses and they were going to replace the windshield at no cost to us. WOW!! He said he did 3 things wrong…of which I completely forget except for not tell us this might happen. He said it had never happened to him and he’s still puzzled how it did it. Michael told him that if it would help, he could tell his bosses that he was a real dick and was yelling and screaming and the guy said that the whole reason that we were getting the replacement was because he didn’t do that. We were pretty lucky on that! So the next day, Safelite Auto Glass came out & replaced the windshield at no cost. Amazing…

We turned the Jeep into the Jeep dealership and had them drop us off at a car rental company where we picked up a rental car for the week. We continued to scour the internet, trade magazines, & anything else we could find for vehicles in our price range. We had about 10 vehicles to look at over the weekend and took off Saturday morning to go down to LA and San Diego if they didn’t all work out. We were looking at any kind of Class B RV or Westfalia.

On the hunt!
Rene & Michael

Visiting Michael's Family 3.23.09

We ended up spending an additional day in Phoenix unexpectededly as Michael ended up with food poisoning or a stomach bug of some sort. Yuck. It's bad enough when you're at home, but much worse when you're traveling. Poor thing...

He was finally feeling decent enough to travel and so we left Phoenix & drove to Palm Springs where his Mom, Dad, & Sister live. The day we arrived, he was still not well but hung in there for a nice dinner at his Sister's house with everyone, watching everyone eat as he couldn't think of eating yet. We enjoyed seeing everyone again - Michael's Mom, Muriel & her husband, Pete, Michael's Dad, Doug,



and his Sister & her family - Jennifer, Walter, Nolan & Gracie. Nolan was participating in a math competition the next morning so we had fun playing math games with him - and him kicking our tails!! haha...



The following day we got to see where Jennifer works - as a dispatcher. We even met the Chief of Police! It was fascinating to see how she works & to meet the fun people she works with. That evening after a relaxing day and spending some time with Muriel and Doug everyone assembled again for dinner at Muriel's house for Corned beef & cabbage - yum! We decided to stay one more night since Michael was so comotose the first day and spend some additional time with his Mom & Dad.



We had a wonderful visit & scooted off on Monday for Ventura! It's time for car shopping...
Rene

Ahhh....Arizona! 3.18.09

We made it! No problems whatsoever. WHEW! I have to admit, after the problems last time we drove in, I was very nervous to drive back out, but it was absolutely no problem. We had a couple more checkpoints, more toll roads - 12 in total for both days, a total of 641 pesos or about $45 US, lots more vegetation changes, mountains, beautiful cactus, roads that were about as lumpy as old abandoned highways back home, & perfect temps. We had one very weird thing happen - we pulled up into a toll area and were going to pay the toll. There were about 10 guys in front of the toll booth, which can be typical as they are trying to sell you stuff - water, candy, food, etc. But this one was different...there was no toll workers! After a minute and trying to figure it out, we just drove on through. We still don't know what it was all about and were certainly looking out the rear view window the entire time waiting for the cop to pull us over! But no problems.

We left Guaymas early this morning, around 6:00 and made it to the border around 11:00. We turned our Temporary Import Permit for the Jeep in so they won't keep our deposit money, and drove on through. We were stopped at Border Patrol on the U.S. side, again, and sent for a secondary inspection...again. Somehow we have to look less conspicous or something as we keep being inspected. But funny, it's always the U.S. who are doing it! Anyway, we were pulled over & asked the standard questions - do you have any plants, animals, pets, tobacco, alcohol, or fruit in the vehicle. We have a cooler on back of the Jeep that has the remains of a 12 pack of beer, but nothing major. So they asked to look inside, saw the jelly, butter, milk, & iced tea jar and were OK with that. An agent came up to my side of the Jeep while Michael was in back dealing with the other agent and asked me the same questions they were asking Michael, and wanted to see inside a soft-sided cooler that was on the passenger floor. It had 2 bottles of water and 2 gatorade bottles...OK...no problem! You can go.

Again, a big sigh of relief. We drove into Tucson, stopped for lunch, and are now on our way to Phoenix where we will spend the night. I said it before but I'll say it again....what a difference a day makes! We go to U.S. dollars, gallons instead of liters, miles instead of kilometers, english instead of spanish, etc!

It's good to be back.
Rene

Driving out of Mexico 3.17.09

We left Marina Mazatlan on Tuesday morning, bright and early and headed up the road. We are going to drive up through Nogales, and into Tucson, and hope to miss any trouble. If you remember, last year when we were headed down this way, we were stopped by a 'bad' cop and had to bribe our way out of him impounding the vehicle. We don't want to deal with that again.

We made it to Guaymas, just outside of San Carlos, about 1/2 way up on Tuesday. The best day to cross the border is Wednesday morning and that's what we're planning on doing. The drive was spectacular - lots of different scenery. There was not a lot of vehicles on the roads, and we stuck to the 'cuota' (Toll roads) as often as possible. We didn't even run out of gas like last time! haha... Live and learn... The typical things stuck out - cows & horses grazing on the side of the highway, cowboys herding cattle on the shoulder (and almost bucked him off as the garbage truck was a noisy thing!), funny signs (Piggy Back - the name of an off ramp), lots of cool vegetation, only a few military checkpoints where everyone was incredibly nice to us, and our trusty GPS made no mistakes. It was a success!

We made it to Guaymas and upon a recommendation by a fellow cruiser, stayed at a hotel called the "Flamingo". This was no Vegas hotel...but it served it's purpose! And a steal at 360 pesos. We asked the gal at the front desk to recommend a restaurant and went for a little walk. Found a restaurant just a few blocks away and sat down & ordered. No sooner than we had our drinks, we observed that there were a lot of workers that seemed to be taking arm loads of equipment out of the kitchen, into the back of two awaiting trucks. We watched as load after load went until we finally asked, what's going on? The restaurant was moving to a new location, this was their final evening, and they were packing up the restaurant around us! haha... We had a spectacular meal, along with another couple that came in just after we did, while the restaurant was being packed up around us....literally! By the time we left, most of the tables & chairs were gone, most of the kitchen equipment and everything from the refrigerators & freezers were loaded up & taken to the new location, just down the street! The waiters were incredibly nice and offered us whatever we wanted, with no problems.

Back at the hotel, they had some wonderful rocking chairs outside on the patio and I enjoyed just sitting back & rocking the night away. Tomorrow will be another early morning so it's off to bed!

More to follow...
Rene

Packing up the boat! 3.16.09

This packing up the boat for summer stuff is HARD work! It is a lot of packing, cleaning, storing, moving, etc. You can call it Spring Cleaning - scrubbing the walls, ceiling, floors, and every space in between, then placing a mold barrier to prevent anything growing that we don't want to over the summer. In addition, emptying, defrosting & cleaning the refrigerator & freezer, figuring out what we are taking with us, what is given to other cruisers, & what is thrown in the trash! We did pretty good this year - much better than last year. We had to give away only a couple things - Pina Colada mix, milk, & Ranch dressing. We threw away only a little piece of cheese and some chicken that went to the local dock cat - Slacker kitty!

All of the sails were scrubbed and hung to dry, then folded up and stored below. All of the halyards - the lines that pull the sails up & down - were also removed, cleaned, & stored below. Ahea Kali looked like she was sailing in the slip as the sails were drying.



Michael was in his 'boat yoga' positions during a lot of the cleaning - providing me much enjoyment.



In addition to that, we have been searching for a vehicle that will take us to Alaska. It is hard work when you're out of the country! haha... But we have some great leads and I have one especially I'm looking forward to - right in our old backyard of Ventura. We'll see how it works out!

We have enjoyed our time here and have had a great time visiting with our good friends. In addition to just visiting, we've indulged in some fantastic restaurants while we've been here, visiting our old haunts and checking out the new spots as well. We both really like Mazatlan and look forward to being back here next season.



We even had some spare time to go geocaching! We enjoyed every once of the anchorages we stopped at and decided as a souvenir to the stops we made, to get a bracelet that is made by many of the beach vendors while we were in each place. We have a nice post on the boat that they are attached. We try to get them at the anchorage, but sometimes we had to purchase them at the next spot as it was impossible to find someone to make them.



It's been a great season! We are heading to the U.S. on Wednesday and are entering through Nogales, into Tucson. Then we're going to Palm Springs to visit with Michael's family, and to Ventura.

More to follow!
Rene

2004 Jeep Wrangler Sahara, 41k miles 14,000 OBO

After much discussion, we've decided to sell our beloved Jeep and purchase a Westfalia (preferably), Rialta, Sportsmobile, Roadtrek, or a Class B RV. We have placed many ads but I figured one more wouldn't hurt!

Up for sale is our 2004 Jeep Wrangler, Sahara Edition.
- Hard Top
- Only 41k miles!
- Beige/Sand color
- Standard 5 speed
- Air Conditioning
- AM/FM Radio w/CD player
- Tow package with a TowMaster hitch on the front for towing the Jeep behind an RV
- Rear receiver/hitch with a storage rack that currently holds a cooler & propane tank
- Surfboard racks on top
- Driver & passenger airbags
- Tilt wheel
- Super clean cloth interior
- Brand new tires - a heavier duty tire special for traveling off-road
- 2 owners, no accidents, Non-smokers

The Jeep has been impecably maintained both mechanically and cosmetically. It has minor rust on a couple parts - the back bumper & one of the door handles and very very minor scratches.

We are asking $14,000 OBO or a trade for a Westfalia, Sportsmobile, Rialta, etc. We are currently in Mexico but will be traveling through Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, B.C. Canada, & Alaska in the next month. Shoot us an e-mail at sailing@aheakali.com for more info or call us at (805) 701-8384.

And if you know anyone looking - send this on to them!! Thanks...
Rene

Videos & Pictures updated 3.3.09

Whew! What a chore uploading the photos & videos!! But I know you will enjoy them. Scroll down to check out the old posts with new photos & videos included, check out our photo gallery by clicking here and keep in touch by e-mailing us at sailing@aheakali.com! Enjoy!!