Monday, October 26, 2009 - San Diego
After a late Sunday night of last-gasp connectivity, we finally turned off the computer and went to bed. The snap, crackle, pop we had heard around the hull of the boat all week were, as we were told, the sound of shrimp feeding and the air bubbles popping inside their shells. We drifted off to sleep dreaming of being in a sea of rice krispies.
¨Worrall Wind’s crew was up at the crack of dawn on Monday morning, preparing ourselves and the boat for the beginning of our cruise to Margaritaville aka Cabo San Lucas. We lashed down the outside gear, stowed the inside stuff, returned the marina gate keys, received bon voyage calls, then disconnected our shore power, marina water, and two of our wireless devices, Russ’s cell phone and (sniff, sniff) our air card to the Internet. Abby and Neal came at 8:30 with some last minute purchase requests: distilled water, sleeping pills, and ketchup! Russ couldn’t leave without the ketchup.
We cast off the bowlines at 9:00 a.m. on a beautiful clear-sky morning waving good-bye and joining the fleet of Baja Ha Ha fleet as we headed out of the harbor into the main channel towards the start of the parade route. The parade started with the gun used for the America Cup races with a 3 minute warning shot, ¨spraying fire boat, and a 10:00 start blast. Numerous local media channels were on hand to video the departure of 195 sailing yachts in full regalia departing San Diego in mass¨. Some crew was in costume….we wore our Naughty Cat ears, others were dancing, and hoola hooping on the decks of their boats. It was all very festive and very exciting.
Beyond the channel and in open waters, leg one of our journey to Turtle Bay began at 11:00 with a rolling start. There was so little wind, all boats were allowed with no penalty points to motor at 6 knots until instructed to cut their motors when the wind picked up. About 11:10 sails were up, wind was up, boats were spread out, and motors were turned off. Roll call which began at 9:30 and was periodically interrupted for parade, start, instructions, and announcements was finally completed by 11:30. Each boat had to check in with name and number on board, “Worrall Wind, 4 on board”.
We knew from looking at our grib files (weather details) and from the announcements, that late Tuesday and Wednesday would present some challenge. A northern storm would be sending sea swells of 15-17 feet which by itself is a little challenging, but there is some disagreement whether the swells will be 13 seconds apart or 6 seconds apart. The closer the swells are together the more challenging the course particularly for those who get seasick. The grand Pooh-Bah of the rally will give us an update tomorrow but is recommending that instead of two nights running, we should duck into a bay along the way and anchor Tuesday night. The winds will pick up on Wednesday morning and then subside quickly on Wednesday afternoon. We will get more on tomorrow that will help us determine our course of action.
By noon we were in beautiful blue Mexican water; the wind was blowing about 10 knots, we had all our sails up and were moving about 5 knots. As the winds increased to 15 knots, our speed varied between 6.5 and 7.3 knots per hour.
Sea swells were getting larger as the day progressed. Most of them were 2-4 feet with sets of 6 foot swells approximately 10 minutes apart. We counted about 6 seconds between the big swells which rocked the boat wildly from side to side. Fortunately, there were only about 3 big swells in each set. Russ and Clark got the Hydrovane (auto wind steering) working¨. It held our course very well without us touching the wheel. We will need to learn its full capabilities in challenging conditions and know if and how much to take over when we are being rolled from side to side.
We purchased a hand fishing line, lures, club, gaff, net, lidded plastic tub, and Mexican fishing licenses in San Diego. After lunch we cleated off the hand line and threw it in off the windward side of the boat. Someone in the fleet caught the first skip jack within just a few minutes of entering Mexican water. Our line dragged sadly behind us all day. As the sun started to dip down close to the horizon and we were heading indoors and cleaning up the fantail helm, Russ started to pull in the line and as he did so a skip jack (tuna family) snapped at it and just like that we had our first fish! Of course neither of us being fisherman, I went downstairs and relieved Clark in the galley who came up to help Russ land the fish. Nina took some video. The fish was yellow with stripes, about 18 inches long and about 10 lbs. I didn’t come out of the galley until “Skippy” was contained in the plastic fish box, with the lid on still flopping around. but not without splattering blood around the back deck. Clark put “Skippy” out of his misery, and after setting the sails (reefed main, and motor running to make as much forward progress to duck in anchorage) for the night and eating dinner, showed us how to filet a fish on a wildly swinging fantail in the dark! Quite a feat. Clark and I did final cut and wrap in the galley while Russ washed down the fish box and deck. Looks like we will get a couple of meals out of “Skippy”. Our refrigerator and freezer are so full, we won’t be fishing for a couple of days now until we can deplete some of the stores.
Clark and Nina were going to hold the first four hour watch from 8:00 p.m. midnight while Russ and I slept; and Russ and I were going to hold second watch midnight to 4:00 a.m., but our “Skippy” adventure rearranged the schedule a bit. Russ and I didn’t bed down until 9:00. Clark and Nina let us sleep until 1:00 a.m. and had freshly brewed coffee waiting for us. The pilothouse doors were open and a pleasant breeze was blowing through. The wind was negligible and the sky was filled with stars. We could see a smattering of running lights in far distances. The tightly packed fleet that started the parade in the morning had spread across the seas.
Our 4 hour watch went quickly. Thanks to the coffee, I decided to stay up for as long as I could hold out and let everyone else sleep. I’ll catch up later. I’d like to see the first Mexican sunrise. As I close out this entry, I have just recorded our 6:00 a.m. location for roll call. We are at N 31 00.343; W 116 49.555.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
The Baja Ha Poo-Bah announced this morning on our single side band radio that the sea conditions going to deteriorate by Tuesday night and said they themselves would be tucking into San Quentin
Bay and suggested slower boats duck in with them…of course we are one of the slower boats. Profligate, the name of the Poobah’s boat is a fast moving multi-hull, they were rounding up the rear. San Quentin is a large open anchorage on the Baja coast and would accommodate quite a few if not all of the Baja fleet.
Having worked our way about 30 miles offshore, going east would add considerable time and distance, but the crew were unanimous that a good night sleep in a safe anchorage would be the wiser of e choices, so we decided to go in. Going in, meant we would need to fire up the engine and move eastward fairly quickly if we were to reach our goal of anchoring before dark.
During our motor sail in we saw a whale off of our starboard side. Seconds later it crossed across our bow and blew on the port side. Although we were not close enough to ID the whale type, we were close enough that it was a little scary to have him disappear from our sight in front of our bow. For lunch we had sautéed skipjack on lettuce. It was excellent! We arrived at San Quentin around 4:30 in the afternoon and had a sunset cocktail. The bay was wind protected, but still got some swells during the night. It seemed so calm when we anchored, that we failed to put up our “flopper stopper”. This is a device that hangs off the bow orJib pole to the side of the boat. When the boat leans down into the trough of a swell the device, dips under the water. As the next swells lifts the boat up and to the other side, the device opens up under water and pulls the boat downward on the side that is being lifted thereby stabilizing the roll. It’s very clever. It would have been even more clever if we had had it up.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Most of the boats left San Quentin by 9:00 a.m. after hearing conflicting weather reports. Some of the boats that had stayed out all night had traveled south without too much difficulty. One of the boats was already in Turtle Bay (a serious racer). Commander weather was predicting winds of 18 -20 knots and high seas. Other information from other nets indicated that the winds and waves would continue to grow and that the faster boats got south the better. We left the protection of the bay and immediately decided to double reef our main and use our self-tending staysail. It was windy and seas were lumpy. We had a brisk sail most of the day with “Hydro” our nickname for our hydrovane steering system doing most of the work. The weather that we had ducked into San Quentin for the night before, decided to present itself. We had sustained winds of 25 knots with gusts to 30.00. Wind waves were six to eight feet and the northwest swell was 18 feet every 6-10 seconds. Some boats reported waves ups to 30 feet. We think we had waves of 20 feet pass under us and around us.
It’s an amazing sight to see a wall of water as tall as the boat and bimini come toward the boat swell up to the side or rear, then disappear underneath and if you catch it just right you can surf down the side a little ways. We recorded one surf as high as 13.5 knots. Hi Ho Silver! For the most part we were sailing somewhat diagonal to the waves to stay on course which was not comfortable for anyone, although the boat was doing well. The boat pitched from side to side wildly when the swells were closer together 6-8 seconds a part. Hydro did a remarkable job holding the course, but had some difficulty recovering quickly when the swells were so close together and we needed to give it hand held assistance. It was wild and wet outside, but even worse inside.
Everything that was not lashed down was flying and rolling around. Even the sure grip on the bottom of cups and dishes with sure grip on their bottom sides were leaping about. My coffee cup which I had just taken my hand from when I reached for my glasses, flew across the nav desk about 3:30 and catastrophe struck. It spilled onto the computer keyboard, chair, and floor. The computer died and instant death and just like that we were without a screen for our navigation software, gps heading, and radar. We had contemplated going as far south as possible through the night to get further south and out of the swell, but without our navigation software in those conditions was unthinkable. We had already gotten reports from other Baja boats that had blown sails, broken booms, broken goose necks, and gotten fishing lines caught on their keels. One boat sank! It had gotten into a pod of whales, and an aggressive male charged it. Within seven minutes the boat was going under. The crew all got into the life raft and were saved two hours later by the U.S. Coast Guard. This was the first Baja Ha Ha boat lost in 16 years since the Ha Ha started.
Again we looked for a place to duck in. We were exhausted by sailing on the edge most of the day and disheartened by the loss of our electronic charting and capability. Everyone was very quiet. I’m sure if there was a plank, it would have been set up for me.
With our “Geepers”, nickname for our gps, the moonlight, hand plotted paper charts, and four pair of eyes we made our way into a bay behind Punta San Carlos. We were one of five sailboats that ducked into this bay. Three of us were in the Baja fleet. Two were on their own. All were glad to have the hook set! Again
We were too tired to set up the flopper stopper before we tumbled into bed and later wished we had. Our night was not extremely restful as the wind and the waves caught us from every angle and pushed the boat to the outer limits of its anchor alarm, setting it off 4 or 5 times during the night, we lost count.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
The morning report seemed to indicate that about half the boats were now in Turtle Bay (supposedly our first stop, but it would now be our third). About a quarter of the boats were expected on Thursday. Others like us were still out. We were still 150 miles away which would require about 20 hours of 7+ knots per hour which would take us into the night with a night approach to Turtle Bay. We decided to leave around 1400 hours after lunch so that we would reach the south end of Isla Cedros at dawn. We had heard that the waters around Cedros, Navidad, and Turtle Bay were filled with fishing lines and pots and we wanted to approach during daylight hours so that we could navigate successfully through them. We had a beautiful sunset and believe we saw the Green Flash! just as the sunset.
We spent the morning cleaning up some of the mess from the day before. Hydro, our wind vane steering system, had sheered a pin and the rudder had cranked itself sideways and needed to be fixed. Back deck needed scrubbing, wind vane had a wrapped wire, and we hoped that when we plugged in the nav computer it would work after a mop up and dry, but to no avail. We pulled out my Mac with dual processor and a Windows Parallel interface and were successful in installing all of the software we needed with the exception of the connection to our single side band to print weather charts and to send emails, but didn’t want to push the Windows system beyond what we absolutely needed.
The mood lifted considerably with our technology back on line. We left San Carlos at 1430, put up a double reefed main and pulled out the full jib. The seas had subsided significantly and the winds were 15-18 knots. The sailing was fabulous. We had some dolphins escort us out to sea. We sailed like this until long after sundown and moonrise. We reached Isla Cedros just before 0130. The wind was dying. We tried for a couple of hours to sail and finally decided to turn on the motor about 0500 and motor sail. We reached the end of Cedros about 0800 and were still about 30 miles out of Turtle Bay and will probably get there just about the time the beach party kicks off.
We arrived at Turtle Bay and anchored by 12:15, 15 minutes before the start of the beach party. The wind in is very broad bay was roaring about 20 knots. We raised the riding sail on the mizzen and experienced very little swing. We weren’t the last boat to arrive, but pretty close to it. One other boat arrived at 1:00 a.m. the following morning. As we approached Turtle Bay, Nina and I prepared our beach party dishes and assembled the necessary picnic ware. Within half hour of anchoring, we were in dinghy heading for a tucked away cove that was reportedly not in the sand storm on the south eastern shore where we were headed. According to the Poohbah, this Baja Ha Ha was experiencing a lot of firsts…the first heavy seas, the first boat sinking, and the first three inch surf ride onto the beach in our dinghy. Yeah, things are looking up!
Baja Ha Ha Survivors!
What a funny feeling to put our feet on the ground. For the first half hour my legs felt rubbery and the land seemed to be moving underneath me. We quickly shed our windbreakers and zipped on pant legs of our sailing gear. The Ha Ha sailors drank wine and beer, ate, played games, found friends and shared stories of broken things, sea sickness, and the tinge of fear that we felt but tried to keep in check while experiencing 18 foot seas. The wind continued to blow and a fine grain sand filled our wine glasses, coated our food, and lodged in our ears. About 3:00 car loads of Mexicans drove through the sand and dust with the front ends of their cars pointed in our direction. It looked like a drive-in movie theater and we were the screen or the entertainment. They watched the partying gringos with fascination. At one point when we were having a tug a war, we motioned them to come and join us, some of the kids did, but most stayed in their cars.
As the sun dropped low in the sky, we scooted Clark and Nina back to the boat to take showers, and Russ and I went into town to walk around before the sun went down.
The town had some cantinas, a laundry, little markets, and an Internet café. Most of the shops were closed by the time we were there. The sand was blowing across the town and unpaved roads. Russ said it reminded him of walking through the ruins of Pompeii. These people are certainly survivors in this stark and sandblasted environment. We returned to the boat, took showers, and slept well. The anchor alarm didn’t go off all night.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
We all slept in until 7:00 a.m. We busied ourselves with some cleanup chores, ate a late breakfast of an oven omelet filled with cheese and vegetables that were beginning to wilt. I transferred the Airmail files from my netbook to the Mac and installed it. We will work on getting the single sideband radio installed on the Mac, then everything will be up and running. I backed up the Mac. Russ put in the waypoints in the navigation software and on Geepers. Today’s rally start was 11:00. We didn’t quite make the start line at 11:00, but did cross it around 11:45.
The second leg of the trip is to Bahia Santa Maria just before Magdalena Bay, about 220 miles or 40 hours at 6 knots. We anticipate arriving Monday afternoon after a two night passage. The first day of this leg couldn’t have been more perfect. With the bad weather behind us, we had a fairly smooth seas with occasional six foot swells and a 15 knot wind blowing off our starboard stern, 30 degrees off due south. The temperature was pleasant even with a nice breeze… no jackets or long pants today. As on of the cruisers crooned over the VHF radio, “It couldn’t be more mellow!”.
We maintained a 5.5 to 7 knot course over ground until after sunset, then the wind started to die down. Clark and Nina had first watch and eventually rolled in the flogging mizzen and jib.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
By the time our watch started at 0100, we were traveling about 3.5 knots and several boats that had turned on their motors earlier had passed us by. Russ turned on our engine to make up some time, bring us back on course (we had to tack off to capture the wind and still keep the Hydrovane working), generate some electricity, and desalinate some water. The Halloween full moon is lighting up the sky. About 1350 I saw a bright yellow meteor that was traveling horizontally in the southern sky for a couple of seconds before it vanished, The doors and hatch of the pilot house are opening and we are still without jackets. In the distance to our starboard side we see red running lights, and on our port side green running lights.
We have been on watch for over an hour and as I write this, the clock on the computer still shows 1354 as it is program to reflect the change from daylight saving to standard time. Looks like our watch will be a little longer than we anticipated. We’ll leave our ship’s clock as it is because until we arrive in Cabo, we are all to remain on Baja Ha Ha time. That’s it for now. Will catch up again tomorrow night on our 1300-0600 watch. We have found that a five hour watch shift from 8:00 p.m. - 1:00 a.m. and 1:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. works best for the four of us. A five hour sleep with a few catnaps during the day seems to be working fine.
We tossed in a hand line and let it drag all day, changing the lure 4 or 5 times. I think the fish were on holiday. Actually, we were under sail most of the day in light winds, and I think our forward motion was too slow to seriously interest any biting fish. We spent most of the day lounging around on casual watch, alternating with catnaps and sunbathing. The wind was only about 12 knots and we were moving between 4.7 and 5.8 knots. By dusk, the wind was steadily dropping. We have over 100 miles to finish this leg of the trip so couldn’t dawned at 3.0 knots over ground. So, we pulled in the lure, ate dinner, dropped all sails with the exception the main, and started the engine. Clark and Nina assumed their watch duties and we went to bed. We weren’t sure how well we would sleep with the engine noise in our stateroom, but it is amazing how ear plugs and a sleeping pill knocks me out. We both slept really well. Clark woke us at 1:00 with some fresh coffee. All was well.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Several southbound cruise ships passed us by on their way to Cabo presumably. They are quite impressive the way they are lit up. They are certainly not hard to distinguish. We should be in Bahia Santa Maria just after lunch today. By dawn we were slipping between the east side of Cedros Island and the coast of Baja. We passed the imaginary finish line for the second leg around 0812 motor sailing. Within 3 minutes of passing the finish, I went out to check our fishing line which I had thrown out at dawn. Clark had switched out a green and yellow hooch for a sparkly pink and white about 20 minutes previous. and as I was checking, an 8 lb. Skipjack hit the line. Fish cleaning and filleting went much smoother this time around. I cut the fish into chunks and put on a skewer for the bar-b-que later in the day.
We entered Bahia Santa Maria and anchored by 10:45. There was a strong offshore wind coming in over the dunes that separate the open bay of Maria and the enclosed bay of Magdalena. We spent the rest of the morning giving Worrall Wind’s outside a saltwater wash down and the inside a vacuum and dusting. She was carrying a thick layer of fine sand from Turtle Bay. Bahia Santa Maria had been recently hit by Hurricane Jimenez. The people of the community were hard hit. They are poor to begin with. Cruisers were asked to give any donations to a man named Victor in the fishing camp. I dug into my supplies and put together a bag of school supplies (writing paper, pencils, pencil sharpeners, crayons, construction paper and stickers. We also put a 4 pairs of reading glasses and a few toys).
The upside of the storm was the greening of the barren mountains were greening from the storm. Wild flowers were not waiting for spring. We spent the first day in Santa Maria close to the boat. Russ installed an outdoor, fresh water shower so that we could all go swimming and not bring salt and sand back into the boat. We caught up on some laundry, sleep, emailing (Sailmail via our single side band radio is back up and running on our old Dell) and socializing with other yachties. Steve and Rita on Lady J invited us over for a glass of wine as we took a dinghy ride around the Bay. We used the little rubber ducky thermometer that Ted and Marian had given us as a bon voyage gift. The temperature outside was in the mid to low 80’s. The water temperature was 80 degrees. We heard there is a low in central California. We are imagining maybe a storm or first snow fall. It is difficult to wrap our heads around this weather, but we are enjoying it. Catherine and Doug from Galatea invited us over after dinner to play some games, but we were all in bed and fast asleep by 8:30.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
After a leisurely morning, the four us got in the dinghy to go ashore for some exploration and beach party. This was going to be our first surf landing. As we closer to we realized the tide was going out and the rollers were building on the shore. We decided to turn around and take a panga (a large wooden boat with big motor used for fishing and transport) into shore. Clark and Nina opted to stay aboard Worrall Wind. Russ and I took the school supplies, camera, and our bottles of water ashore. The pangas of course knew the way to approach the beach without getting dumped, so we arrived quite dry. The first thing we did was to seek out Victor and turn over the bag of school supplies so that we would not have to carry it on our hike. We spotted a group of men who were talking outside of the Cantina and asked if they knew Victor. Turns out that one of the men was Victor. We explained in English and horrible Spanish that we brought some school supplies for the children and the local school. He thanked us and took the supplies into his wife in the Cantina. Having done that and hoping we had gotten the correct Victor and the school supplies would indeed be turned over to the school we headed out for a short hike.
After our hike, we joined the festivities at the Cantina, enjoying ice cold beer and pan fried shrimp. By the we returned to Worrall Wind. The tide had gone out significantly leaving all of the dinghies high and dry. We needed to walk out 100 yards to get into a panga. Even the larger pangas were grounded on the shoal.
We directed the panga driver to our boat in Spanish and with hand signals. When we were getting out of the boat, the panga driver asked me, “you …. Teacher?” I was surprised. “Si” I responded. He smiled a broad smile. He was one of the men who had been talking with Victor when we delivered the school supplies. I felt more confident that the supplies would find their way to the school.
The start for our last leg of the trip to Cabo San Lucas will be tomorrow morning at 6:00 a.m. After a quick, cooling swim, we took down the laundry, secured the dinghy and prepared the boat for an early start. The moon didn’t rise until after the sun had set. When the moon did rise, there was a symphony of howls from around the bay and the rowdier boats. There are some parties going on that we are pleased to be missing.
Wednesday, November 3, 2009
We weighed anchor at 0530 and left Bahia Santa Maria with a rolling start. There was no wind or so little to speak of that all boats were motoring or motor sailing. We motor sailed until 1415 at which we had about a 9 knot onshore wind developed and were moving about 3.1 knots per hour. It had been fairly warm and humid. Steadily the cooling breeze increased until we were consistently sailing between 4.5 and 5.5 knots per hour. We took turns at the helm, practiced our Spanish, and listened to the HaHa net. Today was the day that boats wanting to berth in Cabo were being given their slip assignments. At $150.00 per night, we have decided to anchor out away from the marina in the bay and either take our own dinghy in or a water taxi in. A lot of the boats do not have water makers and their crews are looking forward to hot showers after nearly two weeks out. Our water maker has been doing a terrific job and every time we start the motor, we have been making water. So far our 250 gallon water tank is still more than ¾ full and we have been showers on board. With the engine, solar, and wind our batteries are staying charged to run all of our gizmos.
We have decided not to do any fishing today. It’s time to eat up all of the beef on board before we check into Cabo tomorrow. Whether raw or cooked, Mexican are concerned about mad cow disease and apparently are confiscating beef. We will do some re-provisioning at the Costco so need empty down the refrigerator and freezer a little bit to bring on fresh supplies. Seems odd, since we bought the beef at Costco to begin with. Tomorrow we will be going through the check in procedure for the first time. Apparently, there is a lot of running around to do to several places. Many cruisers hire an agent for $50.00 to do all of the leg work for them. I think we may opt to do this as well so that we can spend our time doing other things. We plan to leave Cabo for La Paz on Sunday and will have only two full days to sight see, re-provision, and visit an Internet Café to post this blog and get caught up on email and world events.
Tonight is our last at sea for a while. The moon came up late, an hour and half past sunset. We looked for the green flash at sunset, but didn’t see it.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
We have all of the doors and the large cabin skylight wide open sucking in the breeze, starlight, and moonlight. It is so beautiful and not at all chilling. It is 0400 in the morning and we have been sailing since 1430 yesterday afternoon, averaging about 5 knots per hour. Russ and I are on watch. Russ is taking a catnap while I scan the horizon visually and with radar. I sure love the full moon because it makes the night sea seem so much more friendly. We should arrive in Cabo late today (Thursday). There is a beach party on Friday and adios and awards dinner on Saturday. Then on Sunday we will all be going our separate ways although I suspect that quite a few boats will be heading up to LaPaz for Thanksgiving. We will be heading up that way for some cruising and to drop Clark and Nina off, but anticipate getting across the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlan for Thanksgiving.
Worrall Wind and crew crossed the finish line to Cabo San Lucas at 1208 on Thursday November 5. Total duration of legs 1, 2 & 3 was 169 hours. Of those hours, we motor sailed 63 hours, and sailed 106 hours. Despite the two days of challenging winds and seas, the trip has been great. We are probably last time wise and motor wise to everyone else, but we had a blast.
View from the top of the mast.
