The Taco Traveler

(5/5 and 5/6/2009)

Now we’re sailing! There’s not much wind anymore, and the swells are still following and a bit annoying, but there’s about 15 knots on my starboard quarter and I decided to roll out the gennaker, and it is freakin beautiful. I don’t think I’ve used the gennaker since my last time in Mexico, “racing” Shiloh and Sailfisher from San Blas to La Cruz, but I had crew, then. I haven’t flown the gennaker single-handed since I left San Francisco. So it’s staying generally full, and I should turn a bit right and get it a bit more angle as it’s often masked by the main, but we’re okay with a little flapping.

I “fixed” the autopilot again, but instead of trying to be too fine, I just put a *bunch* of tape on it so it stays engaged no matter what. It won’t slip anymore, and has been great for a couple hours now, but the problem is I can’t disengage it without removing it. But I’ve removed it about 20 times in the last 48 hours to make modifications and repair attempts, so I figure having to spend 2 minutes removing it to disengage it isn’t that big of a deal. The only reason to disengage it between here and Cabo should be to let it cool off, but I’ve got an ice pack on it right now to try to accomplish that temporarily – I’m not ready to hand-steer yet and it’s doing a great job now that it has better purchase on the wheel.

So under full main and 150% gennaker we’re doing between 7 and 8 knots. Outstanding and fun. We’ll see if this westerly breeze keeps up. If the wind shifts to the NW then I’ll have to run under main only, probably. So given the direction of the wind and the slightly smaller swells, I’ve decided to cut straight across to Cabo rather than hugging the coastline. It’s about 80 degrees and beautiful – couldn’t ask for better weather right now though I’ve passed many northbounders who could ask for a bit of relief from the wind and swells. They’re having a very difficult uphill slog of it.

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Since Mag Bay, the water has gone up in temperature about 5 degrees. It’s now at 64.4 F. My job since I put the gennaker up about 2pm has been to just keep the autopilot cool with an occasional ice bag. That’s a job I can handle, and the autopilot is doing a great job of keeping the boat on course through following seas and the big flying headsail. Just a great sail all around. I just heard a VHF call from Marina Costa Baja, which is in La Paz, so that’s weird. That’s a heck of a transmitter, as La Paz is currently 67 nautical miles away. Well… I guess I’ve received transmissions from farther (AIS uses the VHF band, and I’m picking up a faint, occasional transmission from a boat that’s 282 miles away), but never over land like that (La Paz is on the Sea of Cortez, on the other side of the Baja peninsula).

I’m racing a bit, as I’d like to keep up a pace of 7+ knots so I get to the cape at sunrise. Right now, at 7 knots, I’ll get there about 8am. I definitely would like to be around Cabo Falso before 9:30 or 10am, as the “cape effect” winds can be pretty gnarly, whipping up some big, confused seas and generally making everything very difficult.

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I just took about a hundred pictures of dolphins either sprinting towards the boat from afar or playing in the bow wave. There aren’t very many usable ones, of course, but on “Sports” mode I was able to take several shots in a few seconds to try to grab that one great moment. I got several shots of them coming, then a few jumping next to the boat. Then after that got boring, I took the camera up to the bow and held it over the edge, trying for an extreme closeup on a dolphin right on the bow. Not sure yet how it came out, but there were a few shots of like four guys in a row all surfing the wave. They’re still playing, which is surprising to me because I’m only going 6 knots, but there’s no annoying engine, so they probably don’t get that a lot, with so few sailboats going south right now (most are going north for the end of the season, and are generally motoring uphill trying to go as fast as possible if there’s a calm).

Time to put the gennaker away and start motoring… the wind has dropped down to about 5-6 knots and I’m now meandering along at 5.5 knots (probably 1 or 1.5 of that is current). This won’t do to get me past Cabo Falso before the wind picks up late morning.

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It’s a beautiful night, though absolutely windless. There’s a big, bright moon, the swells have died down, and I’m just motoring along at 7 knots at an easy 2k RPM (I can do 8+ knots if I want to). The water has warmed up even more, and is now 66.2 degrees, so we’re getting there. And I’m being reminded of a big negative with Mexicans and their radios… the fishermen who use it honestly tend to whistle to get attention and then often scream the name of a boat or a buddy three or four times, and reapeat that ten times before giving up or being answered. Then there are also just assholes who clog up channel 16 with idle chatter and messing around. This is why cruisers switch to channel 22 when we get down to mainland Mexico (maybe even La Paz?). Channel 22 becomes the cruiser’s hailing channel, because 16 is so full of garbage. It’s ridiculous, and it would be nice if the Mexican Navy would get a handle on it – maybe try educating people about the importance of keeping an emergency channel clear. But I guess it’s a small minority that is hurt or potentially harmed by this misuse.

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Just after midnight and I’m watching my second movie of the night – “Say Anything.” So funny that I never noticed before that Jeremy Piven was in it. Did ya know that? He’s the drunk aggressive friend of Lloyd Dobler’s at the party who’s wearing the little hat and high-fives his keys into Lloyd the Keymaster’s hand. Then he passes out on the lawn at the end of the party. Oh, and he’s one of the guys at the Gas N’ Sip, too. He says: “Your only mistake is that you didn’t dump her first. Diane Court is a show pony, and you are a stallion, my friend. Walk with us and you walk tall.” He says that right before the kid says “Bitches, man!”

No wind – been motoring for three hours now. I could probably pull 5 knots if I put up the gennaker, but that’s not enough for my goals this leg:
a) Don’t get run over by this big cruise ship called “The World” which is heading north on a really inshore track – probably to keep its guests out of the offshore swell
b) Get through the fishing fleet safely at Golden Gate Bank
c) Get around Cabo Falso before the “cape effect” winds pick up
d) Anchor in the spot where this past December I had good Internet from some hotel on the beach
e) Send a few emails and post a few blog entries
f) Go to sleep

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Weird – Golden Gate Bank is completely deserted (of both fishermen and fish, apparently). When I came through here on my way north in January, there were about a hundred boats working this area. They must have moved over to the Sea of Cortez side for dorado or something (I’m pretty sure in January this area was hopping with yellowtail). Oh well… I guess I’m not going to make a living as a fishing charter captain.

Relatively easy night, but the wind never picked up enough to sail once I took down the gennaker around 6pm. Bummer. I hate motoring, as I just count the dollars getting burned up in the cylinders (are they still called cylinders in diesel? Compression chambers?). So each hour costs me about $2.80 on average – my Pactor modem cash drifting away.

So I’ve got land within 4 miles. Cabo Falso is about 18 miles to the southeast and Bahia San Lucas is another 6 miles past that. Should be at anchor by 11am.

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Arrived in Cabo safely. G'night. :-)

 

It was an easy motor today, and I arrived at Cabo San Lucas Bay before noon and went straight for fuel and water to make sure that when the weather was ready I'd be ready. Then I anchored out in the bay and because of my averse reaction to random taxi fares (which carry over for the most part to random water taxi fares) I popped the dinghy into the water and lowered the motor down with the winch. The landing fee is amazing reasonable - just 3 bucks or 35 pesos (I think - it may have been 30 pesos which would be an amazing exchange rate). Anyway, it's a huge change from the ridiculous dinghy landing fee at Marina La Cruz de Huanacaxtle. There they wanted $10 U.S. and didn't have any flexibility at all. Say you wanted to have dinner and pay 300 pesos for a steak at the marina's restaurant? No, ya gotta pay ten bucks to land your dinghy. Anyway... yeah, amazing deal here at Marina Cabo San Lucas.

So I went directly to the Capitainia de Puerto to check in (and then out) so that I'd be ready to head out at any time, and while there I asked about the weather, and they printed up a flyer for me regarding a cold front moving in. They also stamped my exit papers with this ominous note: "SE ENTREGO REPORTE METEOROLOGICO CON LA FINALIDAD DE EXTREMAR PRECAUSIONES POR FRENTE FRIO." ("I delivered a meterological report [expressing the need for] extreme precautions due to [an approaching] cold front.") So... after confirming that report with a GRIB download overlaid on my Nobeltec and then a second confirmation once I discovered I had Internet out here, I've decided that I can't leave Cabo until at least 12/27. So it's unlikely I'll get to San Diego before 1/3 or so.

There are worse places to be stuck. The jet skiers are a little bit crazy here, but it's at least 85 degrees. Also, and some of my favorite experiences this entire trip have happened while waiting for weather.

TT

 

San Diego - Cabo Photoshare

I don't think I could have scripted a better scene than the 24 hours that passed after turning around in the entrance to Mag Bay. The winds, the boat, nature. Everything was perfect. The sunrise you see here is actually from the morning we arrived in Ensenada, but I hadn't yet downloaded the images to my computer, and this sunrise has to be seen.
 

Anyway, we left Mag Bay on a broad reach to the SSE, apparent wind about 100-120 degrees off our starboard quarter. We raised the cruising spinnaker and instantly we were making 7-8 knots under full main and spinnaker - absolutely cooking... with buttah. There was a decent swell from the NW, but Chemistry ate them up; they were barely noticable at that speed and at that angle of heel. After 2 1/2 hours, it was time to gybe and reduce sail for the night. So we took down the spinnaker and gybed to the SSE, and found ourselves - with just a slight wind shift - on a rhumb line to Cabo. I calculated that on that leg, for that 150 minutes, we averaged 8 knots. Yes, with a waterline of 35' 4", that's pretty much Chemistry's maximum theoretical hull speed, but there was a lot of surfing, too.

Our SSE leg to Cabo started with the wind at 150 degrees off the port quarter (180 degrees being dead downwind), so we just had the full main up (with preventer, of course) because at that angle in only 8-10 knots of wind it would have been difficult to keep a headsail full. But still, through the night, surfing down the NW swells, we made great time and direction.

By morning we were approaching Cabo, and the hills were visible at 25 miles away. Sometime around 11 am, my fishing line, loaded with the Cedar Plug, hit hard. This time it wasn't seaweed. I fought that fish for about 10 minutes and contemplated having Denali stop the boat and lower sail, which would have meant pointing the boat to windward (blowing about 20 knots), hitting some big, steep swells, and bringing in the main. It just seemed like - with full mainsail and 6-7 knots with surfing - it felt like a 400 pound marlin on the end of that line; I couldn't imagine why it wasn't leaping out of the water and giving us a show. Eventually, though, I started making progress as the fish tired, and in the pic you see the absolutely beautiful 15-20 pound yellowtail tuna. What followed was a bit comical, as Denali read to me from my new The Cruiser's Handbook of Fishing on how to kill, bleed and gut the fish. I'd done this with salmon before, but I wanted the meat to be sushi-grade. The photo you see has a 200 lb monofilament line sticking out of the fish, which is used to finish the him off by putting the line down his spinal column. It's called the Tanaguchi Method, and it's how to get the best-tasting tuna. It's called "Pithing," and the point is to stop biochemical reactions (which decrease meat quality) from originating from the intact spinal cord by destroying it. Probably TMI. So I thanked the fish and took a small bite, but there was no time for lots of sushi as we were approaching the cape.

Not 2 minutes after getting the cleaned fish into the icebox, Malavika and Denali got excited about a whale breach, so I grabbed my camera and went back up in time to catch the whale's next breach, which you see here. So cool.

When we rounded the arches into the harbor, that's when the craziness started. I felt like an old lady at a rock concert as maniacal fishing boats blasted in from sea toward the marina, me chugging along at 5 knots. This continued all the way to the fuel dock, being overtaken by jerks going 8 knots in a marina with a 45-foot sportfisher. Nice. Welcome to Cabo, and as one person said recently on a cruiser's forum: Miami Beach with Tacos.

 

We had a good night of sailing under main only, as close to downwind as possible as we came down the last 80 miles from Turtle Bay to Mag Bay. The plan was to stop this morning in Mag Bay, but what we really wanted to do was see the whales, which we'd heard were so abundant at the mouth of Mag Bay that you sometimes had to wait for a gap to pass through. Not the case this time. We did see a few spouts, but we also saw about 20 whale watching boats packed with whale watchers. I felt the still cold and damp air, checked my energy levevl to find I was wide awake, and suggested that if we wanted we could skip Mag Bay and be in Cabo by tomorrow morning. It didn't take a lot of convincing; I think we'd all rather take our nice rest while in 80 degrees rather than the 65 here (not that 65 degrees isn't great, winter-people).

So we got through the entrance to Mag Bay, raised the mainsail again (we'd motored the last 20 miles or so with no wind), and turned back out to sea. We are currently flying at 7 knots 176 degrees (nearly due south) under full main and gennaker, in about 12-17 knots of wind. It's a good ride, but that huge sail makes me very cautious. We'll take it down if we start consistently seeing much more than 15 knots true wind. It's beautiful to look at, and fun to go this fast, but a little stressful out in the ocean. I guess I'm a spinnaker wimp. But the forecast was for these fairly light winds to continue the next 3 days, so I'll try to relax about it. It is staying fairly consistent.

Our watches at night are working out well. Malavika and Denali are comfortable alone on watch, with the AIS and Radar and knowing they can grab me at any time, so we're able to do 2-on, 4-off watches. The nights go by fairly quickly with only two 2-hour watches, and we all seem able to sleep pretty well. Looking forward to crossing the Tropic of Cancer and "going to bed in your foulies and waking up in your swim trunks" as one person said (the same person who said we'd have to wait for an opening to get through the whales at the mouth of Mag Bay).

TT