The Taco Traveler

I needed to get outta Dodge, today – to make my way to a quiet cove away from the bustle of San Carlos and the constant stream of sportfishers and tour/dive boats heading in and out of the bay. I’m at a cove called Caleta Lalo, less than two or three miles from the entrance to San Carlos Bay, just to the north.

This morning, though, before I left the Bay, I picked up my tanks, which Gary’s Dive Shop was kind enough to fill and even deliver back to their dock for me so I didn’t have to transport them on my bike to their shop a mile or so down the road. After I had the tanks back on the boat, I went “war boating.” With my laptop and wifi antenna, I took my dinghy around the bay seeking the best free Internet, and discovered that no one place was better than any other for the one signal I was able to consistently connect to. Still, I’ve been working so much, I needed a break from having Internet. Internet is a momentum grabber; as soon as I get going on a nice piece of writing (whether code or … writing writing), I feel this evil need to check Real Clear Politics again to see if any new battleground polls have come in.

I left San Carlos Bay around 11 am, hoping to get anchored at a safe spot before the afternoon onshore breeze picked up – lately it’s been blowing up to 25 knots in the Bay. I popped the fishing line in the water for the short hop around Punta Doble, and then it was a straight shot to Caleta Lalo. As I was getting close, I started to reel in the line, and hooked a little “shaker” on the way in. It was a Jack of some sort; I didn’t see the black spots, so it might have been a good-eating white skipjack, but it was so small I didn’t want to mess with it. I just grabbed his tail and gently twirled the barbless hooks out of his mouth and tossed him in and away he went, and I was back to directing Chemistry into the cove.

The cove was (and is) completely empty, boat-wise, except for us, so I spun around at a good spot, backed down on the anchor in 23 feet of water, and within ten minutes I was in the water with mask, fins and snorkel to dive on the anchor and refresh myself in the warm water. The anchor was about as buried as buried gets – no worries at all. After I dried off, I grabbed my camera and took a trip into shore and for a spin around the cove. It’s a shame there’s so much trash on the beach. People…. I’ll pick up a bag full before heading back to the Bay tomorrow afternoon.

I remember when I was 9 or 10 and my sisters and I went and visited my dad at his condo on Maui. Just offshore, anchored right off the beach were these big beautiful sailboats. And I thought that must be the life. Now I see my own boat from the beach, and I’m reminded just how lucky I am to be here, to have this beautiful boat, and to be able to live such a life so relatively young. At forty I still feel 30, maybe 28, and the only thing I can imagine that would be better than this would be to have my boys with me and have no financial worries whatsoever.

It’s 8:45 and I just came in from the deck before I started writing this entry. I was laying on the bow, looking up at the stars, the planets, the bats flitting past my anchor light at the top of the mast, and it dawned on me that having young children makes it so much easier to imagine the immensity of everything around us because I consider detail-by-detail how I would describe it to G and T if they were here with me. In that context, it underscores the relative unimportance of all the things that make life distressing for so many. When you start to think about describing the universe to a child – the tens of thousands of stars just that we can see, the millions of others that create the light of the Milky Way, the thousands of galaxies contained within every small square degree of even the darkest part of our sky (with enough magnification) – it just intensifies the feeling of our smallness. For me, it makes it hard to consider wasting any time. It makes Wall Street stupid. It makes war even shittier.

But it really is luck that I’m here, and I appreciate that it’s the money of Wall Street (to a degree) that allows me to be here, the security of our world (to a degree) that keeps me safe here, and the cruising guide that brought me here in the first place. And this would be a less interesting place without the partiers on the beach, the music of my iPod playing in the background (Buddha Bar, Vol III, CD2: “Joy”), the book to read (Choke, by Chuck Palahniuk).

We are so alone, and yet still so dependent.

I was napping this afternoon (I’ve been getting up at dawn and napping after lunch), and I was awakened by a frantic call on the VHF. Someone from across the Sea of Cortez was taking on water, and though he’s over sixty miles away, he’s apparently got a good VHF. I heard his panicked, high-pitched voice yelling “MAYDAY MAYDAY” amongst the whine of his engine as he tried to give his location and somehow get help from someone. He was six and a half miles offshore, off Santa Rosalita on the western side of the Sea. One fellow, very calmly and authoritatively, eventually took control of the situation over the VHF, and in a very reassuring voice asked the man everything that anyone needed to know if they were going to help him and then relayed that information to the nearest marina and the vessels nearest this man’s location.

When you’re utterly alone and taking on water, you have to take a second to assess the situation. All this man knew was that he was taking on water, but from what I could gather with the noise of his boat and the static of the distant transmission, he didn’t seem to know why. I’ve never been in this situation, but with enough sailing I’m sure one day I’ll encounter something like it. First of all, taking on water, in my opinion, isn’t a “Mayday,” it’s a “Pan-Pan.” Especially since it wasn’t yet so high that it had drowned his engine. After alerting other vessels that you *may* need assistance, the very first thing to do (assuming you’re wearing a life jacket and your life raft is ready to deploy if necessary) is figure out why you’re taking on water. I’m not sure what ended up being the issue, but as he was approaching the Singlar marina at Santa Rosalita he seemed much calmer, as if he had the situation under control. One person - in the rash of confusion before the one man took control of the radio rescue - had suggested he feel the temp of the water, and if it’s very warm it’s probably an exhaust leak, and instead of expelling the warm water after using it to cool the engine, it was spilling it into the engine compartment (and therefore filling the bilge/interior). Solution: shut off your engine. The other likely possibilities were a burst hose below waterline (check all of them, close the seacock – because you know where every single seacock is on your boat), a bad through-hull (put a plug in it, literally, from outside if necessary), a messed up shaft seal (dive under, plug a bunch of crap in there to slow the flow, and pray) or, worst case, he hit something big (like a shipping container) and it put a big hole in his boat (get ready to deploy the life raft).

Problem was, this man seemed more intent on crashing his boat at full speed into shallow water to “save” it, or hustling into the safe, waiting slings of the Singlar haul-out yard than actually finding the problem he needed to fix, and it was frustrating to all who were listening from around the Sea.

We all hope we’re cool when it happens, so ready, so level-headed, so well-spoken and efficient and just... together. But sometimes we need that reassuring voice on the line to help us lower our own pitch, to remind us that yes, we know what we’re doing and we’re ready for something like this. Somewhere, out there in the stars, amongst the millions of galaxies and the trillions of stars, it’s nice to think there might be other things – to think that maybe they’re listening, that maybe they’re someday going to tell us to calm the fuck down, to stop killing each other over different beliefs and stop fretting about the stock markets, and that somehow they know us well enough, and it’s in our nature to get through this.

TT

Rich and Deb joined me at Marina Mazatlan on Saturday May 3rd, and it was difficult to get going; we were having a good time there with the good restaurants, the comfortable marina, and the necessary Internet (Rich, like me, is still working). But eventually, on Monday afternoon, we got going. We needed to cross the Sea of Cortez to Cabo San Lucas, as that was the adventure we planned in order to get an adequate amount of relaxation and sailing experience into their trip. The winds were blowing out of the west-northwest, so not favorable at all for a direct crossing, especially since Chemistry can't point as high on starboard tack. The closest we could point to Cabo on starboard tack was somewhere between the Galapagos and the Marquesas. So we motor-sailed due north for the day, and put in at Punta Piaxtla, a tiny village with little to offer, and not charted at all. We arrived at sunset, so we didn't have a lot of time to find a good anchorage on the inside bay, so we just dropped anchor inside the point off the beach. We were protected from south swells, but the waves did a good job of wrapping around the point and hitting us all night. We dropped a stern anchor after dark, but didn't get it set properly so it was a fairly uncomfortable night, especially with the loud surf so close by.

The next morning we roused ourselves around 9 and I hopped in the water for some half-hearted bottom-cleaning. Mainly, I wanted to free the knotmeter, which was still stuck from so much gunk growing around it. I also had to tighten the prop zinc, which had gotten loose and was spinning and sliding free, thumping with every shaft rotation. In the course of all that, I managed to get some nice barnacle slices in my right hand, which now, 5 days later, I'm still nursing with anti-bacterial and trying to fight off infection. Those barnacles are a pain.

After the bottom work, we loaded into the dinghy for a trip to town seeking a "real Mexican experience." Well, we got it. We landed the dinghy on the panga-strewn beach and encountered a couple of fishermen. I asked where we could find a restaurante and one of them told us right there, talk with el gordito. We walked to the next group of men and the gordito ("little fat man") was easy to spot in his purple t-shirt. We asked where his resaturant was and he waved for us to follow, and he walked us to the kitchen of his house, brushed off a few chairs, and told us to sit. There was a restaurant sign, and a license, and a sign that said it was unlawful for him to sell cerveza to minors and people in uniform, but the kitchen had clearly been used much more for himself than much restauranteuring, ever. He asked what we wanted, and as is the tradition in Mexico with tiny restaurants like that, rather than go through a huge list to be told "no," I instead asked what he had. He had meat for tacos, and he had sausage and eggs. We opted for sausage and eggs, then I realized he was probably a fisherman, too, and asked if he had any lobster for some lobster tacos. He suggested we walk up the road to his friend's house to see if he had some. If he did, it would have been 100 pesos per kilo, which is about 3 lobsters - awesome. I walked with him while Rich and Deb sat waiting and Rich chased tiny chickens for pictures, but unfortunately, neither of the two people he asked had any lobster. So were were back to the sausage and eggs. He served us coffee (hot water and a jar of Nescafe in hastily rinsed coffee mugs that had been sitting on the table when we arrived), and prepared the food as we looked at each other, unsure just what we had gotten ourselves into. The food turned out to be pretty good, but we didn't do much damage to the coffee, as even after I was finished eating, the coffee was still too hot to drink. But at least all the stuff in the water was dead. We paid the man 120 pesos, went back to the dinghy and motored back to Chemistry, pulled anchor and headed for sea.

At this point we didn't have much wind, and what we had was against us, so we did some westerly motoring for a while. Eventually, the wind picked up and started turning to the north, so we could sail a bit to the southwest. As the trip went on, the wind kept turning, so we kept turning more west and eventually were heading due west towards the East Cape and Los Frailes, and sailing under full sail at 7 to 7.5 knots with 15 knots of wind just slightly forward of our beam. This meant we were heeling pretty well, and there were some large swells out there, so it wasn't the most comfortable ride. One of the coolest parts of this trip was around sunset watching a blue marlin free-jumping about 100 yards off our port beam. He looked like he was just having a good time, and was getting 5-7 feet of air for 5 or 6 jumps. He seemed to be about 5 feet long. It was a very cool thing to watch.

At around 10 or 11pm, OV started making a horrible noise. Basically, the rebuilt gears I installed several weeks ago are now fried. OV is done for the season. So OV Jr took over for the rest of the crossing, and did a good job when we were headed into the wind or on a beam reach.

A bit later in the night - about 2 or 3am, the wind and seas really started to get crazy. It was my watch, and the wind was off our bow and picking up to 22-23 knots and the swells were directly on our beam. It was time (or past time) to reduce sail. I stared by trying to reel in the yankee, but with the staysail using the small winch, and the wind blowing too hard to reel her in by hand, I basically just made a ton of noise. This brought Rich up, and together we managed to get the staysail wrapped up and then get the yankee reefed to about 70%. Then we rolled the mainsail (in-boom furling) down to about 75%, and we were still doing 7.5 knots but were riding a bit more comfortably. After this change, Rich went back down for a bit more rest, as I was still wide awake.

Twenty minutes later, however, I went down and suggested that if he were still awake, he had to come check this out. What had happened was the the sea had slowly turned white with phosphorescence. This was right in the middle of the sea, and I was absolutely amazed. As we approached it, I was slightly confused, as it looked like fog because of its white glow, but I could see stars through it. As we entred it, it was eerie, and awesome. The whiteness all around was consistent - it was like we were sailing through milk. Rich later compared it to walking through a forest after a big slowfall. It was quiet and white and one of the coolest things I've ever seen. As we splashed through the phosphorescent sea, even more brilliant phosphorescence flew all around the stirred up water off our bow and stern waves. Like the stars at night, something like this can't be photographed (I tried) - it just has to be experienced.

Eventually, it was Rich's turn on watch, as he wanted the sunrise shift, and I went down to try to sleep in the still very rocky and pitchy bow (I'd given up my aft stateroom for my guests, as it would be more comfortable underway and I hadn't yet tried sleeping in the forward stateroom anyway). Basically, throughout the morning the swells kept getting bigger and steeper, and we were really very uncomfortable. At one point we took a huge wave off the starboard beam and several gallons of water landed on the deck just outside the cockpit enclosure, made its way under the enclosure, and towards my computer. I thought I picked it up in time, but something bad happened anyway. I'm not sure if it was the water or the shock of me picking it up, or the wear of a couple years, but basically the hard disk drive just crashed. I pulled out my paper charts, and Rich fired up his Nobeltec, and we were able to get by and get towards San Jose Del Cabo. We kept trying to find the right heading to make the ride more comfortable, and eventually we decided to head straight for San Jose Del Cabo, the eastern sister to Cabo San Lucas. We did this so we could head a bit more downwind and try to quarter the swells. It didn't help much, but we were making better progress towards a comfortable marina. We didn't reach that marina (Marina Puerto Los Cabos) until about 4pm Wednesday afternoon, and by then we were so over-tired that we were wide awake, so we cleaned up the boat, cleaned ourselves up, and went to town and got trashed on one single amazing pomegranite margarita (and a bottle of wine). I had Puerco Pilbil because I've loved the dish ever since my buddy Jim Drake (aka "Spicecake") saw Johnny Depp eat it in "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" and started making it on a regular "special occasion" basis, going by the recipe which is a special feature on the DVD. But Jim calls it "pork butt."

The next morning (and the next two days, going up to about 4 hours ago) was dedicated almost entirely to getting my computer up and running again. I've still got way too much to do to be without a computer for ten days (until I get to Seattle). We left San Jose Del Cabo and spent 3 hours getting to Cabo San Lucas, and way too much money at Marina Cabo San Lucas, but it was relatively fun as CSL seems a lot busier now, for some reason, than when I came through in mid-January.

I'm currently heading northeast along the coast on the south tip of Baja. I'm motor-sailing at about 6.4 knots at 2300 RPM, though the sailing part is pushing it; the mainsail is up but there's almost no wind. At 6.4 knots I've got a 7 knot apparent headwind, which means is blowing less than a knot on my nose. I'm heading towards the East Cape (Los Frailes, Bahia de los Muertos) and probably beyond tomorrow. My plan is to do a 24-hour stretch, get somewhere tomorrow mid-afternoon and rest for the night, then leave early the next day for 12 hours of daylight sailing, then another overnight, then hopefully a short overnight across the Sea of Cortez to Guaymas. It's 9:45 now, pretty dark with only a quarter moon, and coffee brewing. It should be an easy night, as stormsurf.com shows very little wind for the next few days, but with a little bit of offshore breeze (westerly, so on my port beam as I head north) in the afternoons. My goal is Guaymas by Tuesday so I can haul out on Wednesday, hop on a bus on Thursday night, and I've already purchased a plane ticket for Phoenix to Seattle on Friday the 16th. It will be good to be in a city again. I hope the restaurants are still open, and they have good coffee.

TT

 

4.30.2008 - 2PM Nayarit Time (MDT)

Yesterday, 4/29, was a beautiful day. I pulled up anchor in La Cruz and headed towards Punta de Mita and the mouth of Banderas Bay. It was a fairly brisk motor-sail up to that point, blowing about 15 knots on my nose. I had the motor running so I could point higher into the wind; I didn't want to be tacking back and forth for two hours to get out of the bay. After so much time at anchor or in a marina, it's funny all the things that can start rattling around and crashing down below once they've been taken out of their "heel-safe place." Right at the edge of the bay, defined by the line between Punta de Mita and the easternmost of the Islas Marietas, the islands that guard the bay, is a scary place given the inaccuracy of the Mexican nautical charts. There's a big spot that's labeled "2'", and another big exposed rock. And these spots are right in between the islands and the point. So I was pretty stressed as I motor-sailed through that area. I finally found the buoy that marked the exposed rock (about 1.5 miles off where the chart said it should be), and realized that if the chart is about a mile and a half off, then I'm probably about to run into the area that's only two feet deep. Well... I did. I didn't actually hit bottom, and I'm not actually sure the area really was only two feet deep - it could have been a mass of bait fish or other turbulence that caused my depth sounder to read "2", but I was heeled pretty well, and turned a bit, and knew that my depth sounder isn't properly calibrated and reads about four feet shallower than it is... so the most likely scenario is that I went over a six foot shallow while heeled at about twenty degrees, which means I was almost in trouble. The tide was rising, so I wouldn't have been stuck for long, but getting stuck at the mouth of Banderas Bay wouldn't have been the highlight of my trip.

As soon as I left Banderas Bay, the wind died to nothing, so I cranked the engine a bit more and motor-sailed with much more motor than sail for a while. A short while later it didn't make sense to have the sails up at all. In retrospect, I should have stayed closer to shore, as the breeze seemed to be entirely driven by the warming of the earth (I forget what those winds are called). I realized this when I got to Guayabitos and as I got closer to shore it got windy again. I wasn't sure whether to go on to Chacala or stop at Guayabitos Cove, but Guayabitos is bigger and I wasn't sure if Chacala would be good with those onshore winds, so I anchored in Guayabitos.

I'd stopped near Guayabitos, off Isla de Pena, on the way down initially from San Blas with Shiloh and Sailfisher (and my crew, Denali and Malavika aboard), and was sort of drawn by all the activity on the beach but we didn't stop then. Last night, the activity on the beach turned out to be an illusion, as it was all pretty much all-inclusive resort activity and restaurants that were closed for the season. I had to walk around the town for about an hour before I found an open restaurant at 8pm.

This morning I awoke to lots of loud music and PA-amplified yelling and excitement, as the resorts started up their kids-fest / day-care. There are also a couple of party boats that cruise around looking for customers for that night's sail. There are two - one of which is called "Party Boat" and one of which is called "Barco de Fiesta" (which translates as "Party Boat"). If they're competing companies, that's hilarious.

Since wasn't a lot to do or see there, I pullled up anchor and am now heading out to sea more or less towards Isla Isabela, but I've recently decided that I'm not in a hurry so I turned off the motor and am now just sailing as close as I can into a 5-6 knot breeze. It's great - I'm only making about 4 knots, but it's quiet and I have full sail up. Chemistry is so great with all her sail up - yankee, staysail, main; perfectly in balance. A while ago I turned OV off and steered manually for a change. She was so well balanced that I just let go of the wheel and we went along straight with no problem. So now, slow and steady on our way to Isla Isabela (or beyond, all the way to Mazatlan, maybe), fishing lure trailing behind, nothing but quiet all around, the occasional swish of the bow splitting a swell.... Perfect.

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4.30.2008 - 7:45 Nayarit Time (MDT)
Well, timing, timing. I was very much relaxing earlier today, and then started thinking that I'd rather get to Isla Isabela than go all the way to Mazatlan, so I started motor-sailing and have been cruising along at 7 knots since 3 or 4pm. Chemistry, for some reason probably related to the in-boom furling, much prefers to be on port tack (that's when the wind is coming over the port (left) rail). So we were cruising along, then engine at only 2k RPM, with the wind at a relative 30 degrees off the port side (as close to the wind as we can point, with help from the motor). This didn't let us point very directly at Isla Isabela, which is directly upwind, so about 30 mins ago I took down all sail and now am motoring right into the fairly light breeze (about 5-7 knots) towards Isla Isabela. However, I'm having second thoughts and will probably just pass by the island in favor of getting to Mazatlan. I don't know - maybe I'll drop anchor for a bit and take a three hour nap, but I need to get to Mazatlan by Friday morning so I can get to the Capitiana (the office of the Port Captain) and check in/out and alter my crew list on the check-out form. I'll be picking up friends Rich and Deb in Mazatlan, and sailing around for a few days, ending up in Cabo, where they'll fly out on the 7th. Since the Capitania is closed Saturday, and adding crew is a pretty big deal, I need to get there quickly. It's a 14-hour sail (at 6.5 knots) from Isla Isabela to Mazatlan, so at the very latest I'd need to leave about 8pm Thursday, and that doesn't leave much room for error. So, in order to ensure I arrive in the daylight to a port I've never been to, it's probably best that I just go through right now.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to raise the sails again soon, but I need to make a little more westing towards Isla Isabela. I'm hoping that as I get more north and more west the winds will get more favorable for my northward leg, as the winds wrap around Cabo San Lucas. In any case, I have plenty of fuel and we're moving along at 5.8 to 6 knots and only 2300 RPM.

I had the fishing gear out all day without a bite. Crazy "Dorado Killer" and all. The "Dorado Killer" is basically a flasher - an old 1-litre Coke bottle that's filled mostly full of water and then dragged behind the boat about 10 feet in front of the squid lure. It's supposed to attract the attention of the top-feeders and then they see the squid. I'm really missing my Cedar Plug, though. That thing killed, literally. Since I lost it to a shark or something big, I don't think I've caught a fish. Well, maybe that Jack Cravalle, yuck.

I passed through a lot of fish and dolphins around 5pm, but the fish weren't interested or were too busy getting away from the dolphins. One fish jumped right by the boat. I didn't see what sort of fish it was, but 3 seconds later it apparently jumped again and rammed right into the boat because we got a good thud.

I'm betting it was a football-sized yellowfin or Jack being chased by a dolphin. So Chemistry helped get that fish eaten, I'm sure. I saw a billed fish jump way in the distance. I'm not sure if it was a swordfish or marlin or what because it was so far away, but it was cool.

It's 8:10 now, about 30 mins past sunset here, and almost totally dark. So I'm going to send this off on the SSB, go to "nighttime mode" on the Nobeltec chart, and get some food and coffee in me.

TT

5:35am, Friday Feb 8, 2008, since this post is so important it needs to be explicitly noted when it was started and completed. I just had some coffee and my second fried egg sandwich of the night. We're currently about 4 miles NW of Isla Isabela, and I've slowed down because we're going to get there before the sunrise. You'd think I would have checked that before now, wouldn't you? I mean... yeah, let's arrive after sunrise and go in and anchor, but let's motor-sail all night with very light wind and get there around 6am, but not bother to check what time the sun rises. It rises at 7:35. Ugh.

It is 5:37am, 69 degrees, water temp 77.5 degrees, and only enough clouds in the sky to present an amazing sunrise (in 57 minutes).

5:38am. I'm looking forward to a day or two at anchor to: work on work, work on the boat (autopilot, mailsail furling system (see below), dinghy motor), dive into the water to check on the anchor, snorkel / scuba dive to look at the beautiful stuff and maybe to look for prey. Though the freezer is full enough of tuna at the moment (we caught our second just outside of Cabo), I'd love to get some flaky whitefish.

5:41am. I never really read the garbage placard that's required posting on US-flagged boats. Did you know it's okay to throw garbage overboard? Outside of 3nm from land, you can rip paper into 1" pieces and just toss it overboard. Outside of 12nm you don't have to "grind" it at all. It'll dissolve to fibers again before it ever reaches anything. And bottles and cans make much more sense on the bottom of the ocean than they do in a landfill. Just fill 'em with a bit of water to ensure they sink, and -plonk-.

5:49am. No wind. Just tried to take the mainsail down. Gonna have to wait till daylight. Yeah, that's safe. LeisureFurl, you have no idea how much I hate you. I mean, you'd think I could go pull a rope or ease a rope and the mainsail would go up or come down. But no, there's always a batten that's pushing against the track, or some other friction-inducing issue, or the winch isn't getting enough juice, or the un-roller-stopper-thing isn't releasing, or ...? Alas, I'm too broke to replace this super-expensive but super-bullshitty mainsail system with something that makes sense, like Harken Battcars with a Dutchman flaking system.

5:55am. Now only 2.49 miles N or Isla Isabela and waiting for more light. Sure hope there's an anchorage available - there are only a couple spots on this island, and only room for a couple boats per spot.

5:58am. The sky is starting to lighten, though we're still at least 30 minutes from decent light. Time to get this bright computer out of my face and get my eyes used to the semi-dark.

TT

 

There's been this very ugly noise since we left San Diego that originates from a rather important piece of equipment - the autopilot. Basically, it's a hydraulic arm (Autohelm Linear Drive, Type 2) that is making a spectacular amount of noise as it whirrs and grinds to keep the boat on course. What's worse, it's mounted underneath my bed, which makes sleep difficult. Who knows how long it's been going on - it could have been since Seattle (since I got the boat, really) but I'd never noticed before because when I slept in that bed while underway before, we were motoring between Seattle and Eureka, so the engine noise overrode the autopilot drive arm noise. And of course, from Eureka to San Diego I caught my catnaps in the cockpit while underway. So today I've had enough, and have re-installed the backup autopilot to give the primary one a rest. I can't find any information in the user or installation manuals that would indicate what I can do about it, but it's fairly easy to take out, so I'll remove it tomorrow at anchor and take a good look. Basically, it sounds like someone put a handfull of small screws into the arm, so each movement is a metal-on-metal ***grind***. If anyone has any suggestions, please send them along to my sailmail address if you have it, or tt@tacotraveler.com otherwise. Thanks in advance! [Edit: all fixed!]

Oh yeah, and we changed course from Mazatlan and are now headed for Isla Isabela, which is a Mexican National Park where Jaques Cousteau once visited because of the endangered population of Frigate birds and Boobies. Have I ever mentioned I once dated (for a year, actually, so more than "dated") the daughter of a woman who once dated Jaques Cousteau's son (Jean-Jaques, I think his name is? [Edit: It's Jean-Michel]). So Kara Kaufman (who's mum has my favorite ex-girlfriend's mom's name ever, Mary Memory), here's your self-Googling hit of the day. Hi!

Anyway... where was I? So we're heading for Isla Isabela and will stop there for a rest, and then over to Chacala. We skipped the Mazatlan plan because the winds and seas last night were crazy, and they just didn't want us to go that direction. Not comfortably, anyway. So we turned to the SE and are now on a heading that will take us 20+ miles north of the prison (penal colony?) on the Islas Marias. If you get within 20 miles of those islands you risk getting boarded and detained by the Mexican Navy. No, we weren't trying to rescue Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen (see Papillon).

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

 

Currently, we're about half way to Mag Bay from Turtle Bay, motoring as we have been through the night but now with no sail up because the wind has completely died. It's a rough ride right now with big swells and chop and no wind to steady the boat by. This leg started out with some excitement, as we saw several whale spouts just outside of Turtle Bay, and they were going our direction but we weren't lucky enough to get an up-close look and I didn't want to hassle/chase them. There wasn't much wind last night until about midnight, and when it came, it came pretty hard. We'd been motoring along with minimal wind, and then I woke up when Denali was on watch and it was blowing all over the place - 7 knots up to 20 with 30-knot gusts. That's just not fair. I thought about putting the main up (reefed) for a sleigh ride, but with the wind already gusting like that, I decided it wasn't worth the craziness to go into the wind for the few minutes it would take to do it, especially as we couldn't see the seas coming at us. On my next shift, however, I put out the staysail and that had an immediate effect of stabilizing us in the severe chop, as well as getting us all the way to hull speed (about 7.5 knots) with only a little help from the engine, and surfing speeds (down the face of a swell) up to 8.95 knots.

We just crossed over Moore Bank, and Uncle Sam Bank is 4 hours away, so I've got a line in the water with a Rappala lure that's got some crazy jiggling action. It hasn't even got me a bite yet, but it looks cool, and it dives down a bit, which I'd gather is better than skipping across the surface in these conditions. But what do I know? Guess I'd better go study my new "Fishing for Cruisers" book some more.

One great thing... the water is now 62.6 degrees. And in the daytime it's not really cold at all (currently 68 degrees). We'll be to Mag Bay around 6am tomorrow.

TT

 

We had a good night of sailing, and generally we're falling into a sleep / watch pattern which we intend to mess up by anchoring tonight in Turtle Bay (we'll all sleep indefinitely). Currently, we're motoring in very light winds on the inside of Isla Cedros where we're about 40 nautical miles north of Turtle Bay. We got pretty far offshore last night early, but ended up changing direction into Bahia Viscaino because that's where the swells were going - one group of swells, anyway; there were mixed swells last night that tossed us around a little. We decided it would be better to surf the bigger swells at 7 knots rather than have them keep hitting us on the beam all night. Weather currently is nice - about 60 degrees, I'd say, and the seas are pretty calm - just those NW swells pushing us along. Water is bluer and its temp is 58.6 degrees, which is 1 degree warmer than it was just a couple hours ago. Woohoo!

I've got a line out and had a bite of something a bit ago (kelp?) that got loose as soon as I increased the tension on the spool. I'll get something one of these days. The boat is sorta messy, and we're all looking forward to some time to get straightened out while at anchor. We should be to Turtle Bay by 5pm (hoping for some light to anchor by). I wasn't able to get the dinghy's outboard motor fixed in Ensenada. I may need to rip it completely apart, clean everything out and start over. I suspect there may be some sludge in there from old gasoline (the o/b sat for at least 3 years). We've tried everything else short of replacing all the electrical parts (ignition coils, CDI Unit), which nobody had in stock in Ensenada. Oh well, what's a little rowing (he says now). Speaking of... despite Chemistry's good size and great stability, the isometric workout getting around while under way is excellent. You can't *not* crouch low and move around with a hand always on handrail or other solid support. Look for me on the cover of Men's Health soon, touting my own special abs workout.

TT

 

We're cruising along here, doing about 6.5 to 6.8 knots over the ground (5.9 to 6.2 through the water) as we get a big push from a fairly big swell. We're surfing down 8-10 foot waves and making good time towards Turtle Bay. We've only go the mainsail up, as the yankee wasn't liking our direction nearly straight downwind. When daylight comes, we'll either go wing-and-wing, or we'll fly the spinnaker. It's pretty lumpy out here, though, with some mixed swell that is creating some discomfort (mixed swell meaning the waves aren't always coming from the same direction). We've got anywhere from 10-15 knots of wind.

We've seen a lot of ship activity tonight. Denali piloted us through one stretch where we passed three cargo ships going the other way. We've only had to radio one, and that was a ship coming from behind to overtake us. Anyway, a good radio contact and we both held our course and everything was fine. I just passed Carnival Elation which was heading north. We missed each other by 4 miles, so I didn't bother telling them we were here. Gotta love the AIS system that shows me exactly who they are, how big they are, where they are, where they're heading, and if they're turning or not. I think I'll invest as soon as I can though in an AIS that broadcasts the same information about me. It's great knowing where the big guys are, but I'd like them to know where I am, too, without me having to tell them, or relying on the radar reflectors to tell them.

We're currently 41 nautical miles NW of Bahia de San Quintin, heading right for it because that's the direction these swells are going and having swells this size hit us on the beam was no fun. So we'll need to gybe in a few hours after everyone is awake. 200 miles to Turtle Bay. We're gotten about 65 miles south of Ensenada since we left at 3:00 PM. We've sailed 77 miles, but we can't make a straight line right now because of the wind and swells.

More later today. Hopefully a fish story.

TT