11/22/2011, Cabo San Lucas
I know I have said it before, what were we thinking? This place is completely nuts! Yesterday we had our third cruise ship come in for the day, and today there are three more here, all at once! With the increased swell, that has been generated by the late season hurricane, south of here the swell is up quite a bit, and makes for a very rough anchorage. Then you throw in the SPORES!! This comes from a very funny song, by John Reno. It is an anachronim Stupid People On Rental Equipment. There must be a hundred jet skis, all running so close to the boat that I am sure we are going to trade paint with one of them any minute. We considered swimming in the 78 degree water, but have decided we might be taking our lives in our hands just doing so! Then you throw in the the large number of water taxis that is required to ferry the 2000 plus or minus people on each of the three ships, the dozen or so para-sailing boats that are plying their trade with considerable vigor and you have the recipe for some very choppy water. The other annoyance is the teenager who has obviously been hired to drive a jet ski in circles right off the bow of our boat, in an effort to show how much fun it is to be out here on said jet skis! Now I have to give him credit, as he has done his job very admirably, with three straight days of spinning in circles, just off the beach, and waving to everybody. It's probably pretty good work if you can get it!
So, to steal parts of another great song, " I feel I am going postal, so we are going to go coastal" and get out of here! We will leave early in the morning and make the 50 mile run to Los Frailes bay.
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Comments [5]
Ahhh Cabo is only good if your on a 60' Hatteras running out to catch billfish.....
Dave
That's ok though- we had to fly north and we are doing the four letter word thing.
11/21/2011, Cabo
A metamorphosis has occurred somewhere along this voyage and past eight years!
This could also be titled, "Where's Tom and what have you done with him?"
We are on our last leg down the West side of Baja. We pulled up anchor at 6:30am and headed out of Bahia Magdalena. About 8:30 the sails were set, we'd cleared the few lobster pots at the entrance and things were going smoothly.
After making a pot of tea, I offered to bake a few oatmeal muffins. Tom mentioned that it was too bad we were out of apples, as a few chunks would be good in them. ( the first clue that something was amiss!). Then when I offered either raisins or cranberries as an addition...... wait for it, wait for it....
he say's " Lets have cranberries, they have more antioxidants in them!"
After about 2 seconds, I started to laugh, and he stood there with a blank look on his face and then said, "Did I really just say that? Who am I? What's happened?'!
Like I said, who is this man?
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11/20/2011, Cabo San Lucas
Ok, I know we said we were going to blow right past Cabo, and all it's crazyness but here we are. We are anchored right outside the harbor entrance, with a hundred jet skis running all around, a few really bad paddle boarders, and some kayakers. there was a cruise ship, bjut it puledanchor and left at 2:00PM. There are a few other boats here anchored, and we are expecting SV Espirtu, with Chris and Liz first thing in the morning. They left Mag Bay before we did but had to turn back for a bit to repair a faulty wire on their auto pilot.
We dont know how long we are going to be here, now that we are here, We might do some exploring tomorrow, and see what the weather brings.
Then i think we will run all the way to Los Frailies (spelling ?) on our way to La Paz.
I have to tell you....we are so looking foreard to La Paz, where our good friend Rich Boren has promised us a culinary treat with his street taco vender knowledge!!
Until then we will continue on our merry way, and yes, we are having a great time! the sun is out, the water has turned a really cool tourquise color, and is 78 degrees! In some small way, we do wish you all could be here, but we are not sure where you would sleep!!
I will try to get some pictures posted on our prevoius posts tomorrow.
Till later....
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A Couple of incidents while we were there.
Once you get to La Paz, track to the Lak for street tacos , and I had the tastiest street cart hot dog I've ever eaten for 15 pesos last night.
Tacos El Chino for Pastor
Shrimp and Fish Tacos
Gorditas at the market
and then we look for day two...ha ha ha
11/20/2011, South of Mag Bay, Mexico
We had a pretty un-eventful night, with little or no wind.
The sun is up, and it looks to be a beautiful day, with a water temp of 77.7 degrees
We are 31 miles from Cabo.
Still hope to make it to San Jose Del Cabo if we can.
More later
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11/18/2011, Man-O-War Cove
Our trip from Turtle Bay started out with a leisurely breakfast, and a 9:00 AM departure time. Given all the O dark thirty times we have been leaving on, this was pretty nice. The sun was out, there was little wind, and we were well rested. There were 6-7 other boats that had all waited out the southerly storm that passed through, and all departed this same morning. In all honesty, we were the last to leave. We had figured on a 48 hour run, and did not want to arrive there early in the morning, before light.
Once we got outside the bay, it was obvious that the large swell was going to make for a very uncomfortable ride. With a 6-8 foot swell, from the NW, and very little wind, we were taking most of the rollers on the beam....side to side...side to side...ugh. We took this opportunity to run the engine a little longer and run the watermaker. After a couple of hours, a very nice westerly wind came in, and we were off sailing. And sailing fast, in fact we were catching up to many of the boats that had left ahead of us. But alas, near dark that wind came back around to our stern, and slowed us down.
We ran down wind most of the night, until about 3:00 am, when the wind dropped to the point we were barely making three knots, and going sideways to do that. So, we fired up the engine again, and got back headed on the right direction. Daylight came, and we still had very little wind, but finally it built back up, and the sails came out. We were pretty dead down wind, so we played with several different sail combinations. We put the head sail on the whisker pole out to the port side, with the main on the preventer on the starboard side, running dead down. Then we tried just the head sail, and then just the main, and several variations of all of the above. Everything we tried was just plain slow. But we were making progress. After our first 24 hours, we had traveled 113 miles, just about exactly half way.
By now the swell had really started to die down, and the over night run was much more comfortable. Unfortunately, the wind also lightened considerably. We had agreed that if we could not make some reasonable head way, we would run the engine again. We also figured we had room for about 60 more gallons of water, which at 9-10 gallons per hour, would be accomplished with a overnight run.
This trip we also tried a new watch schedule. We are still trying to work out a good system for us, I think we might have found it. During the day, we have a loose nap schedule, with both of us getting a couple of 2-3 hour naps. Then at 4:00, I take over for a 4 hour shift. During this shift, Jeanne does dinner for us, and then goes to bed. At 8:00 Jeanne comes out until 12:00. After that we do 2 hour shifts until daylight. It seems a bit unconventional but it seems to work well for us. This may change if we were to do a long passage, of several days or weeks, but on two to three night runs it works good.
We certainly noticed that as we got further south, things started to warm up! The water temp was now up over 75 degrees, the nights dropped down into the high 60's, or low 70's.
Wednesday morning, the real magic started. We started to see some really cool sea life. It all started right at daylight. After having been to several seminars on traveling in Mexico, one of the things that has been repeated several times, is that if you see a bales of something floating on the water, do not stop and pick it up, do not even talk about it, just keep moving. It seems that when the drug smugglers think they are going to be stopped, they throw their cargo over board. We, here comes a nicely wrapped, white bale floating by. Now that in of it's self is reason for comment, but the fact that it had a very rare bird riding on it made it even more exceptional. The Masked Booby, is a tropical Pacific bird, rarely if even seen in this area. I did get some pictures, but the low light made them just OK.
Ever since we left Canada, I have been trailing a lure in hopes of landing a tuna or some other large edible fish. So far all I have caught has been some very impressive seaweed, and a couple of small mackerel. I finally switched to my last new lure to try, and went below to work on a small "head" issue. It was not but a few minutes, and Jeanne was crying "FISH ON" from the cockpit. By the time I was there, it was off, but you could see it continue to bash at the lure, in an attempt to catch it. In no time at all, it had managed to indeed get it in it's mouth. That is the good part, the bad part was that in my efforts to get a large enough fish to eat, I had managed to go a bit over board. The new lure that we put out seemed to be very attractive to a 100 pound sailfish! Which, by the way, we were not completely rigged to be fighting. The fish began to "spool us", or in other words take all my line, in a very short amount of time. I continued to tighten the drag down, in an effort to slow him, but at last the line snapped. But he was still a very unhappy fish. He started to do acrobatics leaping way out of the water over and over, I am sure in a effort to get my $12.00 pink squid out of his lip.
By the time we were passing along side the entrance to Bahia San ta Maria, the water was very calm, with almost no wind. We took this opportunity to go up on deck and make use of the solar showers. While we were getting the showers set up, we got to see a very large turtle swim along side the boat. Now I know we were getting close to the water we have been dreaming about!
After our showers were done, we started to spot whales. None of them were very close, but, we did see whales! Then just as we got to the entrance to Magdalena Bay, Jeanne spotted a whale that not only was pretty close but on a direct course to intersect with us. It turned out to be a very large Blue whale, and it put on a very nice show, of deep diving and sticking it's tail up in the air. I have to admit, there was a small time where I was a bit nervous, with that large of an animal right underneath us, and we don't know where it is going to surface! It had turned and went back underneath, and away from us, so there was no problem.
We turned into the bay, dodging a large number of langosta (lobster) pots, and headed north up to Man-O War cover, where we had decided to anchor. We passed the Belcher Point anchorage, where out friends on SV Wondertime had anchored. They were going to move up to Man-O-War cover later in the week, but took this chance to get some rest, and give the girls (Holly and Leah) a chance to go for a much sought after swim in warm Mexican water.
We are anchored here in Man-O-War cove, and it is very nice. We protected from all winds except a south easterly. From anchorage to anchorage, it was 52 hours, 268 miles, at an average speed of 5.2 knots. The arrival at this spot, puts us at 2928.9 miles since leaving Seattle on April 19th. With some weather forecasted for late in the weekend, or possibly Monday and Tuesday, we are going to just slow down and relax. We had some, well, slight hopes of being in La Paz for Thanksgiving, but we have made some good friends right here in the bay with us, and we can share that day with them here, or where ever we end up. There is little doubt that Jeanne and I have a huge amount to be thankful for!
Last minute change...I looks like the weather is going to be pretty decent for the next couple of days, so we are going to leave a bit early, and make the 162 mile run to Cabo San Lucas. We don't plan on spending any time there, but might anchor out for a night before going around the corner, on our way to La Paz
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Actually a lot more fun to think of them as contraband though.
11/17/2011, Mag Bay
After getting all settled in, and going to shore with Chris and Liz off of SV Espirtu to get checked in with the port Captain, we had them back over to the boat for taco pot luck! We had fantastic evening getting to know them, and comparing sailing stories. Great tacos too!! YUM!
Then this morning we headed to shore to continue exploring parts of Man-O-War cove, here at Mag Bay. We found beaches literally covered with many kinds of shells. We hiked with Chris and Liz, and Theo and Marian off of SV Marionette across the desert to the beach on Bahia Santa Maria. This is the bay that we passed on our way here. It is a great white sand beach, with nearly 80 degree water....and yes we did swim! Jeanne found a very large turtle shell. We all had a bit of a picnic, before trekking back to our dinghys.
After returning to the boat, we loaded up our fishing gear, and headed out to try to catch some supper! The wind was starting to kick up a bit, so our fishing was brief, but long enough to catch a small halibut. It was fileted, cooked and eaten, all with in a couple of hours!! Man, it just does not hardly get any better than that!
There is another beach party planned tomorrow, with several other boats that have arrived today. We are expecting a few more tomorrow. It is Holly, off of SV Wondertime's 3rd birthday, so I am sure that party will be required.
The small village here at Man-O-War cover is stuck a long way from nothing, with one small abarotte (grocery store) and one small restaurant. We have checked out the store, but the restaurant was closed when we went by yesterday, so we will check it out later. We plan on hanging around here until the weekend is over, before making the 150 mile run to Cabo San Lucas.
The Wi-Fi here is incredibly slow, so we will go back and add pictures later.
Manana
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I did a little research on check in procedures in Mexico, but I wonder if you could explain sometime how you went about it so far, and what was required at the different places.
Way up here in San Diego we're suppose to have some rain probably Sunday and Monday, but I'm guessing the weather must be nicer where you are.
