It's really difficult to know where to start with this blog entry. We are now in Cabo San Lucas and 2 weeks have passed since leaving San Diego aboard Double Diamond. The sheer volume of events that have taken place in that time is hard to process, let alone write down and share in a blog.

Perhaps an apology for not posting any updates during the passage should be the first order of business. Why is a two-part story really, the first part involving technical problems. For the past 2 weeks we have been completely without cell phone service or internet access. Technologically speaking, it is very possible to update our sailblog without an internet connection. It involves the use of our Irridium satphone and some windows-based software. Unfortunately, that software is not-progressed-past-win-95 windows-based software. I guess my easy life of iPhones and iPads have cost me my touch for tweaking junky, clunky old-school software.

I should have attempted a connection to the sailblogs website with the satphone and associated software prior to leaving San Diego when we still had an internet connection and cell service that would allow me to trouble shoot whatever came up. Hopefully I can now have a good long session with tech support while here in Cabo and make this stuff work as the voyage goes forward.

The other part of the sailblog update equation is allocating time to the task. I plead sailing, doing boat maintenance, fishing, swimming, wandering rural Mexican villages, attending Baja Ha Ha festivities and drinking Margarita's in local establishments with really scary bathrooms. These things all take time away from working on blog updates.

The first and longest leg of the trip south from San Diego was to Bahia Tortuga (Turtle Bay), a sail of about 350 miles or 3 days and 2 nights of round-the-clock sailing. There was very little wind leaving San Diego, so the Grand Poobah (Richard Spindler, who runs the Baja Ha Ha and is also the publisher of the sailing publication Latitude 38) instituted what he called a "rolling start" which meant that all the boats could run their engines without penalty (if they did not to exceed 6 knots of boat speed) until he called it off. We ran all night the first night, all under engine power. This was just fine with us as we were happy to put some distance between us and what turned out to be cold, foggy San Diego. The next morning was bright and sunny and the winds had picked up to about 10 knots. Time to sail!!

One of the rituals of the Ha Ha, is the 7:30 AM roll call, where the Poobah runs down the list of boats over the radio and each boat in turn calls in their position in latitude and longitude. This procedure, while a bit time consuming (it takes a good hour every morning to get through all 150 or so boats) it is also one of the safety reasons for world cruising newbies like us to participate in a rally like the Ha Ha. Everyone is tracked and progress (or lack of it) is noted.

The first order of business is reporting medical emergencies and then reporting serious mechanical issues that might prevent a boats progress down the coast. Nothing medical was ever called in by anyone, but several boats had to stop for repairs or leave our anchorages a day or two late, often with the help of other boats who might have parts or expertise in whatever system was broken. We never had a single issue aboard Double Diamond, with all systems working perfectly and nothing breaking along the way - which was a great relief given the number of things that broke on the way down from Seattle. But it was reassuring to know that if we had problems, someone was around to help.

The morning roll call was also a way for everyone to find out a little bit about each other as the Poobah, colorful and entertaining guy that he is, would ask questions of each boat when they responded with their position, drawing us out over the radio for all to hear. With questions like, "So are you missing the Seattle weather?" "Brought any fish onboard?" or for me one morning "So skipper, give us a review of the Lagoon 440". The process all took time, but was quite interesting, as we all huddled around the radio in the morning to listen in.

Right before roll call on the first morning, the Poobah called off the rolling start and most boats began sailing in earnest. We sailed all day and then again all night, reaching Turtle Bay mid-day of day three. The sailing was all downwind with reasonable wind speeds of 10-15 knots. We ran the spinnaker round-the-clock, flying it for almost 50 hours straight, a personal best for us and Double Diamond.

With each anchorage, first with Turtle Bay and then with Bahia Santa Maria, we began peeling back the layers of being in Mexico both figuratively and literally. It's not like we crossed some line and suddenly it was hot outside with warm water. At Turtle Bay the first thing we did was go swimming, but wet suits were in order as the water was only 68 degrees (compared to Cabo's 82 degrees, yet another 400 miles south). Night time on the water still required fleece to be warm.

It was at the next anchorage, Bahia Santa Maria, where things began to really change. The water was 74 degrees. We no longer slept with a comforter and going ashore wearing anything more than shorts and T-shirts was not comfortable. Bahia Santa Maria is the largest bay I've ever seen, where the distant shore of the bay, a continuous crescent of beach backed by sand dunes from one end to the other, was not totally in view at the other end because of the curve of the earth.

For us, the big event of the second leg was seeing a blue whale. It came up alongside us and announced its presence with a loud blow as it breached, startling us all. It swam alongside us for a good half hour - and I mean right alongside us, not some-distance-away-alongside-us, first going behind the boat and then coming up along the other side, then tailing us again. It was actually quite frightening at first because of its immense size, being almost twice the length of our 44' boat. A collision with it could have done real damage, perhaps even sunk us, but after a while it became pretty clear that the whale knew we were there and was maneuvering around us. Eventually it fell back behind the boat for a third time, dove and just disappeared, to where we could not tell.

While moored back in San Diego, an elderly man living aboard next to us with his wife, asked if we intended to fish while traveling south. Yes! He looked over our poles and reels and pronounced them unfit for tropical trolling and directed us to the local gear store called Squidco whose staff he trusted for advice. We rode our bikes over to where our iPhone directed us and tucked in between a nude bar and an adult bookstore was the window-less establishment of Squidco. $500 dollars later we left with a honkin' thick pole, heavy duty Penn reel filled with 100 lb test and a bevy of cedar plugs and Mexican flags (a type of lure). I mention all this because my first reaction upon seeing the whale was to frantically reel in the lure we were dragging, as the last thing I wanted to do was hook into that thing. Although that certainly might have earned us some oohs and aahhs had I announced to the Ha Ha fleet over the radio that we caught and released a 50 ton whale, the potential for carnage was not worth it. More likely, it would have caught and released us.

We actually did catch fish, though. Our first haul was a decent sized Mahi-Mahi that we landed, bludgeoned to death and then promptly, somehow, let slip over the side of the boat and back into the ocean. Man... were we crest fallen when that happened. We had fish blood absolutely everywhere, but no meal to show for it. The following day, we hooked into a small tuna, which we were determined not to lose. Melody grilled it up, using it to top off plates of Arugula salad for lunch. Yum. We were now real fisher-people. Although several boats caught immense amounts of fish, even bringing in squid and sword fish, we only caught one other the rest of the trip. It was a good sized Dorado that made up into 4 big filets and fed us that night for dinner. We have plans to buy more lures and gear, as trolling from the back of a sailboat boat really does work in the tropics. Dare I say we're hooked?

On the third and final leg, from Bahia Santa Maria to Cabo, the layers really began to come off. Now we could sail at night in shorts and T-shirts. With the water approaching 80 degrees, the evening air was cooler than the water. We've had groups of dolphins swim with the boat on numerous occasions, but now they were with us late at night, swimming alongside us in streaks of phosphorescent light. Huge glowing, sparkling fish, swimming alongside us, under us and in front of us like live lit torpedoes. It's difficult to describe how beautiful the effect of this is and occurring at night, moving at 7 or 8 knots through the water, it's impossible to photograph or video. It all seemed more like a visual effect from a sci-fi movie like Avatar. Glowing, streaking packs of dolphins at night in crystal clear water can only be described as off-planet and other-worldly. And to be hanging off the front of a moving catamaran at 1:00 AM in nothing but a pair of shorts, talking with the dolphins (we swear they hear us - and that they respond) is rather surreal, especially for a cold weather sailor from the Pacific Northwest.

We've now spent 3 nights in Cabo and closing ceremonies of the Ha Ha took place last night. In our division (Multihulls, or the Margarita Division as they called us), we placed second in time and speed, although in humorous tongue-in-cheek, Ha Ha tradition, there were 3 boats ahead of us tied for first.

Cabo, of course, is completely unlike the other 2 places we stopped. This is Vegas Mexico, complete with Discos and large hotels. The main beach, off which we are anchored, is wall-to-wall hotels and condos, looking more like a scene from the French Rivera instead of Mexico. It has its charms though. We swam from the boat to the beach yesterday afternoon for an early evening cocktail at the resort in front of us. Then we swam back to the boat. Pretty fun. It was also fun to hear the couple at the table next to us talk about how if they had that catamaran out there, they would be tempted to swim into the bar for a drink. We never said a word.

With the Baja Ha Ha officially over, we are now on our own, although we now know lots of boats and their owners that are heading our direction for La Paz and the sea of Cortez, just as we had hoped would be the case. Boats are pulling up anchor this morning and moving on. I'm sure we will run across many of them as we move on from Cabo ourselves. Cassandra and Keith go home tomorrow and we will miss them dearly as they have been great, great crew. At that point, we will truly be on our own and sailing on alone. The big push to get south is now over and the warm water wandering begins on Tuesday.