01/15/2008, Ensenada, Mexico
The lights of Ensenada can be seen in the far off distance at 8:11 pm. The dull glow of city lights barely reach us as we approach from 10 miles southwest of the Mexican town. The Red Hot Chili Pepper's "Dani California" screams through my Ipod headphones. I am very content with the easy-going, yet upbeat groove. Although we are not there yet, I picture myself having good times with friends in San Diego, wearing jeans, a hoody sweatshirt, and flip flops. I clearly envision myself walking through Pacific Beach and knowing where this or that is. Interestingly enough, spending the past 6 months on a sailboat has increased my imaginative capabilities, so visions such as this are constantly racing in and out of my head. I regularly wonder and dream about the next port, my next watch, the coastline just around the peninsula, and of course, my next meal. Sailors have been known to go slightly crazy after being at sea for too long. Unfortunately I was a bit looney before I even embarked on this trip, so my condition very well may have worsened. But then again, one can never be too imaginative these days.
Similar to traveling on land, we are required to "check out" of Mexico before we make our final sail back to the U.S. Although simple on paper, checking out consists of stopping at the Port Captain's office with our boat papers, passports, etc. The Port Captain will give us an exit stamp, and hopefully wish us a safe journey back to the greatest country of them all. Unfortunately a large amount of red tape is common, although we normally do quite well due to the fact that Julie speaks good Spanish and always impresses the men. I've gone into the offices a few times before and normally just stand quietly and patiently. I find smiling a lot helps too, but over-doing it can be a problem. The trick is to look and act as if you truly are happy to see them and arrive in their port, even if you're not. It is basic Drama 101 stuff. We've had very few problems to date, so I don't anticipate any surprises. However, this wouldn't be the first time I was wrong.
The navigation instruments read we will arrive in the main harbor at 10:11 pm, just a few hours from now. We'll drop the anchor and head into the official's offices first thing tomorrow morning. We'll stay no more than a few days in Ensenada and then make the 60 mile run up to San Diego. Being so close to the U.S. is somewhat surreal at this point, and a bit difficult to grasp. The U.S. Coast Guard and various American vessels can be heard on our VHF radio, which is just plain weird. I've gotten used to hearing nothing but Mexican or foreign vessels for the past 6 months, and now the radio is flooded with gringo boaters like us. I feel a bit like a foreigner entering the U.S., even though it is my home, and beloved country. Reverse culture shock is a doozie isn't it? I'm sure I'll feel much better after I sink my teeth into that "Double Double" cheeseburger. I figure that outta whip me back into my American roots. And if that doesn't do it, I'll get a chocolate shake "to go" .just might supersize it to be on the safe side.
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01/15/2008, 100 MIles South of Ensenada
After having a wonderful time on Isla Benitos, we are currently rocketing through the water and heading toward Ensenada, our next scheduled stop. As many of you know, Ensenada is just 60 miles south of San Diego, which means that we are well within reaching distance of the good ole' U.S. of A. I can almost taste an In N' Out "Double Double....Animal Style". The Santa Ana winds have kicked up in the L.A. basin area and help us sail north in good time. The prevailing North/Northwest winds have shifted to Northeast, which provides us with a much better angle to sail. We are no longer banging into the waves but rather reaching towards land in a steady and efficient way. The only downside of the Santa Ana condition is the fact that the winds can be particularly strong at times, which we saw this morning with 24 knot sustained and gusts upwards of 28 to 29 knots. Once again, this brings me back to the construction and seaworthiness of a Swan and the way Cisnecito is rigged. Just a few minor sail adjustments are needed to handle the strong wind, which she does so effortlessly.
Yesterday was definitely a highlight of the trip, and probably the most fun I had on this last and final passage. After getting a great night's sleep and catching up on the much needed rest, I awoke with a clear head and energized spirit. Julie baked fresh scones which went down nicely with a hot cup of coffee. I spent the majority of the morning puttering around the boat and reorganizing things in my berth. Any item that isn't properly tied or lashed down tends to get thrown around a bit in rough seas. For instance, the medicine cabinet in my bathroom contains all sorts of fun goodies and was complete mess after heeling so hard and banging up and down with the waves. I spent the remainder of the morning retying the SSB radio antenna to the backstay. We use large zip ties to do this. Like all things that sit in the sun, the plastic breaks down after prolonged periods of UV and salt water exposure. Changing them out simply consisted of cutting off the frayed ones, and retying a new one. While Julie and Chris paddled ashore in the kayak I listened to Paul Simon's "Graceland" and enjoyed my little project. I found myself grooving to the African beats and singing along with the harmonious tribal background choir.
After lunch I had the opportunity to explore the island, which was an incredible experience. I planned on walking all over the island and checking out the entire place, but found myself totally mesmerized once I found a large elephant seal colony. I ended up sitting on the rocks with the seals and photographing them for hours. I've never been much a photographer but always appreciated a well captured glimpse of raw nature on film. Digital cameras have inspired me and I ended up taking about 100 photographs of the seals, their behavior, and their young and vulnerable pups. Elephant seals really are incredible creatures, often times growing to 2000 pounds or more. They are not your typical small and playful California coastal seal, but rather a monsterous creature with aggressive character traits. Some of the larger males were easily over 12 feet and occasionally sat with their chests high, a display of dominance. The section of the island was completely littered with them and I found myself surrounded by them numerous times. I estimate there were a few hundred of the noisy, smelly, and fatty creatures sunbathing on the warm sand, and making their way in and out of the chilly water. Although elephant seals are aggressive, I was able to get extremely close to many of them, which gave me a rare opportunity to photograph and video the incredible animals. At times I was less than 3 or 4 feet away from them and could actually smell their rank and sour breath as they deeply exhaled through their deep sleep. Being so close to such a large wild animal was a bit unnerving and something I will never forget. The picture taken above was especially fun for me because the large male sat below in a small rocky canyon, just large enough to fit his over-sized, blubber-filled body. I slowly crept up to the edge of the rock, stayed low, waiting for him to sense me, and eventually pop his head up. Sure enough Mr. Sammy the Seal Sr. noticed me, arched himself up to towards the sky, and cried out a deafening bark. His stained yellow K-9 incisors shined in the bright sun as he made his presence clear. Click! went my camera and I retreated back down the rocky hill.
As I walked back to the boat I thought about National Geographic photographers and what fun that must be. I love watching the nature channels and now greatly respect the individuals that spend weeks, months, or years capturing our world's precious animals, people, and lands. I feel very fortunate that I have been able to visit and photograph so many spectacular places over the past six months. I'm looking forward to getting home and compiling a slide show of the highlights, which there are many.
I returned to Cisnecito around 5 pm to find Chris and Julie preparing the abalone. Chris and I then cleaned the lobster (all 8 of them!) and giggled about the amount of seafood we planned on cooking for dinner. Everything turned out perfect and it was a brilliant meal and evening. We toasted to our last meal at an offshore island and enjoyed the moment.
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01/13/2008, Isla Benitos
After sailing upwind and battling the often times miserable conditions for roughly 600 miles, we pulled over and dropped anchor at an offshore island called Isla Benitos. The three small wind-swept islands are approximately 50 miles offshore and about two-thirds of the way up the Baja. The last 24 hours of our sail were actually quite stressful as we had a major scare yesterday around noon time.
We approached Isla Benitos around mid-morning, excited and ready to settle down for a good night's sleep, a proper hot dinner, and some solid rest. We had been pushing incredibly hard for the last 5 days and desperately needed some down time to reenergize and calm down. I use the word "pushing" because it describes how we have been sailing, pushing up and against the wind the entire time. I mentioned briefly in previous blogs that we cannot sail directly into the wind, but rather slightly off the wind, which blows literally straight down the outside of the Baja, or from the direction we want to go. While on watch, it is my job to ensure the boat is sailing as "tight" or "close" to the wind as possible. This means the boat is on the edge, heeling horribly hard, and normally banging and bashing into the waves. The southern half of the Baja had swells in the range of 10-15 feet with 2-3 foot wind waves, although it appears they are subsiding as we make our way further north. Generally speaking, the swells are moderately spaced out and not too terribly steep, so Cisnecito handles them pretty darn well. However, every once and a while we barrel up a steep one, crash violently down on the other side, only to be hit by another one. Quite frankly, it isn't the most enjoyable sailing, and as you can imagine, often times just plain nasty. This is exactly why we were so excited to pull over for a bit.
We fired up the Yanmar diesel engine as we neared the beautiful bay. Large colonies of giant elephant seals could be heard yelping in the distance and provided great charm to our arrival. We use the engine to help us navigate through an anchorage, properly set the anchor, and as a back-up power supply if anything should happen or go wrong. The trusty engine fired up with a roar as it always does and idled like a well tuned tractor. Suddenly, Chris shut down the engine and began using certain words and phrases that cannot be repeated, for I try to keep my blog PG-13 or better. I was on the foredeck unlashing the anchor when this happened. I turned around to see what was going on and immediately assumed the worse, which is exactly what happened. Our engine's cooling system was not circulating any water, which can cause the engine to over-heat, or literally melt, in a matter of minutes. We quickly realized this because the engine spits water out of the exhaust pipe and makes a gurgling noise with the exhaust note. Obviously there wasn't any gurgling noise, which meant there was no water in the engine, which was a serious problem.
It is imperative to understand the importance of having a reliable engine at sea. Sure, this is a sailboat driven by the wind, but it is also a boat that uses an insane amount of electricity, which we rely on the engine to produce. We have two solar panels mounted above the cockpit, but they provide little power compared to the monster-sized, engine-driven alternator. Most importantly is the fact that our navigation equipment (GPS etc.) radios (VHF & SSB), auto-pilot, and computer system rely on electricity to run. With no engine, we cannot properly charge the batteries, and will eventually run out of power, bringing us back to the days of Columbus, Magellan, and Cook. Chris immediately dug into the engine to diagnose the problem. I assisted Chris, while Julie turned on the Satellite phone and began looking for phone numbers to Yanmar. We quickly learned that the raw water system's impellor had failed, which starved the engine of water. Fortunately we shut down the engine immediately, and it appeared there was no serious damage, other than the blown impellor. We pulled out the rubber impellor to find that 4 blades had broken, and been sucked into the engine's cooling system, which presented a "no bueno" situation. Thanks to a quick phone call to a Yanmar mechanic, we tore into the engine's cooling pipes, power-flushed them with air and water (using the foot pump I use to inflate our dingy). There was still no sign of the missing pieces, but the system flowed freely, which was a good sign. Fortunately we had a spare impellor which slipped in perfectly ("prepare for the worst and hope for the best" .remember that?). Thankful to the heavens above, the engine started up and circulated water like it should. While the entire ordeal took close to five hours to fix, we were all relieved when we saw water spitting out of the exhaust pipe. Hallelujah!!
Had we not been able to solve this problem we would have been forced to sail directly to San Diego and radically conserve electricity. We would be forced to keep everything shut down the majority of the time, only using what is needed to ensure our safety. One might ask, "Well, it sounds a little silly that you rely so heavily on electricity". Well, this is slightly true, but we can actually sail, navigate, and survive with no electricity whatsoever, it is just a MAJOR inconvenience and borderline dangerous (for example, we would be without radar to spot large ships at night or in the fog). Fortunately we can steer the boat by hand, use our backup handheld GPS for longitude/latitude coordinates (we also have a sextant should the reserve GPS go down), and navigate with paper charts. We have plenty of food and water aboard, so we probably wouldn't consider cannibalism for at least a good 3-4 weeks. What I find scary are the trawlers and motor-yachts that have no power supply besides their single or dual engines. If their engines go down, they are literally set adrift, which could present a life-threatening situation. At least we can throw the sails up and make our way to the nearest harbor. We also have a device that drags behind the boat and turns the prop, which ultimately turns the alternator enough to generate a minimal amount of electricity (enough to operate the radios etc.) Bottom line is that we would be okay, although it would be an awful situation to be in, especially given the fact of where we are, and how far we have to go.
All and all, it worked out for the best, but was a real scare. All three of us breathed a heavy sigh of relief once we got everything sorted out. And best of all, is the fact the fishing village on the island is keen on trading goods. The few dozen people that live here are extremely isolated from the outside world and rarely have the opportunity to acquire anything other than what comes out of the sea. We learned this as Hector, a local fisherman, approached our boat and offered to trade for lobster. We asked what he wanted in return and he simply asked for a bag of potato chips. Wow!! This is an Andrew Roberts kind of deal .a $2 dollar bag of potato chips for lobster!? Hector asked how many lobster we wanted and I immediately thought to myself, "Uh .40 or 50 would probably do it". I had clear and real visions of me eating lobster for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the next week. I could taste the lemon butter already. We ended up getting not 1, not 2, not 3, not 4, not 5, not 6, not 7, but 8 (count em' baby!) lobster and two giant abalone, all pulled out of the water first thing this morning (in fact, the lobster are still a bit squirmy). We gave Hector our diesel jerry cans (that have actually been around the world), a pack of Oreo cookies (wasn't too thrilled about that), three toothbrushes, and some toothpaste. Hector was thrilled and very interested in where we came from, our trip etc. So now we have about 12 pounds of lobster and two huge abalone to be cooked tonight. If my math proves correct, which is rarely does, we have roughly $300 dollars worth of super fresh seafood sitting at the bottom of our refrigerator. The plan is to start with sautéed abalone in bit of olive oil, a sliver of fresh garlic, a splash of lemon, and pinch of salt and pepper. From there, we'll dive into BBQ'd lobster, salad, and the fresh bread Julie just baked this morning. Although this rest stop started with a potential disaster, it may go down as the greatest of the trip. This is a sailor's and seafood lover's dream. I wonder if this is what heaven feels like?
The picture attached above is me pointing toward San Diego, which lay a short 285 miles away. This particular section of the island was littered with elephant seals, which I enjoyed watching for hours....which will be discussed in my next blog...because it is time to start the BBQ!!
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