15-Nov-2009, Bahia Santa Maria, Baja California Sur, Mexico
Clamp your teeth tight. Turn your head to the left until you feel the pinch in your neck. Sit on a hard stool tied to the back of a pickup truck on a steep, rough road at night. Get someone to spray cold saltwater at you every minute, and you've got some idea of what the Baja Bash feels like.
This morning we finished the longest single leg of our trip north. We left San Jose del Cabo on Wednesday around noon, heavily laden with groceries, fuel and water, and dismay that we were leaving Mexico so soon. The fifteen miles to Cabo San Lucas were so easy that we thought we'd continue past Cabo Falso and begin trudging north. It didn't work out. The waves and wind were fierce enough off that enormous cape that after we buried the boat in a steep green wave we turned back to the anchorage in Cabo to await calmer conditions.
On Thursday at 4:40 in the morning we left the singing and dancing and holidaymakers in Cabo and raised anchor to try to round the cape before the wind rose in the afternoon. The seas were still steep and the going was slow, but we could make headway and after ten hours or so we could be satisfied that we might continue northward.
Going against the same winds and seas that brought us here is so much harder than having them carry us along south. The engine roars continually, the boat rides up waves and stops, occasionally sliding backwards. Spray crashes over the bow and finds its way around porthole gaskets and any holes in the boat. Everything is salty; the floor, the handrails, the stove: Even my hat has a crunchy crust. The boat sometimes moves so slowly that on this leg we worried continually that despite all our extra jerry jugs we might not have enough fuel even to make it here, much less to Turtle Bay, our next fueling stop. The Pacific wind and water are so much colder that we have already dug out our winter wardrobe.
By the early hours of Friday the winds and seas had calmed so that we were making good progress and the going was easier. When the going is good, this passagemaking is wonderful; a little wind, though, picks up the waves and makes the travel incredibly tough. From Cabo Falso the coast trends northward, then westward toward Magdalena Bay, and as we headed west the conditions remained calm and pleasant. We have shortened our watches to three hours, making the stints at the helm somewhat easier as well.
Turning northwestward again, the final approach to Bahia Santa Maria was rough. There is a cape here also, Cabo San Lazaro, and chilly 15-20 knot winds combined with the current off the cape made the going slow and steering difficult. Fatigue and the anticipation of getting to anchor and sleep made the last twenty miles terribly painful.
We anchored at dawn today--Sunday--amid a dozen rusty shrimp boats, totally exhausted from the 48 hours of noise and violent motion. We wonder if some of the boats are the same as the ones we saw here just eleven months ago, and we look around for our friends on Apple II and Dash as if they should still be here as well. These 200 miles seemed an eternity, yet the year has seemed so short.
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Comments [1]
Safe sailing my friend.
2-Nov-2009, Bahia los Frailes, Baja California Sur, Mexico
We are anchored right at the Tropic of Cancer, right under the inky line that runs right around your library globe, showing the northernmost limit of the sun's path. At noon on the longest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere the sun stands directly overhead here, more or less.
But it's not the longest day of the year, and at 6:00 it's already gotten dark. The moon, nearly full, glitters on the waves in this rather lonely anchorage whose vertically-striated cliff evidently reminded the 17th-century Spanish of friars leaning west. A couple of days ago, in the San Lorenzo Channel we passed Arranca Cabello Point, which seems to our modern ears a bit more honest. Arranca Cabello translates to Tear Your Hair Out.
In any case, today we had a lovely-and as the day wore on, increasingly blustery-sail past nearly fifty miles of points (Pescadero, Arena, Pulmo) before finally setting the hook in the lee of the Friars. Snorkelers ply the rocky shoreline, and we wish we could visit the reef a mile or so north; the only hard coral reef on the west coast of North America.
To our south, the Pacific; to the east, the Sea of Cortez. We have hardly any land left before we run out and head north. Here in the lee of the friars, with a stiff breeze and rolly waves just offshore we feel a bit as if we're clinging to a window ledge by our fingernails.
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1-Nov-2009, Ensenada de los Muertos, Baja California Sur
Our sail down from Playa Pichilingue was delicious. We got up at 4:45 in the morning and were under way by five so we could make the nearly fifty-mile journey by dusk. We plan our passages based on traveling at four knots, and the days are growing shorter. The moon set gloomily in the west as I raised the anchor.
I promptly discovered our stern running light was out, so along the way I changed the bulb, and was pleasantly surprised by my foresight to have carried one at all. We have spares for what seems like everything, but frankly I didn't quite believe that I'd thought of that one. I also managed not to drop any screws in the water, so it was a job well done.
We passed through the San Lorenzo Channel as dawn broke pink and yellow, drinking coffee and tea with milk and sugar and reveling in the freedom of cruising. The wind carried us along gently east, then southeast down the 25-mile Cerralvo Channel. This watery gap between Isla Cerralvo and the mountains of southern Baja narrows to the south, funneling the winds and often driving them against the current, raising steep waves and making for a rough trip. But downwind, with a favorable tide, we made good time and arrived at Ensenada de los Muertos (on the Dia de los Muertos, no less) well before sunset.
Ensenada de los Muertos was one of the places I'd heard about since Sausalito. What I'd heard I couldn't have told you, except that it's a jumping-off place for sailing to Mazatlan; the western end of the Southern Crossing. The bay provides good northerly protection, with a steep, long sandy beach. Some fancy but ugly houses and the Giggling Marlin restaurant line the shore; at one end of the beach were a couple of dozen pangas pulled up on the sand. There were two northbound sailboats and a big power catamaran to keep us company at anchor.
From what we saw, I wouldn't make it a destination, but it is a convenient stopover and something of a gateway to the Sea of Cortez. If you sail this way, you'll probably stop there too.
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30-Oct-2009, Playa Pichilingue, Baja California Sur, Mexico
"Growing to the bottom" is what cruisers call it when they stay in one place too long. It's a metaphor emphasized by the awkward discovery when one actually gets going again that there are barnacles on the hull and the anchor chain is smelly and encrusted. Some boats grow to the bottom and become permanent features of the anchorage: We are not those boats. But still, when I raised the anchor this afternoon to leave La Paz, the chain was covered in orange fish eggs (just like sushi!), brown slime, and a few gooseneck barnacle shells. Bahia de La Paz is full of life, and after a week there we had grown to the bottom just a bit.
Just ten miles out we put the anchor down again, in a little bay called Playa Pichilingue, just north of the commercial bay called Bahia Pichilingue. From here we can see the giant Baja ferries to the mainland, and the cruise ship terminal and a miniature marina and a couple of palapa restaurants on the beach. Music and voices drift over on the breeze. We can also see the steep swells generated by several days' strong wind, the first Norther of the season. That Norther kept us holed up in La Paz, bouncing around in the anchorage and half-drowning ourselves in warm brine when we ventured out in our little dinghy. Now that the wind is down and we have a nice weather window, we can get moving again.
Just a few days ago we ate in one of the restaurants here in Playa Pichilingue with my mother and Richard. It is charming to see the place by land as well as by sea, even if the food wasn't great and the prices were high. Does feeling a little wistful about it count as growing to the bottom?
These ten wistful miles were the first leg of our journey home. We'll go north for a few more miles, and then south again along the East Cape of the southern tip of the Baja peninsula. Then we'll stop in at San Jose del Cabo and leave the boat in a marina there while we make a short trip by airplane to California. When we get back, the much longer Baja Bash will begin in earnest.
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Hope to see you soon-
30-Oct-2009, La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico
"We were following your blog and then it stopped. We figured you really went CRUISING!"
This sentiment from Bill on Apple II is the sort of thing that throws down the gauntlet and gets one writing again. Perhaps some excuses will help get us over the hump.
Excuse #1: "It was too hot to write." While technically not true, we are not such stalwarts that the daily 100 degree temperatures didn't affect us. Cruiser lore has it that there is no sex to be had in the Sea of Cortez during the summer; blogs suffer similarly. Sweating freely throughout the day and night reduces the appetite for a lot of things.
Excuse #2: "It was too hot to write on the computer." This part is entirely true. I am rather proud that I outlasted my 13-month-old laptop in the heat. Its specification sheet guarantees nothing when the ambient temperatures rise above 95 degrees, and it got well above 100. The computer stopped charging, and then a few days later Windows Vista froze (it was the only thing freezing, ha ha) for the last time. Now I have a new laptop, the temps are down, and life in general can resume.
Excuse #3: "There wasn't that much to write about." This is also true. Enervated by the heat and trepidatious about hurricanes, chubascos and their lesser weather cousins we spent a couple of months growing to the seafloor in Puerto Escondido. Somehow we just didn't do all that much that seemed worth writing about. Too, Hurricane Jimena dwarfed our emotions.
Now that we have that out of the way, there's lots to write about. In the coming weeks I will be filling the blog going all the way back to June. Simultaneously, I will be keeping up-to-date as we head north again.
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The world has turned absolutely beautiful since Hurricane Jimena dissipated into a remnant low over the Sea of Cortez. The nine inches of rain it left behind here brought the ecology to life. The red-brown cliffs and rocks are now flush with thrilling bright green verdure, the hot breeze blooming fragrant like Paradise. The animals are fat, the water teeming with infant fish, birds singing in the brush. The weather is still very hot but there are signs of cooling with the approach of Fall.
Life here is largely back to normal since the hurricane, though some supplies are still in short supply. This is not the case everywhere, though. Here's what we've heard lately.
- Lopez Mateos, a small town on the Pacific near where the storm made landfall, suffered terrible damage. Over 150 homes were destroyed, and 90% of the structures were badly damaged. As of yesterday morning, no relief had arrived at the town's airstrip since the storm.
- I previously reported that a prison in nearby Ciudad Constitucion was blown over, killing more than 70 prisoners. In fact, the prisoners were saved and no lives were lost. A similar collapse occurred near Guaymas, where a prison fell down with no loss of life. In both cases guards are credited with saving the lives of many prisoners.
- Between 14 and 18 boats were sunk or driven ashore in San Carlos harbor on the mainland, and numerous boats were blown off their stands in dry storage there.
- Here in Puerto Escondido, the Perry ketch "Waverly" and the ferrocement ketch "Spirit" were both--amazingly--recovered from the mangroves by Singlar staff and the gentlemen from the sportfisher "Bad Company" who had already acquitted themselves so well rescuing Jaime during the hurricane. The Albin Vega "Wanderlust" remains in the mangroves, its rigging dangling forlornly.
Tropical Storm 16-E is presently stalled off the Pacific coast after a very faltering development over the past several days. All the models predict it will dissipate harmlessly in the next day or two, and we are all relieved. Only a month left of the season!
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follow up i was listening to mozart's 19th piano concerto. somehow your words in counterpoint to the music, brought tears to my eyes. the unusual emotion was so strong that i wanted to tell you. GLAD that all is well with you both.
Chris and Rani
