They say that facing one's fears is the key to a fulfilled life, or that all we have to fear is fear itself. I'm not sure about all that. We had to look our fears right square in the face on the crossing from Mazatlan to Baja and still I don't think fear is all there was to it. There was also the storm, and the storm couldn't have cared less about our fear.

We left Mazatlan very slowly. Sitting in the fetid waters of the Mazatlan marina, our hull and propeller had grown an outrageous encrustation of barnacles, and we were too cheap to pay someone to clean them before we left. So we motored out of the narrow entrance at 1.5 knots, thinking there must be some dramatic current sweeping in against us. Once outside, we raised sail and the boat picked up speed quite nicely, managing 4-5 knots in a mild southwesterly breeze.

Around sundown the wind died, and we started the motor. Our shocking lack of progress proved that the propeller was foul, and I faced my first fear of the trip. 30 miles offshore, the sun sinking dark orange in the west, I donned mask, snorkel and fins, and, trailing a line behind the boat for security, I plunged in to try to get enough barnacles off the prop to get us moving. The water was an impossible blue, navy of course but lighter and more turquoise, and bottomless. Waves lifted the stern and then dropped it on my head, so I had to time my moves carefully. First I cleared some barnacles from the hull so that I wouldn't get too badly mauled as I then hacked at the pink ball of shells where our propeller should be. After a surprisingly few minutes I decided I'd excavated enough and climbed the ladder aboard. The motor now had something to work with, and the boat moved steadily west-northwest for seven hours into the night. Lightning flickered to the east and made us glad we were leaving it behind.

Late at night the wind picked up and we enjoyed a beautiful southeasterly breeze that pushed us along at a swift pace all through the following day. Dolphins joined us for a while, jumping clear of the water and performing flips in the air. We made movies of our frothy wake, and read books and enjoyed the sunshine.

But this second day of our journey the sun set with an evil appearance, its red disc flattening and shimmering amid thick grey cloud. The sea was calm but not content. Tropical Storm Andres, the first of the season, was working its own way westward hundreds of miles to our south, and its tentacles streamed up into the southern Sea of Cortez.

By 2200 we were nervous. We were down to double-reefed main and staysail, one of our smaller sail combinations but not desperate. Despite our still-foul bottom we sped along in a southeasterly wind that made the sea rolly and difficult. Flashes of lightning flared in the sky to the east and south. I climbed into my berth in hopes of getting some rest before the weather grew too thick.

Sarka woke me at midnight because the lightning was flashing all around us. Big raindrops spattered the deck as a squall came right overhead, and the radar showed that we were surrounded. On the screen the squalls looked like roiling blobs of orange rimmed with yellow and green, running in lines behind us to the east, and parallel to our course to the south and the north. Fearing a lightning strike, we hid what electronics would fit in the oven on the theory that it would act as a Faraday cage. It was one of the only things we could do in the face of the storm.

And then we waited. Sarka sat beside me on the engine cover and I sat at the nav station, trying to think of what else to do. We talked a little bit and stared at the radar. The boat lumbered along with no one at the helm, the cabin red with our night-vision lights while the squalls blew and the waves tossed.

When the gravest squalls had passed I took over the helm and steered us so that we took the waves on our quarter. The boat flew along magnificently, leaving a flat, creamy wake over the toppling swells. Strange, triangular waves reared up and tossed water on the decks or threatened to spill into the cockpit, coming right up to the sill before retreating. Breakers slid right under the boat, hissing as they approached and went on their way. The wind blew in long gusts, cold and weak for a few minutes and warm and strong for a few more, over and over again. The waves threw the boat violently from side to side, and at one point Sarka woke up hanging in the lee cloth of our sea berth, her arms and legs dangling in space. Outside, watching the compass spin, I was too fascinated to notice the roll. I spent hours looking forward to the end of the storm, wondering how long it would last.

The morning light brought lighter winds and the end of the storm. We had outsailed the slow-moving squalls and were approaching Baja. Now visible, the waves tumbled from horizon to horizon, not very high but closely spaced, deep blue with white streaks of foam, the breakers still hissing. We got on the radio and checked into one of the cruisers' nets, and heard the reassuring voice of Marni on Two Pieces of Eight. When we announced our destination--Ensenada de Los Muertos, where most people make landfall crossing to Baja--another cruiser got on and told us the waves from the southerly storm had made that anchorage miserable. He suggested La Ventana a few miles to the north, just where we'd planned to go if Los Muertos was closed out.

As the sun rose higher, the wind and waves dissipated gradually, and we found ourselves closing upon a fascinating new desert shore. It was exciting to have made it, and it was exciting when we dropped our anchor in windswept but protected Bahia La Ventana and crashed into our bunks, exhausted.

I'm not sure that we had faced our fears, but we had felt them. This was no big storm, only an aperitif, but it left us very tired and very humble. I like to think that in the next storm I will be more ready, and that the boat handled very well, and that it really wasn't as bad as it could have been. I leaf through the books we have about the weather and try to calculate a path away from the next storm. I double-check the rigging, and thank Faraday for his cage. But after all that I wonder what fate yet lies in store for us, and I am in awe at nature's power, so much bigger than us and so uncaring.