Cruising the Sea of Cortez

I sold Princess Anna in December 2015. It was hard to let her go but I had to do it. The maintenance headaches were really stressful and I was not using it much because I did not true her to be reliable.

In July 2015, I went on a three-day cruise with Jeff Rosen off of Scituate, MA. It was fantastic and whetted my appetite for more sailing.

In August and September 2016, I took sailing courses from Marina Sailing (the folks who handled Princess Anna when she was in Charter in Channel Islands Harbor). Most of the courses were held in Marina del Rey but I also took courses in Long Beach and Kings Harbor. By September 13, I finished ASA 104 and 114. But I still remained a novice sailor. I need a lot more experience.

I have fallen in love with sailing. It is much harder physically than cruising with Princess Anna, but it is also more rewarding. I am learning so much new material every time I go out. I hope to do this as long as I physically can. I just wish that I had found sailing long ago.

After thirteen and a half years of ownership, I closed the sale of Princess Anna on Friday, December 5, 2014. It was a hard decision to make. I have had such wonderful times with all of my friends on the boat on our many adventures. However, the last six months I have not used the boat much due to health issues in our family and distractions with other life projects. I always complain that 90% of the boats in marinas never get used and they just sit and rot in their slips. I was not going to let that happen to Princess Anna.

Fortunately, I found a great buyer who is worthy of owning my pride and joy. Dorian Cooley loves the ocean and loves boating. He has never owned a boat but he has belonged to a sailing club in San Diego for several years and has chartered many boats. His wife, Sonia, also loves the ocean and they want to instill their love into their twin six-year-old boys. They are changing her name to Malana, which means calming in Hawaiian. It’s appropriate.

Saturday, December 6, I met Dorian and Sonia at the boat in Channel Islands Harbor, so that I could go through all of the systems on the boat with them. He is on a steep learning curve because he has not had complete responsibility for a boat before. We spent about two hours going through everything that I could think of. He took a lot of notes, but I know that he could not absorb everything. It was just too much information. I offered to answer any questions he might have by email or over the phone. He seemed relieved.

He told me that he was going to take Princess Anna up to Ventura Harbor that afternoon where he will have some work done on it before he takes it down to San Diego Harbor—the boat’s new home port. I then asked him how much experience he had taking a powerboat like Princess Anna in and out of a slip. As it turned out—none. I had to get home to be with Deborah, but I could not let him take the boat up to Ventura Harbor by himself. He could get in real trouble putting a strange boat in a strange slip. I checked with Deb and she was doing fine, so I offered to go with him. He was incredibly relieved, as was Sonia.

We secured all of the loose equipment and took in the power line and the dock lines. I backed the boat out of the slip, spun it around to the starboard and turned the wheel over to him. He handled the wheel just fine although he got a little close to a couple of boats that had strayed out of their part of the channel on the way out of the harbor. (Perhaps I was being a little over protective.) We exited out of the left part of the breakwater and he turned the boat northward for our six-mile trip. We were cruising at 2500 rpm or about 11 knots. I showed him the basics of the electronics (radar, GPS/chartplotter, sonar, radio, engine gauges) in a kind of stream-of-consciousness patter. Once again, it was too much info for any person to absorb. I urged him to read the excellent manuals on all of the electronics.

It was a glorious day—sunny, flat and unlimited visibility. We could see the entire length of Santa Cruz Island. No swells and no chop. The last few times I had taken the boat out, it had been pretty rough and not much fun. These were perfect conditions. I stood on the back deck, spread my arms out and yelled, “I love it!”

The entrance to Ventura Harbor is not very clear from as little as a mile away. I put a waypoint on the harbor entrance so that I knew where it was. However, the breakwater and channel are not clear until you get real close—about 200 meters. He navigated the channel entrance and we went looking for Ventura West Marina. We found it easily on the left side of the harbor. He had a reservation for a 40-foot slip at B85. Easy enough. I took over the helm and we went into a narrow fairway looking for B85. We found it five slips from the shore, but what I saw really concerned me.

The beam of the Princess Anna is 14 feet. It is wide. What I was looking at from the fly bridge helm was a slip that was maybe 14.5 feet wide—a slip for a narrow sailboat. The wind was blowing a couple of knots out of the WNW which put it almost directly behind the boat. I spun the boat to the starboard using the twin diesels and inched closer to the slip. Incredibly, I fit the boat into the space as easily as a hand fitting into a snug glove. After we tied the boat up, I walked around. There was three inches of space on each side of the boat. I guess thirteen and a half years of boat handling really paid off in the end. It was a perfect final trip.

For me, the old cliché is not true. I suspect everyone has heard it. The two happiest days in a boat owner’s life are the day he buys the boat and the day he sells it. Friday was a very sad day for me. But I have the wonderful memories of all of the magnificent cruises that I will cherish for as long as I live. I am forever grateful for the good times aboard the Princess Anna.

November 14, 2011—So much for the “really protected cove.” At midnight a “corumel” wind came up from the west at 20 knots. Partida Cove has only one unprotected side—the west side. Ah well. Tom and I did not get much sleep. The boat was bouncing around the rest of the night in 2-3 foot chop and high winds. As I mentioned, we ran out of weather lucky charms. By the way, the cut off low moved east across the Baja Peninsula, into mainland Mexico and then north into Texas. To say the least, this was an unpredictable weather pattern.

The next morning, it was still blowing so we waited it out. A big power boat, Daymaker, left the anchorage about 1100 hours headed for La Paz. We asked the captain to radio the outside sea and wind conditions to us. He called and said “No problem, the seas are flat.” That was all I needed to hear. We pulled out about noon and headed into the bouncy but following northwesterly chop—not exactly flat. The wind dropped throughout the afternoon and we pulled into Marina de La Paz at 1500 hours with the wind calm. We got our slip, checked in, had blissful hot showers and headed for Bandidos for dinner. The Chimichanga is to die for. The best part was I did not have to cook.

We ended our trip three days before we had planned but that was ok with both Tom and I. We saw plenty of weather, several things on the boat need to be fixed and we both needed some uninterrupted sleep. We will stay here until we head back to the U.S. on Saturday, November 19. Thanks to all of you for putting up with my scribbles. I hope you enjoyed our adventures.

Mike and Tom

November 13, 2011—Rain. Rain? Seriously, rain???? I awoke at 0445 hours to a strange sound on the deck—raindrops. Rain in Baja in November is about as rare as an investment banker with a conscience. It was a steady rain for over an hour. The rain came down hard enough to give Princess Anna a nice fresh water washdown. Strange.

We had breakfast and listened to the single side band radio weather forecast from Don Anderson, one of the weather gurus. He said that the low pressure system that hit Southern California on Friday bringing rain should have headed east like all other good low pressure systems which follow the jet stream. Instead, this became a “cut off low” which headed south and was centered off the Pacific coast of the Baja peninsula about a third of the way down. He predicted that the cut off low would “dissipate” about noon and give way to light northerlies. Ok.

We took off from Bahia Aqua Verde and headed south for Isla San Francisco—about 48 nm away. But we noticed that rain cells were coming from the west over the Baja peninsula and headed for us. Amazingly, we stayed ahead of about 10 rain storm cells on our way down all day long. Clearly, the cut off low had not dissipated. We have not heard an updated forecast but I suspected that the low continued down the Pacific side of the Baja Peninsula pumping moisture across the mountains into the Sea of Cortez where we were. I recalled a few years ago that a cut off low in southern California sat over LA for several days causing lots of rain and some flooding. The good news was that the seas were calm and there was very little wind.

By the time we got down to Isla San Francisco, several rain cells were bearing down on us and the 17-mile passage to Isla Partida looked flat calm. We took a chance and kicked the engines up to 11 knots (the same speed we used to cross the Sea of Cortez two weeks previous). We did run into some rain but missed the worst of it. The boat was thoroughly washed down with pure rain water. We pulled into Partida Cove where I have stayed many times about 1620—over eight hours of cruising. I was really happy to be as far south as we could get and to be in a really protected cove. We are going to run into La Paz tomorrow depending on the weather. I think that we have used up all of our lucky charms on this trip and we need to get to the marina even if we are three days early.

November 11, 2011-The wind was calm most of the night. Also, there was a gorgeous full moon in the sky most of the night. In fact, we left the Puerto Escondido anchorage at 0620 when the moon was above the western horizon and the sun was just rising in the east. Beautiful. Isabella followed us out of the anchorage. I figured out finally that "Rod" and Jane Kennedy are aboard with their dog Tucker. We arrived in Bahia Aqua Verde at about 1230-only four hours of travel. We made a lot of water on the trip with our reverse osmosis watermaker, we dumped the waste tank and charged up the batteries.

The relatively small anchorage had a few boats in it when we arrived. We found a good spot and dropped the hook. Several boats came in after us and took the remaining spots including Mama Bird. It was great to see Colin and his buddy Chris again. After a day of intense sun and 80 degree temps, where Tom and I tried to hide in whatever shade there was, Colin invited us aboard for dinner. I accepted immediately because Colin is an excellent cook. He is vegetarian and cooked a lentil curry with a type of garlic Nan bread that was delicious. We contributed our cole slaw and a bottle of wine to the dinner. We spent about 3 hours exchanging stories and advice on fixing things. Colin had some great advice on getting better control of my inverter and battery charging with a new Magnum unit. Good boating friends. We saw a beautiful moon rise. It was calm in the anchorage all night.

November 12, 2011-Calm all night long with a beautiful moon. The temperature today was a lot cooler than yesterday. We decided to stay in the anchorage another day. The winds were predicted to come out of the south today and that is the way we want to go. Tomorrow is supposed to be calm. We met Sandy and Barney from the boat Wahkuna. They wanted to tour Princess Anna because they were considering a move from their sailboat to a trawler. They really liked our boat. They have been traveling the Sea of Cortez for 25 years. Both are scuba divers and they seemed to have a lot of fun. Barney set up a satellite internet receiving station (solar powered) on the beach and created a little Wifi system in the anchorage. I was able to hook up to it and check weather and email. Believe me when I tell you that this place is in the middle of nowhere and yet I had internet. We spent a quiet day on the boat. Early to bed again.

November 9, 2011—The winds blew all day. In the morning, we took the dinghy in and got showers. Our trip back to the boat (remember, the boat is 400 meters from the dock) was dead into the wind which decided at that point to blow even harder. We made it a lot wetter than when we started. All we could do was rest and read. We made some water with the watermaker because we are getting very low.

November 10, 2011—The wind was howling again when we woke up. The forecast for the next few days was confused. It looks like tomorrow, Friday, Nov 11, will be ok so we plan to leave and cruise down to Agua Verde which is only 22 nm (about 4 hours) away. We will stay there two days because there is a strong easterly wind predicted for Saturday. We will see what the weather brings. Tom went into the dock to pay for another night and buy some ice. Today’s activities were almost a carbon copy of yesterday—rest and reading. We made some nice friends in Puerto Escondido: Rod Kennedy, his wife Jane and cute doggie, Tucker aboard Isabella; Ed and Cindy aboard Tequila Mockingbird and Betsy and David aboard Mystic. Tonight was a gorgeous sunset—at least a 9.0. We did not cook dinner because we had been snacking all afternoon and neither of us was hungry. For some of you, this may be hard to believe!!! ;-)