Bashing Home
27 May 2016 | Bahia Asuncion
Annette/Editor Mike
When setting out fron Cabo San Lucas, heading north, the first and toughest hurdle is making it past Cabo Falso, just four miles to the west. This, like Point Conception, the “Cape Horn of the North Pacific” is an area where, due to the shape of the coast, the wind and waves form a convergence zone that can be quite a bit rougher than the waters just to the north and south. So, when we left early in the morning and made it around Cabo Falso to the “bust out zone” without too much discomfort, we congratulated ourselves and carried on feeling free of the madness of Cabo and happy to be on our way home. Our first leg was 175 miles. The conditions we had were winds of 15 knots on the nose (22 at Cabo Falso) and a two knot current pushing against us, but we were motoring along at 5 knots, rocking and rolling, not bashing, and feeling like “We can do this, it's not so bad!”. We anchored at 9:30 the following evening in Magdalena Bay, tired but optimistic.
As soon as we arose from a good night's sleep we set out for our second leg up to Bahia San Juanico, 115 miles away and another overnight trip. Shorty after leaving Mag Bag we sailed into a pod of feeding Blue Whales. We were surrounded by 15-20 of these very large mammals. Like the game “whack o mole”, we had no idea where they would surface, while we were looking out for the Blues in the distance, a humpback surfaced a boat length from the bow of our boat causing us to quickly alter course in order to avoid a collision. Then, within minutes of our near collision with the humpback , a blue whale (the largest one we have ever seen!) casually came up along side Rum Doxy and graced us with it's immense presence than slowly dove. Why can't humpbacks be more considerate, why must they always come up between the hulls or right in front of the boat causing us to shit our pants! Why can't they be more like blue whales and sei whales? As forecasted, the wind picked up later in the day, and even more so in the evening. It was bumpy but very little pounding. By 8:30am as we motored into San Juanico aka Scorpion Bay there was 0 wind and flat calm seas.
After studying the wind patterns over the course of 24 hours from a number of different Gribs (computer generated wind forecasts), Captain Mike came up with a strategy for the up coming legs, between Scorpion Bay and Turtle Bay. We would sail from anchorage to anchorage, taking off after dark and arriving before 11:00am the next morning, The reason being the wind patterns show the strongest winds beginning at 11:00am building until evening and than tapering off by 9:00pm.
Setting our plan into action, we took off again the next evening at 8:45 pm for Bahia Abreojos. That turned out to be a miserable night, nothing like what was forecasted. By 4:00am the wind exceeded 20+ knots, we still had a strong current we were pushing against, and the wind chop we were bashing into was 4-6 ft. Imagine your home lifting up in the air, then dropping out from under your feet, landing with a bang, 3 times in a row. After which there would be a short calm then swells and short chop would hit again. This went on through the night. Relief came at sunrise, the wind died and we gently motored into Abreojos, dropped anchor and went to sleep.
Sticking to the plan, we set off again at 1:30am for Bahia Asuncion. Because of slightly different variables we had a much easier time last night toward our destination.
We've been on the move from Cabo San Lucas for 7 days and have come 400 hundred miles. We're making good progress, and even though it hasn't been the easiest of our journeys so far, it's still beautiful Baja, and we're so happy to be here.