Steve, Sunny warm days..cool nights
03/17/2011, San Jose Del Cabo

When we arrived in Ensenada we were treated to the start of Carnaval, a celebration before the start of Lent. When we arrived at Turtle Bay we were happy to learn that this little town at the end of a 135 mile dirt road was for some reason selected as the site for Carnaval for the entire central Baja region. We knew pulling into San Jose that Carnaval was now over...but the ever partying people of Mexico also celebrate their towns patron Saints...and as luck would have it San Jose was just kicking up their Festival for St. Joseph (San Jose). Last night Peter and myself went to town, let me tell you that this was the best celebration so far, they have a rodeo, a cock fighting arena, and of course tons of food and drink. I know that this isn't going to go over well with some people, but we both had never been to a cock fight and part of the reason we are traveling the way we are is to be submersed into other cultures...and cock fighting is a part of the Mexican culture. So we paid our 100 pesos (10 USD) and settled in. Now I could start coming up with a bunch of sexual innuendoes about who had the biggest......well never mind, this is after all a family blog. The Mexicans do a lot of betting on the fights, but not really understanding anything about it we just made little bets between ourselves of a beer. Cock fighting is a pretty controversial sport (?)...but is it really that much more inhumane that shooting chickens up with growth hormones and packing them together in pens, and then slaughtering them? How about beefing up large men and then having them run at each other at full speed (football, rugby)? That said I don't think I will go to another cock fight, to me it was interesting to see once, but not really that entertaining, and we weren't sure if we should feel sorrier for the dead loser or the pretty messed up winner.
We've decided to stay in San Jose Del Cabo a couple of more nights before slowly working our way to La Paz to meet up with Shaybo and Bob the first week of April.

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Steve, Sunny warm days..cool nights
03/16/2011, San Jose Del Cabo (duh)

So yesterday we all took a little break from each other, Peter went to the beach for a swim, Catherine went to the marina work area to catch up on her art orders and I decided to walk the 1.5 miles into the town of San Jose Del Cabo and try to get a haircut. I made a wrong turn and ended up on an isolated dirt road, but could tell I was headed in the right direction, just on the wrong road. I got into downtown San Jose and soon realized that the towns festival was getting ready to start (more on that later), I cruised around town getting the lay of the land and asking around in my almost nonexistent spanish for a barber shop. I finally found a kinda seedy hair salon where they spoke no english, but using my fingers as a imaginary pair of scissors conveyed that I wanted a haircut and wanted it VERY short, it all worked out and it was kinda nice not to have to try to come up with small talk while she cut my hair.
I decided that I would take the dirt road back to the marina as I hate walking on busy streets and the dirt road was a nice, although isolated walk, so off I went crossing a small stream picking up an old piece of bamboo that was laying in the road to use in case I came across any stray dogs along the way. About half way back two guys came into view walking towards me, as they approached me one of the dudes, a kinda rough, mean looking guy, starts yelling at me in spanish, I myself able to yell with the best of them yell back "NO HABLO ESPANOL", I then drop into a batters stance using the old piece of bamboo as an imaginary bat, homey immediately goes into a pitchers stance, he winds up and throws me an imaginary pitch...a fast ball no less, I take a swing, make contact with the imaginary ball and raise my hand over my eyes to watch it sail out of the park, we both look at each other and start cracking up, I turn and continue along my way and he does the same.
The moral of the story is with a little imagination and some humor, you can get through many situations.
My friend Dan on Dazzler just pulled in coming from Puerto Vallarta as I've been writing this so we'll be catching up later over a few brewski's...adios for now.

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Steve, Sunny warm days..cool nights
03/15/2011, Puerto Los Cabos, San Jose Cabo

We rounded the tip of the Baja yesterday morning as the sun was rising, and headed into the Sea of Cortez to the Marina Puerto Los Cabos. I'm happy to say that due to God's will and lots of preparation we had no real problems sailing down one of the most inhospitable, desolate, isolated and beautiful coasts in the world. It took us a total of 12 days including stops in Ensenada, Turtle Bay and a afternoon and evening rest stop at Bahia Santa Maria. The nearly 800 mile trip was done mostly under sail as we glided along wing on wing, sailing with the wind to our backs, we saw whales, dolphins and every few days we would see another vessel of some sort. Si Bon proved herself to be a very sea worthy cruising yacht and her ease in handling gave me plenty of time to reflect on my love of the ocean. The sail down Baja causes many people to scrap their cruising dreams as they imagine all sorts of issues. This may be considered a boring post as I have no horror stories to tell, we didn't hit anything, all of Si Bon's important systems worked, we didn't drag anchor and no pirates tried to mess with us, I did hear there was a Tsunami while we were gone but we didn't know anything about it until arriving in Cabo. I will say to anyone thinking of cruising what has been said to me many times by my now fellow cruisers, "cruising isn't really that difficult, you just need to do it" (Nike??). So prepare (not over prepare) yourself and your boat, untie the dock lines and get going...life is good.
I will now turn my prayers to the people of Japan.

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Steve
03/08/2011, Bahia de Tortugas, Baja California

Well here we are on the hook in Turtle Bay, one of my cruise books calls TB "coyote Ugly" and at first glance that is pretty accurate. TB once had a cannery which was closed in 1998, since then the town is supposed to have been in decline, however as we have walked around the streets of TB we all have marveled at how nice the small, simple homes seem to be, not any of the shanty type structures that you might expect to find in a little village at the end of a 135 mile dirt road.
Once again as luck would have it, TB is the sight of Carnaval for this entire region of Baja, last night as we were headed back to Si Bon we were caught up in the parade (a pick-up pulling a trailer) followed by people on their way to the festivities, with music blasting and people dancing wildly .....it was pretty crazy as they tugged at us to join the parade and danced with us on the small dirt street.
Our current plan is to leave TB on Thursday and continue south towards Cabo San Lucas....subject to change.

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Steve
03/07/2011, Turtle Bay, Baja California

For some reason I wasn't able to get on to my blog while we were in Ensenada..so I have a lot to catch up on, I'm sending this out from an internet cafe in beautiful (NOT) Turtle Bay and not able to post pictures..hopefully Manana.
We left San Diego at around 0200 on Wednesday morning, my friend Brian Brown got up and brought us donuts and saw us off...thanks Brian. We made excellent time and were at the Marina Coral in under 11 hours. On Thursday we cleared into Mexico with the Capitan de Puerto (port captain) and as luck would have it Canaval was starting, so Peter and I headed into town to check it out while Catherine finished up a few work related things. It was really cool to see how all of the Mexican families enjoy all of the festivities with their families and friends...it made us realize that all of the material things that we seem to not be able to live without in the US....don't necessarily equal happiness.
I was orginally planning on leaving Ensenada at 0530 on Friday morning..I had figured that that would put us into our next port (Turtle Bay) at around mid-day Sunday, after thinking about it I decided that trying to time a 275 mile trip was next to impossible, and part of the joy of the cruising lifestyle is to relax and not always be rushing around....so I broke the news to my crew that we would leave sometime Friday morning and they could get up whenever their little hearts desired...this brought great joy to both Catherine and Peter...and the skipper didn't mind it a whole lot either.
We ended pulling out of Ensenada at about 1000 on Friday morning and had our sails up within minutes of getting out of the harbor, as we headed south the wind continued to build off our stern, we deployed the whisker pole and were sailing along at a steady 7-8 knots going wing on wing, that's where you have your main sail on one side of the boat and your head sail on the other. As the morning turned into afternoon the wind continued to pick up force...Si Bon was flying along...8-9 knots..I grabbed my camera to get a picture on my SOG (speed over ground) from my GPS, I took a pic at 9.3....all of a sudden we hit 10.2...i had to get another pic...I snapped one at 10.3 (will post on blog) and decided it was time to reef (reduce the sail area) the sails before things got out of hand. Even after we took in the main sail about half way and the Genoa several feet, we were still hitting 8-9 knots.
Friday night the wind died out and finally about 1900 we turned on the iron sail.
On Saturday we were treated to pea soup fog, however once again the wind came up early and strong as we sailed south at a great clip, everyone had that look of a little kid at Christmas as Si Bon cruised easily along. We sailed all day and well into the night before turning on the engine for a few hours as we past Isla Cedros towards Turtle Bay, we ended up dropping the hook in Turtle Bay at about 1430....which was about when I thought we would arrive before I decided to let everyone sleep in Friday morning.
I will try to post pictures tomorrow and tell you about lovely Turtle Bay...we plan on being here until at least Thursday...subject to change.

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Steve
03/01/2011, San Diego, California

Well the day has come...the crew is all aboard (pic)....the cupboards are packed...the fuel and water will be topped off later today. The plan is to leave Wed. morning at 0300 and sail down to Marina Coral, Ensenada, this should put us at the Coral around 1600. We will clear into Mexico on Thursday and spend Thursday night at the Marina Coral, weather permitting we will leave Ensenada on Friday morning and sail to Bahia Tortugas (Turtle Bay), Turtle Bay is about 275 NM south of Ensenada which should take us about 2 1/2 days. All subject to change of course.
Thanks to all of our friends and family for your support and prayers...God bless.

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