Sailing BOAT

Join us as we follow a dream and start in on the cruising life onboard our 41' Hunter. We will be heading south from our home part of Channel Islands, CA and traveling as far as we can go/where the wind takes us over the next 8 months.

02 April 2018
25 March 2018 | Sayulita
10 March 2018 | San Blas
10 March 2018 | Isla Isabella
09 March 2018 | La Paz
28 February 2018 | Los Frailes/Ensenada de los Muertos
27 February 2018 | Cabo San Lucas, BC
20 February 2018 | Bahia Magdalena
08 February 2018 | 27 41.11'N:114 53.13'W, Bahia de Tortugas, Baja Sur Mexico
06 February 2018 | Punta Tomas
01 February 2018
01 February 2018 | Ensenada
31 January 2018 | Ensenada
26 January 2018 | Fiddler's Cove, San Diego
23 January 2018 | Catalina
23 January 2018 | Two Harbors at Catalina

New post is live!

02 April 2018
Follow link HERE to new post that is now live on the new site.

Again, going forward I will be using the new site for all future posts, so delete this link and bookmark the new link.

New site URL: https://chazirjian.wixsite.com/svboat

Enjoy and thanks for bearing with me as we make this update to the new site!

xo
C

MIGRATING TO NEW BLOGSITE - LINK BELOW

28 March 2018
COURTNEY
Hi Guys-
Since we have been using WIFI predominantly to post on our blog (not our sat phone due to limitations in sharing pictures and video), I am migrating our blog to a new site that has many more features to make for a better experience (IE: media tab with pictures and videos all housed in one spot, email subscription with notification on new blog posts..and a much more beautiful layout)

Check it out HERE

Also, direct link at:
https://chazirjian.wixsite.com/svboat
(copy and paste URL into browser, if above hyperlink doesn't work)

I will keep this site live, but for future posts and updates on where we are beyond today, please go to the new site! (and don't forget to bookmark it!)

Enjoy and hope you like the new site better :)

Sayulita

25 March 2018 | Sayulita
COURTNEY
Ok, its been a long time since I last updated as we have been throughly enjoying ourselves as we spent almost two weeks visiting with friends and family once we arrived to mainland Mexico following our arrival in San Blas.

Following our departure from San Blas on the morning of March 11, we traveled further south to meet up with Jay's sister and family on their vacation, in Sayulita. Perfectly well timed, might I add to our travel schedule! Sayulita is a quaint, surfer beachside mecca just about 40nm south of San Blas. I had previously heard about Sayulita both from friends and for it being largely known as a great surf town, with mellow hippy-esque vibes--completely my kind of place and I had been dying to get my board out to play in the waves. While San Blas is also know for an incredibly long right, after our my jejenees run in, I wasn't too keen on staying longer and battling the bugs to find the beach, let alone allow another buffet free-for-all. More importantly, we were really excited to meet up with family and spend some time with them!

While there is no marked anchorage, per say in Sayulita, we figured with the large bay showing on the map near Sayuita Beach and right in front of the house our family had rented, we figured we would give it a shot and see if possible to drop anchor. I mean, how cool to be able to sail right up to the beach where they were staying, drop anchor and dinghy right on in to their front steps!? Worst case, we could go just around the corner to Punta de Mita, where there is a large anchorage just off where the Four Season and Jack Nicklaus golf course sits on the point. (I'll get to our time there too in a later post!)





As I just shared, Jan and John (Jay's sister and brother-in-law) rented this absolutely KILLER house, right ON Sayulita Beach....steps away from the surf and all the ongoings at the main beach in town and just a short walk away from the town center. The pictures above were taken from their deck -- hands down the best spot on the beach, right?

Anchorage wasn't the best at Sayulita Beach, but it was doable and like I said, simply killer to be able to anchor right out in front of their house. Jan and John were incredibly kind and insisted we stay with them, which after the first really rolly night, we took them up on their offer and slept in a real live bed for the remainder of our time with them (plus way more fun being all together) Don't get me wrong, sleeping on BOAT is by far the best sleep ever! Our bed is super comfortable, complete with a Memoryfoam mattress that you just sink into and are rocked to sleep by the movement of the waves. However, we both really appreciated sleeping in a "land bed" and having the 5 star hotel quality full-sized bathroom. Biggest complaint about BOAT is the bathrooms...but another post, another time!

Such a great reunion with "most" of the May family, niece Amanda, Amanda's boyfriend and nephews, Brett and Bradley (Justin arriving just a few days later...Sean sadly didn't make this trip as he was busy at school in ID and spring breaks not aligning-bummer :( Additionally, Jay's Dad lives just a short bus ride away in Puerto Vallerta, so he also came up for the day. So after arriving in the late afternoon, getting BOAT settled in a quite rolly but perfect spot just outside the surf break in front of their house, we dinghied to shore and were greeted by everyone, hugs all around and excitement at getting to spend the next few days together.

We spent four glorious days with The Mays. We surfed, played in the waves, lazed on the beach, chit chatted while sipping homemade pina coladas and spent a day exploring this cute town (despite a few hiccups of A. everyone getting sick, dropping like flies night two. UGH! How Jay and I didn't get sick is a miracle and still beyond me?! and then B. poor, but a total trooper Brett hurting himself pretty badly, complete with a really exciting trip to a local hospital and later a Skype exam from a family friend doctor hoping to reassess the not entirely promising, nor the most accurate injury evaluation at said local hospital. Modern technology seriously rocks!

However, despite these crappy set-backs, The Mays bounced back and we all had a great time together! And we had the added bonus of meeting some of friends of Jan and John who also were vacationing in Sayulita that same week. All absolutely lovely people whom we really enjoyed meeting and getting to know!

(Jan/John, if you are reading this, since leaving you guys every couple we have ran into further south when we shared we were in Sayulita, first question, hands downs has been, "Oh, did you guys get sick?!" AH!! I guess its thing there? I'm calling it the "Mexican 24 hour Weight Loss Program for Gringos"--Complimentary on your first night stay in Sayulita!)

Anyway....! Here are more pictures of this lovely little town and our time spent:




I am almost thankful I was too interested in spending time with everyone and not really into shopping as I would probably have bought entirely too many things. As it was, I managed to only buy three adorable beach blankets, which was probably the ONE thing we absolutely didn't need for the boat (Rivaling food, bathing suits, and spare parts for the BOAT, blankets are also WELL stocked on BOAT) But you can't pass up adorable Mexican blankets for $20/each!








We saw these guys almost every night in town, I think there are a few different groups of entertainers. Some like the above video, another night there was a guy on stilts, all have crazy get-ups and circus slash Halloween like makeup on. Apparently one night, the street entertainers were doing their thing, amazing the gringos with their fire ring tossing skills. I think it might have been the same guy in this video. Well, he took a small misstep in his "routine" and dropped the ring, which then ROLLED TOWARDS THE CROWD OF ONLOOKERS WHILE STILL ON FIRE?! Thankfully no one was hurt at all, but can you imagine?! Im guessing they probably don't have liability insurance....and which is why the performer ran off and called it a night after that mishap. Taking this story to heart, we were careful to not sit "first row" at any of the restaurant we ate at.

Day four of our visit and time in Sayulita, Jay took all the guys out for a sail and to go fishing, hoping to catch dinner for the evening. Sadly, it was not to be and no fish wanted to offer up themselves as delicious dinner, ah well! This same day, one of my best friends (we've known each other since 6th grade and one of my go-to travel buddies) was arriving to Sayulita and then traveling on with us to Puerto Vallerta.

The bus systems in Mexico are super cheap and efficient ways to get around, so Jenn had flown into PV and then taken a hour bus ride north to us in Sayulita. (Jenn, I am VERY proud of you for heeding my advice and packing lightly with condition appropriate luggage this time)

After she arrived later that afternoon, we got her settled onto BOAT, which THANKFULLY the seas had calmed over the past few days, making for a much smoother night sleep on BOAT. I would love to lie and say we had a wild night out on the town after her arrival, drinking too many marguerites, eating too many street tacos, dancing with the fire dancers and waking up with face tattoos and a lion in our bathroom with Jay missing, but well, Jenn traveled from the east coast and had been up since 4am, and Jay and I are on the AARP bedtime schedule. So, we had a nice early night out and back to the boat well before a brag worthy bedtime and no crazy antics stories to retell.

Aaaandd, to keep literary interest here, let's just go with the previously fabricated story as what transpired that night, ok? Last picture taken of the night:


(just kidding this was from my cousins wedding in 2016, but complements the story quite well, making it somewhat believable)

Anyway, the next morning, after we found Jay asleep on a rooftop in the next town over and returned the lion to Mike Tyson, we dinghied back to the house to say our goodbyes and set off further south to Punta de Mita as our next anchorage AND with our new crew member Jenn!

--

Last Passage Distance: 40nm (San Blas to Sayulito)

Cumulative Distance to Date: 1,535.8nm

Days since last donating to Posideon: 8...glory!! With more land time than sea time this past week, I didn't have nearly as many opportunities to make any deposits.

Items donated: n/a

Isla Isabella to San Blas

10 March 2018 | San Blas
Courtney
Isla Isabella to San Blas

Finally back up to speed in current real time. We made it to San Blas on Wednesday (3/7) with a short 43nm sail from Isla Isabella. Wind in the morning was favorable and a steady 15 kts, which later died to about 1kt in the afternoon. On went the motor for our last few hours into San Blas.

San Blas is GORGEOUS! And everything we hoped it would be. Warm weather, palm tree lined beaches, beautiful anchorage, quiet...did I mention warm? Just bliss.

Here is a video of us arriving to mainland Mexico. I must admit I did a little happy dance once we caught sight of San Blas. Getting to the mainland was a big feat in my opinion and I was psyched to get into the lush tropics of Mexico!



Alright cutting to the good stuff that I am dying to share. Check out the seriously coolest thing ever that greeted us after we decided on a nice little spot to drop anchor



DUDES...WHALE SHARKS!!! So we spotted about three fins in the water, shut off the motor and sailed over to check them out, still not sure what they were. Right before I start the video we realize they are whale sharks and one was curious enough to come over and check us out. OMGEEEE--totally freaking out as you can very well tell from my lovely voice over audio, which I included for the comical effect.

So yeah the whale coming under our boat was cool, like way cool. But this actually might outrank in terms of cool factor of things we have seen.

The video cuts out, as the curiosity of the whale shark got the best of him and he accidentally bumped our hull with his massive head, scared himself and then quickly swam off. I got concerned for him and shut off the video, readying myself to jump in, give him a hug and then help him find his friends.

Guys, let's be honest. Whale sharks are like the fancy versions of sharks; they have polka dots and are basically vegan Sharks. I mean, how LA are they?! Obviously, speaking to me on a very deep spiritual level--we just get each other. We should probably share lavender lemon water and chia seed pudding recipes sometime soon. I'll keep you updated on that.

San Blas, super gorg!







After we settled into our anchorage, and calmed down from over excitement of seeing the whale sharks, cold cervezas were calling us from shore. We took a quick dinghy in to the nearest restaurant to enjoy a few cold ones under the shade of their palm tree huts.

Side note: when pulling up the dinghy, Jay made a graceful dismount and jammed his toe pretty good...I'll come back to this later so just file away as to be continued shortly...



Jay's artsy fartsy video showing the quick walk up from the beach to the restaurant.

I should preface that before leaving for shore, we "cleaned" ourselves up. Which for me, means, finger combing my hair, putting a bathing suit coverup on and dousing myself in perfume to feel fancy and presentable to the outside world.

Well, simply put I am the dumbest human alive and couldn't have made a stupider move in the entirety of my traveling mishaps (which are many) Why did I put on perfume?! Why....?

So we left arid desert to arrive in tropical Mexico, right? You know what tropical Mexico has in addition to warm humid weather and lush palm tree beaches?

Freaking no see ums

Little devils...little specs of pure evil that ruin all good things.

and this moron (me!) Basically decides to soak myself in the beaconing smell of "please come feast on me, no see ums from a 50 mi radius" Seriously, I did the equivalent of all out APB for the most epic feast session ever.

While I am flapping my wings and jumping around in my seat after the first 30 seconds of sitting, Jay is laughing and watching me, sitting total still and not bothered one bit by these little sh*t devils.

After the sweet owner of the restaurant tried everything to increase my comfort (smoking me out with burning coconuts, turning a fan on....) His dear sweet grandmother (god bless her sweet sweet soul) comes over, smiles at me, says nothing and proceeds to SLATHER me in bug spray. Now normally, I would be wary of some rando stranger rubbing me with lotion, but at this point I was in such bug feasting hell, I would have gladly taken off all my clothes and let her dump the entire bottle over my poor body.

Ahhhh relief finally!!

I was able to sit still for another cerveza. Usually beers help with forgetting the itch, right?

We sit for a bit longer, enjoying this lovely beach, insanely delicious guacamole and cold brews, before calling it and heading back to the boat.

The next morning we woke up to two majorly disappointing things:

Jay's dismount yesterday? Resulted in a elephant sized foot, swelling and purplish bruise forming all around his big toe. His foot is really weird looking and sadly banged up pretty good.

Me? My body is 70% covered in medium size welts. I look like I have leprosy and have already gone thru one whole tube of Benadryl to ease the fire burn from the welts.

So in summary, we are in paradise and are quite the pair of gimps. Haha!

Anyway, we are off today to go and explore town and head to a mangrove tour. Hopefully, we wont scare any children with our leprosy and elephantitist of the foot.

--
Last Passage Distance: 43nm

Cumulative Distance to Date: 1,495.5 nm

Days since last donating to Posideon: 4

Items donated: n/a

Punta Bonanza to Isla Isabella

10 March 2018 | Isla Isabella
Courtney
Punta Bonanza to Isla Isabella

With only a short half day sail to Punta Bonanza which is a open bay anchorage off one of the southern most islands in the Sea of Cortez, Isla Espiritu Santo, we arrived mid afternoon to our anchorage. Since we needed a good jumping off point for leaving La Paz and best wind angle run to the mainland, we decided this island would be the best. The hard part was choosing which side of the island to visit, east or west. As I shared in my last post on La Paz, the weather was warm during the day and then cold at night, as typical of desert climates in Baja. Additionally, we were not sure if the famed Coroumels, afternoon to late evening winds that pick up around La Paz, sometimes whipping up to 25 knots if not higher for much of the evening, making some anchorages dangerous. There were some pretty strong winds in La Paz that we felt in the evening—on one particular night they were cold and strong enough that they drove us inside the boat and an early evening—Party Pooper winds. So, without much knowledge of recently good anchorage spots, we decided on Punta Bonanza—it is a big, open bay which looked to have protection from notherlies and hopefully wasn’t exposed too bad to Coroumels, should they occur.

I wont spend to much time here, but I will share disappointingly this anchorage wasn’t the greatest and our time spent “exploring” the Sea of Cortez can be summed up pretty quickly. We came at the wrong time of year and didn’t have the time dedicated to visit and adventure. I know, I know, this is probably a big disappointment to some as The Sea of Cortez is know for being gorgeous; teaming with crazy cool birds, sea creatures, beautiful beaches, emerald green seas and warm hot sun. Well, we didn’t get any of this. Again, and to not wrongly portray the Sea of Cortez as I can see the allure and how it could be beautiful and exotic and just “heaven on earth.” Simply put we didn’t plan for a Sea of Cortez trip, which within itself could be anywhere from a few weeks long to a few years long, neither of which we timed/planned for, despite our best efforts to “check out” No joke though, we have heard NUMEROUS stories of people cruising to Mexico and four years later, they got “stuck” and are still exploring new places in “The Sea.” Additionally, we are just outside of the warm weather in The Sea. Being spoiled brats from Southern California and enjoying almost near perfect warm weather for about 8 months out of the year, we weren’t too keen on staying in cold weather and having to wear our foulies during the day and wishing for UGGs at night. This, and coupled with Baja also having very similar climate and surroundings (desert) to SoCal, we wanted to get to tropical-lush and untamed palm tree beaches, hot and humid weather—you know, to feel like we actually traveled to a “new place.”

Punta Bonanza was super windy and cold. Our night spent here was inside, out of the cold and BOAT whipping around on our anchor all night. Not the most comfortable and we were anxious to get going the following morning. Maybe another time, another trip? Consolation, the sea was a crazy, cool bright green color and very pretty to look at, if not for the angry seas and white caps all around us.

Jay planned our route this time, angled with best winds and hopefully a straight shot, on same tack down, taking us right to Isla Isabella, a tiny island just off San Blas and mainland Mexico. This small island is usually skipped by most cruisers, as books shared there was iffy anchorage with a very rocky bottom and the sound of grinding chain and anchor against the rocky bottom typically resulting in fouled anchors. BUT well worth it for the exploratory and gambling type cruisers as this island is a bird sanctuary, with beautiful cliffs and caves. Nat Geo and Jacques Cousteau featured this island on TV specials as a “wonderland of unspoiled nature” Clearly we are gamblers and are slightly brain dead in terms of recollecting past rock versus anchor experiences as we were both gunghoe on seeing this island! Thankfully we didn’t win any Darwinian awards by choosing to anchor here. It was just as beautiful and bird Grand Central Station as we had hoped.



The passage took us 292nm and about 50+ hours to make. We had GREAT and I mean great winds the whole time. Seas were pretty ugly the first day, about 4-8 foot swells with short, maybe 3-5 seconds between sets, so we both took sea sickness aids to help with the rocking and rolling of the boat. With wind and seas about 120 off our port, it wasn’t too bad with the swells and short sets and besides we were cooking with Crisco All Organic Coconut Oil and cruising along, averaging about 6-6.5 knots the whole way (truth be bragged about we actually got BOAT up to her highest speed yet of a 9.9knots! Damn Skippy!!)

Also thankfully, this was a largely uneventful passage. Despite having accomplished previously long passages of 200+ nm sails, I am still wary and nervous getting ready for them. I think it's the unpredictability of them that unnerves me. The seas and Mother Nature, you have to respect. Weather reports or forecasting isn’t without fault….that's what they are...forecasts. And you don’t truly know what conditions will be like until you are actually out and in the thick of it, so to speak.

Plus, night watch sucks. Ok, I’ll admit that they are getting easier, and there are moments that are pretty cool and a great time to think and reflect (actually most all times getting from one place to another on the boat is time to think and reflect.) I have done entirely too much thinking and reflecting in these past two months, I am becoming Buddha in my levels of thinking-ness and reflecting-ness. Which seem very zen-like, but actually are usually riddled with rehashing totally awkward moments in my teenage/youth years or pondering how things got their names, like who names stuff? Who gets that authority? Or even greater imponderables such as “why is a raven like a writing desk?” and “do fish have best friend like humans do?” and “when did domesticated chores of folding laundry and wearing pants become mainstream practice?” You know, the typical stuff that happens when you let your mind wander aimlessly and tackle life’s greater mysteries. So I have gotten better and have now upgraded my time to include, whitening my teeth, painting my nails and listening to “Learn Spanish” audio tapes my awesome sis got us (Muchas gracias Beans!!)

And this is also where every single person reading this blog, groans and then silently begs, no pleas with Jay to take over this blog STAT….I’m DONE! don’t worry back to the real stuff, like sailing, fixing things and fishing, especially lots of fish pictures. Ok, I’ll deliver:



Better yet, you all can have a good laugh at me catching this giant monster of the sea, and me, bitching and complaining the whole time.



Context: Second day of passage, seas have calmed considerably and Jay knows I had a crap night sleep so to distract me he suggests we, meaning me, sport fish, just fish for fun and throw back whatever we catch.

Hilarious, right? To defend myself, its not that I wasn’t into fishing, I actually do enjoy fishing, a lot. Offshore fishing is way fun (and truth be told I almost won the pot once for biggest catch one of the few times we went out near home on day tour boats. Yep, little me versus about 30+ fisherman, I can hold my own!) But, this beast of a sea demon was yanking hard—and quite honestly I was convinced he was going to pull me into the sea with him, regardless of being tethered onto the boat with my jackline. That and I was running on about 3 hours of sleep and no strength what so ever to engage in a epic tug-of-war with Rover McFishFace. In the end, it was a win win for both of us.

We spent one night and half a day at Isla Isabella. Truly was a beautiful island, teaming with birds and gorgeous cliffs



We took off around 10am heading our last 43nm miles to San Blas. Despite all the warnings and hearing the terrible sound of our chain grinding against the rocks all night, we got off without a problem or hooked anchor from our anchorage. Glory!! With warm winds to our backs we continued onward to Mainland Mexico!!


Last Passage Distance:
292.3nm (Punta Bonanza to Isla Isabella)

Cumulative Distance to Date: 1,452.5 nm

Days since last donating to Posideon: 2

Items donated: Sleeping bag. Yes, I seem to be donating a heck of a lot of items to Poseidon, which Jay has kindly pointed out. My theory is that the sea will take care of you as long as you keep making alms payments (read: this is my nice justification for all the crap I lose overboard, because I am a klutz to the nth degree) So! while on night watch first night of our passage to mainland Mexico, I got up to check something on the other side of the cockpit (as per usual it was the moon rising but every night it tricks me into thinking a huge tanker is coming straight at us…nope, just the moon doing its moon things) I swear I only left the sleeping bag for a moment—turned around and it was gone. (Wind was whipping that night and it was our lightweight sleeping bag.) Anyway, I think it was a suicide mission, but who knows?! I’m hoping my donation binge is over for a bit—we are starting to getting into nicer stuff—Posideon is getting greedy and all be damned if he tries to take my 3lb bag of tortilla chips!

La Paz

09 March 2018 | La Paz
Courtney
La Paz to Punta Bonanza (Sea of Cortez)

Whelp, back to being a week overdue in where we are in real time. So time for catch up. We’ve covered a ton since I last check in. Spending time in La Paz (freaking awesome city) to heading out to an island in Sea of Cortez, and then rallying for our longest passage yet, of 292nm, making a run for mainland Mexico, which is where we are now (San Blas, Nayarit Mexico—check map out to see where we are!) I'm going to break this all out into a series of shorter posts as our wifi is being finicky going in and out and I am done playing the "where is my wifi waltz" game.

Before getting into La Paz, check out the killer Bluefin Tuna we (rather, Jay) caught just outside of La Paz:





Guys, WE FINALLY GOT OUR TUNA!! And we had enough tuna for three meals--Yay for my fishing fool of a husband, Nicole Kidman style claps all around! Our first night in La Paz, we had our friend over from Lamanee, whom we met back up with after parting ways in Los Frailes, and enjoyed our delicious catch (Braggs Amino Acids and EVOO marinated Tuna with veggie couscous salad. Can we say DELISH!) As a side note, I am so completely and totally into this living off the earth diet thing. It's my hippie daydream diet come true! Eating fresh gifts from the sea and snacking on local veggies just picked from outside someones garden—culinary dreams do come true. All that is left is me to find my fresh coconuts, chop them open with a machete and I am set for making this trip a full time lifestyle! Maybe Jay will monkey up a tree for me and get me a few coconuts. I keep dropping not-so-subtle hints of “Hey look at that palm tree with coconuts, you should climb it and get some for me”, so fingers crossed he finally starts picking up what I am laying down. (The machete is ready and waiting for some coconut hacking action-sweet nectar of the tropical beach gods!)

ANYWAY!

We decided to stay in a marina while in La Paz, as BOAT needed a good washing (she was pretty salty and looking a little rough around the edges with all her grim both inside and out.) Plus, Jay wanted to get a few things done on BOAT that would be easier done on a dock. We stayed at Marina Palmira, which I must say was freaking modern civilization godsend.





Gorgeous marina, with great slips, full showers (which I took full advantage since I have been on the shower every 5 days routine—great for your hair, but not so much for having friends—remember Steve? I was registering about a 6 on the Steve scale of smelly) full laundry and a cruisers lounge. Paradise! I think this is the boaters equivalent of a 5 star hotel? I don’t know, nor care as it was HEAVEN ON EARTH! and since the earth was finally still for a bit, there was the added bonus of being able to brush my teeth without almost poking my eye out, or TKO’ing myself.


(see what I mean, you try brushing your teeth or washing your face when water does this mind bending trick. Sailors are no joke talented-like Cirque de Soleil level. Astronauts trying to “eat” water in space. Heck, I raise them a sailor dude trying to pee in the toilet when the boat is heeling over 20 degrees to the left and right. Now THAT my friends is freakin talent!)

So for the four days spent in La Paz, we took full advantage of all the amenities they had. Short of our shoes and anything not nailed, welded or permanently adhered to the boat, I stripped and laundered everything! Back tracking a bit: Both in Turtle Bay and Cabo when we got our clothes laundered, both places used the ever prevalent and pretty pungent smelling fabric softener that is EVERYWHERE in Mexico. To describe (and Nicole, I know you are reading this and laughing your guts out right now as you know where this one is going)

Ok so fabric softener in Mexico—we need to talk about this. PHEW-WWYY! I mean I love the smell of fresh laundry and smelling good, and all. And I am the first to whip out Febreze and dance around spraying it everywhere singing show tunes, because smelling good is MUY IMPORTANTE especially for having friends. (Truth be told, I totally stocked up on a million bottles of perfume as I wasn’t going to be the smelly girl on this trip!)

BUT….

BUT, then there is Mexican fabric softener on the other end of the spectrum of smells. I can't really describe it, beyond saying that sometimes too much of everything isn’t good. Like mixing colors or flavors (or too much of most anything really.) A few together really enhance the flavor, make a great dish or make a cool color, but on the other end if you add all the colors or throw in all the things, you are going to get…

well, fruitcake.

You get a fruitcake when you add all the things (1940’s housewives are still laughing at their passive aggressive genius. Before the bra burning, I am a firm believer that fruitcakes were symbolic of women’s lib, a silent and hilariously unifying housewives club protest. “Women’s place is only in the kitchen?! I’ll show YOU!” says Holly Homemaker with her perfectly coiffed hair as she dumps the entire contents of her “baking pantry” and almost rotten fruits PLUS the canned ones and anything else she can find lying on the kitchen counter into a large baking dish laughing maniacally. The rum was an afterthought as she glanced at her noontime half finished “Mommys medicine” of straight booze, because well, anything baking or cooking-wise with alcohol in it is automatically “fancy." It lends more legitimacy of passing this garbage can dish off as a real dessert people should enjoy. Little do they know…….HaHA! Point for Team Women!

Ok, digressing again, sorry!

Whelp, mexican fabric softener is the equivalent of fruitcake. They added all the good laundry smells together, resulting in a nasty overly perfumed smell, which permanently lingers on clothes for entirely too long that is normal in the world of smelly things (good and bad). The kicker of why this stuff is heinous, it adds this weird soft but thick texture to your clothes, which kinda creeps me out. No clue what is in that stuff and a little wary about what weird cancer I might get by it touching my skin. Needless to say, I was beyond excited to wash all our clothes in my known and enjoyed lighty perfumed smelling laundry detergent, ridding us of the terrible fruitcake-of-a-smell and cancer causing coating. (Yes, I am being dramatic, and no, I don’t care—don’t mess with my laundry, yo! It's my only lasting tether to living a somewhat civilized lifestyle at this point. Parting with my full walk-in closet and 60+ pairs of beautiful, beautiful shoes was traumatic--don't take decent smelling clothes and sheets away from me!)

Well then, moving on from my abnormally long winded and entirely unnecessary rant on laundry…. where were we?

La Paz!

La Paz simply put is a cruisers/boaters paradise. I mean they have EVERYTHING here—anything you could possibly need to outfit/fix/build your boat—they have it here! And all within nearby walking/biking or a short taxi/uber (yes, Uber is in La Paz too!) So after we spent our first day on the dock, mouth agape and marveling at all the luxury around us called “civilization” and “normal 21st century amenities” such as electricity, full sized bathrooms and separate showers AND populations of people totaling more than 2” (ok kidding, we haven’t totally been roughing it that much and for that long that we stood in dumbfounded awe. We actually said, “Cool” and then cleaned both inside and outside of BOAT all damn day long.) The next day we biked into town to check it out:











I'm kinda in love with La Paz. It’s gorgeous as you can see. The ocean is a teal green color which in contrast to the light terra-cotta streets and purplish dirt/rocks is simply stunning to look at. The city is set along the this big bay, with shops and restaurants lining the malecon. Very touristy and obviously catering to the large population of expats living here as well as the touristas (I think I heard equal amounts of English and Spanish being spoken here—hey, it's like LA!) As you travel away from the malecon, smaller streets intersect creating bustling but cozy, welcoming neighborhoods lined with more restaurants, small shops and little tiendas selling meats, pan (bread) and TelCel (Mexico's version of Verizon or AT&T) So charming! I mean, even the trash cans were pretty. Little sculptures of turtles, dolphins, and whales transformed these ugly city necessities into little works of art! Too embarrassed to be THAT tourist taking pictures of trash can, I sadly don’t have any pictures to share, so hopefully my description will suffice.

Warmish day (mid 70’s) turns to cold evenings as we are still in the desert climate of Baja. In fact, it was actually really cold at night (cavet: I have become a thin skinned whiny Angeleno after living there for 20 years so "cold" by my definition is anything under 60 degrees) So once the sun sets, the desert arctic cold sets in. So much so, and since hooked up to shore power, we sadly busted out our heaters at night (endless electricity rocks!) Jay and I actually joked about making a wrong turn as we started up from Cabo into the Sea as the temperature started dropping as we ventured north….um, not what we signed up for. We were suppose to be leaving the cold, not heading towards it. As explained to us later by the staff at Marina Palmira, we are still in winter here and temperatures won't actually get warm until later in March/April. Darn, guess we should have timed this trip better….se la vie, right?

On our last night in town, we met up with our friends on Lamanee (who would be staying here, getting their boat ready to store while they headed back to BC to work for the summer) as well as our friend Gary and his son, whom we knew from our dock back in Oxnard. He had left two weeks after us, making the same trek down the CA coast and into Baja. We had been playing anchorage tag and FINALLY timed right for us to meet! We enjoyed a nice night of sharing tales of our travels and laughs. Knowing we would be heading out in the AM, we called it an early night.

Sunday, we had a pancake breakfast and said our (tearful) goodbyes to our friends on Lamanee before we headed out. I have to give pause here to reflect on meeting our friends, as well as others we have met since leaving our home port and taking this trip. Cruising is both a big and small community. There is this bigger, and largely still unknown to me world of people that do this and have been for a long time, be it full time or part time and for a few years or making it their long term lifestyle. Before leaving on this trip, I started reading tons and tons of blogs written by other cruisers, as they are called and call themselves. Reading with wonder, as they recount their travels all over the world, leaving all their material belongings behind, saying goodbyes to family and friends, quitting jobs or just recently retired and setting out for a life filled with adventure, exploring untouched lands, being one with nature and challenging themselves as they take on the seas. This is a huge community that exists all over the world and they travel all over the world. Its endlessly fascinating to me and something I knew nothing about, and I mean nothing about until I started researching and asking around on our dock for others stories. Truly it is nothing like I have ever experienced before—and so vastly different than just taking a trip. I mean, you are taking your “home” with you and stepping out into something largely unknown. Unknown in so much as, while researching and researching some more on other’s experiences, nothing will be like how you experience it. The seas, the places you visit, your mindset and headspace…all of it is unknown and continues to be even as you are traveling. Every day is different and each day brings about it sets of challenges, frustrations, joys and moment of sheer “oh my god is this real?” like awe. This is where the smaller communities comes in. With each anchorage, we commonly would run into the same general grouping of cruisers as most all of us are following the same weather patterns and specific “stop points” that are commonly known for having desirable amenities such as diesel, laundry, chandleries, grocery stores…etc. So you see the same people a few times over, when covering a general area. You meet a few of them either in passing in town, or a quick dinghy ride over to say hello. Other times, you click with some and spend dinners together at your current anchorage, or share travel plans and see if they align. Meeting Lamanne in San Diego and traveling with them for this past month was a hugely amazing and unique experience in so much as we conquered so many firsts for the both of us together—long passages, entering into a new country, experiencing ports and learning the in’s and outs of checking into a country/navigating its waters along with its share of hazards. Thru this shared experience you develop a kindred bond—relishing in the newness of experiences together, stepping into and facing your fears, both as a group and as individual crew. We spent many nights for a month straight with Lamanee planning our next passage, rehashing our days events, lamenting on similar or different boat (or personal) issues and offering advice and assistance to deal with said issues all while also sharing our lives with each other. We got to know each other quite well over a 30 day period. So when it came time to say goodbye, it was hard. I wouldn’t say emotionally traumatic hard like having to 3 flush salute your favorite goldfish down the toilet type scarring, but hard in that you are saying goodbye to good friends and not knowing when we would meet again.

Bittersweet is maybe a better word. Knowing its the end of what was a crazy, cool and epic first couple of chapters of our trip.

So yeah, I cried while we gave goodbye hugs, pulled myself together to get the boat off the dock and then teared up again as we set out towards Isla Espiritu Santo. Jay? As his dear wife whom he loves and knows I always tell the truth, I say, “Heck no, he doesn’t cry”

…mysterious “people” sometimes just happen to be cutting onions nearby :)

Shout out to Kande and Dennis at Lamanee—we will see you guys in Canada…or somewhere where the wind blows warm in our future!! Get your spill proof glasses ready for us and we will bring the fresh catch of the day! xoxo


Last Passage Distance: 14.6nm (La Paz to Punta Bonanza)

Cumulative Distance to Date: 1,160.2 nm

Days since last donating to Posideon: 7! We are on a roll here guys—this is HUGE!

Items donated: n/a

Los Frailes and Ensenada de los Muertos/Suenos

28 February 2018 | Los Frailes/Ensenada de los Muertos
Courtney
Wow—I am finally ontop of posting and actually am updating with today’s events so you guys are current! Until now I have been running about a week behind in posts from where we actually are. Yay! So let’s get you all quickly up to speed to present day (today is Feb 28)

Left Cabo and traveled a short day sail to Los Frailies. As I shared the anchorage in Cabo wasn’t the best and actually was one of our least favorite. Super swelly and very, VERY loud. There were many times I heard a jet ski come inches from our boat, run up on deck and see them taking off, likely near missing our boat from not paying attention or having no clue how to steer and operate it (not like those aren’t little death machines or anything). Not our cup of tea and didn’t want to wait around for some moron to actually hit our boat on a jet ski.

While in Cabo, Jay and I also discussed and made plans for the next few weeks of our trip. Prior to leaving, we had planned our trip up to Cabo, and then would re-assess once we got there which direction we would go—hop to mainland or go up into Sea of Cortez. We decided that it would probably be a mis-step to not visit the Sea of Cortez (which to many of you might be shocking that we weren’t all about planning to visit it as it is famed to be absolutely gorgeous and heaven on earth. In fact, many cruisers make plans to travel far and wide, then get to Sea of Cortez and 4 years later they haven’t left!) With our sights set on making it to Panama and potentially going thru the Canal—we have been focused on trying to make it further south/southeast more than travel in “The Sea” But again, we discussed more and figured we should head up and check out some of the more southern islands as well as La Paz—which is well known to being a boaters/cruisers paradise. Best likely place for us to get items we needed for the boat…AND we are now dead set on getting ourselves some dive gear! Too many anchorages we are passing by that have KILLER and I mean killer, dive spots (and the whole rocks and anchor thing....yeah)

So with this decision, we are planning to leisurely make our way around the trip of Baja, stopping at two anchorages (Frailies and Muertos) before heading into La Paz. From there we will check out Isla Espiritu Santo anchorages and then make the hop over to mainland Mexico…or so is the plan right now :)

Los Frailes was a quick 45nm sail south/southeast from Cabo. We had decent winds coming from the north, around 10-15 so we had a fun day tacking back and forth with some silence from our motor. Enroute to Cabo we unfortunately lost Señor Mexico (the kickbutt lure we caught our first Mahi with!) Sadly, some big fish or shark nabbed him off, so while in Cabo Jay picked up a bunch more similar lures. I of course named my two favorite:

Pancho Villa and Don Quixote (I realize wrong region and actually Spanish, but they seemed suitable names for these pair)

So we busted one out for our trip to Los Frailes and wouldn’t you know. We caught two more Mahi! I caught the first one and Jay caught the second, slightly larger one. Video and pics for you:


Hilariously, you can hear me dry heaving in the very beginning, trying to avoid watching Jay remove the hook. I’m such a weenie!

and the prized catch:


While I have gone offshore fishing with Jay a few times before, the deckhands or Jay always helped get my fish on the boat as well as filet the fish for us. I wasn’t having any of the holding the fish up for a photo op—shoving my fingers up in their gills and pretending to not be throughly grossed out (I actually am dry heaving thinking about it right now—GAH, cough SHAKING HEAD, cough)

We kept the smaller fish and gave the larger one to our friends on Lamanee. Made a delicious ceviche and almond meal encrusted dinner that night (Almond meal mixed with Italian spices and Parmesan cheese in substitution for breadcrumb crust—wow it is so good!!!)

Los Frailes is a smaller bay that is supposedly, per our travel book, protected from N, NW wind. However, it was very windy and pretty swelly. By comparison to Cabo, much calmer, but not exactly heaven on earth. Los Frailes is also a popular anchorage for boats making the hop to Mazatlan, so it was also somewhat crowded (about 5-6 boat, maxed out around 8 boats one evening)



The beach there is teaming with campers: their tents, VW Vans, Airstreams/other such campers, and oversized cars packed with assorted camping gear all covering the beach. Also, like any other small beachside town, its a popular spot for local fisherman to head to work from. Fun watching them “commute” to work each morning and return at dusk. A great dive spot is also around the point to our north. Sadly, with a cold and constant wind, it was hard to get out of my sweatshirt and layers, let alone wanting to bust out the wetsuit and jump into the cold water. Seriously, SoCA and Hawaii ruined us from being spoiled brats when it comes to diving/snorkling. Unless it's bath water, I’ll sit in the dinghy, hanging out with just my facemask on to look at the fish. And unless there are waves or body heat inducing activities I can do to stay warm, I don’t want to float around shivering my butt off in my wetsuit.

We stayed at Los Frailes for about 5 days. With cold windy days and overcast weather, we hermited ourselves on the boat and dove into projects/tasks we had on our list from prior to leaving. Jay converted our aft shower into a pantry so we would have better storage for food AND allow us to redistribute our weight (we are a bit starboard heavy and with only storage on our starboard side, made it hard for us to move items around to equally distribute weight.) And oh my god, an OCD dream come true the new pantry is everything I had hoped for and more! I was able to pull all the food stored under our seating, freeing that up for lightweight items and now we have easy access to all our dry goods. Crap we originally had out in our forward cabin and spare parts that didn’t fit elsewhere now all have a home! Organization on BOAT is finally taking shape and I cannot be happier with neatly having things stored away. Jay and I have gone to great efforts to have things stored and a rightful place for everything without excess crap on our boat. I don’t know why but so many boats I had visited in the past, just seemed to be cluttered with knick knacks and crap, giving a cramped feeling, disarray and a mess. I was determined to NOT have our boat looking like that. So to finally have this storage is HUGE!

Meanwhile, I deep cleaned (dust bunnies and mold prevention and removal), polished all the Stainless (it was in desperate need) as well as deiced the freezer and cleaned out our fridge. OH! and reshuffled all of our stored foods to the pantry and reorganized a nice and clean forward cabin (we have our second bedroom back—whose coming for a visit?!?!) All these projects took the better part of a week. Once we were done, we were antsy to leave and get to a better anchorage, now having finished our “chores” and ready to enjoy more sightseeing and exploring





Temporarily saying goodbye to our friends on Lamanee, who were traveling straight to La Paz and needing to get their boat up on the hard, we headed a short 47nm around further north into The Sea to the next anchorage, Ensenada de Los Muertos. Wow this is a beautiful anchorage! I will share most of our time here thru pictures versus telling as likely will tell a better story



Muertos is similar bay set-up like Los Frailes, protected from northerlies with sandy bottom and great holding. Much calmer seas, so a much better anchorage with a beautiful white san beach. To the right is a restaurant catering to the local fisherman and cruisers.

To the left is what was suppose to be a luxury resort, which has largely failed (for what reasons we have no clue) We took a walk to check out the resort, which was just surreal in that it was mostly abandoned, midway thru building (huge expanse of land was cleared for what was to be a golf course, complete with paved golf cart trails and irrigation system, but all half done)



Walking up past the villas we come to an open air restaurant which we are greeted by one of the workers…?! He invites us in and tells us to take a look around and yes the resort is open…? Odd as the grounds look abandoned and unkept with the exception of this main restaurant area….There are cooks in the kitchen prepping food, bartenders running in and out stocking the bar. Grounds keeper washing the pavement by the pool….but the rest of the property is completely dead….like its not even part of the same resort.

Check out the inside of this incredibly cool restaurant







and this video of the top floor complete with an old model trainset-oh my god childhood!!



What I find totally hilarious and extremely ironic about this entire place is that its originally named “Ensenada de Los Muertos” which translates to Bay of the Dead, right?



Well the developers of this new luxury resort renamed it to something a bit more appealing “Ensenada de los Suenos” (Bay of Dreams).



So, chuckling to myself as the irony of it now should be renamed Suenos son Muertos (Dead Dreams) since clearly this resort, with all its hopes will never be….

After this adventure we then took off on our dinghy to check out to the north of us, where we could see some large private homes perched ontop the cliffs overlooking the water. And Oh my god, this was a trip! Check out these ridiculous homes:










Crazy, right? I made a joke about the second property with the obnoxiously brightly colored buildings and weird Easter Island heads being the house of some Mexican drug lord and to not go to close...Jay didn't seem to find that funny.

We are now enroute to La Paz (20-25kts winds passing thu the San Lorenzo Channel wooo!!!) and will likely check in some time later with stories. For now, you are all updated and current on where we are and what’s been going on.

Maybe Jay can take over for a bit..and write a few?!

xx until then
C


Last Passage Distance: 45nm (Cabo -> Los Frailes) 47nm (Los Frailes -> Muertos)
Cumulative Distance to Date: 1,067.6 nm
Days since last donating to Posideon: 2
Items donated: Toe ring, rug (it needed to go anyway and was all cotton so fish friendly) and a rag (All in Los Frailes, it was a bad day) Also almost lost my short board with a big gust of wind, when I was taking off the SUP from the board rack. THAT wasn’t fun as the current was pretty strong as well. I took off on the SUP chasing after it and it took me a good 20 minutes to get back to the boat fighting the winds and current. Hilarious after the fact, no so much at the time. Still chuckling thinking about a rug at the bottom of the ocean, nice decor for some fish, you know spruce things up a bit for them.

Cabo: The Super Highway

27 February 2018 | Cabo San Lucas, BC
Courtney
We arrived in Cabo San Lucas on Feb 17. Two day, one night sail from Mag Bay was gorgeous and mostly uneventful. Leaving Mag Bay was a quiet 1 hour motor out of the bay, passing again the posse of whale tour pangas, scurrying about after more (or the same) 10+ whales hanging out in the mouth of the bay. I finally had read in one of our travel books that it was gray whales migrating season and not uncommon for large group sightings around where we were (ah ha!) So expect to hear about more sightings as we continued further south!

Both days were incredibly calm, with same light N, NW winds about 10kts, gusts up to 15 and literally glassy seas, with bright warm sunshine. Might be the first time we enjoyed a sail that I didn't need to wear my RX patch, which was a big accomplishment within itself. Since we bought our boat almost two years ago, I have battled sea sickness most every time we went out. Sometimes it would be for our entire trip, other times it would just be the first 24 hours and then I would be fine. Jay had told me once that for new pilots in the military, who suffer from motion sickness, they will send them to a special school to "train" their bodies out of it. (Sounds just delightful, right? Screw band camp and sign me the heck up!) Well, hearing this, I figured, I too can "train" myself to overcome it...and sadly, it's still obviously a work in progress without military grade training. Regardless, I have a large supply of Transderm patches to help me out and not render me completely useless. Mind you, this is after trying everything else under the sun that hasn't worked--the shock bracelets were especially terrible for me. These mini torture devices, as they should be aptly marketed as, you wear around your wrist like a watch. They send out small shocks in second intervals-you set strength of shock and interval timing - which are supposedly directed to specific pressure points in your wrist thought to eliminate motion sickness. And at a pretty penny of about $120 each. My god, those things are medieval torture devices--I can literally see that company laughing all the way to the bank. I should write them hate mail in the form of Arabian camel fleas socks or Florida fire ants underroos for the two hour sail trial run I withstood) Anyway, I have been selective in wearing the patches, allowing myself just enough discomfort to force my body to adjust, but not so much that I'm in the fetal position, in a sleeping bag, eyes closed and focusing all my energy on not feeling so awful. Anyone that gets sea sick, knows exactly the feeling I am taking about--its plain awful. So, the first real full day of both me feeling great and enough winds that we could enjoy a nice day of easy sailing-BRING IT ON!

Enroute day one, I am looking out into the great watery expanse and see a brown object off in the distance to our portside. I sit up to get a better look; kinda looks like a rock or maybe floating cardboard? I check radar and our various charts -nothing is showing up as random rocks where we are even despite being a good distance offshore and in over 2,000ft depths....what the heck is that?! I take the binoculars out, not wanting to wake Jay from his siesta, bothering him with floating trash sightings, assuming that's what it would be.

AHHHHHHH---TURTLE!!

so, I wake Jay up :)

For the rest of the day, we came upon tons and tons of turtles! They just float at the surface, shell exposed, looking like small and large floating rocks. I sadly didn't get a good picture of a single one as they are quite shy. As soon as we would get close enough to one for a good Kodak moment, they would dive down and go out of sight. But man, we saw some HUGE ones!! Getting the bino's out, we could watch them sunbath, some would even lift their fins/feet out of the water and sun their "arms" for a bit too, in a sort of synchronize swimmer dance like twirl. But mostly they just did the Deadman's Float, warming up their shell and likely snoozing.

Man, I love turtles and maybe just as much as dolphins. I was kind of hoping that one would be curious enough and want to come with us. How cool would that be? A pet sailboat turtle. Obviously, we would name him "Turtle" and he would naturally have an Aussie accent, like all turtles supposedly do per Finding Nemo and he would want to come surfing with me all day everyday. And he would subsist on pizza, so low overhead to keep. #winning

--

So Cabo. Wow...where do I begin? We arrived to the mouth of the bay in Cabo around late afternoon, racing the sunset. As we approached the bay, you round this point (where the famous arch is, showcased by many picture/travel books:


Approach





this one. But rounding this point is a bit of a blind bend--and holy jesus the traffic of boats coming in and out of the bay. Imagine Heathrow/JFK/Los Angeles/Tokyo/De Gaulle airspace all packed into one complete sh*tshow of boats. All going every which way, with no apparent rhyme or reason of due course or rules of the road, so to speak. You have massive powerboats/sportfishing boats, sailboats, dinghies, pangas, booze cruise catamanrans, water taxi's...you name it. It's basically a free for all in whoever makes it first coming in and out. Like oil droplets on a hot frying pan or taxi cab drivers in NYC--makes no god damn sense.


Alas, even Mexican pirates have succumb to the tourism business, being more lucrative then booty hunting in the Sea of Cortez, I guess? They now are offering arch tours (now crossing 'becoming a pirate of the high seas' off my list of potential new careers)

Now usually this isn't as shocking to come upon such chaos of boats when entering a big bay, but keep in mind we had barely seen towns or villages, let alone people in groups for the past few weeks. The biggest activity we experienced in a day was a handful of whales, or dolphin pod sightings. So coming up to this was a bit of a culture shock. Even Ensenada, a major major port wasn't this busy! Jay and I just kept laughing and repeating to ourselves "damn ....people everywhere" Also, drunk people on booze cruises are hilarious to watch.

The cruise books we had been following (Charlie's Chart and Cruising Mexico) all suggest the best anchorage as being tucked just into the north of the bay, beyond the swim areas beaches, right along the hotel strip and basically just beyond all this mayhem. (We had no desire to rent an overly priced slip and after seeing this mayhem coming in and out of the bay, we didn't really want to continue into the harbor anyway) So, we knew this was going to be a loud anchorage. Well, let's say our guesses were not wrong. You literally drop your hook, about 200 yards away from the massive strip of hotels jn downtown Cabo. Im going to equate it to popping a campsite tent in the middle of the Vegas strip. It was a fun (temporary) change and we all got a good kick out of how different this anchorage was than any of our previous spots. Here is a video of something we common saw pass by us, oh about every 15 minutes for the three days we were here.



At nights, you can hear a cacophony of competing club music coming from all the nearby hotels, bright spotlights from clubs in downtown Cabo dancing across the skyline, as well as the beaches teaming with tiki torches, fire pits....and you guessed it, drunk (in love) vacationers. On one particular night we heard this beautiful opera music coming from the hotel nearest us, competing with a mashup of heavy beat club music and a DJ directing dance moves (in loud spanglish)..followed by an excited boom of "BAILA BAILA BAILA" (meaning: "dance, dance dance")

For Jay and I, getting to Cabo was a big first milestone for us, outside of entering Ensenada and foreign waters. Cabo, for us was an accomplishment of rounding the entire west coast of Baja and a marker point for completing the first major leg of our long trip. We had made it and without major incident. BOAT was in great shape, we had managed to (mostly) handle all of the issues that arose and were still happily married (horray!) We fist bumped and toasted our milestone with a cocktail watching the drunk beach goers and beautiful tequila sunrise colored sunset our first night. The fruits of all our preparations the months leading up to our trip and actually leaving our dock back in CA were finally starting to sink in.

We spent about three days in Cabo, taking the time to catch our breath, relish in reaching our milestone waypoint and enjoying the opportunity to explore Cabo. Being the first major city we had visited since leaving Ensenada, we want to take advantage of nearby stores for reprovisioning and getting random items we needed (one of the cars on our mainsail broke in Mag Bay, so we needed to find a chandlery to see if we could get a new one to replace AND laundry!)



Day One, we picked up our friends on LAMANEE and headed into the Marina dinghy dock to explore town, and get lay of the land for future shopping trips (with a dinghy as our "car" and space for a few large shopping bags and only one large dry bag, we needed to plan our trips carefully, avoiding too much back and forth from dock to boat with supplies and survive the trip dodging all the traffic in and out) Main interest, besides checking out the town, were to get fuel and to plan a trip to local mercados and Costco for restocking of meats/fresh veggies. Side note: we had read and been told that you cannot bring red meat into Mexico. If boarded and found, they would be confiscated. Based on the "if's" and not wanting to donate to the Federales nighttime dinners (yes we are slightly pessimistic they weren't taken only due to country regulations) we brought only a small amount from the US..which we were already out of. AND all our fresh produce was now gone too.)

For those that know me well, I am pretty finicky when it comes to food (God bless you Mom and Dad for putting up with my weird, vegan/vegetarian/it-has-a-odd-texture-then-I-wont-eat-it multiple phases I went thru as a kid/teenager--still haven't grown out of that as an adult either). One of my biggest fears, outside of encountering massive seas like in a Perfect Storm, having a major medical emergency and needing to use the sutures in our medical kit, or having a Titanic like run in with an unseen and highly unlikely massive floating object in the middle of the night, was the idea of having to subsist on canned food (Spam--vomit!), Kraft Mac and Cheese and other processed non perishable, DInty Moore dinners for the next 6-8 months. No freaking way! However, I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised at being dead wrong in this thinking. Thankfully BOAT is equipped with a great size fridge and freezer and substantial storage space being dedicated to food. And AMAZON, you were a major life saver! I spent a good amount of time in the months leading up to our departure researching healthy/delicious alternatives to processed non perishable items that we could pack and bring. THANK GOODNESS I DON'T HAVE TO LIVE ON MRE's!!! Glory Hallelujah (and despite what any of you military people think--that stuff is gross. and yes, I know when you are THAT hungry you will eat everything and anything. I'll chew on my rubber Havianas instead thank you very much.) Check our MRE's HERE if you don't know what the heck I am talking about...and be thankful for that blissful ignorance of not knowing....

Cooking and creating meals has actually been hugely enjoyable for me and I am finding that I am becoming more creative and spontaneous in cooking, playing with flavor, spices and texture combination. With limited space and the art form of provisioning (it's seriously is an art form--I can't tell you how many blogs and books I read, downloading spreadsheets, calculating how much food two people eat over a period of x number of days, taking tips from others on how to plan and shop for food when you cruising) So many factors you don't even think of, such as not necessarily having a store nearby to grab extra ingredients, if they even carry them in foreign countries, space being limited and fresh items having to be consumed first to avoid waste. Needless to say, its a challenge in getting creative in multiple uses and combinations of few items/ingredients to create variety in meals AND make it tasty and healthy. Needless to say despite all these fears and seemingly daunting task of trying to best prepare ahead of time, we are actually eating better and healthier than we both ever have. I don't think we have eaten a canned dinner yet and with an extremely varied menu every night. MRE's are still safely tucked away with our ditch bag and will remain as such, thank you sweet baby Jesus.

So with all this being said, I was excited to take a trip to the local mercado and find whatever fresh produce they had to work into our meals for the next few days. I was also really missing some of my favorite staples: a nice crispy head of romaine lettuce and apples!



So here is the funny thing about directions in Mexico--no one person can agree on specific sets of directions to get you to a desired location....the same grocery store can both be only 1 km away down a specific street as well as 60km away down a series of twists and turns of differing roads. That or they had no clue what their neighboring store was. Common exchange:

Me: Do you have a grocery store nearby?
Them: Uh, I don't think so.
Me: Oh, so there s no nearby place to buy fruits and meats?
Them: Oh yes.
Me: ok...? Can you tell me how to get there?
Them: Go three blocks down this street, turn left, go four more blocks and its on your right
Me: (repeating directions back)
Them: Yes, or you can go straight and its on your left
Me: huh?
Them: Yes easy very close
Me: Uh ok, thanks...?

Also, everyone we asked for help, assumed we only wanted Walmart (After third time, I started my inquiry by prefacing with NO ME GUESTA WALMART.... I can count on one hand how many times I have been in a Walmart in my life in the States...and I definitely didn't want a Walmart for meat and fresh produce.....

So we all set off on day one to find a local mercado for meats and veggies. Well Explorer Bob we did and we went on the most "Where's Waldo" hunt of our lives. We must have asked about 5 different people where we could find a local mercado, each time explaining in succinct detail what we were looking for and each time, being sent on a wild goose chase up and down back roads and dirt hills in the countryside of Cabo looking for a damn local supermarket. One time, we were even sent about 20 minutes outside of the city (walking up steep incline hills in both directions in the sleet, snow and hurricanes...ok I might have embellished just a bit on the sleet and hurricane part) BUT we ended up at a store that is a combination of Staples and Costco..weirdest store ever! and no freakin produce at all! Just aisle of office products backed up against aisle of weird and unusual Asian spices and cleaning products (seriously where the heck were we?!)

After two roaming-the-Cabo-countryside hours, we gave up the search temporarily and found ourselves at a super Americanized bar to have marguerites and reassess continuing with this epic hajj or abandon all hope and return to the boat empty handed like Columbus' First Expedition. But, naturally drinks would solve our woes! Thankfully the bartender was able to aptly explain and give directions to places other than the one Walmart in town where us gringos could find a local market. Well, three (strong) marguerites each in and the power of tequila coursing thru our veins we, like Don Quixote and Pancho Villa set off again to find our holy mercado! (Actually more like Carl from Idiot Abroad, and if you don't get my reference, look it up now and watch!)

And lo and behold, would you imagine the damn store was a block away from the marina we started from. A block away! Well, my butt appreciated the stair master work out regardless, even if my strength was tequila powered for the second half.

Arms full and fresh meats and veggies we returned to our boat day one to cook up some yummy meals.

Day two, Jay and I set off to find Costco to buy some bulk meats and restock on some snacks and potential electronic equipment we needed. Our Go Pro case had broken and without the attachments we aren't able to video without hand holding anymore--big time bummer.

With plans to take the bus from the Marina to the Costco that the map showed being a few miles outside of the city, we set off out of town. We drop laundry along the way, after reading a few promising reviews of a quick and easy fluff and fold service just outside of downtown. Deciding half way after the laundry stop, we changed tactics and wanted to walk the full distance, enthused about the walk and stretching our legs for a second day. We would then take the bus back from Costco once we had arms full of groceries. Walking along the main street as you get outside of town, you begin to notice the devastation from the hurricane that hit Cabo a few years back. Full strips of land are lined with abandoned buildings, some boarded up but completely dilapidated. Other buildings, like the Ford dealership, had windows and walls completely knocked out and sand filling to almost the ceilings of the remaining cement structure. Work was still being done on some places (like the dealership) to restore and repair. Other buildings completely abandoned and with "For Sale" signs sadly hung.


hilarious hot dog restaurant with clever marketing. Zoom in to see the name --just above the Red car . When you see it....

With about a mile to go, we decided we are hungry and using our noses, find this great little restaurant along our route. Its open air and with beautiful, simple and authentic Mexican decor: dark wood tables, brightly colored napkins and tablecloths, pictures lining the wall with both family and local artists and a delicious aroma as topping to the beautiful ambiance. An open kitchen in the very back, showcases the made to order meals being prepared, fresh tortillas being ground and made by a little Mexican woman standing barely above the tabletop, smiling away as she labors over the grill and hot plates.

I cannot tell you how yummy the food was here. It was the first authentic, real Mexican meal we had eaten since getting to Baja. Deep spices, fresh produce, non americanized meal--amazing! We eventually met the owner and chatted with him at length about the restaurant, how it came to be and how he now runs it with his British wife and his extended Mexican familia. (His extended family and children were eating at the table next to us.) A real labor of love and a beautiful story! Naturally, since we are gushing about the food and an experience we had looked forward to since getting to Baja but hadn't found, he asks if we would mind shooting a short promotional video, so he can post on his Facebook page.

DONA NATA VIDEO LINK HERE

After finishing our meal and a promise to return the following day we head out to Costco, which happen to be just across the street.

Costco, as expected is the absolute anthesis of what we just experienced. A large bustling Costco filled with predominantly white Americans shopping around. Signs are in a mixture of both English and Spanish. The location itself sits high atop a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean and just 5 miles outside of the tourist downtown area--not bad! We rush thru and in record-never-been-done-before-in-the-history-of-Costco-shopping (or Target shopping for that matter) are in and out in under 30 minutes and with only spending $100! Big time bust on the meats tho, as surprisingly all the meats were extremely expensive and with leaner cuts than we were looking for (Being the prima donna that I am and newly venturing into enjoying red meat after a 20 year stint of being a solely chicken-and-fish-eating odd person, I only like Try Tip cut meats....go figure, their tri-tip was incredibly expensive and limited in remaining selection)



We hike it back to the bus stop which is just at the entrance to Costco. Arms filled with random and useless snacks and beverages, the bus system is super simple and straight forward. 5 minute ride and we are back to the marina! We get back to the dinghy dock to see two huge pelicans sitting on the bow of our dinghy and had apparently decided to use our dinghy as a latrine. If you aren't familiar with Pelican poo, their digestive system turns seafood diets into grey cement waste. Mercy on their digestive system as I have no clue how this stuff is processed and passed thru without solidifying in the transit out (If karma does exist, then I wish it on these two As*holes Of The Air to have horrendous constipation for a week) But regardless, its beyond disgusting and near impossible to remove. Of course, they decided the outhouse area was where my seat is and maybe thought it nice to decorate my seat with their cement like Jackson Pollock style butt artwork.

(Side note: Mom/Dad, if you are reading this, I am really sorry that I just spent an entire paragraph describing Pelican Poop, using descriptives such as "butt artwork" and "as*holes of the air" Ladylike, of me, I know. Hopefully, you can think of other proud parenting moments with me and let this one slide....What can I say, bodily functions, they are funny to talk about and coming up with euphemisms for them is a fun, creative outlet for me.)

Anyway...enough locker room talk. We load our bags and ourselves into the dinghy and head back to the boat (me gingerly avoiding messing up the "local artwork") As we exit the harbor, we see that winds have substantially picked up since we arrived and are now white capping in the bay and seas have picked up to about 2ft swells. Awesome....and now is when we realized we also forgot our dry bag. Selfie time before we are totally wet and very sad:


10 long and windy, wet minutes later we arrive back at our boat. We are both completely drenched soaking wet, the cement pelican poop art is now a sludgy slimy grey mess or finger paint looking art and amazingly our groceries are somewhat dry (most importantly my 3lb bag of tortillas is unscathed in this wet debacle, I really didn't care about anything else beyond my chips not getting wet or poo soaked. Priorities, man!)

I never thought I would say this (amoungst, many, many other things in this post I never thought I would type), but in that moment after return, I briefly missed the simplicity of the traffic hellhole of Los Angeles; driving 1 hour to go grocery shopping at a store 5 minutes away. No wind, waves. mexican directions or cement Pelican poo to worry about. Seriously, who worries about Pelican cement-poo ruining their otherwise perfect day?

Also, yet again another sentence I never imagined I would write....

--
Last Passage Distance: 150 nm (Mag Bay -> Cabo)
Cumulative Distance to Date: 975.6nm
Days since last donating to Posideon: 2
Items donated: Our favorite and super lucky Fishing Lure Senor Mexico (RIP while enroute to Cabo, sorry Stan :( we think he was taken by either a Marlin or Shark. He went down with a fight tho, the fishing line was THRASHED when we pulled it back up.

Bahia Magdalena

20 February 2018 | Bahia Magdalena
Courtney
What a beautiful anchorage! After making our jaunt from Turtle Bay, we decided to anchor in Man o War cove—which is 5 mi inside Bahia Magdalena - a massive, massive bay (think San Fran Bay massive)

When we arrived in the late morning, we were welcomed by a few whales just outside the entrance to the bay. As we rounded the point, the seas and winds calmed substantially making for a very easy motor, no sail in. In the distance, we could barely make out what looked like little rocks far off in the distance, straight ahead of us. None of our charts or guidebooks outlined low-lying rocks in the middle of the bay, so we kept a vigilant watch on them trying to figure out what in the heck they were. Fishing boats? Buoys? Weird Mexican traps of some kind? Retarded boaters floating in the middle of the bay? After watching them for awhile, we noticed four of them would shift together, racing towards a specific direction in a group. Ok, maybe drunk fisherman playing some odd game? Eventually and now within about 200 yards of them, we realized they were whale watching tours and, how we didn’t notice this before, but a TON, and I mean a TON! of whales! There was at least 10 pangas and about 10-15 whales just surfing around the bay, some in groups (parents with their small young, elderly grandparents taking a romantic afternoon swim, some punk teenagers out looking to cause a rucous--because, yes animal groups have the same social systems as us, obviously!) and some that were more loner style. So cool and so incredibly hilarious to watch these tour boats racing in the direction of the whale spouts, coming within inches of the whales, who didn’t seem to mind at all being on display for their audience of onlookers. THIS is what Sea World should be about!! Happy little whales cruising around in their big ocean habitat, and us, the foreigners, quietly and respectfully observing from a distance. It was breathtaking, really. I tried unsuccessfully to video both the hilarity of the tour boats scurrying about the bay in packs as well as catching these massive marine beasts floating along. Sadly, my previously impeccable timing was a bit off today and every video is just of rolling seas or grainy, shaky video of the tour boats. Actually, more commonly, its just video of my thumb squished against the screen and muffled sounds of me ‘ooh-ing’ and ‘aww-ing’ at the whales, none of which are even remotely clear as to what I was trying to capture. So in any case, you just have to take my word for it on what it looked like :) It was cool—whales, boats, people, nature and a lot of seawater.

Man o War anchorage was a DREAM!!! Seas were like glass and incredibly quiet! On anchor we felt like we were in a slip it was that calm! And literally no sounds at all, besides one other sailboat we were the only other boats anchored—dead quiet day and night. It was absolute bliss!



Man o War is a big open bay, with a gradual sloping shelf leading to the beach. Little sand bars begin to peak out about 50 yards away from us and then become fully exposed like little islands during low tide. There is a very small, ittsy bittsy teeny-weeny town on the beach comprised of about 40 houses, one restaurant, two small “tiendas” which I was sure where actually peoples homes with front area retrofitted to resemble a store front.

We stayed for about three days. Day one and two we took the opportunity for some much needed rest and down time. Literally do nothing; no boat repairs, no cleaning, no rearranging, no travel planning, no must-go here and do this chores…literally doing. nothing. Jay sat in the cockpit, headphones on and listening to his book slash cat napping all thru out the day. I finally busted out my Paddleboard, tied off to the stern and floated, fully stretched out with my book and life vest as a pillow. Talk about multitasking with all of my favorite things; getting a tan, catching up on reading AND floating on the water with my SUP—who says you cant have your cake and eat it too?! I of course, tried to take a selfie here to capture this— which was a total fail. Oh well, like I said, still working on my portfolio for Nat Geo—it make take me a decade or two to get the right material, but practice is a start. I'm sure Ansel Adams probably shot a few terribly lit landscape shots with his thumb blurring the entire lens in the beginning, right?

As I shared before, there is a really small town just nearby where we anchored. We ventured in one day to explore, but quiet honestly it was so tiny that we had seen everything in about 30 minutes. The locals were kind enough to open up a store for us to buy some snacks, which was occupied by a younger man, sitting outside the “storefront” on his phone, I think watching Youtube videos (hows that for some odd juxtapositon?!) He yells to his grandmother to come and help us (because obviously too busy watching Youtube to get up and walk the 5 inches to help us, but instead doesn’t even move a muscle and just yells for his poor grandmother to walk/hobble around from the back house and help these dumb gringos—nice kid! Isn't mexican culture all about respecting the abuelos?!)

After we leave a gang of local dogs comes up to us and decides they want to be our friends. Most of them were little tiny mutts, some cute, some not so much. One of them slightly resembled the Anthony Weiner look alike dog meme (anyone else know what I am referring to?) However, this one massive dog comes over and decides to take a particular liking to me (why not pick the smallest in the group to harass, right?!). Like all dogs, he starts shoving his face into my stomach/crotch area (he was waist height to me and was basically Courtney horse size—no clue what mix he was.) Well, Jay of course notices that this dog is, errrm, still intact AND very interested in me. So, naturally because he knows it will get a rise out of me, starts teasing me that the dog wants to mount me. I, being only half the size of this massive dog, and noticing his uhm, man parts are like medium size floatation devices—I freak out, and try to get away from the dog. This only encourages the dog more to follow me—sticking his nose in my butt and basically acting as if he was in on the joke with Jay. Thankfully, the dog was being playful and not aggressive at all with me, but still, strange dogs that are massive in size AND getting up in my business trying for sexy time—yeah, no. Look Muchacho, you might be the king of this town and a hot tamale to the other perras in this hood, but I aint one and I am not interested in playing this little game anymore.

Meanwhile everyone else is laughing hysterically, including likely some locals watching this all go down. I am not. I sprint towards the water hoping the dog won’t follow me

....and then I remembered his “floatation devices”—crap! Dog, of course follows me into the water, crouches down just down stream of me and then proceeds to relieve himself. I guess that was his equivalent of the middle finger to me for my rejection of his Bailando de Amor (love dance)

--

Our last day in Mag Bay, Jay and I take the dinghy to go explore San Carlos—which is a commercial port and Port of Entry. We had heard there was a small town there and wanted to go check out. The dingy ride was a good distance away, so Jay decided to rig our dingy for comfort



While it look ridiculous and I almost told him to take the chairs off, it was actually quite comfortable and I appreciated it after the fact for the long ride into town. (With the winds and sea chop coming at us, this was a very wet and slightly uncomfortable ride there. Took us a good 40 minutes to get to San Carlos.)

[Quick side note: I had brought the GoPro with us to take video and pictures of this trip. And wouldn’t you know, 5 minutes into the dinghy ride, I go to bust it out to shoot some video and the damn thing is out of batteries—Son of a….!!??) Anyway, my description will have to do, as I have no pictures to share whatsoever!)]

Anyway, continuing on with my story, as you round the point of San Carlos, the commercial dock comes into view. It is a massive cement dock, with a few old tires nailed into sides acting as pseudo bumpers. There are only two big fishing boats tied up and absolutely no one around. You can kind of smell the eau de fishing boats, which I guessed the seagulls could smell as well as there was a LARGE swarm of them circling the boat. So big a grouping of birds, that Jay and I both commented on how it was slightly Alfred Hitchcock-eque with the amount of seagulls circling and sitting on the tin rooftop of a nearby vacant and run down building on the dock.

We round the corner of the commercial dock looking for a safe place to land the dinghy. There really isn’t anyone around, a few houses dot the coastline, but everything seems pretty desolate and uninhabited. We know the whale watching tour boats (medium sized pangas) must have come from this direction, so we are trying to find their dock. Finally, in the distance, we see a small shoreline and a few brightly colored pangas beached with anchors. Nearby are a few two story building, well maintained and a few huts just beyond on the beach. Building are traditional Spanish style adobe, thick cement structure with arched open-air doorways and windows, clay red and orangish yellow in colors, giving a bright cheerful look. Decks are shaded with straw and bamboos screens. A big outdoor bar area is covered with a straw thatched awning and decorated with hanging lights and brightly colored strings of “papel picado”.

As we beach the dinghy, this super creepy dude slinks out of the bush about 20 yards away…and is staring/ignoring us but trying to be low key and watching us… Clearly homeless, or tweaked out. Jay turns his back and tells me to ignore him. Um—no! I defiantly stand, fully facing him and staring right back—making it very clear I see him there. Jay tells me to run up towards the buildings and see if there is actually anything there before we decide to stay.

As I am coming back to report of a cute little hotel and restaurant, totally unexpectedcted from what it looked like from the rest of the land, Jay has pulled the dinghy back into shore much closer to the other beached pangas. Creepy dude is gone and no where to be seen. I had run into the owner of the hotel on my walk about in, kindly asking if we could beach our dinghy and if safe here. He speaks perfect English and tells me its very safe and to, of course, bring our dinghy, come and walk around. His staff will watch our dinghy for us and make sure ok. GREAT!

San Carlos is unexpectedly super cute! Tiny town, with one major street, lined with convenient stores, restaurants and hotels. Some with nicer facades then others, and some total abandoned, open for lease. Streets are extremely clean and well maintained. The main street's divider island is newly landscaped, with tiny palms and bougainvillea bushes peeking out and beginning to cover the dirt/rock landscaping.

Being late in the afternoon and not having eaten anything yet for the day, Jay and I are starved! Tempted by our noses, and being well beyond the point of hunger, we settle on a TO GO BBQ chicken shop. We take our meals, quickly stop by a convenient store to pick up two beers and head back to the beach for a late afternoon picnic on the beach.

OH--I forgot to mention! This was Valentine’s Day!

So, we have our romantic BBQ chicken and beers lunch on the beach watching the whale pangas tours workers clean and repair the pangas; lively, hilarious bunch of guys. They are yelling back and forth at each other - making jokes, splashing around and teasing each other with the occasional suggestive thrusting of their hips dance. Who knew we would have lunch and entertainment! Best Valentines Ever!

As we ready to leave, we notice that the tide has gone out and where before we beached our dinghy with about 20 yards to deeper water, we now have about 50 yards to water…..whomp, whomp. Guess we are getting our exercise in!

After a good 15 minutes dragging our dinghy, huffing and puffing, we finally get it into deeper water and we are off back to BOAT!

Heading out the next morning for a 150nm jaunt and FINALLY TO CABO!!!!!

Playing Go Fish, Minesweeper and The Panhandlers of the High Seas

13 February 2018 | Bahia Magdalena
Courtney
We have arrived in Bahia Magdalena after a 3 day, 250nm sail. Think this was our best passage yet! Very eventful and winds finally, finally picked up so we were actually able to sail!! I will share this post broken into three parts to cover all the exciting events that happened in my best condensed version.

Playing Go Fish
One of the biggest things Jay and I were looking forward to on this trip was catching delicious dinners. Mexican waters are known for their big sport fishing; having an abundance of Tunas, Mahi, Lobster, and Marlin among other things. Not that we are into big sportfishing, but being able to catch a fresh fish dinner was a highlight we were looking forward to. We have three poles onboard as well as two spearguns (I am beyond excited to teach myself how to spearfish-bring on the warm waters and my hunting prowess!!!)

If you have any gear onboard it is mandatory to get fishing licenses when in Mexico. As I shared in a previous post, the process was super easy and relatively cheap (USD$50 for both of us for the entire year). So, we have been trolling since we got into Mexico, but with no such luck yet....

Leaving Bahia de Tortugas, the water was considerably warmer-which is exactly where all the good fishing happens! We put out our Mexican lure (it's a plastic thingamabob, my non-fishing term for it, and I'm too lazy to get up and ask Jay what the real name of it is) It has feathers the color of the Mexican flag and was given to us by a boating buddy who swore by its crazy ability to catch tons of fish in Mexican waters. Whelp, this was to be our day and what we have been waiting for (and I know some of you have been asking for fish pictures, so time for us to deliver-which is hopefully the start of many more)

Around mid-morning the trolling pole excitedly starts making the best sound ever

"whirrrrr-tssssssk" as the line goes off sounding something pulling on it.

Wide eyed and big smiles, Jay and I leap up and run over. Jay grabs the pole and gives a few good tugs to check if actually a fish or another false alarm (we've caught seaweed and sadly some trash, so while still always hopeful-we knew a potential for letdown). NOT THIS TIME! Baby was tugging right back. He starts to pull the line in and work the fish as we ready to take the pole out of the holder and transfer to Jay. Another big tug and then Jay starts swearing. The fish let go...maybe? We keep the line in, I jump up on the deck to get a better angle to see what/where the fish is, while Jay continues to work the line.

"Whirrrrr-tsssssskkkk"

It bites again, Jay gives another good pull-fish tugs back and then lets go again. Nothing for a few seconds. Jay joins me on the cockpit deck as we watch the water. Then we both see it--a huge (at least 4' long dark thing in the water chasing the lure!!). Never seen anything like that!! So this fish, whatever the heck it was followed curiously hunted that lure for a good 5-10 minutes as we watched. Honestly, quite happy it let go as I am not sure we would have wrestled to pull that monster out of the water. Again, we are just looking for a nice dinner-not to conquer Goliath of the ocean.

Fast forward an hour later. Back sitting in the cockpit, letting time pass. Trolling pole is back up in its spot, lure out.

"whirrrrr-tssssssskkkkkkk"

We jump up like excited kids at Christmas as if we just heard Santa's Sleigh Bells (also having a slight Dory moment, always excited as if it's the first time we have ever heard this sound, Haha! Oh expectational enthusiasm!)

And HECK YES!! This time we got a fighting fish for sure!!

Jay wrestles with this guy for a solid 10-15 minutes. Fish is fighting back like crazy the closer it gets to the boat. Jay's making these weird caveman-like grunting/groaning huffing/puffing sounds--first fish reeling workout of the trip (and I now assume what happens when men are in their primal element; man versus nature, in the wild and hunting for dinner--sorta odd to observe, ladies. It's like they morph in front of you and I was half expecting Jay to start beating his chest after getting our first fish--didn't happen. And thankfully they go back to being their normal domesticated selves shortly after the "kill"...but I digress.) Anyway, I'm videoing the whole time-capturing this awesome moment and laughing my ass off.

Finally he gets the fish close enough and it's about a 22-24" beautiful bluefin tuna! YAY!!! SUSHI DINNER!!

I'm happy dancing around the boat making up some kind of song about sushi and dinner (likely just me repeating those two words in a sing-songy two word rap) Jay's still grunting and fighting the fish (obviously I am of no help in the actual fishing part, this was all Jay. I just offer encouragement in the form of entertaining song/interpretative dance. And maybe thats exactly what cave-ladies did back in prehistoric times--who knew I was unknowingly reverting into ancient primal habits myself?!)

I grab the gafe as Jay has managed to get it to the boat--we can TASTE dinner now. However this little bastard is fighting like crazy still! To not ruin the ending, Here is the final video conclusion of our bluefin tuna dinner:



What I wish I actually did catch is right after I stopped recording, I pan to Jay who is hunched over and completely silent. I see his jaw slightly jutted out and set a certain way. "Omg," I ask, "are you crying?"

whispering "yes"

And then we both start cracking up.
--
A few hours later and determined now to catch something our line is back out and it's back to zoning out on deck again, enjoying the sun and silence sans motor.

"Whirrrrrr-tssssskkkk"

"Oh heck YES!!" We both leap up towards the pole. Repeat process from last two times.YEP IT'S A FISH!

"DINNER"

Jay mildly fights with this guy for just about 5 minutes before he is able to pull him in close to see what we have

MAHI MAHI!!and the perfect size first catch for us and dinner

I grab the gafe and Jay hooks him effortlessly.



YAY!!

Contrary to what I previously thought, while a good amount of blood, Jay fileting the Mahi wasn't as gross as I thought. Except for when he announced that our "dinner" recently snacked on some, no correction ALOT of shrimp. I kinda threw up in my mouth then--I could have done without an autopsy report, Coroner Jay thank you very much.

We grilled up the Mahi that night, light seasoning of olive oil, lemon pepper and Dukkah spice mix -DELISH and cannot wait for more!!

Playing Minesweeper
So you all know the classic game Minesweeper, right? Well this is very similar to going thru crab/lobster trap country on the ocean. In shallow waters (like a few hundred feet versus being way offshore in thousands of feet deep waters) you have to be on the lookout for crab/lobster traps from the local fisherman. Usually they are clearly marked with brightly colored buoys floating on the water, which you can easily pick out and avoid running over. Obviously we don't want the lines getting tangled in our propellor as makes for a pretty messy situation that would really, really suck to get out of.

Well when you have been staring out into the great expanse of the ocean for hours on end, sometimes it takes your brain a bit to register when you see a buoy.

Around late afternoon following our exciting fish catching morning, we suddenly find ourselves amongst some buoys. Jay takes the helm and we maneuver around a few. We can see the fishing boat in the distance, but not sure if he is dropping or lifting them yet. As we continue south on our track we quickly realize THERE ARE A MILLION POTS AROUND US. AHHHHHH!!!!

And so begins the game of Minesweeper. Do you go left or right? You also run the risk of the traps being tethered together so not only do you need to avoid the buoys, BUT you must also keep a look out for catching lines that run BETWEEN the buoys. Arghhhhh!!!

Whelp, needless to say, we hit a "Bomb" and it was game over for us. Whomp, whomp.

Jay starts swearing (yes, this a running theme on our trip, Jay swearing followed by something not so fun happening)
Anyway, he's swearing like I shared-so I run to starboard side of our boat to see a bright yellow line caught under our boat, and the buoy pulling towards us. Jay tries to counter steer and shake the line off. Meanwhile, I'm yelling at Jay and hanging off the side of the boat asking for a knife so I can cut the line before the buoy goes under Too late! And under the boat goes the buoy--

Sh*t

We struggle for a few minutes trying to steer around and let current help us break the line free--all while under sail, mind you, as we CANNOT turn the engine on and risk fouling our prop worse with a dread of a line.

No luck!!

Thankfully we still see the fishing boat in the distance, so I get on the bow of the boat and start waving them over. (While checking my google translate for the word 'crab pot' not something I had ever used before, nor heard)

Fisherman finally come over, I communicate that we have their trap and are stuck. I expected them to be very angry, but I think they were appreciative of us getting their attention so they could retain their trap and buoy. Within about 10 minutes they had cut the line, retrieved their trap, while Jay got their buoy. We thanked them for their help-they thanked us and we were on our way!!

Damn traps!

Panhandlers of the High Seas
This is a quick story but hilarious not to include. So evening time, same day as above-it's been a fun filled action packed day! Sun is setting and we are settling into our nighttime routines, dinner planning and getting our warm gear out from below to prepare for our watch schedule. Our buddy boat, Lamanee is just about 300 yards from us and a bit forward to our starboard side. I'm taking pictures of their boat as it's accented by the setting sun and just a lovely sight. A fishing panga is off in the distance and likely heading home to shore (about 50 miles away-remember this as important to the story). Days ending and this is the only other boat we see for miles. Panga takes an abrupt turn and starts heading towards our buddy boat. I sit up in interest, always staying vigilant for pirate encounters (see earlier entry on my over active imagination issues. I really need to reassess my media consumption choices)

So this panga beelines it to Lamanee, pulling up alongside them. They float like this for about 10 minutes. All the while I am straining to hear and watch body language to see if there is an issue-or we need to get over there to help out ASAP and stop a pirate takeover.

Panga takes off and Kandy comes on VHF.

Ready for this one? (....)

They wanted to know if they had any bread they could have to make a sandwich with....

Bread.
.....

They wanted bread.
.....

We are 50 miles offshore, no other boats around and haven't been for MILES, and .....these guys!

I'm dying....I can't 😂😂

Seriously,yYou can't make this stuff up!

BONUS MATERIAL: Night Time sailing
(The first time I tried to throw Jay overboard)

As I shared, we finally had wind this passage, which has been a HUGELY welcomed change from running the motor and motor sailing since leaving Oxnard back in late January. With a good consistent 10kt winds we pulled up the a-sail and decided to let her fly all night. Usually we have pulled her down at dusk as she is a pretty finicky sail and has twisted on us a few times around the forestay. So to not bother with potential issue we have pulled her down and gone with just the main at night, which has slowed us but makes for calm evenings to sleep. Wanting to take advantage of consistent winds and keep our speed of 5.5kts we decided to keep it up. Jay would sleep out on the cockpit during my watch shifts, god forbid issue arouse, he would be right there.

All was going great-consistent 10kt winds coming from about 120 off starboard, so a lovely jog of about 5.5 for most of my watch.

Around 11:30, the wind starts to pick up, with smaller gusts coming every 10 minutes upwards of 12-13kts. Our speed picks up to about 6kts and the boat heels over a bit. Not much but enough to get a little rush of excitement. Side note: nighttime sails are usually pretty boring and not something I look forward too. It's just hours on end of fighting to stay awake, highlighted by short-lived drama of seeing big cruise ships on our AIS and determining if you need to change course and avoid Titanic-like encounters.) So needless to say, this was something!!
I'm up out of my sleeping bag and at the helm-wanting to enjoy this moment of getting a little excitement! Wohoooo I'm silently saying so as to not wake Jay who is sleeping leeward side and doesn't seem phased by the little Bursts of speed.....yet (Grinchy eyebrow raise and wink)

Around midnight, the gust are getting up to 14-occasional 15kts. And BOAT is LOVING IT!!! She is a speedy little demon with some wind! Boat is now topping out at 7.2 and the rails are ALMOST in the water.

"HELL YEEEEEEAH!!!!!!" I'm dancing around the cockpit now wide wake and loving this!!!!

Soooo, Jay wakes to almost being dumped out of the cockpit into the water as we are really heeled over, rails grazing the water and his crazy wife at the helm hooting and hollering as the boat is speeding along in the night.

(He altered course soon after to slow us down so he could go back to sleep. My excitement was short lived....damn!)

Bonus BONUS material
Shortly after this fun adrenaline rush, things have calmed and I am back on watch, Jay nestled back in his sleeping bag/glowworm cocoon. I hear breathing in the water. Looking out I see we are surrounded by a HUGE pod of dolphins. Since nighttime, it's hard to see but I can hear them coming up and breathing. I can also see the waves cresting around them as they speed along with the phosphorescence lighting up all around them. It's like a psychedelic lighting show-waves illuminating around the boat, and I can also follow them as they speed along just underneath the water's surface--like a tunnel light show. I lean between the safety lines to get a closer look and...

Omg!

I can hear their high pitch sonar squeaks as they talk back and forth with each other!!

Obviously, being the ever considerate wife, I'm clearly not letting Jay sleep at all tonight, so I yell for Jay to wake up; excitedly telling him I can hear the dolphins talking to me (this might be the last night watch he sleeps on deck, let alone allows me to snack on candy and drink two cups of green tea before my night shift--WIFE has gone absolutely MAD!)

Well -- Yes, he can hear them "talking" as well!!

(At this moment I am waiting for god to appear, singing in a deep baritone "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" A technicolor rainbow arching across the sky, while unicorns are dancing and showering me with Skittles and soft puppies--it was that epic!)

We sit in silence for a good 10 minutes watching this trippy phosphorescent light show, listening to the dolphins breathe at the surface inches from our face and then speed along, diving in and out of waves, all the while they are click-clacking-squeak-talking back and forth to each other as the phosphorescent are cresting and lighting the ocean like a million lightening bugs rhythmically dancing across a huge blanket.

Today was seriously a magical day.....
Vessel Name: BOAT
Vessel Make/Model: Hunter 410
Hailing Port: Channel Islands, CA
Crew: Jay and Courtney
Social:
BOAT's Photos - BOAT
Photos 1 to 88 of 88 | Main
1
Potato Harbor
BOAT!
Skipper and First Mate
Muertos Anchorage 4
Coconut cocktails on the side of the road, San Blas
Muertos Anchorage 3
Muertos Anchorage 2
Muertos Anchorage 5
VALENTINES DAY CHARIOT
new helm seat!
Muertos Anchorage1
Enroute to Costco
Los Frailes Anchorage1
Who needs showers?
Isla Isabella
San Blas sunset
Los Frailes anchorage
Mahi catch for Lamanee outside Cabo
La Paz Marina; Marina Palmira
Marina Palmira, La Paz
La Paz
La Paz beach near Marina La Paz
La Paz
La Paz
La Paz
Court
Muertos Houses1
MUERTOS HOUSES 2
The beginning of a joke.... San Blas
Costco Haul - Cabo
MUERTOS HOUSES 4
Pirates and Cabo Arch
San Blas
Suenos Resort 3
Suenos Resort 2
Suenos Resort 1
San Blas
Approach to Cabo
First Bluefin Tuna catch!
Cabo Arch
Cabo Marina
Cabo Pirates
San Blas, after getting bug spray doused
Downtown Cabo
San Blas town center
MUERTOS HOUSES 3
Jay with his Bluefin catch
Cabo Shopping trip (before we got SOAKED)
Suenos 1
MAN O WAR ANCHORAGE IN MAG BAY
Water intake clog: Look what we discovered as route of our engine overheating issues-seaweed Scooby snack that BOAT had been stowing away
San Diego Marina and Public Docks
Ensenada Port Captain and Immigration offices
Ensenada from Cruisport Marina
Diesel trip with our bikes and Jerry cans; Ensenada
Santa Cruz Island Anchorage: Potato Harbor
Our neighbor in San Diego: Atessa
Our first catch!
Putting together the onboard medical kit...Pirate edition!
Cousin visit to BOAT, Oxnard
Marina in Cabo San Lucas
Don Quixote and Pancho Villa: After the tragic loss of our prized lure Senor Mexico (RIP) we found close replacements at the tackle store in downtown Cabo.  Let’s hope they work as well as Senor did
Muertos Anchorage
Street tacos In Sayulita
Fire dancing entertainment In Sayulita
Sayulita Beach
Iguana Sanctuary, Sayulita
Sayulita
Sayulita
Sayulita Beach
Sayulita
 
1