07/29/2010, Mazatlan is only 1.5 Days away!
With our rounding of the tip of Baja California Sur and the city of Cabo San Lucas, THIRD DAY has now officially started heading northward and entered the Sea of Cortez! It feels great to have made it back and I'm sure more than one bet has been lost, first when we actually left San Diego and secondly with the announcement that we have re-entered the Sea of Cortez. The third bet against us will hopefully go down to defeat when we reach the Bay of Los Angeles (BLA). My first timeline was to be anchored in BLA by August 1st, but the extra time it took for me to work on the watermaker project along with finding new renters will push our BLA arrival back by about 2 weeks.
We hope to spend about a week in Mazatlan getting our personal items off the old boat and getting it ready to seriously list for sale. It's hard to photograph and list a boat for sale when it's packed with personal gear, and yes even some junk! If there is space in the Singular dry storage yard (La Vita, can you check on this for a 36ft boat for us for the 3 month min?) for our Pearson, then we will have her pulled out of the water and spend the remainder of the summer and hurricane season up on the hard. I also wanted to have the boat surveyed so that a perspective buyer can see a third party opinion on the condition of the boat PRIOR to making a trip to Mexico. Besides I will need a new survey in October to renew my boat insurance anyway, so I might as well do it now and get the added benefit of being able to provide it to a perspective buyer. If the dry storage yard is full, then we will just move her to Marina Mazatlan and prepare her for spending the rest of the summer in the water.
As for us, we can't wait to see all of our friends again this summer up in the northern Sea of Cortez and get back into the cruising lifestyle. There's also the ulterior motive of wanting to unload all of the cargo we are caring down. We had so much stuff, we had to turn our aft stateroom head into a cargo locker and it's filled to the point of not being able to open the door without something falling out. The weight prize goes to our friends on SV Hotspur and their 80lb Manson Supreme anchor that is currently lashed to the base of our mast along with our 100lb anchor. We are just happy to be able to have the room to help people out a bit, because in the cruising community you always know that when you need a hand someone will be there for you.
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07/29/2010, 40 Miles North of Cabo San Lucas
It's currently 3AM on Thursday July 29th and I'm on watch while the rest of the crew, even Cortez the cat, is sleeping soundly down below. We are currently 63nm north of Cabo San Lucas and at our current pace of motor sailing in light to non-existent wind, should be rounding Cabo in about 14 hours, or by 5PM. The wind left us just after our fire this evening - -oh, I guess I should explain the use of the word fire before I continue. One of our favorite ways to cook fresh tuna is to cut the filet into chunks, marinate for a few hours in teriyaki sauce, and then for the grand finale wrap the chunks in bacon for grilling. Everything was going according to plan and the whole crew was excited to have a taste we haven't had in almost two years since our last trip down Baja, until the bacon grease decided to provide the fuel for combustion rather than the propane. It didn't help matters that we were cooking on what we like to call our Burn-B-Que otherwise known as the Magma Grill, which has the almost magical ability to do an impression of a crematorium on even the non-greasiest of foods. I was alerted to the problem by screams from both Lori and Amy along with a billowing cloud of white smoke that could have been seen from San Diego and easily mistook as a Mayday smoke signal. I was in the middle of a radio conversation during the evening's Southbound Net and by the time I made my way to the cockpit Lori had already turned off the propane but the flames were still shooting a good foot above the grill. All I could think about at first was the horror of seeing my glorious bacon wrapped tuna being turned into ashes with no way to stop it. Lori was ready to cut the Burn-B-Que lose from the rail and send the whole flaming mess to Davey Jones Locker, Jason was ready to spray the flames with a fire extinguisher, Amy was putting some ice on a small grease burn, while I alone maintained focus on the important things.
You've heard stories of mothers gaining almost supernatural strength to lift a burning car to rescue their kids, well in a way, the same thing happened to me. Casting my personal safety aside, I screamed for the spatula and made my way towards the pillar of fire, smoke and certain death and started turning the tuna. It seemed like the most logical thing to do at the time, because the thought of wasting not only the tuna, but the bacon was simply too much for me to deal with emotionally in the time of crisis. The bacon wrapped tuna was indeed saved, and ironically the high intensity heat and flame cooked the bacon crispy, while still keeping the tuna juicy and moist, it was like some sort of miracle at sea surely made possible by divine guidance. There wasn't a single piece of tuna left over and even Cortez was able to feast off of the two pieces that were tragically (and in a panic unbecoming a member of the crew of THRD DAY I might add) knocked on the cockpit floor during the melee. Now, where was I? Oh ya - we are heading towards Cabo, all is well, and I'm tired. I guess that's the kind of blog post you get during a night watch at 3AM after 6 days at sea.
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07/28/2010, First I was Cold, Now I'm Hot
I woke up this morning at 9AM to the horror of sweating! When I went to bed last night after my 2AM to 4AM watch, I was in full cold weather gear: wool hat, farmer-john jump suit, two sweatshirts and even wool socks with my crocs for heavens sake! But by 9AM this morning I could feel beads of sweat on my forehead for the first time in months in addition to a stream of bright warm sunlight shooting through the boat's porthole. Now that we are south of Mag Bay and about 2/3 down Baja, the weather has finally turned warm! Now rather than complaining about freezing to death, I'm afraid that for the foreseeable future I'll have only the heat to complain about. Some people say that you can always dress for the cold, which is true I guess, but I'd much rather undress for the heat and go swimming instead!
The entire crew, including Cortez, is taking advantage of this warm weather. Cortez has found a great place in the upper salon to nap in the sun, Amy just took a shower with me soon to follow, and Lori asked me to fire up the washing machine so she can do some laundry and hang it on the lifelines to dry. Jason, well we will have to beat him into the shower as usual, because he much prefers to have his sea water swim count as a bath.
We lost our wind yesterday late afternoon and have since been motoring on calm seas as we approach Cabo San Lucas, now about 150 miles away. We don't plan on stopping in Cabo, but just giving a wave as we pass on our way to Mazatlan, an additional 200 miles away.
We are happy to have no additions to the breakage and broken list in the last 12hrs, so our list stands as follows:
Main sail seam (which puts the main sail out of use)
Intermittent Alternator on Main engine
Mizzen boom topping lift
Forward head sink (now with a wooden through plug inserted to keep out water and us from sinking, which is story in itself)
Mizzen mast running backstay block.
All in all, this old gal is holding together pretty well and getting us down Baja in comfort with only the weather to complain about, which as Martha Stewart likes to say, is a Good Thing.
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