Baja Bash Part 1
24 May 2011 | Turtle Bay
Fred
We awoke at 0430 and cleared the jetty at 0500 bound for Mag Bay or Bahia Santa Maria for the first leg to San Diego. We rounded Cabo Falso at 0730 and started working our way up the course. Blue Sky and Brisa left the night before and we spoke to them on the radio as we passed Cabo and they anchored in Cabo for the night as they had 20 knot winds. Sun Baby was out ahead by 2 hours or so and Elisa left an hour after us. They passed us at Falso and we started working our way up the coast to get some wind and current relief. I think it worked just fine and we were comfortable in the 15 knot winds. The night was windy and lumpy but not unreasonable. Fletcher did take on wave straight in the face as he did not duck fast enough. We had a few drips in spite of Ross' Hatch Tape but not bad. We will retape some spots on the next stop.
As we neared Mag Bay it was good running in smoother waters so we decided to bypass Mag and Santa Maria and keep going to Turtle Bay. Looked like we had a reasonable window to do so and it worked out.
One small problem, we found out that the harder the engine has to work at the same RPM the more fuel it using. At 0730 in the morning the engine stopped. The fuel gauge said empty so we guessed it was. We were going to transfer fuel anyway so I changed the filter first and it was clean. So we got out our handy dandy jiggle siphon hose and emptied a 30 liter can in about 4 minutes all without having to suck on a hose. Best $25.00 I spent. We put in the remaining 2 jugs and had 24 gallons of fuel. We figured that we would have to sail whenever it was favorable so we would have fuel for the entry to Turtle Bay. I didn't want to have to sail in.
We were able to get in some good sailing with a reasonable course to Turtle. We tacked a few times and went into the beach and back out. When it went light or not favorable we used the engine but now down to 1000-1200 RPM. We did that all night and the next morning we got a nice wind and were able to sail to the entrance for about 4 hours and then we got headed and slowed down so we decided to power up and see if we could get in.
We made if fine and arrived at noon and were met by Anabelle's fuel barge to sell us fuel. We told him to wait until we got anchored and he followed us in. It is pretty competitive here between Gordo Jr. and Anabelle. Gordo's price was $10.52 pesos per liter when he came by and Anabelle was $10.20 and he sold us a used 55 liter jug for $13.00. We figured we needed a little more reserve. We filled up the main tank only took 87 gallons so we had 13 to spare. We filled the jugs up so we now have 134 gallons of fuel to make it to San Diego and can always stop in Ensenada if necessary but when you are that close to the barn, you just want to get there.
We are here with Lani Kai who has some damage to his catamaran and is repairing, Elisa, Psyche, Odessa, Darling and Quan Yin. Iluka came in at 3AM this morning and fueled and left for San Diego while the rest of us listened to Don Anderson's weather that said there would be 20-30 knot winds from Santa Barbara to Mag Bay for the rest of the week. So we are going to stay here until we can get a weather window that is favorable. Iluka can crank it up to 20 knots so she will probably do all right.
We were a little concerned that Enrique who owns the Gordo fuel pier would be mad that we didn't buy fuel from him and not take us in or charge accordingly. Eliza said that they were charged $5.00 us per trip but he just bought $1100.00 worth of fuel. So I called and he came out and said $5.00 each way so we went in.
Toured the town and checked out all the tiendas to see what each have and determined that we will not starve; in fact there are some nice clean little markets in town some of which I have not seen before. We had lunch at the Café Vera Cruz which is also a small hotel and Fletcher got a hot shower for 4 bucks. Bob and I showered on the boat but Fletcher couldn't find the hot water so we must have used it all.
We are now back on the boat and looking at weather and we could be here for 4 or 5 more days until the weekend. Dismal thought and hopefully the weather will change but not likely.
So it is back to watching the Best of Johnny Carson tonight and reading. We do have some movies thanks to Al for leaving them on board from the trip down. Life is not all bad, the phone is not ringing, not even working but we do have internet!