Baja HaHa leg 2
09 November 2013 | Turtle Bay to Bahia Santa Maria
Fred
The rolling start ended and we sailed into a nice breeze. The wind kept increasing all day and we were sailing fast sometimes hitting 10+ knots. As darkness crept up the wind did also and we dropped the spinnaker and set the jib. Not much loss in boat speed but much more comfortable. Pasta dinner and beautiful sailing conditions and the weather was warming up. The next morning we decided to hoist the spinnaker and had one of the best days of sailing I can remember. However,,,,30 miles out from the finish we had a big puff up to 28 knots and a big wave that rounded up the boat and our bow sprit looked as if it had a few to many Viagra tablets as it bent straight up 90 degrees. We doused the spinnaker and set the jib wing and wing with Max pushing the jib sheet out with his foot while comfortably reclining on the deck for the next 3 hours. We entered the bay just before midnight and dropped anchor and crashed for the night. When we awoke we saw that the hills of Santa Maria were a beautiful green. We decided to move the boat up closer to the beach where the party would be. Found a good spot and got the dinghy in the water and visited a few boats. Mostly just caught up on some sleep and had a good dinner that night. Next day was the big Bea h party up on the bluff over looking the bay with 125 boats at anchor. Great sight. The local fishermen produce a fish and rice dinner and have plenty of super cold beer and a band from La Paz comes in to play. Remember, there is no paved road to this place, in fact no road at all. The band comes in at low tide in a truck on the beach to set up. Quite an undertaking but the music was good and everyone had a good time. Back to the boat to get ready for an early morning 7AM start which meant we needed to have the anchor up shortly after 6. Again a rolling start was called and lasted for 2 hours. The final leg to Cabo was about 170 miles so one more overnight.