We made it to the tip of the Baja Peninsula and gratefully motored into the hot, noisy and overcrowded marina. Due to a lack of space, we wound up "rafting up" on an end tie, the third boat out from the dock. This meant no water for us to wash the salt off the boat, no electricity and having to traverse from boat to boat to boat to get to the dock for a mere $77.00 a night. We left the following morning to anchor off the beach in front of the condos.
The beach offered no real protection from the ocean swell and to top it off, about seventy jet skis kept the ocean well stirred in between the anchored sailboats along with speed boats towing parachutes, Pangas constantly taxiing tourists to different beaches, a daily parade of a hundred or so fishing boats first thing in the morning and back again in the evening was all topped off with being caught in the cross fire between the drunken, multi-decked party boats booming loud music, and the many condo parties on the beach, each blasting their own version of "music" all night long!
Cabo is like a magnetic hub for tourists displaying a vast variety of booze infused poor judgments both on land and in the water. We also saw little common marine courtesy and zero regard to wakes or how fast or close one skis or wakeboards between the anchored boats. The action of the anchored sailboats became quite violent during the day and there is little doubt that entire fleet of sailboats would have left Cabo for the Sea of Cortez within a day or two if the fronts blowing down the Sea would have allowed us to do so.
So we are trapped here in the Cabo anchorage for now. We will try to get back into the hot and noisy marina today to wash the boat and do some maintenance if we can secure a slip with water and electricity.
On the lighter side, we won third place in our division of ten boats. By a strange coincidence, seven other boats in our division also won third place. In fact in all of the divisions there was not a single boat that came in under third place. Few boats sailed the entire way. Winds were often light and exhaustion and anxieties sometimes high, placed pressure on crews to use the "iron spinnaker" (engine) to get to the next anchorage and restore balance to self and equilibrium. Most boats had crew, some did not. We were very grateful for ours as Harry the continual optimist joked levity back into stressful situations and Linda threw in or tackled any job no matter how insurmountable it may have seemed through everyone's exhaustion.
Overall the race was good and I would recommend it to anyone traveling south. There was as much camaraderie as you cared to enjoy and plenty of help for those with breakdowns or other needs. Two boats had kayaks blow out of Turtle bay one night and both were recovered by rally boats the next day 22 miles at sea. We met many nice cruisers who I'm sure we will see again in other ports but for now it will be nice to be on our own, without a daily itinerary and check-in times, able to leave or stay at an anchorage as long as we like.
I believe we are going to love this cruising life, but it is still a little soon to tell for sure.