Check out more photos of this passage here.


Cabo or bust!

At long last our project list was done enough to leave Ensenada, our home for the past two months, and head to "Dos Cabos" (Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo.) Our weather window was narrowing as another low pressure system was due in a week and we were scrambling to leave.

It was time to untie our lines, say hasta luego to our new Ensenada friends, and sail south! A BIG THANKS to Pete, who helped us so much with last minute errands and final lashing things to the deck; Karla for loaning us water jugs; assistant harbormaster Jonathan for running Heidi around to fill up said water jugs (because the water delivery service was on vacation!?); Dan & Nancy on s/v Karvi for help with rides from San Diego, picking up parts from West Marine, and fantastic weather forecasting via the SSB radio on our whole passage south!; Cindy & Doug, hope you're out of the igloo soon!; Vickie & Steve, for the laughs; Shannon & Rob, for loaning us their truck for errands and being all-around great neighbors!; Peter on Ahaluna, for the stories, the chiropractor, and manning the SSB Net on our trip down the coat; and to the crew of Lun II for their camaraderie and boat tour--best of luck on your voyage guys!

We had planned to leave Ensenada Monday morning on the auspicious Feb. 29th, but by the time we had everything stowed, lashed, and ready to go, it was late in the afternoon and we were beat! Being at the dock for 2 months, you start to un-fold like origami, things come out of storage for daily use, boat-project parts are strewn around, and there's a lot to put back away. Better to get a good night's sleep and leave early the next morning...

Up at 0500 on Tuesday morning, March 1st, only to discover pea-soup fog??? While we have a radar, it's still misbehaving, and with cruise ships, container ships, sea-going tugs, navy ships, and fishing boats all coming and going in-and-out of the narrow entrance, we decided to wait for the fog to lift. It was beginning to feel like the Universe was conspiring against us to ever leave Ensenada. But we could use a few more hours sleep, seeing as we were about to be sleep-deprived for the next few days, so in our best "be here now" mode, we went back to bed.


By 0900 the fog had lifted and we were on our way, with Pete casting off our lines. Hasta la Vista Baby!



We knew it would be a motor-sailing trip, with light winds behind us and following seas; the calm before the storm...And it was just that. Each day of the six-day passage blended into the next with KAVU blue skies, cerulean blue seas, vibrant sunsets, and billions of stars punctuated by planets. Jupiter brightly lead the way with the Big Dipper larger-than-life hanging off our port quarter and Orion and The Pleiades off the starboard quarter.



We kept a watch schedule of 3-hours ON, 3-hours OFF during the night (1800 to 0600) and 6-hours ON, 6-hours OFF during the day. Heidi was off-watch from 6am to noon or a bit before, when she'd get up and make lunch, then we'd eat lunch before Kirk went off watch a bit after noon. Heidi was on watch all afternoon, then made dinner so we could eat dinner before she went off watch at 1800. Breakfasts we were on our own with instant oatmeal, or granola and fruit.



We also keep our log-book up-to-date with entries every hour noting Latitude/Longitude position; Wind direction/speed; Sea state; Barometric pressure; and anything else worthy of noting (sail configuration/motoring, etc.) It's interesting to note the barometric pressure changes down here in Mexico. In Seattle the barometer would generally rise during the day, and drop during the evening, unless a storm was coming, then it would just drop. Here it goes up and down all day long like a roller coaster... weird!?



The first day out from Ensenada both gatos got sea-sick, even though they were taking medicine. So we decided to ditch the medicine since it wasn't working, and they both found their sea-legs within a day and did GREAT the rest of the trip. Tosh loves to be out in the cockpit lying in the sun mid-afternoon. But he doesn't so much love the harness he has to wear, and being clipped in. Tikka doesn't seem to mind her harness as much, but also doesn't have a lot of desire to be out in the cockpit while we are underway.


What are these harness things all about anyway?!

A few times there was actually enough wind on the beam to sail, but we soon realized we had an issue with our autopilot: it wouldn't disengage?! Picture your car's cruise control not turning off. Only it has control of the wheel instead of the accelerator... So even while we were sailing, the autopilot was steering the boat. Kirk contemplated manually disengaging it, but we knew that would mean we'd be hand steering the rest of the passage and we weren't keen to do that. Hand steering in big swells can get very tiring, and we'd likely need to trade off every hour or two, making for not much sleep. No thanks.

Our old friend Marianne, the e-127 chart plotter was also up to her old tricks again, rebooting herself 3 times mid-passage for no apparent reason. And the radar was chronically shutting off as well (ironically mostly on Heidi's watches, rarely on Kirk's? We were starting to wonder if her magnetic personality was effecting it?!) It is likely that we have a bad radar cable and may have to replace it. The faulty radar could also be contributing to Marianne's issues as well. So a few more things we need to troubleshoot next time we're working on boats in exotic locales!


Night visitor: squid... the cats missed seeing this, it got thrown back to sea before they ventured out.

Cool Sea Life: As for cool sea life we were a bit disappointed not to see any dolphins or whales--save two dolphins leaving Ensenada harbor, maybe the same two that lead us in? and one bottlenose dolphin swimming around the boat after we were anchored in Cabo San Lucas. We have often seen dolphins entering or leaving harbors. We did have a night-visitor of a flying squid that land on the deck!

One day in the middle of the trip, Heidi had her nose in a book while on watch (still glancing up and around at the end of each page!) When she decided to take the binoculars and have a better look around, she saw large, white plastic fishing floats (2'x3') strewn around the sea like land mines. As she continued looking around to see how far they extended, she randomly thought: "I wonder when we'll start to see sea turtles?" Within about two minutes, one popped its head up just off the starboard quarter and looked her right in the eye. SO cool! Thanks Neptune!



On Saturday we were in touch with our friends Don & Lisa on s/v Windcharmer via the VHF radio. They had left Bahia Magdalena enroute to intercept us near Cabo. We also talked to Chuck on s/v Epic who was on a trimaran single-handing from Ensenada to Puerto Vallarta. Chuck was near by us and we agreed to take some photos of him sailing by with his spinnaker up, which was a fun diversion. We planned to meet up with Windcharmer about 0700 off the point of Cabo and get photos of our boats with the famed Cabo Arch in the background. Just as it got light enough to see, there was Windcharmer! Fun when you can connect at sea after 700 miles of travel.



We got photos of each other's boats, then dropped the hook in front of the hotel-zone in Cabo San Lucas, and hit the hay for several hours. So nice to get uninterrupted sleep for the first time in a week. We were awakened by the mosquito-like buzzing of jet-skis zipping round-and-round the boats. Kirk's theory: The jet-ski rental people must say "For a great time, go zip around those sailboats as many times as you can!" Enough already!

We had planned to stay anchored off of Cabo San Lucas for 3-days, before moving over to San Jose del Cabo for fuel and water and to visit our friend Sara. You can get fuel in Cabo San Lucas, but rumor has it the fuel dock has a $150 surcharge just for tying up!? We'll skip that Gringo-tax thanks. Apparently the weather gods had other plans for us--a big system was moving in on Tuesday and Wednesday and if we didn't move over to San Jose del Cabo by Monday afternoon, we'd be stuck at on the hook in Cabo in high winds, bouncy seas, and likely not able to easily get to town in our dinghy. A good reminder that ultimately, all of our "plans" are at the mercy of the weather gods.


Kirk, Heidi, Lisa, and Don.

So we took advantage of the one nice night, and went to explore Cabo with Lisa & Don from s/v Windcharmer. Into Aventuras (our dinghy) we hopped, and zipped out to the arch just in time for sunset. Then on into the big marina to find the dinghy dock, a bit obscured by all of the neon, upscale shops (like Rollex), and casinos, we weren't quite sure if we were in Cabo or Las Vegas?! We walked around Old Town and ate dinner at Pancho's, which was good food, but nothing to write home about. The place we wanted to eat, a little hole-in-the-wall fish taco place had a line out the door and down the block, and we were too hungry to wait.



Monday morning we re-stowed the dinghy and outboard, and got ready to head out again as the wind picked up into the mid-20's. Fewer than 20 miles down the coast to San Jose del Cabo, we sailed for a bit, then motored when the wind clocked around to the nose.

Recall the autopilot issue? We knew we'd have to disengage it before entering the marina, to navigate into the slip. Just inside the breakwater in flat-calm water, Kirk went down under the cockpit (into our basement/garage area of the boat) and manually unbolted the autopilot motor from the tiller-arm connected to the rudder. Whew! Just like that Heidi had her steerage back and was ecstatic!! She drove right into the slip, no problemo.



We've had a nice visit in San Jose del Cabo, including a walk around Old Town, an excellent lunch at Jazmines, and bus ride into downtown for groceries. Our dear friend Sara, the late Dr. Bob's wife, came to visit us along with her two friends, Wendy and Wendy, on her way to fly back to Seattle. Sara winters in Baja and we'd hoped to spend more time with here. But thanks to the weather and those pesky boat projects, we just got to see her by the skin of our teeth. We welcomed taking the food she couldn't take back to the states off her hands, lots of gluten-free food for Heidi! We'll be seeing Sara again in July when Captain "Reverend" Kirk gets to marry her son Braden and his fiancé Molly. We're all excited for that!


Kirk, Sara, Wendy, and Wendy

Now it's time to continue our adventures on the other side of the pond, in the Puerto Vallarta area. We plan to head out tonight at midnight, to ensure arriving in PV in daylight hours in this weekend. Heidi's girlfriends are coming down to play and Kirk will keep busy playing with the autopilot, water-maker, and cockpit shower. Always more to do than time to do it...

Hope spring is finally arriving wherever you are! For the record, although it IS getting warmer the further south we go, Heidi is still wearing fleece in the evenings, and it's still not warm enough to go swimming here! Maybe in Puerto Vallarta?

Remember to check out more photos of this latest passage, Cabo San Lucas, and San Jose del Cabo here.


We'll leave you with this shot of Tikka stalking the resident pelicans for hours on end, SO funny to see! :-)