Once we finally woke up from the trip over we discovered ourselves anchored in a lovely little bay. Our decision to wait till the following day to head to Bahia Los Angeles was based entirely on the theory that Hurricane Rick would continue to dominate the area and provide us with light southerlies to ride north.


Lovely shot of us in San Fracisquito

When I tuned into Geary's weather on the Sonrisa net, the latest news was that Rick had parked himself over cold water well south of Cabo San Lucas. The forecast now called for a possible grazing of Cabo and landfall occuring in the vicinity of Mazatlan. By parking over cold water Rick had already weakened to a tropical storm. What this meant for our plans was that the storm was no longer powerful enough to dominate the weather in the area. Consequently our light southerlies turned into strong northerlies.

For the next 2 days we rode out strong northers in the 20-30 knot range. The bay remained pretty flat with small wave action not building until the end of the last day. We found a tiny bit of wifi in the bay but since we have no booster antenna and found no cellular signal we raised the anchor and let the wind push us into shallower water closer to shore. We reanchored in 8' of water and got a sliver of internet out of it. We still had to sit in the cockpit at the aft edge to get a connection. We're definitely after a wifi booster now just to fill the 3G gaps.

Since we all decided to stay in San Francisquito I had fantasized about digging out the dive gear and going after some of the fish that would certainly be around these precipitous points. Sadly it was seriously cold in the bay. The water was below 75 degrees and the air temps were dropping into the high 60s. I'm sure if you're sitting in the midwest right now these temps sound ideal but I can assure you that after a summer in the Sonora desert you would find those temperatures as horrifying as I did. Of course my fond memories of spearfishing in the sea involved diving in my lycra skin suit and staying in the water all day, at sub 75 degree temps I'd have to wear a wetsuit and jump out after a couple hours.


The cat has decided she doesn't want to come in through the companionway in the mornings, she'd much rather jump in through the V-berth hatch and land on a sleeping stomach to better motivate breakfast.


First attempt at white bread.

For breakfast on our last morning in San Francisquito we decided to have a nice balanced breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast with homefries with sauteed green peppers and onions. The weather forecast called for flattening seas and lighter conditions for the next day, Our favorite sailmaker was back in town in San Carlos and we wanted to see him before he left for Phoenix on Monday. The weather was supposed to be light on thursday with an ideal sailing breeze on Friday and lovely conditions on Saturday. Since we dont leave on a Friday our options were to leave on Thursday or Saturday. If something went wrong and the increasingly fickle weather forecast changed we could fail to leave on Saturday which would mean we'd miss Tony. The big deal about missing Tony is we like him a great deal and he isnt coming back down until the 15th of november and its our goal to be in mazatlan by the 18th so if we miss Tony this time we might never see him again, okay at least not for a few months or a year.

So we were officially making a momentous decision. We were going to go be in a certain place by a certain time. This may not seem like much but its something we've never yet pulled off on this boat.

We went over to visit with Festima Lente on Thursday afternoon and enjoyed a nice visit for a few hours and made plans to meet up again in Mazatlan.

The wind seemed like it was filling in so around 1500 we quickly hoisted the pram on deck and fired up the motor. We optomistically hoisted the main as we exited the inner harbor only to find a windless sea on the outside.

After discovering that my little Dell mini-9 netbook is only drawing 500 milliamps I have started using Coastal Explorer as an additional chartplotter as we make our passages, it gives us something to entertain us as we plot our way across the sea.

We tried to motor-sail using the reacher for a bit but soon the wind died and the reacher started to back so we rolled it in and sheeted the main in tight. We decided to make our first 100 mile passage of this cruise and shoot straight for San Carlos. The route I plotted would be 102 miles and assuming an average of 4 knots we would arrive 24 hours after leaving San Francisquito.

There was significant tidal action in the deep waters surrounding San Francisquito and we soon found ourselves motoring along at over 7 knots with our engine at 2200 RPMs. At this rate we would arrive well under the 24 hour mark.

As we approached Isla San Pedro Martir, Kris checked the hand line and saw nothing and a split second later, I looked back to see our handline bar taut and no longer trailing behind us. Whatever was on the hand line was swimming alongside the cockpit as we made over 7 knots of speed over the ground. It was also disrupting a large area of the water's surface much the way whales do when their powerful bodies swim near the surface. I grabbed the hand line and pulled on it only to find it was way too loaded for me to pull on. I was trying to figure out what was on the other end of the line, hoping it would leap out of the water and identify itself before mercifullyly releasing itself leaving our handline intact. I started to look for a piece of string to tie a rolling hitch with so I could take the hand line to a sheet winch and pull this monster in when it made some kind of underwater maneuver and my line went slack. I was grateful to see that the monster had gotten off of my hook and didn't take my precious lure. Whatever it was I wasnt sure if I would land it or it would land me.

We spent the next few minutes speculating as to what that monster might have been. We figure it was either a huge bull dorado or a billfish of some kind. Just as we were discussing whether or not it could have been our first big dorado I looked back to see a huge dorado skipping limply along across our wake on the end of our hand line. I fairly easily pulled this one in but getting this beast on board was a bit more involved. Just the same I landed a 42" female dorado without the use of a gaff. She was exhausted so that sort of ruled out the theory that the previous fish was a dorado. I had to kill this one partially with some alcohol in the gills just so I could handle it without splattering the cockpit with blood. I quickly fileted it and we decided to leave the hand line out of the water overnight. I am now convinced that if you want to catch large fish go to Isla San Pefro Martir just off the coast of Baja near bahia San Francisquito. I have to attribute the deep cold water and the precipitous volcanic island to the easy fishing. I also need to thank Bevan and Lisa Davern for our best lure on the boat. They gifted us a black and purple squid rig that has caught us 3 dorado so far.



Biggest fish I ever caught, 42" Dorado (Mahi Mahi)


As the sun set the motor was running perfectly and our speed had barely dropped to 6 knots despite running the weak 20 horsepower engine at 2200 rpms. Kristina was feeling well and I decided to hit the sack an hour early and forego dinner. Kris baked an instant cornbread loaf and threw a can of turkey chili in a small pot while I hit the sack. The pilot berth was pretty warm so I moved up to the colder cockpit and slept under a blanket for an hour or so before returning to the pilot berth. Kristina had a totally uneventful night watch spent watching TV on the netbook until around midnight when she woke me up for my watch.


Baja sunset. Goodnight baja

I warmed up my half of the chili and had some cornbread and honey butter after I noted our position. We had made great distance putting on almost 30 miles in 5 hours while conserving diesel running at 2/3rds power. I topped up the tank with a 5 gallon jerry jug and pulled off the engine cover to check on the oil leak. Both paper towels were soaked to the corners and there was a small pool of about half a quart of oil. I have started storing a gatorade squirt bottle full of motor oil to make it easier to add small amounts of oil to the tranmission. I dumped most of a 600ml gatorade bottle into the running engine to top up the oil and put the cover back on before settling in for some TV watching of my own.

Having the autopilot is a revalation. Watches are far less stressful and life under way is considerably more luxurious. I went on deck from time to time to make sure the wind didnt kick up and overpower the main causing the autopilot to error out. I was so comfortable on watch that I decided to let Kristina sleep in and just keep kicking along. I alternated between hanging out down below and relaxing in the cooler cockpit.


I decided to go out into the cockpit to take in the sunrise when the mountains on the horizon started to turn deep orange. I was starting to feel a bit sleepy but I was eager to watch the sunrise. So I moved to the port side of the cockpit and kicked back in one of our reclining cockpit seats and settled in to watch the sunrise.

The motor was humming along and I was almost hypnotized by the glassy sea when my peace was suddenly shattered by an enormous bottlenosed dolphin leaping completely out of the water not six feet away from my nose and easily within 18 inches of the port side stanchion gate. As the powerful sillhouette pierced the deep orange hue, the magestic creature bent it's nose downward toward the sea and plunged in almost a hooked bellyflop into the deep. I'm not usually one to attempt prose or one for overstatement but my limited writing skills cant do this encounter justice. It lasted seconds and startled me into exclaiming "Whoa!" My brain was startled and thats what came out. I would think ususally such an encounter is followed by a pod of dolphins playing around the boat, but this dolphin encounter was a solitary one. It was without a doubt the strangest wildlife encounter of my cruising days so far.

The rest of the passage passed uneventfully. We continued to make excellent time after the sun rose. Kristina awoke on her own around 0700 and chided me for not waking her. I decided I'd have a cat nap while Kris took us the rest of the way to San Carlos. We had expected to pull into San Carlos around 1500hrs assuming a 4 knot average and a 24 hour passage. Instead we pulled into San Carlos at 10:00 just shy of 19 hours after leaving San Francisquito. Averaging almost 5.5 knots the whole way. The motor had lost some more oil but nothing too alarming.


picture taken after I removed 750ml of oil from the sump pan.

We launched the dinghy and immediately went ashore to have lunch with Tony. We had for the first time successfully set a goal to be somewhere by a certain time and made it. Kristina was thrilled that we had made an overnight passage and had no adversity. We arrived refreshed and happy with a boat that had no major issues.

The plan now was to hang with Tony over the weekend then say our goodbyes. Spend the following week sorting out the oil leak and cleaning the van out so we can cut our ties with San Carlos for good and head south at last.

Stay tuned for more developments.