A late season tropical depression was forecast to arrive in Cabo
San Lucas just after the Baja Fleet. It showed up on weather forecasts
on Wednesday, with a projected arrival in Cabo on Sunday. As usual with
a weather forecast, the further out the event, the less certain the
forecast. We have an Iridium Go! (satellite data delivery device) and
use Predict Wind weather software. It gives us access to four different
weather models. Only one of the four models predicts the tropical
depression will hit Cabo. The fact that the models disagree also
indicates uncertainty.

A tropical depression features closed isobars and (in the northern
Hemisphere) counterclockwise rotation. Winds are in the 20s-30s with
gusts into the 50s. If it intensifies it gets upgraded to a tropical
storm and gets a name. If that intensifies, it’s called a tropical
cyclone, aka hurricane. This one is a long way from tropical storm
strength, much less hurricane, but even a tropical depression is not
something we’d like to be sailing in.

If we’d left yesterday morning, we would have arrived in Cabo well ahead
of the bad weather. The problem was that the marinas are all full, and
the anchorage is just a roadstead off the beach, with no protection from
wind and waves from the east. An option would have been to hustle up to
La Paz, which is well protected, but we’d be racing the bad weather.
Much of the fleet had marina reservations in Cabo and ran down there. A
couple of fast boats were going to round the corner and head for LaPaz.

The third choice was to just stay in Mag Bay, watch the weather and head
for a hurricane hole if it showed signs of heading this way. There are
several protected spots near here, and the bad weather is projected to
be dissipating by the time it gets here. That was the choice we (and
about 20 other boats) made. We don’t have any deadlines, so it made the
most sense for us. Our crew has plane tickets out of Cabo, but it turns
out there’s a bus that goes by nearby.

The whole exercise showed the value of a satellite internet connection
to a weather service. Many of the boats in the fleet are not so well
equipped and they rely on a cellular internat connection (none here) or
second hand weather info, interpreted by fellow cruisers. The
interpretation adds to the underlying uncertainty in the weather. Just
watching the weather out the porthole (the old fashioned way) is also
not adequate. Three days before the expected arrival of the bad weather,
it’s sunny and 80 degrees, light wind and we’re headed for the beach.

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