Whales Tales and What's next
09 November 2009 | Cabo San Lucas
Monica
Our crew left yesterday with tears falling. Rod and Jane are great people and were a big addition and help for the passage south. We look forward to their visit once Jane retires in February and meeting up with them next year as they bring their boat Isabella south to Mexico.
Scott and I went to Wal-Mart yesterday to pick up a few things we need for the next weeks until La Paz. We had been planning on leaving this morning but we need to get spark plugs for the dingy engine as it has begun running rough and simple tasks such as this we have discovered in Mexico can take a day to achieve so we will leave at first light tomorrow to Los Frailles.
Some thoughts on the Baja HaHa: Hey we placed third in our category!!!!! We are glad we did it and had a great time meeting everyone and finding the spirit of people working together to help each other when needed. Would we do it again? Probably not. Not for a second time that is. It is worth it once but to do it again and again like some have isn't our cup of tea. The good thing is that it gives you a date to leave by and makes you leave. For doing things like checking into a foreign country they provide instructions and plenty of opinions which was a plus.
This year the Baja HaHa had the very first ever boat in its fleet sink. The stories were varied but at the awards ceremony the Capitan of that boat was there and spoke. First, it was a modern J boat which is much lighter then ours and made for racing. What happened to them would be almost impossible to do to our boat because of the difference in construction and below the waterline design. It appears that they were in the big 20 foot seas and were surfing down waves in their boat and found themselves amongst a pod of whales. It sounds like they ran into and over one which hit their keel, prop and tore their rudder off leaving a large 3 x 4 foot hole in their boat. They grabbed their ditch bag and EPIRB and abandoned ship. The US Coast Guard rescued them about 2 hours latter taking them to San Diego. The next issue of Latitude 38 will have the whole story.
So, things do happen out here and you have to be smart and prepared. We feel aboard Scott Free that we have taken the precautions necessary and given an emergency we would also be able to survive. But, enough of that, we are going to go for a swim and then have fish tacos for lunch!