We're On Our Way!

This entry will be a bit long since I haven’t entered anything since before leaving San Diego! (I have a few pictures to add but will get them tomorrow!)

We left right on schedule from Chula Vista Marina and joined the Baja Ha Ha fleet for a racing start at 11:00 outside San Diego Bay entrance. Our crewmember, Mitch, in addition to Jim Degnan (our long-time friend who brought the boat down from San Francisco to San Diego), is an avid sailor/racer and has a lot of enthusiasm and know-how to add to all this. We sailed for 3 days and 2 nights and then came into the first anchorage in the middle of the night! We stayed there for 2 days then set out again for another 2 overnights to get into the second stop, Bahia Santa Maria mid-day.

About the second day of straight sailing (after an overnight) just about everyone on this boat and the others I’ve talked to, is ready to stop for a rest! We wear the same clothes for the duration, just brush teeth occasionally and put on new sunscreen—Jim is now sporting a “Bill Seelig” facial shadow! He’s looking pretty relaxed, doesn’t seem to miss work! Since I’m the cook, the guys are doing the night watches in 3 hour shifts and I get to sleep. I’m not a big fan of the night watches—we are able to set the windvane which steers the boat, hands-free, but people on watch still monitor for lights from other boats and check in on the radar. Check out this image (when I get it in here its a shot of our radar screen)—we’re the little guy in the middle! You probably can’t read it, but those are two cruise ships passing us in the middle of the night!! They did see us on their radar and let us know that they would steer clear! The other boats in this event (about 130 of them) are pretty spread out and we can always see some on the horizon. 2 came pretty close last night but the lighting systems and signals are really helpful. Also, when sleeping down below there has been a pretty steady swell and that causes the sails to fluctuate and pop and clank as a swell passes under the boat. It doesn’t worry me any more (thankfully!) to hear it, and I mostly just readjust with my back to the downside and go back to sleep.

We, okay, the guys, have tried out every sail configuration. We have the wind behind us so we’ve gone wing-on-wing (the main sail to one side and the jib on the other) and the same setup with a “whisker-pole” (a rigid aluminum pole) forcing the jib to stay full of air. We’ve had the asymmetrical (one of those colorful ballooning sails) out twice. It’s a lot of work on a boat this size, but hey, we don’t have much else to do!

So far we’ve seen a bunch of sunfish (funny-looking, flat-ish fish) on kelp beds, a couple of whales, and then we came through a school, pod, bunch of (?) dolphins that spread out around us as far as we could see in any direction—that was an incredible sight, probably thousands of them!

Our first anchorage was Turtle Bay, the one we came into at night. “They” say never to enter an anchorage at night, but dang, if you get there at night you don’t want to just sail in circles outside for another couple of hours! After 2 days, stopping is an exciting idea! Jim D. was on the GPS and radar below and the other 3 of us were in the cockpit on the lookout. The GPS would be more valuable if the information they are programmed to was accurate—apparently there can be 2 miles of inaccuracy in these waters (the GPS info is taken from paper charts and those can be many, many years old—some people use Google World to overlay their charts). So we use our depth sounder and radar to verify what info the GPS gives us. We got into the bay just fine and put down the anchor (first time with this boat) with no problem. Then we all slept for a looooong time! The next morning we woke to find we were in a good spot in an enormous bay, we weren’t in any danger coming in the night before. We got human again, showers, clean clothes, breakfast made on a non-rolling boat and then inflated the dinghy to go into the little fishing village. They were ready to do business with the influx of 130 boats and about 800 people! We got some lunch, looked around, found an internet spot (you did get the birthday greetings didn’t you M’Liss?!)and then vegged out some more. The next day there was a sponsored beach potluck. Then we set out the next morning. The next stop, Bahia Santa Maria didn’t have any accommodations at all. Some local fishermen and their families plan on this Baja Ha Ha event coming down each year and bring food and beer and a band from some long distance. I’m guessing they do a years’ worth of business in two days! The best part of that stop was watching the pangas (Honda powered open boats) power through the surf to a cut into a lagoon where they’d then let off the 10-12 people they’d collected from the various boats in the anchorage! It was mayhem only topped by the smaller sized mayhem of people trying to do the same in their inflatable dinghies!! A few big dump-overs! Jim and I aren’t that big on partying so we walked the long stretch of beaches. At one point the sand seemed to move away from us—it was hundreds of tiny crabs with turquoise blue pinchers held high running away! Underway again we set out a line and got a yellow-fin tuna and had it for dinner that night. Sounds just so yacht-ish—but it was a floppy, bloody mess for a while!! Guess we’ll never starve but we need to improve the process!

It took us another day and night to get within range of Cabo San Lucas where we’ve been anchored for several days now. Our crewmember Mitch met his wife here and we’ve had some meals together and caught up with Lake of the Pines news. They left tonight (Monday) and Jim Degnan is leaving tomorrow mid-day. We’ve lugged laundry in and gotten some groceries. We tend to go to sleep before 8:00!

I’m going through some culture shock—not because we’re in Mexico but because just about every familiar aspect of life is altered!! I’m going to get some phone setup tomorrow, I’ve used calling cards a few times to talk to my girls. The internet is sketchy and the Ham Radio version hasn’t been sorted out yet. I did get quickly familiar again with the GPS and radar. The diesel engine coughed and then let out a high pitched alarm about 6:00 one morning and we collectively came up with a diagnosis of the failure of the impeller on the water pump. Since I’m the smallest on board and had some guidance from the guys, we now are intimately familiar with that part of the engine and got it working again.

So it IS a big adventure—I’m sure our comfort level and expertise and familiarity with the boat will all grow. We’re going to La Paz in a three day trip starting on Wednesday and we’ll be in the company of friends who also have a Valiant 42.

Keep us in your thoughts and prayers!! Jim and Sheilagh