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| Leaving San Diego |
After
checking in at Ensenada, we immediately made our way south for our first
overnight passage since we had left San Francisco. We had excellent wind, so made good time down
to Turtle Bay, our first stop going down the coast of the Baja peninsula.
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| 51 = Official Squid Count! |
You
never quite know what you will find some mornings when dawn finally breaks –
and on the 2nd morning in route to Turtle Bay we woke up to a bunch
of mini squids all over the deck. There
were so many, we decided to count and there were 51 of them in total! Apparently they were all eager to get their
big break in a fine California sushi establishment, but didn’t “catch” that we
were heading the other direction! I know
– terrible joke. Bad Stacey!
Later
that day we were completely surrounded by large bottle-nose dolphins - at least
30-40 of them this time. There were
about 5 to 6 of them at all times taking turns playing under our bow, with the
rest all around us. They raced along with
us for about 40 minutes and they were so close you could almost touch them as
they jumped out of the water. So
amazing, I never tire of watching them.
Turtle Bay was a nice stop and a good place to get a little rest
before continuing on. The bay is quite
beautiful – with high mountains on either end, connected by a long flat sandy
section. It is pretty huge – so I can
see why it’s one of the stops on the popular Baha Haha, which went through the
week prior.
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| Turtle Bay |
We
had a lovely day in route to our next stop of Bahia Santa Maria, with 10-14
knots of wind, kind seas and about a gazillion more dolphins – great passage
day. Unfortunately, it was followed by a
night of 18-25 knot winds with large, confused seas. With this kind of weather it’s very difficult
to sleep off-watch as the boat is really noisy and creaky and waves tend to
slam into the boat from all directions.
It’s incredibly loud. They had only
forecast 13-17 knots, so we were a little surprised to see the wind get up that
high. But we found the wind to be
consistently about 5 knots over the forecast the entire way down the coast, so
eventually we just learned to incorporate that into our forecast.
Because
of the angle of the wind, we also had to do a lot of jibing (ie. "out of
the way" sailing), on this leg – which means it takes a lot longer to get
where you want to go. Originally we had
hoped to arrive at Bahia Santa Maria around 3pm, but instead arrived about an
hour after dark – not something we like to do.
Thankfully it is a wide, easy bay to enter – so with the aid of radar
and our chart plotter and careful scouting, we managed to get safely
anchored. We have HD radar and it’s
amazing how it shows literally every boat, every rock, every piece of land and
exactly how it compares to the charts - very helpful – don’t leave home without
it!
After
a very short stay at Bahia Santa Maria (basically just an overnight), we made
the short passage to Bahia Magdelana, which is just 20 miles to the south and a
HUGE bay. We had been getting some
warnings of high winds for the next two days, so wanted to be there to wait it
out before making our final jump down past Cabo San Lucas and around the tip of
the Baja.
Bahia
Magdelena is a HUGE bay - miles and miles across. The bay is known for the gray whales that
come through and birth their calves in the spring, but unfortunately they were
long gone when we passed through. Surprisingly,
we’ve still only seen the one whale on our way down (the one that almost took
out our rudder!).
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| Bahia Magdelena |
The
winds arrived as predicted, howling through the anchorage as the sun was
setting. That night, we had one of the
worst nights at anchor that I think we’ve ever had. Even though we were safely anchored, there
was so much wind and noise that it was almost like being out to sea all night! It was impossible to sleep more than an hour
or two at a time. That said I was very
grateful we were holed up there in just 25 knots and not out to sea or located
somewhere worse! We found out later that
some friends spent the night anchored out near a sand storm where it was
gusting over 60 knots all night and pelting their boat with sand. Much worse than we experienced for sure!
The
winds finally died down around mid-afternoon, so we decided to make the jump
down to Las Frailes, which we expected would take us about 36 hours. We figured if we left around 5pm we would
hopefully arrive around dawn two days later.
After un uneventful night and day, the next evening we rounded the
“corner” by Cabo San Lucas and it was quite a sight to see. After an entire coastline of almost no lights,
Cabo looked like it could be Las Vegas in comparison. So many lights!!! And it stretched on for miles – quite
impressive and a nice change from the complete darkness of most night watches.
We
had decided not to stop at Cabo as it is VERY expensive to stay there. They charge $20 US a night just to anchor out
and dock space was FAR above that. Since
we’ve been there several times in the past, we just didn’t feel the need to
blow our meager cruising kitty on something we’ve already seen – so we went on
to Bahia los Frailes instead, which I’ll cover in my next post.
Overall
the landscape on the way down is quite breathtaking. For any of you that have visited the Palm
Springs area it’s very similar to that – huge soft looking mountains in front
of a bright blue sky – but here the mountains come down to long stretches of
white sand and water instead of the desert.
As we traveled south we watched the water temperature continue to climb
and by the time we reached los Frailes it was over 85 degrees!
We
finished our fast trip down the Baja peninsula in just 9 days and I can hardly
express how GREAT it feels to know that I won't have to make another overnight
passage for MONTHS!!! Since leaving
Seattle we have traveled almost 2500 miles - all at no faster than about 8
miles an hour and all done in just two months with lots of stops. Kind of gives you a little perspective,
eh?
I
am really looking forward to finally SLOWING DOWN and starting to actually live
the life we’ve been dreaming about for so many years. Here’s to hoping that reality matches up with
our expectations!
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