Month: November 2018

Replies not supported

If you’re getting these blog posts by email*, note that you can’t just reply to the email. The service I’m using to email the posts just doesn’t support it. If you have replied in the past, we didn’t receive it.

Sorry ’bout that.

You can always send comments, suggestions, bad jokes, etc., to me at chesley@acm.org. And if you did reply in the past, and still have the email you sent, please do forward it to me. I love hearing back.

*: If you haven’t subscribed, you can easily do so on the blog page on the right side. Getting the posts by email means you don’t have to remember to check the site for new items. You’ll get them in your inbox.

Is there a doctor on board?

We knew it would happen sooner or later — a medical emergency while we’re away from civilization and emergency rooms and doctors. Well, now it has.

We have a lot of stuff on board for emergency situations. That includes a rather large and complete medical supply kit. And it’s part of the reason we have a satellite phone — so we can call for medical advice no matter where we are.

We haven’t gone as far as one couple we read about, who learned how to remove each other’s appendix, just in case. In fact, we never got around to taking the wilderness medical course that we really, really meant to.

But you never know what the emergency is going to be or when it’s going to occur. In this case, it happened in Bahia los Frailes. And it happened while Suzana was taking a shower, so I was on my own. Coming out of the aft head, I… Oh, it’s painful to even say it… I stubbed my toe!

OK. OK. It’s not exactly a life threatening emergency, but in fairness, it did turn black and blue, and it did swell up. It wasn’t just a little stub, it was a big, painful stub!

But now that we’ve done the “medical emergency” thing, we’re hopefully that it’s out of our system and will never happen again. Just like we got running aground done with early in our sailing career and have never felt the need to do it again.

Cabo to La Paz (11/16/18-11/21/18)

Cruising is sometimes exciting, sometimes scary, sometimes fascinating, and sometimes very, very relaxing. Our passage from Cabo to La Paz, with stops at Bahia los Frailes and Ensenada de los Muertos was the latter.

The seas were light, as were the winds, and all legs of the trip were in daylight. So no stress.

Frailes had swell coming from the South, generating a constant rolling the entire time we were there. Normally, rolling is a bad thing, as it makes it harder to do things aboard, even as simple a thing as walking in a straight line. But this rolling was both very gentle and very regular. So it felt like there was someone singing a lullaby quietly in the background. It made it very easy to sleep, even when it wasn’t bedtime, and just generally made the whole stay feel very dreamlike.

Perhaps the only source of tension during the passage was anchoring in Frailes, which was very crowded (around 35 boats) when we arrived. Most of those boats were Ha-ha boats, including several with people we know. We found a spot a little closer to other boats than we like, but workable. However, the next morning when we woke up, every boat around us but one had moved on, and we had lots and lots of space. We did wonder if it was something about us that drove them away, but we didn’t complain.

We dug out and inflated the kayaks for the first time ever — they came with the boat, but we had never used them before — which was lots of fun.

We woke up the next morning to find a rather large power boat anchored in the bay. They stayed the day and then moved on. We’re not sure, but we suspect that’s a water slide sticking out the back.

Ensenada de los Muertos, our next stop, translates to Bay of the Dead. We’re not sure what the history of the name involves, but don’t worry: the local developers have renamed the bay to Bahia de los Sueños, or Bay of Dreams. How’s that for rebranding?

Another Island Packet 420, Reality Check, anchoring not far away, in time for this sunset photo op:

Muertos has a very accessible beach (no breaking waves to get you soaked), with lovely white sand, and a resort that includes a very good restaurant. If you eat or drink in the restaurant, you can use their other facilities, like the pool (with water slide).

And inside the restaurant, on the second level, is an extensive model train set. You can’t run it, but it sure brought back childhood memories. If I remember my model train gauges correctly, I’d say it was OO gauge.

We had lunch with cruisers from Epiphany, Cravn Wind, Redeemed, and C.A.T.* The restaurant was planning a Thanksgiving dinner for the 22nd, and some of the other cruisers decided to stay for it. But we wanted to get on to La Paz.

Muertos is one place we’d like to return at some point.

*: C.A.T. had been planning to sail directly, overnight, to La Paz. They noticed our mast in the bay at Muertos, and called us on the VHF just to say “hi.” We told them it was a great harbor and they really should stop for a while. We thought they’d continued on when they suddenly showed up at the restaurant just as we were eating lunch. They later said the tacos were great, it was really nice to get a good night’s sleep. We played sea tag with them the next day all the way to La Paz.

Who you gonna call?

Some people sail single-handed. I’ve done it. But mostly, sailing involves two or more people, especially cruising. Where do these extra people come from? It’s one of those questions with thousands of answers.

Someone commented the other day on the number of couples cruising where the husband is significantly older than the wife. My immediate reaction was, well, yeah, it’s always better to have younger crew.

One of the Baja Ha-ha rally boats is crewed by a father and daughter, who’s taking a break after college. They seem to get along wonderfully.

At the kick-off party for the Ha-ha, the day before everyone was to leave, there were a number of boats still looking for crew, and people looking to crew. Nothing like trusting your life to someone you just met yesterday…

Our friends on Epiphany had their daughter along for crew. After the Ha-ha, she switched boats, to crew for one headed to Mazatlan.

One captain we talked to over drinks said the best crew are those who pay to do it. By which he didn’t mean than it’s nice to get paid, but that having that sort of formal, financial relationship solidifies what everyone expects from the experience.

For us, although we could have done the Ha-ha with just the two of us, we decided — for safety and to make things easier — that we wanted at least one more crew. We started out talking to some of our long-time sailing partners. But none of the “usual suspects” could make it. Then we talked to an instructor from Tradewinds, but he backed out, choosing instead to do missionary work in Africa. Really.

So we ended up sitting around one day in our cockpit back in Richmond, wondering where we’d find someone, when this guy showed up, completely out of the blue, and asked if we were looking for crew for the Ha-ha. That was Wes.

Turns out, Wes was building his own boat (literally, but that’s another story), was planning to do the Ha-ha on it, but it wasn’t ready for this year’s Ha-ha. So he wanted to go with someone else for the experience. He’d been talking to people in the marina who knew we were doing the Ha-ha, and they pointed him in our direction.

Our first reaction was caution, not knowing anything at all about Wes. So we invited him to a day sail or two, which went very well. Then a trial run to Monterey and back. By then we were convinced that he was the right crew — easy to get along with, knowledgeable about sailing, willing to do it “our” way, even when he thought there were better ways, but also willing to share the better way with us.

Having now completed the Ha-ha, we can say definitively that Wes was just about the best crew we could possibly have hoped for. We got really lucky that day he dropped by the boat in Richmond.

Turtle Bay to Cabo San Lucas (11/3/18-11/10/18)

The second and third legs of the Ha-ha took us from Turtle Bay, to Bahia Santa Maria, to Cabo San Lucas.

Spanish pronunciation mnemonic 1: “a” and “i” in Spanish are pronounced like in Maria, so Bahia Santa Maria rhymes very nicely.

As we go on a leg out into the (potentially hostile) ocean, it’s comforting having other boats nearby. When we start, you can see the other boats on our AIS display, as shown below. In the middle of the circles is our boat. All the little, sperm-like thingies are the other boats.

AIS only shows nearby boats, so as the leg progresses, boats disappear, one by one, exactly as if a giant sea monster were picking them off, one by one. We assume not.

At night, you can see the lights for the very near boats. On the first leg, we were surrounded by what Suzana called a “circle of lights” following us through the night.

In Bahia Santa Maria, there is virtually nothing at all, yet somehow, magically, there were more pangas to take us to another big party on shore.

Here are our friends from the boat Ramble On Rose:

There was a very good live band, who got trucked in from far, far away. I’m told, but haven’t verified, that the lead singer was the winner of the Mexican TV series “The Voice.” They played for tips — and I’ll bet they did OK.

The normal schedule for the last leg of the Ha-ha, from Bahia Santa Maria to Cabo San Lucas had us leaving early in the morning, and getting in late the following day, possibly after dark. As we hate entering a new port after sunset, we took off the night before, sailed over two nights, and arrived in the morning.

Here’s the entry to Cabo:

Cabo downtown is a very noisy place. From our slip, we could hear four or five bars attempting to attract patrons by blasting loud music into the night. If you’re into atonal music, it’s great. And then at 6 in the morning, the sport fishing boats go out, after loudly getting ready. But we were so tired from the trip and the heat, we slept through it all.

And, it wouldn’t be the Ha-ha without another party in Cabo, at Squid Roe, which the guide books describe as the heart of the Cabo night life.

If Suzana looks a little blurry, that’s just because it was that sort of place.

The next day, there was an awards ceremony, where we won second place in our division, and chattiest boat. Getting second place was partly because of Suzana’s experience with racing and her advice: just show up. I’m sure we’d have won even if all the other boats had submitted their time sheets as well.

At La Paz

Just a quick post to let everyone know that we arrived safely at La Paz.

Here we are, in one of the “big slips”:

They’re double slips, 60′ long, and wide enough to fit two catamarans. We have cats on three sides, and a giant power boat on the fourth.

We plan to be here about a month, maybe more if we like it.

I hope to catch up on blogging over the next couple days, so more to come…

Ha-ha Fleet, Ha-ha Fleet, this is Gardyloo, over

Everyone has trouble talking on the VHF radio to start with. You have to push a button on the microphone and say your thing, not knowing who’s hearing you, or just how you sound. And so it was with Suzana before we started cruising, indeed even after that and before the Ha-ha.

But during the course of the Ha-ha, she blossomed as a radio operator, not only becoming casual about using the radio, but downright witty and generally helpful to others in the fleet. So much so that she got the chattiest VHF operator award, by popular vote.

She say that it’s not that she talked more than others, but that her accent made people remember her more than others. I say it’s not because she talked more, but because she had more style than the others. And she wasn’t talking just to chat, as the award’s name suggests, but nearly always to spread useful information or help someone with a problem or needing to connect with someone else in the fleet.

Anyway, I’m really proud of her expanded and expanding prowess as a radio operator.

San Diego to Turtle Bay (10/29/18-11/2/18)

The first leg of the Baja Ha-ha, from San Diego to Turtle Bay, was the longest one, lasting three days and three nights. Over night, we (Suzana, Wes, and Harry) did watches of three hours each, with half hour overlaps, which seemed to work well for us — enough time to get a couple four hour sleeps each night, but not terribly long stretches on watch. During the day, we didn’t do formal watches, but as it’s pretty boring being below, someone always seemed willing to take the wheel.

Unfortunately, this year, there was very little wind, so most of it was done motoring. And even when there was some wind, it was pretty much dead behind us, not the best point of sail for a boat without a spinnaker.

Anticipating this, we had set up preventers on both our main and Hoyt boom staysail, letting us do wing-on-wing without worrying about accidental jibes, and allowing us to use the Hoyt boom as a pole to keep the staysail out.

We arrived in the middle of the night. Not wanting to go into a strange harbor full of a hundred other boats in the dark, we sailed back and forth for a few hours, and went in right after sunrise.

All these boats were with the Ha-ha:

As advertised, the bay is large enough for the entire Ha-ha fleet to anchor and then some. Local fishermen provided a shuttle service to shore ($2-3/person) with their small fishing boats (pangas), so we didn’t even bother to deploy our dinghy. A lot of other people did, though:

There was a party on the beach, seen in the background above.

Suzana took a panga to shore and went for a run one of the mornings. Unfortunately, the five other people who said they’d come running at 9AM all slept in. But Suzana enjoyed her run anyway.

We also wandered around town (about 4,000 people), and stumbled quite accidentally on a religious service taking place outdoors in the local cemetery, on the Day of the Dead. It was very interesting, even if we could’t understand a word of it. At one point, everyone turned to the people nearby, shook hands and said “la paz,” including with us. Afterward, everyone was setting up food near their relative’s graves. We slipped away.

Absolutely glorious

You had to be there, but here goes anyway:

We’re going from Turtle Bay to Bahia Santa Maria. It’s the middle of the night, and my shift, so everyone else is asleep.

Shortly after coming on-shift, I had realized we had plenty of wind, so switched from motoring (which is dependable, but tedious and noisy) to sailing (which is variable and requires more attention). At present, we have about 13 knots of wind, so we’re going around 5-6 knots through the water. The sails are full, and the water gurgles as it passes by, giving a feeling of motion, and of a sail boat doing it’s thing.

We’re well away from land, and any sources of light pollution, and there’s no moon. So looking up, I see stars, stars, and more stars. The Milky Way is very visible and spread across the sky. Orion, my personal favorite constellation is up and brighter than I’ve ever seen it.

After a bit, I notice something moving in the water beside the boat. It’s a pod of dolphins, come to swim alongside. When sailing, we often cross a pod, and they usually swim along with us for a stretch. But this time, it’s a set of white shadows in the water next to the boat, weaving in and out. Probably five or ten dolphins as best I can tell.

I’m sitting on the aft railing seat, taking all this in, and thinking how absolutely glorious it all it, when a shooting star streaks across the sky, putting the while experience somewhere beyond that.