I’ve just mailed in a deposit for a build-it-yourself fiberglass dinghy! The PT11 from Port Townsend Watercraft.
I first heard about this kit from a fellow cruiser while hanging out in Ensenada. At the time, I thought, “wow! cool! I’d love to do that.” But there’s just no place for a project like that on a cruising boat, so I figured no way it would ever happen. But when we decided to stay in the Bay Area, near home, for a few more months, a window of opportunity suddenly presented itself.
It’s a dream. But as with so many dreams, there are those who will question my sanity.
On the one hand, it’s the absolutely perfect dinghy for cruising on Gardyloo.
It’s 11′ long, making it large enough to comfortably ferry people and groceries between the boat and a dinghy dock or shore. Yet it’s only 90 lbs, so two people can handle it easily. And I plan to put wheels on it, so even one person alone can get it on and off the beach.
It’s a “nesting” dinghy, which means that it comes apart into two pieces, and one of the two fits inside the other. That means it will fit perfectly (a whole 2″ to spare) in the limited foredeck space we have under the staysail Hoyt boom. But it’s also tough enough to be towed, even in fairly rough conditions.
It’s designed to be so easy to row that you don’t need an engine. Which, assuming it proves to be true, means we can get rid of our electric outboard, which is neat itself, but requires storage, is one more thing to break, and consumes electricity from our limited supply.
And as an extra added bonus, it also works as a sailing dinghy, with a removable rudder, daggerboard, and 13 lb carbon fiber mast and sail. Certainly not a requirement for a cruising dinghy, but definitely a source of much potential fun.
On the other hand, it’s a do-it-yourself kit that’s estimated to require 200-300 hours of work to assemble (despite many prebuilt pieces). And I have no experience at all working with fiberglass and fairly little working with wood.
But there’s even an upside to that: It comes with a meticulous 280-page manual, that’s described in one review as being virtually a course in how to work with fiberglass. So I’ll finish the project knowing a lot more than I do now about fiberglass. Not a bad thing if you’re living on a fiberglass boat and depending on it to keep you safe and afloat.
I expect there will be more than one future post covering my progress with this project. Stay tuned.
The previous post was supposed to have more pictures than it ended up with. Some bug in WordPress or my ability to use WordPress. Anyway, if you didn’t see some of the pictures, you’re not imagining it.
I sort of doubt you really wanted to see those x-rated sailing pictures anyway.
Generally when I do a blog entry, I find a unifying theme that ties all the elements I want to talk about together. Occasionally those theme are a bit stretched, but still, there’s a common element. This time, I’ve accumulated a bunch of completely disjoint items that need posting. So it’s the “stuff and such” edition.
Bashing up from San Diego
We sailed the boat north from San Diego to San Francisco, stopping briefly in Santa Barbara and Monterey, familiar marinas from our trip south last year. It says something about our level of experience as cruisers (or our level of hubris) that a journey usually referred to as a bash, wasn’t even worth a blog entry of its own. We waited for good weather windows as usual, but still saw a few days of high wind and seas. Not always pleasant, but no longer so scary.
The @%#$ed diesel hydronic heater
We had a diesel hydronic heater installed on the boat a couple years ago. A diesel heater heats up water (they call it coolant, like in an engine, even if the point is for it to be hot, not cool), which circulates through the boat to radiators with fans that blow heated air into the cabins. The @%#$ thing has never really worked.
It has a high or “power” mode that it uses to quickly get things up to temperature to start with. During that phase, it would flame out and spew out billows of smoke — we always expect people to run over thinking the boat was on fire. The original installer couldn’t figure it out, basically throwing his hands up. (Ask us if you want to know what diesel hydronic installer in the Bay Area to avoid. I won’t name names here because I’d get carried away and may be sued for defamation…)
This has been a source of dissatisfaction and existential angst for years. It wasn’t so important in Mexico, but up here it gets colder and a good heater can make the difference between a warm, cozy home and an ordeal.
I finally decided to take things into my own hands and debug the @%#$er. After some pretty hairy testing and jury-rigging, I found four things that were not installed according to the specs in the manual (wrong size fuel line, wrong mounting angle for the fuel pump, wrong exhaust length, no exhaust water drainage), and one thing that was actually the problem (too many 90 degree bends in the exhaust).
So it’s now finally working! Well, there are still a couple small things, but I’ll get those done RSN (real soon now). It’s absolutely toasty on the boat, even with sub-50 temperatures and 20 knot winds.
Radiation therapy
As of this writing, I’ve just finished the seven weeks of radiation treatments, getting zapped five times a week. So far, it been going extremely smoothly, with very few side effects. I’m tireder, more tense, and perhaps a bit harder to live with. But it’s going far better than I had worried that it might.
The side effects are cumulative, so the two weeks after the end of the radiation (now) are the worst, but, hey, it’s only two weeks — like a Summer vacation. Well, a vacation where you spent way too much time in the sun, didn’t drink enough water, and ate something, or several things that didn’t at all agree with you…
For a variety of complex medical reasons, we won’t know anything definite about the results for six months to a year.
We moved the boat to Oyster Point Marina for the duration, which is only a mile from Kaiser’s Radiation Oncology department. Very convenient.
New life lines
Life lines run along the sides of the boat, helping to keep you from falling overboard. Ours were original equipment, made of plastic-coated wire. These days, they recommend against plastic coated ones, since you can’t inspect the wires to see if they’re about to rust through. And eighteen years is about as long as you want to let them go without replacement. So we decided to get new ones.
But even more fun, there’s a new technology that’s being used a lot for lines on boats, including life lines: Dyneema. Dyneema is “ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene”, which is made of plastic fibers like before, but is stronger (for the same size) than steel. Best of all, it’s fairly easy to do your own life lines using Dyneema. You don’t need to cut or crimp wire, just do some splicing.
Freezer insulation
The insulation of our refrigerator is not great. Even worse, there’s one lid that opens both the refrigerator and freezer, letting cold out and moisture in every time you get something out of the refrigerator. Which leads to frequent defrosting.
So we decided to try building an insulated, zippered cover for the freezer section. It’s been a partial success. It’s not nearly as easy to get in and out of as the old scheme was, but the MTBD (mean time between defrosting) has been cut in half, and it’s hopefully more efficient as well.
The future
We’ve made the decision to stay in the Bay Area for the Winter and Spring, and then head south again in the Summer. We haven’t decided which marina(s) to stay in, or just when to leave. But this means there’s still time to see us if you’re a Bay Area local and haven’t already — or even if you have, we’ll let you have a second round at no extra charge.
(Warning: The following post includes personal health content that may be too much information for some readers. And it includes the “p” word — the one that starts with “pro”, ends with “ate”, and includes “st” in the middle.)
In our cruising adventures, we have now successfully circumnavigated the Sun — it’s been one year since we started. And we find we enjoy it. Gardyloo is cosy and comfortable. We don’t (usually) drive each other crazy being in such continual close proximity. The view from the back porch is always pretty, and changes periodically. We’ve seen parts of the world we had never seen before. And the future holds open-ended possibilities.
Our plan had been to return to Mexico in November, spend the Winter there, and then continue onward to the South Pacific in the Spring. However, life is change and cruising is life, so our plans are changing.
As some of you know, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer a couple years ago. I had surgery that removed the prostate entirely. Since then, we have monitored the PSA level, which indicates if prostate cells are growing anywhere in my body — even if prostate cancer spreads to other parts of the body, it’s still prostate cells, and thus still affects the PSA level.
Recently, the PSA level has risen, which means they didn’t get all of the cancer cells. The big question is whether they simply missed some in the prostate area, or if the cancer has metastasized and spread elsewhere. At this stage, it’s impossible to tell.
In the hope that it’s still local, I will be having radiation therapy, that will kill everything in the local area where the prostate was. It may remove the remainder of the cancer cells, and I’ll be “cured” (like a ham). If it has spread, there’s no cure, just ways to slow the growth down.
Note that for the time being, there are no symptoms from the cancer. No pain, no loss of function. Just a rising PSA score, a number on a test result. The treatments do have side effects, but they’re more annoying than debilitating.
The radiation therapy requires a couple months of treatment, plus another month of recovery time. Given this big time commitment, and given that the boat is already back in the US in San Diego, we’ve decided to bring the boat up to San Francisco, where there’s a marina within walking distance of the treatment center.
So we’ll continue cruising, just closer to home.
We hope to continue our longer distance cruising next year and to get back on track to the South Pacific in the Spring. However, it’s equally possible that we may decide to put back the Pacific crossing a year, and take our time going back South and spend more time in Mexico before crossing.
Stay tuned for future updates.
(Note: If you’re getting this by blog email, you can’t just reply to it (sorry, out of my control). So instead email to me and/or Suzana.)
People are always asking “how’s it going?” Or, in our case, “how’s the cruising life going for you?” There’s never a simple answer to that question, so I thought I’d recount a day recently when everythingwent. Sort of cover it all in one post.
We’d been at the Police Dock on Shelter Island in San Diego since arriving from Mexico, and it was time we went elsewhere. You’re only allowed two weeks time there, and our time was up.
Quite a number of boat bucks went into getting stuff added to the boat, all installed over the previous two weeks. (A “boat buck” is $1k, because nothing you done to a boat seems to cost less than that.) So another goal for the day was to try out the new equipment. It’s always important to try gear locally. Once you go on to another country, it’s hard to get the installers to come fix it.
We had planned to get up early and do a bunch of sailing, but a late dinner meant that plan went quickly out the window. By the time we were ready to head out, it was 10AM. Our goal was to be at our new marina by 3PM, since the office there closes at 4PM. But it wasn’t a hard-and-fast deadline, since the marina would leave the dock key hidden in the dock box for us.
Suzana nearly went nuts trying to find us a slip. San Diego these days is almost full up. You can find slips down in Chula Vista (south of San Diego and still on San Diego Bay), but that’s less convenient for shopping, dining, visiting downtown, and getting out to the ocean. She contacted everyone we knew with connections in San Diego — people who’d been at particular marinas for extended periods, so the marina would be more likely to try their best to find something. Finally, with the help of Diane from Celtic Song, whom we’d met on last year’s Ha-ha, we got a slip at Harbor Island West.
We went through our departure check-list, prep’d the new equipment for trial, and cast off from the dock, making a sharp turn into the wind. A turn which didn’t quite make it. So we did what’s known as a fairway rotation — going forward and back while turning. Unfortunately, the wind was pushing us toward the slips opposite us, containing one boat and two concrete pylons. We missed the boat (whew!), had some help from a good samaritan bystander avoiding one of the pylons, but hit the other pylon, making a rather scary scrunching noise.
With some more help from the bystander, we managed to get the boat pointed away from the dock, and went on out. Inspecting the damage, as we motored up and down the Bay, we found it wasn’t good — the rear pulpit was bent over a couple inches, causing the lifelines to sag in that area — but it wasn’t terrible — the boat was still sea-worthy and the damage stable. I should note for the non-sailors that the pulpit is made of 1″ stainless steel tubing, not something that bends easily.
It’s always a good idea to do a post-mortem on any accident, to figure out why it went down the way it did. In this case, we blame two factors: First, we had planned our departure assuming we’d get out at 8AM, when the wind is virtually nil; but we actually got our at 10AM, when it had picked up to 10-12 knots. We should have re-thought the departure to take the wind into account. Second, we’d attached our new auto-pilot rudder (more on that later), which reduced our ability to make tight turns. We should have waited until we’d left the dock to attach it.
So finally, having decided we didn’t need to return to dock for repairs, we went on out of the Bay. San Diego Bay is a very active waterway, especially on a Saturday morning, so there were dozens of others sail and power boats out with us, a huge cargo ship on its way inbound, and a “warship” (what they call all military vessels) on its way outbound. We stuck to the side of the channel to avoid the big guys (cargo ships can’t maneuver much to avoid you, and warships don’t have to avoid anyone unless they feel like it), and enjoyed the ride. Many of the other sailboats were sailing out, but we were running behind schedule, were not 100% clear about the angles between the wind and the channel, and were still a little shaken from our earlier adventure, so we motored.
Once outside the Bay, we went about getting the sails up. The wind was still in the 10 knot range, which is enough to keep us going, but not enough to really get up to speed. We put up the full main and jib.
Next, the poop went overboard. No, that isn’t a euphemism. Once you’re three miles offshore, it’s legal to dump your holding tank. This was one of the goals for the day. The actual process is this: Suzana stays in the cockpit and watches the lovely clouds. I go below, into the bowels of the boat, open the floorboards, reach in and twiddle the boat’s levers, which are long and hard and need a strong hand to manipulate into place. Then I switch on the vibrator — uh, I mean the macerator, which massages the holding tank contents and spews it into the ocean. Having done the dirty work, it was time for testing the new stuff.
The first piece of new equipment we went to try was the autopilot. We already had an electronic autopilot, but wanted a wind-driven one as well. We got a Hydrovane model, which was a good match for our boat. Wind vane autopilots have a wind vane (duh) sticking up in the air. You adjust the vane to the angle you want the wind relative to the boat. As the boat wanders from that angle, the vane is pushed over, which is mechanically translated to a shift in rudder angle, moving the boat back on course. They require no power and are very reliable. Why did we need a second autopilot, you ask? Four reasons: wind vane auto-pilots are more reliable than electronic ones; they draw zero power; we wanted redundancy, as life on a long passage with no autopilot is no fun at all; and this model can also act as an emergency rudder should your main rudder break. These are especially important features if you plan to go far away from civilization, like across the Pacific.
Up went the vane. A little fiddling and we locked the main rudder in place, leaving all the steering to the Hydrovane. And steer it did, keeping us exactly on course. We adjusted course using it, switching from upwind to downwind. Everything worked as expected on both points of sail. The real test will come on a longer passage, but so far, so good.
The next piece that went under test was the Watt & Sea hydro generator. This is a propeller on a shaft attached to the rear of the boat that you lower into the water. The propeller turns a generator that makes electricity. Gardyloo already has solar panels, but they don’t generate quite enough power for our needs, so we wanted a supplemental source. We considered more solar (no space), wind (too noisy), or a generator (yuck), but settled on the Watt & Sea. When sailing in areas where we frequent marinas (and shore power), it’s not needed, but it works extremely well for long passages like a Pacific crossing.
The final piece of equipment we went for was the water maker, or desalinator. We got a small Spectra model (150c) that only generates about 6 gallons an hour. Again, not so important around marinas, but really nice when crossing the ocean or in places where you have to dinghy water out to the boat in jerry cans. We set it to run for an hour, and it did its thing with no further supervision.
Having successfully tested all the new equipment, we decided it was time we went on to the new marina. Back up the channel and down the Bay, ready for a fresh encounter with a dock. We were assigned slip 362, which is a side tie that wasn’t in the original marina plan and was added on later, and thus doesn’t show on the map of the marina. It’s on the side of a series of slips pointed away from the marina. As those slips there are numbered 358, 359, 360, 361, from left to right, we figure 362 was on the right side. Wrong! Our first clue was as we approached and I noticed there were no cleats to tie the boat to. But dock we did, tying the boat temporarily to the cleats for the next slip. As we stood there scratching our heads, someone popped out from one of the other boats and said, “that’s not actually a slip, you know; the slip’s on the other side.” “Oh,” we cleverly replied.
Try two went a little better, though this time it was on the down-wind side, which is a bit more challenging. There were plenty of cleats. Once attached to the dock, I got off the boat to adjust the boat’s position, while Suzana stayed on the wheel. The adjustment process involved some heavy duty pulling and pushing from the dock — it’s a heavy boat, and the wind wasn’t helping.
That’s when I went overboard into the water between the dock and the boat next door. I was pulling Gardyloo in, but it turns out the line I was putting all my weight on wasn’t actually secured to the boat cleat — in retrospect, I recall attaching it temporarily over just one horn of the cleat while I dealt with other matters. Anyway, it gave, I went, splash. In more detail: oops; shock; blackness; oh, this is what they meant when they said they didn’t know which way was up; ah, there’s the dock; hey, my PFD actually went off like it’s supposed to; hmmm, not too hard to climb back up; damn, I’m soaked; good thing I left my wallet in the other pants; huh, Suzana looks concerned. (Suzana says, the sequence was more like: splash; he’s in the water; omg, I’m too far from the dock to get there; where is he???; boom? aah, the PFD; whew, his head’s out of the water; I can breath.)
Though completely wet, the water temperature was warm, so I went on to secure the boat lines before going below, taking a shower, and changing clothes.
So that was the day that everything went. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide if things went well, went poorly, or just went sideways. But you have to admit that everything did went.
People have been asking for more blog posts. The problem is, nothing’s happening. The boat is in Ensenada.
Suzana and I are coming and going between Ensenada and San Francisco, doing more work cleaning up the house (the one piece we didn’t get done before heading out cruising last year) than on the boat, which hasn’t moved for a month.
At the moment, Suzana is in San Francisco, and I’m is in Ensenada. While I’m sure Suzana is getting up every morning at 5AM and working all day on the house until midnight or so, I’m taking it easy. Oh, there are boat projects to do, decks to be swabbed, oil to be changed. But mostly I’m doing crossword puzzles, watching TV (just finished season three of Stranger Things), doing Tai Chi, taking naps, eating out, and watching the cruise ships come and go two or three times a week.
So maybe this is a good time to briefly describe cruising (as we do it), especially since we’ve noticed that some people have misconceptions about it…
Cruising has essentially three different modes:
In the marina. This has been our favorite style. It’s very little different from having an apartment in whatever city you’re visiting. You can sit at home. Explore the city. Or visit with other cruisers — there’s always someone around the dock to chat with.
In nature. This mode involves anchoring out, away from civilization. It’s quiet. There’s swimming and/or kayaking. And there’s hiking on the nearby land.
Passages. This involves getting from place to place, sometimes taking multiple days to do it. This is the most strenuous but also the most exciting of the modes. It’s when sea sickness happens. And it’s when the dolphins come and swim along with the boat.
So, if you’re considering coming and staying in our spare bedroom, note that there’s something for everyone. You can sail. You can avoid sailing entirely. You can visit a city. You can commune with nature. You can do lots of stuff. Or you can nap.
We’ve found that some people have the mistaken impression that we’re disconnected when we’re cruising. Not true. Even during passages, we have an Iridium satellite connection that lets us do texting and limited email, as well as getting weather reports. At the other end, in the marina, we’re as connected as we are at home: full cell phone service, email, Internet, etc. And even in the nature mode, we surprisingly often have cell phone reception, which we use to access the Internet as well. So don’t hesitate to call; if we’re busy napping, we won’t pick up.
P.S. Without Suzana’s superior language skills to lean on, I’m picking up more Spanish. Now I can say, “Uno calzone para llevar, s’il vous plait.”
On the one hand, this was the most adventurous and dangerous thing either one of us has ever done. We were dozens of miles from other people, hundreds of miles from a marina or boat yard, and sailing into high winds and high seas, the bow crashing into the waves.
On the other hand, although there was definitely some bashing involved, it really wasn’t so bad. And while we occasionally felt uncomfortable and occasionally felt seasick, we never felt out of control or like we or the boat couldn’t handle it.
How does this square with the reputation of the Bash? I think it, like many things in cruising, has to do entirely with preparation:
1: Experience on the water. At one point, while we were bouncing up and down in some of the steeper waves, Suzana pointed out that if we’d done this when we first started sailing, she’d be curled up in a ball in the corner. As it was, we’d been through seas just as rough in the past, and had a lot of hours in varied marine situations.
2: The right boat. We picked an Island Packet boat because they’re cruising boats, designed to handle rough seas. And we now have enough experience with our Island Packet that we trust her to handle nearly anything that gets thrown at her. Confidence in the boat lets you relax and enjoy the ride.
3: The right weather window. We ran into more than one person who left to do the Bash ahead of us, who had done it before, and who said, “Forget waiting for the right weather. It’s gonna be miserable no matter what. So just go.” We totally disagree with that attitude. We didn’t wait for perfect weather, but we did wait for reasonable weather; what we called when we left, “not terrible.”
4: Buddy boats. We went with two other boats, Ginger and Blossom, who more or less stuck together — not always along the way, but at least at the stopping points. It meant we had someone to turn to if things went wrong. Nothing did go wrong with our boat, but we did loan Blossom a couple jerry cans of diesel, which they actually needed in the end. And the other buddy boat benefit was having someone to talk to on the VHF during the long, lonely, dark watches. Here are the crews of the other two boats (each had an owner and two temporary crew):
(We were envious of the other boats on two counts: 1) having three crew makes for a much more relaxed watch schedule; and 2) one of the crew on Ginger, Brad, was a professional chef, who seemed to be constantly cooking something tasty (he used to own a restaurant in New Orleans).)
And here’s the blow by blow (pun intended):
We started off in San Jose del Cabo. We topped off the fuel tanks, provisioned for three weeks (just in case we got stuck due to weather along the way), and watched the weather. Before this, the weather projections had been “not terrible,” and that continued. But when it looked like the future was going to become “terrible,” we (and our buddies) decided to head out rather than facing a potential long wait for “perfect” weather.
After a calm stretch along the coast between San Jose del Cabo and Cabo San Lucas, we rounded Cabo Falso, reported to have reliably high winds and rough seas. And it did not disappoint. Winds were 25 knots, gusting to 30, plus plenty of waves bashing the carp out of us, which meant our speed slowed from our usual 5-6 knots to more like 3. So this is what bashing is all about.
We had been told that it takes around 5-6 hours to bash through the higher winds at Falso, then things calm down. For us, it was more like 3-4 hours. After that, it was bouncy but, as expected, “not terrible.” It might even have been a fun ride, except for two things: Suzana had a touch of seasickness (though not as severe as on some past occasions); and the bouncing kept on going for the next two nights — rollercoasters are fun, but not when they keep going for days.
But two days later, we made it to Bahia Santa Maria. We had been there before, when we came down with the Ha-ha, but with the Ha-ha, there had been nearly 150 boats; this time there were just us three and two others. And it’s a big bay.
We had planned on one day there to recover, but one of our buddy boats needed to refuel, which takes time: there is no town there, so they had to arrange for someone to take their jerry cans cross-country to the nearest gas station and return them, a 24 hour operation. Hence, we stayed an extra day.
Meanwhile, Suzana joined them for lobster dinner (a first for Suzana):
And the next day, got a panga ride to the beach:
To go for a hike to the top of the nearest hill (those dots in the bay are the boats):
I stayed on the boat, needing more recovery time than Suzana, and having a couple boat projects to attend to.
Then it was off on the next leg, from Bahia Santa Maria to Bahia Tortuga (Turtle Bay). For this leg, the weather decided to give us a break. The water was mirror calm. No bouncing up and down. No 25 knot wind in the face. Just pleasant motoring all day. Plus turtles and dolphins. We could have done it for weeks.
Unlike Santa Maria, Turtle Bay has a town, restaurants, and a grocery store. We were looking forward to a day or two to relax there. Unfortunately, the weather was again threatening to become “terrible,” and the other boats decided, rather than risk getting stuck in Turtle Bay, to head out immediately, stopping only long enough to refuel and reprovision.
Turtle Bay has a refueling service that comes to the boat. While we still had a half full tank, and would probably have made it all the way on that, we opted to add another 40 gallons to be safe. The refueling service has a somewhat shady reputation for overcharging and misreporting fuel quantities. But everything seemed fine for us. As far as we could tell, we got as much fuel as we asked for, and though expensive as fuel goes, the extra trouble of getting the fuel out to the boat seemed to justified the cost.
So off we headed, trailing a bit behind the other boats, who were more efficient getting ready to go.
The last leg was the longest, about 300 miles, requiring three nights. Given how briefly we stopped at Turtle Bay, this made for an effective five nights, six days at sea. This was the longest passage we’ve ever done, and good practice for our possible South Pacific passage next year, which will be longer but calmer.
The weather was kicking up again, varying from around 15 knots apparent to 25 knots. It was not as rough as Cabo Falso, but certainly made cooking a challenge.
We had been warned to watch out for fishing boats around Santo Tomas, and, sure enough, we ran into a string of four of them, all in the middle of the night. And they don’t do AIS, so we used radar and their lights to track them.
The first one passed without incident during Suzana’s watch. The second, just as I came on watch, seemed to be changing direction, leading to enough confusion that we had a near collision. Both boats having to turn to avoid it.
So when the third one approached, I made a point of turning 50 degrees to starboard to ensure no possibility of another close call. And he turned to follow me! But I had made the turn sharp enough that he passed at some distance anyway.
The fourth one passed without any similar interactions, but once it was a mile behind us, it stopped, then turned toward us and headed up behind us. But slowly enough that it didn’t get near.
All of which was pretty strange. I have three theories: 1) fishing boats get bored during the long night out, so they find it amusing to mess with the sailboats that come by; 2) everyone involved was a little blurry eyed and not using their best judgement; or 3) I’m still learning how to read the radar and got it all wrong. I give each of those an equal probability of being right.
Early the next morning, we reached our destination of Ensenada. We’re now at the Cruiseport Marina, which we graciously share with the big cruise ships. We’ll stay here and explore Ensenada for a month or so, then head up to San Diego, where we’ll stay for the rest of the summer.
Statistics for the passage:
Total days: 10
Time at sea: 148 hours
Time sailing (as opposed to motor-sailing): 4 hours
Nautical miles travelled: 691
Average speed: 4.7 knots
Highest speed: 6.7 knots
Fuel used: 130 gallons
MPG: 5.3nm/gal
Gallons/hour: 0.9
Tank (washing) water used: 130 gallons
Bottled (drinking) water used: 5 gallons
Highest apparent wind: 32 knots
As to the Bash, our feeling is that it’s one of those things that can be very bad, even life threatening, if you’re not ready for it. Things can go wrong, and if they do, they can go very wrong. But if you’re prepared and do it right, it’s not so big a deal. Of course, the stories everyone tells are about the times it doesn’t go right and the people involved aren’t prepared.
Some of you have seen me refer to the “dreaded Baja Bash,” and wondered what I meant. Some of you have done the Bash and don’t dread it at all. Time to explain.
Sailing down the outside coast of the Baja peninsula is fairly easy, as it goes with the wind. It’s so easy that the annual rally of 150 or so boats doing it is called the Baja Ha-ha. We did that one last Fall.
Sailing up the coast generally goes against the wind, often against the ocean waves, and is usually much, much harder. Hence, people call it the Baja Bash. That’s what we’re about to do.
We’re doing the Bash for two main reasons: 1) We want to stay on the boat this Summer, but don’t want to cope with the 90+ degree heat here in Mexico — no air conditioning on the boat… 2) It’s a great shakedown trip for us and the boat — after all, we may be going across the Pacific next year, and may run into much worse.
The Bash is one of those sailing things that everyone has opinions about, whether they’ve done it, plan to do it, or wouldn’t ever want to do it. Those opinions cover a wide range of options: “Wait for a weather window.” “Wait until July.” “Don’t go if the wind is orange.” (Makes more sense if you’re looking at a weather app that color codes the wind speeds.) “Hug the coast.” “Get well away from the coast.” “Go 400-500 miles out from the coast.” “Eat ginger.” “Just do it!”
We’re heading out tomorrow in a weather window best described as “not terrible.” But later in the week, things get genuinely terrible (26 knots wind, 10′ waves at 6 seconds, for those of you who know what terrible means). So if we don’t go now, we may not go this month. We expect things to be difficult, we expect the boat to go slower than usual (fighting the wind and waves), but we expect to get to the next anchorage (Bahia Santa Maria) within a couple days.
Why are we willing to do this crazy thing? 1) We trust the boat. She’s proved herself before in rough conditions, and we believe in her. 2) We trust ourselves. We’ve done enough passages to know that we always get there in the end. 3) We’ve done our homework, reading about the Bash and preparing for contingencies*. And 4) We’ve arranged with two other boats to head up at the same time (roughly), so we’ll have others to call for help, or at least for commiseration.
The tentative plan is to stop in Bahia Santa Maria and Turtle Bay, just as we did on the way down. But weather and sea conditions (and more) will dictate what we actually do, and whether we make additional stops along the way. The final destination, though, is Ensenada, getting there in something between ten days and three weeks. If you’d like to follow us on the journey in detail, click here.
So, this blog entry is the “before the Bash” post. I’ll do another one after we’re safely in Ensenada. It will be interesting to see if my perspective changes.
(*) Re contingencies: Yesterday, we discovered that our emergency manual bilge pump was not working. This is something you really, really want if you’re doing something like the Bash. We had visions of trying to find parts for it locally, where there are few chandleries, and poor availability of parts. This morning, we took it apart, expecting an unrepairable mess within. Instead, we found just gunk that was wedging an important internal mechanism open. We cleared the gunk, reassembled the pump, and now everything is working 100%. We were very proud of ourselves.
We’ve switched to a different boat tracking system. If you go to the top of the blog (https://gardyloo.blog), you’ll see the new, improved system. We think it’s clearer and easier to use. If you click on the boat icon, you’ll also get a mini-blog of short posts that come out more frequently than the main blog posts. As with the old one, you can zoom in to see more details. And it has a full-screen mode if you want to get even more.
Also, we’re getting ready to head out across the Sea of Cortez, from Mazatlan to Bahia Los Frailes and then to San Jose del Cabo. We plan to leave in the next couple days. Frailes has iffy network connections, so we’ll likely be out of touch for a day or two or three. Follow us on the new tracker.
It’s taken quite a toll on Suzana and me to keep all of you in the dark about what we’ve really been doing these past six months. We’ve hated lying to everyone, but we had good reasons to do so. Now it can all be revealed.
First, the big lie: We have not been cruising. We have not been living on a sailboat. We are not in Mexico.
We have actually been living in a small studio apartment in Fremont. We’ve been spending a good part of our time photoshopping ourselves into pictures of Mexico that we’ve found on the Internet.
As a couple of you have been told in confidence, Suzana has long been a semi-covert agent working for Mossad. It’s been a bit of a balancing act, but we’ve been careful to avoid “projects” that would be in conflict with the United States’ interests. But the news coverage of the latest venture has blown her cover, so that’s all over now.
It started out as an investigation of a questionable tallit importer. A bit of undercover work led to the discovery that not only were the tallits of poor quality, but sewn into them was a WiFi surveillance device capable of compromising any computer network they were in contact with. This was part of a larger scheme to compromise US Jewish community computer systems.
Suzana’s “in” to the organization was to pose as the owner of a computer repair facility in downtown Oakland, who had created software to cause the compromised computers to explode. But that required a full time commitment on her part, which required a reason for her to be absent from her regular home life. Hence the cruising fiction.
While it’s true that this was a form of entrapment, you have to remember that it was a Mossad operation, not US law enforcement. So different rules apply.
The operation came to an abrupt halt when the tallit warehouse spontaneously exploded (we suspect, but can’t prove, interference from the CIA, as the same warehouse contained compromised MAGA hats). The resulting news coverage — which I’m sure you all saw — blew the lid off the whole operation.
So we’re back home again. See you around the neighborhood.
