The Baja HaHa 2013

This is the AIS screen shot of us leaving San Diego heading down to Bahia de Tortugas or turtle bay, Mexico.  Wikipedia AIS for a quick lesson on what it is if you don't know.  120 boats left with us on a rainy morning in San Diego.  About a third of the boats in the race carried AIS. We are the blue arrow and everyone else is orange.  

This is also us leaving "sunny" San Diego. Record cold on October 28th. Typical. Pretty windy at the start.  Thanks to Michael and my step brother who took their boats out to take some pictures of Appa as we headed south.   Love seeing our boat under sail.  We had more wind than forecasted and I was still in my pirate outfit while all this was going on.  Those pirate boots are not good deck shoes.  

After the 1100 start we settled in for the 322 mile ride to Turtle Bay. We had a south east wind for most of the first day down south which we were told is very unusual.  Once I got out of my costume and trimmed the boat a bit, we were making pretty good time.  

You can motor during this "race" but it counts against you.   On the first leg we stated up the motor at night when the wind died and started to slowly, slowly start to come out of the northwest. We motored for about 4 hours.  The wind built to about 15 knots or so at 4 am so we rolled out the b and started sailing.  Once morning came, October 29th, we had all hands on deck and we raised the spinnaker.  That helped us a bit with our speed and we were making around 8 knots or so right on the rhumb line. Beautiful sunny day with a nice gentle swell pushing us along.

Had the spin up for most of the day and dropped it at night right after our sundowner drink. About 9 hours of great sailing. 

The 30th was another sunny nice day but the wind was pretty gusty so we decided to just sail with the jib and main up.  Almost raised the spinnaker but really, no sense in breaking us or the boat.  Had the fishing lines out but didn't catch anything.  At night we had to throw in a reef and finally crossed the finish line for this leg at 0130 on the 31st.  We then had to sail another 10 miles to the anchorage.  

We pulled into Turtle bay, dropped the anchor in 25 feet of water and went to bed.

In the daytime, we cleaned up a bit and then went to town.  Turtle Bay is a small fishing town with about 2000 people.  Most of whom are dreadfully poor but appeared to be very happy and indeed were very friendly.  Dust covered everything.  Had a couple beers on the beach and then back to the boat for dinner and getting the kids ready for trick or treating via dinghy.  Ben dressed as a pirate and Samey went as a pirate princess, complete with orange and black dress along with a sword.  Very cute.  Photos are on the camera and I'll get them on here soon.  Max drove them and our good friend's kids around in our dinghy.  They had a pretty good haul.

On the second we had a beach party with Max being picked to scale this big hill and wing frisbees over the crowd as we all posed for group photos. Pretty fun.  Not much for the kids to do though.  

We did see a CS34 in Turtle Bay named Moondance that was sailing in our race.  They had it tricked out pretty well.  Took some photos of that boat for Pete and Rachelle as they have the same thing.  Never did meet Moondance's owners though.   

Left the party at sundown and got into our bunks early for the next leg to Bahia Santa Maria or Mag Bay. 

Sam and Jen at the beach in Turtle Bay.

Petting the local hounds in Turtle Bay.

The local watering hole.

Just a portion of the dinghies at the dock.  The fuel dock at Turtle Bay was a rickety sob. Fuel was super expensive and I heard that they ran out of gas to power the pumps for the diesel.  Mexico. Gotta love it. 

Those blue support poles are very rusty and appear to be close to failing.  

The anchorage. Some swell but not bad and we slept well.  Had much worse swell up in California off of Catalina island. 

Jennifer doing the morning radio net.  You give your position in lat and long along with fish caught, funny stories, etc.

The next leg of the race was about 233 miles and the plan was to stay offshore a bit were there was reportedly more wind.  We found it. That and waves. 

Above is a screen shot of the AIS my nav program was showing.  The whole trip down had us dodging boats. We really had to keep a sharp lookout especially at night.  Challenging sailing for sure. 

We had 12 boats in our division. They were all Jenneaus, Beneteaus, Catalinas, and one Hunter 41.  

The boat that we seemed to sail with the most was Ariel IV. She is a Borghegn 49 sailed by a Swedish couple who have circumnavigated twice. 

The link is not English but it is them.  http://www.arielfyra.se/bat_och_utrustning.html

We have plans to meet up with them throughout this next year while in Mexico. 

The first day out of Turtle was brilliant. Good wind, from the right direction....nice. Spinnakered for hours.  The next day the wind got gusty and the waves twisty.  The swells were from two different directions and the wind caused another set of waves from yet another direction.  Crazy stuff.  It was exactly like the trip down from Seattle to San Fran. Same crap.  

All day and night we got slammed around by the waves.  The partners in the mast started to work loose so I had to repair them underway.  Not too bad.  The water maker hose ruptured the day before also.  Steering was ok.  No squeaking.  So really only two problems. When the hose for the watermaker went, it dumped 60 gallons of water into the bilge though.  Maybe 50 gallons.  A bunch.

Got into Mag Bay at 2130 and dropped the anchor in 30 feet of water.  Hit the rack right after that.  Long grueling trip. Max did great as did everyone else but Max really shined.  Hard to imagine doing this without him.  

Got up at 0730 and did the radio net check in thing and then checked the water temp.  75 degrees!  We went swimming.  After that I had to try and find watermaker parts (to no avail) and fix the partners in the mast. 

Had a party on the beach the following day.  They truck in a band and beer with food and have at it.  Pretty fun but again nothing for the kids so we went down to the beach and played in the surf.  Warm water and waves....perfect. 

Next morning we left for Cabo San Lucas.  188 miles to the south.  We still did our night watches with sweaters on till this leg.  Warm out and getting hot.  We also traded dermabond and lidocaine for fishing lures while in Mag Bay. Got us a cedar plug.  It works.

More mañana....