Hangin' at The Horn of Mexico

Cabo San Lucas...  Lot's of folks here for their vacations staying at the over abundance of beach hotels or on the cruise ships trying to pack in a lot of FUN! FUN! FUN! All that activity turns this very peaceful anchorage at 6am into a raging cauldron by 10am with more potential than the open ocean for death or dismemberment.  Dover is on deck warning every banana boat, Seadoo, parasail boat and seemingly taunting sea lion population that he is watching and ready to defend his vessel.  We came into the harbor last night at 9:30pm completely blinded by all the hotel and bar lights.  We have been in this harbor twice before in '05 but I do not remember the amount of hotels, condos and developments.  It looks like it has grown to twice the size that it was. 

Our leg from Bahia Santa Maria to Cabo started out wet.  We left on a cloudy Tuesday morning which turned into rain about an hour outside the harbor.   Craig is borderline fanatic about checking the weather before we head out anywhere, which is a very good thing.  He usually checks the wind and wave forecasts though, not precipitaiton.  Somehow we were both under this blissful delusion that the "weather" portion of our journey was over.  It wasn't a driving rain.  The light wind forecasts were correct, but it was very wet and produced a fetch and albeit light, wind that was heading us.  We were going approximately 3.5 knots motorsailing on a presumably downwind, downswell run...  Welcome to El Nino!!!!  The rain lasted about 7 hours and then just partially cloudy skies.  We hugged the coast down so as to minimize the cape affect.  It was still pretty rolly at 20 nm from the cape, but we got a NE shore breeze at sundown which enabled us to get in pretty tight around the cape.

Once again we saw a huge amount of Grey Whales on our trip.  We have nicknamed Dover, Ensign Ahab, because he has displayed the uncanny knack of smelling the whales minutes before we see them.  He's basically The Whale Wisperer.  They are amazing creatures and at times we had dozens surrounding the boat.  Seeing a full body whale breach the surface of the ocean never gets old...  We just say a little prayer that they don't inadvertently do it under our boat.

We are here for 2 days and then will trade the washer machine anchorage for a quieter slip up the road about 15 nm in San Jose del Cabo.  Once there, we will provision and get ready to cross The Sea of Cortez headed for Mazatlan and our friend Neill who is waiting patiently for the solar panels of his that we are bringing onboard with us.