Stuck in Abreojos...

We are at an anchorage at the very top of Bahia San Lazaro (top portion of the middle bight of the coastline) waiting not to patiently for the weather to die down a bit before pushing north again to get into Turtle Bay and a required fuel stop and mini-provision.  We are only 80 miles away, but it seems like 1,000's because the wind howls through here, and every mile gained since leaving Santa Maria Bay has been hard won for us.  We actually tried to push through this morning.  We weighed anchor at 4am and got around the corner only to be slapped back.  The weather guru Don, s/v Summer Passage who broadcasts via ham on The Amigo Net, says that a gale will blow starting this afternoon down the Baja coast and be blowing 30-35 knots NW for the next couple of days.  We will probably be stuck here through Saturday, May 1st...  Big bummer...  We are down to our last 6 eggs and are out of fresh produce save for potatoes and onions.  My big sister Aina's sprout kit will be coming out this afternoon!  The town of Abrejojos has few services and we are well tucked in a cove east of it, so popping into town for a few things is not an option at this juncture.

Other than our frustration at the Baja Bash, which was to be expected, we are all well.  South Trail has been running great, and other than our bow mounted running lights going  out all the time (understandable with all the pounding seas) knock wood, we have had no major system failures.  Dover is resigned to the fact that he will not be going ashore often on this part of the journey, and is getting his daily exercise running the decks and warning away all manner of sea bird and mammal away from his South Trail.  He also gets nightly games of tug-o-war and boat fetch.  We all desperately need a shower and are lamenting not hooking-up our watermaker for this trip.  The water we have onboard must be conserved for moments like this when we don't know how long it will before we are able to fill up again.  Turtle Bay is the Oasis in these parts.  They have fuel, water, provisions, restaurants, and even one of the local hotels offers cruising sailors showers in one of their hotel rooms for $3...  Yeah, we will be doing that deal bigtime!

Whata Difference a Bay Makes!!!

We arrived 180 nm's NW of Cabo today, Tuesday at sunrise, in our favorite deserted anchorage, Bahia Santa Maria, outside of Mag Bay.  No Sea-Doos here baby!  Just a small fishing village who love to barter with us gringos for their commodity...fish and lobster.  We are in hog heaven right now, and it is a good thing because according to the weather gurus, South Trail with be here for a few days while some Gale's blow down the Baja coastline...

Our Bash out of Cabo was not the trauma inducing experience we were stealing ourselves for.  Once again, Capt. Craig picked a great window to weigh anchor and get outta Cabo.  We left the anchorage at 10am on Sunday.  We rounded Cabo Falso with no major head wind or seas.  It was choppy and we were only doing about 3.5 knots, but it was very doable.  The afternoon blow which is typical was very mild.  We saw nothing over 14 knots during the whole passage.

The worst part of heading uphill in a boat like ours, is that you have to get used to the fact that you will most likely be averaging less nautical miles per hour than you have been used to the entire cruising season!  I think it is more of a trauma psychologically than physically.  We just kept thinking the whole passage, "shouldn't we be further along by now?"   You are beating and the wind is in your face and the boat is working, but you are just not going as fast as the conditions might lead you to believe you should be.  It's a bummer for sure.  But like anything, the more you do it, the more confident you get...  We should be very confident by the time we make it back up to Ventura!

Time to relax, get some sleep and enjoy these bugs for dinner tonight!

We are hoping to leave on our most challenging leg, the middle bight of Baja up to Turtle Bay, on Friday depending on the weather gurus instructions.  There are a couple of possible anchorages in between that we may have to stop at due to necessity.  Stay tuned for more bash updates!....

Fair winds to all on your own life passages...

 

In Cabo: Teeing-Up for the Big Bad Baja Bash!!!

Arrived in Cabo at midnight Wednesday night from our Mazatlan crossing.  Very pleasant, benign Sea of Cortez passage.  Got to actually sail a bit when we left Mazatlan.  Got a little bit of SW Pineapple Express gentle push to get us outta town.   As this is possibly the last calm, benign passage for awhile, we REALLY enjoyed the lack of drama.  We are in the lovely rolly anchorage here in Cabo San Lucas with a lot of pasty white tourists wizzing around us on rented Sea-Do's after too many cocktails, and worse, trying to show off their incredible Sea-Do prowess of going way too fast through a crowded anchorage...  There are more ways to die here in Cabo on the water than anywhere else on the Baja really.  Craig, Dover and I had to run into town for parts and were nearly capsized by a glass bottom boat and a cruise ship tender respectively.  We thwarted the full bath, but got a good soaking nonetheless...  We will leave as soon as we get a good weather window to get us up to Magdelena Bay.  At this writing, we may be leaving on Sunday or Monday.  Hopefully, before the Sea-Do's drive us all totally bonkers !

We really had to tear ourselves away from Mazatlan as it is our new favorite city in Mexico and so many of our friends were there when we left.  We will miss Jack and Elvia, Neill Randle, and Patrick Martin and all our new aquaintences in Old Harbor, Club Nautico, Isla Marina and Dock 4, Marina Mazatlan.  We did lots of laundry and stowed all our non-necessary items (read: all Eva's little homey touches that could get destroyed in the coming weeks of pounding to weather)

We celebrated our wedding anniversary on Easter Sunday this year down in the Plaza Machado in Centro Historico at a lovely outdoor cafe and then went to our favorite pastry place, Panama, for some sweets to take back to South Trail.

Dover is absolutely the star of this cruising trip.  He has made so many new friends, and has turned into the very confident smallest big dog we've ever had the pleasure to know.  Everyday he impresses us with his abilities and great attitude.  Dover has opened doors for us and added a great dimension to this trip for us. We could write a book about moments and places Dover has experienced in the last few months...  Maybe we will!

Our Baja Bash strategy is pretty simple...  We are going to go with the fastest (Read: Sea-Do story above), best weather window that gets us around Cabo Falso and up to Bahia Santa Maria/Mag Bay for our first passage.  Based on our experience with our Telcel Dongle coming down the Baja, we will be able to check our favorite online weather sources (buoyweather.com, sonrisanet.org-Geary's weather, passageweather.com, noaa.org -for the cool big picture satelite images) as well as listen to Don, s/v Summer Passage on the ham Amigo Net @ 8.122.01.   Being realistic about this trip having already completed it under sail power alone with no self-steering on our Cal 2-29, s/v Tigertail Street five years ago, we are understand all too well that plans can change quickly depending on what Mother Ocean is giving you to work with.  We try to be flexible with plans for the sanity of the crew and the health of our home and transportation!  Also, we really study our charts and guides to have the most alternate routes, as well as strategies, thought through ahead of time.  Craig goes through the boat systems with a pretty fine tooth comb to smooth out any issues.  He's got his tool bags out and ready to work on any issue quickly and efficiently in a seaway if necessary.  He will dive on South Trail tomorrow to check our prop, shaft and zincs one last time, and I have been cleaning the waterline so our gal with be as slick as humanly possible.  We need every possible speed advantage we can find.  Our decks are kept pretty clear.  We put our jerry jugs down below to keep the weight low.  Our V-berth has been cleared of all our heavy items and they have been moved to displace her weight aft and keep the bow light into the seas.  We put up our new/old kevlar working jib...  Very exciting.  It worked great on our Sea of Cortez sail in light wind.   We are provisioned up with a lot of easy quick meals and tons of grazing foods and snacks...  We are ready to rock-n-roll!!!  Stay tuned...