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.
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...
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