Ensenada to Cabo San Lucas

It is Friday March 11th and we are in La Paz, Mexico. This is Baja California’s capitol city. We arrived on the ninth, and have been trying to catch up on our sleep. I have much to say, but little time to say it at present. As a result, I will give a brief rundown of our trip at this time and add more at a later date. My mind is still a bit fuzzy, as during the trip I got less than six hours sleep in eight days. Yes, after all these years of “pushing the lope,” I reached my limit of physical endurance. There is no way I could have pushed myself any further, and without Judy’s help I could not have made it. I can’t understand how one can make extended passages alone. I mean, how in the hell do they get any rest? I will have to ask our friend Erik, who is sailing down from Alaska single handed, when he gets here.


We left Ensenada Mexico on the morning of March 1st at seven thirty. The sea was calm with no wind. The wind did pick up at noon to five knots, allowing us to motor sail. Hey, that beats no wind. We made 7 ½ knots at 2000 RPMs. At three in the afternoon the wind reached eight to ten knots. We also had a following sea with 3 ½’ rollers. It was frio noches, as they say here, a damned cold night. All in all it was a great day, as we made 178 nautical miles. At this rate we could be down as far as Cabo in four days. Unfortunately, that was not to be. At the end of our first day our possition was……N29*21 W116*21

On the second day the engine started using excessive oil, but where was it going? It was not smoking enough to warrant the consumption. With the engine going and the working jib out we made seven knots most of the day. At six pm the wind had picked up to 18 knots and we were sailing along quietly and making good time. It was great sailing weather with the exception of the fact that we were freezing our buts off. Where the hell is all this hot weather our friends keep telling us about down here? We will make it a point to ask. Maybe they lived in Oregon so long that they think anything over sixty degrees is hot. Actually after twenty six years there ,I kind of see their point. Our average speed was 8 ½ knots that evening, not bad for a couple of scrubs.

On our third day the problems began. The engines oil consumption had been joined by both the transmission and the v-drive. We now had three mechanical devices spewing their grimy fluids throughuot my once pristine bilge.The seals will have to be replaced in both asap. In the mean time all I could do was shut the engine down every three hours to check the fluid levels and then add the appropriate amounts of the required oils. Needless to say, we went through a shit load of forty weight oil and transmission oil., which of course ended up sloshing around in the newly cleaned bilge. The bilge now looked like a poorly maintained grease pit. To add to this tribulation was the shutting down of our sonar. Actually it didn't completely shut down. What it did was automatically switch back to fishing mode every time I tried to put it in the navigation mode. Great, now we can’t tell how deep the water is. That means no anchoring, which in turn means no stopping at Bahia Tortuga to get some needed rest. Oh well, on thje good side, it also means no lost time going in and out from the outside passage rout. We have been sailing thirty to eighty miles off shore. Generally the winds are better further out. This also meant that we would get south faster in search of that elusive "hot" weather.

On our fourth day the radar must have became jealous of the sonar not having to do its share of work, so it joined in the strike. Yep, it just refused to come on completely. It would go through its warm up and then shut down, just teasing us. Damn, now we can’t see the cargo ships on radar, and believe me, there was a shit load of them around. I crossed paths with fourteen in the wee hours of one morning alone. At one point, when I was below deck and Judy was at the helm, she yelled out to me to come up, because this giant ship had somehow snuck up on her. When I entered the cockpit and looked forward, the sneaky ship was about four hundred yards in front of us, yikes! She asked "what do I do?" I said turn around and get outa here. It got a little exciting for a bit there, but all was well as we headed off in the opposite direction.

By the end of the fifth day I had everything under control, kinda! At least everything was moving forward. I was getting a bit tired, but figured rest was coming soon, as we had decided to stop at Cabo for fuel and rest a few hours. Somehow it just didn’t work out that way. We arrived at Cabo San Lucas in five and a half days, but it was in the evening. As a result, since I refuse to enter a strange harbor in the dark, we had to lie a-hull and wait for daylight. The seas were raging, and the wind was doing it's part to make it miserablly cold once again. Now when lying a-hull one is supposed to be able to rest (sleep). Not so, at least not for me yet. So while waiting for daylight I noticed a light pop into view

There will no longer be any reference to days. They are now irrevocably blurred. Anyway, we left Cabo with Judy at the helm. I went below to get some long needed sleep. Once again this was not to be, for as I was just lying down I heard this God awful scream come from the cockpit and then this loud eruption. Now this was not a normal Judy scream. She has a habit of letting out these little startled screams when something unforseen takes her by surprise. Like if a piece of paper floats by unobserved and touches her arm. No, this scream was a, “I’m shitting my pants scream.” Needless to say, I jumped up and ran to this obvious "damsel in distress" call. Upon entering the cockpit the remains of a vast amount of water was showering down on its return to the sea from which it came. Judy was screaming “ a whale came up right beside the boat in the air, what do I do?” Very calmly I said; “It’s okay just turn away, and get the hell outta here” I took the wheel trying to exuberate calmness and turned hard to port. As I did so, another whale breeched directly in front of us, errupting through the surface of the water with only a small portion of her tail remaining in the water. As she lost momentum in her reach for the heavens, she rolled onto her side and then returned to the sea, hitting it full lenfth with a tremendous splash. About that time all hell broke loose and whales were flying out of the water all around us. Shit, we were right in the middle of a pod’s feeding frenzy. These monsters were huge, or as the children say in Oregon “great big huge.” As I have stated in the past, my greatest fears of  sailing the ocean are whales and lightening. At this point I must go, as we have much to do. So that’s all for now folks, gotta get back to fixin the problems. Oh I forgot to mention that the mike on the VHS took a dump also. It’s in the shop being repaired, I hope!