A few days ago I wrote the following on my Facebook wall: I’m pretty sure I’ve figured out why people get “stuck” in La Paz for decades. They come here to get a few small boat projects done. Then they decide to stop into Club Crucero for morning coffee. 10 years later they get their first errand done. Not that I’m complaining, I’ve just never EVER seen a social scene so vibrant… EVER. ...
Okay, it’s been a long time since I had enough bandwidth to upload photos. Now I have this Telcel data plan and I’m going to put it through it’s paces. So here it is folks, all of the pictures from San Diego through Puerto Los Cabos… after the break Sorry for all of the duplicate subject matter. I got a little lazy towards the end.
..is poorly named. We arrived here last night in a near gale. The wind and waves were all coming from the one direction in which this precious little harbor is unprotected. We set to making the most basic dinner (tater tots and bowls o’ soup) in gut churning swell, Vick and I alternating in and out of the galley as the other got too nauseous to continue. By the time dinner was ready I had put together our exit strategy. We would nap for a few hours and then run before the weather all the way up to La Paz. We hoped to arrive at the Canal San Lorenzo in time for the flood tide to carry us through. We ate dinner and hastily got the kids into their berths for bed. We ship shaped and got ready to nap and just as I was dozing off, the swell abated and wind died. As my eyelids finally collapsed under the weight of the day’s exertions I said “We’ll stay tonight.” ...
this post was written on our passage to Cabo San Lucas Night watches are a fact of life for passage makers. It is the subject of many forum posts, articles, and dockside conversations. I have loved every night watch that I have stood, be they starry and clear or foggy and tense. On one hairy night I had my spinnaker wrap around my forestay like a giant hourglass. There was one night (coming into Isla San Miguel) where visibility wss reduced to 1/4 mile or less and I had a white knuckle grip on the dodger for 3 hours. But there have also been countless nights where the stars fill the sky so impossibly full that I feel like a child again, looking at a universe full or wonder and possibilities. I have had nocturnal visitations from unidentified marine mammals, seen my wake lit up by bioluminescence, and seen a dozen breathtaking moonsets. ...
A month ago my life was punctuated by weekends, days, hours, minutes, seconds. I vaguely recall leaving my office at 2 minutes to the hour to be on time for a meeting at 10am. I certainly remember wishing for the weekend or for 5:00. Lately I have been unable to site the day of the week. Weekends are entirely irrelevant and if I am a day late to a meeting (yes I still have them) I figure I’m close enough. ...
Our trip so far has been lived under a slight but constant disappointment. We have eagerly been anticipating something that felt southish. This feeling isn’t just about temperature, nor is it about turquoise water. There is a certain something that makes a locale feel southish, and we just hadn’t gotten there yet… until today. Today we arrived in Bahia de Santa Maria. This subtropical harbor is located at latitude 24 46’. It’s 80 in the cabin and the water is 77. When we arrived and checked that statistic we all simultaneously decided to go for a swim. Mine was particularly satisfying after a night in full foul weather gear and a day sweating at winches and halyards. While I was in I decided to dive the keel and was pleased to find that I a) could do it, and b) that my little grounding in Morro bay hadn’t caused any real damage (just a little paint scratch). ...
I forgot to mention the amazing things we have seen so far. On our way across the Mexican border we were greeted by the largest pod of dolphins I have ever heard of. There must have been 100 of them, all leaping and playing around the HaHa boats. It seemed as though they must have organized a rally of their own, as if to prove that the ocean was still theirs. ...
The Baja HaHa is officially underway and so, once again, are we. It felt so good to leave the dock at Cabrillio Isle Marina. The marina was fine and San Diego’s services were welcomed, but I seem to have a deeply ingrained need to sail and every day at the dock was chafing against that directive. Now we are South of the border (30°44.41’N 116°36.75’W) sailing at 7 knots with the wind behind us. The sun is out and it’s finally feeling like “south.” The kids, as always with passages, have settled into their routines and have been mostly joyful. They are looking forward to catching fish and reaching the beach party in Bahia de Tortugas. If conditions maintain we should be there in about 30 hours. ...
Other than Tucker not going to work it seems like our day to day routines are really normal. Tucker wakes up early with the kids and makes me coffee before he gives me my wake up call. We make a breakfast or two and get dressed for the day. We go about our day doing boat projects or walk to a grocery store, or look for a place to do laundry. The kids play, read, do workbooks, make crafty projects, make messes, play games and video games, go for walks, find parks, climb trees, go to the beach, and visit with friends. All of our meals are at home or packed up as picnics. The pace is really perfect. Ruby has time to sew with my help; to concentrate on her cursive handwriting; or to sit in between Olive and I and give us very specific and serious lessons so that we can become competent Angry Birds players. Olive looks for jobs and fixing projects whenever he can. Today he very seriously threaded buttons onto embroidery thread (really a distraction so I could work with Ruby on her project) and made several strands as gifts for all of us. ...
Wow, what a day, woke to a beautiful island vista (San Miguel). Winds finally died enough to put the dingy together and head ashore. Had a nice play on the dunes and then decided to head back. Dingy nearly flipped trying to get over the breakers, then I got soaked taxing to pick up the kids. Later, on Convivia, gusts reached 35 knots and the swell picked up. We are now pretty sure that we’ll ditch our Channel Island plans and head for Ventura, just in case the local wisdom (High winds on I5 = Santa Anna winds on the water) is true. We should be able to post more from there (with pictures too)!
As I sped down the front of another steep swell, propelled by near gale force winds, in a fog so thick it dripped, I was visited by an old fear. It was not a fear of death, though some may have felt that. My fear was one of smallness, of cosmic insignificance. On a boat that is arguably ballasted with technology, I found myself dwarfed, humbled, by the milk water fog. With less than a quarter mile visibility at times, I was on constant vigil. All of our technology was not enough to see through the wall of white to the possible hazards beyond. For a moment I wished that we had radar (the one category of tech that we don’t have) and then a timid voice inside suggested that maybe my desire to conquer my fear through technology might not be all that dissimilar from, say, our culture’s desire to buy happiness. Perhaps, the voice pressed, there is no end to this compulsion to dominate nature, and perhaps there is also no end to nature’s dominion over us. Perhaps, and I’m going out on a limb here, we are insignificant in the cosmic scheme of things, and even our grandest achievements will only be noticed by us humans, and only for a small flash of time. ...
Standing here, at the refrigerator/nav station/electronics table, and reflecting on our first overnight passage, what strikes me most was how noisy it was. Not up top (in the cockpit) but down below. We started the day with a strong WNW breeze which soon turned into 15-20 knts of NW. This was perfect for our southbound passage and if it had not been for that square swell, we would have been in total heaven. As it was the boat handled admirably and we sailed most of the late afternoon and evening on just the genoa. By 1 am the wind had completely died and we had to turn on the engine. ...
They say no man is an island and as we embark on this adventure—replete with our water maker, mini solar farm, new high tech rigging, etc—I feel it is appropriate to acknowledge and give thanks to all the people who helped us get here. As a knowledge worker, my ability to fund this trip came from an excellent education. The formal education I received was one of the best in the world, but my parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents all contributed to developing my intense curiosity, troubleshooting skills, and general competencies. Without these skills, and the reassurance that I could do anything that I set my mind to, I would never have been able to contemplate such an outrageous undertaking. ...