For about 10 days we were in Turtle Bay, which is about 1/3 down Baja. The cruisers sorta piled up, all waiting for a weather window. That’s where we met Goolka, a Canadian boat heading home after completing a 12-year circumnavigation last year. They are great people, and have so many amazing stories from around the world!
One day there, somebody said, “hey, lets climb that huge mountain up there” so we hiked all the way to the top, it was amazing. On the one side is a pretty steep slope down to the anchorage and dusty town, on the other is a cliff down to the desert as far as you can see. Needless to say, it was great to get out and do something.
We finally got a window and headed up on the Eastern side of Cedros Island then North-East where we passed Sacremento Reef and continued North to San Diego. It was fairly uneventful as the window was good, there was bit of wind (about 15-20kts) coming up and across from Cedros, and there was fog and no wind after passing Sac Reef.
San Diego was amazingly warm coming in, they were having a couple-day heat wave, so it was pretty nice first day here or so. Then it got cold, but the sun’s been out today. We’ve been just taking in the fact of being back in America, we wandered around Trader Joe’s, went to jack in the box, yeah it’s nice but weird at the same time. We’ve also been bombin’ around with Goolka, Espiritu and some of the other boats here. That’s about it for now, check out the pictures I’m uploading if you want more complete detail, they say theyre worth a thousand words.
We tacked back and forth all day and night just to get out of Banderas Bay and clear Cabo Corrientes. After that the wind picked up to about 25-30 knots off the beam, coming from the North. The swell wasn’t too bad, only about 3-5 feet.
Over the morning of the second day, though, the wind became a steady 30-35 knots, and the swells picked up to 6-8 feet and increasing. Later on things got even worse and we had 35 knots with gusts to 40 knots and the waves that were now breaking were 10-12 feet and getting bigger all the time.
We hung in for one more night, but sometime in the early morning of the third day the vane on the windvane was blown off into the huge seas and the blocks running to the windvane broken. So now we were on autopilot, which was our backup, with regular 15 footers coming over at an angle. We were at that point 80 miles out, and on the radio we heard boats ahead of us were getting 18 foot seas and higher winds. Plainly speaking, we just weren’t prepared for that kind of weather, so we ended up turning around and heading back towards shore, which wasn’t an easy task in itself either.
One more overnight saw us into Tenecatita Bay, which is a little North of Manzanillo, where we put the boat back in order and saw some kid boats. We were there for a week, in which time we decided to do the bash North again.
So last week we made our way to Punta de Mita where we met up with some friends, jammed and caught a little surf, and today we just finished the three- day passage to Cabo San Lucas, where I am stoked to be getting some internet amid the jetskis and cruiseships. Our plans for summer are written in sand at low tide (like pretty much everything else), but we are hoping to be in the Santa Cruz area.
About a half mile from here is a grocery store, and since we’ve been provisioning with cans and the like, we’ve found it works well to just bring the cart back with all the cans, and then return it later. Hey, we look like hobos, but it works great.
We are in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and preparing to hopefully jump the Pacific Puddle the weekend after this coming one (sorry I have no idea what date that would be, I’ve been having enough trouble remembering what the date is today)! Jeff is back in California until the end of this week, then he’ll be back and we’ll be doing the final preparations. So far, most of my work has been doing the cetol on the taffrail, as well as helping provision and doing various odd jobs and cleaning. I will try to create a new album with pictures, but no garauntee on this internet connection….
So that’s been about it, its been great to hear from you all via email.. hopefully I will post a few more entailing posts in the next week or two.
