The High Life

Every cloud tells a different story--turbulent conditions will follow soon.

WE TOOK A SHARP SERRATED DIVER'S KNIFE AND SLASHED the head and then the tack of our jib. It drifted off, astern, into the whitecaps of the tumultuous gray-blue sea, sinking slowly into the abyss below. There was nothing else that could be done at the time.The seas were building, ferociously, and the wind was whistling, howling, screaming and on occasion, vibrating, deeply, emitting a low-pitched roar.

We departed Ensenada in mild conditions and pointed the bow southeast, toward Bahia Magdalena, or to be more precise, Bahia Santa Maria, one of our favorite natural anchorages in Mexico, about 150 nm northwest of Cabo San Lucas. We intended an uneventful 550 nm passage. A pleasant, five-day, four-night downwind ride, which would carry us most of the length of the Baja Peninsula's west coast.

The first two days were in fact a breeze. But the wispy, fast-moving cirrus clouds told us that we were in for a rough ride ahead. Rough, because the winds would be high, and from the northeast. Rough, because the seas would build, stacking up from the west-northwest. We were ready for a gale. We had set up the storm staysail and the storm trysail, our favorite bullet-proof sail combination.

The only catch with this sail combo is that you need wind. A lot of wind, to move along. We've been in plenty of gales before and knew that Anna would ride big seas and big winds safely. But before those winds and seas really kicked in we would need a little more sail power. And so we deployed our headsail, which resides on our ProFurl roller furler. We've never had a problem with our ProFurl until around midnight, on the second night of our little five-day adventure. It was Christmas Eve and the only other vessels at sea were large, container ships and grain ships and cruise ships. The cruise ships were going to, or from, Cabo San Lucas and were lit up like small floating cities, aglow from twenty miles away; appearing one moment at the crest of the waves that were building, and disappearing the next moment, as Anna dipped into the troughs, fifteen to twenty feet below.

High winds can be expected soon.

It was time to roll in (furl) the jib. The wind was starting to pipe up and the headsail would soon be a liability; it would overpower the helm and make steering down the waves very difficult. So we began to roll the sail in. Typically, this is a simple task. From the cockpit we pull in a reefing line that rolls up the jib. That's it. The line wraps around a drum at the bottom of the forestay and each pull on the line rolls up the sail until there is no sail left flying. This works great as long as the furling (reefing) line doesn't get an override and lock up. And on this one occasion, after  twelve years of flawless operation and hard use, we had the dreaded override. And this meant that unless we could manually unlock the override, the sail would not be able to be furled; that is, it would not simply disappear, magically, as it had for years and years, it would be flying when we least wanted it to.

We would have to make a trip to the bowsprit, in building seas and howling winds, to try and free the line and get the sail reefed down and secured. This proved impossible. We managed to free the override in the line but the sail was flailing about and creating havoc on the foredeck. We had no time to spare as conditions worsened. It would take too long to re-wrap the line onto the drum. Green water was coming over the bow as we hung on to the rail in a last ditch attempt to bring the sail down by lowering the headsail halyard. It was a long shot that almost worked. The sail was dropping down, slowly, from the mast head but as it approached the level of the spreaders, about half way up the mast, a strong gust caught the belly of the jib and ripped it from it's track and sent the bulk of the sail into the sea. We tried to pull it back on deck but it was no use. The sail filled with water and became impossibly heavy. It began to drift under the keel and threatened to do damage to our rigging. We had but one option left: cut the sail away. Let her go. It's only a sail. We can replace it. It wasn't a hard decision to make, as our safety and Anna's rigging were at stake (shock-loading the rigging is always a bad idea). But it felt tragic none the less.

The remains of the day--Anna's jib had to be cut loose during the gale.

Shortly after we cut the sail loose the gale kicked in. A full gale, in fact. The seas were large and confused due to the cross seas; big ugly wind waves of short-period duration and a large cross swell from an opposing direction. There was nothing to do but ride the gale out to sea, moving away from the perils of the coast, until conditions eased. There were no safe havens that we could steer a course for. The wind and seas built for three straight days and nights. It was too demanding to hand steer or keep watch in the cockpit. This was a job for our self-steering device: our Monitor wind vane, perhaps our most valued piece of equipment. We set a course for the Monitor to self-steer, a heading of south-southwest, to take the waves on our starboard quarter and the wind on our port quarter. The Monitor did the heavy lifting while we went below and secured ourselves in our bunks, behind the protection of our lee clothes; a sturdy net of ballistic nylon that would keep us from flying across the cabin if a violent wave struck the boat at the beam. And here we remained for the better part of three days and three nights, exhausted, nauseated, unable to eat, and dehydrated. After 72 hours the gale finally blew herself out. During times like this we have plenty of time to think. And one thought that managed to surface, from the depths of a relentless headache, was how some people would refer to ocean sailing as: the high life.

Every hour or so one of us would reluctantly crawl out of our warm bunk and take a look-see on the horizon and check the AIS receiver for ships that may be on a collision course with us. Our receiver picks up ships as far as 100 miles away, although most of the traffic we're interested in is within a radius of 10 miles or less. If we see that a ship is within 5 to 10 miles and on a reciprocal course, we contact them on our VHF transceiver and let them know our current position, speed and heading, so that they can change course if need be to avoid a potential run-in. They appreciate hearing from us because sometimes, if the seas are big, they can't see us on their radar. So we touch base and wish each other a pleasant and safe journey. Occasionally, we will hear a Mexican fishing boat with an anonymous greeting. During the dark, late night of Christmas Day we could see no other vessels anywhere on the horizon. And then, mysteriously, an ethereal voice came clearly over the airwaves, on VHF 16: me-goooooo, Navidad, Navidad amigo! 

The dunes of Bahia Santa Maria.

Bahia Santa Maria anchorage adjacent to Bahia Magdalena .

On the fifth day we reached beautiful Bahia Santa Maria and the comfort of her anchorage. We rested up there, and we regained our strength and appetite and replenished our reserve of adrenaline. We also pulled out our spare headsail, out of deep, deep storage under the V-berth, to replace the one we let go a couple days before, in the gale. And while installing the smaller, spare jib, we noticed that the lead block, the block closest to the furling drum was not positioned at a true 90 degree angle to the face of the drum; this could have explained why the override occurred. It was not the fault of the ProFurl unit itself, which worked flawlessly, but the way the furling line was led to the drum. We corrected the position of the block and tested it out, and found that the combination of a smaller headsail, and improved lead to the drum made a huge difference in the effort it now took to roll up the jib under a load. A lesson learned the hard way. On a side note, had we deployed the sail off of a continuous-line free-flying furler, such as a Facnor furler (like we have for our drifter), the override never would have occurred, because only a single, continuous loop is used to wrap around the the furling mechanism. Something to think about if refitting is in the cards.

Fishing off the breakwater at San Jose del Cabo's marina.

We headed out once again, this time to turn the corner at Cabo San Lucas (Land's End) and make our final approach to San Jose del Cabo and the quiet, charming marina there. Hidden just behind the double breakwater was calm, Puerto los Cabos. We would spend the next week strolling along the pristine, empty, white-sand beach and spectacularly beautiful cactus and succulent landscape of the marina's red dirt paths.

Fish-cleaning palapas at Los Cabos marina beachfront.

Someone had the eye of a first-rate museum director when they designed the walkways, which surround the docks at Puerto Los Cabos Marina. The artwork was impressive. Murals, quotations, sculptures and photographs described the life and work of Leonora Carrington, one of the early artists of the surrealist movement, in the early part of the 20th century. The Museum of Modern Art, in New York City, couldn't have created an installation more noteworthy.

The duty of the right eye is to submerge in the telescope while the left eye questions the microscope.   --Leonora Carrington

We spent our first day at the marina in San Jose del Cabo cleaning up the mess down below, and rinsing off the salt, up above. On our last night, just before rounding the bend at Cabo San Lucas, our alternator had burned itself out. We removed the beast, swapped it out with a spare we kept on board, and then took a bus, next day, to Cabo San Lucas, from San Jose del Cabo, to have new diodes and a coil replaced in the burnt out alternator. Always an interesting, colorful experience when taking a local bus in Mexico. And always a chance to tweak our Espanol skills as well, when trying to talk tech stuff, in Spanish, with a local shop. After a few challenging minutes of getting nowhere, fast, with our description of what needed to be done to repair the alternator, Lili, the senora who we were speaking with at the home-backyard-open-air-shop brought up Google Translator on her laptop. She typed in her response, in Spanish, so we could read it in English as she typed away. Okay, that was cheating, but it all got sorted out in the end. Efren, her husband, and mechanical wizard of alternators and starters and regulators opened up our alternator housing on his outdoor-front-yard bench and looked inside and saw that the coil and diodes were burnt out, as we suspected, and said ...wow! Another guy in the shop who spoke some English, was kind enough to translate what Efren had said when he opened up the alternator. He looked at us in earnest and said that Efren's first reaction, after he opened the alternator's casing, was ...wow! We said gracias senor, but we got the point the first time around. Next day the scorched alternator was repaired; like new again. Makes it almost worthwhile to have a piece of equipment fail just so that you get the chance to see the way people work in their small shops or homes or both, off of a back street in the low-rent district. They don't have a lot to work with, but they manage to get the job done, regardless. We returned to San Lucas to pick up the repaired alternator the next day. And of course this gave us an excuse to have some tacos camarones and a couple of Pacificos at a local dive, just around the corner from the alternator shop. We'll now keep the repaired alternator as the spare.

We left San Jose del Cabo after spending the better part of a week there while Shayna visited. The days were sunny and warm, 80 degrees F on the average. The nights were cool. The breeze was balmy. The humidity was low. Great weather for being a slacker and eating tacos and burritos under palm trees. Sadly, when it was time for Shayna to return to Seattle, where she was to start her new job, at Expedia, the weather forecast for Seattle called for a high of 40 degrees F, a low of 34 degrees and rain, rain, and more rain.

Fish camp at Los Frailes.

Los Frailes northeast corner , where snorkeling is superb.

We departed easy-to-get-used-to San Jose del Cabo for La Paz, on the Sea of Cortez. Our first stop was Los Frailes where we snorkeled the reef. The ride up was sweet. We saw three pods of whales, two giant sea turtles floating along at the ocean surface, and caught a kawkawa, a small tuna, with our hand line and cedar plug.

Kawakawa, a beautiful, small  tuna. It's best to catch and release this species.

Squid land on deck during passage.

We cleaned the tuna on deck, cut a fillet and cooked it. Next day we chopped it up and made a tuna salad sandwich. Unfortunately, kawakawa looks much better than it tastes; like cat food. It is a fun sport fish to catch, they give a worthy fight, but we'll release it next time if we catch another, and hold out for dorado, yellow tail, or skip jack.

Moonrise, one day before full moon, at Los Frailes anchorage.

We waited at Los Frailes for the strong, winter north winds (northers, as they're called, in the Sea of Cortez) to abate before we headed further north to our next stop along the way: Bahia de los Muertos. We did have a reprieve from the fierce northers, but what we had failed to take into account were the thermals that generate winds and kick up seas, sometimes just as ferociously as the northers. We slipped away from Los Frailes at 0600, just before daybreak. And when the sun broke through the horizon, and started to heat up the surrounding mountain ranges and surface of the sea, the winds and whitecaps began their distinguished rage. Driving straight into the seas, we didn't have a chance to sail; the wind and waves were directly on the bow. So we motor-sailed with our storm staysail and Perkins 4-108. We were headed north-northwest and the weather was headed south-southeast. We were on a reciprocal collision course with nature. And nature had the right of way. What should have taken us eight hours to reach our destination took us fifteen, hard on the wind. We made a night approach to Bahia de los Muertos under radar and electronic charts. The moon, one day past full, began to rise over the eastern horizon, an enormous globe of yellow-orange diffused by a low cloud layer. It helped to light up the anchorage a bit as we dropped our anchor approximately 500 feet, according to our radar, which never lies, from the nearest boat or projection of land. A very large manta-ray swam by us and lit up the water, in a bioluminescent glow, as we dropped the anchor off the beach.

From Bahia de los Muertos, the islands outside of La Paz are an overnight sail away. We'll probably leave Los Muertos at sunset, in a couple of days or so, to avoid getting caught up in the thermals as we move Anna to the north, deeper into the Sea of Cortez. We are currently anchored just north of the imaginary line which represents the Tropic of Cancer. Today we're watching small bat-rays soaring high out of the water, twisting and flipping, just off the cockpit. Our wind generator is putting out 5-7 amps-per-hour, the solar panels are generating 7 amps-per-hour, too. This is enough energy to create a surplus, which is then returned to the battery banks. When that happens we don't need to charge the batteries with fossil fuels. And in our opinion, this is the true definition of the high life.

Whipping up a meal after a rough ride.

Anna, is now firmly in the southern section of the Sea of Cortez. We've come 2,248 nautical miles since our departure from Seattle, in August 2011. And we consider our current position a major milestone in our voyage. We have now begun a northward trek, through the Sea of Cortez. And we are compelled to spend some time here, before once again, turning Anna's bow to the south, in the general direction of South America.