Countdown to Baja Ha Ha 2014

cabo wabo

11/11/2014

Beautiful Sunset at Turtle Bay

750 miles from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas
12 days total, 6 full nights at sea with two stops: Bahia de Tortugas (Turtle Bay) and Bahia Santa Maria.

A continuous series of ‘firsts’ for us, this was our first real passage. Not only did we complete our first overnight sail, we did 3 nights in a row right off the bat. Overall it was our farthest distance offshore of about 40 miles, our first time in Mexico, our first test of the SSB and sailmail, first docking at a foreign port (and in the dark no less) side-tied to another boat last minute. Longest distance sailing without motoring was 40 hours, etc. etc. The firsts continue to compile…

I can best describe our trip to Cabo as yin and yang. There were highlights and low lights and everything in between. I now realize I have to get used to drastic changes as every second of every day is different and challenging.

Highlights (yin):

Crossing the imaginary (on our chartplotter) Mexican border line just south of San Diego. Wow we are really here! Now let’s hope we don’t get boarded by the Mexican Navy (we didn’t).
Finally anchoring in Turtle Bay after being on the water for about 74 hours. We did it! High fives all around. Now this is real Mexico, dusty streets, open air beach shacks with sand floors or decks, fishing pangas, rickety pier, stray dogs running everywhere, tiny one room tiendas (markets), first time I’d seen eggs sold non-refrigerated (they last longer that way), shocked at just how many food products are the same or similar as in the US, no street names, houses are nothing to speak of but everyone has nice cars…what’s up with that?
Cruisers potluck on the beach with over 400 people and 150 different dishes and Pacifico (yay!).
Eating manta ray soup for lunch at this little open air patio/I think it was her house. Who knew you could eat that? Tastes like fishy beef, it was good though.
Surrounded by dolphins in glass-smooth waters near Isla Natividad.
Anchoring in Bahia Santa Maria after 2 nights of 17-24kt winds and 10-12ft seas, worst we’d ever been in. Just happy to be anchored and still.
Beach party at Bahia Santa Maria. Delicious shrimp tacos cooked in a little beach shack miles from civilization. Beach was gorgeous, smooth hard packed sand with a cool estuary. No buildings in sight except a couple shacks.
Meteorite sighting… anchored at Santa Maria we witnessed a green flash streak across the sky falling behind a stark mountain with near-full moon in the background.
Finally being able to sleep on the boat down below, even if it’s only while motoring.
Not taking any seasickness pills since day 2. Very proud of that.
Leg 3: Warm waters at last! Mid-ocean seawater bucket dump to celebrate the crossing of the Tropic of Cancer (now called Tropic of Taurus) latitude.
Manta ray kickflip right next to the boat… he did it twice, a 360 flip, then I guess he was done showing off. Very cool.
First dinner (beef tacos) made at sea on the stove (not until our calm last leg). I always pre-made pasta or quinoa salad dinners before leaving for the next port.
Visited by butterflies for entire last leg of our sail. Brian thought I was crazy until he saw them too. And we were at least 20 miles from land.
Finally got used to the motion enough to read on board (liken it to reading in a car eliciting car sickness).
My last night at watch for 5 hours in calm seas, full moon and no boats to be seen. We normally did 3 hour watches at night but I was awake and Brian was getting some much needed sleep while we motored. This was how my first night sail should have been! Calm waters, peaceful and gorgeous full moon.
Sailing down to Cabo in late afternoon, watching the sun set. Perfect weather, 80 degree air temp, 80 degree water, calm seas. The perfect sail. A welcome respite from Leg 2.
Entering Cabo in beautifully eerie, rippling, inky waters, rounding the Cabo arches with the help of a full moon.
Real showers at Cabo Marina. Breakfast out.
Final beach party at Mango Deck on the sand with the arches across the bay as a backdrop.
Beers with new-found friends at Cabo Wabo, Sammy Haggar’s bar (from Van Halen).
Strawberry margaritas, fresh made guacamole, ceviche, best chilaquiles!

Yang:

Day 1 sucked - can’t say it more blunt than that. We were totally exhausted. Could not sleep until the 2nd night out… just too amped up and nervous I suppose. That very first day I kept thinking “what on earth were we thinking not taking crew?” Literally everyone we talked to who asked us how many people we had on board, when we said just the two of us they grimaced and said “eewww” or “ooohhh” like we were crazy. Everybody has crew. Now I knew why… we should have made Luis or Jesse go with us. Would have been more fun. I will say that day 2 and 3 exponentially improved, and by the time we got to Turtle Bay, we both felt much better.
Rolling around in a chop with no wind was horrible. Boom banging. Sails slatting. Washing machine motion. Can’t move around the boat without falling onto something….
Brian hits himself seemingly on an hourly basis, whether it be whacking his head on the boom or the companionway door or the dodger. Puts him in a foul mood. Even when I so carefully plant every foot and try to not to move quickly about the boat to avoid falling, I still back-slammed into the chart table and got shwacked on the temple with a cupboard door. 3 days later the bump still hurt.
All of Leg 2 from Turtle Bay to Bahia Santa Maria. 2 full days and nights of rocking and rolling. 17-20 kts winds gusting to 25kts, surfing down 10-12ft breaking waves. It was miserable for the entire fleet. But I never felt unsafe, in fact the boat took the waves like a trooper and we were really happy with the Monitor windvane which steered the boat way better than we ever could. We sailed the whole way, which actually made for better motion, but by the morning of day 3 before we made landfall, I broke down in tears… I just wanted OFF. Let me ‘splain…
On top of no sleep, we traveled too far inland to get away from the horrible waves and got stuck inside what I nicknamed the ‘Bay of Purgatory’ as it took forever to sail out with light and fluky wind going back into the large waves with no forward momentum, top that off with no more energy to deal with the crazy movement…
I just have to say going to the bathroom was the worst. Getting there is hard enough, we usually hold on for dear life when climbing down the steps below to avoid getting lurched backward or sideways when the boat rolls. Then it’s a comical dance tripping over the liferaft, dinghy and sails in the middle of the floor (we put those below on overnight passages as we’ve read too many stories about things on deck being swept overboard). We do a monkey bar hand-over-hand maneuver along the overhead handholds, trying not to get thrown to the side of the boat as it rolls. Then run 2 more steps to the front, body slam full force against the closet, ping-pong off the v-berth while opening the bathroom door, whip yourself in there and close it before the next wave slams the door in your face. Then try dropping your pants in a bathroom half the size of a telephone booth, gripping a handhold with one hand, bracing yourself with one foot against the wall, and sometimes depending on the heel of the boat your forehead bracing against the wall as well. I won’t go any further details, you can imagine the rest on your own. It’s not pretty.
At Bahia Santa Maria we were SOOO happy to be on land but as soon as I stepped on that gorgeous beach I got land sickness. Damn it! Such a beautiful place and I couldn’t stand up for more than 10 minutes without feeling the unbearable need to sit down. Dizzy, exhausted and probably dehydrated, everything started spinning and I was seeing white spots. Ironically, after just wanting OFF the boat, all I wanted to do was get back ON the boat and go to sleep.

All in all, this trip was a ‘bucket list’ experience. We are glad to have done it and I am learning that cruising is yin and yang; and I need to put up with some definite yang to get to the yin. I cannot say I am ready to cross an ocean, in fact after Leg 2, I never wanted to sail overnight again and could not fathom sailing for 30 days straight to the Marquesas. That is up in the air… for now we will be sailing up to La Paz later this week and are looking forward to a vacation!

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i'm on a boat

10/25/2014

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Our sail out of Camp Pendleton for the last time was the idyllic one I'd been looking for. Hopefully a good omen for things to come.

Cutting the docklines…
As I sit here in Cabrillo Isle Marina, I can hear the planes taking off from San Diego airport only a mile away. It’s truly mind-boggling the work we have done in the last few months to get us where we are today. Just a week ago we left our longtime home Camp Pendleton’s Del Mar Marina. The final days leading up to our departure turned into a blurry whirlwind. Monday and Tuesday we stuffed the last remnants of our worldly goods into the boat. Yes, we miraculously found a spot for all but 4 boxes that we shipped back to Michigan. Tuesday we fell into bed exhausted but pretty stoked that everything had a place. (Alas, our new waterline is now right at the edge to where we just had it raised, maybe a tad bit higher.)

The final day at Camp Pendleton…
The morning before departure we were feeling good… we were finally finished. This was our last day with the car as we were selling it that evening, so all I was supposed to do that day was get groceries, pick up mail and be done. We were waiting for a second anchor to arrive and figured we’d go pick it up that morning at our friend’s house. At 9am Brian looked at the email more thoroughly and saw that it did indeed get delivered, but to our former address. Crapola! What followed was 2 hours of us running around like chickens trying to get that stupid anchor.
We drove immediately to our former house in Carlsbad, knocked on the door, and nothing. Of course we were selling the car and cleaned it out, so I had nothing to place on the door. We went to FedEx just down the street to see if they could tell us if it had been recalled. Apparently they can only see if the package was received. “This is just a retail store” they tell me. “We don’t have access to any other information. You need to call 1-800-GOFEDEX.” So let me get this straight, I’m physically in a FedEx STORE and I am told I have to call FedEx. Seriously.
So we perform the mandatory automated number pushing and find out…nothing. But they at least put a ticket in so that if it gets recalled it will go to the correct address. Next I try to find my former landlord’s phone# to no avail and resort to emailing her in hopes she actually looks at her email and send my phone # to the current tenants. Then I try to buy sticky notes at this Fed Ex store but it was under reconstruction and had none! Useless. Did I mention that we leave the next day? I don't need this to happen right now.
Brian hadn’t had his morning caffeine jolt and was getting more agitated by the minute so we stopped for coffee. Subsequently, we walked into CVS and bought the most expensive sticky notes ever for a whopping $7 (this after having thrown away tons of sticky notes in the move). We then drove back to the house only to get cut off by a raging idiot. He pulled in front of us and proceeded to stop at a perfectly good green light juuuust long enough for it to turn yellow and punch it, leaving us to wait another turn. Wow. Brian is about ready to go into convulsions and I am stifling a laugh. Are we being filmed for a reality TV show, or what? Finally we placed a huge fluorescent note on the door of our old house to please, please hurry and call us. Then drove a mile away to munch on our breakfast muffins and sulk.
We decided to head back to the boat defeated, stopped to do an errand, and lo and behold the tenant called. We raced over there and thanked him profusely for calling. It is amazing how things get screwed up but eventually work out. My mom would call that serendipity. Had he entered a recall, FedEx probably would have picked it up that morning and we never would have gotten the anchor in time… it would have gone back to the shipper. Of course had the order been entered correctly it would not have happened at all, but I digress.
We got back to the boat, opened the package and while the anchor was there, a shackle Brian had ordered with it was not. Foiled again. By this time I left Brian fuming to go grocery shopping. Afterwards he told me that had been contacted by both the distributor and manufacturer apologizing profusely. We ended up getting our money back for the part as it was too late to ship it. I called back FedEx, told them to cancel the investigation ticket and noted how nice people are when you solve a problem for them.

The last grocery store trip…
Meanwhile I went to the commissary for the last time. I was humming merrily along until the enormity of our impending trip hit me like a brick in the canned food aisle. Who knew canned meats could bring me to tears? I stared at them: canned tuna, canned chicken, canned beef, canned clams (maybe), canned sardines (no), spam (hell NO). I realized this was the last day I was going to have a CAR to do grocery shopping! How the heck do people haul around heavy canned goods from a grocery store to a dinghy to the boat? I won’t have a CAR! I’m going to have to WALK everywhere! What am I going to do without a CAR? What the hell am I doing? Panic city.
The rest of the day went much better: I packed the groceries into the overstuffed cupboards, Brian fixed the steering column and we sold our car to a friend that night over dinner. This worked out well because he needed a car for his daughter and we needed to get rid of it. We contemplated keeping it but it just didn’t make sense in the long run. Besides, we still have the pickup stored at Dad’s.
In the morning, some friends took us to breakfast and we left the marina rather unceremoniously, just the marina staff and our two friends helped to shove us off. Of course I forget one stern line is still attached and hit reverse causing some disconcertion. But for that, it was a blissfully uneventful day. The winds were perfect, the seas flat and sparkled like diamonds. We pulled into Mission Bay in 5-1/2hrs after sailing almost all the way in 6 knots. We anchored like pros since there were hardly any boats in the bay to contend with. Quite literally the perfect first day to start of the rest of our lives. Compare that to the crazy days leading up to this moment and we were glad for the respite. After dinner I told Brian all I wanted to do was curl up and sleep for a whole day. Well we went to bed at 8:30 that night and didn’t get up til 12 hours later. Wow, we needed that.

Into San Diego Bay…
We motored out of Mission Bay and had to go out probably 2 miles to get past the kelp beds and turned due south. Rounding Point Loma we realized that we had never sailed in San Diego Bay. Now I knew why. Even on a Friday afternoon there were boats all over, and at least 5 huge Navy ships milling around contacting various boats who got too close to their operations. We had light winds in the morning but round the point we had plenty of wind and sailed all the way to Harbor Island. We had pre-arranged a slip at Cabrillo Isle Marina and had scoped it out a couple weeks prior. We knew exactly where the slip was, had noted that a red dinghy was in the slip and were told it would be moved by the time we got there. Ummm, yeaahh, it wasn’t. As we motored up to the slip I cried out “the dinghy’s still there, back off!” The decrepit red dinghy took up a third of the slip width so there was no way we were both fitting.
Backing out is no easy thing on a sailboat. You have to reverse, then the boat swings the wrong way, then you have to gun it forward to get the boat to swing opposite, then gun it back. Thank goodness I wasn’t driving. The thoroughfare was so narrow it was a miracle we didn’t hit anything (well I hit Brian with the boat hook but we don’t count that). We motor back out, call the marina and they give us another slip number which is thankfully a bit wider and easier to get into. Also it is far away from ‘red dinghy man’ who if I ever see will get the glowering of a lifetime. It’s still there in the slip, taunting me.
We are now 3 days out. We leave on Monday. That is “cray cray” as my friend Molly would say. How on earth we got this far I don’t know, but we have been on autopilot the entire time… heads down not really able to see past this date. Now it is finally here. We ACTUALLY live on a boat, we don’t have a car and are going to Mexico come hell or high water. This last week is full of parties, seminars, meeting other fellow Ha Ha’er’s, last minute boat fixes, and lots of paperwork. Bring it.

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20 years...and done.

5/1/2014

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It's difficult to believe that this is Brian's final week in the Marine Corps. His final day of work and retirement party (party#1) is tomorrow Friday, May 2nd.

Even as I photo-shopped a huge banner with about 50 photos spanning the last 20 years, going over photo after photo of the places we have been and the people we have met, I still have a hard time comprehending...right now...this is it...it's finally here...

Looking back, it's been a good run... mostly good times, and the ones that weren't, well, they aren't worth ruminating over. We can't say we'd do anything differently. The few major choices we were able to make for ourselves garnered us friendships and experiences that we never would have had otherwise. We are supremely lucky to have met some of the most amazing people along the way.

We've moved 9 times and lived in 6 states. Brian has traveled to Iraq twice, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Korea, Japan, Okinawa twice, Israel, Tunisia and all over the US for work. Deployed 5 times (3 to combat), I estimate he has probably been away about 4 years out of our almost 19 years of marriage. That may sound like a lot to the non-military, but I know many others who were away much longer. I still think I deserve to have him all to myself now.

One thing is for sure, Brian is excited to:

1. Wear whatever clothing he wants, wherever he wants. In fact he might just walk around in pajamas for a few weeks, just because.

2. He is also threatening to grow a beard. And a pony tail. Bald w/ ponytail? Not cool I say.

3. Never run another PFT (physical fitness test) = No more running! His last one was a few weeks ago. Aced it, I'll have you know.

4. As Cartman of Southpark so bluntly puts it: "I do what I want." There's no one to tell him/us when to jump or how high.

Side note: just signed up for the 2014 Baja Ha Ha! We are ready for the next big thing.

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cabo wabo

i'm on a boat

20 years...and done.

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