It’s the final day of prep for our 3rd season in the Sea of Cortez. Last step? Put the truck in a gated storage lot. Now, we’re all set to get out of dodge. But, without that easily-taken-for-granted means of transportation, our mindset is still consumed with its necessity.

The day before leaving, sans truck: “You wanna go to Hammerheads for iced tea?” “But, we’d have to waaaalk… it’s sooo far… and it’s sooo hooooooot”. “But they’ve got air conditioning.” “But I’d still have to walk in the heat to get AT the air conditioning.” It’s amazing how quickly not having a car affects your basic decision-making process on everything. We went… for you dear reader… just so I could upload that bottom-paint blog.

So, are we ready?
There are 4 areas of preparation we are constantly contemplating before any overnight crossing.

1. Is the boat ready? Have we done everything we can to make sure she is safe? Namely, engine maintenance: change oil, change impeller, check or change coolant, run engine at the dock, make sure she sounds OK and looks OK. Check for leaks. Check that solar panels, fridge, navionics and radios work, etc.
2. Is the weather ready? We read various weather documents and look for a window of 48 hours with less than 10-12knots. We prefer a mixture of minimal wind and some wind, so the seas don’t have a chance to build over time. (Preferably NO wind for me equaling flat seas, but Brian wants to actually SAIL this time…pooey.) Why 48 hours when we’ll only be doing a 24 hour trip?  In case we get stuck out there and have to fix something, we don’t need the added pressure to get to safe harbor with high winds bearing down the following day.
3. Are the pre-passage peripherals ready? Do we have all the food we need? Water tanks filled? Extra bottled water in case of emergency? Fuel jugs filled? Is everything on the boat in its proper place for sailing: jacklines out (lines run on deck that we clip to at night so we don’t fall off accidentally), lifejackets ready, pre-prepped cold salad for dinner (so I don’t have to use the stove), fridge arranged to quickly access needed items in case of high seas, route charted on chartplotter, put up leecloths (to keep us from falling on the floor when heeled over & sleeping), cool weather gear and blankets out (so we don’t have to go digging in the middle of the night for a jacket)? Kayak folded and stowed below? Dinghy tied down on top? Are we checked out of the marina? Is the blog uploaded ? J
4. Are WE ready? Mentally and physically? Does either of us feel sick or run down? If so, we don’t go. Prepping to leave on a big journey, especially one of several days at sea like the Baja Ha Ha Event, is highly stressful. It can cause frayed nerves and bickering in even the most adoring lovebirds. This is normal. There are a thousand things to do to prepare and a million things you can worry about; everyone is stressed.

But this time, miraculously, we are not stressed. Partly because we took our time getting the boat ready and we aren’t rushing around like crazy idiots trying to finish chores; partly because it’s our 15th night at sea so our comfort level is much higher - one overnight is now not such a big deal; and partly because we are just ready to get off the dock. While we don’t necessarily enjoy all of the aspects of night sailing, it’s a necessity to get to the good stuff. Like enduring LA traffic to get to Disneyland. Or the ½ hour wait for an In-and-Out burger.

The boat was prepared, and more importantly, we were prepared, mentally, for an overnight crossing. We felt great, we were super excited to be heading back out into the Sea once more. We were rarin’ to go.

Indigo had other ideas…
Bound for Punta Pulpito, 95 miles across the Sea of Cortez, we let loose the lines and quitted our cozy crib at Marina San Carlos at 9am, Oct. 30th.

At 9:15, we are in the San Carlos inner bay. While I steer us out of the bay, Brian checks the engine, as he always does, to be sure it is running fine after it warms up so we can push it to full throttle. He checks for excessive heat on the prop shaft with an infrared thermometer, as he has just tightened the leaky packing gland a few days ago. Then he checks the bilge, as we always do, to make sure we aren’t sinking. Except we ARE.

Abnormal Bilge Water
There is about 2 inches of water in the bilge. What? This NEVER happens. While some boats seem to have a propensity for constant water in the bilge, Indigo has ALWAYS been darn-near bone-dry in the slip; and we accumulate merely a thin coating of water if we’ve sailed all day. 2” of water in the bilge after only 15 minutes of motoring is a striking anomaly. It’s not the shaft packing gland, Brian fixed that the week prior and it is putting out only a minimal (and normal) drop or two. Maybe it’s that through-hull connector he had tightened and sealed, but no, it was fine too. This was a NEW leak…a slowish leak, but more than we’re comfortable with. Frickin’ boats and their holes.

So we motor into the outer bay, away from all the fishing boat and panga traffic, to shut down the engine and assess. Luckily, there is no wind and the seas are not rambunctious.

Rudder Post Packing Gland Leak
At 9:45am, with our motor still burning hot, Brian cramps himself down inside the engine room for a look-see, trying not to scald himself on the engine elbow. This NEW leak was coming from the packing gland where the rudder post attaches up into the boat. To be crass, if Indigo had a rear-end, this would be it; and her rear-end was leaking. Brian thinks the post ultimately needs new packing material (which we do not have and could not switch out at sea anyway). He could try and tighten the bolts as a temporary fix but access is nearly impossible and may not help. We contemplate.

Return or Go?
Should we return to the dock? While San Carlos is usually devoid of special boat parts, at least we will have the truck to go to the states and pick something up. On the other hand, we know we can get the stuffing we need in La Paz. But, if we keep going the way it is, will the bilge pump be able to keep up? Will it get worse? We have a very heavy duty manual pump that can suck out 1 gallon in a single pump, but we don’t want to use THAT if we don’t have to.

Mr. Fix-It
Before we make any decision, Brian tries to fix it himself, or at least minimize the water flow by tightening 3 bolts at the steering column. Well, no big deal, right? Just tighten 3 wittle bolty woltys. Easy, peasy, summer breezy! Nope. The problem lies in WHERE those 3 bolts are located. Time for some Engine Room Hot Yoga! “Hot Yoga” is actually a thing if you haven’t heard of it…yoga class purposefully done in a superheated room (up to 105 degrees), to induce maximum sweat equity and flexibility. No need to pay that instructor, I got your hot yoga right here.

New Yoga Position: Crouching Dragon.
Because he is trying to reach the verrrry far, far back of the boat, under the steering column, where no normal human should ever be forced to go…he must contort himself into an entirely new yoga position. I call it the Crouching Dragon because he looks like a dragon squatting at an angle, ready for take off… and because he is so hot he is practically breathing fire.

You Too Can Do the Crouching Dragon
Stand in engine room (about 1-1/2ft square), bend over to hangman placing your arms inside, slight crouch ‘til your butt hits the engine…dip your head down like you’re going under the bridge (under the hatch). Keep your back arched and your butt in the air because there’s just no room for it yet and it can’t touch the hot engine. Then, feet remaining still, crawl up on elbows at an angle into the bowels of the tiny space and slowly lower your butt into a 45degree-angled, fetal position crouch (except you're standing on tippy toes). With your head scraping the fiberglass above, booty abutting a hot engine, arms wedged in a triangle… desperately reach for those bolts in the vanishing V-space of Indigo’s rear. That’s it. Now hold. Keep holding...
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Do this in a stifling space the size of a mid-size moving box…with a scalding, hot engine….in humid, 94 degree weather… in a rocking and rolling boat. 

Good Thing He’s Not Claustrophobic
Once he was in there, he wasn’t getting out until he was finished. He could barely move. There have been cases of people getting stuck in their boats – arms, legs or spines not bending the right way to get back out. Talk about claustrophobia-inducing. If he wasn’t thinking this at the moment, I was.

Wake!
Knee-deep in his jail cell, I noticed a jerk powerboat zooming towards us, purposefully too close. (Why do powerboaters LOVE tormenting sailboats with wake-inducing drive-by's?) So I steered perpendicular to his inevitable wake to omit side-to-side motion. Because Brian could see nothing, I grabbed him by the back of his shorts and told him to hold on (so he didn’t lose his grip and fall against fragile or hot engine parts). Insert smattering of expletives here. In this tiny space, with the boat pitching for a half a minute…how he didn’t puke, I’ll never know.

Hotbox
I was mildly nervous, trying to be super-fast at finding tools. Not because we were sinking…it was a slowish leak… but because Brian was sweating like a banshee (if banshees sweated) and looked like he was about to pass out any second. At one point, he thought there was another leak – no, it’s just massive amounts of sweat pouring on top of engine parts from his poor, battered body sweltering in this triangle torture chamber… like those hotboxes used in the Vietnam war.

Can't Get a Grip
He couldn’t get a good angle or grip on the packing gland bolts, trying a variety of wrenches, sockets, and vice-clamps…sweaty hands and limited to zero mobility and visibility didn’t help. It took forever to adjust. Forever in a hotbox seems like an eternity. Funny thing was, there wasn’t much swearing involved on this project, other than the powerboat wake incident. He was too focused on getting the job done and getting the hell out of there to become irate. After 45 minutes in this horrible position, he tightened those bolts as much as was humanly possible and wrenched himself unstuck and into the open air where he sucked down a bottle of Gatorade in 2 seconds flat. All this for 3 bolts.

No Record of the Crouching Dragon
I did not take a picture of this awkward position… sometimes there is room for decorum, even by my standards. I mean, after reading this, don’t you feel bad for him? This was a semi-serious situation and I wasn’t going to make light of it by snapping a pic when he’s in the middle of a crucial problem, just for your benefit. Now, that’s not to say I didn’t THINK about it. But… I refrained…for morale’s sake. And I highly doubt I could goad him into performing a reenaction scene just for our curiosity.

The Chuck Norris of Engine Yoga
Today, Brian was to this problem what Chuck Norris is to any bad guy who crosses his path – he punched it right in the face and kept on walking. Bam! Brian stopped the leak and we continued on with our journey. We’ll buy new packing material and redo it in La Paz. Wait, does that mean he has to get up in there again? Shhh. Don’t remind him.

A Benign Crossing
While delayed by a couple hours, the crossing itself went off without a hitch. Although we had no moon, the stars were out in droves so we could discern a faint horizon. We started out with no wind, but by 1pm we had a perfect 9-knots and sailed with minimal effort and no wave action until 10pm. Then the wind picked up to 14-16 knots for a couple hours, but settled itself back down to 8-10 knots until pre-dawn. And while we got some lumpy waves afterwards and a banging boom for a couple hours, we can’t complain. Our bilge water level was back to normal due to Brian’s hotbox fix. And we sailed nearly the entire way, only using 3 engine hours of 24! Guess who was ecstatic!

The morning after our bumpy bash, we started out towards our next intended anchorage, Punta Pulpito. Our original goal was to stay out another week and then cross to San Carlos. But the weather forecast today and tomorrow looked good for doing an overnighter; the next few days after that (when we wanted to do our crossing) indicated more high winds and accompanying miserable seas. Ugh.

Not Your Normal Jump
Punta Mangles is not the normal “jumping off point” for a crossing to San Carlos. The direction from here to there is due north - we’d be heading right into the prevailing wind and waves. If you saw the video from my last post of us bashing into short-period waves, imagine doing that for 24-hours straight. NOT fun. So, most people cross the sea from farther north to get a better angle and a better likelihood of sailing instead of motoring. But, you STILL have to travel 60 miles north-northwest along the coast just to GET far north enough to cross at that better angle. It would take us two days to travel those 60 miles further (one short day, one long), then we’d cross the sea in a 75-mile overnighter just like last year; as opposed to a 100-mile single shot from Punta Mangles…less miles and days spent overall, but more potential of being caught in unpredictable seas during this longer passage.

Switching Angles
In the end, a decent enough weather window overrides everything. Our angle to destination would probably require motoring the entire 100 miles (Brian HATES motoring). Despite this fact…I’m just going to go on record…Brian was the one to suggest this strategy! Once we made the decision, we switched our angle and headed across the sea to San Carlos, 100 miles away.

Switching Mindsets
To date, we have completed 8 “passages” - this will be the 9th. A passage, in my mind anyway, is anything that involves sailing/motoring continuously for one or more complete overnights...dusk ‘til dawn. Including our initial Baja Ha Ha rally from San Diego to Cabo, over the past two seasons we have completed the following passages: 3 straight nights at sea, 2 nights, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2 and 2. An overnighter is no longer this scary monster requiring self-induced panic a week in advance. This time, I easily switched my mindset from anchoring in a few hours to an all-night crossing and I was OK with it…pretty good (for me).

Prepping Dinner in the Morning
As soon as we angled away from land, I went below to make dinner… in the morning! I happened to have leftover cooked quinoa… so I cut up some veges and cheese (of course), threw in a tuna packet, mixed a salad dressing and threw it back in the fridge. Anxious about a repeat of yesterday’s severely choppy, mid-morning bash, I felt the need to prepare dinner now, during morning’s flat water. It paid off later… big time.

Standard Sea Lunch
The crossing started out fine, but late morning again brought increasing wind and waves. Not quite as bad as the day prior at 20+knots, the reduced 15-17 knots sustained rather uncomfortable seas for much of the day until well after sunset. The sea state was bouncy enough that going below to fix lunch was not high on my to-do list. So I reverted to our “standard salami sea lunch”.

In the gallery beneath this post is a photo of our typical “I don’t want to go below” lunch…pre-sliced, pre-packaged salami (easily obtainable at any Mexican grocery store), cheese (duh) and Saltines (you can find them everywhere in Mexico, it HAS to be this country’s official cracker). Maybe I add an apple or some carrots and peanut butter, if you’re lucky. This is my go-to lunch when we don’t feel like eating much and, more importantly, when I don’t want to be downstairs preparing food in a jolting galley.

I can quickly grab my cracker bin, haul the salami package and a cheese wheel out of the fridge (pre-positioned and easy to access), add a knife (with blade sleeve) and cutting mat, and bring it all in the cockpit in just a couple minutes. Right there on the seat, I leisurely slice & dice, using the cutting mat as our plate. We eat this lunch so often (I don’t think it’s THAT often) that Brian has declared we are not allowed to eat Saltines or salami in the RV for the entire summer. Booo. He can’t ban cheese though…he knows better.

Dark Skies
After our tuna-quinoa dinner at sunset, the seas calmed considerably, eventually smoothing out to a sheen during the night. Whew! Flat seas always evoke a great sigh of relief. While we had no moon by which to steer, millions of diamond-stars glittered in the dark sky. It took me a while to realize that the massive transparent cloud looming overhead was actually the Milky Way. What a beautiful sight!

A moonless passage in the Sea allows for an unparalleled view of the night sky. Other than a barely-perceptible glow from Guaymas and one other town, there is zero light pollution. Gliding along, we literally witness the circulation of the earth and the passage of time as one constellation dips below the horizon and another pops to the surface. The weather in the Sea of Cortez is usually so crystal clear that I’m often perplexed when a new, bright star comes into view at the horizon line: is it a star or a ship? I keep an eye on it to make sure it continually rises higher, not brighter/closer. Of course…there’s a cool app for that too. Sky Guide

Mysterious Sea Creatures
OK, so I am on watch at around 3am, Brian is sleeping below. It’s flat calm and completely dark except for the glowing stars overhead. Suddenly, I see a huge shape stream UNDER the boat. Yes, UNDER. How can I see said shape, it’s pitch black out? (Brian: Yeah, you’re blind as a bat, you see bugs and spiders and all sorts of things that aren’t there due to your eye-floaters, no WAY you saw anything in the water.)

Well, I wasn’t sure I did either. It appeared as a gigantic blob of faintly illuminated smoke streaming fast perpendicular under the boat. A lighter blue/black just discernible enough amid the murky water but nothing broke the surface. It must be a phosphorescence trail of something, but what? I neither saw nor heard dolphins swimming nearby, plus it was way too big for that. The shadow was as long as our 34ft boat, but only about half as wide, maybe 5ft. The first thing I thought of was a cloud of pee, ‘cause, well, that’s what it looked like! Did a whale emit this as it swum beneath us? I know I’m stretching. It would have dissipated and hung around, plus there was no smell (I assume it smells?). Maybe a tightly packed school of fish streaming phosphorescence? But it was so uniform in shade, it had to be one object. Maybe it was a small whale?

I waited and kept looking and looking…and it happened again, this time running parallel to the boat! So happy it was NOT my imagination! But now I am paranoid and alert and standing up on the seat leaning against the dodger to get a higher view of the surface. I saw these sea monsters a couple more times and finally slowed the boat slightly, afraid I’d run into whatever they were. A little bit later, Brian came up on deck and I reported my sighting. Totally did not believe me! I went below to take a nap and he saw nothing during his watch. Of COURSE!

“Once again we have defied death and made it to safe harbor” – Michael :)
Well, we didn’t hit any whales… I never figured out what those watery ghosts were… we didn’t have to bash into choppy waves the entire way… and we even got to sail for about 3 hours in the wee morning hours. I’d call that a successful passage!

As the sun rose, Indigo pulled into an anchorage just 6 miles north of the marina and all of us quickly fell asleep. After our nap, we took the kayak to an early lunch at Bonifacio’s on the beautiful sandy beach of Playa Algodones to celebrate our victory. The next morning, we headed into Marina San Carlos to begin the tedious process of getting the boat ready to leave on the hard for the summer. The fun’s over…now the work begins!

Under Pressure
It’s March 2nd and Indigo headed back north again on our way out of the hurricane zone. Already, you say? Well, yes, we didn’t go back to renew visas this year so we need to get out of dodge by the end of April. With the winds the way they’ve been (really windy from the north), we’d been a little (OK a lot) nervous about having enough time… time to be able inch Indigo farther north to San Carlos in between all these week-long northers… and, once we arrive, time to finish Brian’s thousand-item-checklist for putting the boat into dry storage. You wouldn’t think it would be soooo nerve-racking, having to be OUT by a certain date. But it is, and we feel the pressure already. So we cut our time short on the mainland in order to have lots of time to venture north. No one wants to feel rushed when cruising; makes for unhappy campers all the way around.

Leaving Mazatlan
While Mazatlan has a stunning shopping mall, multiple movie theaters, the best Mega(grocery store), a quaint historic district with interesting colonial architecture, and a miles-long Malecon on a beautiful beach… it also has oodles of people, tons of tourists, too many time-share salespeople and walking trinket-vendors up the wazoo.

Despite our initial reaction to the whole touristy feel of Mazatlan and feeling like we’d seen all there was to see within a matter of a couple weeks, we stayed to experience Carnaval. Fortunately for us, our tour guide friends on S/V Cuba Libre showed us around their adopted home and within a couple more weeks they helped us discover some really cool stuff: the artwalk, street hot dog vendors, amazing tacos al pastor, a spectacular bullfight, yummy gorditas, the shrimp ladies, the gringo theater, Cuban food, the carnival fireworks…all things we never would have experienced without their local knowledge.

Soon we got used to riding the crowded buses, going in the claustrophobic market and navigating the hectic downtown sidewalks where I came within 6” of getting clipped by a bus. We began to ignore the steady stream of “salespeople” who inevitably come right up to your dining table, even INSIDE some restaurants, hawking everything from bracelets to banana bread to foot massages (if I only had a dollar for every time I had to say “no gracias”). We learned the trick of fending off timeshare salespeople (tell them you live on a boat - this indicates you have no money) and shooed away the persistent yet terrible street musicians who shouldn’t be allowed to touch an instrument let alone sing.

So for us, it took a bit for Mazatlan to sink in; we like it now. We understand why soooo many Canadians and some Americans move to this city permanently: a myriad of cultural activities, great shopping, awesome food, perfect weather, beautiful beaches, low cost-of-living. Still… Would I fly my mother down here? Probably not. I just don’t think it’s up her alley. Some people absolutely love this place, but it’s not for everyone. Now that we’ve spent enough time here though, we feel comfortable getting around and could certainly play tour guide a thousand times better than when we’d first arrived.

Back to La Paz
While we will miss Mazatlan, we were eager to get back to nature… back to the peace of La Paz, the beautiful anchorages and the stunning waters of the Sea of Cortez. So on Wed, March 2nd we left Marina Mazatlan (we moved there to get the varnish completed) at 7am and headed back to La Paz. This time we had no buddy boat and were on our own for the 2 day passage. But somehow, it wasn’t quite so daunting the second time around.

 “YOU talkin’ to ME?”
A few miles outside the harbor entrance, we noticed a boat trailing behind us, but didn’t pay much attention. Then I heard a call over VHF, a little something like this: “Sailboat just out of Mazatlan Harbor headed to La Paz, this is Salish Sequel.” Normally, hearing a call like that always induces a quandary. Are they really talking to me?  You just never know. Well Watson, we HAD to be the one she was hailing. Why? We were literally the ONLY other sailboat out there!

You see, a person can stand at the Mazatlan harbor entrance and tell exactly where a boat is going to; there are only two choices. If you turn south, you’re going to La Cruz or PV, an overnight passage; if you go northwest you’re headed back to La Paz. There’s just nowhere else to go. (Ok, there is Topolobampo due north, but it’s much farther so most people don’t.) We ended up chatting a couple times over VHF radio with Salish Sequel, loosely buddy-boating by sheer proximity for the first day; we then lost them after dark.

No Wind, Perfect Wind, or Too Much Wind
Brian wants SOME wind for a crossing (a perfect 10kts, on a close reach – good luck with that), so we can sail most of the way and not use up diesel. Sure, tell me something that every sailor doesn’t want. But I’m a realist. For a 2-day crossing, I want NO wind so we can just motor and get it over with and so there is no risk of lumpy, seasickness-inducing-seas. Neither of us wants TOO MUCH wind. At this time of year (well most of the time) the winds come from the northwest. Guess which direction we had to go? Northwest. Bashing into strong winds, to put it crudely, sucks. So we time our crossing via Sailflow and other weather-prediction sites for 3-4 days of super benign weather…and cross fingers.

I WIN!
That first day, we were able to sail for 5 hours (Brian is ecstatic). We then motored for 24 hours straight (Me=Yay!; Brian=frowny face). Then sailed for 2, then motored the rest of the way. Yup. I WIN! Oh, the seas were beautiful - like glass! I overheard this conversation over VHF: “You got any wind over there?” “Nope, it’s like a skating rink out here.” Only a Canadian would use a skating rink analogy, but he was right…it was so smooth you could drop a pin and the water would ripple for miles. Motoring at night, through pitch dark for several hours before the moon rose, was pure peace.

Turtle Migration
The second day, we had our first turtle sighting! I had gotten a bit jealous that everyone else had witnessed turtles in the Sea; we had been here for a season and a half… still no turtles. Lo and behold, we got our fill of them this day. We must have seen 20 or more throughout the day, never more than one at a time, never too close to the boat (they’d duck under if our paths intersected too close). We could spot their dark shells as much as a half mile out, floating at the surface, infringing upon the baby blue monotony of our flat skating rink. Their green/black hard-hat shells stuck above the water several inches, their little feet swimming along back to La Paz. If it took us two days to get there, how long would it take them? Quite the journey. We spotted a seagull standing atop one, catching a free ride. Not sure why the turtle let him; he could have just ducked under and sent him flying away, but he didn’t. Maybe he just needed a friend.

Bonanza!
We landed at Playa Bonanza on Isla Ispiritu Santos 47 hours and 250 miles later. Just before sunrise, we anchored in this expansive bay in the dark. And who should arrive under the rising sun but Salish Sequel. They graciously invited us for delicious sangrias and snacks that evening to celebrate a good crossing.

For two days, we rested in the perfect white sand arms of Bonanza, and then made the final, easy leg to La Paz. We docked at Marina Palmira for one week, just enough time to grocery shop, do taxes (blah), finish my incredibly long bullfight blog (it took 4 hours sitting in the lounge just to upload the video – man, I miss El Cid internet) and do some boatwork (Brian climbed the mast 5 times in one day to polish all the mast steps and clean the rigging – what a feat!).

Heading North Once Again
On March 13th we began our 2nd northern trek to San Carlos. This signifies the beginning of the end of our second season in the Sea…hard to believe!

Crossing to San Carlos. June 3-4
As soon as we made the decision that morning to jump to San Carlos and run from Hurricane Blanca, my anxiety level went sky-high. 24 hours of straight sailing…an overnight….uggh. We hadn’t done any night sailing since going non-stop from Cabo San Lucas to Bahia de los Muertos back in November. Not a fan of night sailing; I was NOT looking forward to it.

Today’s wind was forecast to be 15kts. It wasn’t exactly ideal, mostly because you always tack on another 5kts for prediction error, which would mean potential of 20kts. I worried about possible wave action generated over 80 miles and 24 hours; but if we waited, it would be worse the following day, and worse the day after that.

Like a Box of Chocolates
You see, 15kts of wind in the Sea versus 15kts in Southern California are often two entirely different animals. In SoCal, that is typically ideal sailing weather…a nice, sprightly breeze. Here, upwards of 15 knots is fine for a few hours…but the long, narrow Sea can cause a funnel effect, creating nasty 1-2 second wind waves that grow steeper (and more vomit-inducing) the longer it blows.

Therefore, many people try to time their crossings with less than 10 kts predicted. You may be motoring the entire way…but hey, it’s better than getting your brains bashed out for 24 hours, at least in our humble opinions: mine being the “comfort-first” attitude and Brian’s the “safety-first” approach after 20 years of pilot safety-training.  We are not hearty San Francisco sailors who love going out in 30kt winds just for the sheer “fun” of it. No way Jose.

Forrest Gump equates life to a box of chocolates; it's the same with the Sea of Cortez – you never know what you’re gonna get. I have spoken to people who didn’t time it right or the forecast was wrong, resulting in anywhere from really uncomfortable to frightening crossings.  After having a couple of bad experiences, one boat’s wife never crossed again; if they decide to take the boat from La Paz to the mainland, he drives the boat and she takes a plane or ferry. Food for thought. Traveling all day and all night across the Sea of Cortez can be benign or hellacious - or a bit of both. So for our crossing, and in light of the pending hurricane, we’re trying to play it as safe as possible… probably to a fault.

Anxious First Hour
We shoved off about 10:30am after a nice, big pancake breakfast with fried apples. Who knows what the sea will be like later, so better to have a huge breakfast, snacking light and easy the rest of the day. Heading out of our anchorage into the Bay of Concepcion, already it was blowing 15kts and the bay was getting choppy. Not a good sign, I thought. I didn’t remember that this bay has its own weather patterns, and as soon as we cleared the entrance, the wind died down to nothing. Woohoo! This meant hours and hours of motoring. Brian hates that – but, I'm not gonna lie... it’s fine by me!

On The Road Again
It took a while but my anxiety level diminished and we got into the motoring groove. Salami, cheese and crackers were on the menu for lunch, the perfect boater snack. Brian made a crossing playlist on the ipod and we listened to everything from the conventional Kidd Rock and Aerosmith… to bizarre tunes like CW McCall’s “Wolf Creek Pass”, (to which we know the words of course) and They Might be Giants “Particle Man” (look up the video on YouTube, Jack.)

All day and into the afternoon we had little wind, at least not enough to sail by. But we had plenty of gas since we skipped 3-4 whole weeks of cruising. We read books. We watched the water – it was hypnotic the way Indigo’s boat wake curled and trailed away across the rippled surface. Brian saw a massive swordfish sling himself out of the water like a catapult. I was looking the other way, as usual. Where!? Darn, missed it again. The sea was remarkably calm and you could watch the smooth roll of the south swell coming up from the hurricane.  Not a single boat for as far as the eye can see…totally and utterly alone.

Ping Pong Ball Moon
One fortuitous aspect about the inadvertent timing of our crossing was the full moon; it lasted all night long and didn’t set until after the sun came up. What a relief to bask in its comforting luminescence mid-sea, 30 miles from land in the pitch blackness. (You can’t see the opposite side even in daylight - think width of Lake Michigan). Under this dazzling moon, we could see the horizon all night long - I highly recommend it. It makes a huge difference for my sanity’s sake to be able to at least distinguish up from down.

Sailing the Midnight Special
At dusk, the wind suddenly picked up to 6-9kts – so we sailed. When it increased to 14kts hours later, we reefed and were still sailing at 5.5 kts. We kept watching the anemometer expecting the wind to get worse. But from dusk ‘til dawn, we sailed straight through to San Carlos in anywhere from 9-14kts the entire time. It never rose any higher and we were supremely thankful. We were also lucky that the wind came out of the perfect direction… for once… probably the only time this trip. With a northeast wind, we sailed on a beam reach the entire way, never tacking once. This angle also helped diminish any uncomfortable wind wave chop as we were slicing between waves. Brain-bashing avoided – yippee!

We did not do watches per se; when one person was tired we’d basically cat-nap in the cockpit while the other drove. Much of the time we were both awake. That works fine for one night; if we were out longer, we’d have to get better rest and sleep below for a few hours at a time as we did coming down the Baja coast.

Magically Delicious
Several times that night we were visited by a small pod of dolphins - we think the same pack of 5-10, again and again throughout the night. I first heard the tell-tale ”pwhuh” of one taking a quiet breath next to the boat. “Dolphins!”  I whispered to Brian, as we were usually both awake. (Mystical animal sightings like dolphins and rays somehow demand hushed tones when observing.)

Scrambling like excited kids, we peered over the side in the dark. Several played in the rushing water of Indigo’s bow wake as we sailed along. We even got our own personal SeaWorld performance, complete with jumps and flips, splashing not 10 feet from the boat, their small, dark black bodies glistening in the moonlight.

“Ooooh. Ahhhhh.” Clapping ensued. (Yes, we actually did clap – they deserved it!) Brian asked me if this could be considered a magical night: sailing amidst dolphins under a full moon. I said, “Throw in a leprechaun and some Lucky Charms and it would be magically delicious”.

Easy Peasy
So, fortunately, our first crossing turned out to be easy. Ominous at first, leaving at the behest of a potential hurricane, but smooth calm seas for half and just enough wind to sail the other half. AND a full moon. AND dolphins. When people ask us about the crossing I feel almost guilty about our perfect trip. Two days later the swell got bigger and indeed we are really, really, really glad to have crossed when we did. Prudence wins.

San Carlos at Sunrise
22 hours and 86 miles later, at 8:30am the next day we arrived in our hurricane hole, San Carlos, a small town north of Guaymas on the mainland. A lovely red sun rose over the imposing Tetas de Cabra (yes that means “goat teats” – look at the photo) mountain whose towering double peaks partially surround this little bay. Approaching land, we felt like we were entering some remote, exotic harbor. Sheer cliffs lined the winding harbor entrance. Expensive vacation villas cling to these cliff sides like crabs. We carefully crept into our slip (Brian did a textbook landing by the way) that I had reserved for July 1st, arriving a full month early on June 4th. We checked into the marina, got a quick breakfast and promptly went back to the boat for a long, loooong nap.

Blanca Waves Hello
4 days later on June 8th, Hurricane Blanca turned back into a tropical depression, but still tracked north towards Magdalena Bay, on the outside of the Baja Peninsula. Effects of that early storm traveled across to Bahia Concepcion, where we would have been anchored had we not decided to cross early, and where they reportedly saw upwards of 40-50kt gusts. Sooo happy to miss that.

In the San Carlos/Guaymas area, we had about 30kt winds in the sea, but protected by the mountains the marina saw only up to 25kts – no big deal, safely ensconced in our slip. It was the surf that was spectacular. After we walked over to the beach, I wish I’d brought my video camera - the Sea of Cortez was indeed angry. Cars lined the roadside beach breakwater; it seemed as if the entire town came out to witness the rare and mesmerizing high surf. I looked at the confused, crashing waves, imagining what it would be like anchored or sailing in THAT…MESS… and I high-fived Brian. Whew... dodged that bullet. Let’s go get a Pacifico!

“You can’t always get what you waannt. But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you neeeeeed.” – Rolling Stones