We left Cabo San Lucas on November 16, shortly after the power boat wakes made staying anchored impossible. Destination: Cabo de los Frailes, about 45 miles distant – we alternately sailed and motored up around the toe of the Baja Peninsula and into the southern Sea of Cortez, traveling north again for the first time…
November 14, 2007. As dawn grew into morning, we passed the usual boat-rally stop of Bahia de Magdalena. By now we wanted to put some distance under the keel so we headed directly for Cabo San Lucas, the southernmost point of Baja California, in the Tropic of Cancer and some 315 miles from Punta Pequena.…
Instead of jumping out of Turtle Bay (on the Pacific side of Baja about halfway down that 750-mile-long peninsula) and spending a two night offshore trip to get to Bahia Santa Maria a couple hundred miles further south via a more direct route; and because the reinforced northwesterlies continued to build, we explored the coast…
We rounded Cape Scott on Vancouver Island BC on July 6, 2007. About 40 miles later, in the first fjord at anchor, some cruiser asked me if I was going on the Baja HaHa. So it proceeded down the coast – about the fourth time this happened I realized that the HaHa was an event…
There are many ways to travel to Mexico by boat. Some people join large rallies out of Southern California like the Baja Ha-Ha or the FUBAR rally for power boats, I suppose for the cameraderie and planning that an organized event provides. Other folks buddy-boat with one or two other vessels for short passages or…
Beer. Tortilla press. Lime juicer. (Cerveza. Prensa de tortillas. Exprimidor de limones.) All can be purchased at any Mexican city’s grocery store for a fraction (US $12 for the press, US $5 for the juicer) of what one would pay in US stores or by ordering these items online. The lime juicer must be seen…
We give thanks for getting the hell here…….. Rounding Cape Mendocino After the UPS medication delivery fiasco we were stuck in Eureka. The weather deteriorated significantly, with high seas warnings to 30 feet and wind in in the 30 knot range. We watched the weather each day looking for a break – on Wednesday we…
Seems like the best time to see ocean critters is when there’s no wind and the seas are flat clam. Ocean sunfish (the little ones, it turns out) drift along the surface of a calm daytime sea. The big ones – 10 feet or so, like what the Monterey Bay Aquarium has in their Big…
Along the West Coast of the US, warm summer air moving over cooler ocean water produces fog. In the usual summertime pattern, fog develops offshore, moves inland overnight, and lifts or dissipates the next morning. The fog can be light or heavy, localized or widespread, short-lived or lingering. Whether it’s characterized as marine fog, radiation…
We departed Barkley Sound at 0600 amid a fleet of sportboats leaving Bamfield. The fog was thick, with visibility of about 200 feet. The boats were anxious to get to the salmon hunting grounds but held an orderly distance until outside the mouth of the inlet, where they roared off at 25 knots to the…