I'm totally free right now.  Free to do whatever I want, whenever I want.  Nobody is depending on me for anything.  I don't have any bills to pay.  I don't have any job to get up for in the morning.  If I want to go explore a deserted island, I can go and do it.  If I dig into a good book, I can lay around and read all day.  My life is entirely my own and that's an incredible feeling. 

There is a stretch of water in the far south of Mexico called the Gulf of Tehuantepec.  Most of Mexico is very mountainous, but the land that adjoins the "T-pec" is mostly low sand dunes.  Thus, all of the trade winds that blow throughout the Caribbean and the Gulf tend to funnel through this 100 mile stretch of dunes and accelerate out into the Gulf of T-pec.  The gales created by this phenomenon are called Tehuante-peckers* and are notorious for their exceptionally high winds, frequently exceeding 60 knots.  These Tehuante-peckers will often blow for as long as a week or two before a weather window opens up to allow for a safe crossing of the 200 mile wide gulf.  
*I didn't just make this up, people actually call them that.

About a week ago, I was looking through my pilot charts (charts that show the average wind direction, speed, currents, etc) for the voyage south.  I was specifically curious about the T-pec and, after scanning a bunch of other pilot charts, I realized that it was statistically the most dangerous stretch of my voyage between Washington and Chile.  I didn't expect this result and it got me thinking.  

For the last year, I've been planning to explore Central America on my way down to Chile, with stops in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.  I know that this is a beautiful stretch of coastline and I'll be able to meet up with a bunch of friends, likely spending a lot of time on the beach drinking beer and generally having fun.  But there has been something nagging at me from the depths of my subconscious for the last few months as well.  

I've been sailing around in Mexico since June.  It has been beautiful, relaxing, and delicious, but it hasn't been challenging, new, or mentally stimulating.  At the outset of this trip, I felt constantly challenged by navigation and I was learning new skills every day.  During my time in Mexico, I feel like I've slowly been stagnating.  

Thus, I've made the decision to cut the Central America portion out of my trip and take a much more direct route to get to Chile.  With this plan, I'll sail directly from Southern Mexico to the Galapagos (1000 miles to the south which ought to take me about two weeks).  From there I'll sail directly to Easter Island (2000 mile to the south west, 3-4 weeks) and from there directly to Puerto Montt, Chile (2000 mile to the south east, 3-4 weeks).  I feel fortunate to have the freedom to make such a major change like this.

This new route has a number of advantages:
1) It will save me time - instead of 7-8 months more sailing, I'll hopefully complete the rest of the voyage to Chile in 3-4 months.
2) It will save me money - I would've spent a lot of cash goofing off in Central America for months on end.
3) It will allow me to reach Chile before winter arrives in the Southern Hemisphere - I won't lie, I've been looking at pictures of people back home skiing pow and its slowly killing me.  I can't wait to spend a winter in Chile.  
4) It's a safer time of year to make each of these passages - there are fewer incidences of high winds and gales in the southern ocean before the winter months.  

Most of the passages I've made thus far have only been a couple hundred miles, so these longer passages will be an interesting test.  I'll need to manage food and provisioning for extended periods.  I´ll need to keep the boat moving in the right direction for weeks on end, without help from anyone else.  I'll likely run into some nasty weather along the way and there will be no port where I can stop and hide.  These are all risks that I'm ready to accept and I'm confident that I have the proper skills, knowledge, and equipment to make the sail safely and in good style.  

While I'm away from land, I'll have contact with my brother via sat-text for weather routing and he'll be able to update my location-tracking page as well.  If you're interested, you'll be able to follow my progress day-by-day as I inch my way south towards the promised land.  

Thus begins the next chapter in the Voyage of the Rascal.  I'll give ya'll an update when I get to the Galapagos!

As we were working our way up the coast, we were keeping our eyes peeled for a weather window that would make for a relatively painless crossing.  We eventually found one and planned our sailing to be able to hit it.

We spent one more day sailing north and it was a slow, easy day so we took the liberty of launching the superhighway mid-way through and capturing some pictures of the Rascal under sail.  These are the first pictures I've ever taken of her sailing along, so it was pretty exciting for me!

The jumping-off point was decided to be Punta Pulpita (also known as little octopus point) which was a big black rock outcropping that created a couple of protective bays.  There was a day of downtime before our weather window, so we got to do some exploring around in that area.

A gorgeous sunset / moonrise combo started the night out right, and after a good night's sleep, we awoke ready to climb the behemoth that was towering above us.

It was a bit of a long climb, with lots of loose sand, frustrating false summits, and lots of arachnids, but the views from the top were spectacular!

We spent the rest of the day's energy wrapping up a few more boat chores and preparing things for the crossing.  True to our weather report, we got a little taste of 'sailor's delight' just before dinner (which consisted of cheese burger dumplings and a bottle of red wine).

The crossing ended up being pretty casual.  We left early one morning, sailed all day and all night, and arrived the following day at around 10am in San Carlos.  We were close hauled for almost all of it, but the wind and the waves were fairly casual and consistent.  We managed to catch a bunch of dorado and we also saw sea turtles and several dolphins way off shore during the crossing.

Before the voyage, Autumn became involved with an organization called Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation.  They're an organization that "collects and disseminates environmental data to catalyze conservation initiatives worldwide" and Autumn decided to help contribute to their study of microplastics in the world's oceans.  This involved us taking 1 liter water samples at a number of places along our journey, as well as data about when we took them, where we were, what the water temperature was, etc.  Then we send the samples in for them to analyze the number of tiny plastic particles that are present.  

As you can imagine, as the world continues to use more and more plastic products, bits of the packaging, bits of fibers from clothes, and actual small chunks of plastic products end up in the ocean.  Many of these get eat/absorbed somewhere in the food chain and its affecting oceans in a massive way.  Even in a place as underpopulated as the Sea of Cortez, we see tons of floating plastic bottles, discarded bags, and old fishing floats both in the sea and on the beach.

We had a gorgeous sunrise as we approached San Carlos, and we knew we were in the right zone when we spotted the infamous Tetas De Cabra (Goat Tits) Mountains lit up in the morning light.  Tough to imagine anything more majestic than that!  Traffic got pretty thick as we pulled into the harbor, and we saw several shrimpers steaming up and down the 

After being in tiny Mexican towns and out in the sea for such a long time, the opulence of San Carlos got our attention really quick.  San Carlos has lots of tourism from the states, and as a result there are lots of fancy homes, condos, and luxurresorts around.  

We checked into the marina without incident and promptly located a few cold beers.  After a few weeks without showers, we decided a little bit of luxury wouldn't hurt us and Autumn decided to spring for a night at the hotel that overlooked the marina.  She must've given the guy at the front counter a wink, because he offered her the half-off deal for first time customers and before we knew it, we had taken real showers and were luxuriating in the first air conditioning we'd encountered in weeks.  It felt like a million bucks.

We had been doing all of our cooking on the boat and realized that we both had an incredible hunger for a good old fashioned roadside roast chicken.  We ambled back down to the lobby and Autumn inquired if such a place existed in San Carlos.  The front desk man calmly smiled, looked at his partner who also smiled, looked back at Autumn who was smiling, and said, without hesitation, "Pollo Lopez!"  It was immediately clear that this place was something special, so we went to the bus stop and caught a ride into town.  We were borderline giddy when we arrived and we smelled the glorious aromas from the window of the bus before we even spotted it.  It was along the main drag through town and there was a big, sturdy brick oven set up in front of a small concrete building.  No dining room, no tables, no bullshit.  Just delicious, juicy roast chicken.

In addition to the whole roast chicken, each order comes with potatos, chiles, and onions that have been roasting in delicious chicken drippings for hours.  Everything gets roasted with locally harvested mesquite logs and it comes with salsa and a bunch of corn tortillas to serve it on.  We immediately brought it back to our air conditioned room, gorged ourselves for a half an hour and feel into a deep food coma that lasted for the rest of the day.

 We spent the next day running errands, doing laundry and getting superhighway recomissioned.  During the passage her outboard got tilted the wrong way and she wouldn't start.  After lots of poking, prodding, and about a thousand pulls on the starter cord, I finally realized I needed to clean out the carb and replace the spark plug.  It was Sunday, so stores weren't open and we also couldn't inquire about the possibility of a haul out. 

On Monday morning, we scheduled the haul out for that afternoon at 3pm.  They use a huge hydraulic trailer to lift boats in and out and then drive them a 1/4 mile down the road to the boat yard.  However, there were two boats with engine trouble blocking the ramp, so true to Mexican form, they said, "Manana manana," and we got rescheduled for the next morning, with assurances that we would get a "good deal" for our trouble.  The following morning came along and out the Rascal came, without any difficulties.  

She was in the blocks by 830 and we got to work examining her.  There were the obvious areas where the sand had rubbed bottom paint off when she was beached during hurricane Odile.  In addition to these areas, some paint had chipped off down on the bottom of the keel and there was lead showing through.  Rascal's keel is full length with a cutaway forefoot and the lead portion sits along that leading edge.  We started chipping away around that zone and found that whatever fairing compound they used over the lead portion wasn't adhering very well.  We chipped until we couldn't get it to chip any more and talked for a while with the yard manager about the best course of action.  

He advocated for an epoxy layer to fill and provide a waterproof barrier, followed by an epoxy primer (in the zones that got sanded off during the storm), and finally a fresh coat of bottom paint.  That made sense to us, and we weren't entirely excited to sand toxic paint (and I only have a 4 1/2 inch orbital sander), so we decided to let the yard workers tackle everything but the final coat of bottom paint.  That afternoon, my good buddy Joe arrived from Colorado, laden down with all sorts of goodies that I asked him to carry down as well as a big, awesome, LOUD speaker system that he designed from scratch.  Gone is the era of tunelessness on the Rascal.  Joe was kind enough to usher in an era of dance parties, John Mellencamp, and reggae tunes.

The yard workers were slow to start, but they did a great job and while they were working, we lent a hand where we could.  We also installed the speaker system much to everyone's delight.  Last, but not least, we drank enough tecate to choke a horse.

We selected a lovely shade of blue for the Rascal's bottom and managed to get two thin coats of it.  I'm of the opinion that it looks much better than the original rusty red, and she is definitely faster in dark blue.  Autumn and Joe were kind enough to pitch in with the painting and it all went pretty quick.

We celebrated such a monumental achievement by poaching the hotel swimming pool and going out for fish tacos at JJ's.  We were slow to get up the following morning, but a big bacon-and-egg breakfast fortified us, and we rallied shortly thereafter to reprovision at the local grocery store.  They plopped us back in the drink at 11 o'clock, with my wallet a touch lighter than it had been, and we were off to dive back into the cruising life!

We didn't know it at the time, but the next week would involve the catching of a blue footed booby, a show-down in Martini Cove, and another THREE chickens from Pollo Lopez.

Over the past two weeks, I made it from San Diego to Cabo, with a stop in Ensenada to check into Mexico on the sail south.  

Hurricane Season
It has been a long time since I’ve experienced anything resembling “stress”, but if there was one thing that has been nagging me, it is the possibility of getting caught in a hurricane on the Pacific coast of North America.  The hurricane season in the Eastern Pacific starts at the beginning of June (though there was one as early as mid-May this year) and conventionally runs until the beginning of November.  Having bought the boat in Washington, I knew I’d be hard pressed to make it to a safe haven in time, so I’ve been sailing as fast as I reasonably can to make it south before the season really heats up. 

It has probably been clear from the blog posts that this “hurried up” sailing hasn’t exactly been a hardship, but I haven’t been taking much time to explore and smell-the-roses either.  The Sea of Cortez doesn’t get hit by storms very often and there are lots of good, protected anchorages to hide out in.  Thus, my plan all along has been to truck it south to Mexico, where food / living is cheap, fishing is plentiful, and there is plenty of sunshine to bask in.  

And here I am!  In warm, sunny Cabo.  It took me a grand total of 2 months and 2581.6 nautical miles to get from Bellingham to Cabo and I truly had a blast doing it.  The Rascal held up like a champ and my sailing/navigation skills certainly developed along the way.  I'll be slowly meandering around the Sea of Cortez for the next 6 months, exploring the nooks and crannies, catching up on boat projects, and reading lots of books.

San Diego
This most recent passage began in San Diego, where I was stopping to meet up with friends, collect mail and packages, and re-provision for the last time in the states.  I managed to find myself a surfboard (figuring that I'd be a fool to venture down into Central America without one) and started to try and catch waves near my anchorage in Pacific Beach.  So far, its not going very well and I even managed to get myself stung by a stingray, which hurts like hell.  Luckily, I didn't go the way of Steve Irwin and soaking my foot in hot water helped to ease the pain.

San Diego to Ensenada
With the possibility of storms further south, I wanted someone to join me for the passage and my friend Autumn just happened to be free.  We knocked out all the errands and provisioning in a few days and pulled out of San Diego bright and early on a Monday morning.  

There are a lot of military bases around SD and we had an exciting couple of hours dodging big military ships and peeking up at flyovers.

The border is really close to San Diego and we got there in just a few hours.  There were a bunch of stern looking military patrols moving back and forth and hovering in choppers very close to the line, but nobody seemed to pay us any mind and we cruised right on through.  My friend Joe gave me an incredible present a few years ago and I've been waiting for the proper time to enjoy it.  His family is very, very Italian, and as a result, his grandfather has been soaking cherries in a glorious concoction of booze (though the exact recipe remains a secret) for ages.  The bar that he was kind enough to impart to me has been soaking for more than a decade (they were bottled in 2002).  Pretty damn neat, and exceptionally delicious.  Thus, I decided that I ought to consume a cherry every time the Rascal crosses the border into a new country.

You're supposed to "check in" to Mexico at the first available port, and for us, that port was Ensenada.  That said, we couldn't make the whole trip in one day, so we decided to anchor up in the Coronado Islands for the night.  We had a beautiful little anchorage and had a big ole steak dinner to celebrate the start of the passage.

We had planned to wake up around midnight to finish the sail (and have all day to complete paperwork for the check-in) and around 11:45 we awoke to a tremendous buzzing in the cockpit.  Some hungry game fish must've been feeding in the area, and they scared a flying fish out of the water and up into the cockpit.  His loss was our gain, and we pulled up the anchor, sailed out of the lee of Coronado, and ate him for breakfast.

There was a dazzling sunrise that morning and just as it was light enough to see, we were immediately surrounded by dolphins.  They came from all sides, jumping in the waves by the boat and frolicking around the bow.  It was a delightful way to enter Mexico and we figured it was a good omen for the passage to come.

After such a long time planning and imagining my Mexican landfall, I was pretty ecstatic to finally be arriving.  We spent the morning and much of the afternoon filling out paperwork, getting permits, and walking back and forth between the marina and the port captains office.  Once it was all finished, we dove right into the margaritas and street food.  We ended up only spending about 24 hours in Ensenada, but we walked a lot and had several incredible meals and our fair share of beers as well.

We also got a chance to meet some other cruisers while we were in Ensenada and they had wonderful stories to share.  A few had even been to Chile and everyone had incredible things to say about it.  The stoke level is definitely high!  Some folks even passed off some extra food they wouldn't be able to take into the US and our fridge was bursting to the gills by the time we pulled out.  So far, I've had really great interactions with all of the long-distance cruisers I've run into.  

The following morning, with a good weather window opening, and full bellies, we set sail from Ensenada to begin the long trip south.  We saw a few massive whales far off on that first evening, and we were basically surrounded by sea life the entire time.  

I had bought quite a bit of fishing tackle in San Diego and I promptly had my line snapped off within 2 minutes of dropping it overboard.  I didn't know it at the time, but I severely undergunned-it in the tackle department with only 40lb test.  I lost 3 lures within the first 20 minutes (and all of my most promising ones!).  I can only imagine they were either large sharks or perhaps 200lb marlins that hit the lures because they disappeared in an instant and made my strongest drag settings sound like a hummingbird.  I tried a few combinations of doubling up lines and using other make-shift lures, but for the first few days, I had to satisfy myself with non-seafood meals and a great collection of sunsets.

We had a reasonably strong following wind for most of the first few days and we made good time to the south, managing to register 134 miles in one 24hr period - which is exceptionally fast for the Rascal.  In fact, it may be the most distance she ever manages in 24 hours.  Autumn was feeling a little under the weather, so we decided to anchor for the night and take a break in the San Benito Islands.  We anchored in a little weird kelp forest and we woke up to find that we were right next to a remote little fishing village.

We continued to make good time after that and saw lots of dolphins along the way.  Most mornings, the wind would be light and slowly pick up as the day went on.  I hadn't ever rigged my spinnaker before (which is a very big, light wind sail, for going down-wind) and it seemed like the conditions were right.  Setting it was surprisingly easy and it boosted our speed by about a knot in comparison with the genoa, which makes a big difference and will probably save me a lot of gas over the course of the next few years when the wind is light.

As we got further south (and especially when we were close to terrain features in the sea floor) we saw more and more sea life.  At one point we even saw a huge marlin or sailfish jumping out of the water and i decided that was the last straw, I had to trail a line again, despite the light weight of my tackle.

My efforts were quickly rewarded, and after a long battle, I managed to land a little yellowtail.  We happened to be really close to Magdalena Bay and we decided to anchor up and turn it into sushi right on the spot.  It was tastier than any of the hamachi I've ever had in a Japanese restaurant and we feasted like kings!

We stayed fairly close to shore for the rest of the passage (because that was the fastest route) and things were pretty uneventful until we got close to Cabo on Friday morning.

We had eaten the remainder of the yellowtail as ceviche and we were starting to get hungry again when we started seeing fish jumping out of the water all around us.  Clearly something was feeding and eventually we saw dozens of manta rays with their wing tips just grazing out of the water.  It was incredible to watch and I decided to cast my line out again.  I was promptly rewarded with a stout little skipjack tuna.

Thus, we pulled into San Jose del Cabo well fed, but excited to be back on dry land again.  We even stayed in a hotel for a night to give the Rascal a rest and get a little bit of relaxation of our own.  There happened to be a music festival going on in town 

Yesterday we spent most of the day lounging on the beach or by the pool, but we also managed to reprovision the Rascal from a local market.  We ate a few absolutely incredible meals of ceviche, shrimp soup, tacos, fresh fruit, and even a cerveza or two. 

Sadly, Autumn had to head back to the states, so I'm going to slowly make my way up to La Paz and begin exploring the Sea of Cortez solo.  I'll continue to be out of cell phone service / wifi except when I'm in port, so if you need to get in touch with me, send an email and I'll get back to you in a week or so.

Since I arrived in Ventura, I’ve been slowly toodling my way south, stopping to meet up with friends, and provisioning for my final departure from the states.

Channel Islands
The first order of business was a sail out to the Channel Islands (Smugglers Cove on Santa Cruz Island to be exact).  We had a great crew - Porter was in town for a business meeting, my buddy Michael lives in LA, and he brought his girlfriend, Lily, along.  We loaded up the boat early Saturday morning and had a lovely sail out to Santa Cruz, complete with mimosas, sunshine, and dozens of dolphins swimming along next to us.  There were a handful of other boats already anchored up when we arrived and we found a good spot, dropped the hook, and jumped in!  We were in about 25 feet of water and it was so clear we could easily make out crabs walking around on the sandy bottom.

We spent the afternoon swimming around, drinking beers, and exploring the island a bit.  Michael brought pizza supplies and we roasted them up to perfection in the cast iron combo-cooker.  All-in-all, a magical day and one that I won’t soon forget.

The next day was just a warm, sunny, and perfect as Saturday and we spent the day engaged with breakfast burritos, cribbage, and some snorkeling.  Porter managed to pull a few lucky wins out on the cribbage board, but the victor is far from crowned.  We were visited by a cute little baby seal that was curious about us and had apparently been tagged by some wildlife officer that also saw fit to give him a neon mohawk as well.  Bizzare.  He was especially curious about the Little Rascal and even hopped up on ‘er to take a peek around.  

Getting back and forth to the beach was a bit treacherous due to the light swell that was rolling in, and we all got trounced in the little rascal at one point or another.  Michael, who hadn’t ever rowed a raft before, actually faired the best out of all of us, though watching him row was pretty comical in the beginning.  

The sail back to Ventura was uneventful and Porter and I got a chance to enjoy a big dinner of dumplings and Chinese food before he had to hit the road back to Vegas.

Sailing South
Over the course of the following few days, I worked my way further south with a couple stops to buy parts and supplies that I’m expecting to be scarce in Mexico.  There are a couple of second hand boating supply stores that are much easier on the wallet than West Marine, a store I’m really beginning to loathe.  I got a chance to meet up with friends (new and old) and had some damn good meals aboard the rascal.  Oddly enough, and by happenstance, most of them were Mexican meals.  I guess I’m subconsciously preparing myself for the next six months of tacos, beans, and salsa.  Can’t wait!

This afternoon, I finally made it to San Diego and I’m anchored up in Mission Bay (which is free! Hell yeah!), and I’m sitting in the cockpit taking in a glorious sunset as I type this post.  The next two days are going to involve a lot of last minute provisioning and taking care of the final details of my departure from the states.  I’m hoping to check into Ensenada on Monday and then make the run to Cabo in one shot.  I’m really bummed to be missing the whole Pacific coast of Baja, but the threat of hurricanes looms large, and I want to be in the Sea of Cortez as fast as possible.

From here on out, I won’t have a cell phone and internet access will be sporadic at best.  I’ll try to keep up with the blog as best I can, but expect a couple weeks between posts while I’m sailing away from civilization in the Sea of Cortez.