San Diego to Cabo

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.

My anchorage in Mission Bay

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.

One down - dozens to go!

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.

Entering Ensenada harbor

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.

Goat tacos and a Ballenon of Pacifico!

Chilaquiles, carne seca, y huevos for breakfast

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.  

The lighthouse on the exit from Ensenada and a shadow beneath it that looked eerily like a little girl in a dress

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.

The moon rise south of Ensenada

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.