San Carlos, Mexico - Victoria, Canada

We went to Palm Desert, California to visit Susan’s parents for a few days from San Carlos. This was an easy trip for us as San Carlos is so near to the border. We had a nice time visiting Howard and Shirley, eating fast food and buying stuff that we couldn’t get in Mexico. On the way back we had a funny experience crossing back into Mexico. You have to understand that Mexican Customs is always confusing for us. Inevitably, we have a lot of odd industrial looking packages and between our tortured Spanish and the typical border guards indifference to the peculiar laws regarding importing parts for yachts we worry about delays, seizures, fines or (heaven forbid) bribes. Neither of us had ever been through the Calexico/Mexicali crossing before and we didn’t know where to go. Howard has dropped us off about a block from the actual border and we were struggling along like pack horses with all of our gear. The cars were all stopping at the little customs booths but everyone was ignoring us. We kept wandering along unenthusiastically looking for a customs official until suddenly we found ourselves in downtown Mexicali. Oops! We later learned that there was a pedestrian tunnel, but clearly our way of simply stumbling through the car lanes was better.

___________________________________________

Every year or so we have to have a crane of some sort lift the boat out of the water and paint the bottom to keep the barnacles from growing out of control. We had two options this time, an Americanized operation in San Carlos or an authentic Mexican yard in Guaymas. The Mexican yard was a little less expensive and we liked the manager better so we decided to haul the boat there. What an experience! There were no showers, only one hose in the entire shipyard and extremely basic restroom facilities. To flush you need to toss of full bucket of water down the toilet. Good bathroom etiquette demanded that you then refill said bucket and leave it beside the toilet when you were done. If you’ve never worked on a boat in a boatyard before this may not sound too bad, but these places are always dirty and working on the bottom of a boat makes it much worse. We were there for three weeks and it was about all we could stand. We did have a little fun with the local “wild” life though. The place was full of stray dogs. None of them really had anything to eat so we temporarily adopted the four smallest puppies. These little dirt coloured mutts were about four inches tall and all ribs and ears when we arrived. Everywhere we went in the yard the four of them formed a four-point honour guard, protecting us from shadows and wind gusts. We fed them anything and everything that we wanted to get rid of including old rice, vegetable scraps, melted ice-cream, assorted bones and of course pigs ears (we bought those for them as a treat). By the time we left they all looked like the might actually belong to the race of dogs. Of the four, Sad Sack and Leaper were so healthy and aggressive that we thought that they’d do OK, but Limper and Mooch the Pooch (the blind one) didn’t look as good, so on our last day we bundled them up in a box and surreptitiously ‘delivered’ them by bus to the marina where the well fed softy foreigners lived. A few days later, when we returned there with the boat, they were fat and happy and seemed to think that they had gone to heaven.

Leaving the shipyard after the paint job proved more difficult than we expected. The crane put the boat back in the water just as the tide was going down. Then the pilot boat led us directly into a shallow part and “Daydream” went aground. This was really our own fault, we knew where the channel was, but had allowed the staff to convince us to follow the pilot boat even though we had seen them put three other boats aground in the previous week. We quickly put up the sails, reved the engine and the pilot boat towed, putting us even higher up on the mudbank. Finally, we realized that we wouldn’t be getting off the bottom until the next high tide, so we settled back and had dinner. Just after moonrise, the tide was high enough for us to start moving, we bumped along over another two or three hundred feet of shallows before finally getting clear.

_______________________________________________

My sister Fey (actually she likes to spell it Faye) came down for a visit while we were in San Carlos. This was her first visit to Mexico so we had fun showing her around. Faye also went out of her way to entertain us. First there was a short hike during which she missed her footing on a steep slope. As she fell down the hill she reached out and gave a cactus a big bear-hug. Later, after we were able to stop laughing, Susan and I each extracted a couple hundred cactus spines from Faye, including one that had completely pierced an ear. The following week we anchored up after a hot afternoon of sailing and Wayne and Susan were immediately over the side for a quick cooling dip. It took Faye a little longer to get in as we were getting out. While drying off Faye asked if we ever got stung by jellyfish. I began a long winded explantion about how rarely that happens etc, etc. Midway through my explanation, Susan interrupted to point out the painful looking sting marks all over Faye’s body! When we looked over the side, there were literally thousands of jellyfish all around the boat that had timed their arrival with Faye’s swim. Faye took these mishaps with such astonishingly good grace that we started to get suspicious that she was planning revenge. Sure enough, a few days later we were boarded by pirates! Actually we were never able to prove that she had caused this incident, but since it was the only time in four years that it ever happened, she must have had something to do with it! We had spent the night in a quiet little bay right near the city of Guaymas. As this was squid season there were fisherman in and out of the bay all night long in open pangas. Just at sunrise, Susan heard a sound outside and I went up to investigate. There was a panga right beside us and one of the three men onboard, was holding onto “Daydream”. This was a little weird but these guys often need to borrow some gasoline or a few fishhooks so it wasn’t completely unexpected. In this case they wanted cigarettes. “Sorry we don’t have any.” “Oh...what about breakfast?” “Sorry.” “Well, we need some water”. You just can’t refuse to give people in an open boat water, so I went down to get some. When I returned, one of them was standing on our deck which is very odd. I explained that people were asleep below and asked him to step off, which he did. They left and we went back to bed. Twenty minutes later they were back, this time with cigarettes in their mouths and needing a match. I went down to get them a match and immiediately started to hear some very strange noises from up above. Susan thought that their boat had hit ours and was yelling at them to be careful, but the noise continued. Finally I went back up just in time to see one of them leaping back into their already moving panga with an armload of our dive gear. I went over the rail after him and just made it into the front of the panga as it reversed away. The ‘pirate’ who’d just left our boat saw me coming and continued running right off the back end of the panga and into the water. He was fully clothed in foul weather gear and boots and we probably should have started worrying about him being able to stay afloat. By this time the panga was about 100 feet from “Daydream” and the other two were cowering at the other end staring toward me. I was dressed rather stylishly in glow-in-the-dark pink flamingo boxers but that didn’t seem enough to explain their looks of awe. Finally, I looked over my shoulder at “Daydream” and discovered that there was a certain short blonde person out on deck waving a steak knife and endeavoring to launch our dinghy for a rescue effort. My two remaining pirates gave up the fight at that point, explained that it had all been an ‘error’, delivered me back to “Daydream” and finally rescued their sputtering cohort from the ocean.

____________________________________________

Finally the boat was painted and we were ready to head South. We waved good-bye to San Carlos. It felt great to be moving again after sitting still for so long. That feeling lasted all of a few hours. It’s only a short hop across the Sea of Cortez and down towards Loreto but the Sea decided to make it a doozy. Susan doesn’t remember much of it as she had her head inside of air sickness bags the whole way across. To finish off that lovely voyage, the wind quit as we approached our destination of Ballandra Bay so we decided to motor the last ten miles or so. The transmission gods thought not. The transmission promptly spit out all of its oil and quit working. Needless to say we sailed, very slowly, to Ballandra and there we slept the much deserved sleep of the dead. From there on down to La Paz was a great trip. We had big North winds behind us most of the way giving us excellent speed between anchorages. We hopped along until we landed in Ensenada Grande on Isla Espirito Santo. It was a real pleasure to find our friends Tom and Liz on ‘Feel Free’ anchored there. We put off our push to get to La Paz and enjoyed a few idyllic Mexico days. It was to be our last real free time in Mexico before leaving for Hawaii as there was still a lot to do. Those days embodied all we loved of cruising in Mexico. A beautiful, uninhabited island, clear water, great scenery, nice weather and just great fun with good friends, partying, snorkeling, hiking and picnicing on the beach. It was hard to leave but time was passing so off we went to La Paz.

We made it into La Paz just in time to be a half hour late for a surprise birthday party for our friend Gaye. It was great reunion and we are glad we headed in when we did as David and Gaye left for the Marquises the next day. Perhaps we’ll see them in B.C. in a couple of years.

The next month in La Paz was cram packed with final boat preparations and saying good-bye to old friends departing in all directions. I also had to fly up to Palm Desert and deliver Twiggy into my parents apprehensive hands. We decided that we didn’t want to quarantine Twiggy in Hawaii for two months as it is manditory for all incoming animals. In retrospect, it was a great decision. We missed her terribly but she wouldn’t have enjoyed the passages or quarantine very much. By all accounts from home my parents did a great job of showing her the good life.

We arrived in Cabo San Lucas at 2 a.m., had a quick nap and headed ashore for our last day in Mexico. We got checked out by Immigration, had lunch and bought a few last minute veggies. Then literally one hour before we planned to leave, we discovered that our fuel tank was leaking. Repairing that delayed us overnight but early the next morning we were finally on our way.

(paragraph about how long it typically takes to get to Hawaii, our first huge passage, nervous, but excited, no anchorages, very little sleep, on your own)

There was no wind in the anchorage when we left but just over a mile outside of the anchorage there was 20-25 knots of wind from the West. To top it all off within just a few miles of Cabo San Lucas we encountered the biggest wave we’ve ever seen. Wave heights are normally very difficult to estimate because there is nothing to compare them to. Normally waves that are twelve feet tall look pretty big and are unusual in the tropics. In this case we were within ½ mile of a big tanker when it took a sea squarely on the nose that reached as high as the top of its bow. This would have to be 40-50 feet above sea level! Seconds later as we were still staring, gape-mouthed at the freighter the wave got us too but we floated gently up to the top of it and just the last couple of feet at the top broke and gave a good soaking. This was a pretty exciting start. There was 25 knots of wind blowing and it didn’t drop below 20 knots for the first six days. We got the sails up and the wind vane on and six days later we had yet to run the engine. The wind vane had done all the steering except for a couple of hours when it had broken a control line that needed repair. Here’s an excerpt from our log on day six. “Right now we have a North wind of about 17 knots with a four foot swell. We’re going due West at about six knots and heeling about eight degrees. We’ve been on the same tack since we left Cabo. Does it get any better than this? We’re running down the 19^th parallel and we passed 120 degrees West this a.m. According to NMC (explanation) the trade winds are here blowing E-NE 20-25 knots. We’d really like to see those East winds because the chainplate for our starboard whisker stay has developed a crack. We’ve got a line leading from the end of the bowsprit out to a spinnaker pole and back to a winch. It’s as tight as a violin string so it should hold the bowsprit if the chainplate goes but life would be a lot easier if the wind would just go East.”

(1 light since Cabo, manoverboard buoy rescue, mileages)

We started our watch schedule several days prior to leaving in order to be reasonably well rested during the first few days. As a direct result we had the best long passage ever. We were well rested and fed and the boat was kept in perfect order.

This is day 15 and a bunch of stuff has happened. We finally decided to motor for a while when the wind got down to about 8 knots. Exactly one hour after we started the engine, the transmission quit working. The next morning we dug out the manual and decided that we could repair it. By this time we were in a flat calm with the only movement being provided by a big old ocean swell. The transmission’s control valve came out easily but then we discovered that we’d need a press to get it apart. The calm only lasted about 5 hours but it was followed by only very light winds. We only made about 50 miles that day. The following morning the wind quit again and this gave us an opportunity to build a press. It’s really ugly, we call it Franken-Press, but it worked. Everything went back together and we started the motor. Unfortunately, the transmission was still spitting out it’s oil. We made only about 25 miles that day. The next day the wind came back. By that evening, we had 15 knots from due North and we were making 6 knots due West. We passed a 176 foot schooner that night, talked to them on the VHF radio and asked them to email Dennis with our present position. For several days we’ve had steady North winds of about 15 knots and we’ve made pretty good time. On the 13^th day we were about 100 miles from the halfway point and moving really well with the wind off of our quarter. We had just put the genny up when we heard a loud crack. A couple minutes later there was a louder crack. Our forestay had broken off at the top swage but the halyard was still holding everything up. Of course the wind was blowing about 25 knots with 8 foot seas and darkness was falling. We frantically rolled the sail up and then unbolted the foil at the bottom and lowered the whole mess into the sea. The entire time the foil was slamming from side to side threatening to take out the spreaders. Once we had it down and under control, we were able to heave it up onto the deck and get a sail up onto our inner forestay. As far as we can see everything is OK except that we may have damaged a section of foil. (inner forestay addition holding things up). We even have a spare forestay but don’t want to go up the mast to install it out here. It’s been 36 hours now since the forestay came down. We’re still averaging better than 4 knots and we even got motivated and tried the last thing that we could think of to fix the transmission but so far there has been no need to motor. We have less than 1100 miles (give or take a week and a half) to go now so it feels like the home stretch.

We passed the halfway mark two days ago and opened the best half way present imaginable. It was from Tom and Liz on “Feel Free”. They’ve done lots of long passages and clearly know what’s needed at this point. The package included balloons, large size handywipes for showering, junk food, pictures of Tom and Liz in Canada looking cold, and best of all, stick on tatoos.

The rest of the passage went very smoothly only a couple of other minor things broke. We did have a funny experience about 4 days away from Hilo, Hawaii, we passed an office tower floating in the sea. Actually it was a drilling rig being towed from L.A. to Singapore. It was the most amazing sight, it looked like a 200-foot tall building hundreds of miles out to sea.

We spent one month in the city of Hilo on the island of Hawai’i. This is a nice small city with all the good things...

repairsa;;;volcano...RAIN.. etc

From Hilo we sailed overnight up to the Island of Maui. So far this has been our favorite place in the islands. We were in a rush of course so we only spent a couple days at the town of Lahaina. It has a great climate and a very interesting history.

------------------------------------------------

We left Oahu on the 2^nd and had a week of upwind sailing in the trades. The wind was strong but steady so we made good time and other than blowing out our stay-sail this part of the trip was trouble free. By the 12^th the we were approaching 40 degrees North and the winds were light but finally we were able to point toward Vancouver Island. In the 72 hours starting on the 13^th, our barometer dropped over 24 millibars, by which time we had a full gale blowing with seas of over 15 feet. We were still able to make some progress but eventually the wind turned a little and started forcing us South. At that point we took down all the sails, even then we were still doing six knots and had breaking seas on deck every few minutes. After a few hours of that, we dragged some lines over the stern, that helped bring the speed down and allowed us to control the boat better. Like all storms this one eventualy ended and other than being a long way off our course and having mostly wet cloths and bedding we really had no damage at all. Actually when I say the storm ended it was not really all that simple. In the blackest part of the night the wind absolutely stopped leaving us with giant seas and no way to steady the boat. This is pretty much the original design for a vomit comet, so Susan started the engine for the first time on this trip and began to motor. Within just a few minutes a line floating in the ocean wound itself up in our prop and stopped the engine. We went back to drifting and being uncomfortable. At first light I went over the side with a knife to clear the prop, but it was obvious that the boat falling off of ten foot seas would quickly bash in my head, so I gave up. We didn’t really care anyway, cause by this time the wind was back. A few hours later we had a really beautiful warm blue day but with about 25 knots of wind on our beam. We still had big seas leaftover from the storm but on a day like this its impossible to believe in any bad thing so I had the boat beam onto the seas and doing its best speed straight toward Victoria. Susan was asleep in the sea berth with a pillow over her head when I heard what sounded like a freight train coming toward us. This is what a breaking wave sounds like, but this one just kept coming and coming. Finally just as I was heading up to make sure that it wasn’t really a ship making that noise, the breaking wave hit us squarely on the side. Daydream was knocked down flat and water squirted in through the closed portholes drenching Susan and the last of our dry bedding. Susan lifted the pillow off her head, opened one eye, said a bad word and went right back to sleep.

The day after the big knockdown we started to hear tiny unintelligible voices on the radio. We always kept our radio on no matter what, but at sea it was not unusual to go thousands of miles without ever hearing a peep, so this was pretty exciting. We turned the volume up and listened as hard as we could. After a few hours we began to get bits and pieces and realized that we were listening to a fishing fleet in the middle of a search for a lost boat. We eventually were able to raise them and offer whatever help we could. The search was being coordinated by a fishing boat called the Ocean Pearl and they said that one of their friends had reported he was in trouble and then gone off the air. They asked us to keep an eye out for a life raft. We did what we could, and listened into the radio all day long. Finally near the end of that day, the fisherman reported that they had found their friend and he was OK, but his radio had been ruined by a big wave over the side. At this point we jumped in and asked the Ocean Pearl if they had the ability to email or call Dennis and let him know where we were. There was a long pause after we gave them the email address and finally the captain came back and said “Dennis was on this boat the day we left Victoria and we tried to talk him into coming along.” It’s probably impossible to express just how unlikely this is, but if you realize that the Pacific ocean is bigger than all the dry land on the planet combines and we were just about as far from land as its possible to be, you’ll have some flavor of it.

We were getting close to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and we still had that rope in the prop. We decided that we really should try to get it off cause the Juan de Fuca is a dangerous place, full of ships, fast currents, fog, and rocks, and ultimately we’d have to get to the customs dock in Victoria harbor. We chose a day when the seas were kind of reasonable, dug out the thickest wet suit we owned and Susan boiled a pot of water, She filled my wetsuit up with hotwater and I went over the side on a line. It turned out that a knife was useless for cutting through 20 feet of 2 inch nylon line, but eventually we got a hacksaw going and I was able to saw it all away. I dropped my dive knife and was mesmerized to see it spiraling off into the clearest water I’ve ever seen, maybe 10,000 feet deep.