We finally departed Ensenada at 7am on Thursday, heading for Punta Santo Thomas or Bahia San Quintin, depending on the conditions and our happiness with being at sea. Unfortunately we were only 30 minutes out of the harbor when we noticed a strange burning rubber smell. Adam examined the engine and discovered that our throttle cable had chafed against our alternator belt. The heat caused the plastic sheath on the cable to melt into the fibers of the cable, freezing it. This caused our speed to be stuck at 1800rpm. We returned to Ensenada, whereupon Adam spent most of the day replacing and rerunning our cables to prevent chafe. The extra time gave me the opportunity to make another provisions run to the store (my third) and to sew a little bag to hold our silverware.
Friday dawned with winds in the steady 20 knot range, gusting into the 30s. We decided, given that this would be our first sail in 3 months, we should hunker down for the day and wait for the wind to mellow. Saturday morning dawned with a sunny sky and a mellow breeze in the harbor, and we gladly departed Ensenada for the second time. This time nothing impeded our departure. Seas were relatively mellow and the wind was light though adverse, so we motored out of the bay with a pod of dolphins guiding our path. As soon as we rounded the point and headed south we hoisted the main and unfurled the jib sail. We sailed on the 5 knot breeze, making about 2 knots. We estimated that this speed would put us into Punta Santo Tomas (25 miles South) before dark. Adam got a chance to play with our wind vane self steering in light air and we were warm, comfortable, and happy. After going just 12 miles in 6 hours the wind filled in and we were soon moving at 5 knots. Before long we were pushing 6 knots and we decided to roll in the jib. Adam dialed in the windvane and we enjoyed really nice sailing all day. That evening the seas got a bit choppier and I gladly climbed into the pilot berth for some sleep during Adam’s 7pm-12am watch.
(Kris got busy with other projects so Adam is finishing this entry.)
We had our best sail yet over the course of the next 28 hours. Our Cape Horn wind vane self-steering system easily steered us downwind, consuming not one amp of power and steering a far truer course than either of us could.
Kris woke me up at 6am as we approached Bahia San Quintin. I asked Kris if she didn’t mind pushing on as we were still getting 20+ knots of breeze from behind and had comfortable sea conditions. She reminded me that San Quintin was supposed to be very pretty and that we wanted to see grey whales calving in the estuary. Every year grey whales migrate down the coast of Baja and calve in various estuaries along the pacific. Magdelena Bay (600 miles south) is one of them and Bahia San Quintin is another. We reluctantly turned in and made our way into the bay.
While offshore we worked at perfecting our weather prediction tools. Without internet access in much of Baja, high frequency single side band radio becomes the only source for weather. Every day all day NOAA broadcasts fax signals depicting isobaric weather maps over a series of high frequency radio stations. We plug our small Kaito radio into our laptop microphone jack and receive the faxes using a piece of software. I am no weather man, I have a LOT to learn but I can read the sea state and the wind predictions and get a rough idea of what kind of weather we are going to have. Another source of weather for the Baja Cruiser is the schedule of high frequency radio ‘nets’ that occur throughout the day. A ham geek/sailor/meterologist by the name of Don Anderson graciously donates his skills several times each day to give a sailor oriented weather forecast for Baja and mainland Mexico.
We were finally able to tune in one of these weather broadcasts the evening before we arrived at San Quintin and heard a weather question asked by S.V. Sweetie with regards to the weather between Bahia San Quintin and Islas San Benitos. We were originally planning to buddy boat with Tony and Shannon aboard S.V Sweetie but we were delayed by our throttle cable mishap. I figured we wouldn’t catch up with them after being in Ensenada a further 2 days beyond our mutual departure date. So we were pleasantly surprised to hear that they were in Quintin.
When we approached the bahia we heard chatter on the VHF between S.V SailSoon and Sweetie. They were discussing whether today was a good day to leave San Quintin. I chimed in that we were just arriving and found out that Sweetie was leaving as the weather that had trapped us in Ensenada had kept them in San Quintin. They wanted to know what kind of conditions we were experiencing and I told them we were in manageable moderate NW winds with manageable seas. I mentioned we wanted to keep going but whales beckoned. They confirmed that at that very moment a 30’ grey whale surfaced 20’ from where they were anchored.
We regretted missing them but the forecast from Don indicated 30 knot winds over the next few days so we would probably wait it out in Quintin. We were getting very little reception from the SSB net but we were contacted several times during our stay by S.V. SailSoon, who relayed the weather forecast. They were on a 34’ coastal cruiser and were awaiting calm weather to depart for Turtle bay.
The wind really howled during our first night in San Quintin and we discovered that we had anchored too far from the headland. During our first approach we were a bit intimidated by the wind waves being kicked up in the bay and were having difficulty recognizing the exact place to anchor. Also, right through the middle of the anchorage there is a curved sandbar that has breaking surf crashing over it. Once you are acquainted with the area it is not a big deal but it does lie between the anchorage and the inner bay and when we were trying to sound out a good place to drop our hook we were shocked into early action when we saw massive tubular surf crashing ahead, it didn’t help that by the time we got inside the wind had built to over 25 knots and the tops of those tubes were being violently blown off.
Consequently, as the day progressed the wind built up 4 foot wind waves and we found ourselves pitching unpleasantly. Our bowsprit is 7’ above the water and it was regularly doused by the waves. On the bright side, I got to work out some fairlead issues with our anchor snubber that didn’t become evident until we were pitching to our anchor.
During that first night we got a call on the VHF around 8pm. A man with a thick Italian accent called us from the sailing vessel Sparovina, bound for Cabo. He informed us that he was traveling in company with his 14yr old son on a trip to Cabo aboard his Hans Christian 44 and that the seas were 20’ when they ducked into San Quintin.
He called us later to tell us that he was sorry the weather was so bad because his son caught a fish while they were out and they had sautéed it up with some shallots, mushrooms and white wine and would have us over if it wasn’t blowing so hard. We were charmed by his offer and amused to be offered extravagant Italian cuisine over the VHF in some desolate bay in Baja.
The next morning it was blowing a solid 25 knots and our chafe gear was failing. I was growing concerned that we would chafe through our snubber and then the windlass and roller would have to bear the brunt of these big waves so we decided to pull up the anchor and go see if we could make passage in the sea conditions outside the bahia. If we were unhappy we would just duck back in and drop our anchor over by Sparovina, anchored far closer to the headland than we had dared and pitching a lot less.
We started sailing downwind in 20 knots with just a scrap of jib out making an easy 6 knots. However it became increasingly difficult to steer the boat as the seas were building as we approached the mouth of the bay. When we were finally outside the break we were being heeled over on our ear by every other wave. The assessment that the seas were 20’ was a bit excessive but not much. In reality I think they were in the 14’ range but very close together and sloppy. Kris was feeling uncomfortable at this point and I went below to plot our position on the chart. As I was walking back from the vee berth with our log book in my right hand the boat suddenly pitched over and I found myself in desperate need of my right hand to grab the handrail. Unfortunately, with my right hand occupied, I came off my feet and landed in the saloon, breaking the curved part of our nice teak railing.
At this point I calculated that even at this speed we wouldn’t make our nearest suitable anchorage at Isla San Geronimo until after dark and the next point down the coast was Punta Baja and had inferior protection from the wind and seas. We decided to turn around. On our way back we saw Sparovina. Evidently our departure had motivated them to leave as well and they were eager to know why we were coming back and what the sea state was like. I told him it was uncomfortable so we were going to wait for comfort but that the conditions were manageable. He thanked me and said he was just going to go to Punta Baja for the night anyway so they would endure the discomfort.
We bucked the steep swell with its white caps being blown off and squeezed back into San Quintin. We ended up anchoring much closer to the point the 2nd time and even though the wind was 30 knots or more each day of our stay, we pitched very little. We spent the following 5 days listening to the weather nets daily, baking banana bread and playing Monopoly. This bay would henceforth be remembered by us as “Monopoly Bay”. We had provisioned well in Ensenada and so we ate like kings while we relaxed in the bay. I perfected the art of anti-chafe gear for the anchor snubber and we really had a nice time. Most importantly of all we were free of Ensenada’s death grip. We cannot overstate the psychological value of getting some more sea time. It was only 120 miles and one overnighter but it was the best sail we have had yet. A total of 2 hours under power and 26 hours sailing downwind in comfortable conditions wasn’t bad for our first real try.
On our fifth evening the cruiser’s net reported that the winds would be letting up for a few days. We decided that it was time to make our move South. The following morning we pulled up the anchor and made our way out of the Bahia. The seas were notably calmer and there was a nice 15 knot sailing breeze. We hoisted the sails and made an easy 5 knots. It was a beautiful sunny day, though chilly, and we greatly enjoyed watching the large numbers of sea birds and dolphins that were out and about. Kris said that it was “like sailing through a nature documentary,” and she speculated that the foul weather and seas had also kept the wildlife from going about their business.
