We noted a light southerly had filled in for the two days that we spent in Los Frailes. It died every night after sunset but we thought maybe we could take advantage of it to go north to Muertos. We had exhausted all of our towing options and if need be we could use the 3hp outboard for 26 hours to get us there. This would of course require 52 trips into the dinghy to pour gas into the tiny gas tank.
We used the little outboard to push us out past the lee shore of the cape and into open water. We had just cleared the cape when Kristina noticed the dinghy was actually falling slack with our just our jib rolled out. I killed the outboard immediately and hoisted the main. Soon we were clipping along happily at 3 knots. Kris was eager to take advantage of this freshening breeze so she ran to the foredeck and rigged the spinnaker launch tube. In a few minutes we were blasting along at over 5 knots. Previously 3 knots felt like a rocket ship at 5 knots we might as well have been riding a speeding bullet, or superman or something that fast. Over the next 6 hours we covered half the distance to Muertos. We were becoming giddy at the prospect of making a passage that didn’t require an overnighter of drifting when the sun began to set and the wind died with it.
During the night light southerlies became nothing. On Kristina’s watch the wind had totally left her. I was thrilled when I woke up for my second watch to see that she had managed to move Estrella 6 miles over the course of her 4 hour shift. Our bar for speed under sail had been significantly lowered by our 3 day passage to Los Frailes.
The biggest downside to moving Estrella along at speeds under 1 knot was the need to hand steer. Our windvane needs some adjusting to make it turn our difficult rudder and when there isn’t much water flowing over the oar it is totally incapable of turning Estrella. So in order to keep her bow pointed the correct direction when drifting one has to sit in the cockpit steering by hand.
There were only two contacts throughout the night on our passage. Both of them were sailboats moving south and both of them called us to ask us how our passage had been thus far and to ask if they should expect any weather. I informed them both that if we had experienced any weather we would already be in Muertos and they wished us well on our drift.
On my watch there was absolutely no wind whatsoever. The night sky was being reflected off of the flat smooth surface of the sea. I was pleasantly surprised to see that we had a 1 knot favorable current pushing Estrella north. We had gotten a 5 mile offing in preparation for drifting through the night, as is our custom now that we have no engine. Consequently, we had no worries of lee shores or rocks. There wasn’t much for me to do and I had to charge the batteries so I fired up the engine to charge the house back and settled in for a movie on my watch. Over the course of my 4 hour watch we got no wind whatsoever and still managed to move 4 miles due north, thank god for a fair current.
Shortly after sunrise the wind started to fill in from the south. We were able to sail along at 2.5 knots and being only 15 miles out of Muertos we felt confident we would make it before dark. The closer to Muertos we got the more the wind filled in. By the time we could see the anchorage we had 15-20 knots pushing us in from the south.
Wind is great for passage making but not great for anchorages. This wind made the anchorage a potentially dangerous lee shore. We had initially planned to anchor near the beach but I allowed the wind to change our plan. We anchored Estrella just inside the bight at Muertos and well away from the beach. This way if anything went wrong with the anchor or anything else we would have some room to get away from the beach before the wind blew us ashore.
We got the anchor down and it set instantly and violently. We had no doubt that our anchor had bitten and was well set. I let off sufficient chain and attached our snubber. On the way in we had been hailed by S.V. Scrimshaw and they applauded our “fortitude” for making it that far without an engine and informed us that Kia Kaha had told them to expect us.
Scrimshaw was evidently broken down as well. Their fuel pump had burned up and they were waiting for a replacement to be driven down to this remote anchorage by their saintly British diesel mechanic who was driving to and from La Paz to service them.
As the wind built out of the south the exposed anchorage at Muertos started to suffer a horrible roll. We pitched violently every direction.
We went ashore shortly thereafter to enjoy lunch at the giggling Marlin with the crew of the Scrimshaw. They said they would give us a tow to La Paz but they were headed to cross the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlan. We appreciated the thought and wished them well after a lovely (if a bit pricey) meal.
We found out shortly thereafter that the “bus” to La Paz doesn’t actually exist. There is a guy who works at the Giggling Marlin named Teddy who drives to La Paz almost daily and will take us with him if we ask. We spoke to him about taking us to La Paz that day to speak with Immigration about our visa. He told us it would be pointless because on Sunday the immigration office is closed. He could take us in the morning to La Paz where we could plead our case and try to get the wheels moving on our FM3 resident visas.
The next morning we went ashore with our paperwork and were pleasantly surprised to hear that Teddy just wanted help with gas and wasn’t going to charge us an arm and a leg to drive us the hour to La Paz. He just wanted gas money, which we were happy to provide.
The ride to La Paz was quite pleasant. Teddy, I found out, was from Acapulco like so many other people in the tourist trade we had met in Baja. He informed me that 70% of all the workers in the tourism business in Baja are from Acapulco. They have had big tourism in Acapulco for many years and it is now a big Mexican tourist spot so there isn’t as much money to be had there as there is in Baja where all the gringos come. Also the local people in Baja don’t like to work in the service industry because they are mostly rural farmers and fishermen. Consequently they don’t like to serve people and don’t really have the skills to pull it off if they wanted to. So the money attracts Mexicans from the Acapulco region in droves. Evidently Teddy’s whole family moved to the Los Cabos area and so apart from one distant relative all of his family is still nearby in Baja so he doesn’t go to Acapulco much these days.
Getting random rides with Mexicans in Baja is a more commonplace thing than I had expected it to be. In the US hitching rides with random people is considered very dangerous and we are raised to steer clear of such situations but here it is a common form of transportation. In fact as we were driving to La Paz Teddy informed us that he didn’t know when he would be coming back so he wanted us to know how to get ourselves back to the Bahia. Muertos is in the middle of nowhere so we would have to catch the last and only bus from La Paz to a nearby pueblo called Los Planes. There we would get off the bus near the municipal building where we would begin asking for a ride from people around there to the Bahia.
In the highly unlikely event that we didn’t find a ride we were to go to the policia in the municipal building and ask them to drive us. Teddy was positive that one of those methods would result in a ride. In the highly unlikely event all of that failed we had his cell number so we could call him and he would drive to los planes and pick us up.
Upon arrival in La Paz we immediately hit the Immigration office where we were given reams of paperwork to fill out and requirements to fill. In retrospect it wasn’t that bad but since they are only open from 9AM till 1PM and we arrived at 9:30 it was evident we wouldn’t be able to meet our requirements before closing time.
Once we had our papers to sort out we called Jamie and Eileen on Flying Cloud on the VHF and they directed us to the internet café where they would meet us shortly. It didn’t take us long to find the café and when we got upstairs we saw KC from Boreas was working using Skype. Before long the crews of Flying Cloud, Sanctuary, Boreas, and Festima Lente were in the internet café asking us how our slow slog had been going.
We had our pick of offers from boats to sleep aboard, and it was looking like we would need to stay the night. Before we left the internet café we had an offer of a powerful outboard and a ride back to Muertos as well as all the offers of places to stay. The cruisers here are really great people and I am lucky to have their help.
We have been very averse to accepting help from others until this point but we finally caved and decided we have had enough of rigid self-sufficiency. We are going to spend a good amount of time trying to work off the karmic debt we accumulated in La Paz in one day.
Anyway, later that day we went to see a friend of KC’s named Milton at the Casa Buena B&B. We were told to go ask him about help with our FM3 requirements and paperwork. We had considered trying to hire an agent but threw that idea out the window when we found out that the agent cost $100/person. We caught Milton just as he was loading his truck with people heading to Todos Santos, on the Pacific side of Baja to play on the beach. He let us use his phone and told us where we could get passport photos taken (the FM3 visa requires each party provide 6 black and white passport sized photos 3 front and 3 profile) and he was really helpful, welcoming and friendly. He apologized for not being much help even though he was a tremendous help in the short time we were there. He even showed us a room we could take in his absence later that night, showed us where the key would be, and said “pay in the morning, no big deal”.
We needed to use his phone because we hadn’t propped open the door to the head so the cat couldn’t get at her litter box. We left a message for Scrimshaw and they gladly propped open our head door so the cat could use the cat box.
That night we went to dinner at a wonderful seafood restaurant with the crew of Flying Cloud and they welcomed us into their cabin for the night. The following day we finished our immigration paperwork, submitted it and left in the early afternoon with our ride in a Honda civic packed with 4 people, 12 gallons of gasoline, a 9.9 horsepower outboard and an 8’ roll up inflatable dinghy.
We arrived in Muertos an hour later and assembled the dink. We took Leina Ala to lunch for the ride and they went back to La Paz before sunset while we began getting things sorted out to leave the next day.
The following day we strapped the dinghy to the side of Estrella and set off on the tide in the morning for the 60 mile voyage to La Paz.
We timed the tides so we would have a nice push through the infamous Cerralvo passage and figured we would eat some tide in the narrower but shorter San Lorenzo channel. The powerful outboard aided by the fair tide pushed Estrella at a speed of over 6 knots for several hours. When we hit the San Lorenzo channel our speed dropped to 3.5 but we were thrilled to be making such way in a foul tide. Once we came out of San Lorenzo we still had no wind at all and the current subsided leaving us chugging along at 4 knots.
It was becoming evident that we were going to run out of gas. Our consumption was about double what we thought it would be and when we saw a large aluminum hulled sailboat motoring past us we hailed them so see if we could buy some gasoline from them. They came right alongside and gave us everything they had. They flatly refused payment and offered to tow us into La Paz.
I appreciated the offer but the sun was setting and their destination was a marina 4 miles north of La Paz so I didn’t want them to go 8 miles out of their way to tow us in. Besides with this flat calm and tidal push coming we would easily cover the last 6 miles in the next hour and a half at most.
Well, once we hit the beginning of the 4 mile long 100’ wide entrance channel to La Paz a stiff corumuel started building. Corumuels are a local effect southerly wind that kicks up every day, usually around 4pm and blow 15-20 knots through the night and into the following morning subsiding around 11AM.
Thinking we were only a mile or so outside of La Paz we called Flying Cloud and Festima Lente to come tow us the last mile in. soon we realized that we were still 4 miles outside of La Paz and that would take them a long time to cover and was way to long to expect them to come. Kristina was eager to get in but I deemed the channel impassable in the conditions and decided we would anchor in the channel for the night.
We fell off and blasted downwind at 5 knots. I peeled off sail area to slow us down to 2 knots and wee found a spot with 15’ of water just outside of the number 3 and 4 marker buoys. We sailed downwind as I dropped our anchor and let out 100’ of chain. When I locked down the chain gypsy the chain went instantly taut and Estrella spun 180 degrees. Confident that the anchor was now well and truly set I let out 30’ of snubber and began making dinner.
We feasted on Kristina’s special request of hearty home fries with caramelized onions and went to bed as the wind built through the night.
The following morning I worked on fixing a little problem that had arisen with the dinghy and set off for Marina Costa Baja to give Northern Dream (the aluminum boat) back their gas can and to fill up our gas tank just to be sure we would make it in if the wind eased up.
Vince from Northern Dream was really friendly and I found it hard to leave him as he had many interesting stories to tell and was more than happy to share his hospitality. It became easier to leave however when as I was chatting with Vince the wind died completely. The wind chop disappeared and the channel turned to glass. I planed back to Estrella as fast as I could and strapped the dinghy alongside while Kris started cranking up chain. We took shifts taking in the chain to get it in faster so we would be able to leave during the fair tide and flat calm.
We snuck into the anchorage at La Paz in the early afternoon calm and repeated our new favorite method of setting the anchor by driving over it and letting it spin the boat 180 degrees and were met by Jamie from Flying Cloud who took pictures of us and made a little video of our anchoring in La Paz.
Arriving in La Paz felt like a dream come true. We worked so hard to get those 150 miles from Cabo San Lucas to La Paz it sometimes felt like we would never make it. La Paz started to seem like the impossible dream. Even though I cant say we made it on our own with out help from others I remain proud of our achievement and we as a crew are moved at the way these cruisers came together on our behalf when one could easily argue that we weren’t in dire need of help. They came together to save us from our discomfort and we owe them big-time for the efforts. Getting from Cabo San Lucas to La Paz will, without a doubt, be the most indelible memory of our trip so far.
