Even though it is considered bad luck to leave port on a Friday, and last time we left on a Friday we took a beating getting from San Quintin to Turtle Bay, we left an hour after Sweetie did at 6AM Friday morning.
With an estimated 36 hour passage time at 5 knots we would be pressed to make Cabo before sunset the following day. As Tony, my performance cruising motivator points out, at 6 knots or better it will be a piece of cake. Of course he has a much bigger, faster boat than I do and several decades more experience.
As we motored out of Bahia Magdelena we were surrounded by pangueros out for their early morning fishing. I was pleased to see that with proper tuning I could easily pick up every single little panga on the radar. Once we reached the mouth of the bay we altered our course to the south southwest. There was a small headland to clear and then we could turn east a bit and lay Cabo San Lucas on a rhumb line (in a straight line).
The wind was light at first so we motored, then it began to build so we played around with rigging a line to act as a barber hauler on the jib. We had been having a terrible time sailing on a deep reach down this coast, our jib would collapse or produce weather helm. Our main, in the typical 25 knots dead astern we experienced, had to be reefed so deeply that we couldn’t stay fast enough to keep ahead of the following seas leading to a rolly, uncomfortable ride. If I put up the whole main the weather helm would stress my poorly installed wind vane control lines and something would break.
As evening approached our wind built considerably as did the seas. We were still stubbornly trying to sail a rhumb line dead downwind to make our aggressive schedule and found the rolling unbearable. So we fired up the engine to get our speed up and ease the motion. Instantly our comfort increased significantly and we were able to happily set about the routines of passage making.
After a lovely dinner of Japanese bonito curry with rice we both settled in, me for the first watch and Kristina for sleep. My watch was totally uneventful apart from the parade of cruise ships heading north up the coast a few miles offshore from us. We conversed with Sweetie on occasion getting their position and the weather report. The gap between Estrella and Sweetie grew rapidly. I was envious of their well sorted sailing rig and excellent performance. Not to mention their beefy below decks mechanical autopilot.
After my watch ended around 2AM I woke Kristina and retired for what I hoped would be the next 4 hours or so. About an hour later Kristina woke me to report a strange rubbing noise coming from the engine room. I didn’t hear it but just as we were discussing whether or not there was a noise I heard a definite clunk and our speed began to drop significantly.
Sticking my head into the engine room and looking down at the shaft I saw something I had never seen before. My shaft appeared fine but upon closer inspection it was clear that the coupler attached to the transmission was spinning happily along and the shaft in the middle of that coupler was not moving an inch. I reached down and tried to move the shaft by hand but it wouldn’t budge. I could see now that it had clearly slipped most of the way out of the coupler and while I didn’t know what had caused the problem it was evident that I wouldn’t be able to repair it at sea. Fortunately the seas had died down quite a bit and there was enough wind to push us along at 3-4 knots.
At this point I should have been quite tired but having been shocked awake by yet another mechanical failure on passage I wasn’t really feeling it. Dawn was approaching and I was thinking of nothing but boat speed. Getting to Cabo before dark was now a more significant goal as we would have to anchor in Cabo under sail. There are no anchorages between Magdelena and Cabo. Once past Cabo one must sail upwind into the Sea of Cortez 40 miles to Los Frailes, the first anchorage on the inside.
As dawn approached I began preparing to hoist the spinnaker. The wind was only in the 6-8 knot range. We were moving along at 3-4 knots but I was not happy with the ETA that speed would produce. I called ahead and informed Sweetie that I would be under sail only and would likely lose communication with them as they pulled ahead of us. They informed me that they were seeing gusts to 22 knots on their wind meter and were roughly 4 miles ahead of us. With that information I decided to delay putting up the spinnaker.
The lesson I was relearning was that you have to sail the wind you have, not the wind you think you are going to get. After two hours of moving along at 3 knots and having no extra wind materialize we hoisted the spinnaker. Sweetie was reportedly getting gusts in the 20s as they approached the cape but I was still seeing 8 knots. I changed our course to be more easterly to bring our apparent wind forward and make the most of the light air we had. With our large chute up we were flying along at 6 knots steadily. Our ETA was beginning to look a lot better.
When we left Mag bay we calculated that at 5 knots we would make San Lucas at around 6PM. With this spinnaker up we were starting to estimate our arrival at 4PM. This was very encouraging but I remained cautiously optimistic. After a couple hours our wind was starting to build and we were making 7 knots consistently. Our ETA was looking better and better. Being ever the cautious optimist I worked out that if we could just keep moving at 7 knots for 2 hours we could then still make entry at daylight as long as our speed stayed above 3 knots.
We got a text message from Madeline asking about our position and I informed them that unless there was wind in the anchorage we would need a tow to get in. They said there was no wind whatsoever and indicated this was usually the case. I then became concerned that we wouldn’t make it around the cape and end up drifting. Still you sail the conditions you have and worry about problems when they actually happen. I didn’t waste much more energy being concerned about a becalming near the cape.
As is often the case with capes, the closer we got to the cape the more wind we got. I have never been so aggressive with a spinnaker in all my sailing days but I was on a mission. As we approached the cape we were now breaking our theoretical hull speed and blasting along at a consistent 7.9 knots. The biggest number I saw was 8.1 and I was astonished.
I was having a blast in the cockpit carefully monitoring our spinnaker aggression. Before the wind got up I was looking forward to turning around the cape and onto a tighter reach thus maximizing the power produced by the spinnaker. People in the anchorage were still reporting that it was dead calm but I was now worried about the turn.
We were really pushing the spinnaker hard. I could hear the rig creaking and the masthead spinnaker halyard block (pulley) was making a groaning noise whenever it moved around. As we headed more easterly around the cape the wind wrapped around and stayed right behind us. The spinnaker then fell to windward and blew open with a loud POP! I looked up to see if all the seams were intact and even though I could see daylight through the strained stitches, the spinnaker was still completely intact. After a second POP I decided our fantasy of sailing through the anchorage with our big beautiful spinnaker up was not to be.
Kris expertly blew the sheet as I pulled down our now beloved snuffer sock and while I balled up the spinnaker on the foredeck Kristina rolled out the jib and trimmed it in. At this point we decided to hand steer as we were very close and the conditions were a bit sporting.
Our jib is rather small at only about 90% of the fore triangle. It is easily ¼ of the surface area of our big spinnaker yet it alone was pulling us around the cape at over 6.5 knots. I never would have imagined being aggressive enough to carry a spinnaker through winds that would pull us at almost hull speed with just a small jib. But as a result of our aggressive sail handling we pulled into a surprisingly windy anchorage at 2PM. Nobody was more shocked than we were to have made such good time. We were met by a fleet of dinghies, Madeline, Petra and Sweetie all came to give us advice on where to anchor and offer assistance if needed.
We couldn’t have been happier with the conditions the wind was a steady 10-12 knots out of the NW and we had a large (if a bit crowded) anchorage to tack through at our leisure. After scoping out the various areas and tacking around the anchored fleet I decided I preferred to get away from the crowd and anchor where there was no boat downwind of me.
We came around close to the leeward side of the furthest boat in the anchorage and rounded up dropping our anchor in front of the La Estancia Resort. I pushed our main boom out while Kristina steered and we sailed backwards onto our anchor. As has been the case our 66lb Rocna set instantly and we were boarded by our generous support group.
We have been in Cabo for the last 4 weeks working on the engine and relaxing. We are now finally below the Tropic of Cancer so we are finally no longer cold. Our plan had been to be in Central America by now but we decided that we would rather take our time and see the Sea of Cortez. If we tried for Guatemala we would have to get there before May 15th to avoid hurricane season. This would require we keep a brisk pace down the mainland and miss much of the famed Mexican Riviera.
We are not in a race and our current pace has been dictated to us by mechanical failures, bad weather and general mood so it would be foolish to continue south this season.
I apologize to those of you who emailed asking what was up with the website updates ending. We have been kind of busy here and what leisure time we have taken hasn’t been wisely spent updating the website or improving Estrella. Hopefully we’ll remedy that before long.
I will endeavor to bore you all with my detailed Cabo report tomorrow if time allows.
