Day 3
This morning the ride was even better! There was no wind chop at all and the swells were small and widely spaced, making the hobby horsing was definitely less severe. The water looks silky from the lack of waves. But more importantly, with the better sea conditions, Trevor finally snapped out of his sea sickness completely. He was lively and full of energy all day. What a relief!
When we checked the weather forecast this morning, it said Continue reading
Day 1
Eric and Christi woke up this morning at 0100, having gotten only 3.5 hours of sleep. We immediately went to work getting the boat ready to go. We decided to let Trevor sleep for a little longer, but we got him up an hour later and had him help us.
We mentioned in yesterday’s post that the wind completely died in the evening. The forecast said the calm would last a couple of days. We were taking advantage of this opportunity to make a 36 hour run up the coast to the next suitable anchorage, Magdalenda Bay. We were all feeling pretty grim as we prepared the boat for sea. We have been dreading this last leg for so long, and now it was finally time to face the nightmare.
We pulled up anchor at 0300. The moon was half full and provided decent visibility. There was zero wind as we pulled out of the bay and headed towards the notoriously evil Cabo Falso, the very tip of Baja California. Cabo Falso is a notorious wind tunnel where the wind blows much, much stronger than anywhere else on the run. Many boats get stuck there for days and even weeks because the wind there is often just too strong to make rounding the peninsula possible.
As promised, as we began to round the peninsula, the wind instantly jumped Continue reading
Day 2
In the wee hours of the morning we got to the Sea of Cortes, the body of water that separates Baja from mainland Mexico. We expected the seas to pick up, but they didn’t at first. All was status quo with the ride until about sunrise. Then the wind and waves slowly but surely picked up all day long. The pick up was so gradual that it was truly a nice ride for the better part of the day. The sun was bright and visibility was good. The wind was on our nose and so were the waves, but the waves small and the swells were gentle and lazy and were far enough apart that it was still reasonably comfortable.
Of course, by dark it had picked up enough that we were hobby horsing a lot, but it still wasn’t too bad of a ride overall. By 2200, though, it had picked up enough that it finally made it to the “no fun” category. The moon didn’t rise until midnight and it was dark out with poor visibility.
We have continued to make excellent time, so in the early afternoon we again upped the RPM’s by another 50 RPM. According to our calculations, we were on course to arrive just after sunset, and we needed just a little more speed to get us there while it was still light. We are crossing our fingers we continue with such good speeds.
Day 3
The wind and seas continued to Continue reading
Christi was up before dawn yesterday. Don’t be too impressed”¦ the sun doesn’t rise until 0800 here. The pre-dawn silence was suddenly shattered by two people talking. One, who sounded like an adolescent boy with a changing voice, said “I like that boat Kosmos”. The other, a deeper adult male voice, said “Yours is much safer than that one. See the poles there? Those are stabilizers. That boat is so unstable that if you don’t put the poles down, then the boat could flip over.” Christi opened the back door to Continue reading
Day 2
The slow speeds continued all night. Eric was starting to worry that we were dragging a fishing net, but the current eventually changed and we sped up. Eric heard the Pilipino monkey boy on the radio in the early morning before dawn. He was shocked. What is that guy doing here? Eric suspects it is an imposter.
Like yesterday, the day was sunny with just a little bit of haze and perfect temperatures. There was still no real wind or wind chop, but the swells were just as bad. At 1030, we rolled up 5,000 hours on the engine. That is 208 full 24 hour days! Wow. We really have spent a lot of time at sea, haven’t we? After 5,000 hours in every kind of condition imaginable, we can accurately say Continue reading