Author: sailawaysarantium

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The 130 Bajahaha boats needed to check in with the Mexican customs on their arrival, but upon they got here the special machine (scanner of some sort) broke down so the Mexicans decided to collect everyone’s passports. There are 130 boats with a minimum of 3 crew members on each boat. Many boats have 5 crew members… you can do the math on that one……As of yesterday, at the party, they didn’t have the passports back. But late last night they were all distributed back to the appropriate boats so they could all pull anchor this morning. And they sure did! Bay is empty again! They are all off to Cabo san Luca. See you in la Paz perhaps!

The Wind is light for the next 24 hours so we decided to sail into Magdalena Bay, which is 20 nmiles from Bahia Santa Maria, today, and check out a new anchorage.

And I met a bunch of Sweeeedes! A man was sporting his boat’s T-shirt, like so many others. And it had Aquavit written on it, under his boat print. I thought, “hmmm, chances are high there will be a Swede in that crowd”. I went over and said “you need to be a Swede to be naming your boat Aquavit”. He immediately started speaking fluent Swedish with a bit of an accent. Story goes… he was an exchange student in Lund, Katedral skolan and met his wife there…. hmmmmm this is too funny. For those who know my story know how incredibly similar (identical) this story is to mine. Turns out his wife grew up in the same area as me and they now visit Skateholm regularly, which is very close to where my parents have their summer house and I spent many days during my childhood. He proceeds to tell me that there is another boat here that consists of two families who are Swedes from Stockholm. One of the families now live in Seattle. Of course, I find them! And I got to speak Swedish for the evening! This stop at Bahia Santa Maria was a fun one.

Pictures say it all….

I woke up early as always, stuck my head out the companion way and counted about 100 sailboats.. some still floating in after a night of sailing. Am I back in San Diego?

We could have left Bahia Santa Maria, but we choose to stay and enjoy a day of swimming and snorkeling, and of course catching up on sleep. They say you can’t, but I sure felt I did. As soon as we anchored, I crawled into bed and slept solidly for three hours. Caught up!

After my three hour nap, I jumped in the water and swam over to Oatmeal Savage, a 45 foot ketch and Inscrutables, a Bedford 45 (Junk rig) our Canadian friends, to have a chat. Everyone was in the water floating around. Heather and Matt from Inscrutables invited us for happy hour that evening. The rest of the day, we just hung out, watching boats come an leave, made banana bread, roasted veggies and Amber used the rest of our Bonito (fish we caught) and made fish salad. In the evening, we packed the banana bread and headed over to visit with our Canadian friends, the Inscrutables and the Oatmeal family, Francis and Matt with their two teenage children, who are eager for other family boats to arrive, where the teenagers can hang with their peeps.

That night I slept almost 12 hours and felt like a new person waking up. I jumped in the water while coffee was brewing. These early morning dips are lovely as people are still sleeping in their boats and it’s dead calm. It’s just me and the Pelicans. I’m so happy I have a swimgrit on my boat with a ladder, as it makes for a quick in and out, and no bathingsuite is required.

BAJAHAHA drizzling in….During the day, a sail boat every half an hour floated in… BAJAHAHA left San Diego on November 4th, and they do two stops, Turtle bay for two nights and Mag Bay for two or three nights depending on fast or slow they are. There is a party in each bay! And then a final one in Cabo san Luca, where they linger for a bit before heading to La Paz. Since they stay in Cabo San Luca for a bit, we decided we were in less of a rush getting there before they do and besides, a party is brewing. The bay filled up throughout the day and lights littered the bay by the time we went to bed. No more morning skinny dipping …

The rest of the day consisted of us taking the dinghy to a nearby reef for some snorkeling. We saw Garibaldies, Angel fish, and some other fish I don’t know the name of, as I can’t find my fish identification book. I also went for a bit of a swim which may be the first bit of real exercise I’ve had since I left Nanaimo.

In the afternoon I dinghied over to the Inscrutables to borrow a crimping tool so I can start renovating my battery set up. The crimping tool I borrowed is the kind you use a solid hammer to pound the cable and connector (not sure of proper name). I had the appropriate cable cutters, a skookum hammer, and all the ‘fixings”. What I DID NOT have is confidence in what I was doing. So I asked for some help. Matt from Oatmeal Savage came over with a tool to cut and peel off the shell from the cable, a nifty tool I need to buy. We measured, twice, the cables that will connect the three batteries to make a bank, and cut. We cut two sets and crimped the cables. Matt brought back the cables to their boat to heat shrink with his heat gun as I do not have an inverter to run such amp hungry device. Remember, it fried, as salt water got in on our passage from Port Renfrew. So the first step in getting a better battery set up is complete. I will continue once in la Paz, when I don’t rely on my batteries so heavily. I’m really excited to have this completed…

Amber had baked delicious flatbread in the afternoon to go with the remainder of our Bonito salad for dinner. In the evening I made Tosca Pear dessert and tea. As we ate dessert, sipped tea and read our books, the bay filled up with BAJAHAHA boats. Goodnight!

One, that’s about gentle winds, sailing by islands, seeing albatrosses, whales breaching, hanging out on turquoise beaches, connecting with other cruisers, waking up early to the gentle waves hitting the hull, sipping coffee and watching the dolphins swim by and bathing in warm salty water early in the morning.

Then there is the long night passages…. dark and windy, staring at a screen reading the wind, reefing and gybing in the dark, fighting to stay awake, wondering why, but then the sun appears and all is good!

… the wind picked up and grew and grew and grew…

This sail began at a beautiful 12-15 knots of wind. I was thinking how this 2 nighter looked promising for the wind vane to take us to Magdalena bay. This was not the case, and it may have been the worst small storms yet. Wind was forecasted a North/North West wind but in reality we were hit by an Easterly wind which over the night increased to 35 knots. What made it worse was that the waves were 8-10ft and hitting us broadside every 6-7 seconds. We were beating into the wind at 30-33 with gusts of 35knots. We had two waves hitting us so hard the cockpit had a foot of water in it. All I could think about was the avacodo pit that I had cleaned up earlier from the floor grate. If I hadn’t, this could have plugged one of the drain holes. But the floors were clean and drains free, so the water emptied in no time. BUT I was drenched as water poured into my foul weather suit, through my sleeves. At one point I was looking for anchorages close to us or turning the boat around to go back to Asoncion. We would have blewn back in no time. But instead we decided to just go off the wind on a beam reach and letting Sarantium surf the waves. With half the main sail and the small staysail up we we were still moving at 4 knots. This kind of sailing makes you extremely fatigued quickly. Although the hydrovane works beautifully, these types of conditions are not ideal for the vane. In my experience, it wanders too much, and since Sarantium needed to go down and surf the waves, not hitting them sideways, it was crucial to keep a precise heading. We tried to have a sleeping schedule, however the main sail needed to be reefed a few times, and it’s a lot easier with two people. The wind was starting to ease off around 0400, and we could relax and grab some food. Around 0600 we had raised the mainsail again to full. We had decent wind in the morning, but wind slowly died and around noon we were motoring for an hour until the winds picked up again, but not to what it had the night before. We had a very pleasant sail keeping around 4-6 knots through the eve and throughout the night. We arrived at the entrance for Magdalena Bay at sunrise and was able to sail right in, sunrise on starboard and mountains and Mexican fishermen on port side. We anchored beside a Vancouver couple in a junk rig that we have met a few times along the way, and soon after, Oatmeal Savage, Family from Powell River, pulled in and anchored beside us. It’s bed time…

The wind picked up in the early morning and it was hard to hold back and not pull anchor. The problem was that if we left too early from Asoncion, we could potentially arrive in the middle of the night in Santa Maria Bay or Magdalena Bay 30 hours later. Arriving in the dark is not fun. As much as we have radar, crab traps, oyster cages, buoys, and small boats are always a concern. It’s hard to distinguish seals and sealions from other items in the water. We calculated that if we left around 1700 and sailed at 5knots on average, we would arrive at sunrise, so we waited, listening to the wind howl. In fact, the wind was so strong that I decided to attach another snubber on the chain to eliviate the strain on the windlass. I believe it was gusting 26 knots at our anchorage. At around 1400, we couldn’t wait any longer and decided to sail off, but keeping only main sail and staysail (smaller headsail) up and not go too fast ensuring arrival in daylight.

Our neighbours (Outmeal Savage) from Powell River decided to wait a few more hours and go to shore one more time. We waved goodbye.

Another reason, I’m feeling antsie to go is the BAJAHAHA Rally are on our tails. They consist of 120 plus sailboats that left from SAN Diego, on Nov 4th. These boats are sailing to Cabo San Luca as a giant “party-flotilla”. Many of them go on to La Paz and will need anchorage. Needless to say, I’m hoping to get there first.

So, we pulled anchor at 1400 and sailed within minutes, at a pleasant beam-reach at 5.5 knots. Big smiles, warm winds, low waves and blue sky as far as one could see.

Getting ready to go! Either Magdelena Bay or we will keep going to Cabo san Luca or La Paz! I’ll be offline for a few days!