Sailing to Mexico

 

I've made it to Puerto Vallarta!  The trip was pretty difficult at times, but also very rewarding.  The boat is very fast (when there is wind) and the autopilot is very very good, so that makes it very easy to sail, provided you don't have to do a lot of sail changes.  The first day, my friend Teague arrived and we got food and fuel and water and everything we figured we needed, then headed out to Catalina Island.

  We arrived after sunset, so he got his first sunset at sea (that's him on the bow).  We blasted along at 10 kts for some of the trip, but then anchored for the night.  The next morning we got up and scrubbed the bottom of the boat (since the water was clean) and then went over to Avalon to get him some sunglasses, and headed off at around 3 pm.  The winds were nice until about midnight, and that was when we crossed the mexican border, but there was a lot of Navy activity and some NOAA bouys around (make me nervous) so I didn't get much sleep that night.  Being around traffic is tough for me.  

The next day we caught a tuna!  It was an Albacore tuna (you can tell by the super long pectoral fins and the big eye) and it was pretty delicious.  We froze a lot of it and ate it over the next several days.

It took us two nights to get to Punta Baja, where we anchored and spent a night.  During the night I played around with my camera a bit and did some longer exposures...

From Punta Baja we sailed on south, but the wind was pretty light and I had discovered that we burned a lot more fuel motoring that I had figured, (and our tanks were getting low) so we did a short hop to Punta San Carlos, where I had been before with the truck and surfed.  The waves were big out at sea and didn't disappoint, I had an evening and morning of great surf (head high) at that point.  After leaving in the morning we tried hard to make it to Islas San Benitos, but didn't arrive until 1 am, and the charts are pretty sparse around there, so coming in at night was challenging.  The next day, the wind finally arrived, but from the south.  So we sailed upwind (but only on one tack, we could just barely point at the place we were trying to go), and found some Gray Whales...

And then we got into Bahia Tortuga.  That is about halfway down Baja, and we stayed two extra days waiting for the wind to die down.  There was a pretty big storm that made the wind blow from the south up to about 30 kts (that we measured on the anemometer) with some gusts above that.  Strong enough to make nasty waves that we were able to hide out from.  While we waited, we saw some Brants!

They were hiding as well.  Then we went over to town and got some fuel (which is a task, going ashore through the break, then walking up to the gas station, then lugging the jugs back, then doing it again)  On the second return to the boat my phone jumped out of my pocket into the surf, and tried to burrow into the sand.  I fished it out and got it working again for a little bit, but it died a day later.  I believe the cause of death was corrosion by drowning.  So I switched the sim card to my old mexican phone, and it is working, sort of, but much harder to use.  The list of things to fix grows!  From there, we sailed to Bahia Ascencion, and raced two other sailboats who were leaving at the same time.  It was a close race when there wasn't any wind and we were motoring, but at 1 pm, the wind came up and we began to roll along at 8 kts, and that was that.  In between Bahia Tortuga and Ascencion, there is a line where the kelp stops growing at, and that marks the end of the "California" waters.  It began to grow warmer, and there was different fish.  Also the area south of the Tortuga is more sheltered from the NW swell, so it feels great. 
We also saw some little murrelets, which I couldn't identify exactly.  

And we saw our last Albatross.  A Laysan Albatross!  

From Ascencion we were going to continue sailing along the coast and point hopping, but the wind was great and so we just went for it, doing an overnight to Bahia Maria (near Bahia Magdelena).

  We spent one day in Bahia Maria, and hiked up the hill overlooking the point.  I've done this hike a few times before, and its great.  I surfed a bit and then came back for a nap in the afternoon, and then we left in the evening, because the wind was forecast to be good for only a few more days.  

But the wind was really good.  We took off into the darkness doing 9-10 kts, and it felt really good.  The wind began to shift a little around midnight, and the next dawn we found ourselves even with Cabo san Lucas and about 150 miles west.  (The boat doesn't like to go directly downwind)  So we jibed and headed for Isla Isabel.  From that point we had about 350 miles to go to Isabel, and we covered that distance in two days.  A midnight to Midnight run of 198 miles during one of those.  

It was dawn when we arrived, and the birds were swarming over a school of fish.  Crossing the Sea of Cortes was pretty rough for us, so we were glad to get in and sleep. 

But also to explore!  We went ashore and searched out some birds.  This is my favorite island around here and we walked under the trees with Frigatebirds all over clacking and croaking and flapping.  It really makes you feel like you've gone back in time.

Of course we spent some time looking at the Blue-Footed Boobies, and they were dancing a little bit.

I got some shots of a frigate from close up

The feathers are a bit worn down on this guy.

But his eye is very bright.

Also the Brown Boobies were nesting too.

From there we did a single day hop to Punta Mita and have had a few nights of sleep and some surf.  It feels good to be here.  Like being home.

I've discovered some problems, however.  The main battery bank is not working very well.  I have the solar panels charging all day long and then its dead at night.  So I think I need to replace the batteries.  Also the Mainsail is falling apart every time I use it.  But at anchor she feels great, and the dinghy davit system is awesome.  So I'm pretty darn happy with the boat so far.