HOLIDAY GREETINGS FROM MEXICO!! (3600 nautical miles since June)

With not a small amount of cajoling, Sally convinced Geoff that it would be “fun” to participate in the “Baja-Haha” -- a sailboat rally leaving San Diego in late October and ending in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico in early November. We invited our friend John Mills from Bainbridge Island to join us. The jury is still out as to whether the “Haha” was a good idea or not.

Imagine 150+ sailboats of various sizes from 26 feet to 72 feet long. All leaving San Diego at the same time, and going to the same place. That’s the Ha Ha, complete madness. The wind picked up just at the start. It has been a very long time since we have raced a sailboat. It was interesting to see how quickly the competitive spirit sparked in Sally & Geoff and the adrenaline started to flow. We flew over the line, set the spinnaker and raced away across the US Mexican border. Spectator boats included the US aircraft carrier “Ronald Reagan”. It was certainly an event.

We arrived at Turtle Bay on the Baja peninsula right after sunset three days later. It was a virtual planetarium of anchor lights. In the morning, we hailed a local pangero (water taxi of a sort – really a local fishing skiff) and got a ride to shore. As our first landfall in Mexico, we were surprised at just how welcome we were and how charming and talkative the locals were. Turtle Bay is an incredibly dusty town. We visited the local elementary school with another family and had a wonderful time being shown the kids’ “Day of the Dead” altar creations. After that, we just walked around, went into the local store to buy some veggies and, yes, more cookies for Geoff. Sally had a wonderful time using her Spanish, which has been hiding in the corners of her brain for far too long. (Geoff says that Sally’s Spanish can charm anyone into anything). In one small store we befriended the local gym teacher and we had a friendly chat. Despite having garbage, dust and sewage in great supply, the town also sported a cell tower, a “Lucha Libre” stadium (think “Nacho Libre”) and even a few very gregarious and loquacious transgender types. Being able to communicate fully with everyone in Spanish made the visit so much fun. When we left the town dock, the gym teacher and his family came to say “goodbye”.

Visiting Mexico without a visa: How odd that you can sail from one country to another, and just land in a village or two, spend several days there, on land, and never have to pass through immigration or customs, show a visa or anything, and have it all be completely legal. Compare this to how difficult the US makes it for Mexicans to travel to the US. We could not have been made to feel more welcome in Turtle Bay – it was a very friendly place to stop. (Nb: Turtle Bay is not a “port of entry” to Mexico, so it is not necessary to have tourist visas until reaching a large enough port – in our case, Cabo).

Sailing through the nights along the Pacific Coast of Baja California was spectacular. There were so many stars at night – and they all were mixing with navigation lights of other boats. Never, ever, have we seen more stars at night than these last nights. Orion (usually the easiest constellation to find) was hard to pick out of the night sky because he had so many sparkly lights around and within him. The Milky Way is very clearly visible. The moonrise was not until 2:30 am one night. Far on the eastern horizon, all of a sudden there is a luminous orange “smile” sliding up the sky. From far away, at night, you can see the mast lights of some of the other boats. The ones that are really far away mix with the blaze of stars overhead and surrounding you, so that you feel as if the sailors and the night sky are really one.

Scatter theory: How is it that you can start 150+ sailboats on a relatively small starting line and then voyage for days with only seeing one or two? What would scientists say about the “scatter” theory? Frankly, in the wee hours of the night, we are just as happy NOT to see too many other mast lights nearby.

Fishing and OVER fishing: On the Ha-Ha radio net every morning sailors regaled everyone with fish stories. At first it sounded wonderful, then we began to wonder; how many tuna, bonito, mahi mahi they had caught in the previous day? These are sailors in a sailboat rally, not commercial fisherman. After hearing about one sailboat whose crew caught 8 yellow-tail tuna, 3 bonito AND a mahi mahi in one day, we began to lose our appetite for fish. You can’t help but wonder why people insist on catching more than they can possibly eat or store on board in any given day. What a waste. Living on a sailboat has made us much more vigilant in all ways about what we use and what is waste. We are parsimonious with power on board, turning on the SSB only twice a day for weather and brief “sail mail” exchanges with immediate family. When at anchor, we are diurnal, waking with the first light and going to sleep when it disappears. (In December, this has meant that we are sometimes in bed by 7pm!) Only occasionally do we give ourselves a real treat and fire up the laptop to watch one of our DVDs or a treasured episode of Star Trek.

Radio net: The Radio nets (on VHF) in the main harbors Mexico are something else. There is a whole community of Americans who either live in Mexico on their boats or are “commuter cruisers” – flying back and forth from another home in the US. On these VHF radio nets you can get weather and tide information, insight into local marine businesses, tips on grocery shopping, charity events, mail, and even sell any extra gear you might not need for “coconuts” instead of money. We have heard countless situations where cruisers lent a hand to someone whose health/motor/alternator/steering gear/sails/halyards/radio/fridge/dinghy had problems. This electronic community is reminiscent of the role the Tokyo American Club first played for us when we were living in Japan. It is quite a contrast – normally solitary types like sailors, bonding together in such a way.

We stopped for a couple of nights in Bahia Santa Maria. It was a nice spot to rest after a few days of non-stop sailing. We took the dinghy out to try to go ashore but the surf was just too great. We ended up taking a local water taxi and even that was a hair-raising adventure. There was lots of spectacular scenery on land. We were smart and got back to Grace about an hour before sunset, thereby avoiding being stranded on shore as others were. Leaving Bahia Santa Maria, we had the most spectacular sail ever. The winds were 20 knots from the NW; we were broad-reaching and running wing-and-wing on our way to the tip of the Baja Peninsula; Cabo San Lucas. This was the real deal with the power of the wind just driving us beautifully.

Despite the lovely rock formations at the head of the bay, Cabo San Lucas is a hell hole. We just hated it. It was crowded, filled with rude or drunk or inept sailors, and locals capitalizing on all kinds of human weaknesses. We stayed through the Ha Ha awards ceremony, said “goodbye” to our friend John, provisioned at a local grocery store, got some diesel for the boat and high-tailed it out of there as fast as we could.

By this time, the weather was very warm, so we packed away our fleeces and have been living in swimsuits (or less [don’t read this mom] if no one else is nearby). Sally’s laundry load has greatly diminished. We spent a few days in Cabo San Jose to decompress after the joint circuses of the Ha Ha and Cabo San Lucas. It is a lovely town with a much more atmospheric Mexican flavor.

We have become mesmerized by all the wild birds we have been seeing on this adventure. The eagles and murres of the Northwest are long gone, and are replaced by frigate birds, pelicans, vultures and some kind of wild canary. Listening to the pelicans fishing off the docks in San Jose del Cabo was very disconcerting. When you live on a sailboat you are totally alert to any noises or changes in noises. Each time a pelican would do its highly undignified cannon-ball into the water to catch a fish; it sounded like a 150 lb person falling off the boat. How they catch fish is beyond us, but they do seem to succeed. They are fascinating and provide not a small amount of comic relief.

From Los Frailles (the Friars), we had wind on the nose and so beat across the Sea of Cortez (not really, but it felt like it) pounding into oncoming waves (Geoff was ecstatic) in order to fetch our next destination, and one of our favorites thus far, Los Muertos (literally translates as ‘the dead ones’, but actually means the lost anchors). Here we spent hours watching the little jumping fish followed by the big jumping fish followed by the even bigger Dorado all flying out of the water. The sea was boiling with life. We dinghied ashore, had a nice meal in a local restaurant, went diving in a corner of the bay where there was a reef and had a wonderful time, despite the tiny stings from the almost invisible jellyfish.

We arrived in the city of La Paz. A mixture of middle – class Mexicans and gringo expats, and both long-term and short-term boaters. We stopped at a local ice cream shop and tried some corn ice cream – yummy. However, we were not willing to try chicarron (fried pork rind) ice cream. La Paz has a huge seaside esplanade called the Malecon which seems to go on forever. . We spent Thanksgiving alone, a bit sad that our family is so dispersed.

Geoff’s local haircut: For some inane reason, Geoff decided that he needed a haircut. He politely refused Sally’s offer to cut it for him and decided to “go local”. In La Paz, getting a local haircut means handing over your eyeglasses to a stranger, with whom you cannot communicate, and taking the ultimate risk. The barber commenced the haircut with an electric trimmer which he wielded like garden hedge clippers. The barber was dressed, by the way, in 2 inch high heeled cowboy boots, button down jeans, and a very large silver belt buckle. Since Geoff can’t see one iota without his glasses, he just sat as still as possible, especially when the barber took out a huge straight razor. Then, the barber commenced putting all sorts of creams, powders and even hairspray on Geoff’s greatly diminished “do”. Sally had a good time laughing and keeping her mouth shut in the barber shop – a bastion of macho-ness. Needless to say, Geoff will not be needing another haircut for several months. What a deal, and it only cost US$4!

For several days we sailed up to Las Islas Espritu Santos for some quiet anchorages and some amazing geology. We passed by Los Islotes, rock outcroppings which house the largest sea lion colony in the Sea of Cortez. Here were Jackie Gleason-sized bulls lounging on rocks next to their petite “wives” and adorable nursing pups. These islands look from afar like frosting-covered fairy cakes. Of course, as you get closer you realize that the ‘frosting’ is really just guano from the various birds who love to hang out with the sea lions.

A bit farther up the Sea was the Isla San Francisco. An essentially private, mile-long beach surrounded by dramatic hillsides. We scouted out some cool seashells and were entertained by a school of puffer fish, right at the surface next to our boat, and who seemed to want to be acknowledged, or at least fed.

We headed back to Muertos, and left there at 3am in order to make the most of the weather and to plan to arrive in Mazatlan about 30 hours later. The early morning sunrise was, yet again, gorgeous. We never tire of the sunrises and sunsets here. They are everything you expect – trite, but wondrous. We set all three working sails (genoa, staysail and main) and had a great sail across the Sea of Cortes towards Mazatlan. Just after dark we were treated to a visit to our mast by a local booby (The bird). It stayed awhile making it appear that our tricolor was flashing as the bird moved-around on the masthead. Making good boat speed under sail with a sky full of stars, bioluminescence erupting with every wave, while listening to the sound of nothing, except the champagne-like popping of tiny bubbles as waves splash the hull is a glorious experience. When morning came, (with yet another glorious sunrise) we cleaned off the squid that decided to hitchhike a ride on the boat, and made landfall in Mazatlan, on the Mainland of Mexico.

We are thankful for all that we have seen and done thus far, and, in the spirit of the Holiday Season, wish our friends the very best for 2008. May each of you have adventures to fill your soul, pelicans to make you laugh, and enough adrenaline producing activities to keep you young.

Merry Christmas and the Happiest of New Years!
Feliz Navidad y Prospero Ano Nuevo!
Sally & Geoff