Baja Haha Leg 1

11-2-12 Turtle Bay, MX

Ready to Go!

We made it to Turtle Bay.  Leg one of the Baja ha ha is in the books.  This post will probably be coming to everyone many days late as we have not yet had the time to figure out our Mexican wifi system.  Leg one from San Diego to Bahia Tortuga (Turtle Bay for gringos) was 353 nautical miles for Autumn Wind.  Not too bad considering the rhumb line was 344 NM.  We spent 76 hours making the first passage; that’s three nights and four days of sailing, sleeping and eating. 

Leaving San Diego with 115 friends

First night sunset

We departed San Diego with 115 other boats, the fire boat was present shooting water into the sky and it was quite a sight as everyone set their spinnakers in light air just out of the channel.  Soon the bigger boats; which is almost all of them; pulled away and we found ourselves in the back of the pack sailing along pleasantly.  And the rest is sort of a blur.  It’s hard to believe that in 76 hours of not leaving a 34 foot boat you can accomplish almost nothing.  We ran 3 hour watches.  So that meant you had 6 hours off between watches.  This may seem like a lot of time, but somehow the time flies by and next thing you know someone is waking you up for your next watch.  Now everyone has had 6 hours off between work days at some time.  It makes for a long next day.  That’s how we felt as we repeated the 3 on 6 off scenario for four days.  At some point all you really wanted to do was catch a couple hours of sleep no matter what time of day it was.  That may sound sort of gloomy.  In reality it was a great passage, but no one said no to an early bed time once the anchor was down.



Day 1 pics

The weather was excellent which allowed us to eat well.  How does weather and food go together you may ask?  Well when the weather is nice you can cook, when it sucks you can’t; at least not very well.  Imagine cooking in your kitchen as it rocks back and forth.  Stuff slides off the counter, as you lean into the stove to keep you balance.  At least the stove and oven swivel, and we have little arms that hold the pots in place as the boat heels.  Still no one likes to spend lots of time down below in bad weather.  So that’s how the two go together.   We ate BBQ beef, made two loaves of fresh bread, bagel egg and ham sandwiches, homemade chili with cornbread, breakfast burritos and to top it off fresh caught yellow tail tuna and then ceviche tacos the next day.  So we didn’t lose any weight on this passage. 

Yes, that’s right we caught our first fish!  Admittedly, it was about a $200 dollar fish at this point with the license and hand lines we bought.  We had fun pulling it in, killing it and filleting it.  This was an adventure for someone who has never really been into fishing.  To make the whole thing even more fun we accomplished the entire operation with the spinnaker up. 

Laura with our fish.  How
do you filet this thing?

Speaking of the spinnaker.  It’s a good thing we have one.  It got a workout on the first leg.  One morning we set it right after the morning net at 7:00 AM and carried it all day until midnight.  Without it we would never have kept up with the pack.

There we some late night chats with other boats over the VHF, always nice to know someone else is out there.  The SSB receiver we bought actually worked, thanks to Elizabeth’s dedication to spending hours listening to static to learn how to tune it in.  We were able to listen to the morning net where everyone checked in and reported their position and they updated the weather for us.  That way we were able to keep track of our friends on other boats.

One of the many highlights of the passage may have been within the last 10 miles as the dolphins were surfacing everywhere, birds were diving for fish and two humpback whales surfaced 100 feet off the side of the boat.

Not much went wrong or broke.  One shackle on the boom preventer and one fork got thrown overboard with the dish water.  (we do our dishes in a bucket of saltwater to conserve the fresh water, it was dark and just got overlooked)  Minor issues for a 350 mile passage. 
So the first leg is history, we are in Turtle Bay for only one day and then it’s back to sailing. 

Our Baja Haha pumpkin