I Sail Away

After the longest leg of the trip, it was great to have the shortest leg of the trip. Today, I sailed from Bahia Magdelena to Bahia Santa Maria–a mere 20Nm and from anchorage to anchorage about 4 hours.

But, let’s back up a bit. Around 4am, I heard a bird land on the mast. Typically, I would run up on deck to scare whatever bird it was away because I hate to clean up their droppings . . . but, last night, I was exhausted and had finally found peace with it. A tired bird looking for a place to rest is not a big deal–a few swabs of the mop in the morning, and all is well. I heard him sitting up there all night . . . or, so I thought.

When I awoke this morning, and was doing my morning survey of the boat, I saw all of the appropriate droppings on the deck. But, when I looked up, I saw a dead pelican hanging limply with his broken wing caught in the middle spreader–about 30 feet above ground.

I am not sure if he tried to fly between the shrouds and the mast and hit his wing, or if he was resting up there and got it caught at some point during the night. But, he was certainly stuck–it took me a while to get him down and set him afloat in the bay. I know that all things of this earth must return to the earth at some point, but that was the saddest thing I have seen my entire trip.

After that, I tried to piece together my morning. Sat and thought for a short time, made something to eat and some coffee, and then took another short rest.

About 10am, I raised the anchor and motored towards the mouth of the bay. Once outside, the winds blew a steady 20 knots all day, and the seas were a lumpy 2-meters high with a pretty fast interval. It was a short 3.5 hours to Bahia Santa Maria, and I arrived to an empty harbor (other than a couple of trawlers anchored out towards the ocean off Punto Hughes).

I set the anchor in this familiar bay (we stayed here for three days on the way down with the Baja Haha), made some food, and off to sleep. If the winds die tonight like they are supposed to, I will depart for the 95Nm leg to Bahia San Juanico at either 11pm or 3am–depending upon the weather. It will take about 15 hours and I need to arrive at the anchorage during daylight hours . . . .

Location:
24°46.000′ N
112°15.428′ W

Tuesday, 15 June 2010

Out of the two storms, one of them faded, and the other has turned into a tropical storm (Tropical Storm Blas). Although it is moving at roughly 3 knots, it is heading towards Cabo San Lucas. Perhaps the water temperature in Cabo is cold enough to not have it turn into anything . . . which is exactly what I wish for my friends there.

As I was getting out of Dodge, so to speak, I had a rough start. The anchor was buried in over a foot of sand. We had been seeing some pretty amazing currents over the last few weeks, and well, I guess they decided to leave a ton of sand on top of the anchor.

The original plan was for me to pull anchor around 8am, get fuel and water, and set off to sea. It turned out that the anchor was stuck fast. So, I dove down to see if I had hooked some surprise (maybe another anchor? 😉 ) and to clear the problem. And, well, the problem was sand. Over the next 1.5 hours, I repeated the following as much as my body would allow: freedive down to the anchor in 25 feet of water, dig as much sand away as possible, and return to the top for air. It got a little frustrating because there were large southerly swells coming in to shore, and the current would send the sand right back to the neat little hole I had just carved out around the anchor. Finally, I dug out the sand enough to where I could muscle the anchor back up to the surface. This was about 2pm.

After the anchor was up, I pulled into the fuel dock, topped off the tank, filled 6 5-gallon jerry cans with diesel, hosed the boat down, and then filled every water-carrying vessel on-board. Oh, and I bought an ice cream to reward myself for diving and digging the anchor out of the sand.

It was now about 4:30pm–and, I was pretty exhausted. Instead of setting out for a 30-hour sail in this state, I reset the anchor in the far, southern end of the bay (as far from the jetskis as I could get), rechecked the weather, and slept–ready to get a good start in the morning.

Wednesday, 16 June 2010

I was up early–around 5am. Changed the engine oil first thing, and was sailing past the arch around 8:30am.

By the time I approached Cabo Falso, the winds were blowing 25 – 30 knots, and freshening by the minute. This area is a pinch point where the land meets many miles of open sea. Rather than bothering to put a 2nd reef in the mainsail, I simply dropped the sail altogether and lashed it to the boom.

Once safely around the point, I headed inland to follow the coastline for some protection from the wind and current, and the seas dropped nicely over the course of the day until reaching a cool 10 knots in the early evening.

This is the longest stretch of the trip at 152 Nm until the next protected anchorage, so I kept myself well rested, very hydrated, and eating small, healthy portions are regular intervals. Which was a good thing . . . because as the night progressed, the seas built to some nasty sailing. By 3am, the winds were back up to a steady 25 knots and the waves were a consistent 2 meters. It is what sailors call–lumpy conditions. 😉

Thursday, 17 June 2010

With the sunrise, the seas and wind laid back down, I was greeted by a spritely pod of dolphins (almost 30 of them came RACING towards the boat to greet me), and I pulled into Bahia Magdelena and set the anchor just south of Punta Belcher around 11am. I set everything out to dry, ate a little food, and slept.

Bahia Magdelena is very similar to San Francisco–without the bridge and the people, of course. Geographically, however, they are nearly identical. Punta Belcher also has a bit of history–in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, it was a processing station for the whaling industry–Mag Bay is where the humpbacks come annually to give birth. Fortunately, the station has been closed for many, many years–but, the ruins are definitely interesting . . . .

The anchorage here is absolutely tranquil. One fishing trawler and a powerboat pulled into the anchorage to join myself and the other sailboat–and, other than a few pangas with fishermen, we are the only humans here. I didn’t realize how much noise and ruckus I lived around–with party boats, para-sailers, dozens of pangas, etc.–until, I heard a single bird cawing in the air. That was when I realized how quiet it is here . . . .

More later . . . .

Location:
24°34.408′ N
112°03.980′ W

PS. I have a lot of new pictures and video, but currently I could barely scrape together enough bandwidth to download the weather info. I’ll have better access in a few days.

I was waiting happily for crew to arrive, and for the right weather window, and planning for everything to be just right.  But, with TWO potential tropical storms (according to NOAA) brewing in the south of Mexico, it is time to go.

The first storm is brewing off the coast of Acapulco, and the second one a bit further down.  The first has a 20% chance of turning into a hurricane, and it is traveling West, North-West–basically, towards Hawaii.  The second storm went from a 10% chance to a 20% chance, and is traveling North, North-West.  Neither of them currently are pointed towards the Baja . . . but, that could always change, and I am not taking any chances.

Marishanna sets sail tomorrow in the early morning hours.  Yesterday, I provisioned the boat.  Today is diesel, water and all the last little bits that need to happen, and tomorrow before dawn, we set sail for California.  The goal is to be above latitude 27 in roughly three days (approximately 300nm).  Fortunately, the weather looks decent – to good, and even more fortunately, I will be buddy-boating with some neighbors from Alameda (literally, other liveaboards from the same dock, even) and, I think they are sharing one of their crew with me for at least the first part of the trip.

More updates soon . . . .

This is a short promo video I made for Captain Bob of L’Atitiude 32. It is a gorgeous boat, and Bob provides an amazing sailing experience. So, if you ever get down to Cabo San Lucas, save a day and go sailing with Day Sail Cabo. (www.daysailcabo.com)

I am looking for a few good sailors for the return trip. The details of the boat are on this blog, and I will provision the boat–you must simply cover your flight expenses to Cabo San Lucas, and return transportation to your home town.

The trip from Cabo San Lucas to San Diego has no place to get off, although we will be stopping in Bahia Santa Maria, Turtle Bay, and Ensenada for our final check-out of the country–with the possibility of other stops along the way to avoid bad weather. Your help on this stretch of the trip would be for the duration of the Cabo to San Diego leg. Of course, you will have to suffer vistas like this . . . but, you will have your share of watches, too. 4-hour watches during the daylight, and 2-hour watches at night–and, we will be fishing the entire trip.

If we were to sail straight through without stopping, and with perfect weather, it could take optimistically 6 days to get to San Diego. Realistically, it will be more like 10 – 12 days–and, if we have to wait out bad weather, or mechanical problems, it could be another 3 – 5 days on top of that.

Once in San Diego, we will be there for a few days to visit friends, re-provision the boat, and check into the country. The legs are much shorter once we are back in the US–San Diego to Morro Bay (with the possibility of stops at Catalina, and Point Conception between), Morro Bay to Monterey, and Monterey to SF.

If you are interested in getting some sea miles under your belt, please contact me through the website, or email me directly at: timothy@isailaway.net

This unassuming storefront may not look like much, but this is Mario’s. And, they just saved me $20 US on the bilge pump. They also had great prices on a new zinc, a replacement lure for the one that was attached to a huge fish, and other bottom cleaning goodies!

Thanks Mario!!!

As I was completing my final check of the boat, I discovered that the bilge pump is not functioning properly and must be replaced.

Fortunately, the local chandlery has a replacement bilge pump.

I should have the repairs completed tomorrow and have my eye on a new window of mild winds that begins on Saturday . . . .

The GRIB files for weather have just worsened.  A high pressure system is bringing some big winds off of San Diego that will extend all the way down to Cabo San Lucas . . . and, so we sit for another few days.

A beautiful boat . . . .

This is Zenzi, purported to be owned by Larry Ellison (think Oracle and America’s Cup).  It anchored out in the bay in Cabo for a few days . . . and, we were neighbors.  Then she set sail.

How sweet it is . . . .

One fine day, I started the engine of the sailboat and saw the temperature continue to rise–rather than holding at its normal low temperature.  Upon further inspection, there was about a gallon of lovely, green anti-freeze sloshing around in the bilge–and, the culprit was the heat exchanger.

Cooling on a sailboat (or powerboat) is a bit different than your car, but the principle is the same.  Sea water is too rough and has too many particulates to circulate through the machined parts of your motor (plus salt water electrolysis can eat away internal parts of the motor), so a closed system with freshwater is used.  This is exactly like your car.  The systems on sailboats even use anti-freeze to raise the freshwater boiling point to a higher temperature because–well, boiling water (steam) isn’t going to keep your engine cool.

The main difference between the two systems is that instead of a car radiator with its hundreds of internal cooling fins that uses fresh air from the car fan to decrease the temperature, a sailboat has a heat exchanger.  This little device has a series of tubes, and it runs sea water through some of them and fresh water through the others and heat from the fresh water is transferred to the sea water–which is then mixed with the exhaust and jettisoned out the back through the exhaust.

So, here’s the problem: at some point, the idle was set to a lower number on the motor–down to 600 RPM.  It probably happened at the boat yard during the last tune-up.  This is a normal idle for motors, but on the Universal M-25XPB.  The three-cylinder diesel shakes violently at 600 RPM.  Universal Diesel even recommends that the idle be set higher to 1100 RPM (I have since set it back to the correct settings of 1100 RPM).  All of that rattling around and vibration basically shook the fittings right off the heat exchanger–putting a pin-hole into the outer body in the process.

While it looks pretty simple and sounds pretty simple, and, in concept should BE pretty simple, there is a caveat.  A heat exchanger has a copper body, stainless steel bolts, brass water connectors, the pieces are soldered together, and even includes a pencil zinc.  It is the perfect example of what can happen when dissimilar metals are placed together (although the zinc is supposed to eradicate the electrolysis part of the equation).  I was concerned about finding someone who could do the work properly . . . .

Fortunately, one of my friends knew a metal craftsman.  We drove to his metal shop and as we were pulling in, a brand new, stainless steel swim platform/live-well combination was pulling out of the yard.  It was beautiful work and I felt better already.

The guy looked at the heat exchanger and all the pieces and said, “no problem.”  He said he would weld the brackets back together, clean everything, fix the pin-hole, solder everything back together, clean and pressure test everything–and, that it would be ready tomorrow afternoon–around 3pm.  At the time, my spanish was not good enough to negotiate the price, so my friend did it for me.  After a couple of rounds of friendly bartering, they agreed on $100. (I guess he wasn’t following the: Good work, Cheap, Fast: Pick Two” rule.)

And, here is the finished result.  So beautiful, I could photograph it on the settee–even painted the exact same color as the motor–classy.  It installed in about 45 minutes, and after the usual hose tightening and air-bubble bleeding, hasn’t leaked a bit and the motor has stayed nice and cool.  And, lastly, I hand-siphoned the spilled anti-freeze from the bilge and the local boat yard recycled it for a modest fee.