The anchorage at Bahia Frailes
Log
Book
- Departure time: 9:00am on Monday, January 7
- Arrival time: 11:30pm on Monday, January 7
- Total travel time: 14.5 hours
- Nautical miles travelled: 46.5 nm
- Engine hours start – end – logged: 949.4 – 957.3 – 7.9
- Gallons of diesel start – end – used: 26.4 – 23.2 – 3.2
- Weather: The forecast predicted 0-5 knots of wind from the West with 1 foot waves.
This was a nearly perfect day of sailing. Unfortunately we
lost another faithful comrade on the trip, but we’ll get to that part
eventually.
We awoke at 7am and immediately
started doing the dance around the cabin and on deck to prepare all of our
systems for travel: Bring up and disassemble the flopper stopper; bring up,
deflate and store the dinghy; make coffee; boil water; eat breakfast; pick up
loose items; secure hatches; put dishes away; put on sensible clothing; lather
yourself in sunscreen; prepare sails; luxuriously drink coffee and do some
light reading (or in my case, a crossword puzzle). James Brown provided the
soundtrack for the morning.
Get up / (Get on up)
Get up / (Get on up)
Bobby! Should I take ’em to the bridge? / (Go ahead)
Take ’em to the bridge / (Take ’em to the bridge?)
Should I take ’em to the bridge? (Yeah!)
Take ’em to the bridge? / (Go ahead)
Hit me now! Come on!
Shelly, one of the campers we met
at Bahia Frailes stopped by on her kayak to wish us a safe trip. She glided
effortlessly out past the rocks and turned left, her paddles gently dipping in
and out of the water. Where white caps once stood at attention, were calm,
rolling swells from the north. This looked promising.
Calm morning on the water.
For the first two hours or so there
was little to no wind and the surface of the water was smooth, reflective.
We left on an ebb tide – the current would be putting up a small resistance for
three hours as we moved North against it. At 10am, once we were past the Cabo
reef, Jeff put our handline off of the back of the boat and we resumed our
morning rituals. More coffee…more reading. At 10:30am I noticed that the
snubber on our handline was taut. “Does that mean we caught
something?” I inquired.
“I don’t know, let’s check it
out.”
Jeff started reeling in the line
and whatever was on the other end was putting up a good fight, swinging wildly
from one side to the next, a water-skier in our wake. We couldn’t see it for
the longest time, its colors blended so well with the surrounding water. Jeff
pulled it to the surface and working tirelessly against the hook was one of the
most beautiful creatures. Metallic blue, with hints of aubergine and streaks of
jet black. We brought it on deck with a net and Jeff severed the arteries
inside its pulsing red gills. I held it in the net, in the water as it bled,
the life draining from it. Fishing is a mystical, sobering experience.
Jeff thinks it was a Skip Jack, a
type of tuna. Enthralled with the colors of this particular fish, the many
little fins running up and down its body, the scarlet disks hiding beneath its
gill plate, the smooth scoop of a mouth with rows and rows of small sharp
teeth, and the snail trails blending and interrupting the colors on its slick
skin like ancient hieroglyphics, I loaded my old manual single lens reflex
camera with film and slid the macro lens onto the body. Fish are a
photographer’s dream.
This beautiful Skip Jack provided food for three meals
As Jeff went about sharpening his
grandpa’s buck skin knife and cutting fillets from the fish, I noticed the flag
on the backstay fluttering towards the bow of the boat. Were we lucky enough to
have a south breeze? I slowed the motor and held up the wind meter – 13 knots
of warm wind at our back. Perfect. With the aid of the doctor I turned us into
the wind and hoisted the main and the genoa. By the time Jeff was done cleaning
the fish we were sailing along comfortably at 5 knots and there was a bowl of
top ramen ready for lunch. All of this before noon.
After lunch we tuned the sails and
Jeff put the whisker pole on the genoa to keep it open to the wind. As we were
perfecting our sail trim the can of Corrosion X that Jeff had been using on one
of our cars* jumped off of the boat and into the water. A look of shock
registered on his face. “That’s like gold! We have to go back and get
it!”
I responded too quickly, turning us
up into the wind before Jeff had a chance to remove the whisker pole. What
ensued was a lively debate as we tried to figure out what we were doing.
Meanwhile we’d both lost sight of the Corrosion X. After some clumsy
maneuvering (on my part) Jeff took the whisker pole off and we were able to
pull the sails in and head upwind, back to the spot where we lost the can. We
used our Navionics chart to figure out the approximate location and doubled
back to that spot, going in concentric circles around it.
I thought it was a lost cause as
soon as we lost sight of it the first time, but Jeff was hopeful. Corrosion X is like gold when you live on the ocean and everything is rusting around you.
Unfortunately these canisters don’t come equipped with neon flashing lights or
sirens, and it was near impossible to spot a white can in the vast space amid tiny white caps generated from the wind. After an hour of searching, sailing
back and forth (motor humming, on standby should we need it) we gave up. It’s
hard to give up when everything you own is so very precious.
We resumed our previous course and
sail configuration, the day a little less perfect than before, but still pretty
perfect. We sailed with a south wind most of the day. At around 4pm the wind
started moving to our side, it was blowing from the east, then it slowly moved
to the northeast. We pulled our sails tight and sailed upwind as the sun set
over the hills.
Since we were still a fair distance
from our destination and we would probably be arriving late (with an original
anticipated arrival time of 9pm) we decided to make dinner while underway. I
fixed up an asian cabbage salad and fried rice to accompany our pan seared
tuna. Fresh fish is incredible, even when paired with half-assed side dishes.
Just as fork met fish, the wind
promptly died. We drifted as we ate then lowered the sails and fired up the
motor. It was 7:30 and we were nearing our destination, only about 8 miles to
go.
Within minutes of starting the
motor, a strong puff of wind blew the black vinyl that I had been using to dry
papaya onto the side deck (along with all of the dried papaya). I scrambled to
salvage what I could for desert (sand and all). Almost immediately thereafter
(this is not an exaggeration) we were pounding through five foot waves with a
steady 15-20 knots blowing from the West and our speed had slowed from 5 knots
to 1.5 knots. We scrambled around above and below deck to secure everything
that might move around or fall overboard.
We were getting murdered. Hoping
for some protection from Punto Perico (Parakeet Point) we turned sharply and
headed inland, straight into the West wind. In two hours we had only traveled
about 3 nautical miles. The wind was at least a steady 25 knots, with gusts to
40. Some of the gusts would take our boat and spin us around. During one of the
biggest gusts both Jeff and I heard something crack. We looked around but
couldn’t figure out what had made the sound.
Once we were a bit closer in shore
we decided to resume our trek North, which would put the waves at our side.
Fortunately the waves were dying down (less fetch since we were closer to
shore) and the wind shifted to the Northwest. We were still 5 miles away, but
eventually our speed climbed back up to 4 knots.
We arrived at around midnight –
wet, cold, a little tired – and dropped our hook in 21 feet of water (sand).
Following some surficial tidying and inspections of the anchor to make sure it
was good and set we pulled out the bottle of tequila and started pouring shots.
Quesadillas were clearly called for. We danced and drank and passed out at
around 2:30am in a happy stupor.
When we awoke this morning and
opened the hatch Jeff noticed that something was a little off with his DIY wind
turbine…it no longer had blades. That cracking sound that we heard in the middle of the night when the wind gusted (is that a word?) to 40 knots…yeah, that was the blades flying off. Looks like a Home Depot run might be in our future (even though we
keep swearing that we broke up with Home Depot, we keep coming back for more).
* You can adjust cars back and
forth on the boat to make the jib flatter or more pillowy, depending on the wind
direction and strength. One of our cars was getting a little corroded…hence
the Corrosion X.