Stories From Sea

Asunción to Mag Bay to Cabo

We woke up at 2 am Sunday to check the wind. It was calm enough but we were tired and decided to re-start at 3. Anchor up and coffee made we set off for Bahia Magdalena. It would be 40 hours ish, and we had a few alternate anchorages if we ended up going too fast or too slow. The morning was cold and dark. The moon had already set but the Milky Way is incredible with absolutely no light pollution aside from our running lights. 

Early Monday morning we caught a bonito and although not as large as our last one (maybe 9 lbs) we had hooked it agressively and opted to keep and fillet her. We switched to a barbless hook after that and caught a few more large ones. They’re aptly named ‘bonito’ but it’s hard to get a good picture on a catch-and-release without feeling like they’ll die. But maybe we’re conditioned on sensitive trout, and ocean fish are much heartier? Any ichthyologists feel free to chime in. 

Monday made for good sailing. We had 15 knots on and off all day and a gentle following swell. We motored a little but kept the sail up. We made some dumb decisions here. I tied a preventer line onto a handrail to keep the boom from swinging wildly in the light air. But I didn’t make it tight enough, so it was able to shock load a couple times and we ripped off the stainless steel handrail. Then later we found out one of our sliding boom shackles was tangled against a reef line and as we reefed in the afternoon winds, we cranked a big rip in the bottom edge of the sail. So we have some repairs waiting in Cabo and probably won’t be able to hoist full sail for a few days. 

The night shift was uncomfortable as the swell backed to the west and hit us more on the side than we prefer. We still found a few hours of sleep here and there. 

The next day required some motoring but things went smoothly and we dropped the anchor in Bahia Magdalena at 7 pm Sunday night. We saw a few late season Gray Whales milling about in the bay so that boosted our energy. We cleaned, refueled using our Jerry cans, cooked the fish, celebrated the leg with a mojito and promptly fell asleep. 

The next stretch could be another 40 hour leg, this time with no wind in the forecast.

Mark’s halfway!

We left San Quentin in good weather at 8 am and motored our of the bay for 2 hours. Once free of the bay, we caught the wind and sailed south. The next 26 hours were ideal and we didn’t do much.

We reefed and un reefed as winds dictated but mostly bobbed along until we reached the north end of Cedros island. (We didn’t sleep much though as the ‘bobs’ were substantial). Once behind Cedros the wind and swell died so we comfortably motored the last 3 hours to our anchorage. The port captain spoke a little English and cleared us to anchor just outside of the break wall. We dinghies to town and had a simple dinner. We asked for restaurant recommendations but I believe we were led by family and friends rather than culinary advice because the restaurant was just ok. 

After a pretty rolly night sleep, we set off and had the best day of sailing yet. 

Consistent 15 knot winds and sheltered by the islands, we sailed comfortably to Bahia tortugas. Along the way we caught our first Baja fish! A Mexican barracuda! A 3 foot chunk of firehose as our fishing guidebook described. But sufficient for many fish tacos. 

Turtle bay marks the halfway point to Cabo and the first (actual) comfortable anchorage since Ensenada.

Back under sail

22 hours after leaving Ensenada we anchored at Isla San Martin. It was a mostly easy crossing with sustained winds of 17-22 knots . Windier than we prefer and most sailing was done with both reefs in the main and the headsail put away. 

We had a few hours early Thursday morning of no wind, and drifting slowly exacerbates the swell. Without enough water flowing across the rudder the autopilot gets confused. Hand steering is necessary, because it gets really uncomfortable to be broadside to the swell. 

Right at 5:30 am when Taylor’s sleep shift ended we fired up the motor and puttered onward. Taylor killed the motor and hauled up full sail at 7:30 when the wind returned and gracefully gave me another hour of sleep sans grinding diesel. The sailing was fast the rest of the morning. A south swell was predicted so we opted for the south and west protection of Isla San Martin. But that left us exposed to the 20+ knot winds from the north. After 20 minutes at anchor we pulled the hook and sailed another 3 hours to San Quentin bay. The bay is protected to the north from waves, but being just a low sandbar we still had 20 knots of wind all night with chattering wind waves.

There are a few buildings on shore, and the occasional dune buggy running the beach but it’s easily the most isolated anchorage we’ve been at thus far. 

We opted to stay aboard scooter and not dinghy to shore. With these winds, and a motor failure, we wouldn’t be able to row back home, and would end up a few dozen miles down wind. 

Rumor has it pangueros will come alongside to offer rides into town but we never got more than a polite waive from the 1 panga going to fish. 

Since starting sailing I’ve read a lot of old sailing books and one thing I’ve decided is sailors were HARD folk. Even 20 years ago, without the cheap access to gps, sailing was really hard. And then to add on the misery of years at sea against one’s will, the work required to keep a wooden boat held together, and all the ropes are the same color! 

We’re so incredibly blessed by a fiberglass boat that doesn’t leak, and by 5 devices that can readout our exact location (within a few feet) all the time. 

Sailing used to be terrifying. Without charts, without schedules, casks of moldy water.

Sailors were allotted a pint of rum a day, to blend with 3 pints of water. This 25:75 blend was called grog and hopefully killed any bacteria in the months-old-water-casks. So a 1/2 gallon of wine strength drink was meant to keep you alive and hydrated. Occasionally they were awarded more, hence the origin of the term ‘groggy’. too much grog. 

We felt softly akin to this term this week. If you add enough bleach to Mexican unfiltered Dock water it’s safe to drink and,according to sailing books, a bottle of white wine per 50 gallons negates the bleach taste. So our drinking water is a fractional homage to the grog of the olden days. 

Who knows what’s next!

We made the short trek from San Diego to Ensenada Friday! It was about 13 hours with a little rough patch of southerly swell and wind coming out of San Diego.

We were stuck on the boat for the first afternoon and night while we awaited a health inspector to come clear us to leave the boat. Then we got a van to the Port Captain office to clear customs and get our Vessel Import Permit. 
Once officially in the country we settled into planning and more provisioning. We didn’t bring any fresh food or meat into the country per the laws, but they didn’t really seem to care. Nor did they care about all of the prep we did for Captain Eunice’s paperwork. 
Wind and waves for the next stretch is rough but not as rough as the apps trying to predict the weather. We’ve vised and re-vised our plans every couple hours. 

Amid the planning, we’ve had so much fun. Most people know my favorite thing in the world is grocery shopping and this has been a next level experience. The exchange rate is great, the produce is fantastic, and then all the little things are so fun! Like the fresh tortillas fresh bakery, fresh chips, etc.
We’ve occupied our time with a four way blend of:

• Preparing and provisioning (constant boat projects)
• Enjoying the ‘marina’ amenities (attached to a 5 star hotel).
• Watching basketball at the only restaurant in walking distance.• And exploring Ensenada. The $2 uber into town, $2 affogatos, and $2 micheladas have made our stay far 2 hospitable.
• The next 14 days look less comfortable. It’s 300 miles to Turtle bay, the next real haven, then another 400 to Cabo.
  We’re optimistic, have lots of playlists and books downloaded, and are eager to get some miles behind us.
  Also, since moving onto the boat, any part of Mexico became the official goal, so we feel content in clearing customs. Anything after this is bonus. Granted, we said the same thing when we successfully made it to San Fran.

The next post will likely be a sat phone text transcript. Feel free to comment what stats from the passage you’d like included. For instance the number of hats purchased and Micheladas enjoyed are both 1. 

To Ensenada and beyond!

At the risk of jinxing ourselves, we’re ready to leave San Diego, and set sail for Mexico!

At the start of the week, we got word we could clear customs and enter the country legally. We set out to finish the 100 tasks needed to prep Scooter to be back out at sea day in day out. Task number 1 was to come up with 100 things we need to do, which was surprisingly easy. And once we got to work, every two completed tasks reminded us of at least one more.

 know what you’re thinking, how did you have so many tasks left after waiting to go for 5 months…and you’d be absolutely right to think that. We’re wondering also. But many of these jobs are time-sensitive, like filling our spare water tanks, getting all of the fruits, vegetables, and fresh meat off the boat. But still, we probably could’ve spread out some of the jobs over the months. 

As of this week Scooter has:

• Functional Navigation lights for night sailing
• A working knot log (speedometer)
• A fixed dinghy motor with ample spares
• Increased diesel capacity for a 600-mile range!
• Baja Charts (if our digital options fail)
• A Spanish-English dictionary
• a whopping 73-gallon freshwater capacity
• spare baseball caps to barter with fishermen for fish.
• dry goods provisoning
• backups on backups on backups of anything we could think of (and fit onboard)
• And 90 other things we chipped off the list.

Other highlights of the week:

Our aft bedroom had developed a small leak and the rain made it a moldy mess. 

Round 1 of our sendoff party turned into a fun dinghy ride…no surprise there. 

Molly Collins, Taylor’s childhood hero, & friends came to visit and tour the boat. 

We had a sushi night sendoff with Chuck and Kitsy. Making sushi in a full-sized kitchen is way more fun than on a small boat, and watching march madness on a big TV is way more fun than on a phone screen.

And Taylor made a badass tote-bag out of some very high-tech sail material!

Assuming departure goes as planned, we’ll leave San Diego harbor Thursday night just before midnight. Sail overnight and arrive in Ensenada mid-afternoon Friday, then begin looking for weather windows to head south. 

We want to thank everyone who has made San Diego home. This week of warm sendoffs has made us feel very bittersweet about leaving. We never expected a few family connections and some random contacts to turn into such an incredible community. This is the longest Taylor and I have been in one place since we got married and we could not be more grateful for what everyone has done for us. 

Thank you! 

Also, if you’ve made it this far you’re a serious reader/supporter so thank you for that. We’re not sure what emails will look like when we’re out of cell service in Baja but our sat phone will work so I may be able to post brief text updates every week. And hopefully when we do return to civilization the pictures can make up for it.

And now it’s time to leave

This week we finally got to sail on a different boat. Our little community of liveaboards has been wanting to see how other boats sail and also as an excuse for a fun day out on the water. 

Trey, Taylor’s friend’s-college-friend’s-roommate’s-boyfriend lives on Space Cowboy, a beautiful Catalina 34. He is a much more experienced sailor than the rest of us and it was great. We learned a LOT about sailing and were enthralled with sailing on a traditionally rigged boat. Their 34-foot boat carries about the same sail area as Scooter, but theirs is evenly divided between the headsail and mainsail

Their mainsail also makes a much better hammock than ours. 

Scooter is 80% mainsail (see last photo) so we don’t worry much about our headsail trim. The night started instructively with a few photo ops but ended up with games and revelry and pizza back at the docks.

This week we also celebrated Saint Paddy’s day at a dive bar (sailing themed of course) with our small Sailing community. Grant and Claire, our dock neighbors, and Trey and Soleil, Space Coyboy’s crew. This was our first night out at a bar, feeling like old times in a while. I’m not entirely sure it was up to California’s Covid precautions. Oh well, it was a blast.

In other big news, we are officially cleared to enter Mexico. The red tape has plagued us for 4 months now and despite having months to prepare, we still have a long list of things to do on the boat to be ready for Baja. We got to work cleaning, organizing, fixing things, and all the other things we won’t be able to do next month…like paying taxes and downloading our playlists. The essentials. 

We took a break to explore the desert with Dave, and hiked around in the Anzo Borrego Desert. I LOVE cactuses. Montana doesn’t have many and I’ve yet to have a miserable experience like falling into one, so I remain enthralled with them. It was a needed relief from the frantic planning and prep. A big thanks to Dave for taking us!

We return to prep work. Next week I’ll share our plan, and our list of tasks we’re chipping away at before leaving, but as of now, we expect to leave US water on the 31st. 

We need it, it’s been a while.

A small poem update:

We’re nearly ready to go

Getting our ducks in a row for Mexico, 

non-existent rigging inspections and so

but lo, we’re delayed by Geico.

The inspection came back all good. Lots of ‘not applicable’ notes on the review as 90% of the rigging is irrelevant on Scooter’s wacky design. 

Hopefully, the insurance underwriters are moved by the rigger’s words to grant us Mexico coverage.

We got an up-close-and-personal show from the navy-trained-dolphins

My dad and our friend Dave Meldahl visited San Diego for a weeklong golf trip and squeezed in a day for sailing. Scooter tore through the wind on an ideal day. We saw the great pacific, saw militarized dolphins, and returned to tour the bay. To add to the fun, they employed us as their Uber and took us to dinner. Our truck is essentially a 2 seater, so shuttling 4 people around gets cozy. 

Taylor’s high school friends paid us a visit and we got two sailing days in a row! Hopefully were knocking the rust off for our Baja voyage soon. The day sailing was another great wind day, and Scooter performed admirably (in case any underwriters are reading this). They’re also aspiring sailors and I’m pretty sure Parker knew more about boats than I ever will.

Eunice took quickly to Madeline and Parker. 

We tapped into our old book and broke out the dinghy rides and homemade Sushi nights to entertain. 

Last week we were given an offcut of a very high-tech carbon sail. Taylor’s seamstress skills had proceeded her and Marsha, the former owner, knew we could put it to good use. So we’ve experimented with applications that require very high strength material and put our craft skills to use…

So far I’ve made a pouch. 

Pouches! Now for ‘sail’ only $100. jk they’re not good enough to sell.

Thanks again for following along. It’s been a long stretch of non-adventure, so if it feels like these emails are coming from a couple of unemployed liveaboards instead of a cool trip don’t worry, we feel it too. 

But hopefully nearing the end of the roll

This week’s email is late and a little broken up. For that I’m sorry, but this week was also broken up. Enjoy many lines of separation but it was another fun week on the boat. 

I used to secretly enjoy red tape. I lived in FAA documents and nit-picky forms. However, now, it’s a thorn in my side in ‘retirement’. We got our coast guard documentation (delayed cause Tay’s name changed and we needed to send a marriage certificate) and started the process to enter Mexico. They need proof of Mexico insurance. Our insurance needed a survey of our rigging. Welp, our boat doesn’t have rigging. We have a wonderful free-standing mast. Instead of a toothpick, suspended with tight steel cables aka standing rigging (like every other sailboat) we have a telephone pole. Literally. They actually source the masts from industrial telephone pole manufacturers. But still, we need to prove our ‘rigging’ is safe.

Most rigging inspectors either refused to inspect our lack of rigging or were booked weeks out. 

We found one only booked a week out, got the inspection and now get to wait another two days to get the report, update our insurance and wait 48 hours to get our new policy, then wait 11 days to get our clearance (hopefully) to enter Mexico.

In the meantime, we drove all over San Diego County. We skated (see above), drove as close to the Mexico border as we could for tacos, and wandered through some tide pools. 

We knocked the dust off the sails and got out on the water with Lindsey and Winnie. Lovely San Diego weather complimented Eunice making friends with her first dog (ish).

Chuck and Kitsy hosted us for a Cacio e Pepe dinner party which, amazingly, turned into me experimenting with the methods. I love cooking in a big wonderful kitchen, and I have not found a significant drawback to boat life aside from this. 

Toasts to Great Uncle Selwyn!

Likely the eye of the storm, but hopefully the storm is equally chill.

This week the driving was substantially reduced. We got back to life on the boat. Not much happened, But thanks for following along. 

We started by fighting red tape, the navy seals invaded our marina, and we got back to polishing our dinghy adventure game. 

We started the week making a few international calls to Mexico and got a guy, rather the guy, to help with all of our border-crossing-paperwork. Another stack of bureaucratic barriers arrived, but we’re chipping away. 

We got a text from our neighbor boat one night that the SEALs were using our marina for some training. We saw a few divers trying to find their ‘mark’ in the field of boats. It was like watching a submarine race, watching their floating glow stick indicators drift around the marina, and the occasional all-black zodiac planting ‘targets’.

We met our dock neighbors for a picnic on the beach via dinghy, enjoyed a sunset, and great conversation. We learned that if Taylor helms, and we put big ole Hank in the front, we can plane Scootie and go fast! So starting now, Taylor is the dinghy Queen. She vowed to take on maintenance responsibility for Grego (the dinghy motor), and for practicing her dinghy-docking skills. I’m pumped! As for our neighbors in the marina, Grant and Claire have been awesome. They’re fun and interesting and it’s fun having friends in the marina living the same lifestyle. They have less sailing experience but they’re far more prepared to do it long-term…remote jobs and whatnot. Check out their Youtube, insta, and hot sauce selling business. Peri-Peri is the king of hot sauces, and as a native South African, Grant has a killer recipe, which we polished off in 2 days.

We had a wonderful dinner with Captain Eunice’s sitters. Dave & Linda made the Wild West Winifred Trip possible and we can’t thank them enough! 

Taylor lured me on a hike, but lessons learned, I knew to ask about elevation change so we limited the climbing. We got a beautiful hike in the mountains overlooking a several thousand-foot drop over the central desert. AND we got to see the first few miles of the PCT and crossed paths with a few hikers venturing northbound up the spine of the continent. 

This week was tame, but we’re ramping up to venture South so the respite is welcome. Maybe I’ll whip out some old stories for all of the wonderful subscribers.