Sail Agora

After our legal debacle and rental car round-trip to San Diego, we were eager to sail far away from Ensenada. We left right at sunset, without much wind forecasted. The wind we did have was fluky and shifting, and as a moonless night fell, the 2.5 mile gap bwteeen islands and coastal rocks disappeared before our eyes. We were sleep deprived and unnerved, checking our position repeatedly. Two days of rain had left us low on solar power, and I didn’t want to use the autopilot quite yet, so I did what I had done many times before and balanced the sails, locking the helm.

“Maybe we should shine the spotlight out there, just in case we’re close to any rocks,” Steph suggested. 

I said, “good idea,” and grabbed our ultra-mega maximum distance spotlight. The lifelines reflected it back at me, so I stood up as high as I could in the cockpit for a better glimpse. Then WHAM! The wind was knocked out of me. Steph came out as I struggled to catch my breath. We had gybed, and the boom hit me square between the shoulder blades.

There were many takeaways from that singlular moment. It’s amazing how sailing for years fails to teach you what you can learn in a split second. Firstly, I was very lucky. Had the lifelines not reflected back at me I would not had stood up higher, and the boom would have hit me in the head. Secondly, we now use the gype preventer religiously, and I will never rely on a locked helm in shifty winds again.

After that, we abandoned our plans for an overnight passage and decided to drop the hook in a little anchorage 24 miles south at Punta Santo Tomas. On the way, however, we had another close call. Our satellite navigation software, Zulu Offshore, revealed a blurry pin-sized splotch in our trajectory. Some math decreed a course change at 2300hrs at about a mile away from said object. Then, at exactly 2300, I spied a what appeared to be a huge ship without any nav lights. I blew up the mainsail with the spotlight and waited for any signs of life. Nothing. Time for radar. This revealed a huge shape directly in our path about a mile off. I changed course and whipped out the precious paper chart. A single pixel sized dot at the edge of some text was all it revealed. A typo? Nope. This was a huge friggin rock, way out at sea, totally unmarked. I have personally named it Oh S*** Rock, and will be submitting a marker to Zulu Offshore for public use.

The next day provided no wind and we motored all the way to a little island. When we arrived at night, we were caught off-guard by a particularly active bioluminescence. The blackness of the water was all at once transformed into a galaxy of hundreds of moving fish all around us, for a split second. Snapshot for life.

When we awoke, we discovered we were anchored next to our new friends on their Westsail 32, Cygnus. The four of us (5 including their marvelous doggy) hiked around, found a lava cave, gawked at the spikey foliage and cracked island jokes while waiting for wind. This place had ancient moss growing on ancient cactus, atop ancient lava flow. It was unlike anything we’d seen. We found skeletons on the beach and heard the coo of baby seals. We were growled at by an elephant seal and cawed at by seagulls. We loved it, and were almost sad to leave.

When the wind finally filled in, we decided to pass up anchoring on Isla Cedros in favor of landing in Bahía Tortuga. The leg would be slightly longer but we were out-pacing a mild gale and wanted to tuck in somewhere protected before it hit.

Thus ensued a 40-hour, 200-mile passage that included both dead calms and ambitious gusts; all the while poor Steph remained stoically, yet nearly mortally, seasick, despite many medications and ancient remedies. When we finally limped into Bahía Tortugas under main alone at 3am two days later, I was ready to sleep for 24 hrs and Steph was ready to stand and walk for the first time since we left.

Bahía Tortugas is a sandy little village that seems as naturally formed as the desert mountains which surround it. We wandered empty streets and skittered to a hault in front of closed sign after closed sign. Stores and restaurants lay seemingly abandoned everywhere. Though we felt as if we were wandering through a movie set, we later learned this abandonment was due to the timing of our arrival.

“It’s the low season,” said Enrique, the resident water taxi driver and diesel fuel provider, “Come back for the Baja Haha – much much people. Like, 100 boats at least. Party party party! All day I am on the radio, ‘Enrique, Enrique!’ I have to tell them to wait.” Enrique seemed like a cool guy. We tossed him a cervesa and a tip for a ride to the pier.

We made new boats-friends too. Kosmos was among the smallest motorboats to circumnavigate the planet and had the best advice for our southern passage. They let us use their Starlink and I used this precious opportunity to download a 967-song playlist (called “random stuff Nai listens to” on Haitus Kaiyote’s Spotify page – it’s great).

The quiet-sandy-beach-town meets old-western-village vibe continued unabated for our next two stops. But not before we conducted our most challenging passage yet from Bahía Tortugas to Bahía Santa Maria. Don’t worry – I’ll divulge all details as soon as I high-five a flipping manta ray. Stay tuned.