Sail Agora

Hello again – it’s been a bit but we’ve been off galavanting on cell-service-less islands. We’ll describe how we got there but first: back to our “most challenging passage yet” from Bahía Totugas to Bahía Santa Maria…

Day 1 of this passage was actually the best day we had up to that point. The boat was moving fast and Steph wasn’t seasick. But things changed the following morning. 

I had been asleep for about 2 hrs when Steph woke me saying, “I think we’re over powered.” Indeed we were, and I made my way up to furl in some headsail and toss in a reef. But ah, forgot about the whisker pole! On goes the harness and up along the deck go I, half asleep. I hadn’t yet mastered the artful technique of removing a whisker pole when it’s loaded and quickly found myself wrestling a 4 inch thick aluminum piston as it extended and retracted with each wave that temporarily luffed the sail. I unwisely unhooked the mast-side first and the piston became a spear, stabbing at the air wildly. In the madness I nearly broke my hand and expressed my frustration eloquently and at full volume. 

Then back in the cockpit, I made the mistake of letting the sheet go, which quickly tangled itself in the rigging. With a freshening breeze now above 20 knots, we lumbered under main alone as I fought to untangle the mess while the sun rose. Steph came back in the cockpit just in time to see a breaching whale about a 50 yards away. We spared a couple minutes to absorb the magic, then set about dealing with too much wind and very steep seas. The autopilot had also depleted the batteries and it was time to either use the monitor windvane or hand steer. 

We were now overpowered as well as double reefed. I had flattened the sails as much as I could, but our heading was a very broad reach and I couldn’t for the life of me keep the headsail open, even with the whisker pole. Hand steering and delirious from lack of sleep, we tried and failed to get “Zoolander” (our monitor that couldn’t turn left) to start working. 

“What should we do?” asked Steph. 

I searched through my internal encyclopedia of sailing obsession. “We could try heaving to, and I could work on the monitor…”

So in went the sheets and up into the waves went Agora. We tacked, leaving our headsail on the windward side. But whoops, the mainsail overcame the headsail, and we slowly inched forward instead of slipping sideways with the current like you’re supposed to. Our deck was wet and our motion was violent. And whoops forgot the whisker pole and it snapped in half before our eyes. I pondered the damage to the pole as damage to my wallet and turned the boat back on a reach.

The rough start and lack of sleep left us jumpy and miserable all day, and Steph’s seasickness came back in full force, rendering her unable to walk or go in the cabin. Despite the conditions lightening and having a decent sail day afterwards, our mayhem extended our mileage significantly and we didn’t arrive into Bahía Santa Maria until the grueling 5am hour the following day.

Bahía Santa Maria is as charming as it is extremely rural, and we spent 6 long days there waiting out bad weather. It didn’t take long to feel stir-crazy, and we quickly exhausted all the bay had to offer. We explored tiny sandy beaches, claimed minuscule Fibonacci shells, and hiked along an isolated bluff to some buildings, which turned out to be the solo surfboard factory of a singular surfboard-making mystery-man and his puppy dog “Reya”. The boards were beautiful, and Steph and I marveled at the randomness of it all. 

The challenging trip prepped us for other less-than-ideal situations, like entering Magdalena Bay at the dead of night in a very harrowing sea-state. But it also honed our planning for overnight passages, and our sail from Magdalena to Cabo San Lucas was nothing short of perfect. I made eye contact a grey whale and am happy to report we didn’t hit said grey whale after he came within 10 feet of our bow. We finally got downwind conditions for more than a few hours at a time, and when we came upon the fabled Cabo San Lucas, our impeccably balanced wing and wing Agora was greeted by even more breaching and tale-slapping whales. Apparently whales are like college kids in Cabo: they’re everywhere and also on spring break.