Mark Twain
The "Baja Haha" is an annual cruise from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas (at the southern tip of Baja California), organized by Latitude 38. This year, 104 boats (including about 6 power boats) and 450 people participated, ranging from age "minus four months" to 87 years.
I met up with Jim Shiets, the owner/captain of "Synergy" at the October Latitude 38 "Baja Crew Party" at Encinal YC, and signed up to go with him. He had recently single-handed his CT-36 from Hawaii. Another crewmember, Ron Lenhart, also joined for the trip. We left from "San Pablo Marina" (bet you have never been there!) and got to San Diego four days later, where we really lucked out and got the very last slip in the marina, within 100 yards of the Latitude 38 headquarters and Halloween party, the first of the four Baja Haha parties.
In San Diego, Jim and Ron did the provisioning, so we had "guy food"....cases of canned tomatoes, beer, bags of pasta, more beer, pancake mix, Gatorade, eggs, a sack of apples, lots and lots of bread, sliced ham, cheese, more beer, and several dozen squishy breakfast rolls....but no mayo or wasabi sauce.
Dave White, a friend of Jim's from Hawaii, joined us there. He was a younger guy, so that reduced the average age of the crew from 61.3 years old to just 59.0 years.
We all agreed on the goals for the trip: Be there for the parties, be safe, have fun, go fishing. We accomplished all of these.
Fishing, of course. We trailed lines and caught about 150 pounds of fish, which (filleted) brought the price per pound down to supermarket prices, due to the expensive Mexican fishing licenses. But we had fun fishing and ate well. The usual boat fishing story: The first fish caught is very exciting....the last fish caught creates a problem, 'cause there is no more room in the icebox, we are tired of eating fish, etc.
"Synergy" is not a fast downwind boat, and we motored a lot, so we could be there for the parties. We were mainly offshore and saw little scenery until the final lovely morning arrival into Cabo. Because we had motored so much, we arrived before most of the other boats and got a good mooring near the beach.
Marylyn flew into Cabo, and we stayed at the Hacienda hotel/resort for four days, swimming in the pool, playing a little ping-pong, and having a true vacation. We had a wonderful dinner at "Mi Casa", an old-time restaurant serving traditional Mexican food that you just do not get here in the USA. We celebrated at the hotel with the crew, with a bottle of specially-brewed "ceyser" (mead + apple juice) that our son Steve had provided.
Jim is single-handing "Synergy" back to Hawaii this month (NOV 2001), and the rest of us flew home.
The Latitude 38 folks did an outstanding job....organized but relaxed. See the DEC 2001 issue for their perspective and photos.
Coming into San Diego, we went through a "pod" of over one hundred leaping and jumping dolphins...an amazing sight.
Sailing at night under the full moon in warm weather was wonderful.... worth everything else just do to that.
It was a great adventure. If you get a chance, do it. Soon.
On "Synergy", we had many of the same experiences as "Mistress": Malfunctioning head, broken autopilot, broken alternator, up the mast with WD-40 to get things working, bad water in the main tank, lost at night in the dinghy in the bay, ripening bananas, creative ideas for using pancakes, finally reading the manual (RTFM), food placement in the refrigerator ('specially because our cold-plate was "hot" with 110V which made getting a cold beer a real adventure), saw a jumping manta ray, using the bosun's chair, doing the "hot bunking", wanting more storage space for our gear, spilling hot coffee on ourselves, dancing on the roof, catching about 150 pounds of fish, which meant fish omelettes, fish sandwiches, fish steaks, fish stew, etc. (all quite excellent).
Of course we had our own stories to tell: How David's laundry got lost in Turtle Bay, leaving him with only a pair of tutus to wear. The super-friendly people in Turtle Bay who drove us to the gas station, saving Dave and I a very long walk. How we ran out of beer (!!) and had to create new drinks ("Cabo Sunrise" = juice from canned mandarin oranges + gin; "Gator Sunrise" = orange Gatorade + gin). Two great Halloween parties in San Diego....where Ron was able to provide all kinds of beer from a single tap! Jim kept cool and calm through all of this, fixing things and keeping the Aires windvane pointing us in mostly the right direction. He also wired a VERY noisy alarm that went off whenever the fuel pump started...a good idea for a single-hander, but it kept waking us up in the middle of the night. We used duct tape and steel wire on the BBQ, so we did not lose it overboard, like other boats did. And with a crew of four "mature" guys, we spent a fair amount of time looking for our several pairs of eyeglasses.
(Photos are about 40KB each)
