Our original plans were to sail around the Sea of Cortez exploring for about a year after sailing to La Paz from Chile, and then sail up the west coast to the San Juan Islands and inland passage northwest of the San Juans. A couple of things happened though that changed our plans a bit. The first was that my second son Chris, who was in the 10th Special Forces and stationed in Germany, decided to get married—to a German girl, in October of 2013. The second change was that he got orders moving him from Germany to the 82nd Airborne Division in Ft. Bragg, NC. So, my wife Elaine, daughter Heather, and youngest son Jay flew to Germany for the wedding and since we were already in Europe, we decided to take two weeks and drive around Poland doing some geneology research on Elaine's side of the family. These are adventures in their own right to be sure, but not the topic of this blog. Since Chris was going to be reassigned back to the U.S. in May 2014 he could take 30 days leave in between assignments and since he hadn't been on the boat yet we decided to leave La Paz a month earlier than originally planned so he could sail with us, and since his new wife Selina was coming to the U.S. on 28 May 2014 we needed to get back to California before then. The general new plan was for Chris to meet Jay and me in La Paz, help us sail Escape to California before 28 May, and then sail around some of the local Channel Islands with Selina when she got here.
With that as background, Jay and I flew to Los Cabos, Mexico just outside of Cabo San Lucas on 5 May and took the shuttle from there to La Paz because that was a lot cheaper than flying directly into La Paz. It took three hours on the shuttle to get to La Paz and another 100 pesos to bribe the driver to drop us off at Marina Cortez, but we eventually made it to the boat around 6 PM on the 5th. We had already made arrangements to have Escape hauled out for a fresh coat of bottom paint before we started the journey north so we washed the boat, got the dinghy back in the water, checked out all of the instruments, started the engines, etc. on the 6th and rode our bikes over to Marina del Palmar to make sure they were ready for us on the 7th. They assured us they were ready and told us to have Escape at the lift at 0800 on the 7th so they could get started.
We got up at 0630 on the 7th, had breakfast and got the boat ready to go to Marina Palmar. The wind was blowing at 14 knots from starboard so we loosened the starboard dock lines and let the boat move to the port side of the slip. Then Jay held one of the ball bouys by the aft corner allowing me to rotate the bow out and then move forward out of the slip. That worked well. The wind was so strong that we had trouble maintaining steering on the way over to Marina Palmar because we were only going a few knots. As we approached Marina del Palmar we tried to contact them on the VHF, but no one answered. We approached the lift crabbing into the wind, but no one was on the rails to take our lines so I veered off to circle back around. It was really shallow there and very crowded with fishing boats in the area around the lift so we ran aground ever so slightly as we circled for another pass, but I was able to power through just scraping on the mud and made it back around. This time there were people on the dock to take our lines so I crabbed into the wind to get the bow into the lift area. The lift slip is only 25' wide and our boat is 24.3' wide so there was very little room on each side. There was still a 14 knot wind so it was very difficult to maneuver into that very narrow slip. Here are a couple pictures so you can see how narrow it was.
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We made it into the lift slip with only one small mark from one of our fenders
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but they were still in very good shape. We were allowed to stay on the boat while it was being worked on so Jay and I put some additional ferrites on the SSB wiring harness and did some other tasks to prepare Escape for the Journey north. The beach where
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the local fishermen launch their pangas and clean their catch for market was right next door to Marina del Palmar so the next morning I took the opportunity to walk over there and get some pictures of the process. Every morning there is a very large gathering of the
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on for the past few days and paint the places where it had been sitting. All that was accomplished early in the morning and then I took another walk around the fishing camp next door for a couple of hours while I waited for the bottom paint to dry in those spots. By about 10 AM we were lowered back into the water. Jay and I had already stowed the bicycles. I went and got the dinghy that we had tied to the local dock and raised it back up on the boat. After we checked all the through hulls for leaks, we released the hoist straps from under the boat and the crew at del Palmar Marina pushed us out of the hoist dock and we motored out into the open channel with Juan, the mechanic, still on board. We slowed down to about 2 knots and they retrieved him from the back deck with a panga. At this point, we were ahead of schedule because Chris wasn't arriving until the 13th so Jay and I decided to take one last trip out to Isla Espírito. We sailed up out of the channel and then back down on the other side of the sandbar to the point of land opposite La Paz where the Whale Sharks are supposed to hang out. Here's a movie of us looking for the Whale Sharks http://youtu.be/mxkZgC4nGY8. We motored around for half an hour and didn't see any so we motor sailed toward Bahia Gabrial at 5.7 to 6 knots with both engines at
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friend Zeek about the outboard motor and he said he had a friend
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Chris finally arrived around 1600 via the same shuttle we had taken a few days earlier. I still had
a few things to do on the boat so Jay took Chris down town on our bikes to show him what he had missed. It turns out that the NORBA Off Road race, which is a practice run of sorts for the Baja 1000 was just finishing up that day so they were able to see all of the awesome race cars as they came into town. The main road was sealed off so the race cars just parked along main street right there in front of our boat. Here are a few pictures of some of the race cars. These cars have some serious suspension and oversized cooling and air filtering capabilities. The terrain is really rugged
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hour, we were thinking maybe we should have ordered something that was more of that restaurant's specialty.
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the gas stations. The two fishermen were
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winds came more from the east and we were now through the San Lorenzo Channel between the tip of land just north of La Paz and south of Isle Espírito Santo so we were heading southeast.
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weather report that morning on the SSB from Sunrisa which is one of the stations that covers Baja. We continued to sail or motor sail the rest of the day on the 15th as the wind moved from NNW to WNW. The seas were not
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noticed that the depth meter showed a whole series of spikes where the depth would go from several hundred feet deep to only 30' or 16 feet deep and then back to deep again. I checked the charts and didn't see any areas where the depth varied like that and we were 23 nm off shore in what should be 700 to 1000 feet of water. I went under the pilot desk (right) and checked the connections from the depth meter to the NMEA 2000 backbone and they seemed OK. I went in the starboard engine compartment and checked the connections to the depth meter and it seemed OK too. Next I disconnected the depth meter from the NEMA network and reconnected it. That seemed to do the job and we stopped getting spurious readings. By that time, Chris was really tired because he had been on the 0300 to 0600 shift so he took his blanket out on the trampoline for a nap (above right). We sailed or motor sailed the rest of the day between 4.4 and 7.3 knots depending on the winds, which were rarely very helpful. Just
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When we got the line back in the boat, our plastic squid was still in tact and the hook looked OK so we redeployed the line and throttled back up to 6.1 knots. Around 1500 Chris and I dumped the 5 gallon fuel cans into the diesel tanks because we had been motoring a lot and we wanted to take advantage of the relatively calm seas. Both tanks were almost full again and we were hoping we could make it to Turtle Bay with the fuel we had left. There was a lot of ship traffic in this region. You can see from the picture below that I took of the chart plotter how busy it was. This picture is small but each of those white lines marks a ship with AIS
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We continued motor sailing that night and throughout the morning of the 18th. The winds continued to be right on our nose so Jay decided to try a new function on our autopilot which maintains the AWA instead of a heading. Because the winds are variable back and forth across our nose, we set the angle to maintain 30˚ and ran the port engine at 2800 rpm. With both sails up and tacking back and forth across the wind plus the engine we maintained about 6.2 knots which is equivalent to 4.4 knots on a straight path to the next way point. We only had 5 to 8 foot waves but with the 8 second spacing between them it was a rough ride. Here's a movie showing what the ride was like during the Baja Bash south of Turtle Bay
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by updating everyone on the SSB radio about where we were and what our plans were for the next day or so. While I was doing that, Jay treated us to a king's breakfast with hash browns (below) bacon, eggs, etc. It took us a little while to get the dinghy off the back deck, get it in the water, and put the outboard motor on it. After that we headed ashore in the dinghy. We started out with a slow cruise around the harbor to get the lay of the land so to speak. If you had really good eyes, you could see from the picture below
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gets far enough out in the water to float so they can start the outboard engine and then they back out a little farther and turn toward the boat they're taking the supplies to. It's not very streamlined so it goes slowly, but they're not going very far. Then when they come in to shore, they time their arrival to get on top of a wave, gun the motor and get up as high on the beach as they can, then throw the painter to a guy on shore who has already backed up the red pickup truck up to the edge of the water. He fastens the painter to the trailer hitch on the truck and tows the boat out of
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the water. Here's a picture of it being towed out
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The next morning, 20 May 2014, we departed Turtle Bay around 0620 before daylight. The winds and seas were light just outside the bay with 3' swells and winds on a starboard reach. By 0730 the winds were shifting to 290˚ moving westerly, still at about 4.5 knots, but by 0855 the winds had moved easterly enough that we could sail at 7.3 knots toward our waypoint without engines so we shut them down. Waves were about 8 feet from starboard bow making a very rough ride (see movie at http://youtu.be/W95zESFKNqI ). Even though these are good sized waves and very rough, you don't hear a lot of wave slap on the bottom of the bridge deck. The winds and waves steadily increased throughout the morning and by 1100 the winds increased to 28.7 knots so we furled the mizzen sail and reefed the foresail to the second reef. We were still going 6.2 to 7 knots (see movie at http://youtu.be/z0R2-i1JytM). At 1545 the winds were still at 23 to 24 knots. We were sailing on a port tack with only the foresail up with one reef. The MFs were deployed but the mizzen was furled—we were sailing at 6.7 knots with 10 to 12 foot waves and some waves were splashing clear over the top of the bridge cabin. At 1830 the winds were still around 20 to 22 knots but shifted a few degrees to the north. We let the mizzen out to the first reef and were going 5.2 to 5.8 knots on sail power alone. Although we had been able to sail all day without motors at about 5-8 knots, the wind was from the direction we wanted to go, so we were only making between 1.8 and 4.6 knots toward Ensenada. The seas were extremely rough so at 2300 we started the port engine and tacked. Since we could only achieve about 3 knots under sail alone we kept the port engine running at 1800 rpm to get us up to about 4.4 knots. Since the motor was running, I started the water maker and when I went on the back deck to check it I found pieces of the wind turbine propeller all over the back deck and three deep cuts in the transom where the spinning blades had struck as the head came off the turbine. In retrospect we probably should have shut the wind turbine down. It's fully capable of operating at much higher winds than we were experiencing, but the wave action was causing the wind turbine to rotate around each time the bow took a dive towards the next trough and you could just hear the turbine decelerate to almost zero rpms. It made the same sound a turbo-prop does when the pilot turns the props sidewards after landing and you hear that rapid deceleration. That constant spinning up and back down apparently loosened the bolt on the turbine head and eventually it just flew off. I'm glad it didn't hit anyone, the back stay, or the SSB antenna because that could have been catastrophic. I went to bed around midnight and Jay started his watch. At approximately 0238 in the morning Jay yelled, "Dad get up here, we just lost a mast". I sprang from my bed put my rain jacket on and ran up on deck. I could see the front mast foil submerged half way in the water off the starboard side with the sail still attached and the waves were pushing it up and down 10 or 12 feet onto the deck with each wave. We were in 8 to 10 foot waves spaced about 8 seconds apart and it was dark, very dark. The mast fell over the starboard side of the boat and took the jib with it. At the time we were sailing with just the foresail at about 3.5 to 5 knots with 20 to 22 knot winds from the port side at about 47 degrees. We did not
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We arrived at Ensenada on the morning of 23 May 2014 and by 1050 had tied up to the dock at Baja Naval Marina. It turns out that our friend Phil, who we had met at Turtle Bay was pulling in to Ensenada the same time we were and he tied up just a couple slips away. Here is a video of the Ensenada Harbor: http://youtu.be/T0cnPHRgqVc. The guy at Baja Naval Marina was very helpful and filled out all of the paperwork we would need to get checked out of Mexico at the Port Captain's office. He also arranged for fuel to be delivered to our boat later that afternoon. Phil and I went together down to the Port Captain's office and turned in our paperwork. They said to come back at 1400 to pick it up. Chris and Jay went out exploring while I took the papers to the Port Captain. When I got back, I waited for Chris and Jay to return and then I went up the mizzen mast to inspect it to see if there was any problem with the mast or mast foil. Everything looked OK, but after losing the foremast every little sound caused us to perk up our ears. Phil and I
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and the second video at:
http://youtu.be/8fOjoJmWbGI shows her skinning one of the coconuts. It was only about 68 nm from Ensenada to San Diego, where we had to clear customs to enter back into the United States. We wanted to arrive in San Diego during daylight hours and preferably early in the morning because we wanted to look around San Diego Harbor where Jay and I took our sailing lessons and we didn't know how long it would take us to get through Customs, especially since the 25th was a Sunday. I got back to the boat about 1600, took a short nap and then started getting the boat ready to depart because we planned to leave Ensenada about 1800. Chris and Jay showed up at the boat about 1745 just in time to get the bikes put away in the port bow locker and untie the dock lines. We sailed past the gigantic Carnival Ship Inspiration. It towered above our boat—it was even taller than our masts I think. We had no more than cleared the entrance to the harbor when Inspiration threw off her dock lines and headed out too. We were both going about the same direction and at about the same speed so she sailed beside us for a couple hours
(see pic above right). The winds were on our nose at about 8 knots so we were motor sailing with one engine at about 5.5 knots towards San Diego. I was still on duty around 2200 and was treated to an incredible view of the lights of the cities along the coast between El Pescadaro and Punta Descante. There was a light haze/fog hanging low above the coast so the lights of the cities reflect off of it giving the whole coast a nice glow. There was no moon so it was dark as can be with just the red lights from the instruments in the cabin. We passed to port of the Coronado Islands about 0500 and shortly thereafter we could see the lights of San Diego ahead (see pic above). San Diego can be a tricky harbor to enter in to because there is a very long cement wall that runs just south of the channel that is just under the surface of the water. It may be tempting to cut corners when coming from the south, but it would be a big mistake so we headed straight for the open water buoy and then right down the middle of the channel to the police dock where the customs office is. Here is a movie of us entering San Diego Harbor: http://youtu.be/QzHDpcb-heI. We were the only boat at the dock when we tied up at 0730 so it was a piece of cake docking there. I walked up the ramp to the customs office and, as expected, it was closed on Sunday, but there was a number to call. Since we were back in the good old USA my cell phone was working again so I called that number and a very nice man said a customs agent would be there in a few minutes. Sure enough, he arrived a few minutes later and we did all the necessary paperwork right there on the dock. We were about to make a good bacon and eggs breakfast, thinking we were all done when another inspector arrived. This guy was from the agricultural office and wanted to check all of our stuff. We had eaten as much of the fruit as we could and threw the rest overboard while we were still out to sea so we didn't have any of that. He then went to the refrigerator and freezer and threw away all of our eggs and meat, including the bacon
we were just getting ready to eat. Fortunately, he said we could keep the couple packages of bacon that had a US inspection label on it even though we had purchased it in Mexico. As a result of the inspector clearing out our refrigerator and freezer, we took one of the bikes out of the bow locker and sent Jay off with his backpack to get some eggs, fruit, vegetables, and candy. We had originally made arrangements to stay in San Diego that day and leave the next morning, but we didn't have much lee way now because Chris' wife was going to be arriving on
the 28th. We had also planned on spending a day at Catalina, but we decided to just hoist the anchor and head for Oxnard. That's what we did. As soon as Jay got back with the food supplies, we cast off the dock lines and headed back out to sea. It was about 1030 by the time we cleared the channel to the open water buoy and headed to a point 67 nm away just north of Catalina Island. The sun was going down by the time we got to Catalina (see above right) and we had shifted our course to be a little closer to Los Angeles to see if we could get a little off-shore breeze to help us along. The sunset above Catalina was pretty cool though and the seas were calm so it was good sailing. We were only about 90 miles from Oxnard and we were making about 6 knots. We had to be particularly vigilant that night because we were passing right through some of the busiest shipping lanes just off the coast of Los Angeles. I could see a lot of big ships from the AIS information displayed on our chart plotter, but I also knew that there could be a lot of boats out there that didn't have AIS. In fact, just about midnight, I was standing watch as we came within a quarter of a mile of three off-shore oil platforms. One of them had a tanker tied up beside it and all of them had lots of lights on them. It was really pretty to see them at night. Then, just as I was nearing the last one I saw a tug boat come out of nowhere cutting right across my bow
about 200 yards ahead. I immediately shined my flashlight up on the sails so he could see me better, but I'm not sure he saw me even then. Wow, that got the old heart going, he didn't show up on the radar or the AIS and it was really dark outside. By 0900 we were starting to see some familiar land marks as we passed by Big Sycamore Canyon. A little farther up the coast about 0950, as we passed Laguna Point, a pod of dolphins came in front of the boat and swam for a few minutes right in front of our bows (see movie at: http://youtu.be/MUAuhUMH87Q. We tied up at our slip at Anacapa Isles Marina at 1100 hours, called my wife to come pick us up and started to clean up the boat. One of the first orders of business was to get the screecher out and dry it. The foremast that it is usually hoisted on was gone, so we hoisted with the mizzen mast and let it dry in the wind (right). While I was below preparing the water maker for storage and the screecher was drying, Chris took Séamus for a ride on the paddle board. He was really glad to see us because we had been gone for several weeks.
As soon as Chris finished giving Séamus a ride, he hopped back on the paddle board for another ride with Jay. Well folks, that's the end of this adventure. I'm currently waiting on my new mast so I can get back to sailing. Chris White, the designer of Escape came out a couple days after I arrived in Oxnard and went over the boat from one end to the other with me. Alex Wopper and the Alwoplast Team have stood behind their warrantee for the mast and mast foil as well as
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all the lines and sail that were lost with it. They have shipped me a new mast and mast foil and I expect it to arrive in the Ventura Boat Yard sometime around the 18th of August. They are also sending a person from Alwoplast to help remove the mizzen mast to inspect and strengthen it and to put the new mast on. I should be back to sailing by the end of August. I will let you know how all this goes in my next post.
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the 28th. We had also planned on spending a day at Catalina, but we decided to just hoist the anchor and head for Oxnard. That's what we did. As soon as Jay got back with the food supplies, we cast off the dock lines and headed back out to sea. It was about 1030 by the time we cleared the channel to the open water buoy and headed to a point 67 nm away just north of Catalina Island. The sun was going down by the time we got to Catalina (see above right) and we had shifted our course to be a little closer to Los Angeles to see if we could get a little off-shore breeze to help us along. The sunset above Catalina was pretty cool though and the seas were calm so it was good sailing. We were only about 90 miles from Oxnard and we were making about 6 knots. We had to be particularly vigilant that night because we were passing right through some of the busiest shipping lanes just off the coast of Los Angeles. I could see a lot of big ships from the AIS information displayed on our chart plotter, but I also knew that there could be a lot of boats out there that didn't have AIS. In fact, just about midnight, I was standing watch as we came within a quarter of a mile of three off-shore oil platforms. One of them had a tanker tied up beside it and all of them had lots of lights on them. It was really pretty to see them at night. Then, just as I was nearing the last one I saw a tug boat come out of nowhere cutting right across my bow
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all the lines and sail that were lost with it. They have shipped me a new mast and mast foil and I expect it to arrive in the Ventura Boat Yard sometime around the 18th of August. They are also sending a person from Alwoplast to help remove the mizzen mast to inspect and strengthen it and to put the new mast on. I should be back to sailing by the end of August. I will let you know how all this goes in my next post.