Escape Adventure—Bringing Escape Home 5-28 May 2014
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.  

We made it into the lift slip with only one small mark from one of our fenders

on the port side.  By 0900 our boat was out of the water and on stands right in front of the lift area.  People started scraping the barnacles off immediately and then 

power washed the bottom.  The bottom didn't look too bad, but the props and the zincs needed a lot of work.  You can see in the picture to the 

left that the cover for the hole where the sail drive comes through the hull had been torn loose and it was missing on the other side.  Unfortunately, I have the kind of zincs that you have to remove the props to replace them and you can see that they were pretty badly eaten away.  The zincs I received from the Nanni Dealer were the wrong ones.  They were bigger (pic at right)  and had a different hole pattern than the originals.  Fortunately, our mechanic was able to take them to the machine shop and redrill the holes and machine down the surfaces so they would work.   I also replaced the zincs on the 

engines (left), 

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 

 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 

local pelicans and this egret looking for a handout as the fishermen return.  I also managed to get a couple videos of these fishermen cleaning their catch and of the flock of 

pelicans closing in to get what scraps they could.  Check out the pelicans milling around on You Tube at http://youtu.be/VUtYfOCIqtQ and see how fast these guys can filet a fish at http://youtu.be/_YWMdRvEMcc. When I returned from the fish market, the guys were making good progress on Escape.  The props which had been covered with barnacles and other growth were brushed clean and were now reinstalled with new zincs and I had them fill the voids where the sail drives come through the hulls with an expanding hard foam so there was more surface to glue the covers onto.  We made a new cover out of a car floor mat (see below), glued it in place with silicon  and then 

painted the props with "Prop Speed" (see right).  Prop Speed is a special paint for props that costs about as much as gold, but is advertised to keep the growth off of the props according to our new friend Scott (right) who was painting his own boat bottom.  Scott has been living on his boat and cruising in the Sea of Cortez for several years.  Clearly, this is the way to do it if you can make the deal with a boat yard. You can save a lot of money doing the work yourself, but it is

 hard work, takes a lot of time, and in most cases the boat yard won't let you do it because that's how they make their money. Scott said he paints his boat bottom green instead of black because it's easier to see the stuff that grows on the bottom when the water is not real 

clear.   He was also rebuilding his transmission while he had the boat out on the hard.  As I stood up on the deck of Escape and looked over the fence toward where the fishermen were, I saw a panga drive up with several goats in it.  The men hopped out, waded ashore and then grabbed the goats by the horns and led them to this truck.  The goats seemed to know the drill, came along easily and hopped up into the truck.  By the morning of 10 May, Escape was finished and ready to go back into the water except they needed to lift if off the blocks it had been sitting 

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

 1600 rpm and the sails up.  About 1400 the TWS came up on a broad reach at about 6.5 knots,  so we stopped both engines and we were sailing at 8  knots towards Bahia Gabriel.  It's always amazing when you can sail faster than the actual wind.  We sailed on in to Bahia San Gabriel which is a big crescent-shaped bay with a long white sandy beach.  Here's a movie of us coming into the bay and a demonstration of how easy it is to furl the sails on Escape  http://youtu.be/Wxk6uq5bO8s.  When we started to take the dinghy ashore, we noticed that the outboard motor was not spewing out water so it wasn't cooling.  Consequently,  Jay paddled ashore on the paddle board and I rowed ashore in the dinghy to do some wildlife photography.  There's a very large frigate bird rookery on the eastern edge of Bahia San Gabriel so I just let the dinghy drift along in front of the rookery taking pictures of the birds as I drifted by.  I also saw this bird with a curved beak.  It looks like a bird equipped more for digging critters out of holes along the beach than for catching fish.  I stayed along the rookery and back in the lagoon behind it until near sunset.

 I could see the tide going out.  It was running really fast through the gap in the rookery where I came through and I was worried that I might not be able to get back over the rocks that separated Bahia San Gabriel from the lagoon so I took this shot of Escape in the sunset and paddled as hard as I could to get back to the boat against the tide and the wind.  Jay made these delicious enchiladas for supper so we had a good meal for our last night at the local islands in the Sea of Cortez.  We slept good that night, but we had 18 to 20 knt winds from the south all night and 2 to 3 foot waves in the bay on the morning of 11 May, so with no outboard motor we could not go ashore.  We decided to head back to La Paz to try to fix the outboard motor.  We sailed the first leg out into the Sea of Cortez with two reefs in both sails and an average speed of 8.7 knots.  By the time we got to Marina Cortez it was around 1530 and the wind had died considerably.  I tried the remote control again to back into the dock.  The remote is nice when docking in tight spots because the wire is long enough that I can walk over to either side and see where the boat is in relationship to the dock.  We worked for two hours running fresh water through the outboard motor to get it to pump cooling water through, but it only helped a little.  Still just a dribble of water was coming out.  Several other cruisers said running fresh water through it is the right thing to do and they even let us try some of their gadgets to try to blow it out.

The next morning, 12 May, I talked to our 

friend Zeek about the outboard motor and he said he had a friend 

who was an expert at fixing outboard motors so he came and got our Suzuki outboard motor and took it to his shop.  He brought it back a couple hours later and it was spewing out cooling water better than ever so it was fixed.  He said the problem was that the cooling journals were filled with sand so I guess the lesson from that is that we can't get in very close to the beach with the outboard motor running.  It cost me $70 for that repair.  Since we had the boat ready to go

 and we had pretty much stocked the refrigerator and freezer, we decided to take a walk around town to photograph some of the artwork along the malecón.  I've shown you some of the malecón art in previous blogs, but here are a few you haven't seen before.  The Wyland Wall mural below is one of about 100 murals painted by the Wyland Foundation all over the world to help raise awareness for conservation of the marine wildlife.  They are all painted life-size so it's a good chance to see what a whale looks like in comparison to other creatures up close.

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
as you have seen from my previous blogs and to win this race you have to be able to drive over that terrain at about the same speeds the rest of us drive down the highway.  Being able to check out these cars and talk to their crews was really interesting to Jay and Chris because they've had a 2003 Toyota Tundra sitting in my back yard for several years now just waiting for the right moment to build a vehicle like this from.  I for one really hope they got some good ideas so I can get it out of my back yard.  In the small picture at the left a reporter for one of the local TV stations

 is attempting to reiterate the salient points the driver told her that makes this car special.  After the last
car had come in and parked for the night, Chris, Jay, and
I all went out to dinner.  Chris and I had clam chowder thinking we should have some seafood in a place like La Paz, but after it took about an
hour, we were thinking maybe we should have ordered something that was more of that restaurant's specialty.
The morning of the 14th we were up before daylight to get an early start because we wanted to get at least to Cabo San Lucas that day.  Here's a picture of what it looked like as we pulled out of our slip and headed towards the channel to leave La Paz.  The movie of our departure from La Paz can be seen on You Tube at http://youtu.be/0OzcJsHQplE. I put Chris to work steering Escape between the red and green buoys as we moved up the channel while Jay stowed the bicycles below in the port bow locker and we stowed all the dock lines and fenders.  Chris was glad to finally be on board and sharing an adventure with me again.  Since childhood, Chris has always been one of my companions on

backpacking trips,  mountain bike expeditions, or kayak trips down a river. We cleared the channel to La Paz about 0700 and shut down the starboard engine.  Running just the port engine at 2200 rpm we were going 6.0 knots which was a good speed to take in all the sights.  Once the sails were set and we were on course for the San Lorenzo Channel, Jay went to the galley and prepared this fantastic breakfast of scrambled eggs in a scooped out
avacado, sausage, coffee, etc. The

tanker picture is just as you leave the channel.  It brings fuel to the La Paz power plant as well as for
the gas stations.  The two fishermen were
 just as we were entering the San Lorenzo Channel.  By 1100 the
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.
We took down the foresail and put up the screecher sailing on a broad reach with the screecher and the mizzen jib plus foils.  With 5.6 knots of TWS we were maintaining 5.3 knots of speed over ground

(SOG).  At 1252 the wind was directly from the rear so we moved the screecher to starboard and deployed the foresail to port in wing and wing configuration (see above).  With 14 knots of TWS we were maintaining 6.2 SOG.  Life was good as you can see.  We passed Punta Arena which is about 1/3 of the way down the east side of the peninsula from La Paz to the tip around 1530.   After the sun went down, we were

treated to this full moon as we continued to sail south.  The wind kept moving more easterly so that by the time we rounded the corner at the southern tip of Baja it was blowing almost due west so we sailed wing and wing all the way to Cabo San Lucas.  We reached Cabo San Lucas about 0800 but we decided not to stop because we had favorable winds, we were told we needed to clear Cabo Falso (the southwestern tip of Baja) before the winds came up in mid morning, and we wanted to catch the westerly winds that were forecast for two days out.  We rounded Cabo Falso around 0930, the seas were calm, and the  winds were 5.5 knots NNW, which was the direction we needed to go.  At that point we had to start motoring which is pretty much what everyone said they had to do to get north along the west coast of Baja.  With one engine running at 2200 rpm we were going about  5.9 knots.  We did get a good
written
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
 too choppy so Jay was able to make this fantastic soup for supper and we were treated to this great sunset.  We made pancakes for breakfast on the 16th.  The seas were still not bad with 5 or 6' waves but the wind was not cooperating with us and continued to be right on our nose.  After breakfast I


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

before midnight we passed within about one mile of a big passenger ship going the other way.  It was lit up like a Christmas Tree.  The 17th was about the same as the 16th with variable light winds from the NNW to NNE and really choppy 5 to 6 foot waves spaced about 8 seconds apart.  Around 1330 we caught a huge swordfish.  The reel made a lot of noise, I throttled back to about 1.5 knots while Jay ran to man the fishing pole (right).  We let the brake off the reel to let him run for a while and saw him jump about 100 yards from the boat (below right). He continued 

to pull very hard, but we were gradually reeling him in when the line went slack.

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 

(Automatic Information System) on it.  I was really glad we had that capability because at night sometimes it's hard to see boats if they aren't lit up.  Of course not all boats have AIS so you have to really stay vigilant when there is this much traffic.  

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 

on the 18th:  http://youtu.be/wFCMGsRfgac.  Around 1500 we heard the brake on the fishing pole 

going again so we throttled down to about 1.5 knots and Jay went back to "reel in supper". Unfortunately, it wasn't a fish, but a cormorant.  We could see it bouncing from wave top to wave top about 100 yards behind the boat and we were afraid it would drown before we got it hauled in.  I put on my gloves and when Jay got it close to the boat, I 

grabbed it by the head so it couldn't bite and hauled it aboard.  Around 1600 we furled all sails and let the Mast Foils freewheel.  We turned on both motors and plowed ahead at 4.5 knots.  We arrived in Turtle Bay about 1930 and dropped anchor in a protected bay with no waves.   What a relief.  As soon as we anchored two men came up in a Panga and asked if we needed fuel so we commissioned them to get 75 gallons of fuel for us for $15.20 pesos/liter.  About 30 minutes later they showed up with the fuel and helped us put it in the tanks.  We needed the rest and it felt good to have the fuel tanks full again.  Since the 19th was my birthday, we decided to stay in Turtle Bay the next day and do some exploring.  Here's a movie of what Turtle Bay looks like:  

http://youtu.be/Dr7ejJvG-Dc.  I started out the morning 

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 

right the sign on the wall saying "Bienvenidos a Bahia Tortugas"—Welcome to Turtle Bay.  There's a large factory behind the sign that looks like it was burned out some time ago.  I'm not sure what that factory did, but maybe we can find out when we go ashore.  I took this picture of Escape at anchor so you can kind of get a perspective of how big Turtle Bay is.  As we approached the dock, a guy named Pedro waved us around to the other side, because that's where the place was to tie up dinghies.  He only had one arm and didn't speak any English, but we gathered from his motions that he was the welcoming committee 

and wanted to show us around.  Here he is with Jay and Chris walking down the rickety dock toward the town.  Our intent was to go to the church that we had read about in the cruising guide and that we could see from the boat (right)  so we told Pedro we didn't need a guid and set out on our own. Here are 

closeups of the front of the church as you approach it and of the inside.  All of the stained glass windows are of scenes from the sea like the one in this picture with Jesus telling Peter to cast his nets on the other side.  While I was inside checking out the church and taking these pictures, Jay was showing Chris how to take 

panorama pictures of the harbor with his 

iPhone. If you do it right and have a pretty steady hand, you can include yourself in the 

panorama.  As we hiked around town we got a better picture of the old burned out factory, but we never learned what it produced when it was thriving.  It's clear from the picture below right that water is a precious commodity in Turtle Bay 

because most of the cars looked about like the one Jay and Chris are standing beside and hadn't been washed in ages.   There were lots of places around town where you could get cold drinks or snacks like the one below left.  Most of the places just looked like people's houses from which they sold cold drinks or snacks on the side.  There were also a few small grocery stores so we bought some fresh vegetables, candy, and drinks for the long trip that still laid ahead of us.  We had plenty of meat and things to cook still in the freezer and refrigerator.  Fortunately for us,

Escape is equipped with a 5 cu ft refrigerator and a 5 cu ft freezer so we can pack a lot of food for open water passages.  We saw this family dog sitting on top of his house.  He barked at us as we went by but then was quiet again as soon as we were "out of his territory". We didn't see a lot of stray dogs around town, but there were a few.  We looked for an ATM machine since we had spent most of our pesos on
diesel, but three or four people told us they didn't have an ATM anywhere in town or even a bank for that mater.  I'm not sure how people get cash there, but if you're a visitor and want to buy something in Turtle Bay, you better bring cash with you.  One of the things I thought was really interesting was this boat.  It's strapped to a trailer carriage with car tires on it.  They load it up with supplies for one of the boats in the harbor, then four or five men push it down the hill to the beach and just as it hits the water they hop in. It

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

the water.  Here's a picture of it being towed out
of the water.  We also saw these huge round boulders stuck into the sedimentary rock down next to the beach.  It was amazing and there were quite a few of them.  At some point, these rocks must have been rolled around by the surf or fast moving water to make them so smooth and round and then later they became
embedded in the sediment.  That afternoon after we returned to the boat, Jay took the paddle board out for a spin (right) to get some exercise and cool down before we went back out into the Baja Bash the next day.
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
have any engines started at the time. The mast was still connected by the foresail halyard, the screecher halyard, the outhaul line, the steel forestay and the furler.  It was partly laying on the deck with the rest of the mast foil and the forestay hanging over the starboard side of the boat.   I was concerned that the mast would be pushed through the bridge windows or push one of us overboard if we tried wrestling with it anymore, so after trying to secure the surging mast foil for a few minutes, I cut the foresail halyard and the outhaul line that was still attached to the boom and released the screecher halyard clutch (see 
below) so the sail and mast foil could go over the edge.    It was still held on by the forestay so I clipped into the Jack Line, crawled out on the trampoline and cut the forestay off with a hacksaw (see movie at http://youtu.be/4NeT308aB-4).  It's a pretty poor quality movie, but the conditions weren't very good.  Unfortunately, the mast and sail were still held up on the deck by the foresail where it had empaled itself on the center lifeline stanchion.  It was very stiff and heavy with the force of the waves on it, so I crawled underneath the sail and lifted it off the stanchion with my back allowing the mast and sail to fall into the water.  We tied the mast foil and sail first to the front cleat, then crawled to the center starboard cleat, and then to the aft starboard cleat with the end of the screecher halyard that had been tied to the bowsprit after I cut it loose from the bowsprit furler.  The idea was to save the mast if we could, but to get it and all the lines hanging in the water as far away from the props and rudders as we could.  We were able to recover both of the back stays and they seemed fine except that the port one was wrapped around the port rudder and limited the travel of the rudder.  We had both ends of the port back stay, but couldn't see how much was hanging loose under the boat that might get caught in the props.  By measuring how much we had up on deck we surmised 
that there wasn't a lot of loose line still in the water so we started the starboard motor.  We had enough movement of the rudder if we moved it by hand to get back on our course of 332 deg toward Ensenada which was another 120 miles.  At least we would avoid being blown up on San Benito Island which was about 12 nm on a bearing of 79˚.   Isla Cedros was about 32.2 nm on a bearing of 72˚.  Our plan was to get pictures of the rudder using our Go Pro camera on the boat hook and to dive on it as soon as it got light outside.  When the mast came off it took all of our instruments on the mast out and that broke the continuity of our NMEA 2000 backbone so all of our instruments went black.  While I was cutting off the forestay, Jay did some quick thinking and was able to bypass the instruments on the foremast and reconfigure the others so within 15 minutes of getting the mast overboard we reacquired GPS, wind speed and wind direction from the Airmar Weather Station on the back antenna pole.  Our radar was still working and fortunately our VHF radio antenna is on the mizzen mast.  I don't know why the mast came off because we were operating within the normal guidelines and going slowly.  Both of the backstays seem fine and the loops at the ends that go over the masthead are in tact, so either they slipped off the back of the mast head or the mast itself broke somewhere.  I cannot say the mast was in one piece because I could only see the lower half of the mast.  The top part either broke off or was under water.  When we got all of the other things done that I mentioned above and went back to see if we could haul the mast and sail back on deck, the halyard was slack and the mast, mastfoil, sail and forestay were all gone.  The good news was that except for the back stay being wrapped around the rudder, we were not in immediate danger and we were again under way moving away from the two rocky islands and towards Ensenada.  I still had full fuel tanks and the mizzen mast and sail so we were able to limp into Ensenada.  We did not send out a PAN PAN PAN message because I didn't think we were in immediate danger.  By SSB I asked Chris White to call the authorities just to notify them what had happened, but asked him to make it clear that we did not need the Coast Guard or someone to come out to rescue us.  We had not checked out of Mexico yet because we planned to do that in Ensenada.  The whole crew was up the rest of the night helping to steer because we thought the extra resistance on the steering wheel due to the back stay being wrapped around the port rudder, might burn out the autopilot.  As soon as it was light outside, we lowered Jay over the side with his wet suit on using the spare halyard on the mizzen mast to see if he could get the back stay off of the port rudder.  The waves were still way too big, however, for Jay to get under the boat because when a wave came in the aft part of the hull would come completely out of the water and then slam back down.  We hauled Jay back on board and put a Go Pro camera on the end of our boat hook pole and lowered it down to get a picture of the port rudder.  It revealed that the back stay was indeed wrapped a couple times around the rudder, but it also showed that there wasn't a lot of slack in the line that could get caught in the propeller.  By this time the rudder was getting more relaxed so we turned the autopilot on and it seemed to be working fine so we left it on.  That took a big load off of us and I sent Chris and Jay off to get a little rest.  By 1000 on the 22nd, the wind had shifted more westerly so we took a heading 10˚ more to the East so we had an AWA of 30˚ and put up the mizzen sail to the 2nd reef.  We were now sailing at 6 to 7 knots and making 6.1 knots toward Ensenada.  Big improvement.  The sea state had also improved to only 3-4 foot waves so the ride was much smoother.  We continued sailing like that with one engine running and the mizzen sail deployed for the rest of the day and into the night of the 22nd.  That brought us a lot closer to shore where we hoped to pick up more westerly winds during the day and easterly winds at night due to the shore effect.  That worked fairly well and we had somewhat useable winds at 8.8 knots so we could motor sail at about 5.5 knots.  By 2230, however, we had maintained our heading as long as we could without running ashore so we had to tack back to the northwest  on a coarse of 317˚ to go more directly to our point right outside the Ensenada Bay called Todos Santos.  On this heading the wind was only a few degrees off our nose so I furled the sail and motored into the night.  Jay and Chris continued this course on their shifts, the wind continued to abate, and the sea state calmed to the point that we were making about 5.5 knots with a fairly comfortable ride.

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 

were just getting ready to go back to the Port Captain's office to pick up our clearance papers when the guy from Baja Naval Marina came around the corner and handed them to us.  It turns out he had to go to the Port Captain's office on other business so he just picked up our paperwork for us.  He was very helpful.  That night we went out to dinner at a chicken rotisserie place.  It was just fantastic.  The food was excellent, the atmosphere was great, the beer was good, and here I was on an adventure with two of my sons.  The next morning we planned to do some exploring and then leave Ensenada at night so we 

would get to San Diego the next morning.  Jay and Chris 

took the bikes and went exploring on the 24th, but I walked around closer to the docks since I hadn't really had a chance to check the place out yet.  There were tons of these 

nick nack shops (two pics above right) but I'm trying to keep everything off the boat if it doesn't serve a useful purpose and if it can be used for more that one thing, that's even better.  I did like these insects and little gizmos made of rocks and welding rods, but I resisted the temptation to buy one.  I did buy a big conch shell that I can use as a fog horn and when I got to Oxnard, I gave it to my daughter Heather, but told her she had to keep it on the boat so we could blow it when we needed to. Fortunately for me, Heather thought that was a good idea so it's on the boat and will augment our

regular fog horn.  It's really loud so you can hear it for a long ways away.  I also stopped at the fish market (left) and several places around the market and on the wharf,  there were traveling musicians like the ones shown below so if you gave them a few pesos, they would play a couple tunes for you.  The harbor was a bustling place as you can see in the You Tube movie at:  http://youtu.be/JuESgLtkYiM.  There were also lots of places for you to get drinks or snacks around the wharf.  There were lots of taco stands or fish taco places where you could get good food for just a few pesos.  Some places had coconuts laying in big piles and if you wanted

 a coconut drink, they would peel the husk off the coconut right there in front of you, poke a hole in the coconut and give you a straw to drink from.  Here's are a couple videos of one such place.  The first video at:  http://youtu.be/jW-G0LHg9aM shows the lady sharpening her machete, 

 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


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.