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Saturday, December 4, 2010

11/28/2010 - Day 7 underway

At 0530 (N23*22.44 W110*42.90 - this was actually an 0500 position)), when I came on watch, Lulu pointed out that we could now see the end of the Baja peninsula (Cabo Falso). How exciting! Looking at the GPS, we're 47 miles away.


Oh, and at 0530 the air temp is 67 degrees. I think we may have finally passed that mythic point and may be able to stash the foulies in favor of t-shirts, at least, if not shorts and sandals just yet.

So far this trip has been devoid of wildlife spottings besides the occasional bird and maybe a dolphin or two in the distance. This morning there were a few dolphins surfacing for a breath alongside the boat and there was even one that jumped completely out of the water maybe 20' off the port side. Twice. About 0730 I had to wake Lulu to come up on the foredeck and watch. The dolphins were swimming and surfing along the boat's bow wave. They were pretty large and some had various scars on their backs. Tried to get a picture but they didn't come out very good. Matter of fact, the pictures were terrible so I'm not going to include any of them. Suffice it to say that the dolphins put on a really good show for longer than we cared to watch. Once in awhile one would stick his tail out of the water and slap the water's surface with it. Wonder what that's all about.

By 0800 it was 70 degrees and I had to take my foul weather pants and my sweatshirt off.

Lulu got to practice raising and lowering each of the sails today. Fortunately she got to practice in conditions that weren't gnarly. That'll come later.

At 1130 the temp was up to 75 degrees and it was absolutely beautiful out. Started getting a tailwind a couple hours later so we unrolled the jib, turned off the engine and sailed. As the afternoon wore on, the tailwind gradually but steadily increased. I was so enamored of the 6+ knots we were moving that I let the jib stay full-size longer than I normally would have. I just really wanted to get around the bend. Well, by the time we reached the bend and were ready to change course, it was blowing really hard and the seas had built up to some pretty healthy waves. We started to roll up the jib but it was hung up somehow. About then I lost control of the weather sheet as the jib yanked it out of my hands. Fortunately it developed a knotted mess that kept all of it from going through the block and flying free. However, enough went through that the jib was flying wildly in the wind. I looked forward and could see that the first wrap of the furler was caught under the reel instead of on it. That meant I had to go forward, out to the end of the bowsprit and fix it. Did I mention that the seas had really built up by then? I hooked my harness to the jackline and headed forward. It turned out to be a fairly easy fix even though the sound of the flailing jib and the heavy seas made it seem like a big deal. Once that was cleared we were able to roll the beast up properly. We fired up the engine and headed towards Cabo San Lucas.

Seemed like it took an awfully long time but we eventually got behind the cape and were protected from the wind and seas. Unfortunately it was too dark to see Los Arcos, the rock formation often associated with Cabo. Cabo San Lucas was all lit up. It's hard to believe it was just a quiet little fishing village back in the late 70s.

One good thing about Cabo was that I was able to get cell service which enabled me to post the "We made it" blog Sunday night. However, I could only get the service topside and didn't like having the computer outside any longer than absolutely necessary so that short post was all I did. Well, that and download about 120 e-mails.

We motored on through the night. We had to lower our speed a couple times so we would arrive at Bahia Los Frailes in the daylight.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thats a good trick. When I click on the picture instead of a big version I get a picture of bigfoot :)