Cabo San Lucas

We made it to Cabo, but not without some drama.  It was interesting, hard, scary, and overall satisfying.  Cabo is wonderful, if touristy.  It is more expensive than most of the rest of Mexico, but I think the whole "oh my God it is so expensive" that we heard from the other cruisers was totally overstated.  We can stay here as long as we want to.  We are anchored just off the main beach in the center of town.  It is a little rolly, but nothing bothersome to us.  Right in front of us are these hotels that cost 3-4 hundred dollars a night.  We pay about $13.00 per day to anchor here, and another $3.00 per day to use the secure dinghy dock.  $16.00 per day to live in this paradise.  Even KOA campgrounds cost more than that.  Not bad.  We will definitely stay long enough to watch the Packers win the Super Bowl, but have not decided how long we will stay.  I was in a hurry to get to Mazatlan, but this is pretty nice.  And we are finally warm! 

We left Turtle Bay and sailed south 175 miles or so to a tiny little bay called Bahia Santa Maria.  It took about three days.  There is nothing there except a small fish camp, but we never saw anyone there.  We stayed for three days in Bahia Santa Maria, and would have only stayed overnight except that we met a friend there, Joel on the Esperanza.  He had a hard time getting there, so we stayed to help him out some.  Then we left for Cabo, and immediately found ourselves in near gale conditions.  Needless to say, our weatherfax information did NOT predict anything like that.  We literally flew down the coast.  The first day the seas were so steep and confused the autopilot could not hold the course and Mike had to man the helm for ten straight hours.  The seas then calmed enough for the autopilot, but we were absolutely flying with the sails reefed down to kerchief size.  We made it here in 33 hours.  It was nice to have a swift passage, but those seas knocked us around something fierce.  I have bruises all over my legs and a scratch on my nose.  We didn't get much sleep because the seas were knocking us about so hard I felt as though I would be thrown from my bed.  We were exausted by the time we got here, although things had calmed considerably after about 28 hours.  It got pretty scary for awhile, especially when we noticed water (not that again!) coming in.  The bilge pump was handling it, but when Mike tracked down the leak, he found it coming in like a little river.  But he managed to plug it - and things were then as good as new.  It turned out to be not a big deal.  But I am not kidding, it was really something.  We felt pretty good about our abilities when we were done.  I just hope our 190 mile trip to Mazatlan is a bit less eventful.

This is the first place we are finally warm.  Ensenada was as cold as San Diego has been this year.  (I realize there are people reading this who live in very cold places - but not even getting over 60 degrees is cold to me, especially when you consider I have no warm clothing as I did not expect to need any.)  There were a couple times in Turtle Bay when I was able to sit on the boat in a bathing suit - for about 20 minutes.  As we made our way down here, we found ourselves shedding layers - first went the long underwear, then the foul weather jackets, then the extra shirts, and so on.  Today we walked around town in shorts and T-shirts.  I almost forgot how it felt to be warm.  It does cool down at night, so we still have our extra warm blanket on our bed.  But I think it may not be too long before that goes as well.  It isn't warm enough to swim in the ocean in my opinion, but we are getting there. 

On a different topic, being out of touch has been weird.  First, once we left Ensenada, we had no idea what was going on anywhere.  For example, I forgot there even was such a thing as the Super Bowl, and Mike and I had even been watching the playoffs in Ensenada.  It was not until today that I discovered the Packers made it.  I have no idea what is happening politically in the US and I don't even care.  I can't take American politics anymore.  But being away from it all has some problems.  We have a number of bill payments set up to be automatically charged to our credit card (Steve's cell phone and car insurance, our own health insurance, things like that).  When we went to look at our account over the internet, we couldn't find it.  It was like it had disappeared.  So we went to an internet cafe in Turtle Bay, called the bank that issued it on the phone via Skype, and discovered some "major merchant" had "compromised" a number of credit cards, and ours was one of them.  Great.  And mail is an issue.  My sister Buffy is letting me use her address, but we haven't been anywhere long enough to have her send it to us.  I figure if we decide to stay here for awhile, we can rent a mailbox at Mailboxes Etc (I was surprised to see them here) and have her Fed Ex or UPS it down here to us.  Otherwise we will wait til we get to Mazatlan.  Mike is making noises about wanting to stay here for a bit - that is the beauty of this, we can make our own schedule.  I often forget what the date or day of the week it is.  Sometimes being cut off like this makes me feel sort of panicky, and I am not sure why.

I have now seen whales breaching, sea turtles, dolphins, and flying fish.  After hard sails with the seas coming up over the decks, I have found little squid on the deck.  Sunsets and sunrises at sea are unbelievable.  I think I made a good choice to live this way.   

It is getting late and I think I will go to bed.  I am hoping to learn to post pictures here, and I have taken some great ones.  Life is good.