By Larry McCullough
Has anyone noticed how windy it has been? I must say I am so sick of the wind, probably not the best thing for a boater. But for the last 2 years it seems like the wind has been nonstop. May is not the best of time to bring a boat north from the Cabo San Lucas area up the Pacific Ocean to San Deigo.
We had been waiting in San Jose del Cabo, the southern end of the Baja Peninsula, for several weeks for a “weather window” to turn the corner and head north towards San Diego. Prior to that I had kept a close eye on weather reports and sea conditions for several months and the storms generated in Alaska kept the train of waves coming down the coast to Baja nonstop.
We hang around Cabo San Lucas and play tourist, it was fun and felt pretty special having the boat tied up in the harbor downtown, something I must admit I had dreamed about in the past, “some day I will have a boat out there”. Being in Cabo San Lucas brought a bit more than I had bargained for. I am sure people had caught many worse things in Cabo than COVID, and at least it went away after a relatively short period of time as opposed to other Cabo ailments, so count your blessings, I guess. Well not only did I get COVID just to make things interesting I had, well let’s just call It, an intestinal issue. For days it went on until I tried some antibiotics that were prescribed for us when we left for Central America. Take one pill for three days and hope for the best! It worked, things were starting to look up, and then Jamie gets COVID.
In the meantime, while all this is going on, an old high school friend of mine arrives on the boat to help us out for the Baja Bash. Steve “Gumby” Grant arrived on the day I had my positive COVID test (if you have read prior posts on the Independence Chronicles Log you might remember Gumby was on the boat for the crossing from Key West to Isla Mujeres in January of 2020, he appears to be a gluten for punishment, he has been a huge help on multi day cruises, no worries about leaving him at the helm). I kept my distance and offered to get him a hotel room which he declined and, yep you guessed it he got COVID. Well at least we are all in the same boat, so to speak. No stress here, we are sick, and we must get to the border for insurance purposes.
I had been thinking about this part of our journey for months, maybe even years, probably too much and the stress was building, maybe that is why I got sick. I have a hard time sitting around, so I spent hours planning the trip (see pictures of routes, currents, moon and sun rises, wave heights, etc.). You can try to plan for everything, but Mother Nature is still in charge.
Finally, I spotted a weather window, but it was only for 4 days then the wind and seas would change and there would be 7-foot waves at 9 seconds (big and steep) north near Ensenada. We had to go for it so on Thursday morning May 12th at 5 AM we untied the boat and headed for Ensenada. It took us about 2 hours to get back to Cabo San Lucas to round the corner to what is called Cabo Falso, which is actually the southernmost point, not Los Arcos at Cabo San Lucas. What happens at Cabo Falso is you get a swell coming from the north, generated all the way from Alaska, which then meets a southern swell and you can get some pretty rough seas especially when you throw in some wind waves that come from the Northwest. The waves we encountered were pretty big, maybe 6 to 7 feet but they were spaced far enough apart. We made it through the first hurdle, the seas calmed down as we got farther north and away from the cape influence.
A quick comment about waves. When you see a forecast of waves they might be described as 5 feet every 10 seconds. On Windy.com you can then find additional information, such as Swell 1, 2 and 3 and finally wind waves. This additional information is crucial. Swell 1, with the example above, might be 4 feet from the west, swell 2 might be 3 feet every 12 seconds from the south, swell 3 might be 2 feet every 16 seconds from the south, and wind waves might be 2 feet every 4 seconds from the west. That is a lot of information that tells you that it might be a bit rough out there, why you ask? Well Swell 1 will have 2 feet added onto the 4 feet from the wind waves. On top of that, or should I say in addition, you have swell 2 and 3 coming from the south that can get on top of each other possible creating a 4-foot wave. When you are out there, I can guarantee it, the waves are larger. How can that be you ask? NOA says it best, Wave height is an average, 1/3 of the waves are larger and 1/3 are smaller. Now I don’t know about smaller but they sure are larger.
Windy.com had a forecast that favored staying closer to shore, which we did and had a fairly mild cruise through the evening. I had told Jamie that it was crucial that we take some naps in the day so we could stay awake at night, easier said than done. I could not sleep even as the night came on and on. Jamie was not feeling well, and poor Steve still had some side effects of COVID which seemed to affect his stomach as well. People wanted to sit at the pilot seat at the lower helm and do the watch position so that they could look at the horizon and try to feel better. Ok, I will just lie on the couch close by.
Friday morning came as we passed Magdalena Bay and another point, Cabo San Lazoro. I had read about the points, you always wanted to be there early in the morning before the afternoon winds picked up. It was windy and it was rough, the waves were much larger than forecasted and closer together. We had to slow down the boat but after 3 hours or so it started to settle down and we were able to get the boat back up to 8.75 knots (about 10 Statute Miles per hour). I tried to stay on a schedule so that we would arrive at the points at sunrise or very early in the morning. We kept on a straight course across the bay heading for our next big point which was just north of Turtle Bay and Isla Cedros. As the afternoon approached so did the wind waves, ok I thought, the sun will go down and the wind waves will to. Nope! The wind increased along with the waves and my stress level.
I needed some sleep. The night before I got maybe 2 hours of sleep that was not deep at all, during the day I think I napped a bit but nothing that really helped. Much of the time it was just laying there, but that was resting. Our master berth is located at the perfect spot, just forward of the engines and a tank that started off full with 1,130 gallons of diesel. That made the ride in the master cabin a bit more stable. Also, I must say that the boat was handling it spectacularly, we just had to keep the speed of the boat so it was not getting bashed or dropping off the waves. In the daytime that is somewhat easier, you can see what is coming at you. At night even with a good moon you can’t really get a good feel for the waves…until you drop off the backside of one which happened while Jamie was at the helm, and I was on the couch next to it… BAM! I said to Jamie pull back on the throttles, slow it down. Now we are doing about 5 to 6 knots which will make for a very long journey to Ensenada.
I had our entire course plotted into the Furuno auto pilot and at that speed we would be out for an extra night, not something I or anybody else wanted to do. Jamie was due for a break and I took the helm and slowly started picking up speed, every tenth of a knot increase in speed felt like a small victory. The seas settled down enough to get the speed up to 9 knots roughly and I started thinking maybe we should try to pull into Turtle Bay and rest. I texted a friend over our Garmin In-Reach satellite device, and he confirmed that the seas on that extra day would be 7 feet and the seas near Isla Cedros would be larger. It wasn’t an option, we had to keep going. Morning came as we passed Turtle Bay (I really do wish we could have gone in there). I checked our forecast on what friends sent and what our Sirius Weather showed on the Furuno screen. I also checked the sheet of paper that I printed out before leaving that had expected currents. The consensus was stay northwest of Isla Cedros and the cape effect that occurs due to the waves, current and wind working their way around the north east corner of the island. This was a good choice because we had calmer seas and a shorter distance. BUT I could not believe the currents we were facing. I had done many engine room checks and our fuel consumption was well within the range I had forecasted. As Saturday night approached, I did an engine room check and saw that we had about 550 gallons of diesel left and we had another 187 miles to go, a huge reserve, let’s keep the speed up. I brought our fuel burn up to 12.9 gallons an hour, but our speed was bouncing all over the place due to the currents, 8.6 to 10 knots. No problem, we had plenty of fuel.
We had an uneventful night except clouds moved in and that beautiful full moon I was expecting was blocked. The crew was doing great, we were able to have a decent meal as opposed to just trying to keep down a PBJ or a Ham sandwich and I got some sleep - deep sleep.
The sun rising was a welcome sight, I felt well enough to even have coffee. Up until then I was going on my third day of no coffee or liquor (I never touch it while operating the boat, not even a beer). The seas were rollie but spaced far apart, a nice cruise, except the currents. On our travels over the last several years we have had some big currents, the East River in New York City we were fighting a tide and a current of 6 to 7 knots, but it wasn’t for long. The rest of the morning until we pulled into Ensenada I had the RPMs up to 1430 and we were only going 9 knots but as we got closer to Ensenada we were going just over 10 (normally at that fuel burn we would be doing about 12 knots. We wanted to load up on fuel and tie up at our slip before they closed the Marina in Ensenada, we made it.
After three days of seeing no other boat and exactly 3.5 days of travel, 662 Nautical Miles (761 Statute Miles) we made it to Ensenada. Steve was great, he spent so much time at the helm all I could do was lay on the couch. Jamie either spent time at the helm or slept. I probably got 8 hours of sleep the entire time but it really is amazing how little you can get away with when need be.
I am so happy the Baja Bash is behind us. There are some great memories, especially tying up the boat in Ensenada, the number of dolphins we saw were incredible. They would come up to the boat and give us an escort at the bow and play in the waves, I never tire of watching them. When we were doing The Great Loop, we had a very stressful time when we left Demopolis Alabama and the rivers were at flood stage with trees floating by. Later I thought “glad we did it, glad it’s over”. With the Baja Bash maybe it’s still too fresh in my mind, all I can think is “glad it’s over”.
