YEA! - WE MADE IT TO THE TROPICS!!!!

We are currently (12/7/01) anchored off the white sand beaches of Cabo San Lucas. It is 7:30 PM and the air temp is still 75 degrees. Finally, we are warm and fairly comfortable. We arrived here about sunset on December 4.

Our big problem is that the anchorage is very uncomfortable. At times, we pitch so much that the swim step buries 6" under water and then makes a huge commotion as all the water rushes off the step when the bow drops. At the same time we are rolling 20 degrees side to side. I've got the flopper stopper out but it is not helping much. We get queasy if we stay below too long at a time. Even late at night it is warm enough that we want to be in the cockpit, despite the occasional sprinkle.

The Cal 43 anchored near us keeps their 10' inflatable on davits on the stern. The dinghy is hitting the water, and then the davits almost hits the dinghy as the bow continues to rise. Arlene swears she saw them take water over the stern while anchored. The bowsprit on the Alajuea 38 next to us dips to the water at times.

The beaches here are almost deserted. There are few tourists walking or riding jet skis and the beach bars are almost empty. The hurricane that hit here in October appears to have done considerable damage and discouraged many potential visitors. We were anchored here in December last year and again in April of this year. Many of the palapa bars and other beachfront sites no longer exist, there are just gullies in the sand.

We have been told that the storm parked over Cabo and dumped 10" of rain a day for three days. I know that the road from La Paz to Cabo was washed out for a week. One odd result is that much of the Cabo San Lucas offshore canyon has been filled in with sand. The canyon used to present an anchoring challenge since it was 90' deep just a few yards off the beach. All the anchored boats had to crowd together around the edges of the canyon. Now it apprears the water is only 40' deep 1/4 mile off shore for at least a mile east of the breakwater.

Inside the breakwater, the outer fuel dock is gone as are most of the charter boat docks along the SE side of the outside 1/2 of the inner harbor.

Getting here has been a major project. The winds have been very consistent 15 - 25 knots every day from noon until 3 AM. We have sailed almost every inch of the way from San Carlos to Cabo. The trouble has been that it has all been dead downwind - roll, roll, roll. Even I, "lets sail in any conditions", am annoyed with the downwind rolling. We have had at least 25 knots on all three overnights we have done from San Carlos to here.

The dead electronic autopilot and the broken parts on the Sailomat control line system have required a lot more work on our part than we are used to doing while sailing. We did not want to use the Sailomat while motoring so we sailed in too much wind and too little wind. On the other hand, we now know that Mirador and the Sailomat can handle conditions that we really would rather avoid.

I'm glad we did rest a couple extra days in Santa Maria. The ride down here was "sporting." Our trip from Santa Maria to here covered 188 NM in 30 hours. We sailed all except the first four hours and a couple of hours in the middle of the night.

We left Santa Maria at 10 AM and motorsailed four hours so we could fill the water tank. We were making 7.2 knots at 2000 RPM and 15 GPH water. The weather forecast was for variable to 15 knots out of the NW switching to variable to 15 out of the SW if the front got far enough south. The wind stayed 10 - 18 out of the NW until dark. We were wing and wing and having a lovely 6.5 knot sail.

That continued until about 11 PM when the wind died to less than 8 knots out of the NW. I went to bed about 11:30 with a single reef in the main and the motor running 2200 RPM. I woke up about 2:30 AM to find bigger seas and a NNW to N wind blowing at 15 knots. I poled out the genoa and started to sail. The wind kept building and moving North.

By daybreak it was 20 - 25 out of the NNE with 7' seas and stayed that way until we rounded Cabo Falso at 3 PM. Sometime in the early AM I rolled up the genoa after putting a 2nd reef in the main. We still kept doing 6.5 to 7 knots. We poled the genoa out one more time just after false dawn and kept the full genoa until Cabo Falso. The whole time from 2 AM till rounding Cabo Falso was very rolly. The wind was from dead astern but the swell was more from the west so it kept hitting us on the quarter. Not very comfortable.

While I was writing an e-mail note to my sister, complaining about trolling all night with no strikes I heard the line start to strip off our big Penn Senator 6/0 reel. I landed a nice 6 pound MahiMahi about 15 minutes later:

We dropped anchor 1/4 mile off the beach, about one mile east of the inner harbor. We are sitting on the Bruce 44 in 35' of water with 100' of chain and 120' of 5/8" rode to absorb the surge from the nasty swell.

Now, back to the Sailomat. The line holding one of the Sailomat turning blocks frayed or broke three times during one night and twice on another night. I don't understand why it is fraying, I can't see any place it drags on anything, but it does fray. When the line breaks it allows too much slack in the control lines and the Sailomat just can't keep the boat on course. We then have to hand steer while trying to rerig the pulleys.

There is a lot more load on those pulleys than Sailomat told us there would be. I guess as the boat surges down those 8' waves and then tries to round up and the sailomat puts in 15 degrees of rudder it really loads up the line going thru the pulley. I am going to have to rethink the whole system of attaching the lines from the steering oar to the steering wheel.

Just to confirm that cruising on a boat really means "repairing expensive parts in exotic locations" - here is the project list for the first two days in Cabo:

- Get the refrigerator compressor running again. Turned out that the pencil zinc in the saltwater cooling system for the compressor had turned to paste and blocked the discharge line. Thus the compressor overheated and shut down.

- Install all the new gears in the Autohelm ST6000 Type I Linear Drive unit for the autopilot. Now it works great. The new gears are all stainless or bronze like material, not the cheap nylon that was orginally installed in the unit. Minor glitch occurred when testing the unit. When we pressed the starboard turn button the wheel would go left and vice-versa. I verified that all the red wires were connected to red and black to black. The problem was the course computer has a pair of 12 Volt output plugs marked 1 and 2, not + and -. The red wire belongs in 1, not 2 as a reinstalled it. Obvious? Nothing in the manual says word about it. But then it is a reversing motor so +/- doesn't mean much.

- Try to repair the 12 volt thru deck plug for the towed generator. The plug ends coming from the generator have dissolved away and there is no way to plug them into the thrudeck fitting. I can't find the right parts to fix this problem.

- Replace the battery in the Force 10 stove. I tried to ignore this problem but couldn't because the thermocouple that keeps the propane solenoid at the back of the stove open is powered by the AA battery.

- Try to figure out why the Portabote takes on water while sitting beside Mirador. I can't find any leaks but it appears a gallon per hour finds it's way into the Portabote.

We've visited Cabo twice and find it as Charlie's Charts describes it - "the Coney Island of Baja" It is just a big tourist trap with very high prices and way too many street vendors.

We've been waiting for a weather break to head off to La Paz. There is still a north and northeast wind blowing in the south Sea of Cortez and that makes for a miserable trip of 155 NM into the swell and wind, trying to get to La Paz. We hope it will blow out soon so we can get out of this rather uncomfortable anchorage. As of Saturday at 9 AM the Chubasco Net weather experts are predicting moderate North to Northeast winds for several more days. We may be stuck here until mid-week. Oh Well!

Oh Yeah, it has been overcast and has sprinkled or rained each of the three days we have been here so far.