Mary Made It By MichaelSANTA ROSALIA, MEXICO

The girls watching the sun set while
anchored in Santa Rosalia's tiny harbor,
a couple weeks before the storm.
"Frances!"
"Yeah?"
"Feet off the moon!"

As we waited anxiously for the hurricane to reach us, we heard reports on the Sonrisa SSB net, reports of destruction and of missing boats and people in Baja cities and towns that we’ve come to know and love. Then we heard about Mary, a 70-something singlehander on a Pearson Triton 28 named Iver. People reported seeing her before the storm, but nobody knew where she’d holed up and whether she was okay. Every morning people requested news and information about Mary.

Then, maybe two or three days after the storm, a boat reported VHF radio contact with her. She was okay, in a desolate anchorage called Trinidad, between Santa Rosalia and Punta San Francisquito . But Mary was stranded, her boat washed ashore, wrecked and dismasted. The person who contacted Mary reported that she didn’t want to leave her boat, it was her home. She still had hope that she could be pulled off and asked the boat to get a request for help to a port captain down south or to the Mexican Navy.

On Monday the 22^nd, after we were able to buy fuel and get water in Bahia de Los Angeles, we headed south, with plans to stop and check in on Mary. En route, we got word that Alex and Sue on Maitairoa were also headed south, a day behind us. They planned to stop in Trinidad at dawn and to offer to take Mary and her things to Santa Rosalia. Mary would have to be willing to abandon her boat.

Late in the afternoon on Tuesday the 23^rd, Mary hailed us from shore on channel 16, just after we’d spotted Iver on the beach. She sounded very happy to see and hear from us. I told her we’d be ashore shortly to introduce ourselves. I told her Maitairoa was on the way and of their plans to arrive the next morning. She was surprised and relieved. She now regarded her boat a total loss and was eager to be rescued.

Ashore, she greeted us warmly. She’d been alone on the beach with her cat, Banderas, for seven nights and eight days. But she effused about the beauty of the place. She said she had plenty of food and water and wasn’t scared, not even during the height of the maelstrom. She pointed to the top of a nearby dune, “I hauled nine gallons of water and some food up there, see it? It occurred to me on the second day or so that if some more bad weather comes, it could take the boat and then I’d have nothing.”

The sun was setting and I invited her back to Del Viento for dinner. “You could even sleep aboard if you’d be more comfortable, you’re absolutely welcome.”

But she politely declined. She was more comfortable aboard and she usually went to sleep at dark. I realized she had no idea of the destruction and loss of boats and life down south. I filled her in and she was aghast, she'd assumed her boat was the only casualty of the storm. She asked me for a hug.

--MR

 

The girls scouting for Mary's boat on a
windless passage en route.

 

The girls and I motored ashore just as the sun was setting,
Iver on the beach ahead.

The girls with Mary. The 50-plus year-old boat
doesn't look too badly damaged in this pic, but her
time is up. Toe rail and hull-deck joint destroyed
at port bow, stanchions ripped out, rudder and stock
destroyed, dismasted. With all of her keel buried
in the sand, the expense of hauling her off from this
remote, distant anchorage to tow and repair just
doesn't make sense.

Windy talking to Mary the next morning. We removed
all her things that day. The yellow box on the stern is
her sewing machine.

The Fortunate 13 By MichaelBAHIA DE LOS ANGELES, MEXICO

I wrote the following three days ago. We anchored off the village in Bahia de Los Angeles yesterday afternoon. I’m posting this today (Sunday) from an internet café. We plan to leave here soon to explore a bit south.

This old wreck is on the shore of our
hurricane hole.

This is our account of how we heard about and responded to hurricane Odile. It struck Cabo San Lucas at the tip of the Baja peninsula at 2:00 a.m. on Monday, September 15. Today, September 18, Del Viento and crew are anchored with 12 other cruising boats in Puerto Don Juan, near Bahia de Los Angeles in the northern part of the Sea of Cortez, 450 nautical miles north of Cabo. We’ve been here since the 15^th and have received only snippets of information via our high frequency radio. We are all quite well, but very concerned about the welfare of friends further south.

September 9: From Bahia San Luis Gonzaga (190 nautical miles north of Santa Rosalia), we day sailed offshore and anchored in a cove at the northern end of Isla Angel la Guarda. We bay hopped and explored, enjoying ourselves for the next few days.

September 14: We dropped the hook in an anchorage called Este Ton. There we met a father and son camping on the beach with their kayaks. They’d left Bahia de Los Angeles a few days prior and planned to circumnavigate this large island over the next couple weeks. We hung out for a bit and gave them cold drinks and 20 liters of water. We’d been keeping tabs on a hurricane brewing south, but we’d missed that morning’s 6:30 a.m. weather broadcast. We told the kayakers we’d get them an update before they left the next morning.

September 15: The news was shocking. We learned hurricane Odile had hit Cabo San Lucas a few hours prior with 130 knot winds. We learned it was the most powerful storm to hit the Cape since 1969. We heard it was a large storm. It was coming our way. We passed this weather info on to the kayakers (they had no communication devices that we know of) and raised anchor and headed straight for Puerto Don Juan, a hurricane hole on the peninsula, just south of Bahia de Los Angeles, and less than three hours away under power. (A hurricane hole is a place that is widely regarded as a good place to weather a severe storm, generally because of natural geographic features that offer protection from stormy seas and wind.) There were already eleven boats here when we arrived (one more sailed in a few hours after us). We said hello to our friends aboard Maitairoa and then found a spot to anchor.

We dropped and set our 66-pound Bruce anchor on 300-plus feet of 3/8-inch chain in 45 feet of water. We hitched a length of ½-inch 3-strand line to a bridle to serve as our primary snubber and then, after leaving a bit of slack in the chain, secured a second bridle of 5/8-inch three-strand to serve as a back-up, emergency snubber. We attached rode to our second anchor (a 55-pound Delta) and flaked the chain on deck, ready to deploy in an instant. We re-furled our headsail and made sure there was plenty of sheet wrapped around it. We put the mainsail cover on and then over-wrapped it with a spare halyard. We wrapped duct tape around our leaking mast deck collar and unzipped the center panel of our isinglass dodger. We double-secured everything that would remain on deck and cleared everything that wouldn’t. We checked and re-checked everything. Down below, the girls got started on a 1000-piece puzzle of a map of Disneyland.

That afternoon, the 20 knots of wind we experienced during our crossing from Isla Angel la Guarda disappeared. It was eerily still. That night, the wind picked up a bit, gusting 15-20 knots before holding steady in the high teens. Neither Windy nor I slept well.

September 16: Windy rose at 6:00 a.m to be sure to catch the weather report on the high-frequency, short-wave radio. The wind was blowing, now strong. It surprised her when she looked out because Del Viento was buttoned up against the rain and very cozy below. The guy who normally does the weather is named Gary, located in Bahia Concepcion, 230 nautical miles south of us. He was silent. Another guy, Bob, in Arizona, reported the weather. Other sailors who checked into the net shared information from their locations. Everything sounded dire. Many, many boats were reported to have sunk or washed ashore in La Paz. There was a list of people missing. One name we recognized was of our friend, Gunther, a singlehander aboard Princess. Straining to hear faint, scratchy transmissions, we learned that one of the two tiny marinas in Santa Rosalia was destroyed and three boats were washed ashore. We learned that the other (FONATUR) marina was damaged and that many of the boats there were damaged, but that all the people aboard all the boats there were fine.

We learned that the hurricane was scheduled to peak for us later this day. It was already gusting close to 50 knots. In the afternoon, a boat near us, Dream Catcher (Eureka, CA), began dragging. We watched, fascinated and concerned, as they reset their hook (two large anchors in tandem) in winds that blew so strong the rain hurt our skin. It was a challenging operation for them. It could have been any of us that dragged, we were glad it wasn’t us. We hoped this wasn’t the beginning of all hell breaking loose.

In the late afternoon, the sky began to lighten in the west and it seemed a dark mass of clouds was moving just east of us. The wind had settled back down to 20 knots. It looked like the worst may have passed. It turned out it had. We slept very soundly that night.

September 17: On the morning radio, we learned only a little more about conditions along the Baja. We learned that perhaps an additional 20 boats were lost in La Paz. These were boats stored on the hard near Marina Palmira, all knocked over like dominos, apparently. We fear that our friends’ boat, Willful Simplicity, is among them. We learned that our friends aboard Manakai are safe in Santa Rosalia, but that their boat is damaged to some extent. We used the day to dry out. During the latter half of the storm, we’d opened up a deck plate and successfully diverted about 30 gallons of water into our tank. This will prove valuable as water (among other things) may be in short supply along the peninsula. We are in conservation mode. Concerned about our families worrying about us, we managed to get a health and welfare email sent to two addresses via another boat’s (Ceilidh) short wave radio. We know that at least one was received, so hopefully that news will spread. It may be a while before we have internet access (and therefore before I can post this report). We launched the dinghy and met some of our dozen neighbors in person and explored ashore a bit. The girls (with help) finished the Disneyland puzzle.

September 18: We learned on the radio this morning that Gunther’s body had been found in La Paz, his boat sunk. We shared the news with the girls, lots of tears. He was old. The girls adored him and his tiny dog, Fritz. Everyone here in the anchorage knows Gunther and there is lots of sorrow. We lowered our Mexican courtesy flag to half-mast and others followed suit. There is still one cruiser missing in La Paz. We’re worried about our close friends who live on the Magote. They live in a concrete house and have lots of food and water stocked up, but they may have lost all transportation off the Magote as well as their infrastructure, including the desalination plant that supplies water to that community. We’re worried about the welfare of our other friends on the Magote and of our friends who live in the city. We heard there is looting and rioting in Cabo and that the airport is destroyed, whatever that means. We have no means of reaching anyone, yet. Though we got through this unscathed, and we have power and food and water and shelter, we are a very small island with scant information coming in. It is a blue-sky day and our setting is peaceful and beautiful, terribly incongruous with what we’ve been hearing.

We plan to stay here for the next couple days, at least. There is another hurricane (Polo), but the projected track doesn’t look as threatening. All of our fresh food is gone and we only have about 10 gallons of diesel. Our plan was to refuel in Bahia de Los Angeles, but they still have no power and we learned the road that connects them to Highway 1 is impassable. Hopefully things will change in the next few days.

We also heard that south of Santa Rosalia, Highway 1 is not passable. This is the overland lifeline for the lower part of the peninsula so we hope that is resolved soon. Windy’s mom is scheduled to fly into Loreto on the 29^th of this month. Before making a decision about whether she should cancel that trip, we’re going to wait a few more days to see how quickly things are restored. If things improve even a bit, we may head down to Santa Rosalia so that we may be close enough to bus down to meet her in Loreto and then make our way back north to the boat—assuming that becomes feasible and we are able to confirm that it is.

A Mexican military helicopter just flew low over the anchorage. Our hearts go out to everyone who suffered in this disaster. Following is a list of the 13 boats that weathered this storm in Bahia de Los Angeles (Puerto Don Juan), September 15-18:

Audacious (formerly Shamu)

Ceilidh
Del Viento
Dream Catcher (Eureka, CA)
Dream Ketcher (Tucson, AZ)
Harmony
Interabang
Jade Purl
Lunasea
Maitairoa
Sea Note
Swan
Take Five

--MR

A post-hurricane raft-up of the boats that weathered
the storm together, really nice folks.

 

The girls' puzzle, done.

This is just one small wash-out of several in
Bahia de Los Angeles. Lots of rain and mud
was the biggest problem there. People were
rescued from rooftops, but nobody died.

Our Underwater World By MichaelBAHIA SAN LUIS GONZAGA, MEXICO

The first day we used the camera case,
we jumped in the water at Los Islotes,
small islands that comprise a sea lion rookery
near La Paz. This bull swam right up to me,
but he didn't bark or anything, I think he was
simply curious.

We used to have an underwater point and shoot camera, an Olympus Stylus that flooded in a Costa Rican water park a few years before we went cruising. It never took good pictures before the flooding. It left me underwater camera leery.

But now that we’re in the Sea, snorkeling all the time, it killed me that I wasn’t documenting any of it. So when Windy was in D.C. a few weeks back, I got on eBay and found a used $100 Ikelite underwater housing that fits her $100 Canon point and shoot. I didn’t spend too much and I wondered what I would get, picture wise. They say disappointment is a product of expectations. I don’t think I’d be disappointed even if I’d expected much more than I did. I leave you with some of our recent photos.

 

And if you want to see really nice photos of underwater life, check out those taken by Andy, a cruiser and professional underwater photographer aboard s/v Savannah. They're in Borneo now.

--MR

 

 

 

 

 

Windy at Los Islotes.

Frances beneath me at Islotes.

Snorkeling around Roca Solataria, near Agua Verde, this
moray eel emerged just as I was passing over. We surprised
each other and my heart raced as I snapped pics and tried to
slowly back away from him, all the while hoping he
wouldn't strike me.

Frances, Windy, and Eleanor--my snorkeling companions.

We got buzzed a lot at Los Islotes, especially from younger sea lions.

This harem was just hanging out, I steered around them.

Isn't this fanciful? All those tiny air bubbles sparkled in the sunlight.

Haven't identified this guy yet.

Embarrassed to say I haven't identified many of them yet.
She is about a foot long.

I coaxed this urchin into remaining still long enough
for me to snap this picture.

Eleanor with a big sea star.

Sargent majors are probably the second-most common
fish we see in the Sea. They range in size from less
than an inch to about eight inches and always
swim in groups.

Hard to photograph, but the outline on these big fish
is an iridescent blue.

I snuck up on this orange urchin.

I call this the ghost fish.

We see all kinds and sizes of brilliant sea stars.

Each of these angel fish is over a foot long.

 

I like urchins.

Eleanor holding a long-expired urchin. These delicate
remnants are all over the beaches.

Eleanor diving down to look at something.

This is an un-puffed puffer fish, by far the fish we see the
most of here in the Sea. The girls love them.

Eleanor took this picture of this crazy beautiful thing.

The girls snorkeling ahead of me in Pyramid Cove
on Isla Danzante.

Eleanor's self-portrait.

 

Big Fish By MichaelISLA SAN MARCOS, MEXICO

Our dinghy on an Isla Espiritu Santos
beach at sunset.

A couple months ago, motoring into La Paz from a trip up north, Windy pulled the throttle back. “What is that?”

I stared ahead, seeing what she was seeing, but unsure, “Rays?”

“I think so. I think those are mantas, big mantas. Oh my god.”

We see rays all the time in the Sea. We see round stingrays on the bottom while diving our anchor and spotted eagle rays sometimes swim by us while we snorkel. Underway, we see the larger mobula rays, black and white and the size of trash can lids. They are especially fun to watch as they leap and flip five feet out of the water, flapping furiously as if in a bid to join the birds above. But none of these rays we see are mantas, the giant, majestic rays of the Sea that can develop wingspans up to 18 feet across.

I took the helm and Windy ran forward to get a better view. “Girls! Come look!”

Then she yelled aft from the bow, “Whale sharks!”

And there were whale sharks too, the creature countless tour boats zip out to see and which we’d tried to do ourselves, but had failed in our anemic dinghy*. Now, they were here, all around us, at least four of them, swimming with mantas.

Eleanor was frantic. “PleasecanIjumpin! PleasePleasePlease!”

Though it usually takes the girl twenty minutes to put a life vest and her shoes on when we’re heading ashore, in about three seconds she’d stripped down, donned her suit and vest and was standing on the edge of the rail. “Now?! Now?!”

“It’s a shark you know, a big one.”

“Daaad.”

Whale sharks are sharks, but more like whales or mantas in that they filter feed. But they do have a shark profile and they’re big—the largest living fish (some grow to more than 40 feet long and weigh more than Del Viento).

Here, surrounding us and swimming close, were juvenile-sized rays and sharks. The rays had a wingspan that looked about 10 feet and the sharks were about 20- to 25-feet long. I was impressed that Eleanor was eager to jump in alone.

“Alright, now.”

And off she went, into the water less than ten feet from a shark that swam near. Windy jumped in after her and they delighted in watching the huge, gentle giants swimming at the surface near them. After about ten minutes, Frances was chomping at the bit and she and Eleanor traded places.

These are the episodes I love most about cruising, the encounters and situations that come out of the blue when we least expect them. It’s the same in a conventional life, but here the serendipitous events seem to happen with greater frequency and in ways they never could back home. Too, they’re not always positive (gales and rough seas and breakdowns come to mind), but no matter because in their whole, the good and the bad that happen out here invigorate our life with a dynamic richness that leaves all of us wanting it never to end.

--MR

* Don’t get me wrong, love our dinghy, wouldn’t trade the Portland Pudgy for another, but fast she will never be.

 

Sadly, this was the best picture I could get from this
episode. This is a whale shark with his mouth
parted, swimming towards us. They live to be
over 100 years old.

 

 

Frances standing eagerly at the bow while a shark
swims by. That's his dorsal fin sticking out of the
water and his tail smacked our hull a few seconds later.

Right after Eleanor jumped in. The shark is the dark
shadow, just in front of her, stretching from the
upper left corner of the picture towards her.
She and Frances and Windy all had much closer
encounters, but I never got a shot off.

So this is the best pic we have, hundreds of miles
north in Loreto, Frances standing next to a whale
shark sculpture.