The Stats

I guess the big news is that we have officially made it to Cabo San Lucas and have completed our trek down Mexico's Baja Peninsula. The majority of sailors who tackle this coast do the trip in 7-10 days, making one or two big hops down the coast. It took us 6 weeks because we stopped at nearly every place possible. But because of either weather or swell, we unfortunately had to skip a few places that we had hoped to stop at along the way. Oh well, we put in a pretty good effort to see everything, but everything just isn't possible.

I've been trying to piece together what I think about making it to Cabo. Part of me feels like it's a big accomplishment for us to get all the way here from Seattle, but a bigger part of me feels a bit disappointed. Not disappointed in any way with our time in Mexico, but disappointed that the Pacific side of the Baja is now behind us. I don't think I'm quite ready for it to end. We have thoroughly enjoyed our time working our way down the coast. We loved the rugged beauty of the coastline, the dusty little remote villages, and the friendly people we have met along the way.

Sometimes this blog is easy for me to write. Sometimes, not so much. For the past 6 weeks, the not so much part has been winning. It's not because I don't have things to share with you, but more than anything, we have too much to be able to cram it into little bits of rambling. How am I supposed to pick and choose which amazing experiences to tell you about when just about everything has been great?

Since I am a person who loves random stats and useless information, I've decided the best way to sum up our past 6 weeks of Mexican sailing would be to put together a list of some of those useless bits of info of our trip from the Mexican border to Cabo. Without further ado, here's the list:

834 miles covered zig-zagging our way down the Baja coast
129 hours of sailing
34 hours of motoring (mostly in and out of anchorages)
5.1 knots average speed (I don't know if you've seen it, but we have a racing stripe...it's green)
10.4 knots is the highest speed we saw surfing down the face of a huge wave
42 knots is the highest wind speed we saw
4 nights tied to a dock (in Ensenada)
50 nights spent at anchor
4 nights at sea
1 bribe asked for while checking out of Ensenada
0 bribes paid
1,255 tacos eaten (mostly by me)
1 Wahoo caught and eaten (65 pounds of fish is hard to consume, we gave away most of it)
44 Bonito caught (1 eaten, the rest thrown back. They aren't bad, but also not great)
14 Skipjack caught and thrown back
18 Mackerel caught and thrown back
0 tuna caught...Brenda is getting very upset about it
4 huge sharks caught that luckily broke the line (I didn't want to have to try to get the hook out of them)
1 day of rain (actually about 12 seconds of drizzle)
80 degrees is the average daily temperature
78 degrees is the water temperature under our boat right now
8 times I've failed miserably while attempting to speak Spanish
12 times I've thought I did pretty good (even though I probably sounded like I was speaking Russian)
8 boats in our flotilla that we are currently traveling with (all are incredibly great peeps)
4 days spent surfing
4 lobster consumed by us
4 days spent snorkeling
4,880 dolphin sightings (approximate) Dolphins surfing our bow wave are a daily occurrence
0 times we've gotten tired of seeing dolphins surfing our bow wave
5 feet is the closest we've gotten to a whale. He surfaced so close to the boat that I could have stepped off of our boat directly onto his back and went for a ride...pretty awesome (and sort of scary)!
1 time stopped by the police (he was excited we were visiting his tiny town and wanted to take us to dinner)
1 amazing drink discovered...limonada...it's delicious and refreshing
2 parades we've happened upon (both religious celebrations)
1 panga ride from a bandito
1 circus watched
3 peaks climbed
6 weeks without reliable internet access
8 incredible beaches we've had all to ourselves
2 lobster pots hit while sailing (luckily they didn't get wrapped around anything)
1 floating island of seaweed and garbage we hit at night
1 time underneath the boat cutting away seaweed and garbage from the prop
0 times we've wished we were somewhere else

Just some dolphins hanging around the boat.  Photo taken with our new dolphin-cam (gopro taped to a stick).
Rounding into Cabo at midnight.
Brenda and our good friend Jen from S/V Full Monty having a fish spa day.
Sunset in Cabo






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Double Birthday and the Italian Connection

Image
There is an interesting thing that happens on this side of the world. When we left Seattle, we crossed the international date line which puts us one whole day ahead of where we came from. Basically, we lost a day. Because we lost a day, Brenda turned the ripe old age of 40 one day sooner than she would have if we were in Seattle. On September the 12 th in Vanuatu, we got to celebrate her big day. But since she says her home is in Seattle, we also got to celebrate her 40 th birthday when September 12 th happened on that side of the world. Basically, she got the longest birthday known to mankind...2 big days long. There is another interesting thing that happens when you are cruising the world on a sailboat. You run into other cruisers that come from all parts of the world and all backgrounds. Where we are currently moored on Aore Island in Vanuatu, there are 4 boats that are from 4 different countries. It's an international coalition. Our newest neighbors jus...
Read more

The Garnet Ghost Town

Image
For years before we left, I had always told people that we were going to sail around the world. Now that we've been out for a few years, I still tell people the same thing. It's a concept that makes sense to the average Joe – a circle around the globe. A start and an end. One complete lap. When a random stranger we meet on the road asks what we are doing, I still answer with, “we are sailing around the world.” But that explanation is and has always been just a quick way to put into words a concept that still doesn't make sense to most people. Because in reality, we aren't going to sail around the world. One big lap of the globe doesn't really have any appeal to us. Although we aren't realistically going to make a big giant loop – with a beginning and an end – we are doing our best to see the world, and we'll be doing it for as long as it takes. So, I think the proper way to explain what we are doing, is to just say that we are out here to see the ...
Read more

A Crossroads

Image
There comes a time in every sailor's life when some hard decisions have to be made. We are at that point. We are currently in a little town on the Baja called Santa Rosalia. It's amazingly different than any other place we've seen so far in Mexico, and after 9 months in the country, we've seen a lot of places. Santa Rosalia is a mining town. Copper was discovered here in the 1860's, and after a few change of hands and some tax breaks and incentives, a French company took over the mines and the town took off. They imported wood from Oregon and Canada, and with that wood, they did something that we haven't seen anywhere else in Mexico. They built stuff...using wood. Nearly everything in Mexico is built from concrete, steel, and cinder blocks, so, without having to use too much brainpower, it's pretty easy to see that this place is different. No hard math or powers of deduction are needed - it's staring us right in the face in the f...
Read more