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| Note the yellow flag, was red the day before. This picture added later when we had internet access. |
Monday morning I paid for our extra night at the dock and we said our farewells. We eased Traveler out of the slip and slowly motored through the narrow canal towards the harbor entrance. Passing El Cid, we saw the yellow flag on its staff. The Port Captain had the breakwater entrance open. The dredge had moved into the center of the channel so we squeezed by it slowly and carefully. Connie was on the bow for a better perspective. The operator on the dredge motioned to her that we should veer to starboard as it is quite shallow on the port side of the dog-leg channel. We turned sharply across the channel to position ourselves to run the entrance. I could now see the rollers coming in, still quite high.
We got her lined up and increased the throttle just as one of the rollers broke just 50 feet ahead of us. We've got breaking seas again.!
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| Doesn't look like much here but it was quite rough getting out past the breakwater entrance. |
Traveler punched her way through a four foot swell. The next swell was a breaking wave that broke over her foredeck, cascading water down both side decks. Connie hung on to the shrouds and got her feet soaked as Traveler muscled her way out through the entrance. Depth gage down to 12 ft then up to 15 and 20 and we were in the big blue. I peeled my hands off the wheel and set the autopilot to head us north.
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| Wind from the west. |
After looking at the various wind prediction models on the internet I decided we needed to get some "northing" as the wind was coming directly from the west. A few hours later we raised both sails and took off on a starboard tack heading roughly southwest, beating as high as we could get. Soon we crossed the rhumb line course I'd set from Mazatlan to San Jose del Cabo. The seas were quite choppy with multiple wave trains coming from northwest and south. Four hours later we tacked north again and held that close hauled course for another four hours, crossing our rhumb line once again. I sure hoped the wind would veer. Tacking our way all the way to Cabo would cost us an extra day.
The next time we tacked we made better westing as the wind was starting to clock around more to the northwest, but still we were loosing latitude. We continued on into the night through lumpy seas. Sleep was difficult, illusive. At 04:00 AM the wind dropped completely but not the seas so we motored northwest to try to get back on our rhumb line. Later that morning the anticipated northwest wind came up and now halfway across the Sea of Cortez we finally were able to sail in the direction we wanted. The further west we got, the easier the seas became until we were able to get some uninterrupted sleep. When the seas are rough you might catch a few minutes of sleep but when the boat crashes into a wave or falls off a wave it wakes you up. By this second day we were both pretty sleep deprived. Swapping naps, we sailed west, sighting land just before sunset. Off to our northwest we could just make out Cabo Los Frailes in the setting sun.
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| You can see how the wind finally veered to the northwest. |
We sailed through the night, taking shifts: Connie, sundown to 21:00; Scott, 21:00 to 24:00; Connie, midnight to 04:00; Scott 04:00 to landfall at 09:00. On Connie's first shift we had to roll in the genoa and hot-foot it out of the way of a big cruise ship bearing down on us.
Morning found us approaching the breakwater off the marina entrance in San Jose del Cabo. The crossing took us just about 48 hours. Long naps ensued.
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| This is the wind prediction off the cape for Saturday when we plan on making our exit. |
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