Small Hopes

We’ve been cruising down the outside of the Baja via Vizcaíno Bay; a stretch of water whose reputation precedes it. Local winds higher than predicted? Check. Local winds lower than predicted? Check. Seas rougher than we thought they would be? Double check. Anchorages that offer little protection from the prevailing NW winds and seas? Not so fast.

While this stretch of coast is also known as the coast of ‘little hopes’; referencing the many small bites in the land that can barely be referenced as ‘anchorages’, our experience has been that, at least during this trip, we have found not only good holding, but also mostly a good night’s sleep. The only thing small about the hopes along this coastline have been the hopes that we would ever get to go to shore and explore the myriads of beautiful beaches and their accompanying rock formations. Those hopes were small because the rompientes, a Spanish word which means breaking surf, was muy grande in each and every anchorage. I mean, we know we are on the coast of the wild ocean but at some point we hoped for at least a large enough rock along the shore that we could scoot behind to land Sea Pony, our trusty True Kit dinghy.

View from the boat. San Carlos anchorage. Beach landing, anyone? Hard pass.

After reaching Isla San Jeronimo and being turned away from shore by the workers on the island, who explained that the island was protected and we could not land and walk around (Huge disappointment. Not small.) I found myself becoming hopeful for a miracle of beach combing at each additional stop, only for my hopes and dreams to be dashed expertly by the desire to stay alive for one more day. It’s not that the dinghy cannot handle a surf landing. It’s that I probably can’t, at least not with a heavy engine on the back of the little boat. If the water were only 10 degrees warmer I would willingly swim to shore and feel safer. But out here where we are literally the only cruising boat and we have no one to help us if we get ourselves in trouble; we just can’t risk it. Even for interesting rocks.

So this begs the question: how did we find ourselves here on this wild coast and not doing the route most people take, which is an overnight sail to Isla Cedros from points north, skipping this entire area altogether?  I’d like to say it’s because the Galapagos crew likes a challenge. Or that following the guide book is just not our style. I mean, last time we sailed down here, we skipped this part altogether by diverting to Isla Guadeloupe in search of more elephant seals. Alas. The real answer is much more mundane than that. It began with what can only be termed complacency. Every sailor knows that complacency is the enemy. And yet we all get used to living this way and even old salts like us forget to ask ourselves ‘What are we overlooking today? What decisions could we be making that would make our lives easier, not harder?”. One small decision. And then the rest kind of falls into place.

Unforgiving, but so beautiful.

That decision we made was, by default, to hoist the dinghy up behind the boat on its davits and tie it securely. After all, we are ‘coastal cruising’, right? We are not doing any offshore passages. If you were to ask us, “Team Galapagos, would you ever, in your wildest dreams consider towing a dinghy on an offshore passage, or even leaving it on the davits on the stern of the boat?” we would have been absolutely insulted by the question. The implications of that question would have had a profound effect on our feelings of self esteem; that you thought we were somehow stupid or prone to just in general being yahoos. And yet, here we are. Feeling like chumps.

The winds at Isla San Jeronimo were light on the morning in question. We left with a blue sky and a song in our hearts, having decided to do the dreaded overnight to Isla Cedros, dinghy hanging smartly on the back of the boat. I was not excited about this upcoming passage because I hate overnights of a single night. They drag on, the moon was a crescent so it wouldn’t shed much light, and no one gets sleep. The next day feels a lot like jet lag.

We never even got to go ashore here. Isla San Jeronimo. So disappointed.

But we were committed as we set a course for well outside the horrible, terrible, very bad and dangerous Sacramento Reef, completely ignoring the fact that this passage was, by definition, an offshore passage across 55 miles or so of open water. By the time the island was behind us, the winds had begun to be reasonable for sailing and we put out the headsail, going downwind at a nice clip. All was well until the following seas got bigger. And then even bigger. And experienced offshore sailors know what we began to fear. They intuitively understand the locked-jawed look my dear husband was sporting right about then.

That’s right. Looking behind us as wave after wave bore down on our unprotected and vulnerable Sea Pony, we saw the bottom of her inflatable tubes begin to skim the water as swells rose up underneath her. Our stress levels began to rise. My teeth began to clinch. At that point we knew: we had made a critical error. We had been in ‘default’ mode and things were absolutely no bueno. If the dinghy took a breaking wave, it could be ripped off the davits. It could, at the very least, cause damage to the dinghy and to Galapagos. Even the sailing wasn’t fun as the waves had started breaking behind us and the interval between waves was short.

Mr. Handsome at Isla San Jeronimo

Even on a good day, it would have been a challenge to sail in those conditions in the direction we were going. The old fun/suck ratio began to swing alarmingly into the ‘this sucks’ realm. We absolutely live to check the weather and usually what we see on the ground, as it were, jives with the forecasts. Somehow, though, this caught us off guard. Were the waves supposed to be this steep? Was the interval supposed to be this short? As a rule we would whip out our phones or the tablet and check the weather again, but what is the use?  Here we were. I imagine that the sea floor topography in this area makes predicting things like wave patterns more challenging. This direction we were heading was going to cause all kinds of grief.

So we stopped going in that direction. Checking the chart I saw that one of our ‘bailout locations’ was available to us.  Since we were past the reef, we could turn to port, get the wind and swells on our aft quarter instead of right behind us, and find anchorage and peace of mind around Punta San Carlos. Now, to be fair to us, we generally have multiple plans so that if something happens we have a backup idea of what to do. Setting this different course allowed the boat to sail better and more comfortably, which relieved some stress. The seas were still of concern but we were sailing fast enough to just barely stay ahead of the breaking waves (and only every few sets did they break on this trajectory) and as long as I didn’t keep my eyes glued to the dinghy I could contain my anxiety about it.  We saw winds as high as 30 knots but, of course, Galapagos loves that. It’s just her owners who prefer tamer conditions. The anchorage was about 10 miles away, so it would take a little over an hour to get there.

Rounding the low point at the head of the San Carlos anchorage, there were sighs of relief all around as we furled in the headsail and motored slowly into the shallower water to drop the hook, well in the lee of the land. We found 10 feet of water under the keel and dropped 100 feet of chain, plus an extra 30 feet with the anchor snubber, just for good measure. Based on the reviews of the anchorage Michael had read, and the guidebooks we had, we didn’t expect to have the peaceful night that awaited us.

Feeling happy to be out of those conditions.

Honestly, I’m not sure what people expect in an anchorage off this coast in order for it to be given some kind of a gold star in the guidebooks. “Small hope”, indeed. It’s the Pacific freaking ocean. Yes, there will be swells. Sometimes pretty big ones. There might even be wind, especially in the afternoon! It’s possible that you will have some rolling of the boat overnight, so it’s ok to expect that. Considering that we came into this anchorage running from winds gusting to 30 knots and following seas big enough they were cresting way too close for comfort, I’m not sure how much worse it needs to be for this to be considered a great anchorage. All I know is that Michael’s worry about whether we were going to be ‘disappointed’ in this anchorage turned pretty fast to a real sense of relief as the anchor bit deep into the sand,  we deployed the trusty Magma swell reducer, and then settled in for a peaceful night’s sleep.

The following day we put the dinghy in the water and drove around for a bit, hoping for a safe landing somewhere but it was not to be. And a good thing, too. Even if we had been able to land safely, I doubt we would have been able to get off the shore again until the winds died down at night. Just say ‘no thanks’ to crashing surf. Back at the big boat,  dinghy tied down on the deck, I decided I like it this way. It makes a great place to ride the bow.  Can’t say we don’t learn from our mistakes.

My new ride.

In all we have stopped at three anchorages along this coast of small hopes. Punta Blanca offered excellent holding and beautiful scenery in exchange for some rolling around. The swells can be big, so anchor well out from shore and put out a lot of chain. Currently sitting in Santa Rosalillita, I think this is the worst of the three. The marked anchorage is close to the town, but we found that the swells and breaking waves were too sporty for comfort there, especially since the water was fairly shallow. We found it to be better in about 30 feet of water, at the SE edge of town, close to where the camper vans park. Out here the swells can ride under us and it’s quite comfortable even though the boat rises and falls remarkably, adding sometimes 6 feet to the depth here.  (I am reminded of the anchorage is Isla San Benedicto, well offshore from mainland Mexico, where the swells added 15 feet to our depth each time we rode up and over one. These are not quite that bad.) We’re also far enough,, about half a mile,  from the thundering surf that it doesn’t ramp up our nervous systems hearing that constant roar.

This is our setup for the swell reducer. It hangs off the end of the boom and we use a preventer to pull the boom out from the hull. We can get it set up in less than 10 minutes.Wish we had two of them.

Do plan to enter these anchorages with plenty of daylight on your side. Not only are most of the charts for this area way off, sometimes dangerously so, but fishermen leave floats in the bays and good luck seeing them, even in broad daylight. At night you would be at their mercy.

And speaking of fishing floats, if you decide to follow in our wake, a reminder that fishermen do frequent these waters close in to shore, and, just like the crab pots back in our home waters, you’ll find floats marking the spots where traps or even long lines have been left behind.  And just like back home, it’s not the floats that you FIND that cause a problem. It’s the ones you don’t find, usually because either you are not looking, or because they are black and blend in with the sea in a strangely uncanny way (Black? Really?? Why??), or because they are actually just underneath the surface of the water and you can’t see them until they find your hull. And that’s how we picked up this bad boy in about 120 feet of water, on our way out to deeper parts.

A slimy heavy line. Yuck. We got really lucky with how this turned out.

It was unfortunate that we happened to be motoring at the time. But Michael was instantly at the helm and throwing the engine in neutral. The sound of something scraping the underside of your hull is straight up a sickening sound. There was almost no wind, but there are always swells around here. With no dinghy on the back of the boat (yay, we’re smart again!) we could clearly see that now we were trailing a line. That’s not really something anyone wants to see. Was it just caught? Was it wrapped? Would Michael have to get in the water? Because that is a dangerous proposition out here. And yes, it would have to be Michael because this maneuver would require strength I just do not have. The water is cold, and we have a big steel swim step that rises and falls with the swells. You do not want to be underneath that thing when it comes down. Whatever we could do to keep him out of the water would be the best thing. Still, he put on the offshore life vest (in case he fell), tethered himself to the pad eye on the back of the boat (installed for exactly this scenario), and stepped onto the swim step, wrapping a leg around the ladder for stability.

I handed him the boat hook, hoping he could hook the offending line and pull it up. Through a massive show of manly strength where in I swear I saw weasels rip his very flesh, he got the slimy thing up and I held it with the hook while he managed to get it around a hard point on the boat to keep it from sliding back into the water. All without losing a limb or even a finger, although he did get a few dunkings in the cold ocean. Handy knife at the ready he cut the offending line free of whatever evil it was attached to and it receded into the deep like a kraken.

This magazine cover is a favorite.

In the past, when we have been unlucky enough to grab something on the prop, we have been able to get it off by putting the engine in reverse in short bursts. Would it work this time? It did! Two very quick bursts of engine reverse and Michael was able to pull the line free. No harm, no foul. No pun intended. (Those of you who have room for a line cutter on your shaft should consider yourselves lucky. We have zero room for anything like that but sure wish we did.)

Crisis averted this time, we made a hard right and scurried out to deeper water instead of using the more gradual approach we had been on. Spooked, I stood watch on the bow.

The sun’s going down over the anchorage. Hoping for an easy passage to Isla Cedros tomorrow. We’ll probably be there a few days waiting for the big low north of us to stop throwing huge swells our way. Maybe we can even go ashore. I have a small hope.

S/V Galapagos, standing by on Channels 16 and 22, even though there’s no one else out here to talk to.

First fish of the season and we threw him back. This is either a Bonito or a Black Skip Jack, but either way, we do not care for them.

 

At Risk of Sloth

“What are you doing in that freezer?”, I asked, trying failing to keep my tone neutral.

“I saw you had ice in your drink the other night and I want some ice!”  Michael is rummaging around in the freezer in a way that is setting my teeth on edge since the freezer is packed completely full and only I know how everything fits together in the one square foot of space we have for frozen foods.  I am not amused, although I am not averse to his getting ice for his well-deserved drink. I begin to think about how I can get the ice to be on the top of everything so he won’t have to dig next time. My teeth can’t take the added stress right now.

Cool fountain down on the malecon.

“Well, Mister Man, be sure to put everything back exactly the way you found it because it took me an hour to tetris all that stuff just so into that little munchkin freezer and it was not easy. I had to take out frozen chicken thighs, which I am not even sure how I’m going to use at this point, to make room for all the cheese I’m storing in there. I’m prepared to be off grid here! I’m prepared to have to feed us for months without a decent grocery store! And in spite of how overly prepared I am,  now we have been here at this  (creative swear words here) dock so flipping long that I am beginning to have anxiety about leaving. I tell you I am prepared! All cabinets, the fridge, the freezer..all possible stowage is packed tighter than a church pew on Christmas.  So just get everything back in the freezer the way I had it. K?”

Michael, accustomed as he is to my unfounded anxieties, retorted as his plastic ice cubes clinked noisily into his glass: “Well, we’ll just put your anxieties about leaving along with all the other anxieties we have about life in general right about now. How about that?”.

I guess he’s not wrong. We’re both getting a little antsy here at the dock in Ensenada. It’s been too long since we have anchored this boat. Too long since we have sailed this boat or even motored this boat. We have been here at this dock TOO LONG. When I start knowing my way around town, then we have been in a place too long. The security guard knows me now. Oh, hell no!

This post is going to degrade rapidly into a bit of a ramble, but I won’t even apologize for that.

Honestly, I have just about reached a tipping point with this whole ‘we live here now’ dock living we have been doing since our belated return from the homeland in Washington State; somewhere on or around January 17. This is a weird thing, this tipping point. When we have to be on a dock, at first I feel  like that’s going to be a nice break from the stress of always living at anchor at the whim of mother nature. We can walk into town. Going for groceries is easy. We can buy boat parts we didn’t know we needed. What’s not to like?

But soon I begin to feel like I’m getting ‘soft’; like if I don’t get back out there away from the easy life of land I’m not going to want this life of ease to end. I’m going to start leaning into being lazy. I’m going to be at risk of embracing the sloth. Days and weeks are going to pass with absolutely nothing to show for it.  I’ll end up doing nothing with my life besides watching Instagram videos and sitting on my ass in the evening eating things that are surely shortening my very existence, dreaming of the day I can get back to refinishing furniture in the basement and planting seeds in the land dirt. Maybe I am the only person who feels this way about dock living. Most people seem to love it and it’s fine with them that they don’t have to worry about anchors holding or being on a lee shore.

When I begin to be this accustomed to easy street, I begin to get anxious once again about the day when we have to leave the dock.  I’ll start planning how to get out of the slip and begin looking at tide and current charts well in advance so I have a concrete plan on how we will do this without messing up other boats. Even though we have literally NEVER MESSED UP ANOTHER BOAT when leaving our slip. Literally never. Does this mean I am finished with the cruising life? It does not. What it means is that I don’t have enough to keep my brain occupied in a positive direction so it has begun to entertain itself.   Don’t try to understand me. I’m complicated.

I’d like to say we enjoy seeing these big boys right next to our boat. Alas. They blow black soot all over everything.

Anyway.  We are still in Ensenada at Cruiseport Marina. Why? Because this trip, destination Banderas Bay to an eventual Pacific Crossing, has taken way too long overall and it continues to do so. Let’s recap this trip so far:

Return to land life in Olympia, Washington during covid times. Get jobs. Sell house. Buy different house. Remodel house. Move into house for the briefest of moments in time. Continue working on boat during all of this, including pulling and replacing all chainplates, re-rigging, modifying the settees in the salon, replacing mattresses in aft cabin, among many other expensive and time consuming projects. Prepare to leave the dock in April 2023. Everything is seemingly falling into place until then. Full. Stop.

Our delays begin when, during the final countdown to leaving Olympia aboard our beloved Galapagos,  we are faced with an unplanned remodel of the apartment at our house. We had always planned to remodel that hovel of an apartment SOMEDAY,  after the current renter left. But we didn’t know he was leaving until two weeks before he did. This was a curveball that, while welcome in many ways, would have been better thrown like 3 months before it landed on us. Wait.

That’s only partly true. The delays began when we could not, in a timely way,  get on the schedule of the guy who did our fiberglass work. Those two delays together, the refit and the apartment remodel, started us off in what was a delay that would have a trickle down effect.

It was August 1 before we were able to leave.  Our plans for Alaska were cancelled once again; our plans to circumnavigate Vancouver Island gone, once again.  Between one thing and another it took us way too long to get the heck out of the Pacific Northwest. By June we had planned to be sailing down the coast. Once we made the big left turn outside of Neah Bay it was already September. And it took even longer than we could have foretold to make it down to southern California. Leaving in this late, we chose to stick close to the coast rather than sail offshore and risk being in one gale after another.  While it seemed like our weather window was a good one, it turned out that we either had zero wind with sloppy and uncomfortable seas or gales. So we spent a lot of time gnashing our teeth tied to a dock or at anchor somewhere waiting for weather systems to pass. So one thing leads to another.  This, we know.

Still, no sense getting down into Mexico before November  (due to hurricane season and all) so we spent time in the Channel Islands, which is always a good idea. Honestly, this was the best, most enjoyable part of the entire trip so far.  By the time we got to San Diego, it was clear our batteries were dying so we had to replace those. Another delay. If I didn’t know that this is sometimes how it goes, I’d think someone ‘up there’ had something against us.

We were honestly sad to leave the Channel Islands. We could easily have spent a much longer time there.

And let’s not forget that when we finally did leave San Diego, we ran afoul of some kelp in the channel that actually wrapped itself around our prop, leading us to call it quits and go back to the anchorage for another night. That was not a long delay, but it did just feel like more of the same. By the time we got to Ensenada, it was time to go home for the holidays. I guess we could have skipped that and gone directly to La Cruz, but it’s a good thing we didn’t.  Family issues back home meant we had to reschedule our flight back and didn’t get back to Mexico until the middle of January.

Back in Mexico, we didn’t want to leave Ensenada until I had been able to get an overdue physical exam (so much easier to schedule that here, and cheaper, too), had my teeth cleaned, and had a couple of retainers made for my teeth since apparently I tend to gnash them on the regular. This had always been part of the plan. Those are checked off the list, finally. (An hour consultation with an Internal Medicine doctor for $58. Complete lab profile, including test for parasites and checking electrolyte levels for 60$. That’s 6 pages of lab results. Teeth cleaned for $50. Two retainers for 150$. Thanks, Mexico.)

Walking down the tourist district. This little girl is learning how to charm the potential buyers!

While I was busy with medical and dental, and catching up with clients, Michael needed to fix the outboard engine that seemed to hate going at low speeds. It expressed its disdain by misfiring and sometimes outright stalling. Mike finally got traction on that today thanks to an older gentleman who works at a local shop specializing in outboard engines. Michael showed him a video he took of what the engine was doing and the guy, correctly, diagnosed the issue and sold him the part for it. It was some kind of rubber covering for the spark plug. It needed replacing. Ten dollars later the engine is finally ready. This is great because it means we can putt putt along close to shore, staring down into the water like we do.  And Michael will be able to enjoy the scenery without staring at the outboard, a puzzled frown on his face.

I’m still working for a living, so it was hard to leave Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday of this week, and we could leave tomorrow but another big rainstorm is coming through with pretty big swells coming directly from the west, so they’d be right on our beam as we head south. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it? No. It does not.

Maybe…Sunday? There isn’t supposed to be wind that day but I don’t care if we have to motor for 100 miles. It’s time to go before I become ossified into this slip and attached to a life whose biggest challenge is whether my Google Translate app is up to date. So for now, barring any other delays, we are leaving on Sunday.  I’ll make some sort of sacrifice to the Gods of Leaving the Dock Safely. We have given notice to the marina. They will have our paperwork ready for us. We have listed our next port as La Cruz in Banderas Bay. That’s where so many people stage to prepare for crossing to French Polynesia. We wish. We hope and we plan. We envision warm water and beautiful fish.

Where are we going next? Who knows? At this point we will let the sea decide where we land to stay at anchor and catch our breath and remember how to sleep on a boat that is moving,  Overall it will be south-ish. We still plan to cross to French Polynesia this year but will we make it? We still need to apply for a long stay visa and to find liability insurance.  It just feels, I don’t know how to say it, but like the wave of energy we’d need to ride to make that happen for sure has not appeared for us yet this year; like we have just started “raising the sails” when the wind suddenly dies. That kind of thing.  Maybe the energy of La Cruz will change all of that. We are trying to practice the “non attachment to outcomes” that is necessary when cruising. We are not always successful with that. But we try.

Getting this blog post up is the first step toward re-engaging with this cruising life. Let it be written. Let it be done.

S/V Galapagos, out. Not even standing by. No one keeps their radio on in this marina.

 

 

The Rule of Four

Yesterday we left San Diego to finally get into Mexico through the port at Ensenada. Today, we are in San Diego sitting at anchor at La Playa. Without an anchoring permit. Oh well.  Breathing a sigh of relief as the anchor hit bottom, I realized I had to write about the Rule of Four and how we came to have that thrust upon us lately.

Our battery project having gone almost aggressively well, we were feeling pretty chuffed about that success and although I was not really ready to leave San Diego, having had too much fun here, we had to go. Fueled up, we waited for the huge sailboat race to be done and then motored out, into the sunset, as it were. I took a few videos and realized no one would really want to see those. They meant more to me than anyone else. I just hated to leave, I guess.

Maybe we had to come back to see Santa and his helpers paddling through the anchorage.

The first issue with the Rule of Four was that the folks at Cruiseport Marina in Ensenada have never gotten back to us to confirm a slip. This gives me reasonable pause because word on the cruiser’s forums was that the guy there who was in charge got back to everyone in a timely manner; sometimes within the hour. Mike had sent our documents a week ago and we had heard nothing. They also did not pick up the phone when he called repeatedly.  Even though this is Mexico and sometimes you just accept this kind of thing, it didn’t sit well with either of us, especially when this was not the experience other cruisers’d had recently. Mike finally got the guy at the marina on the phone.  Turns out Mike’s emails had ‘not been received’. Now, generally when an email doesn’t go through, your email program lets you know. However, Mike sent them again, with our documents. Mike still has not heard back and again, phone calls go unanswered. Sometimes one just gets tired of trying. We figured we will just show up. It’s not that far down there if we have to turn around and come back. We left San Diego.

This beautiful K50, so identified by my friend Roberta Darrow whose family had one all the while she was growing up. I can’t even relate but that is so cool I can hardly stand it.

Just past the headland, before the channel markers even gave out, the second of the four issues began. Big swells on the beam made the ride so uncomfortable all I could think was ‘Great. I don’t even want to be out here in this crap’. Coming from the flat water in San Diego’s anchorages, it was a bit of a big comeuppance. With no wind at all, we were destined to spend a pretty uncomfortable night at sea. And why, you might reasonably ask, did we have to leave on that day? Because of a schedule. A schedule is the worst thing you can have on a sailboat and we almost never have one. But we are flying home and the airline doesn’t hold flights for sailboats. They just leave when they say they will, more or less. Honestly, we wanted to leave the boat in San Diego since we are flying out of this airport,  but the only slip I could find for our boat would have set us back 3K for a month. For. A. Month. We just could not do it, so onward to Ensenada. And now things begin to get interesting.

Nothing more fun than sitting in a cockpit watching small boats racing around the anchorage. Unless you are on one of the small boats. That would be more fun.

As we motored out the channel, Mike decided to take a look at the charts of the course we’d be motoring. The charts of Mexico were not there. They HAD been there earlier in the day. But now, nada. There was actually a line at the border between the countries and the screen was completely white underneath that line. Huh. This was not great. I mean, we don’t trust the Mexico charts that much, but it’s nice to have SOMETHING that represents things like land masses. And we recall that the chart to the entrance at Ensenada was pretty good. Where were our charts? Why were we not seeing them? It crossed my mind, honestly, that this was the final straw. Clearly we were not meant to go to Mexico on that day. But I rarely do myself justice when I have those intuitions. I mean, what am I supposed to say? “Honey, I just feel like we shouldn’t go today. I don’t know why.” I mean, to be clear Mike would almost certainly listen to me on that. We’ve been married too long for him to ignore these little things. But in the absence of evidence that is firmer than missing charts, we carried on. He had to go down and retrieve the little sim card holding the charts, reinsert into the chart plotter, and download them again. The little hairs on the back of my neck were becoming more alert.

I went below to cook dinner. I had just decided that the conditions below were absolutely not conducive to cooking dinner and it would be cold pizza for all when we heard a small thump from beneath the keel. It wasn’t a big thump and ordinarily it would barely even register on our internal radar. But still, we were in an area where there are way too many crab pots. Mike went below to check things out. He found nothing. He looked over the back of the boat and saw nothing. We shrugged and we motored on, wary of the big war ship steaming down the channel.

Our friends on S/V Copacetic. We just can’t seem to leave them behind. Hopefully we will see them in Ensenada in a day or two.

A few minutes later I felt like we were going more slowly than we should. We had the engine at about 1500 rpm and the current was with us, but we were making only 4 knots. That seemed wrong. About the time I realized that our speed seemed wrong, something gave a god awful screech/rattle kind of noise. I leaped across the cockpit from my position in front of the autopilot controls, hurriedly throttled down and threw the transmission into neutral as Mike popped up the companionway like his pants were on fire and yelled to throw the transmission into neutral. Great minds, and all that.

Pants may not have been on fire, but brains most definitely were as I spun the wheel and yelled, “The steering! I have no steering!” Crap, man. What a comedy of errors, almost. I was already saying, ‘Where is the Boat US number? We may need a tow!’ and practicing my radio skills in case I needed to call for help out there. I am not a fan of zero steering and big swells pushing my boat towards Warship #4 sitting right outside San Diego Harbor, and Warship #7 bearing down on us in the channel. No, thanks. Having leapt from my seat to get the boat out of gear and throttle back the engine, though, I had failed to take the steering out of automatic. Breathe. Just slow down. That’s usually the important thing in these situations. Slowing down.

We tested everything we could. Engine sounded fine. Steering was working. Transmission was working. I gave the transmission a little bump in reverse a couple of times in case that might help anything that was wrapped around the shaft spin off and float harmlessly away. Still, we were definitely, MOST DEFINITELY going back into San Diego and dropping anchor so we could check the prop and shaft in the light of day. Nothing makes me sigh more deeply in resignation than having to enter literally any port with a lot of lights at night. Fortunately, in this case, we could just follow our GPS track. Babying the boat and our jangled nerves, we went dead slow and stuck hard to the right of the channel. We dropped anchor, back at La Playa, with a sigh of relief, poured some wine, and hit the sack shortly afterwards.

This morning Mike geared up in his wetsuit and found weed and kelp wrapped around the small amount of shaft that is exposed to the elements. What a relief that it was just weed and not nylon rope that could have melted itself onto the metal. The working hypothesis is that enough weed got wrapped that it slowed us down and cut off the water supply to the shaft, causing that ungodly noise we heard.  Possibly we hit something under the water that was trailing weed to in a big bunch, allowing it time to get good and wrapped around our shaft.

A few pieces like this floated free under the tender influence of the diving knife. Such innocuous looking weed.

Now we are in a bit of a pinch. I’ll have to reschedule some of my work for tomorrow as we need to have some flexibility worked in. That irritates me but I still need to do it.  I made one more pass at trying to find a place to leave the boat stateside, but on a Sunday, and with such short notice, it’s not to be.

So let’s regroup: First, the marina fails at communicating. Then, sea conditions are disgusting and uncomfortable. Then, our Mexican charts disappear. Then we get weed around our shaft and decide to call it quits. What a day.

Now here’s the other thing. It really gives me pause, and I’m not yet ready to make it a Rule of 5 because it will probably be ok. But still it niggles my mind. There are at least 5 boats stuck in San Diego because Mexico turned them away due to a paperwork issue that Mexico, itself,  invented. It has to do with their Temporary Import Permits, which are basically their way of keeping track of foreign boats in their waters, which they have every right to do. The problem is that when you leave with your boat, you are really supposed to cancel this permit upon checking out of the country. And many people do not do that little thing for whatever reason. Then they sell the boat to an unsuspecting new person who then tries to enter Mexico with the boat. The TIP, which may be expired but has not been “CANCELLED” (And why these two things are different is beyond me) has old owner names which do not match new owner names. Maybe even the boat name is different, so the name and the hull number are not the same anymore.  In the past there has been a way to fix this issue. Apparently that is no longer the case. They have switched systems, and these systems do not talk to each other. Not only that, but apparently there is no go-between. If you have an uncanceled TIP, apparently there is no way to cancel it and so you don’t get to enter Mexico with your boat. One less cruiser with a (probably) older boat to deal with?

Is this absolutely ridiculous? Yes. It is.  I have not been one to criticize how Mexico does things because it’s not my country and they can do things however they want to. But, frankly, I believe in the power of the Mexican authorities to fix this problem if they had the will to do so. Why they haven’t wanted to is well beyond my powers to understand.  There is at least one boat that has been waiting for over a year to have this issue fixed. At that point, I may just sail to Hawaii.

We have met some of the folks waiting for movement on this issue here in San Diego. They have spent a lot of time and money preparing their boats for their adventure, only to find, upon arrival, that a previous owner didn’t do what they were supposed to and now they are stuck because Mexico doesn’t want this fixed for some reason. I feel so sorry for them. They have literally done nothing wrong but here they sit doing the ‘anchor dance’ in San Diego.

Why is this on my mind, aside from feeling bad for other sailors? Because our boat has been to Mexico before we owned it and I am fairly sure that the folks who owned it back then did not cancel their TIP.  That would have been, I think, in the 1990’s or early 2000’s. When we checked in before, we just didn’t mention it and we got a TIP with no problems. We also cancelled that TIP when we left Mexico, although we cannot seem to find that paperwork for some reason. It’s not where it belongs.

Although no old TIPs were found in their computer system when we checked into Mexico before, they have upgraded part of their system. Just part of it, apparently. So even though it’s unlikely they will find any uncanceled TIPs for Galapagos, who knows? It’s also possible that they will. And if they do, I just will not be surprised.

The tall ship California sailed by, wowing us on the way out today.

We are sailing along now in much more pleasant conditions than yesterday, just slowly making our way down the coast. We’ll cross our fingers Mexico doesn’t have a record of an uncancelled tip with our hull number on it. But if they do, well, I really like San Diego, even with the anchor dance issue.

S/V Galapagos, standing by on channel 16. Avoiding all kelp.