Today was the famous party at Bahia Santa Maria. It really is pretty fun and a bit surreal. The fun part is that there’s a rock band and amazing food, tuna and shrimp caught fresh by the fishermen who live here. The surreal part is that it’s all on a cliff overlooking the bay and there’s absolutely nothing anywhere around within 100 miles! The rock band comes from across Baja somewhere near La Paz and they bring a generator to power the electric guitars, amps, speakers and such. You get to the beach/cliff by dinghy. You have to motor in an inflatable dinghy over the sand bar to get to the beach. You have to time it so the waves don’t break on you as you’re moving into the shallow water. We were successful. We saw one dinghy at Bahia Tortuga, not here, flip in the surf and go upside down. Definitely bad because the outboard engine gets soaked by salt water. Anyway, fun party. Good day. One funny thing happened after the party when we were all back at the boat. Elan and Ann were in the cockpit enjoying the end of the sunset, I was in the galley cooking the last of our Mahi (with rice and red bell peppers) and Danna was swimming around the boat to cool off and rinse off from a warm day. It was getting dark and through the darkness we heard; “Can I rest on your boat?” Huh?! Turned out “Nate” swam from the beach, which is about 300 yards away and he was swimming back to his boat which was named Panache. But…it had gotten dark and he didn’t know where HIS boat was. But as Nate put it; “It’s all good”. We offered to call his boat on the VHF and get some bearings for him, but he said he’d just swim until he found it. You meet some “interesting” people out here. Anyway, we invited him to sit in the cockpit to rest a while. Then as dinner was getting ready, he thanked us for the hospitality and jumped back into the bay. I left the radio on “just in case” as I had a feeling this wasn’t the last we’d heard from Nick. We sat down for a great Mahi dinner and sure enough, in the middle of dinner, we heard a call: “Panache, Panache, this is Cleo Two”. “Cleo Two, go to channel 71”. We couldn’t help it, we wanted to find out the story, so we switched the radio to 71 and heard Cleo Two say; “There’s a swimmer resting on our stern who says he can’t find his boat”. We then heard Panache say; “Oh no, NIIIICCCKK!” They sounded very exasperated. Eventually by turning on strobe lights and other stuff Panache’s location was identified and Nick realized he was swimming in exactly the wrong direction to get back. Oh well.

Well, that’s our day. Ann’s now trying to teach Elan and Danna how to play cribbage. We have two more days (hopefully only one night) to Cabo. The start is at 0700 tomorrow and Cabo is our next stop. We’ll update there and hopefully add some pictures.

We’re sitting here at anchor watching a warm, beautiful sunrise. Got in at sunset last night (10-31) and anchored in 17 feet off the cliffs. The beach party is this afternoon, so we’re getting the dinghy ready to go have some time hiking around before the party.

Yesterday was more blue-water sailing. A little slow, we were doing 3 knots for much of the day, but nice nonetheless.

Almost saw some exciting fishing yesterday. I saw almost because we lost both fish. The first one hit on our pole. I was unfortunately in the head in mid-stream and although I could hear the line zinging out and much screaming from the cockpit, I was incapacitated and unable to immediately participate. After what seemed like 10 minutes (and was actually probably 15 seconds) I was ready for action. Pants hanging halfway off, I dashed out of the head to the cockpit. Confusing reigned. Everyone was yelling, the line was zinging and we were still doing 6 knots. The wind had come up by this time of the day, so we were doing 6 knots with a huge Tuna on the line (Ann saw it jump). The line was fast disappearing. By the time I got to the pole, the line was down past the 150 yards of monofilament and on the last hundred yards or so of spectra. We only had a few seconds to get things in order before losing all the line off the reel. I told Elan to make a hard turn upwind to slow the boat (which he tried to do earlier, but couldn’t as the line was threatening to cut the wind vane in two). Once I got the vane off, he was able to make the turn, but in the overall confusion and struggle, the turn and fact that I wasn’t completely ready to reel the slack in the line from the turn, left some slack and the Tuna took advantage and shook the hook. I felt it let go. Disappointment. Overall lesson on this one: when the line’s in the water, everyone needs to be rehearsed on how to slow down fast so we can get the fish in. Having been able to hold the pole for a bit, I know it was the biggest Tuna I’ve felt on the line and am not completely disappointed in not having to wrestle that guy up on to the boat. I think subduing him would have been akin to hand to hand combat.

A little later we also got a huge hit on the hand line. So big it broke the lure, so one more miss and a lost lure. Hopefully we’ll have some more action on the next and last leg down to Cabo tomorrow.

OK, so we’re heading in to shore for some hiking now. See y’all later.

P.S. Happy birthday to Lisa Miller, today, November 1st!

25 Degrees, 46 Minutes North 113 Degrees, 44 Minutes West

First off, Ann asked me to send her love to all her family on this special anniversary.

Today was one of those days you wish you could have all the time, but conditions and time constraints usually make it impossible. The water is blue, the sky is blue and the wind is blowing from behind us at about 10 knots, making it possible to actually sail directly where we want to go. We have been sailing now for 33 hours straight. All day today, it’s been wing and wing with the big genoa out on the pole. Other than some housekeeping and running the watermaker, we really have just been soaking up the warm sun and enjoying the peace, quiet and beauty that we’re so lucky to be experiencing. At this point, we look like we might get into Bahia Santa Maria tomorrow night given that we still have some 100 or so miles to go and our speed is about 4.5 knots. In the modern age, that sounds funny to say it’s going to take more than a day to cover 100 miles. Makes you appreciate every one of them.

Our birdy friend unfortunately expired sometime in the night. I guess he was more exhausted than we thought. Elan and Danna gave him a burial at sea a little after sunrise when they checked in on him and realized he had passed away during the night sometime. I’m glad we offered up a little sanctuary and some comfort for him to rest before dying.

No fishing today. We still have lots of Mahi and we’re going to make some fried potatoes with sautéed peppers to go with it. Good thing we didn’t fish because Elan took another sun shower on the foredeck and who knows what giant sea creature THAT might have tempted this time.

By the way, some folks want to see more pictures. We’ll do our best to upload them when we’re in Cabo. These messages are sent via shortwave radio email directly to the blog where they are automatically uploaded. Nice and convenient, but not enough bandwidth to add more than just text. So for now, that’s what you’re stuck with.

Love to everyone.