Denied at the Gate

Tilikum left my boat in Cabo to help our friend Matt bring his down from Magdalena Bay. It seemed the time had finally come: now I would have to sail alone. After all, it is my boat, my life, ect. Crew come and go, but I have to continue.

I have the option of course to find more, but why? My boat is so small, too small for two people who don’t know each other real well. There is a great comfort in having my own space.

But maybe this isn’t completely honest. I am fooling you. Really, deep down, I want to sail alone. I want to show myself that I can do it. I have been patient (in that I didn’t leave Port Townsend solo). PT was several thousand miles ago. Perhaps now was the time.

In a sense, it was perfect timing in that I was sailing with two to three other boats: Matt and Tilikum had arrived from Mag Bay, Herbert, and Jean Claude. All except Jean Claude were heading to La Paz. (The only variable was that they were planning on motoring and I wasn’t.)

La Paz is all upwind. It is a tough sail (or motor) but the motor is much faster and straighter.

All four boats day sailed to Los Frailes which I wrote about in my last letter. Great, beautiful spot. True Mexico. It was a slow sail.

A few days later Tilikum left to visit some friends of hers, leaving all the boys to fend for themselves. The next morning Matt and Herbert left with no wind at all. This was ideal for motoring. Not so for me. I waited.

I fixed my dinghy and slept most of the day. The wind slowly picked up and I made ready to leave by seven in the evening. The sun was setting over the arid

Baja mountains as I set the main and jib.

With the sails close-hauled (sailing as close to the wind as possible) I was steering near to due north. La Paz was to the north-west.

The route was to sail one long tack far out into the Sea of Cortez, fifty, sixty miles, until I could tack back to the west and clear the northern tip of Isla Cerralvo.

I set the windvane and the swell was coming from the north quarter. Close-hauled is the roughest point of sail—the boat heels over far and bucks heavily with the waves. (When cooking or eating, food becomes a moving target.)

Because you’re sailing into the wind, all the elements seem intensified—the wind feels like it is coming twice as hard as it truly is (apparent wind).

If you sail downwind the effect is the opposite, the wind feels lighter because you run with it so it less effect.

I liked this plan of going far out—as opposed to doing many shorter tacks close to the west—since it was taking me away from shore. If I were to oversleep or change direction I would have hours and hours of time to recover.

Also there are few ships in the Sea of Cortez. (I only ever saw one.) So, setting out, I was much more excited than nervous.

Though rare it may be, this trip, for a time, went like a well greased machine. We rolled on and on.

I cooked a soup. I ate. I watched. I slept around the clock. I slept and slept. I dreamt. I never, never ever remember my dreams. But with twenty-five minutes,

I’d remember so much. I remember more than five dreams my first night. What a joy! And I wasn’t tired. And this was my greatest fear: sleep.

I have always been a terrible napper. But to sail alone, you have to sleep in twenty-five minute intervals. Most sailors use a kitchen timer.

I’d go to sleep below, the thing rings like mad, I get up and stick my head out of the companionway and check the horizon for ships, check the course and windvane and sails—perhaps check position (every hour or so), then head back to the berth for more z’s.

And it worked. I slept and slept. I dreamt and I wasn’t tired.

No ships. I had a score of miles of sea room. La Paz as the crow flies was only, I’m not even sure, eighty some odd miles north. Matt and Herbert would do it in two days sails straight along the coast.

I had to tack way, way out into the Sea. I was making way, but the current was against me and the wind pushed me off course a bit, meaning that when I tacked (turned) west it would be a greater angle than I would want, say, 105° as opposed to 90° which is optimal.

What this means, if it makes any sense at all, it that I needed to sail farther to the north than I would want, because…..when I turned west, I’d be on a 240° or a 250° course—which is heading south. So, in a sense, I had to sail past the place I was trying to get to to get there.

But this is sailing—you have to sail to the wind and current—not to a point on a map.

So I kept heading north. I kept sleeping. I stayed below all day out of the sun. At night I looked at the stars, saw some meteors. The sailings was great.

The second night I tacked west. I hadn’t done quite enough northing, but I was ready for a change and I knew I would still be many miles out by dawn.

And true enough, at dawn I was still over ten miles out of Isla Cerralvo and not quite high enough to get through the north channel.

I needed to be sure. The island would be a lee shore, meaning that the wind would try to push me toward it and wreck me. I needed all the room I could afford.

I tacked north for a few hours and got my room.

The wind shifted a bit and allowed me to fall off the wind just a bit. I started sailing faster and faster, now catching the waves against the beam (middle of the boat) instead of the bow.

Now I was really sailing. I was making six knots. I cleared the island. This would be the day. I only had to cross the Cerralvo Strait and shoot west through the San Lorenzo Channel and I’d be two miles from a safe anchorage in Puerto Ballandra, ten miles north of La Paz.

The San Lorenzo Channel was the last obstacle.

It was shallow and sparsely marked. I was intent on getting through it with daylight. And I was sailing faster and faster, exhilarating sailing. I would make it with time to spare at this rate.

But things change so fast, better to make time while I could.

And indeed things were changing. The wind was piping. It was blowing 25…30….35…

I pushed the rig hard. The bulwarks (outer rails) were drowning in blue water. The bow was skewering the waves as they rolled across the boat.

I considered it a good shake down. I hadn’t had so much wind on the bow ever before. So I kept pushing.

But I was also getting closer and closer to the channel. The channel was shallow. Already the seas were building up, eight feet, some breaking waves.

In shallower water they could build even more. They may die, too. I couldn’t be sure. But also it was narrow and the boat was now barely in control.

Clearly, it was time to reef (take in sail) then I could think further about what to do.

I reefed the main…. and I only went faster. I dropped the main altogether and raised the try’sle (storm sail)….still draining the gunwales. Dropped the jib and raised the storm jib….still doing seven knots. We were screaming along.

Damn.

I was soaked—utterly wet head to toe. The boat was like a bucking mule. Moving around was arduous and my grip and attention were firm and fixed.

I was slow in getting out my harness and clipping in. I just couldn’t believe it had come to that.

What to do??

I had listened to the weather—there wasn’t any. So were did this come from? It was gusting 40!

I was down to my smallest sails and I was still working hard. Control was marginal and the channel was an unknown. What about the tide? How would it effect me?

I was keeping a straight course, but the situation was tenuous, verging on ridiculous.

Of course I could make it. I knew I could. I could stay on my course and head straight through, but….was it a prudent choice?

I could lose everything. Mexico is challenging. We passed Matt’s boat that he lost on a reef three years ago just south of Los Frailes.

I hated it but I turned the tiller. I fell off the wind and started to run south, the only direction still open to me.

What to do??

All my friends were in La Paz waiting for me. Where would I go?

Going back the way I had come would now be dangerous as well, with the wind and lee shore of Isla Cerralvo.

I’d have to continue south, but to do that would mean abandoning La Paz altogether—it would take me days to get back here.

There was too much tide to heave too and too much land to be safe. I had to leave.

I deceived I could run south to an anchorage called Bahia de los Muertos and there I could compose myself.

But it seemed that from there I would have to head east across the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlan, where Jean Claude was now heading.

It was just then that, strangely, the wind just petered out. It didn’t ease off or lighten up—it died, utterly and absolutely. Not a gust. I started spinning around in circles.

I looked north and thought to myself—This is my chance. I fired up the diesel, sheeted in the sails and turned back for the San Lorenzo Channel.

The seas were flattening out a bit. It was a bit rough, but my blood was flowing now. It took over an hour to make up the ground I had lost and the sun was starting to set.

I wouldn’t make it through the channel in day light, but

that seemed like such a feeble concern at the moment. (The buoys were lighted, which made them easier for me to find in the dark than they would have been in the day time.)

I motored on. The wind slowly rose again, but never to the same roar as before. I left the engine pushing me through so I could get through as fast as possible.

But now, I felt so serene and relaxed. There was no danger of being washed ashore. Current, depth, speed, wind—everything fine. I past through the gate into the Bahia de La Paz.

Rounding south, eight-thirty in the evening, now I had a new obstacle, and no mediocre one. I was pulling into a very small and challenging anchorage in the dark with no moon.

I would be blind (as if I could be anything else!). I set the autopilot and plotted waypoints on the gps. They had to be accurate and they needed to be well chosen.

I wanted to know exactly were the northern tip of the bay was. (I was motorsailing south now in the Bahia de La Paz and Puerto Ballandra was on my left, or east side of the bay.) If I knew that latitude I could creep due east right into the top of the bay, at about a knot per hour, and watch the depth and land marks until I was far enough in to be protected from any wind.

I crept and crept. I’ve never moved so slow… and it was perfect. I came right in at the top—above a dangerous underwater rock. I followed the rocks and beaches in and found shallow water and dropped the hook.

Oh, it was grand. I looked around in the darkness and knew this was an amazing spot—rocks, cliffs, and some five separate beaches. You could hear it all. The morning would be sweet.

But, before that, I’d sleep, and I mean sleep, the first long uninterrupted sleep I’d had in three nights.

Puerto Ballandra was cliffs and white sand beaches, pelicans on the rocks and shallow water for good holding. I went for a morning swim to some rocks. I weighed anchor and had a fine DOWNWIND sail ten miles into La Paz.

I found Herbert and dropped anchor next to him. He dinghied over straight away with a couple of tacos and some Washington beer.

Then Dan showed up with another beer—I haven’t seen him since Ensenada. (Dan and Sonya are on Lift, friends from PT and Sausalito.)

La Paz is great but more on it later. More when I get a better feel myself.

It was a great sail. The boat handled wonderfully. I sailed it well. And I enjoyed myself, and proved something to myself. No complaints….though I think I will relax in La Paz for a bit.

Time for some boat work.

Love you all. Hope all is well elsewhere in the world.

Sorry for the length, as always. I’ll try and shorten it before I advertise.