Sorry it’s been so long. I’ve been tired, busy and drunk. It all started a few days ago with no wind. Having no wind for a sailor is kind of like being in church. It’s a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there. The northeast Pacific these past few days has been a quiet church indeed.
Weather guru Don Anderson explained over the radio that a fairly unusual condition had arisen. There was basically no big, robust high pressure over the northeast Pacific and that led to very, very light winds all along the first 1,000 miles of my route. You may remember that he told me several days ago to work my way in toward the Baja coast and try to get within 30 miles of the shoreline. There I would at least have thermal afternoon sea breezes out of the west. So that’s what I did.
The problem with sailing that close to the coast is that all the traffic is there. For a singlehander that’s a big problem. I can only keep myself awake for so long at a time. But the ships were constant. Once night I counted six cruise ships and several freighters that came within a few miles of me. So for three nights I slept no more than 30 or 35 minutes at a time. (Maybe that explains the spirituality of my last post — perhaps I wasn’t seeing souls, maybe I was hallucinating.)
I have this amazing timer/alarm called a Screaming Meanie. You set how long you want to sleep — say, 30 minutes — and then when time comes it lets out a 120 decibel screech. 120 decibels is loud out on a football field. Inside “Ventura” it is enough to wake up the dead. I bought it because I used to use two regular alarm clocks, and when I was really exhausted I would sleep through both of them. But not the Screaming Meanie. So it would screech, I would jump up, groggy to the point of incoherence but awake, and then I’d pop my head up into the cockpit and look around.
So why 30 minutes? Well, a ship travels at about 20 knots. That means that in a half hour it travels 10 miles. That’s roughly how far away a big ship can be for me to see it when standing in my cockpit. So in theory, a ship will not pop up over the horizon and reach me in less than 30 minutes (assuming good visibility and no fog). So as long as I check the neighborhood every 30 minutes, then I should see all traffic.
So much for theory. Try it some time. Stay awake for 72 hours sleeping only 30 minutes at a time. Now you understand why I much prefer the far offshore route where there is little traffic and I can sleep for hours at a time with only a tiny, tiny risk of being run down.
Anyway, I needed wind, so I sailed in the traffic lanes near shore. Still, I only had wind from about noon to 10 at night. The rest of the time I just bobbed around. So I started to use my engine. But I only carry 37 gallons of fuel on board, enough for perhaps 400 or 450 miles. Since I expect very light wind when I eventually get down near Panama, I need to save the fuel for that. But I used up 15 gallons on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
Don Anderson also told be that I would have a big hole of empty wind further south for several days. So I scratched my head, looked at the chart and decided to head to the last port near my route: Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, at the very southern end of the Baja peninsula. I figured I could buy some diesel, repair the boat, and sleep.
On Wednesday afternoon I sighted the arch rock just outside the bay and harbor. I was exhausted. I had been at sea for 8 days. The sea is a true wilderness, a place where the slightest stumble can mean death. I am always on edge at sea, always trying to stay a step ahead of the boat, the waves, the wind, always wondering what unexpected calamity will strike next.
So in that state of mind I sail around the point and, and, Jesus Christ! Dozens of jet skis driven by girls in bikinis and guys in baseball caps, maybe a hundred fishing boats, water taxis, glass-bottom sightseeing boats, huge mega-yachts, boats blaring music, tourist information and over-revved engines. I just stared and tried to convince myself that I was not hallucinating.
I work my way into the harbor, which is packed with every conceivable floating vehicle you can image. Everything from kayaks to 100-foot yachts, all jockeying for space. So I thread my way far back in the harbor and radio Marina Cabo San Lucas, who have a slip for me. “Ventura” let out her breath as we turn into slip B-26.
Now this is not really “Ventura’s” kind of place. Cabo is about hedonism, fishing, gleaming marlin fishing boats with names like “Wolf Picante” and thundering bars. Now Cabo is at the very end of an 800-mile nearly deserted, hot, windblown, desert penininsula. But here it is, a case of geographic and cultural Tourettes. And here we were.
From slip B-26 to the marina office is maybe 200 yards. Maybe it’s what I looked like after 8 days alone at sea, or maybe they just treat everybody this way, but as I walked that short stretch, I was offered a lap dance, an oil massage, and cocaine twice.
“But my wife might fly down to meet me,” I say to the first guy offering to arrange a lap dance at a nearby strip club. “Then let’s hurry and go now, before she gets here,” he says. The next guy is trying to sell me on a massage parlor. “I just got off a boat after a long trip,” I say, “I’m tired..” “Great,” he comes back, “we’ll go for the oil massage so you can sleep afterward.” The two cocaine dealers get nothing better than a laugh out of me.
Actually, I can’t think of a better way to arrive in Cabo in the middle of spring break week than on a sailboat after a long solo sail. It heightens the senses. The food tastes more intense, the girls look hotter, the music is more energetic, and the Margaritas are more potent. I arrived into my slip at about 3:00 in the afternoon. By 4:00 I had drunk two Margaritas and two beers. I am watching Marlin unloaded from gleaming, over-chromed charter sportfishers by young Mexican men who give high-fives to beer-bellied American customers who bask in the unaccustomed warmth of adoring smiles of wives or girlfriends or whatever in bikinis. And I’m slipping into zero gravity, a distant “Hotel California” wrestled to incoherence by Mariachi music, the smell of a big fat celebratory cigar smoked by an overly pink and round American fisherman who should have shaved three days ago, and I’m thinking that if you could combine the genes of Kurt Cobain and Ernest Hemmingway you’d have the perfect Caboista. Now that’s someone I’d like to meet. I might even take him on my boat.
That was yesterday. I’ll tell you more about the sailor’s life in Cabo in my next post.
Pacifico, por favor,
David
PS. Here’s a picture I took of the rocks at the point, around which lies the current madness. Trust me, it’s real.