At Sea, Baja California
It is now around 4 PM on the third day of this passage.
The last 24 hours has been a combination of sailing, sometimes boisterous, sometimes drifting along, and about 50% of the time motor-sailing. The winds for the most part have been very light except for a couple of hours in the middle of the night when they crept up to 15 knots. Of course, I stupidly left the entire mainsail up until is was a challenge to reef in the higher winds and bigger seas - but we managed to wrestle it down ok, continuing for a few hours with the Genoa alone. All of the winds have been from directly behind or from slightly off the starboard quarter.
After a non-event sunset the night before, last night we were treated to a spectacular sunset - red sky at night, sailors delight? Temperatures remain around 15 during the night, rising to as high as 23 during mid-day today. The water temperature, which we have been monitoring the entire way down the coast, has not changed by more than a degree since leaving Nanaimo - currently 16 degrees (still very cold water). Mostly sunny, with some wispy, hazy overcast.
We saw a pod of whales a couple of miles off about 2 hours ago, heading north - all we could see was their spouts.
Right now we are motoring, with a double reefed main, in dead calm seas - probably as flat as we have seen on this trip. We are approaching some islands off of Punta Falsa, the largest of which is Isla Cedros. We have used a very conservative off-shore route, being as much as 70 miles from the nearest land as we crossed the huge Bahia Sebastian Vizcaino. Our planned destination of Turtle Bay lies on the other side of this major point of land on the Baja coast and marks the transition from northern Baja to southern Baja, hopefully with a similar difference in climate. We are currently motoring at no more than 4 knots in order to arrive just after sunrise tomorrow. I'm not sure we are going to find any winds to sail by tonight, but hope springs eternal.
{GMST}28|23.1|N|115|41|W|Day 3 - To Turtle Bay|Day 3 - To Turtle Bay{GEND}
The last 24 hours has been a combination of sailing, sometimes boisterous, sometimes drifting along, and about 50% of the time motor-sailing. The winds for the most part have been very light except for a couple of hours in the middle of the night when they crept up to 15 knots. Of course, I stupidly left the entire mainsail up until is was a challenge to reef in the higher winds and bigger seas - but we managed to wrestle it down ok, continuing for a few hours with the Genoa alone. All of the winds have been from directly behind or from slightly off the starboard quarter.
After a non-event sunset the night before, last night we were treated to a spectacular sunset - red sky at night, sailors delight? Temperatures remain around 15 during the night, rising to as high as 23 during mid-day today. The water temperature, which we have been monitoring the entire way down the coast, has not changed by more than a degree since leaving Nanaimo - currently 16 degrees (still very cold water). Mostly sunny, with some wispy, hazy overcast.
We saw a pod of whales a couple of miles off about 2 hours ago, heading north - all we could see was their spouts.
Right now we are motoring, with a double reefed main, in dead calm seas - probably as flat as we have seen on this trip. We are approaching some islands off of Punta Falsa, the largest of which is Isla Cedros. We have used a very conservative off-shore route, being as much as 70 miles from the nearest land as we crossed the huge Bahia Sebastian Vizcaino. Our planned destination of Turtle Bay lies on the other side of this major point of land on the Baja coast and marks the transition from northern Baja to southern Baja, hopefully with a similar difference in climate. We are currently motoring at no more than 4 knots in order to arrive just after sunrise tomorrow. I'm not sure we are going to find any winds to sail by tonight, but hope springs eternal.
{GMST}28|23.1|N|115|41|W|Day 3 - To Turtle Bay|Day 3 - To Turtle Bay{GEND}
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