In 2023, Sampaguita has rounded Vancouver Island with the farthest North being above the Scott Islands and has now rounded Cabo San Lucas at the tip of the Mexican Baja Peninsula. She is presently sitting at anchor in Bahia De Los Muertos (The Bay of the Dead) in the Sea of Cortez. We will likely be here through the holidays, waiting out a weather window to get to La Paz. The Sea of Cortez is notorious for choppy seas with wind against current. Northwest sailors are familiar with that. Think the Strait of Juan de Fuca or Georgia. More on that later.

After Bahia Santa Maria, we visited Magdalena Bay for two days. It was very similar to Santa Maria, but bigger. More desert, off-grid fish camps, and mangroves. Bigger meant wind shifts that made for pitchy anchorages due to increased fetch. Uninspired and seeing a weather window for the three day sail to Cabo San Lucas, we hit it.

Two days of decent sailing followed by a tedious day of motoring got us to Cabo San Lucas. (All motoring is tedious. If I wanted to motor, I would use a car. It’s faster, cheaper, and more efficient.)

That place is totally lame. Las Vegas with water sports. Novices on jet skis woohoo-ing there way around. There’s more to it than that, but not worth the mention. If you like Cabo San Lucas, why would you read this blog? (I think the same of cruise ship lovers.) After arriving late and getting some rest, the next day I thought I would head into town and take a look-ee-loo, get some gasoline, and score some fresh food from the Wal-Mart. I inflated the kayak and headed in. It was lumpy and the marina was chaos with constant traffic. But I’m no novice and know what I am doing. As I approached the dinghy dock, the IGY Marina dock supervisor (Look that up, they have all the high end yacht destinations in the world. Not my people at all.) called me over to tell me that kayaks were not allowed in the marina. Mind you, I am already as far into the marina as possible by now. (I get it, 100 novices on paddle boards and kayaks on their woohoo vacation would stop marina commerce and endanger the idiots.) But this guy wouldn’t make an exception, that this was my dinghy. I could not tie up to the dinghy dock. If he let me, he would get into trouble. Not that I needed an escort to get out. I never ever saw any policia or harbor patrol in or outside the marina. I just couldn’t tie up. (If you’re big on law and order, this probably isn’t the blog for you either.) So IGY Marinas and Cabo San Lucas are dead to me. Period. I was still able to get fuel at the marina Chevron and throw my garbage away. Just no look-ee-loo or fresh food. And left with a sense of disrespect against my minimalist ways. So I paddled out of there, immediately deflated and stored the kayak, raised and sailed off the anchor, straight through all of their water sports, and said “Adios.” Sampaguita proceeded to have a great three hours of sailing at hull speed under full sail on a beam reach, on our way to Bahia Los Frailes.

I arrived in Bahia Los Frailes after an overnight and a day of motoring. (TEDIOUS.) It is just up inside the Sea of Cortez. I liked this place. I saw sting rays doing flips in the air and fish feeding frenzies. The anchorage was well protected with a little bit of wrap-around swell from the Sea. There was an off-grid fish camp here too. I spent a day resting up from five previous days of sailing and explored the sand dunes a bit. I probably should have headed up to Bahia De Los Muertos on this day, but it would have been 50 miles of motoring over a windless Sea, and I just was uninspired by that thought.

To avoid a day of motoring, I took the rest day in Los Frailes with a wind forecast of about 10 knots from the North on the next day. We are in a totally different weather pattern now(all North, all the time), and we are going the wrong direction. There was no cell reception in Los Frailes, so my forecast was a couple of days old. I asked another cruiser about the weather. (With the obvious Dishy McFlatFace, Starlink users are easy to spot. Cruisers have any weather forecast available on the internet now available to them if they have the power to run the “extra refrigerator.”) He was unwilling to turn on his Starlink for me, but gave me the Hurricane Weather Service he still had on his laptop. This jived with my old forecast. I went to bed early that night and woke up about midnight as seems to be a habit. Awake, with moonlight, and local knowledge of the exit, I decided to raise sail and anchor, and get under way. It would be a beat to Bahia De Los Muertos which could turn the 50 mile journey into as much as 100 miles, so I figured the sooner I left, the better. There was light wind and it was pleasant. With more of a west-ish bend I was making a good direction through the morning. Later, checking my phone, I found cell reception and data service. I checked PredictWind. Uh-oh. The forecast had strengthened and expanded. 15 knots from the North and right up to the edge of land. Committed and, really, without much choice, (if I didn’t give it a go, I might be in Los Frailes for a week or longer) and a mission to get to La Paz (my solar panels and main source of energy replacement are not up to the rigors of Sampaguita style expeditions and are failing) to take care of several important expedition preparations and life maintenance chores. Rather than turn tail and run back to Los Frailes, I continued on. The wind built and sail changes started, but things were still fine. Then the ebb turned to flood. The building wind against current for the next six hours resulted in some steep and big waves. Sampaguita was charging at hull speed on a close haul and it was a very wet and raucous experience. Unlike Sampaguita and I have ever done before. There was so much water coming over the deck, the boat was rolling in the waves, the rails were going under, and the rigging was slackening. I needed to keep as much sail on as possible to stay powered up to take on the hills, adjusting the rigging as water washed over me and the bulwarks. The plus side was that since I was going into the wind, water going into the cabin without the boards in wasn’t an issue. Sampaguita did really well, always making continuous headway. At one point I was adjusting the bowsprit stays, trying to get the split rings back on the turnbuckles. Every time I tried the water would hit my hands and knock the ring out of it. (it couldn’t wash away because it was on the turnbuckle, just not through the stud hole.) More and more water kept coming as I was entirely focused on success. Finally a wave completely washed over me and that was enough. It would have to wait. I finally looked up to realize I was in a washing machine of steep, six to seven foot waves, the biggest of the day. I tacked back closer to shore and this helped. After six hours of building seas, the tide switched to ebb and the going was easier again. After 23 hours of beating into the wind, and 77 nautical miles, I arrived in Bahia De Los Muertos around midnight. The entrance was easy, the moon was out, and I got in fine, dropping the anchor in 20 feet of water. Shedding my salty clothes, I climbed into the berth for some needed rest. I was asked recently how a Flicka 20 would do beating into a wind and sea on the ocean. The answer is she will do well, provided you have enough wind and are not shy about keeping as much sail on as possible. Which is to say, more than you would on an inland sea. Make sure your gear is up to snuff. Nothing appeared to get broken and the layer of salt has been refreshed anew. Should I have motored the day before? Eh, six of one, half dozen of the other. All’s well that ends well.

Remember, I’m no expert. I’m just a fool in a 20-foot boat and a microphone.

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