Long Beach to Cabo San Lucas - 10/21/98 to 11/09/98

S/V "Mandolin"
Long Beach to Cabo San Lucas - 10/21/98 to 11/09/98

(click on a thumbnail below to see the full-size photo)

November 9, 1998 (we think)

Hello everybody! Todd and I are at anchor in Cabo San Lucas. Bienvenido Finisterra!

I think we last wrote from Long Beach. Gosh, so much has happened. How's about the Reader's Digest Condensed version?

We had a terrific time seeing friends and family in the LA area, but again didn't see everyone we wanted to. Celebrated my birthday again with my family. It was really good to spend time with them before jumping off into Mexico. Also had a really fun dinner with Todd's sister, Chris and her husband Jim. Through her we met Todd's cousins Phil and Rose Marie Mandeville, whom we had not met before. Well, not as adults anyway -- they used to baby-sit Todd. What fun to get to know family you didn't know you have!

October 21, 1998

My brother, Jeff, came with us on the trip from Long Beach to Dana Point. Unfortunately, we motored most of the way due to lack of wind. Jeff decided he's a landlubber, but had a good time. Sauvie Island Yacht Club has reciprocal privileges with the Dana Point Yacht Club and gave us three night's free tie-up. Too bad we were only able to stay one night! Mom came down to pick up Jeff and we all went out to dinner in San Juan Capistrano before they headed back home. We would have loved to have spent more time in Dana Point, but were feeling pressed for time as the Baja Ha Ha started in less than a week. The wonderful Long Beach Yacht Club reciprocates with all yacht clubs and also gave us three free nights. We took full advantage of these three nights.

October 22, 1998

Woke up a 0300 and headed out the harbor by 0330 for San Diego. We gave ourselves bunches of time in case we had light winds, but we had NO WIND all day. Poop. Oh well, we got into San Diego in the early afternoon and were tied up at the San Diego Yacht Club by 1500. SDYC allows any yacht club member to berth at their docks for only $0.50/foot/night. A terrific deal when marinas charge $1.00 or more per foot/night. We enjoyed their hot tub, pool and showers every night. They also have breakfast, lunch and dinner in their restaurants seven days a week. Now we're living!

October 22-26, 1998

So, what did we do in San Diego? On most visitor's itineraries is Balboa Park, The Hotel del Coronado, The Maritime Museum, Cabrillo Monument, Sea World, The Mission and Old Town. Our itinerary: Downwind Marine, West Marine, Laundromat, Costco, buy and install a VHF radio, finish installing water maker, pray the water maker will work when "done" installing, the Mexican Consulate, the Mexican Fisheries office, the Baja Ha Ha skipper's meeting and Halloween Party, and the Mexican Ham radio office in Tijuana. My mom and two sisters came down to catch a few glimpses of us during all this hustle and bustle and whisked us off the Mission for Mass and then to Old Town for dinner. My sister, Anna spent the night on the boat and we managed to drag Todd away from the boat for an hour to drive out to Cabrillo Monument on Point Loma. These were much needed respites during a very busy time of preparation. Of much help were our friends Brad and Lynn who let us borrow their car on two different days. Also our friends Grover and Karey who ran errands for us and drove Todd down to the border to get a Mexican Ham license. Thank you all so much!

October 27, 1998

And here it finally was, the start of the Baja Ha Ha V. At the fuel dock the attendant asks us if there was some big regatta. We told him about the Ha Ha. "Oh, that must be why so many sail boats are buying fuel today." We left the fuel dock and joined the parade of sailboats heading out of the bay.

In one of the loosest race starts we've ever seen (with about a 5 mile start line) the Cruising Class of '98 was off for Mexico. Soon after the start we were photographed from the air by a helicopter. We have since picked up the pictures and they are great. On the suggestion of Carl aboard "Cadenza" we headed out around the Coronado Islands to get better wind. The first leg to Bahia Tortugas was 370 miles and we were able to sail the entire way. Caught a yellow fin tuna that we made sushimi and steaks out of. Yummy! It doesn't get any fresher than plucking it out of the ocean yourself.

Our watch plan of 3 hours on, 3 hours off worked very well for us. We sailed for three days and three nights on the first leg. The first night was the most grueling as we were still tired from all our preparations. As the days and nights progressed, the watches got easier. On each subsequent leg, the night watches were never as hard as that first night. So get plenty of rest before starting a passage.

Our first stop was Bahia Tortugas (Turtle Bay). As we sailed toward land, Todd remarked, "We're not in Oregon anymore." The land was brown and quite barren - no trees or even bushes to be seen anywhere. The people certainly were happy, though. The first night many of the cruisers headed to the one restaurant in town. As we made our way through the dusty dirt streets, little children would yell "Hola! Hola!" at us. They were probably anticipating "Halloween! Halloween!" which was the next night. "Halloween! Halloween!" is what the children yell at you on Halloween night. They really liked having all the cruisers in town to give them candy. Earlier that day we had a great party on the beach with frisbees, baseball, new friends, sushimi on the table and fish on the grill.

The second leg started with almost no wind. After slatting our sails for a while and watching other boats not much further out sail away from us, we decided on "Judicious Use of The Motor" and motored for 15 minutes to get out into the wind. From there we sailed for two nights to Bahia Santa Maria. That first morning saw light breezes with the wind building. Within two and a half hours, we took down our spinnaker. About a half hour later we watched a boat round up and get knocked down. Not a pretty sight. Nothing seemed to be happening to correct the situation, so I (Ellen) finally got on the radio and told them to release the spinnaker sheet and then get that spinnaker down. Turns out it was the first time they had ever flown their spinnaker. Ouch.

On the second day we caught a Dorado. We weren't too sure what it was at first and called over the VHF for fish identification. "Miki G" said it was his friend Fred and we should go ahead and eat him since he owed him money. Fred tasted pretty good. We made him into fish tacos with "Orinoco Flow" at anchor the next day.

At the midnight watch change on the second night, Todd discovered that the gooseneck track had torn away from the mast and twisted. Time to take down the main sail. We finished the race at 0352 under jib sail alone. In Bahia Santa Maria, we rafted up to "Orinoco Flow" to make use of their big inverter. While the guys did manly things with power tools, the women drank coffee. We then had the fabulous fish taco lunch mentioned above.

We felt really good about having motored only 15 minutes thus far as many boats had motored for many hours. Well, leg three saw very light winds. We motored for the first 2 hours and 50 minutes when we were then able hoist main and spinnaker. We were only making 3.5 knots, but we were sailing, hurray!

During the night we tore the gooseneck track off again. It was still held by the bolt we installed earlier. This time we motorsailed while we took the boom off. I installed another bolt in the track and we were off again.

We had a fantastic downwind sail, only wrapped the spinnaker badly twice (once right at the final finish), caught fish and ate more sushimi.

Because of all our sailing we won our division in the Baja Ha-Ha rally. I guess we better stop racing now since we won the only race we have entered.

So here we are in the land of 80/80 (80 in the water and 80 in the air) swimming right off the boat and wearing lots of sunscreen and straw hats. If this makes you jealous, you'd better untie your dock lines and head on down! You can look up the websight: www.allaboutcabo.com and see the beach from their webcam.

Todd and Ellen Mandeville
S/V "Mandolin" - Cal 34
svmandolin@hotmail.com
www.aljian.com/mandolin

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