Leg 6—Ensenada to San Diego

April 27-May 2
We spent 5 days in Ensenada. When we came in, we anticipated a quick turnaround for the short hop to San Diego. But a peek at the weather quickly changed our minds. Unseasonable Santa Ana winds were predicted for the next few days, so we settled in for a little longer stay. The first evening there was really chilly. We chalked it up to being acclimated to the warmth of tropical Mexico until I checked the weather from back home. The high for the day was only 3 degrees warmer in Lafayette, OR than Ensenada, MX. And we were out on the water in the cold wind. We pulled out our electric heater, thankful to be hooked into shore power.

The next day, we walked up through the marina boatyard to the town. We spent most of the day in a coffee shop, catching up on correspondence, business, and the state of the internet. It's always funny to sit around, each of us with a screen in front of our faces, and wonder if anyone is secretly labeling us as those people, the epitome of a family separated by the evils of technology. They don't know we spend almost every waking moment together in a life so unified, "What did you do today?" has almost completely disappeared from our vocabulary.
That night, after dinner, Bryan and I walked laps on the wharf, talking over our plans for our return. We'd almost made it back to the States, and the end of the trip was finally seeming real. For years, we've put much of our disposable income and energy toward making these precious months a reality, but we both have lots of dreams and goals for the next stage of our life and it was exciting to talk through our priorities and consider how we might transition well back/forward. Finally, chilled to the bone, we headed back to the boat and the girls, who'd been more than content to monopolize the electronic equipment while we were gone.
Before I even opened my eyes the next morning, I knew the Santa Anas had arrived. The temperature had jumped at least 20 degrees overnight and the brisk offshore winds made us glad to be safe in a harbor. I walked up to the marina office to check in since they hadn't been in all weekend. I'd e-mailed the harbormaster before we got in on Saturday for our slip assignment, but they hadn't required any payment or paperwork until Monday morning. What a departure from our recent marina experiences where they require copies of all our passports, boat documentation, and pre-payment before giving us keys to the gates...the gates which are card-locked both coming and going. If the dock ever catches on fire, you'd better have your key with you or know how to swim!

The Harbormaster pulled together a packet of exit paperwork for me and gave me instructions on how to clear out of the country with Immigration and the Port Captain. They offered me a phone with free US service to make a couple of important business calls and I took care of our latest banking issue. After months of inactivity on one of our accounts, we shocked our bank by making a purchase in Cabo and they stopped authorizing our automatic payment to InReach, our tracking and emergency satellite communication device. We'd spent several weeks on Baja trying to solve the problem by e-mail, repeatedly clicking "Yes, please authorize this payment!" on the fraud alerts that kept rolling in. I even borrowed a friend's phone in Turtle Bay and curled up in the V-berth to wait on hold until I was assured the problem was solved. But it wasn't. More fraud alerts, more denied payments. A final notice from the long-suffering InReach corporation. At one point, we sent our parents a quick note on the device warning them that our tracking might cut out, but that we were just fine...not to worry. As if that would stop them:-)
Anyway, I got that issue and a few others worked out and showed up back on the boat high from my morning of productivity. Bryan had gathered some laundry and offered to take me out on a date to celebrate. Since "date night" at home usually refers to the 5 minutes it takes to push the garbage bins up our driveway to the top of the hill, laundry sounded like a perfect way to spend some time together.

We didn't get a photo of the huge boat behind this impressive door. We just liked the folding door!

We walked through town with our enormous bag and finally located the place, a colorful, 3-story laundromat. In most of Mexico, you drop your laundry off and pick it up later, washed, dried, folded. Here, so close to the states, we didn't know the system. The machines seemed coin-operated, but the attendant helped us get our laundry going, offered to switch it for us, and had it waiting, folded when we came back a few hours later. All for about $3 a load. I won't miss carrying my laundry up the docks and all over town but fresh, folded laundry? Yeah, that's pretty nice.
A little done with tacos for the moment, we found a little Italian cafe and took care of my months-long lasagna craving.
In the late afternoon, Bryan decided to tackle our contaminated freshwater tank. The tank itself is made of plastic, but completely fiberglassed into a hollow spot in the keel. It can't be removed, and access requires pulling up our cabin floor. You might think living in a space the size of a large bathroom is difficult. Just wait until the room has no floor. The girls and I just tried to stay out of the way and keep errant tools or knitting implements from falling into the bilge while Bryan worked to empty, fill, wash, repeat.
Partway through the process, he got suspiciously quiet. It wasn't a fun job by any means, so I set aside my momentary red-flag feeling as ridiculous. But soon the look on his face intensified my worry. And his next words, "At least there's a haul-out handy." did nothing to quell my rising anxiety. He'd noticed a stream of water running down the outside of the water tank. Even after he pumped the tank dry (a long, long process with only a foot pump) water still bubbled. We'd started to hope we had a hole in the freshwater tank, a significant problem in itself, but far less dire than the possibility of a spontaneous crack in our hull. As unlikely as that scenario was—the boat had been through much worse than our rough ride to Ensenada and we hadn't hit anything at sea or in the harbor—we couldn't take it lightly. I sat on the settee, my heart pounding a bit, as I thought through the ramifications. The stream of water was a small one; our pump could definitely keep up all night. And we were sure the boatyard would get us out of the water onto dry land as soon as possible. I decided not to get ahead of myself and waited to worry about all the trouble and the expense until we were sure we knew what was up. Bryan fiddled around a bit more, this time filling the tank only halfway, far below the suspicious "hole". And water still dribbled out.
Finally, he headed upstream, into the engine compartment, where the normal drip around our propeller shaft had increased to a steady stream after our many hours of motoring. He tightened down the packing gland to stem the flow and then checked the "hole" again. It turned out that every time we put water in the tank, it weighed down the boat just enough to shift the puddle from under the packing gland, down some conduit in the fiberglass, and down the side of the tank, making it look like the water was coming from the tank or the hull. After he tightened everything down, the compartment drained and water stopped running from our mysterious "hole." Whew! He cleaned the tank, swabbing out the bottom with a rag on a stick ("I think last time I used a shop vac for this part," he said.) and put the whole thing back together while I sat on the settee and caught my breath. There's always something.

The next couple of days were delightfully boring. We hung out a did a little bit of shopping. I bought a pair of sandals identical to those I'd bought our first time in Ensenada, which I'd long since walked into shreds. The girls poked through the shops and we each bought one last churro. We kept careful track of our dwindling peso stash, trying to somehow make it last but spend it all.

Warned that the US might not allow in raw eggs, I took the precaution of hard-boiling all our remaining eggs. Meira didn't want anyone mistaking them for raw.
Wednesday, we checked out of the country. We visited the same office where we'd checked in and this time, comfortably navigated the multiple windows and regulations. We paid our 260 pesos (about $20 USD) and returned in an hour for our official Zarpe, a beautiful certificate that informed the precisely zero officials who will ever ask to see it that we legally left Mexico.
Now that we had checked out, we were on a 48-hour clock to skedaddle. (We'd been subtly reassured, "They won't come after you if the weather is bad and you're here a little longer, don't worry.") On our way back from the Immigration office, Bryan spotted a cinema playing an English version of Spiderman 2. After a quick dinner at our first Mexican taco stand, he rounded up a copy of the first Spiderman, got it working on the still-broken computer, and surprised the girls with evening entertainment and the plan to see the other one the next day.
In the morning, he and I snagged a dock cart and walked the 5 or 6 blocks down the wharf to the nearest gas station. We filled our tanks and lugged them back with many offerings of thanks to the inventor of the wheel.

We coerced ourselves into a little boat cleaning and whipped it back into a seaworthy state in time to escape the heat in the cool theater. We walked over, bought our tickets and waited. A few minutes before the show started we headed in to find our seats. The ticket taker found a way to convey that the start time was later than we'd expected and the last movie hadn't finished yet. We waited some more.

And then bought popcorn and drinks all around. Movie prices in Mexico are shockingly low. Like $3.50 or $4.00 a person. So we easily justified buying the quite reasonably priced snacks. We found our places, resisted eating all the popcorn before the previews were over, watched the first scenes of the movie, and...it wasn't Spiderman. We waited a few minutes, confused, but it persisted in not being Spiderman. Finally, Bryan stepped out and got some help. We'd been sold the wrong tickets but due to the language barrier, nobody had noticed. Spiderman had started already (the time on our tickets was later than we'd expected because, you guessed it, they were for the wrong movie.) They printed out replacement tickets for the early evening showing, which started about the time we'd hoped to be leaving the country. And we walked out into the heat we'd tried to escape and ate our theater popcorn in the park instead, all feeling oddly deflated by the whole fiasco.
We walked the 10 blocks or so to the grocery store and stocked up one last time on all our Mexican favorites--cookies we love, boxed juices, and shelf-stable milk and cream. On our way back to the boat, we automatically turned down the walking street vendors. "No, gracias. No, gracias....wait a second!" The tamale vendor turned around as we realized our mistake and squealed to a stop. Why were we saying "no" to a quick, easy, delicious meal for our night at sea? Strangely enough, I had not eaten a tamale our entire time in Mexico. I don't know if they're not a tradition in the areas we visited or if we just didn't run across them. We pulled out some of our few remaining pesos and, when he listed his prices in gringo-friendly US dollars, I fished out a $5 bill that had been riding uselessly around in my wallet for almost 6 months. We each got a chicken tamale for dinner and picked up pineapple and corn dessert tamales too, why not?

We dumped our food on the boat and hurried back to the theater again. This time, all went as planned. We counted out the last of our change for a couple more drinks and thoroughly enjoyed the movie, though the oddity of spending our last hours in Mexico in such a non-traditional way was not lost on us.
It felt immensely strange to walk out of the theater, walk a few blocks to the boat, drop our key in the drop box and just...leave the country. In a moment of reflection earlier in the day, I'd recognized the truth that many people lose their lives each year trying to get into the US and, though most of the Mexicans we met wouldn't dream of giving up their lives for mine, the privilege of free travel afforded me by my US passport should not be taken for granted.
We motored away from the dock, through the harbor lights, and across the breakwater. 8 tamales and 15 short, easy hours later, we pulled into the San Diego Harbor.

We tied up to the customs dock, waited for our inspection (they didn't even set foot on the boat), and took down our tattered Mexican flag (why is it that old flags are always "tattered"?)

In the stiff afternoon breeze, we moved to the sheltered La Playa anchorage and dropped the hook.

A few minutes later, Bryan was off helping another sailor on a mission to rescue a houdini hound who'd gotten tired of waiting for his owner and decided to make a swim for it. The dog drifted past our boat in the current and looked pretty beat, but when the guys approached, he wouldn't let them get close.

The girls and I stayed on the boat and yelled across to the owner's boat until he saw the situation and hopped in his own dinghy to retrieve his dog.
That evening, by popular demand, we walked the mile and a half to the closest Smashburger, a local chain we'd discovered back in November. We struggled to translate the dollars into pesos, the currency we'd become most familiar with, and fought the reflex to thank the servers in Spanish.

After burgers and shakes (and a really good, dark beer for Bryan) we walked back to the boat. Meira said, "Now I finally feel like we're really back in the States!" We really are, dear.

Leg 5—Bahia Tortugas to Ensenada

April 20-May 1

My journal from April 20 says, "In some ways, this is our toughest leg. Good thing we're feeling tough." We left Turtle Bay late, just before midnight. Bryan motored us out of the bay and took his normal night watch. By morning, we were off Punta Eugenia, cutting between Isla Cedros and the Baja peninsula. We'd heard it could be rough in there, as the wind and currents funneled through the tight passage, but we had smooth sailing until we hit the northern end of the island. As we left the protection of the island to our west, the wind and currents picked up significantly. It wasn't too uncomfortable, but we spent the afternoon and early evening trying to resist looking at our speed-over-ground. The low numbers, 2.4 kts...2.1 kts...1.7 kts, were too depressing to consider—about half of our typical speed. A local fisherman had recommended Isla San Geronimo as a great stopover spot and we'd planned to pull in there Tuesday night. It was already clear, we wouldn't make it. The weather was predicted to worsen by Tuesday afternoon and, at this rate, we might not even make our 2^nd choice port, the remote bay of San Carlos, before the winds picked up even more. During the night, the daytime winds died down and we made a little better time. 

Prepping to make a snack...oven mitts and vice grips serve dual purposes at sea

Tuesday was a long, long day of fighting our way toward San Carlos.

Yes, I straightened the horizon (No, we didn't straighten up the cockpit)

As the afternoon wore on and the headwind increased, I wedged myself into a safe spot and did the calculations. X rate, Y hours...would we make it in by night? The sea got pretty bumpy and our speed decreased until we started to wonder if we'd somehow fouled our prop. It would have been really difficult, even dangerous, to dive on it in these conditions and it didn't seem to be hurting the engine or the shaft so we just pushed on. 

The last 20 miles, normally an easy 4 hour run, took us 10 hours. But even at that slow rate, crew morale didn't take too much of a hit. We'd expected much of the bash back to be like this and felt pretty lucky that we hadn't had these conditions for more of our travel time up Baja.

About an hour before sunset, we finally neared the bay. Our charts listed it as safe, but windy—more beloved by windsurfers than sailors in need of a rest. 

It didn't seem like we would be able to find shelter from the wind and sea, but as we edged north into the bay, and prepared to drop the anchor, sure enough, the sea settled down a bit. We got the anchor set, deployed the flopper-stopper, and went below for a surprisingly comfortable night. The wind blew all night and all the next day. We turned on music to mask the whine in the rigging and did a few boat chores. I squelched around on the soggy carpet vowing to buy rubber-soled slippers in the next port (in rough conditions, a little water always seems to find its way inside and wet socks? Shudder!) Bryan cleaned the sand out of our cockpit drains, only spawning one or two more projects in the process, and dug out the last of the precious Mexican coffee. 

In the afternoon, while he got some rest, the girls and I watched several hours of classic comedy DVDs, a gift from our friends on another sailboat in Turtle Bay. Our weather reports from Turtle Bay were shot; the system we'd expected Wednesday had come in on Tuesday, so we couldn't trust the rest of the report to be helpful at all. We couldn't pull in any weather reports in San Carlos, but the barometer and cloud formations seemed to indicate that we were at the tail end of a little blow. Sure enough, Wednesday evening, the wind eased. We waited an hour or so to see if it would pick back up and then made the collective call to attempt the jump up to San Quintin. If the weather kicked back up, we could take shelter at San Geronimo, 20 miles away, or Punta Baja, another 10 miles or so north. And worst case, we could always turn and run downwind back to San Carlos. We dropped a GPS point on our e-charts in case we needed to find our way back in the dark and then hauled up the anchor. We braced ourselves to have to stop short of San Quintin, trying to count every small jump as a victory. But we had smooth motoring through the night and made it all the way to San Quintin on Thursday afternoon.

I'd been trying not to worry about fuel for several days now. Because of the extra hours at sea between Bahia Tortugas and San Carlos, we didn't have enough gas to get to Ensenada. Now we couldn't ignore the problem anymore. Our guide books indicated that, in an emergency, we could get a ride across the shallow lagoon entrance and into town on a panga. Or we could move to the other side of the bay, row in through the high surf, and beg for help from the hotel. Friday morning, we tried raising help on the radio and stood in the cockpit waving colorful pillowcases in an attempt to flag down a fisherman. 

By mid-morning, Bryan made the call to take the surf-landing/beg-for-help route. We drove the few miles across the wide bay and anchored as close to the surf as we dared. He and I took a few minutes getting ready. We put dry clothes into waterproof bags and tied the backpacks, the fuel jugs, the oars, and our shoes to the gunwales of the dinghy in case we flipped trying to land. We took the handheld VHF but left the girls behind. It would be hard enough getting through the surf intact with the 2 of us aboard, but Bryan thought my language skills were worth the extra weight.

He rowed toward shore and I marveled at our calm. How far we'd come since our first time in this bay! We watched the swells, counted the sets, and shifted our weight to keep us from getting hit by an early-breaking wave. Bryan picked a small wave and rowed to match its speed, surfing down the front edge into the golden sand. Perfect!

Exhilarated from our landing, we stripped off our lifejackets and dragged the dinghy up the beach. We walked in the sun up the dunes to the hotel and hid in a back stairwell while I took off my thermals. Even just a few feet inland, it was significantly warmer than out on the boat. A quick stop at the reception desk yielded a ride with a bored chef. He didn't have to start dinner until 3 pm and was happy to drive us the 5 miles into town. We tossed the jugs in the bed of the truck and climbed in after them.

The climate was noticeably different than that in dry Bahia Tortugas and greenhouses lined the highway. 

While Bryan got gas, I chatted with the chef. “Are you sure you don't want anything at the mini-mart?” he asked. We picked up cold sodas for the crew and offered to buy him one too. He turned us down and we headed back to the hotel. 

He pulled up as close as he could to the beach access and seemed surprised at the tip we pressed on him.

On the walk back, Bryan leap-frogged the tanks down to the dinghy to give his arms a break. 

We repeated our prep work, tying the now-full tanks and our bag and oars into the dinghy. We pulled up our pants and waded down the shallow beach up to our knees. The first few waves were definitely too big, but we'd seen a small set while we were getting ready and knew to be patient. We waited until the waves got scary-big and then diminished. As the first of the smaller set approached, we hopped in the dinghy and started rowing out. But the sea is anything but predictable and a late-breaking wave curved high above our heads and collapsed over us, soaking us and swamping the dinghy. We jumped out in the waist-deep water and sloshed back into shore, tossing our gear back into the dinghy, though it was full to the brim and barely afloat. I'd forgotten to tie on my sunglasses this time, and one of the oars escaped its tether. But I snagged the oar before it could float away and found my sunglasses in the bottom of the dinghy.

We had just started the long process of bailing with our hands (in retrospect, it would have been easier to dump out the water while the boat was still floating. Oh, well!) when we noticed a group of divers getting ready to launch their panga through the surf. One approached. “¿Hablas Español?” We worked out a plan for them to drive me and all our sopping gear through the breakers and let Bryan and Rover handle the surf on their own. Before I knew it, they'd bailed out the dinghy, tossed me in their boat and delivered me, dripping wet, into LiLo's cockpit. 

I looked back to check on Bryan, but he was already through the breakers and rapidly approaching. We would have been just fine the second time, but it was much easier without all the extra weight (I'm aware of the joke potential here already, thanks.)

Back on the boat, I waited for our helpers to motor away before stripping off my wet clothes in the cockpit and going below to pull on dry ones. 

Bryan, who'd been watching the weather with a little more optimism than I had, arrived with undampened energy. “If we leave right now, we might pull into Ensenada before the weather is completely impossible. If we wait, we won't be able to leave again for 3 days or so.” We took a poll of the crew and all agreed it was worth a few hours of discomfort to be done with the Baja Bash a few days early. Having learned a thing or two about division-of-labor on our trip south, I spoke my bargain aloud. “I'm happy to go right now and promise that, when it gets rough, I'll tuck myself into my cozy bed and ride it out as long as you're happy to go right now and promise that, when it gets rough, you'll be OK to handle it on your own for however long it takes." Of course, I was perfectly willing to do anything I could to help smooth the rough passage, but going into it with no expectations made it easier on us both. I knew Bryan wasn't taking on anything he couldn't handle—he would happily single-hand in these conditions—and could relax, knowing he wasn't resenting my comfortable ride. (It wasn't all comfort. Here's a blurry shot of me from that evening after the boat lurched and dumped the contents of the bookshelf on my face. Meira laughed so hard, I didn't even mind holding the pose for a photo shoot.)

Meira hauled up the anchor and, wet clothes still hanging from every secure place, we were on our way.

So, yeah. It was a long day. 

Meira's photo processing captures the sea's mood perfectly

And a long night. 

And the next day felt pretty long too. 

But we could taste the end (of this leg anyway!) The girls and I took the evening, as usual. By morning, when we would have normally taken over from Bryan, the seas had picked up enough that Hannah and I were a little queasy trying to move around the boat. Hannah and I crawled into the V-berth (aka anti-gravity-chamber) together and chatted over the smacks and crashes every boat makes when beating to windward. (“LiLo's just doing the biggest belly flop ever,” I reassured her once, when the boat dropped sideways off a wave and the surprisingly-solid-sounding crash reverberated through the hull.) 

Bryan dug deep and, with assistance from the indefatigable Meira, pushed us into the wind, past the last point of land, and then turned off the wind to beam-reach the last 10 miles into Ensenada.

We raised the sails in the brisk afternoon winds and Bryan got a little rest in the cockpit. (These 2 photos are from the same angle on the boat. That "horizon" in the second is actually the big beam swell. It looks as if it will break into the cockpit but every time, the boat rides it up and over and we come up dry.) 

At the last minute, we held back while a cruise ship motored through the breakwater and then it was our turn—racing the looming rainclouds across the protected bay and into a slip at the marina. We tied up in a hurry and headed up to the malecon for a fish dinner to celebrate the end of Leg 5, the last of the Baja Bash!

Leg 4—Bahia Magdalena to Bahia Tortugas

April 9-April 12
After we made the decision to pass Bahia Magdalena, the rest of the night went smoothly. Bryan navigated us around Cabo San Lazaro, the point at the north end of the Mag Bay area, and then pointed us due north for the run up to Bahia San Juanico. There's a San Juanico Point and a San Juanico Bay. We made sure we were pointed at the right one. He even picked up an internet signal as we passed Bahia Santa Maria and pulled in a current weather forecast, which was still predicting beautiful calms through Friday evening.

I woke to another clear day, no boats in sight and land only a distant outline, the glassy swell untouched by even a hint of wind. I did the dishes, taking advantage of the chance to let them dry on the stable counter before the sea changed her mood. I hardboiled some eggs, chopped the last of a head of romaine, and sliced tomatoes, avocados, and a cucumber for a chef salad. I improvised a creamy dressing, grated the last of the pepper jack cheese, and pulled out sliced almonds for some crunch. We set up the table and gathered around, grateful for one more easy day heading north.

In the afternoon, Bryan hung the solar shower for me and I took a shower in the cockpit. I should have left the bag of water out to heat for a few more minutes—Brrrrrr!—but I finished quickly and the sun soon warmed my skin and dried my hair.

No Photo Available

The wind picked up juuust enough to keep a headsail full, so Bryan and Meira hauled it up and we made good time under drifter alone until the breeze died, less than an hour later. In the quiet, I read aloud to the girls from Arthur Ransome's We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea, a locationally-appropriate family favorite. 

Late afternoon found us curled up on the settee for a movie. 

The computer sat balanced on the counter between the sink and the stove and the sound cord ran across the range to the stereo so we decided to take an intermission to make popcorn. Everyone doctored it to their own liking—salt, parmesan-garlic, or cinnamon-sugar. Bryan sat on the companionway steps and stood to look around every few minutes. The girls and I would typically have taken the evening shifts, but we were within 3 or 4 hours of landfall and Bryan needed to be awake to make the call about whether to anchor after dark or wait until dawn. I'd been awake since 6:30 and my weariness had me feeling a little anxious about the prospect of a night entrance. The old rule, “Never Make Landfall at Night.” is a good rule, but not an unbreakable one. Especially if, like tonight, the moon was high, the seas calm, the visibility beautiful...and the captain willing to turn around and spend the night in the safety of the sea if needed. From the charts, San Juanico Bay seemed like an easy place to approach in the dark, with no off-lying reefs and only one, well-charted rock far closer to land than we wanted to venture. Bryan didn't need me up and anxious, at least not until the last minute, so I curled up in bed and let myself relax.
Bryan stretched out on the settee and got a few minutes of sleep while Meira took her evening watch. I woke about 12:30 am in sudden silence. The girls were both in bed, the cabin and cockpit were empty, and Bryan had just shut down the engine and was stepping forward to set the anchor. He'd eased his way into the outer edge of the shallow bay and, as I watched in the light of the high half moon, he settled us snug for the night.
The nighttime temperatures on Baja's southwest coast are a little cooler than where we've been, but still not cold, and the daytime temperatures are perfectly warm, but not hot. I've been enjoying mornings cool enough to savor a hot cup of tea and this morning was no exception. I woke Bryan with a cup of coffee and the girls got ready to go to shore while I made breakfast burritos. We'd all eaten, and were just debating if we should tackle the long row to shore or pull up and re-anchor a little closer, when a trio of fishermen pulled up in a panga. We exchanged greetings and then I asked if there was gasoline in town. One of the fishermen spoke great English and he responded affirmatively and then invited us to hop aboard for a ride. I called over, “Uno minuto, por favor!” We scrambled into our shoes and grabbed the backpack, our cash, a water bottle, and a dry bag with a couple of internet-ready devices in case we found a place to check the weather while we waited for a ride back to the boat. Bryan tossed four empty jerry jugs across the water to the waiting fisherman, who tucked them down among the lobster traps and tools. When we were all ready, the panga pulled up, we stepped quickly across, and were off.
On the way in, Nacho manned the outboard and opened the introductions, pointing to his crew in turn. One of the men seemed shy and I didn't catch his name. But they proudly lifted a plank to show us the day's catch—4 white sea bass. Landing a panga at San Juanico, known for it's record long surfing waves, was a little bit tricky. The fishermen turned the boat stern-to the beach and instructed us to sit tight until they got the truck attached. We watched, fascinated as they rolled a set of wheels down into the breaking surf and floated the boat into the makeshift cradle that connected the wheels. Luis held the boat while Nacho backed his truck down toward the water and the crew expertly tied the boat to the truck bed. The surf threw us into the sand and then floated us off again several times before the truck finally hauled us free of the sea. 

Once safely ashore, we hopped down from the panga. 

Before we could begin to ask directions to the gas station, Nacho welcomed us into his “Fish Car” a beat up, extended-cab truck that looked just right for the job. We found places for the fuel jugs among the crates in the back and piled into the cab. The girls and I tried to avoid hooking our hair, or worse, on the sharp fishing lure hanging from the headliner. We were all grateful for the ventilation offered by the missing rear window. The Fish Car had obviously been well-used. Of course after several days at sea, it's quite likely we added our own aroma to the mix:-)

Nacho drove us up the slender road from the beach to town. He'd lived here all his life and talked about how much the town had changed with the influx of surfers from America. “Everything is so much more expensive!” He pointed out the homes owned by Americans, but seemed quite content with his life. “It's good to live in a town where you know everyone.”
We pulled up to an open structure on the side of the road and Nacho asked one of the men there if he had any gasoline. I didn't understand the whole conversation, but it was obvious they were out. So we drove on through town to the official gas station, the gasolinera. 

Nacho inquired about prices for us and we quickly siphoned 20 gallons into our tanks. The smell of corn tortillas from the tortilleria down the road overpowered the odor from the gasoline dripping from dangling hoses. 

Bryan and Nacho went into the small tienda next door for sodas for the crew and the girls and I tried not to stare at the adorable, ice-cream coated pre-school girl who came out of the store to stare at us.
We paid for the gas and hopped back in the truck. We took a different route through town on our way back and Nacho stopped in the road to chat with a friend on the way. I spotted what looked like an open ambulance with an examining room in the back and Nacho clarified, “There's the clinic.” We have friends following us on our trek north in a few weeks, so we asked about diesel availability and he said, “Yes, there's diesel in town too. If your friends need anything, we always monitor channel 69. Just have them call us.” I asked if he'd seen a recent weather report and he verified that the wind looked calm through Saturday. He said he has satellite internet and checks several sites every day to know what to expect in his work out at sea. “The next week should be the best week of the year,” he claimed. “Not like February and March. Too much wind!”

Back on the beach, the men loaded the fuel into the panga. The crew had stayed busy; fish entrails surrounded the boat and we tried to avoid tracking any on our shoes as we climbed up on the tire and over the gunwales. 

Bryan joined the fishermen in shoving us back down the gentle slope into the water. 

The boat bucked in the surf as they pulled the wheels back up above the high-tide line and hopped aboard.
We'd anchored half a mile or more off shore, but the panga's powerful engine made quick work of the distance. I stepped back aboard and grabbed for our camera to get a couple of pictures of our good samaritans. They hadn't asked for anything, only saying they were happy they could help. But we fished out some pesos and passed them over the lifelines before they motored off.

I glanced down at the clock. We'd only been gone about 30 minutes. We'd hoped that skipping Bahia Magdalena would work out well, that there would be fuel in San Juanico, and that we wouldn't end up regretting our decision. But we never expected to get in, get gas, and get out so easily! We quickly added fuel to our main tank and, just a few minutes later, Meira hauled up the anchor, started the engine, and got us on our way again. 

If our forecast was correct, and the weather began to shift Friday evening, we could pop in to Bahia Asuncion, where we spent Thanksgiving, to wait for a chance to day-hop north to Bahia Tortugas. But if, as our San Juanico friend indicated, the weather held all the way through Saturday, we could make it all the way into Turtle Bay by dawn on Saturday, more than halfway done with our trip up the coast of Baja in only 5 easy days.
The first few hours back out at sea were fueled by leftover adrenaline from our fun fuel run. We had a dance party on our microscopic dance floor (watch your elbows!) 

and I covered our settee cushions in the silly frog fleece we'd bought in Mazatlan.

But as evening came on, reality set in. We still had at least 36 hours of motoring ahead. We sent Bryan to bed to get some rest before his night shift. Toward the end of Meira's watch, in the span of about 5 minutes, a thick fogbank blew in and surrounded us in opaque mist. 

I squinted into the void, listened for engine noises, and tried to stay in the present moment. The fog thickened and lightened a bit over the next few hours. I checked the barometer repeatedly and tried not to wonder if we were racing an oncoming weather system. Bird sounds flew out of the fog long seconds before the birds appeared, close on our beam. I took comfort in our remote location. No major shipping around, no large fishing vessels. And any small panga still out in these conditions would be alert and agile enough to zip out of our way.
By the time Bryan got up for his watch, we'd broken free of the fog. I was glad to leave the thick, gray clouds behind. And there was evening. And there was morning. Another day.
We'd been fighting a bit of a current all the way up Baja, averaging only 4 knots instead of our usual 4.5 or 5. About 6 pm, just when our Monday morning forecast had predicted, the wind picked up a bit and the sea joined in, slowing our speed to 2-3 knots. Knowing that we would likely break free of the higher current in a few hours, after a tide change or after clearing another point of land, I resisted the urge to do the math—would we have enough fuel to get all the way to Turtle Bay? As we passed the entrance to Bahia Asuncion, we edged in closer to try to pick up a cell signal and a weather report. We never managed, but we took comfort in knowing that if the wind did keep us from making northward progress, we could always turn and head into this safe harbor on an easy downwind run. I checked the barometer again. And again. And pondered the cloud formations and the wave direction. Then I let the girls take their watches, went below, and shut my worrier off for a while. Re-analyzing the conditions every now and then is helpful, but I tend to try to analyze them constantly.
Again, by Bryan's night watch, the current had eased, the winds and seas had calmed down. I went to bed and gladly let him deal with the what-ifs for a while. I woke about 6:30am and squinted through the cabin to where Meira's feet stuck out across the cockpit. 

She'd woken early to give Bryan a little rest before our arrival and sat outside, bundled against the morning chill. I got up and helped with the navigation particulars, making sure our course was set to avoid the rocks standing sentinel across the southern portion of the entrance. Then we both sat back and enjoyed the ride. 

The pelicans were out en masse, performing their peculiar dives with the last-second reverse. Several dolphins arched nearby. As we passed the point and entered the bay, we pulled out the binoculars to catch first sight of the town. 

The bay was emptier than on our last visit; many of the pangas were gone and we only spotted one other sailboat's mast. We motored past Turtle Bay's flagship blue fishing boat and found a spot to anchor just outside the line of moored pangas. Once more, Bryan and I executed the now-familiar anchoring dance to complete leg 4.

Bryan steps to the bow. 
I shift to the helm. 
He bows deeply over the anchor and looses the chain,
Arms rhythmically releasing the rode. 
I follow his swinging movements and wait for the flourish, 
A figure-eight to hold the line fast. 
He grasps the anchor rode, 
Waves one hand theatrically broad. 
Thumbs up for a hard reverse to set the anchor well. 
I watch his back tense, 
His whole body listening to the feel of the rope. 
I kick at the throttle with my foot and wait 
A finger meets his thumb for the final “OK.”
He steps back. 
I ease the engine into idle. 
I lean over, 
Turn the key, 
Glance at the clock. 
He steps down into the cockpit.
I stand straight.
I circle into him for a quick kiss, 
Our arrival tradition.