South

Shrimp Boats Everywhere!

December ?  Not sure what date, but it's Wednesday as I write this in my notepad. I think.

We've passed the halfway point between Turtle bay and Cabo. Turtle Bay is actually the halfway point between San Diego and Cabo. I like working in halfways when it comes to geography and traveling. It seems to make sense and gives me a sense of moving forward. No matter where I'm at, if I see it as halfway between two spots then I'm closer to something or some destination. Or further away, it depends on how you look at things and if you're coming or going.

What I love most of being South of Turtle Bay is that we're not only in Baja California Sur (Baja South) but it's warmer. Much warmer. Like shorts & sport top. If I were the exotic type I'd probably ditch the sport top. But I'm not the exotic type. I'm French Canadian and I grew up wearing wool socks year round. Oh how I wish I had a sock monkey made of an old grey sock with the red trim...

So, back to me and my shorts and sport top. Lee's wearing nothing but shorts, or some kind of lycra italian undies. Very sexy. He's more exotic than I am. If it were a contest I'd declare him the winner in exotic personality profiles. But it's not a contest and we haven't got any winners. Or losers. So I guess it's a win-win so maybe there are winners, but not the kind who bring home a medal. Although we do have each other as trophies.

Being South... There's barely a cloud in the sky, or anywhere else for that matter (ba-boom-boom-tish!) Until the moon rises, the stars do their best to make it nearly impossible to find the big dipper.

I don't know why but I struggle to rest until I spot the big dipper. That big old lard-ass of the skies...

This year's southbound trek sure is the stellar opposite of last year's southerly bash. We. Are. Taking. Our. Time. Yesterday was our very first sailing day stretching beyond 8 hours of navigation. And that's only because we had no other choice! Nowhere to park, ya know? And even then, we almost cruised right on by our anchorage as we both dozed off on autopilot. I saved the day (or night) which is a rare thing. Lee's the fixer. I woke up, looked outside, looked at our radar and the GPS and woke up the fixer "Where are we supposed to anchor?" he blinked a few times "Shit, we went passed it!"

But not by much. We turned and dropped the anchor and slept with vivid and immediately forgotten dreams.

Killer Day!

Up until last year when we sailed South my most frightening day ever was crossing to the famous Cedros Island midway down the peninsula of Baja California in Mexico. That day was dreadful.
Topped that one today I tell ya... *shivers* Today was so friggin scary I actually did utter the magic words "Oh God, please let us survive this!" Yup. I prayed. I openly and out loud prayed. Maybe more than once too. Not sure. But I did in fact pray to the baby Jesus and begged him to let me see the full moon tonight.

We sailed our spinnaker sail. For the third time today ever, we sailed it. And for the third time I thought I would die behind it. Or get hurt. Or break something. Like a bone, a neck or maybe our boat.

It started perfectly well. It was in fact sublime. We had a wind, dead behind us, and our sails were useless. Lee said "Let's try the spinnaker!"

"Uh oh." I was still shaking from our 2 previous attempts. And up he comes the staircase dragging that pretty thing of death.

We hooked that bitch up, pulled it up and shazam - it was awesome! Beyond awesome. It parachuted open dead center in front of our boat and we hit speed digits we'd never (ever) seen. We even wen't beyond 10 knots. Which is insane, trust me.

Suddenly (after nearly 3 hours of nose bleeding speeds of 8-10 knots) the wind picked up. It PICKED UP! Mega schmega style! And this beautiful butterfly turned on us and went à-la Hitchcock and yanked the boat to one side dipping in the water then boom yanked it to the other side, tipping so far over I stood STOOD on the SIDE of the bench 0_o and this went on and on and ohmygodIwilldieinthisfrigginboat on.

I took a picture of where one of my shoes landed. It wasn't on me per say, but it needed to leap from one counter to the other, to land 4 feet away tucked between the stove and the cabinet. Ok? I can go on. I so could totally go on with the weird and insane stuff that happened. But I won't. Because you either:

1. Would not care.
2. Would not believe me.
3. Would be too scared to sleep tonight.
4. Would ask to see my I.D. (in case you work for for the DMV or the INS or the FDA or the CIA or the KKK)

Why the heck would I ever think of adding those last 3 hateful letters???
We freaked out. Needless to say. We tried loosening both sides. The sail only parachuted more and created a bigger bubble. We lowered the lanyard holding the death bitch up. Bigger bubble. We loosened the sides again. Big bubble. Words were said. Maybe yelled. Prayers were mumbled. Then spoken more clearly. Bits of flesh were lost on the quickly and harshly tugging lines. Rope burns. They suck.

Finally we tossed the coin: it's us and the boat or that beautiful flapping butterfly. We won. Thank god. And we released first one side then the other. I'm at 530 words and by now the true story has taken over 60 minutes, has brought my heart rate way up and ...I don't know... I realized I had more of a belly than I did last year. Yeah, as I jumped from one side to the next I looked down and saw the bulge. What can I say, I love hot pastrami sandwiches!

Yeah. So long story short (too late) we let go both sides, watched it flop all over the place, then finally let it out the top so much it came down to the water, we motored up to it scooped it up and allowed twentyfivethousand gallons of salt water into our cockpit (hee hee I said cock). Oh yeah, and with all this tipping dreadfully from one side to the other a jug of fuel spilled over. Fun! We not only had the threat of laying the boat on its side but now we faced the thought of explosion!

Killer day I tell ya, killer day! Oh and my belly - have I mentioned my belly and how my legs need a waxing?