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| This is an artist's rendering of what happened. Notice the clothes in the front window? |
They say when you go South down the Baja it's downhill, but heading northbound is like going uphill. The current, the wind and mankind's basic natural instinct all take you towards the South and warmer climates!
Going North? You've got a headwind and find yourself slamming against the current. Waves hit the front of your boat nonstop - this is what they call the Baja Bash!
Leave it to US to go uphill even if we're headed South. It's now our own little inside joke that if we want the wind to change direction all we need to do is go sailing with it on our side, it won't be long before it changes direction!
Our boat holds 55 gallons of diesel, plus we always carry two 5-gallon fuel jugs just in case... Diesel fuel goes a long way in a sailboat when the sail's natural fuel is on your side!
Almost halfway between San Diego and Cabo San Lucas is Cedros Island. The Northern crossing to Cedros is Baja's own little Bermuda triangle. If anything is to go wrong on the Baja journey - THAT is where you can expect it to happen. And happen it did, indeed! But that's not all that happened in this portion...
• Broken fan belt... check!
• 30-mile hour winds... check!
• In our faces of course... check!
• Waves over 6 feet high... check!
• Hitting us from all sides... check!
• Fuel: empty... check!
• Vomit... of course!
At one point, I'm down below lying on the bed trying to control my fears (yes, fearS as in multiple amount of fears) and suddenly the Captain decides to jib or tack or whatever its called and turns into the wind, or tries to do some kind of a turn and Mr Thirty-Mile-An-Hour-Wind is pissed off at us for our utter lack of respect. The boat tilts. A lot. Like "wholly-fuck-my-cabinets-are-throwing-all-my-clothes-out" kinda tilt.
Yeah. I was in the middle of a scene taken directly out of a horror movie when some unknown and invisible beast decides to throw all contents from the interior cabinets into the air to freak the occupants way the fuck out! Lying on the bed I suddenly found myself kinda standing upright. I immediately grabbed my iPod and turned on my funky little level app to see what kind of angle our jangle was taking. The iPod was slammed against the ceiling in a "landscape" format and suddenly it changed its degree to "portrait". That's how far we were leaning. And this was after the mega tilt!
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Editor's note: In case you, the reader, don't know what I'm talking about, it's when the apparatus believes you want to look at it upright rather than on its side. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about!
And then, the Captain announces he needs me up above to help him reef the sail so less of it is exposed to the elements from hell. I avoided looking at the waves at all cost. This was some serious freaky scary shit man! Once we secured the sail, we climbed back down. Soaking wet the only thing we wanted to do was make our way towards the toilets. Some serious deposits were needed pronto!
Are you jealous of me now?
