HaHa Day 2

Winds were light in the morning, but Janet pointed to a rather ominous mackerel sky, signalling the approach of the storm front. By afternoon, we encountered a heavy swell from the northwest, another sign of the approaching storm. The original HaHa itinerary had us going from San Diego all the way to Turtle Bay, about half way down the Baja coast, but there was no way we could get that far before the storm hit, so we decided to head for a protected anchorage at San Quintin, about 180 miles south of San Diego.

As we approached San Quintin bay we had a mishap with our foresail, a roller furling genoa. We were running down wind and the main was blanketing the headsail, causing it to slat. The rolling of the boat in the heavy swells increased this problem, so we decided to furl the genoa. As we released tension on the working sheet, however, the rolling of the boat created a whipping action on the clew of the genoa, causing the sheets to tangle and creating a knot around the forestay. This made further furling impossible. The winds were well above 20 knots and the fouled genoa was flapping wildly and hard to control, in danger of tearing itself apart.

I started the engine and turned into the wind, while Paul went forward to try to untangle the sheets. By then we were in relatively shallow water, near the entrance to San Quintin bay, and the swells were steep and high. Paul had a wild bucking bronco ride on the bow, as the boat pitched up and down at a 45 degree angle. He could barely hang on and had no chance to untangle the sheets.

Not knowing what else to do, we decided to drop the genoa to the deck. We released the halyard and Paul managed to slide the luff out of the foil on the headstay, gradually sliding the sail down to the deck, where he sat on it and used his strength to keep the strong wind from blowing it off the boat. We motored into the bay that way. In the bay we found protection from the swells. It is a windy night, but the anchor is holding and we have another storm anchor ready to deploy, so all is well. There is some damage to the genoa but thanks to Paul's good deck work, nothing we can't repair.

San Quintin is full of boats. It looks like half the HaHa fleet is here. Despite the wind, people are in high spirits. The folks on Pacific Mystic announced that they had baked an apple pie but (alas) didn't offer any to us.

Here is Paul in a more relaxed moment.

The HaHa Begins

On October 26 the 190 HaHa boats paraded out of San Diego bay, past television cameras, and headed for the starting line.




We managed to get off to a great start by heading far out to sea, where we found good wind. We beat many of the larger boats to the Coronados Islands, but after that they began slowly overtaking us. Even with our spinnaker flying, we can't keep pace with boats 10-15 feet longer than ours. But it was gorgeous watching boats come up behind us with full spinnakers on beautiful calm seas.

Here is Janet, trimming our spinnaker, and a shot of the spinnaker up and drawing in light air.





Here are a few shots of boats overtaking us. The sight was so stunning, we didn't mind at all.





At nightfall of the first day, the wind died and we motorsailed through the night. In the early morning hours we encountered heavy fog and I wished, for the first time, that we had a radar. But we made it through the soup, blowing our air horn every few minutes, and as far as I know we never came near another boat.

Here are shots of Janet and Paul getting ready for their night watch on the first night.

The Skippers's Briefing and HaHa Pre-Party

The cruisers' race/rally known as the Baja HaHa is scheduled to begin at 11 am on October 26th, outside San Diego Bay. Today (October 25th) I attended a "skippers' briefing" run by the organizers, and met some of the skippers of the 190 participating boats. They range from grizzled old sailors who look like they've logged thousands of sea miles to novices wondering what they have gotten themselves into.

The meeting was run by Richard Spindler, the publisher of a sailing magazine known as Latitude 38, who likes to call himself "The Poobah." The tone of the meeting was festive until the Poobah warned that heavy weather is expected by the second or third day of the rally, and discussed various points on the Baja coast where a sailboat might find shelter from high winds and big waves. That got everyone's attention and called to mind the famous liability waiver, prepared by the legal staff of Latitude 38, that all participants have signed. It asks participants to acknowledge repeatedly their understanding that: "the HaHa is a high risk activity open only to those gladly willing to risk injury and death in the pursuit of adventure." This language seemed like a bit of a joke when we signed the waiver--the only injury sustained in the previous 15 HaHa's that was mentioned in the HaHa materials was suffered by a drunken cruiser who fell off a barstool in Cabo. But talk of winds in excess of 30 knots and waves of 15 feet and higher has us wondering about the risks. No boat has ever been lost during the HaHa--I'd hate for this year to be an exception.

I know three of the HaHa skippers already from my celestial navigation class--Tom Madden of St. Mary II, Rob Johnston of Blue Swan (a pretty ketch he just bought recently) and Jim Schmid of Formula Won.

After the briefing there was a big costume party for all the cruisers, where the mood became festive again. Our pirate do-rags were outclassed by a variety of more elaborate costumes.

Heading South

October 19th was departure day. We sailed from Long Beach to Newport Beach, where we picked up Mexican visas, fishing licenses and entry documents from Joan Irvine's document service. The next day we sailed on to Oceanside, where we stopped two nights while I did more work on the boat. I touched up the varnish, disassembled and reconditioned the primary winches, and worked on our WiFi amplifier and antenna set up. I also replaced the regulator and connector on the propane tank in order to deal with a propane leak. Then it was on to Mission Bay, where we will meet up with our crew for the trip from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas--my sister Janet and her husband Paul. They are both experienced sailors and we are looking forward to sailing with them.

Last minute repairs and upgrades

We have decided to go South with a cruiser's rally known as the Baja HaHa, which departs from San Diego on October 26th. That means everything must be ready in time for us to get down to San Diego. We have been working frantically to take care of problems and make repairs. In the last couple of weeks we have replaced our aging lifelines and replaced the main and spinnaker halyards, which were identified as suspect when we had a rigger go over the boat. I added a teak bracket on the stern for our new outboard engine, added a hoist for the outboard, rebedded a leaking deck prism above the chart table and made a series of repairs, upgrades to the sanitation system to try to deal with an odor problem. Our marine toilet is new--the problem seems to be an old Y-Valve (diverter valve) which was leaking because the gaskets were shot. Replacing that was a delightful job--not exactly how I expected to be spending my time on sabbatical.