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.