2004 Baja Haha

With our crew of Larry and Sandy Arvidson, we departed San Diego at 1:30 PM on October 26,2004 in a light rain. We arrived in Bahia de Tortugas (turtle bay) at around 7 pm on October 29th during a full lunar eclipse, which blocked our light from the full moon. We picked up a nice yellow fin tuna as we passed the north end of Cedros Island. We spent 3 nights in Turtle (3 more than on any previous trip) culminating with the beach party on the last night with around 500 sailors at a pot luck. Sandy climbed the mountain overlooking the bay. We departed Turtle on the morning following the beach party with the new iron rose spinnaker up, making 8.2 knots Most of the boats in the ha ha (about 150) had a colorful spinnaker up so the departure was spectacular. Larry got some shots of the other boats (attached) The wind got to be too strong for the chute so we doused it and made 6 knots under the main alone in 25 knots of wind. We sailed about half the way to Santa Maria Bay and Sandy caught a nice dorado. We arrived on the evening of October 31 to this usually isolated bay with a 20 mile long beach. The last time we were the only boat in the bay. Now there are another 150 boats. We stayed for a couple of days with the fleet and partied with the other cruisers. Larry and Sandy swam ashore with the inflatable kayak and climbed to the top of the mountain that forms Cabo San Lazaro and got a great shot of all the boats in the bay. We left for Cabo on the following morning with the spinnakers up again, a really colorful sight. The wind moderated and then died so back to motor sailing until sundown when the wind piped up to 20 knots or more. We arrived in Cabo the morning of November 4th. Bill Cross flew our Bonanza down with my sister Carol and met us and flew Larry and Sandy back to Phoenix for their flight home. We all went to the beach party which featured drunks doing back flips off the elevated stage. I ferried everyone 3 at a time to the beach party from the marina. Cabo is still the most expensive place we have ever stayed, 125 dollars a night for a slip. We partied with our crew, Bill and my sister, our friends on Liberty Tom and Nancy, Frank and Dayna of Snowgoose, and Dick and Carol of Tanoshii. In hindsight, we did the Ha ha to meet more cruisers en route (we had done 3 previous trips solo) but mainly hung out with folks we knew from the Cal club, Ham class etc.