Ensenada to Bahia Santa Maria

11/19/14 – 11/24/14

530 Nm; 115 hours; 2 hours on motor

Departed Ensenada at 1300 and had our only upwind leg, beating out of Todos Santos in San Diego-like conditions. By sundown, we'd cleared Punta Baja and started to settle into the long downwind run.

Punta Baja

I made a classic series of mistakes the first night out.

Step 1: Misjudge wind strength while running downwind

Step 2: Carry Spinnaker at night

Step 3: Carry Asymmetrical Spinnaker too deep

Step 4: Carry Spinnaker under self-steering vane

Thankfully, the spinnaker survived with no obvious damage, although I felt something stretch or tear in the battle to get it down off the spreaders.

Our rhumb line was much deeper than we could accomplish with our asym or jib. Jibing downwind on JUMBLE is a painfully slow affair, so I spent the dogwatch putting the finishing touches on a super-heavy duty spinnaker pole I built a couple months ago, but never rigged. The spinnaker pole with jury-rigged braces turned out to be our ace in the hole on this leg.

Tradewinds Rig

Wind strength varied between 15-25 knots most of the way, with only a few lighter spots of 10-15 as our course took us near the coast and in the lee of capes (south of Punta Eugenia for instance). The dominant direction was NW. This allowed us to go DDW on our rhumb line and make a minimum of 4.5 knots, but usually around 6. We had to reef and shake out reefs pretty frequently, but the 105% jib stayed on most of the time. Our Sailomat self-steering was more than strong enough to handle an over-canvassed JUMBLE, but the blocks and lines connecting it to our wheel would get very noisy when sliding down a wave and were under a lot of strain. We found a happy speed to be about 6 knots average and keeping things in balance with the steering effort as light as possible. The mizzen was furled whenever DDW.

In the lighter wind areas, we found jibing downwind under 170% jib and full main and mizzen to be the ticket. The lighter conditions were always near land and usually at night (where we'd often get an east component to the wind), so the spinnaker just wasn't worth the effort with one person on deck and the other trying to get some sleep. However, in this configuration our distance made towards the mark was much worse, usually 3 knots or less.

Harmless Clouds

We had a little light rain and squally looking clouds around Cedros Island, but nothing stronger than the prevailing winds materialized. We encountered much less marine life than on our previous trips. Maybe it was the time of year or just the choppy conditions. This is the first 2+ day sail we've taken without seeing any dolphins.