Bahia Santa Maria-Cabo San Lucas
1 February 2022 – Just before we weighd anchor out of Bahia Santa Maria I managed to flag some fishermen over to us and gave away the mess of fishing line we had picked up on our way here. Good riddance, we felt.
Once one leaves Bahia Magdalena (the next by 20 NM SE of Bahia Santa Maria) there are no good anchorages along the way to Cabo San Lucas so one is pretty well obliged go to Cabo San Lucas in one long leg, approximately 152 NM by the book. We went a bit further offshore to try to stay in good wind so I reckoned our leg at more like 190 NM. We sailed near SV Makai the whole way; she was better handled and though we flew our spinnaker (the enormous light air headsail we have lugged around since we bought Antoinette) and made great time, we could not beat her to the Cape.
We saw several whales, some quite close, and about 40 NM off the Cape we ran into a giant group of dolphins which swam under and around us for quite some time. They gave us the SeaWorld special, jumping clear of the water, standing up out of the water on their tails, and generally frolicking about us. A couple tiny squid of two or three inches jumped out of the water and onto our deck, probably to escape predators. I found them dead in the morning.
Sometime during the early morning of the 2nd of February, between 0800 and 0900, we crossed the Tropic of Cancer at N 23°26′ 11.1. ″This is “the northernmost latitude at which the sun can be directly overhead” according to Wikipedia. This only happens once a year on the summer solstice. The ceremony for crossing the Tropic of Cancer is not as elaborate as that for Shellbacks crossing the Equator for the first time, but still interesting for us to mark.
We arrived a couple of hours before sunrise on the 3rd of February, so we pulled down the sails, started the engine and orbited in front of the entrance to the marina. Just at sunrise there was an explosion of boats of all sorts, mega yachts, sport fishermen, pangas, barges, coming out of the narrow entrance channel of the marina; Jimena said it was like ants coming out of an anthill when disturbed. I was terrified and could not see how there would not be a collision of some sort, but the pelicans and the sealions had obviously seen it all before and were perfectly accustomed to the chaos.
We pulled through the last of the ants onto the fuel dock and took a bit less than eight gallons of diesel to top our tanks, as much just to get out of the way of all the maniacs as to take on fuel. Jimena laughed when I told her that I had told the fuel dock workers that the entrance to the marina had been “…like a zoo”; she said that doesn’t really translate and is something of an insult since I had likened them to animals. She said a circus would have been a better analogy. Zoo…Circus…it is all apt to me.
We fetched the Cape almost exactly 46 hours after we departed Bahia Santa Maria, meaning we averaged around 4 knots. This does not sound too fast but it is for us. it is almost 100 miles per day. A person can walk that fast, sure, but not for as long and not carrying all that Antoinette carries.
